If you are waiting for Path of Exile’s next expansion, you have to wait a bit longer, the developers said. Patch 3.17, originally planned for release in the third week of January, is pushed back for at least two weeks. It is now expected to launch in early February.
According to a forum post, the reason for the delay is that the higher-ups have decided to give their staff some time off to celebrate New Zealand’s summer holidays so that they can come back fully recharged for the year.
Aside from that, an experimental game mode with a tentative name, “Hard Mode,” was supposed to be up for testing before Patch 3.17 is released. However, as it stands, it is now slated for launch after the release of the said update.
On a positive note, if you still have plenty of things left to do in Scourge league, you can do them given the extra time. Perhaps you can use the extra couple of weeks to get the equipment you’ve been wanting to acquire since the beginning of the current league.
The Community Wants Better Communication
While the developers have been upfront about their plans in the first quarter of 2022, it seems that fans want them to be more communicative.
Redditor @Varnas_A said that they did not feel that the folks at GGG have delivered on their promise of more communication, updates, and general interactions. They’ve added that the devs have seemingly abandoned the community two weeks after the launch of Patch 3.16.
Another user replied that GGG has consistently missed the mark in the past four out of five leagues launched in the past year. They explained that the game has always suffered from poor balancing. They’re hoping that the release of Lost Ark will shake things up and put the developers on their toes so that they’re somehow pressured to deliver more moving forward.
Redditor @putupthosewalls opined that the devs just promised those things as a form of marketing for the Scourge league. This is somewhat true considering that the game encourages you to buy more stash tabs, cosmetics, and other items in the said expansion, which requires real money.
What do you think? Should the devs have been more vocal? Are there other things that they should improve on?
