With the Necropolis League nearing its 3-month mark, the question that is on everyone’s mind is: when is the next expansion of Path of Exile going to be released?
That is indeed an interesting question and one that we will answer in this article. So sit back and read ahead. We will provide you with the information that you need about PoE’s next major content update.
Path of Exile Patch 3.25 Release Date
It is no surprise that Path of Exile: 3.24 Necropolis League is nearly three months old, which is actually quite a long time as far as the game’s major expansions are concerned. Thus, Grinding Gear Games (aka GGG) made an announcement to give the community some info about the next content update.
The company said that it is eyeing a late-July release for Patch 3.25. That could mean a couple of things. First, the potential release date for the 3.25 expansion might be July 26. Since the current league was launched in the final week of March, this is the most likely scenario. You could say that the company is following a trend here.
Second, because of the poor player retention of the Necropolis League, it is also possible that GGG will release Patch 3.25 sooner, by about a week earlier on July 19.
Whatever the case may be, you can expect the game’s next major patch next month.
PoE Necropolis League: What Went Wrong?
If you look at the game’s forum, subreddits, and various community platforms, you will find that Patch 3.24 Necropolis League is deemed the worst Path of Exile expansion to date. In fact, some would argue that it has surpassed the Kalandra League in terms of being that bad. So, what went wrong? In the next sections, we will explore the possible reasons why.
League Mechanic is Meh
For those who are new to the game, GGG always introduces a new league mechanic every time they release a major expansion. That said, the league mechanic for the current expansion involves getting a bunch of corpses, storing these corpses in the morgue, and then burying them to create a new item with some desired modifiers.
On the surface, you might think that the league mechanic is fine, right? In Necropolis’ early days, not exactly. You see, there were just so many problems with it that it forced GGG to make drastic changes just a couple of weeks into the league.
While it is certainly much better now than it was when Patch 3.24 launched, graveyard crafting is still pretty mediocre compared to the previous league for sure.
Too Much Clutter
Have you been mapping in PoE lately? If so, you have probably been bombarded with just a ton of stuff on screen, which has resulted in a severely diminished quality of life.
Requires Heavy Investment
The best way to illustrate how bad the current expansion is in terms of player retention is to compare it to the previous one, the Affliction League.
One of the major downsides of the Necropolis League is that it requires much heavier investment if you want to earn plenty of PoE currency.
For instance, you’d have to spend multiple Divine Orbs in order to juice up your maps and get the most out of them. If you do not do this, you will just be wasting your time.
Now, compare that to Patch 3.23 where you only had to defeat monsters that have been buffed by the wisps from the Viridian Wildwood and you would have a plethora of incredible loot. This is true even with a minimal amount of currency invested in maps, by the way. The only problem you had to worry about was if your build was capable of eliminating the buffed-up monsters, but other than that, it was certainly a blast!
Content So Boring
Aside from bombarding you with corpses and items, the Necropolis League is so boring from a content standpoint, so much so that the vast majority of players would just ignore graveyard crafting completely.
What’s worse is that the PoE community is united in saying that they would much rather tackle the old content as opposed to what is being offered right now.
Very Tedious
While it is true that some players are able to make boatloads of PoE currency just by selling crafted items from the league mechanic, graveyard crafting, in itself, is very tedious for the vast majority of the game’s population.
Just look at the number of corpses you’d have to bury in order to get the highly-coveted modifiers:
Constant Crashes and Server Issues
There is always some level of excitement when it comes to new content and this applies to every Path of Exile expansion as well. The only problem is that to actually retain players, the content has to be enjoyed without issues that are beyond the community’s control.
Players had been complaining about constant crashing issues and server problems on Reddit and in the game’s official forums ever since the Necropolis League was launched. In fact, even alt+tabbing in and out of the game would cause the client to crash. Yes, it was that bad!
GGG was able to rectify the situation, but it was too little, too late. The player count saw a massive decrease because of those issues. There is only so much a person can take, which may have contributed heavily to PoE’s decline in population in the Necropolis League.
Tier 17 Maps
This league introduced a new tier of maps that are quite difficult to accomplish, but that is with a promise of good loot. Well, that was what the community thought at first. However, this was short-lived because players found out that the modifiers that show up on a T17 map are either too hard to deal with or can completely brick certain builds that players are using. If you don’t believe us, just check out this Fortress map:
Unlike T1-T16 maps, Tier 17 maps can only be re-rolled by using Chaos Orbs. So, not only do you have to use a competent build that can destroy monsters on these maps, but you also have to have a ton of currency to get the set of modifiers that are acceptable for your character.
