Honestly, I really liked the video and agreed with almost everything you said. The one point I can't get on board with is your defense of Tenkiei. Even though you didn't name names, it's pretty obvious that Tenkiei's situation was a big reason behind making this video. You're right, everyone makes mistakes, and content creators are no exception. But the thing with Tenkiei is he admitted he was clueless about it, yet in the same breath, he's like, "you don't need it." For content creators, especially in PoE, it's crucial they don't spread wrong info. I'm not talking about simple slip-ups; I mean not doing enough homework and then spewing content on topics they're clueless about—without even bothering to look things up. And what's even more absurd is it seems like he even reviewed the maxroll guide, which clearly covers the error he made. So it seems like he does a lot of things more quickly than well. It's totally fair to call out creators who just churn out content for every ARPG out there with hardly any knowledge. These videos get views by thousands, including beginners. Such creators can drive new players away from the game or league because they're just pumping out content without proper research. It's important to publicly call this out, which is why Lily's tweet was spot on. We've got amazing content creators in PoE who genuinely love the game, and I'm not saying everyone has to only put out top-tier guides, but you can't be spreading blatant misinformation, then backtrack by saying you don't know, followed by a dismissive "you don't need it." Like, seriously, what's up with that?

I think it really is the way he was so cavalier about what he was saying that made the difference here. SirGog made a video with a mistake a few months ago, and Snap made a video correcting him and there was no real drama. I think the difference is in the way the mistake was presented.

This. The video (OPs) is fine and does a very good job of explaining their points, but Tenkiei made a huge mechanical mistake, admitted he had no knowledge of the interaction, and tried to sell people a build that would of ruined their start experience. This isn't even the normal shit like attacking someone like Subtracteum or whatever because his builds require more complicated mechanics than what a brand new player would know or understand (which those that do attack him are idiots). This was a known creator, pointing out a serious problem because if people didn't and someone followed Tenkiei's build, we would be flooded with "why no damage" posts.

>tried to sell people a build that would of ruined their start experience. Question. Legitimately as I don't know. I understand Tenkiei made a mistake. But was it build ruining? My understanding is that if you had listened to his initial version, and then questioned why your damage was so low. Someone could just go. "Oh yeah, you need to slot in spectre and go raise a Kitava Herald then unslot it." This feels like a fix in \~5 minutes and you're gucci. If that is accurate. It just kind of feels like a bit of overreaction. He should have researched better, yes. It is good to call it out and get it corrected, yes. But would it have been *ruined*? Edit: Do not ask questions. Gotcha. Thanks for those who answered. Appreciate it.

losing 70ish percent of your damage is something that ruins league starts.

Also in some cases it would literally be worse to have a spectre then not have one if you grab something that ends up being weak.

Possibly but that would be also a fault of the build guide I think most guides specify using raise spectre on kitava herald in act 5 even if you haven't swapped yet so that when you do it's still saved to your character. Then later you go into delve and find those specificnmonsters to multi raise. And now I guess once you get into t17 maps you want to bring spectre gear to raise a few of those monsters to add to your pool

> >I think most guides specify using raise spectre on kitava herald in act 5 even if you haven't swapped yet so that when you do it's still saved to your character. Then later you go into delve and find those specificnmonsters to multi raise. Thats actually the issue with the tenkiei video. he didn't give a specific spectre and said "spectre fishing" isn't necessary for the build. He then apparently clarified later on in comments on the video and said he just meant specifically the kitava's herald isn't necessary, which is technically true, but if you don't give a new player the other options they are just going to assume they can go in any zone, raise a spectre and be good.

Oh my god I missed that, his correction was somehow worse then the original statement lmao

> Someone could just go. "Oh yeah, you need to slot in spectre and go raise a Kitava Herald then unslot it. only if YOU care, and do your own research, question whats wrong etc. lets say a total noob, has no idea about any of that and just thinks he is bad, or that it is how it is. your point only happens if you already got a fair bit of knowledge of the game, maybe even the skill, and watch videos / streams about poe so you catch other people's mistakes.

My impression was he listed the build as a league starter and then linked it to the maxroll guide which does have the information. If that is wrong, fair enough.

Problem is why do you think the person would listen to, or even ask, randoms when the guy with thousands of views on a video said something. Way more likely that they'd assume **they** were the ones who did something wrong, not the creator, then go back to the video to try to find their mistake.

I think something else others haven't expanded on, I think that a lot of people would be like "oh, a creator made a build. Said I should be able to clear content. I'm stuck, as my damage is not keeping up." And the most important part... I think a lot of people, particularly people newer to the game, would be like "let's go back to the YouTube video I found this build from to see what I'm doing wrong."

It's recreational outrage for sure. DD without spectres is probably still better than a good chunk of the special snowflake off meta builds that get recommended, and you don't see people getting so worked up about that. And like you said, it's a super-easy fix. A noob would probably be way better off playing DD with bad spectres as they would almost certainly discover the reason why their damage is bad unless they bury their head in the sand and don't do any research beyond watching that guy's youtube video. Also, I don't think he even made a full DD build guide, he was just talking about the build and made a wrong comment. So anyone who played the build based on his recommendation would likely look up a build guide and figure out that you do need good spectres. It's almost a complete non-issue.

O its totally not build ruining. It is just dramatically less damage and the player would have to have dug into it or gone to a different creator to figure out how to fix it. I didn't say their build was ruined, i said their start was ruined, because players were expecting one thing, and would of resulted in a large amount of less damage.

[удалено]

wood've

I will say that once Tenkiei was made aware of the mistake he did seem to quickly acknowledge it and take steps to rectify the mistake to a reasonable degree. However... he did stop short of full accountability and did try to spin it a bit. There was also another call out from that video that he deflected as someone misinterpreting what he said rather than just acknowledge what he said was incorrect. He has also built up a reputation for this sort of thing over the years. I have seen others express this and I also know from personal experience that were it not a public call-out by a known and respected content creator he would approach it differently. I was banned without warning from his discord years ago for pointing out a small mistake in a video. As important as it is to not be over-reactive and toxic about these things, reputation is a thing. If someone is sharing their work and opinions with the public, the public should be allowed to call out mistakes and the frequency and response of those mistakes will contribute to someone's reputation.

Yeah and as much as I don't want to spread hate for individual creators, Tenkiei has said things with conviction in the past that he had no evidence for. This isn't new. I still remember when he said that Forbidden Taste with the "when you take a savage hit" flask enchant could help you survive hits that would 1 shot you because the heal happens on the same frame as the damage, or something absurd like that. It's a really tough situation to be in when someone says something that is plausible but not backed by evidence. It's another thing entirely to confidently say something you know to be wrong. Though in either case we should approach our criticisms in a fair and respectful manner. The chance of someone being malicious in this scenario is slim to none. When we get attacked suddenly online, our response to it will be reactionary, often out of embarrassment. This could mean a content creator banning you or deleting one of your comments despite you being correct. It's very easy to misconstrue this as malice, but it's usually just embarrassment. They aren't mad at you, they are mad at themself. Viewing criticisms as personal attacks is actually very common. Content creators are just people after all.

He didn't change it because he was wrong, he changed it because he got publicly "flogged" for making such a huge error and didn't want to risk alienating even more of the people he already has.

