The subreddit for Path of Exile is a particularly unhappy place right now, especially in light of a recent dev blog talking about update 3.19 and some of the adjustments Grinding Gear Games made to item drops.
The post in question revealed that rare monster spawning has been scaled back and that a “massive historic bonus” to item quantity and rarity from league-specific monsters was further removed. These adjustments were offset by better rewards from the rare monsters that do show up and a “moderate” increase to item quantity respectively.
“Our intention with these changes is to modify certain league content that was out-of-line with other content so that it has a similar reward profile. These changes are important, but we understand they have reduced overall rewards that players receive,” the post explains. “We are going to compensate elsewhere, but we don’t want to just increase the raw number of items that are dropped. Most items are immediately filtered out. We want to increase the number of relevant items that drop.”
This portion of the post has infuriated Redditors, many of whom call out the fact that the loot drop changes weren’t spelled out in the patch notes or a recent livestream. The reposting of the dev blog on Reddit by lead developer Chris Wilson has also managed to be his most downvoted post on the platform to date.
There are plenty of other changes and explanations in the post as well that discuss harvesting, archnemesis tweaks, and rewards for the Lake of Kalandra, some of which are being met with further annoyance from players, but it would appear that mucking with loot drops has touched a deep-seated nerve.