Lacks Build Diversity
The 3.24 Necropolis League focused heavily on crafting, which only caters to a very small portion of the PoE community.
Contrast that to the Affliction League, where players had access to That Which Was Taken and Charms that basically encouraged them to try out many different and very unorthodox builds.
What Can You Expect in Patch 3.25?
The current league certainly has a fair share of problems, but that is not to say that GGG has given up. If anything, the company will do its very best to entice the community to play Path of Exile again.
Improve Long-forgotten Builds
If we were to guess what is coming in PoE Patch 3.25, we believe that it will not be focused entirely on loot. We have made that assumption because the past two expansions were heavily based on lucrative items.
Instead of focusing on items, Grinding Gear Games should put more attention on how to encourage players to try out different builds that do not cost an arm and a leg to achieve.
One way to do that is by making balancing changes that buff the least popular skill gems and ascendancy classes in the game. For example, the Gladiator and Assassin could certainly use some adjustments.
Another suggestion would be to finally give the attention that melee builds in Path of Exile definitely deserve. People have been clamoring for this for ages at this point, so it is time for GGG to do something about it.
Technical Changes
The frequent crashing issues that players have experienced in the current league may be fully ironed out in Patch 3.25. At least, that is what we hope will happen.
The good news is that GGG is already making a lot of progress and has taken more strides to improve various aspects of the game.
For instance, just recently, the company released a 4GB patch that introduced Render Resolution and Upscale Modes to Path of Exile.
Render Resolution allows players to lower the resolution to vastly improve performance, though this comes at the cost of lower image quality. It is important to note that players who want to use this feature must play the game in Fullscreen Mode because it does not work when using Borderless Windowed Mode.
Upscale Mode, on the other hand, allows PoE players to improve both performance and image quality through the use of upscaling technologies. By default, Path of Exile uses NIS or Nvidia Image Scaling to do this. Despite the name, this technology is also available for those using AMD GPUs.
Hopefully, the company can come up with more technical changes that improve the experience of Path of Exile players.
Transfigured Support Gems
When the Affliction League was released, GGG also introduced a new class of gems called Transfigured Gems. They were made to give players some level of flexibility when it comes to creating builds, all without relying on threshold jewels, lab enchantments, and alt-quality gems.
That said, the Affliction League and Necropolis League only added transfigured versions of skill gems. Given a couple of expansions to think about, perhaps Grinding Gear Games will finally introduce transfigured support gems in the 3.25 expansion.
If that happens, maybe the old and forgotten builds will make a resurgence. Those who were bummed out by the heavy nerfs to the Tornado Shot Deadeye build might be able to rejoice once again once Patch 3.25 goes live.
Simultaneous Release
For many years, GGG would release a new PoE expansion on PC first, then followed by the console versions a couple of weeks after. The company has changed that in the previous league. What does this mean?
Just like in the Necropolis expansion, Grinding Gear Games will launch Patch 3.25 simultaneously on all supported platforms. This means that Path of Exile players are going to enjoy new content together no matter what platform they choose to play this popular APRG.
More Accessible T17
Right now, Tier 17 maps obliterate 80% of the builds in Path of Exile. The only ones capable of clearing such maps are players who have invested a ton of PoE currency into their characters.
If GGG could go back to the drawing board and make suitable adjustments that allow the vast majority of the population to enjoy this content in-game, then that would be greatly appreciated!
This is not to say that Tier 17 maps should be made significantly easier because some form of challenge is still necessary for the content to be engaging. But, what we mean is that it should be accessible enough that builds with a considerable amount of currency invested into them can do the maps with a few teleports to spare.
New Quality of Life Features
Path of Exile, by today’s standards, is a pretty dated game. Hence, improvements have to be made in order for players to enjoy their time playing it.
The current league did bring a bunch of new improvements, such as the ability to place the same type of PoE Currency all at once in the trade window, increased stack sizes for stacked decks and Divine Orbs, and a full scarab rework, among others.
It will be interesting to see what quality-of-life features GGG is going to implement in Patch 3.25. Hopefully, they are going to be something worthwhile!
Conclusion
Even though the current league did not perform as well as the company had hoped, we remain optimistic that GGG will turn things around in Patch 3.25. In fact, the company has already implemented technical changes that improve image quality and performance. Who knows, maybe the developers have learned their lesson and, because of that, they will make sure that the game’s next expansion will not suffer the same woes as the Necropolis League did.
So, how’s your current experience with Path of Exile so far? Are you excited about what’s to come to Path of Exile in Patch 3.25?