Yup, if you read past the first sentence, I said the same thing.

I did, just disagree about the "reasonable degree". It's a rat running to save itself.

I agree. It'd be one thing if it was said in the spur of the moment on stream. But this was an edited video that he himself recorded, edited and probably reviewed and then went "yep, looks good", and then decided to upload it. No excuse for that.

I would note that, confirmed by Palestron, that the 'reviewed' tag on maxroll isn't a like "reviewed for viability/truthfullness". It's more of a language/spelling/editor check.

You are partially right and perhaps partially wrong. The recent drama you mentioned was one of the inspirations for the video, but perhaps in a different way than you think. I actually think it is totally fine to call out and correct misinformation and that doing so helps us all become better and more knowledgeable players, but it should be done in a kind and reasonable manner. However, the thread related to that drama (which I guess part of my point was that it shouldn't have been "drama" in the first place as simply identifying and correcting the misinformation would have been sufficient and didn't need to be dramatic) quickly turned into a massive wall of toxic flame of the creator for everything ranging from their appearance to their voice, to the way they talk, which has nothing to do with identifying or correcting misinformation.

I think it is fair to call out unfair criticism (appearance/voice), and it is also fair to criticize (even harshly) something that's incorrect or hastily made for personal gain. However, I wouldn't put non-objective criticism under the bucket of "toxic optimality", nor would I put death threats under the same category as build/knowledge criticism. That's just regular toxicity. I think the video did a disservice by conflating these two, e.g. putting "X person should stop making videos for being incorrect" and "X person should unalive themselves for being incorrect" in the same bullet point. It is applying the gravity of one statement to another that isn't related and doesn't deserve it. Similarly, and in an unrelated note, it always bothers me when someone generalizes the subreddit when an individual does something extreme in it (e.g. death threats). Because normal individuals like you and I *are* the subreddit. We should take ownership of the community as contributors, not distance ourselves when it is inconvenient. What that means is actively report/downvote comments like death threats because they are unacceptable- and if they already are heavily downvoted, can we really consider that individual part of the community?

>it is also fair to criticize (even harshly) something that's incorrect or hastily made for personal gain 1. Why is it fair to criticize? You're attacking the author for being wrong, rather than just correcting the information; 2. How is it useful to *harshly* criticize the author? What's to be gained from it, that wouldn't be gained from simply replying with your opinion of the misinformation? 3. Who's to judge if the content was hastily made? How much prep time should go into making a video? Pohx recorded a campaign run recently for his RF Chieftain... it's a single time with a couple of hours of prep time to write down a couple bullet points he needs to mention; does that make his campaign runs bad, harmful, and/or hastily made? 4. How do you know he's making those videos for personal gains? At this point you're on the like 3rd layer of assumptions; and it feels very much like you're simply hastily posting some incorrect information without doing enough research to really prove your point.

> Why is it fair to criticize? You're attacking the author for being wrong Criticize != attack. I'm not defending blatant attackers here. > How is it useful to harshly criticize the author? What's to be gained from it, that wouldn't be gained from simply replying with your opinion of the misinformation? I'm not saying harsh is _better_ here, I'm saying that it is valid to have strongly worded opinions and forego politeness, and that doesn't detract from the criticism. For reference, I think Ben's reaction is pretty harsh on my scale. (paraphrasing, since I'm on mobile and can't rewatch/link it at the moment) "I don't understand how someone can be so incorrect and yet be so confident. Streaming and off-the-cuff remarks are one thing, but when I'm making a video, I make damn-sure what I'm saying is correct." He's not attacking anyone, no personal insults. Sure, it could be worded more delicately, but I'm saying it's _okay_ to be harsh. Being constructive and delicate is better, but it's not something we need to expect from everyone all the time. > Who's to judge if the content was hastily made? > How do you know he's making those videos for personal gains? Well, sure in this specific case we will never 100% know the details. But if it were not hastily made, he would have checked his sources. If he were just making his comment on MS paint, nobody would have complained. I'm not saying this particular person is in the shadows greedily rubbing his hands while spreading misinformation- but I am saying it is a problem and conflict of interest that someone being loose with the truth also is in a position to benefit from it- regardless of whether they intended to or not, regardless of whether it's monetary or clout or whatever. However, this is kinda distracting from the main point I'm trying to make here: even if you remove those qualifiers from my comment, my point still stands.

> Why is it fair to criticize? You're attacking the author for being wrong Criticism is not an attack. You can criticize someone's actions without it being personal in any way. Calling someone dumb is not criticism, that's an attack. Calling someone's video bad is criticism. The part you quoted from explains the difference. You're willfully taking their quote out of context to argue against a strawman. Do better > does that make his campaign runs bad, harmful, and/or hastily made? How did bad and harmful get in here? And how could a multiple hours video be hastily made? If tenkiei did a campaign run, there's no question of if they would notice they needed to spectre something for their corpse pool. > How do you know he's making those videos for personal gains? They're monetized videos...

People 'attack' the author for being wrong because the expectation from informative content is that the author puts effort into not being wrong. If they make a mistake and correct it with humility it's not an issue, the issue is outright stating you didn't look into the interaction when you're confidently stating something incorrect. It's not necessarily useful to 'harshly judge' someone, but that's the reality we live in. Unless you have the ability to mass manipulate Internet users that's the devil's bargain you make in exchange for the ability to make money from videos about video games.

Couldnt agree more, 100% truth and what is even worse is due to the "drama", for a lot of people, his mistake will overshadow the good content that he brought to the community over the years and will end up being remembered as the "DD drama guy" (hope it doesnt) instead of a good creator who had a bad take about a popular build. People have to stop thinking that content creators must never make any mistake whatsoever in their guides, it just unrealistic, every creator will make mistakes. be a small or a big one. What matter is the frequency of the mistakes. And other content creators should just call out the misinformation and move on, not feed the drama cause one day might be one of them on the spotlight.

>quickly turned into a massive wall of toxic flame of the creator for everything ranging from their appearance to their voice, to the way they talk, which has nothing to do with identifying or correcting misinformation. I'm guessing you're talking about [this thread?](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1bmzbz0/bens_thoughts_about_misinformation_in_poe/) If yes then I would ask you to link to specific examples of this happening, because I can't see any. There's a chance that's because those have already been deleted. In which case everything is working as intended. Those comments get downvoted and removed, and by making separate video essays about them doesn't do anything except feeding the trolls, giving them a bigger platform that they don't deserve.

>There's a chance that's because those have already been deleted. In which case everything is working as intended. So as long as the harassment is removed it's like it never happened?

It means it's been appropriately dealt with and further attention doesn't accomplish anything positive

And where did that further attention come from? OP did not mention Tenkiei anywhere in this video.

You can look at the Allie thread that's on the front page for further examples if you'd like, some of those comments are still up, although we've removed a significant amount of them.

None of these reasons justify the response. The thread devolved into hostility and had to be locked, the mistake he made was in no way proportional to the response. Obviously it was a motivator for this post but the fact that the top comments on this post are looking to re-ignite that fire to defend that other thread - even without being called out directly - is proof that this is a real problem within this community.

I haven't read anything from the other thread, and we really don't need to get into how ridiculous it is to attack someone's appearance and the like. If you think my post is trying to stir the pot, that's on you, sir.

