The cycle is always the same: players find a loophole, developers respond, and then it starts all over again.

Action RPGs like Diablo are, in many ways, an open invitation from developers to players to discover things they didn’t expect to be able to do. Ideally, this is limited to effective skill interactions and builds. However, it often includes exploits contrary to the spirit of the game that are somewhat game-breaking. Path of Exile 2 recently received the 0.4 update, which introduced a new buildable dungeon system: the Vaal Temple. This endgame side activity involves running through tracks for valuable loot. The system is so complex that it is highly divisive among players who simply want to kill monsters and collect shiny items.

About a week ago, Grinding Gear Games (GGG) intervened to improve the mode’s rewards and make it less punitive. The mode is still shrouded in enough mystery that players are sharing infographics on how to place each unique room type to earn the most rewards. Now, enough time has passed for people to develop strategies for generating income with it. We’re talking about loot that can’t really be found anywhere else. The limiting factor is that the temple is only valuable if you build it over time. It can take a few hours of gameplay for the right rooms to appear.

As is natural for action RPG players, people started looking for ways to speed up the process. They’ve found a method that GGG would certainly not approve of. Fubgun was one of the few who realized they could keep their characters at a low level during the campaign to build temples quickly. Rather than clearing the tracks and searching for the entrance, a special campaign track generates it in a specific location. We can reset the course repeatedly while building the temple and generating profits, saving a lot of time.

This method requires a low-level character because high-level characters cannot receive any rewards. This is clearly the most optimal method in a game that encourages optimization. After all, the loot may be upgrades or crafted items that can improve our existing equipment.

The only reason we think this method still exists without a hotfix is because GGG is on holiday break. The problem isn’t serious enough to prompt someone monitoring the servers to apply a hotfix. However, it’s an exploitable bug that would be fixed immediately if more of the team were present. Clearly, people were not intended to spam Vaal Temples and deliberately die to keep their characters at a low level.

It’s surprising that it works at all; it’s a good example of how flawed the mode is. If players are so frustrated by the randomness that they resort to strange solutions just to win, then perhaps the system has deeper problems that need to be fixed before it can be implemented in the game.

Source: PCGamer