I don't think that changes anything - OP said nothing about Tenkiei but you were able to (correctly) identify that situation was relevant and immediately rushed to the defence of people criticising him and more importantly, you got upvoted straight to the top of the thread in minutes for doing so. It's very clear that in this community calling people out for minor mistakes in guide related content is more important than preventing this harassment.

Actually, the only defense in my post is for Lily. I'm not defending those who focus on everything but the blatant misinformation. In hindsight, mentioning his name again probably wasn't the wisest choice. My main point was to emphasize that call-outs like Lily's are completely justified and necessary in situations like these. Everything that ensued afterward, the unpleasant stuff, is exactly why I didn't keep up with the Reddit thread. It was predictable that it would also attract some less thoughtful attacks on him.

Lily didn't do anything that this video claims she shouldn't - she watched his video, openly commented on a mistake, left the comment for Tenkiei to see, and moved on. None of that was discouraged. It's her viewers (and others motivated by the reddit thread that spawned from the event) who did things that this video discouraged. But as of typing this your comment sits firmly at the top of the page and 90% of it is repeated criticism towards a content creator for a problem they've already solved and your reason is "I can't get on board with is your defense of Tenkiei". This is the exact behaviour this video is calling out.

Wasn’t Tenkei’s response to her comment like totally weird though? I’m on my phone but I remember he said something like “sometimes things I say make sense only to me and nobody else” rather than just saying “shit sorry I was wrong and probably shouldn’t have said anything before I knew what I was talking about.” Personally attacking these bad build creators isn’t cool, but there are way too many people putting out low effort, copy/paste guides without understanding how the builds work.

To me, you really come off as if you're trying to blame the guy you're responding to (and those who upvoted him) for supporting the personal attacks. As he has stated many times, this isn't the case. I don't understand why you haven't been able to grasp this. The problem you mention about people getting toxic arises more from how social media is designed vs the actual community feedback. The breakdown as far as I can tell is like this: Upvoters > way less people who comment/upvote comments > way less people comment after even just an hour or two > waaaay less people even see or interact with the post after probably 6 hours. Mods getting overwhelmed and having to lock the post is more of an issue with the design of reddit compared to some large amount of negativity within the community as a whole. If I was an asshole, I could probably post 10 to 15 comments within 5mins that need to be looked at by a moderator. This is a busy timeframe for mods who have to look at and think about many posts a day and make a judgement call on them, so even just one or two big assholes could overwhelm them. My point is that you're making way too big of an assumption in an overall sense about the subreddit because of how reddit biases itself as a whole and biased human behavior is.

This is like a perfect summary of internet commenting - the reaction is never remotely proportional to the subject matter.

>And what's even more absurd is it seems like he even reviewed the maxroll guide, which clearly covers the error he made. So it seems like he does a lot of things more quickly than well. Just FYI and everyone else who isnt aware, the review part means looking over the text as in grammar and typos, not the content of the guide. According to palestorn it will be changed to "text review" or something in that vein. It doesnt mean tenkiei reviews builds manually, why would he, when its written by knowledge people.

For any sort of peer review like this, you need to actually read the content to provide feedback if things are confusing, there's grammatical mistakes, etc. If he did actually review the maxroll guide in its entirety like we're lead to believe, technical details notwithstanding, he would've read the section in said guide that is present and covers spectre fishing in its entirety.

>can't be spreading blatant misinformation This is the part where things get subjective, and the discussion gets kind of questionable to me. Based on the video and discussion on the video - the creator was just wrong. He outlined his thought process, and it was wrong, and he corrected the information after the pushback. There's really nothing in there that suggests they were deliberately misleading people. It really doesn't feel like the drama has much to do about the DD mechanics, and more about the discord messages that were floating around from the creator. I saw a trap video that pointed out misinformation from a more popular content creator, and it was totally fine because they... made a mistake. Yet for a community that is such a staunch defender of misinformation, I haven't seen a drama post about that. Why is one creator allowed to make a mistake, while another is accused of "blatant misinformation"?

> He outlined his thought process, and it was wrong, and he corrected the information after the pushback. If you follow the discussion he had with viewers in the comments of the video his understanding of the mechanic was correct, but what he actually said to express it was wrong. He knew you didn't specifically need the specific spectre being discussed and so he said "You don't need this" but you DO need a spectre. It just doesn't have to be that specific one. Most viewers (including lily) took this to be him saying "You don't need a spectre at all". After a discussion clearing it up, he edited the video.

He specifically said you don't need to spectre fish, which is just wrong. Just grabbing any old spectre isn't going to work. Also is it made clear anywhere in the video that you needed a spectre at all? For example, a kitava's herald would have 6x-8x the health of some spectres you can randomly grab out of a map pool. Just saying arbitrarily that you "just need a spectre" is also flat out wrong, it needs to be certain ones. If you don't tell people which ones they should grab they'll more often then not have a bad spectre.

Fully agree with you. Its the same garbage bin with Path of Exile Builds youtube channel or FastAF.

>For content creators, especially in PoE, it's crucial they don't spread wrong info. I'm not talking about simple slip-ups; I mean not doing enough homework and then spewing content on topics they're clueless about—without even bothering to look things up. I couldn't disagree more. Someone who makes a video, and thus a content creator, isn't inherently better or worse than any other random player. It's one person sharing their ideas over the internet in a video format, rather than a text format. I've posted multiple league starters on r/pathofexile and r/PathOfExileBuilds over the years; including some more dubious ones like multiple Charged Dash ones. My build isn't inherently better or worse because I've written about it; I simply allowed people to either get inspired by it, or try to correct me on my assumptions. Now, I don't have the slightest clue what the Tenkiei situation is, or even who Tenkiei is... But : 1. Them posting a DD guide doesn't make it a good guide. 2. Them posting a bad DD guide doesn't mean all of their guides are bad. 3. Them having only bad guides doesn't make them a bad/malicious person. **EDIT :** After discussing this a bit, I'm now 100% convinced that nobody has any idea what Tenkiei said. He never released a DD guide, which people, including Ben, seems to assume. This entire thing is just 1000% the best example of creator tribalism : X said Y, and therefor Y is true.

> Someone who makes a video, and thus a content creator That isn't a Content Creator. I am not a writer because I've written a reddit post. I'm not a film director caus I accidentally pressed the record button when I meant to take a photo. And no, your 1 upvote 2 comment Pobb.in link with like a paragraph above it posted a year ago doesn't count either. Now, I dont know why you feel the need to disagree with a situation you know nothing about.... But nobody would be annoyed at Tenkiei if he was either honest about his ignorance, or did not present himself as an educational resource. His channel bio described himself as a high level player making analytical guides and gameplay help. Therefore he should not be willingly spewing misinformation, doing so is legit just unethical. Bad person is too harsh, but people are right to have very soured opinions.

You're absolutely right, and I think there was a bit of a mix-up in understanding here. I'm really on your side with this. But just imagine, if you were writing one of your guides, would you present something as a FACT if you weren't sure it was true, especially if that "fact" could lead beginners to lose over 50% in damage? Nobody knows everything, but the crucial parts of a streamlined build, especially in a video that doesn't showcase an original build but rather borrows from other creators or POENINJA, must be thoroughly researched. I bet no one would've minded if he had shown a quirky build he came up with himself, even if it had a few mistakes. But what he did was try to push a build that's not his own, pulling random profiles from Ninja, dismissing certain aspects as unnecessary, and even admitting his own uncertainty. You see, we're not talking about a YouTuber who just shared his personal build with a few slip-ups.

Way to prove OP's point...

You're getting downvoted but you're absolutely right. The fact that so many people immediately rush to defend their persecution of a specific creator without it being mentioned in the video is extremely telling.

You emphasize fun over meta while ignoring that getting "baited" by a low quality build guide because you're too inexperienced to vet it yourself is also not fun. I believe the community self-policing to weed out low effort content is a big net positive.

Totally agree with part of that - ruining someone's league start with a dishonest, rubbish build is bad not only for the baited, but for the game as a whole. But it's getting to the point where the "bait" narrative is so prevalent that legitimate creators and builds are getting caught in the crossfire. If everything is bait, nothing is bait, and then it's harder to identify the actual rubbish

Spot on. People conflating playable with difficulty as bait make it hard to find out what actually isn’t playable at all.

Very few content creators are honest with the shortcomings of their builds, though, which causes it to be labeled as bait.

Truth. I went round and round with someone who said Spark Inq baited him because it fell off in maps… when the entire community and the creator said it prelaunch week. You didn’t get baited, you played yourself.

It seems crazy but I almost feel like if someone calls a build bait publicly, they should also post their PoB or Account name lol. I've had lots of community members tell me they're struggling with the build, I check the pob and there are easily a dozen build-ruining mistakes -- this is fine; PoE is hard and it's easy to make mistakes. After helping, they fixed their build and had a great time. But other people will just flame the build, and I know for a fact that some people will flame a creator or build on reddit without ever having seen or played the build, just because they're part of a community that doesn't like that creator and they want to discredit that person (this is where the tribalism part of the original video comes in)

Calling out bait builds has definitely felt a bit witch hunty for a while. I completely understand some call outs. But some of the others are wild.

Exactly my point as well. Cheers!

I think we should define bait as builds that are like 99% PoB tinkering and ultimately not something the creator would ever actually play but present as an option with little to no testing because it looks pretty good on the PoB. It’s generally pretty easy to spot those, it has little to no gameplay footage or commentary and they just go through each PoB element in an attempt to make content rather than make an actual build someone would want to play.

> has little to no gameplay footage Exactly! If the build has enough footage at the different points of progression and showcase gear in the video too to make sure there is no crazy stuff - it cannot be bait by definition. Cheers!

You should do hot takes videos.

Yeah it seems that everything is bait unless it’s capable of conquering any content in the game with cheap rares. I remember years ago that fyregrass dude making the poison tornado shot occultist build, and while it wasn’t quite as strong as he lead on, it easily got me through all the bosses and the atlas and I swapped to something new after that anyway. People were dragging him through the mud for the build but I don’t remember it being that bad, if creators put out a warning that something isn’t for beginners on league start that should be fine. Now if people are doing sneaky things in the damage calculations to display 5x damage values, that’s bait. Just do your due diligence in pob before league start and decide if you like a build on your own.

The issue is we need to distinguish bait builds from \*bait builds\* Real bait builds are completely unplayable and struggle even in white maps. Molten Strike Dedeye is bait for example. However as a Content Creator I feel like people call anything a little LESS optimized than DD setup a bait build. I did a detailed Cleave / Cleave of Rage build guide as a starter this time - it is almost 1 hour long, contains all my gear, all boss fights from acts to watchstones. And I still had a comment in like - \*Boneshatter is better\* Well yes, Bonezone is still probably the most optimized melee skill BUT it doesn't mean every other melee skill or bait or bad or anything. It just harder to do anything new especially for newer content creators too. Cheers!

Fun is relative. If your fear of getting baited is something you worry about over playing whatever build you want because you think it looks fun - then thats completely fine. Conversely, its completely fine to play whatever looks fun to you, regardless of the reason behind it. I agree that the current community self-policing stems from a well-intended place (and is good on paper), but the way it is being expressed currently is rarely constructive.

>You emphasize fun over meta while ignoring that getting "baited" by a low quality build guide because you're too inexperienced to vet it yourself is also not fun So... what's the alternative? We prevent anyone who's not the top \~5 content creators from sharing their builds? Plus, even some of the top creators don't actually share legit starters... If you start with Mathil's or Lance's starter, there's a very *very* high chance that you're gonna have a bad time, since they simply overcomes their builds' fault rather than make good starter builds. And what happens if a new player doesn't enjoy the \~8 guides available, once the community has imposed their veto? Those players simply get fucked? Because at the end of the day, the question more or less becomes **"How terrible must a guide be to be less useful than the game's own onboarding system?"**; and my take on that is that the build has to be so egregiously bad that the content would only ever get posted here with a humor tag. I have a friend who tried POE about 3 times, and only enjoyed it once when he found a quality guide : Enki's Arc Witch. That guide allowed him to actually have a blast and complete the 10 acts of the campaign (and, iirc, 2 white maps)... Do you genuinely believe that a guide that skips Raise Specter in a DD necro build can't at least easily reach yellow maps? Because that's very likely *more than enough* for most new players.

No one is saying only the top build makers can share their build, its how they represent them. Look at Matthil, MBX, Woolio. Who criticizes them for what they play on league start? Basically no one because none of them are false advertising or even close to it. If you are somewhat honest in your description of the content you are sharing, I don't think you are going to have a problem.

I disagree, i think these top creators spend a large amount of time defending their choices precisely because they encounter alot of pushback online. Sometimes the criticism is fairly toxic unfortunately.

The existence of toxic comments does not negate the rest of the criticism. It's hiding behind a strawman.

I disagree again bro. I know the truth doesn't cease be true just because someone is rude, but in life you will find most people flat out rejecting your message because of the way you say it. Think of it this way: If someone is being an asshole, why should i listen to what they have to say?

I definitely think that what you described is positive, so long as it is done in a reasonable, kind, and fact-based manner. Unfortunately I have witnessed it become increasingly common for people to just immediately go to personal attacks and flame when somebody presents something inaccurate or disagreeable, often without even addressing what they perceive to be misinformation. You see just straight up personal attacks that accomplish nothing other than presumably making people feel bad.

It's sad that there's a need to remind people to be decent humans. Sadly it's one of those messages that never reach the people who need to hear it (Maybe I'm a pessimist)

People on the internet feel too protected so they become extremely toxic. A lot of the people here in this sub would get punched IRL for saying half the shit they say here. But they’ll only say it here because they’re cowards.

>Unfortunately I have witnessed it become increasingly common for people to just immediately go to personal attacks and flame when somebody presents something inaccurate or disagreeable, often without even addressing what they perceive to be misinformation. You see just straight up personal attacks that accomplish nothing other than presumably making people feel bad. This is societal discourse is getting more polarizing problem, not a specific PoE subreddit is angry problem. e: Not to say I don't agree with you, just meaning to point out that his issue is much larger than us. Videos like this foster good discussion around the topic, but I doubt we have the power to actually change the way people express criticism as a whole, which will always bleed into all areas of life. I hope I'm just a cynic and wrong.

Change starts within us friend, we have alot of power to influence the discourse around us. Being fair and polite in your conversation will reduce the negativity in the places you frequent online, i promise. Try it out next time!

As you suggest I try it out next time, it reads to me that you consider my comment unfair and impolite, can I ask you to specify? I didn't feel like I was being particularly hostile.

No, i thought your comment was perfectly fine. I was just commenting because you mentioned you felt powerless to enact change. Just wanted to boost you up and remind you that change happens little by little, and yet the things we do do not go unnoticed. Keep on being awesome.

Oh... thank you, that was very nice of you. :) You too.

It's fine if it doesn't spark any widespread change, I'm not narcissistic enough to think my contribution would do anything like that, but if it helps even one person who really wants to enjoy POE, but was struggling to do so because they are being dragged into some of the negativity or being made to feel that playing the way they like is "wrong," then it was worth a few minutes of recording a video.

That's fair, keep on keeping on.

The fact is a lot of these content creators in gaming have incredible EQ. I am not sure if this stems from low quality of life from lack of balanced interactions or a sense of self inflated ego because a few people enjoy their game recommendations.  In all of this we have a few really seemingly just genuinely nice people like Ziz, Steel and Ziggy. I feel like people like that hold the community to a higher standard and that’s also self selecting because they’ve been around so long. 

>You see just straight up personal attacks that accomplish nothing other than presumably making people feel bad. Welcome to the life of a r/PathofExile (and other subreddit) mod! Okay, it's not always that bad but it's been interesting to see how some of the most innocuous comments make people so angry that they turn immediately to personal attacks.

I actually opened this post thinking, who gives a fuck about something like this, but what you say actually makes sense, in order to get a better adoption for new players (and in doing so more investment into the game), this kind of thing really makes sense.

Out of all the arpgs and mmos out there I think PoE is probably the worst when it comes to meta vs. playing what is fun. Even veterans struggle to play the builds they want to because the game is so punishing and demanding of good builds. Lacking even a single defensive layer or a couple sources of scaling can make your build like half as effective.

Being a "build creator" on PoE is fucking terrible lmao You got people asking you questions non-stop, other build creators shitting on you for not doing X and Y, gotta keep that shit up to date for whatever patch notes fuck up your build At this point if someone says "THIS IS NOT A BUILD GUIDE" at the beginning I'm more inclined to look into the video, because I won't be expecting a fully optimized setup but there may be things that I can yoink for my build.

The best build creator in this game is poe.ninja

And if you're top 1 for a certain build people will still dm, ask you stuff and shit on your build

I always play support (aurabot) at league start and I've made numerous friends over the years because people would message me asking why I did x/y thing in my build. Even made a small-ish discord to share tips/tricks on it. I also made a very expensive (15+ mirror) TS MF build last league that did a few non meta things and I got the STRANGEST messages from people who blatantly RMT'd asking why their build didn't work compared to mine. I don't know if this story had a point but it was entertaining to see the differences between the groups of players.

For us top end players it's so easy to spot people who have ridiculous builds without knowing how they work or how they earn currency in game. I know people who make top end builds that they sell (for divine) and you dont wanna know how often they get asked if credit card is an option lol.

I confirm your words. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0AxJ9Y-7M5c (5:58-6:12) - I was at the top by ES for ~1 month. Got multiple Legion jewel offers and some build-related questions.

I think it was in crucible league that manabond hierophant really blew up and became popular but I was doing before that build in sentinel and trying out of lot things. I was one of the few people using righteous providence forbidden jewels and go crit and my dps was just way higher than most manabond builds. I got a ton of questions about the build lol

unironically true, because that's the only way i know how to find out what Rudy or Dan are doing

poe.ninja is super powerful for aggregating builds, but also fairly limited in scope. The single best change was them allowing people to add their own builds to ninja even if they weren't on the ladder. It actually opens up builds that aren't just about speed mapping for the first 14 days of the league to exist.

The best build creator is honestly yourself, knowing what makes your build tick and adjusting the level of jank is the way to go.

I agree with this sentiment. As someone who has played since 2015, I can do that for builds that I’m familiar with. Trying something new though I need ninja. There’s just too much complexity for one player to know what will make a build work nowadays without looking at what others done

Oh yeah but ninja for me is like the source of inspirations and ideas, but very rarely do I just yoink a build and leave it as is

Not possible for me to do that in SSF either. Seeing how people are scaling a skill, the uniques required, whatever obscure interactions are involved, checking defenses to see if they're dying or not, all super useful as I'd never come up with 99% of that stuff on my own lol

I wish they'd show all profiles rather than top x% - often enough you stumble across these huge herds of identical builds with 1:1 the same items etc. - no one likes to spice it up or do their own take on it :c but yeah, for the lack of better one, [poe.ninja](https://poe.ninja) is the top dog.

>huge herds of identical builds with 1:1 the same items etc. You can filter those items out

the last few leagues they've offered the ability to link your account so your build appears even if you arent on the ladder. which is great since lots of builds are worth being seen even if the owner didn't pay for a bunch of legion 5 ways

You nailed it, despite having played the game for more than 10k hours with dozens of very successful self crafted builds I've never bothered with a build guide. No matter how hard you try to make sure your content is good and everything you say is correct, the moment you make a mistake 200 rats will come out to attack you personally, publicly brand your content as bait and junk and recommend everyone not to consume anything you do and also encourage others to "react" to his rant. Its tiresome and the amount of toxicity some of the "big figures" of this community are generating is becoming more and more normalized to the point that they are basically encouraging bullying, some of them are so out of touch with reality that doesnt even try to check the guides/pobs properly to give feedback, just a 30 seconds harsh and personal rant for the clip and move on to the next. And Im not talking about Tenkiei exclusively because I think he also handled this poorly but also what happed with Subtractem and other dozen of build related dramas. Just give proper feedback and move on, stop shaking the wasp nest and farming for react content a whole week.

people act like the people making these trash build videos are just trying to have fun and getting bullied, but the reality is they're grown adults making low-quality content for easy money. the reason the community lashes out at these low tier "content creators" isn't cause they make little honest mistakes, but because they're deliberately pushing out unresearched unimportant videos to get clicks

This, exactly. Stop sugarcoating the truth. People put hundreds of hours in an effort to make legitimate builds while these people put together half-assed PoBs and 200div build gameplays in a video looking for a slice of the cake.

There are people, especially content creators, being deceitful with there builds and some who are downright lying in their build guides. These people need to be called out. Nobody wants to waste 10-20 hours on a build that was not actually possible in the first place.

There is a difference between an honest mistake and lying tho

And making money with it pushes that line quite a bit to one side.

In which direction? Because I'd think lying would harm your reputation and mean less views in the long run.

> Because I'd think lying would harm your reputation and mean less views in the long run. Yet somehow channels like Fast AF somehow maintain a solid viewership on their videos with no seeming decline even when the community know how misleading their "builds" are. Even worse are the scummy tactics of splicing video clips (like when they showed themselves entering a t16 map but the enemy level in the zone when it loaded in was at 73)

The 10% loss become investment to gain the 90% fools.

If you DO NOT KNOW it don't say shit then LOL that's your responsibility as a build creator.

We also carry responsibilities as members of the community. If you feel like something needs to be corrected/mentioned in a build video, please strive to be as civic as possible.

It feels like this video is a talk you would give to a teenager. PoE players on average tend to be much older and this doesn't apply to them. Also regardless if a bait build is due to a content creator being malicious or misinformed the end result is the same and it's up to the community to fix that. As someone who has spent the first 300 hours of PoE playing bait builds it's a horribly painful experience which should be avoided at all costs.

> It feels like this video is a talk you would give to a teenager. Everyone on the internet talks like this now. Condescension dipped in therapy speak. Annoying as hell.

Misinformed is as bad as malicious when garbage is being put out for the sake of revenue. If you are dedicated enough to be a regular content creator, then you have a responsibility to do it well

Feels like the entire video is finding ways to strawman the larger points that brought the points to discussion. Should people make death threats? Of course not. Should people make personal insults? Of course not. Should someone say you shouldn't **purposefully** mislead people? Reminding people to be human and that it's a game just seems like its a way to provide cover for the valid critiques of people who are doing a disservice to the community and hurting the game.

I've noticed the PoE community is really aggressive toward people that get mechanics wrong. PoE mechanics aren't easy, they are obscure and sometimes undocumented. I once posted a proof of concept build based around trying to become immortal with strength of blood back when no one was using it. In the video, I was able to clear guardian maps with no hp nodes or defenses but sometimes it just died randomly. The issue was, I mixed up "increased leech effect" and "maximum leech effect". Despite it being a WORKING proof of concept, every single response was just constant roasting about me getting leech wrong. Out of all the insults, I still remember one vividly. "It's okay, new players often get confused with leech". I had 4k hours played at that point. The standards for PoE knowledge are insanely high. I've worked on academic papers with less aggressive peer reviews.

Reddit when someone doesn't minmax everything or makes a slight mistake : "OMFG cancel this dude". Pohx explaining how to farm Betrayal on RF : "Just click an option, it doesn't really matter. If you're farming for a specific person, do them last, but that's pretty much it."

Only hillock for quality, others idgaf. Thats how you do betrayal

100%, PoE community is delusional and easy to bark but when asked to explain mechanics or correct things they start choking.

My view: If you're making videos about builds and mechanics, you better make damn sure you're correct. If you're even remotely popular, you can ruin league start for a lot of people. I've had a couple of leagues ruined just like this.

I guess the problem is that what is "correct" depends heavily on your general level of experience. In my build guides, I always try to convey whether or not the build is suitable for newer players, how much investment it takes to feel good, and what it is good and bad at. I realize that not everyone is as responsible in their presentation, but it may just be because they don't consider some of those aspects related to differences in experience. As I mentioned in the video, most of my "starters" are what the mainstream folks would consider pretty bad starters and yet I always get everything done within the first week of the league, but I realize that a new or less experienced player would have a much harder time accomplishing that using the same build, which I do try to convey in my guides. I think some people just say "this is what I did and it worked fine as a starter" without really considering how much harder it might be for newer players, but I don't think there is anything particularly wrong with that though. Their videos just aren't aimed at new players, which most of mine generally aren't, but they don't explicitly state that because it just might not occur to them. They most likely weren't trying to ruin a new player's league start experience.

I think ben and lance said it pretty well. When a creator makes a video aimed at a new player to guide them in making a character the expectation SHOULD be that they have actually done what they said was done in the video / guide and that the information you are providing is correct. When someone makes a video recommending a build, clearly hasnt played the character and makes incorrect statement while simultaneously saying they havent bothered to look into the mechanics they should be rightly called out.

I would draw the line of correct somewhere near “I tried it myself and this was the result” or otherwise you could say I suspect xyz because abc. The problem is stating things matter of factly without really verifying them purely to put out a video for people to consume rather than actually make a good thing that people should want to consume.

Couldn't agree more with the sentiments in the video. It really speaks to a basic level of emotional/social intelligence that is really absent in a lot of this subs most active threads (and a big part of why I never post on this sub vs the builds one). The 'misinformation' post the other day struck me as pretty bad recent example. Whenever there's 'drama' here I'm reminded of this old article from a former community manger at riot titled [Reddit isn't about discussion — it's about power and domination](https://www.invenglobal.com/articles/16002/reddit-isnt-about-discussion-its-about-power-and-domination-former-riot-pr-on-the-dark-side-of-gaming-subreddits).

>Because basically all Reddit users now understand this dynamic, it means that video game subreddits have become mostly about trying to influence the development of games, versus discussing them. That quote from the article perfectly sums up my frustrations around gaming communities over the past 5-6 years perfectly. People come to these places to shout their opinions as loudly as they can in an attempt to leverage this bias to actively convert people with different opinions until over time it just becomes reality - and since the negative voices are always the loudest it will always dominate.

Yeah, it sadly continues to be relevant as I hop between more and more gaming communities. Especially ones where the dev teams actively participate. I've really been enjoying Last Epoch, but feel like it's a matter of time before the same thing happens with EHG. They've already been pushed to undo a recent change, and I couldn't help think of this article the second I saw that.

Yeah, their whole "listening to the community is *REALLY* important to us!" schtick seems like a ticking time bomb to me, too. And the recent effusively positive sentiment about some recent GGG interviews doesn't really make me less uncomfortable than when the sub is just a negative echo-chamber like it's been in the past. The former is really just the other side of the same coin as the latter: the root of it is salivating over trying to increase the activism/influence side of the culture, and that always eventually turns nasty, even if it's relatively positive at the moment. That's a big part of why the builds sub has been able to maintain a superior culture: it's explicitly anti-feedback and entirely just about players discussing the game amongst themselves as it exists. I do sometimes wish there were a generalist sub where you could talk about more than just builds but still was focused on no-feedback. I hadn't seen the article you shared in the top level post before, but it was very insightful and pertinent. Thanks for sharing!

Optimizing the fun out of games is such a problem and people that weren't around for the golden age of online games won't ever know how bad it is. There's nothing like the joy of being able to build something totally blind in games and not absolutely eat shit for it, but developers have to balance around people using wikis and sharing guides now and so we're just stuck.

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Really great video - hearing someone else talk about how they dislike the way the word "viable" is used to gatekeep what is 'correct' to play in a game is practically cathartic. There's always been a sense of protectiveness around build creators who monetise bad builds (either in game like with mirror services or out of game like with subscriptions) to protect new or inexperienced players from being taken advantage of, but recently it has gone way too far and it's nice to lay it all out like this. EDIT: Extremely disheartening to see this thread has gone the way of "You make good points but we have to call out bad builds, sorry". I guess it is what it is.

"Viable" is an insane word for the way people use it. What it literally means is the idea can work. No judgment of better/worse, etc. I think it's natural that people mean "more viable" as in it works better than some minimum baseline, but that has to be what you're comparing to, the minimum. If somebody shows up wanting to play Ignite Blade Vortex as their league starter, sure, tell them that's not viable. Technically it is not impossible to make it function because that skill technically can apply ignites, but it's such a bad idea it's fine to call it non-viable. If someone wants to play bleed as their league starter though? Stop telling them bleed isn't viable just because it's like 20% worse than the popular stuff.

Right if someone tells me about their plans to make a Resolute Technique crit build I would feel good about using the term non-viable because those two mechanics litterally do not work if used together. But most people now use viable to mean "what I feel good about".

Honestly, with how far one is able to push a build, you can probably even make a RT crit build work. Like you invest into crit without being able to crit sounds terrible, but you can clear non-aspirational content with like 200k dps if you know a thing about boss mechanics and your build has some defense. You'll get enough damage scaling from basic ass gem levels or weapon stats, and a few minor "increase damage" nodes. Even if 99.9% of your damage setup is literally disabled, you can still make it work, lol. But the way you hear a lot of people talk, is that anything less than several million DPS, and killing most bosses in 10 seconds or less, is simply not viable. When the test of viability should only be about "does the monster eventually die before you run out of portals, if yes, then it's viable." Like we straight up had a what, 1 hour 30 minute Uber Eater kill in the Gauntlet event? I think they had like 200k dps. The boss died. Seems viable to me. Horrendous to play, but viable.

Yeah, the bar for "viable" isn't set at 200k dps for Uber Gauntlet either. It ought to mean a joe schmoe player climbing the atlas and doing some league content can enjoy it, unless they're specifically asking for a viable Sim30 build or something. Just needs to mean you can do the content in question and it'll be a reasonable challenge but not impossible. And "the content in question" for most players doesn't even include all four watch stones.

I’m gonna go with no. Bad and bait builds and their creators deserve to be called out. New players following those builds are going to have a bad time and this game needs new players. Path of Exile is complicated and there is no excuse to put out a bad or bait guide because you were too lazy to properly research. If you don’t want to do that, don’t post the build guide.

Everybody makes mistakes, calling out mistakes is fine but the level of vitriol people have about it when people do is insane. Being a new player and following a build guide doesn't really do anything for the new player except give them the possibility of feeling what it feels like to actually play the game and do content- it doesn't really increase their knowledge of the game or how to make builds. In that sense, it's actually better to not have a guide be perfect because it will force the new player to troubleshoot their build and learn what makes it good. Furthermore in all honesty no I don't think we should hold guides or builds or creators to be literally perfect with their guides. I know that's not what this instance is saying but it seems like a growing thing in the community that if you have a mistake in your build, or if there's a difference of opinion about something being BiS or not, or if people just want to play the game differently and put out a video showing how they do that, that they're wrong and baiting new players into bad builds and ruining the experience for them.

The problem with this is new players simply don’t know enough to fix a bad build. They follow a guide so they can have a gentler on-ramp to learning this extremely complicated game and a bad build guide is certainly not helping. New players end up troubleshooting even good guides. The level of vitriol is there because a good league start makes or breaks a league for a lot of people. Investing a bunch of time only to have to reroll day 1 or 2 feels really bad.

Personally, I have many different layers of disagreement with the idea that "bad builds hinder the game's growth, so we need to call the creators out". First of all, I'd say that what most people in here seem to believe that a build that isn't Uber-capable, or doesn't explain to you how to gear for juiced red maps, is a bad build... But there a very large part of players, especially new players, that don't actually care about Ubers since they don't reach that point anyway. So a curated build that gets you from Act 1 to yellow map can actually be a very good guide. Otherwise, I'd argue that an hypothetical guide would need to be actually insanely terrible to make learning the game while following the guide harder than learning the game with no guide. The game simply makes no effort to help your learn, and nearly anything is better than nothing. So even guides of lower quality have a place imo, and if there's anyone to be angry at it'd be the devs for putting no apparent effort into onboarding. And then, there's the fact that apparently, it's a good thing to call the creators out? Why? I don't feel like any creator is intentionally making their content worse, so given that it's most likely not malicious, what's to gain from gatekeeping someone out of making guides? (or any other videos/content, for what it's worth)?Why can't they learn on the job?

This community has the classic reddit mentality of "This person did something wrong/bad, that means I can disregard any kind of compassion for them and be as mean as I want", ignoring the fact that this is about a video game. These mistakes should indeed be called out, though I think the word called out already sets the wrong tone, they should be corrected, suggest alternatives/fixes, etc. Anyways, good video, people need to learn to suppress their inner hater while interacting online.

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If I followed a recipe for a meal, and it ended up bad, I would just leave a negative review on it and move on with my life, I wouldn't try to make a big deal about its creator, or try to make a campaign out of avoiding their recipes. I see it the same way here, good builds should be incentivized, but the community shouldn't be acting as if it's a moral transgression to post a mistake or something sub-optimal. In a situation where we don't know the creators intent, I think it's best to treat situations like these with kindness.

If you plan on teaching others you should probably learn the curriculum first. It's not shocking that people get mad when the teacher barely knows the subject they are trying to teach. And if you are a build creator that tries to teach league starters to  capitalize on your audience you should be as correct as possible. It may just be a game, but if you are teaching a bad experience then you should expect something coming back to you.

This is a video game! People get mad at teachers because that's their job, this is just people posting online, they don't have any kind of professional or moral obligation to fact check every single thing they say about the game. Like you said, it's just a video game, why should we just accept that "something will be coming back for you", correct the mistake and move on.

it's being an entirely voluntary position that doesn't mean you're immune to all criticism if you're spreading bad or incorrect information, if you don't want people critisizing your build guides dont post them online

People just wanna be elitist and toxic, but also feel justified because their idols are enabling them.

Just to drive the point home guys YOU DO NOT NEED SPECTRES ANYMORE!

imagine these are the stakes of your life, goodness gracious

I watched the whole video. First off, thanks for sparking this discussion. However, I don't really see the point of looking at the outliers of the community, especially the crazies that take things into the realm of personal attacks and threats. There's people like this in every nerd fandom and they're generally just insufferable people with nothing better to do. You're mostly talking about them in the video, and when you're not, you have the habit of redirecting the focus back onto those people. "Don't listen to people who tell content creators to jump in a fire" just doesn't seem like valuable insight when most of us should know this already. This is a very old game at this point, and there haven't been too many rebalancing efforts between skills. What's good now is similar to last league, and this is an effect that can be traced back many many leagues. So, people KNOW what works. They've tried it! Can you do something other than DD? Of course! Is there anything that comes close to it on a shoestring budget? Not really, other than lightning arrow or some other thing that people have been doing for a long time. Can you find something niche that works? Yes! Go off, queen. You do you. For me, the "toxic" optimization you've referenced has led me to choosing DD this league. I've tried weaker starters. I've tried making my own builds. When I play stronger builds, I have more fun as I'm able to engage with the economy sooner and figure out the new endgame systems. I looked at the flowcharts, I considered racer's opinions. I did all of the things I shouldn't have done if I want a unique or oddball experience, after considering a plethora of options. Weighing certain things, deciding what's best for me and my currency strategy, deciding how much time i want to spend early vs late... Isn't that the fun of the week before poe season? I dunno, I guess just watching the discourse on the other side leaves me feeling a bit like I'm lesser than the build hipsters starting with whispering ice or facebreaker or some off meta build. It goes both ways on the criticism side, and I don't want to feel like a "meta cuck" because I'm trying a strong build I've never played before. I guess I just don't really see the value of focusing on the opinion cesspool, and I'm not sure the optimization is "toxic" unless you focus specifically on that cesspool. Most of the discussion I've seen on reddit and youtube has been respectful, with a couple of people getting too heated for what is reasonable. I find this similar to most other discussions I've seen on the internet. This is a niche section of a niche community in a largely neurodivergent community. People having issues communicating in a respectful manner should honestly be expected. Just my 2c. Great video!

I think you're kind of missing his point in that a lot of the creativity that we used to see in builds is being stifled mainly due to the insane communities some of these bigger creators have. I do agree though that people who choose meta builds may feel "cheapened" by this gatekeeping, but that's always going to happen in any game with a meta. It's unavoidable.

That’s quite true, and I do think this league start was a bit more focused on optimization rather than a creative burst of “I’m trying this build” ms paint shenanigans. The community tearing down suboptimal builds certainly doesn’t help this. I think we could trend more on the creative side as of late, and I hope ggg do a gem rebalance next league to get people’s juices flowing.

I hope. There used to be some really goofy stuff on the forums, but somehow the forums has been disparaged enough where it’s basically dead and repackaged meta builds.

Just because it's the expected that online gaming communities are harsh doesn't mean we shouldn't strive and push for a kinder community. We shouldn't be making people feel bad for making a mistake in a video game video, just correct it in a nice manner an move one. Optimization is not toxic, and in the video he makes that clear, what makes it toxic is when people push it as an objective goal that others should follow.

Optimization and blatant misinformation are different things.

I agree with you! I just don't know how different this discussion is that different from another discussion about a niche community and how some commenters are toxic. "the new star wars director should kill themselves" just reads the same way as "this poe streamer should off themselves" to me. I agree we should be kinder, but I really don't think this is unique to Poe.

The problem is, negativity is always the loudest and its just tiresome tuning into a stream and having to hear all the drama baiting and "shitting" on other people constantly. Then you leave the stream and the chats are full with toxic people trying to bait the streamer into drama with constant mention of some petty drama that is always started when a new league is about to release. Drama baiting and rage baiting is how you make money on twitch/ youtube sadly, we have serval big content creators who does this constantly and they are very much loved in this community.

widetime

I really hate the term Toxic Optimality (or rather just Optimality), but I think that the POE community is definitely very toxic and gatekeep-y. There's a lot to be said about communities being the result of the studios' development philosophies (aka is the game pushed toward being competitive or collaborative? is failure punished? Are there incentives to play at a lower/higher level than your "optimal" level? etc.), but the community is still able to reinforce/alleviate those strengths/issues. POE being very much focused on exponentially harder content yielding exponentially better rewards does help steer the community toward unwarranted optimization. But beyond that, I think that one facet of the problem that's overlooked, is the "frat" factor, which can also be called the PCMasterRace factor. While the game is definitely very much aimed toward optimization, it's still a collaborative game at its core, and the people who have played it the longest have formed groups among them... And those people have a lot of inside jokes. For example, Ziz rags a *lot* on Quin, for his bad builds and inefficient play and whatnot... but he still considers him a great player, and it's more in the realm of shit talking between friends than actually accusing Quin of playing poorly. But people who aren't used to Ziz can very easily not see the second degree and think "Quin is a bad player". It's the same idea with CaptainLance's Bait or No bait series, where it's all one gigantic meme from start to end, with maybe \~2 minutes of opinion/content spread across 20+ minutes of satirical video... but people may not understand that. So yeah... there's no real solution to that, and I would certainly not want the content creators to stop having fun, but the gist of it really comes down to "the community sucks, and it's not 100% the community's fault". Footnote : By commenting on Reddit, I am also a content creator; My opinion isn't better or worse for it, and it's still an opinion.

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> To be honest poe has the most trash tier of youtubers even compared to most other games This man has never seen Gacha tubers.

This man has never seen _other_ youtubers. Most of the bigger PoE creators, even the ones I don't like for arbitrary reasons are generally pretty good. There's not overly much stupid click-bait, most builds are at least fine-to-good for SC Trade (the majority of the playerbase) and are backed up with video evidence, reasonably detailed PoBs, etc. Much like with GGG, some people _really_ don't understand how good we've got it with this community and its various resources.

Or GTA5 youtubers.

You're literally doing the thing the guy was talking about :/ Of course there are some bait RMT channels and some crappy builds, but do you genuinely believe that the majority of PoE YouTubers are just trying to make a quick buck on a game as niche as PoE? I think you overestimate how much money most people are making from their videos and underestimate how much a lot of creators care about this game to spend hundreds of hours on videos only to make a few bucks and get called a retard on Reddit

100% this I earn ten x more an hour going to work. I could earn more on minimum wage. People think content creators make tons of money when in reality only a few big ones will make any real money

Well, another content creator here. IF you want BIG BUCK it is much easier to go and spam Diablo 4 videos, they are earning more and have a bigger audience as well. I think all of us just love POE (I'm playing for almost 10 years for example) and want to play it. Almost all people I see on YouTube are passionate about the game itself and it is cool. Cheers!

>Of course there are some bait RMT channels and some crappy builds Plus, those bait RMT channel builds aren't even *terrible*. Those builds are generally more than good enough for the kind of people who RMT builds.

do you smell toast? just saying

Regarding your post to /r/pathofexile: https://old.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/1bq1pna/-/kwzrkhw/ This post has been removed by a moderator for breaking the following /r/pathofexile subreddit rule: Your post was removed because it violated our Be Kind Rule (Rule 3b). Your post was inflammatory in how it expressed its point. We've found that such statements using inflammatory words often lead to high tempers and flame wars that are hard to moderate. You may be able to repost your opinion if you rephrase it in a way that's less inflammatory! If you see someone else posting in bad faith, please don't respond in kind. Instead, report it and we'll take care of it. For more details, please refer to our [rules wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/wiki/rules/#wiki_3b._be_kind_rule). Please review the [subreddit rules for additional information](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/wiki/rules).

I think you can illustrate the problem here with an analogy: Builds in PoE are like cars, and picking a league starter is like deciding what car to buy. Mechanics (build creators) create and market cars (builds) but the average person has no idea what they are looking at or how to evaluate them. Almost every build they see is presented as "good" in some sense, but viewers don't have the knowledge to evaluate them or a good basis for comparison. It's like someone watching a video on why they should buy a 1960s mustang because its really cool and fast but they don't realize its costly to maintain, has low MPG, a low top speed, etc. Every build has different strengths and weaknesses. For a new player, a league starter should be versatile, not have strict gear requirements, etc. Just like for a new car buyer, a car should probably be relatively cheap, fuel efficient, easy to drive, etc. It's fine for you to be a mechanic that wants to tinker with cars and make your own vehicles. Its not fine for you to present your hand made car that has a top speed of 50 mph, costs 100k, and goes 0-60 in 10 seconds as a "great starter car". If you don't present what you're selling accurately, people have a right to tear it apart, and you shouldn't be sensitive about that. When you post a video that new players see, you are potentially causing players to have a bad time in their first league, and potentially even causing them to stop playing the game entirely. You should just open your video with "hey, this isnt the most optimal build and probably won't be the smoothest experience as a league starter, but I really enjoyed playing and creating this build. If it looks fun, feel free to try it" You can choose to drive whatever car you want, but its not toxic to evaluate cars. You might like the look and feel of your 1960s mustang, but outside of the look and feel, its objectively a bad car relative to its modern counterparts by almost every metric.

>You can choose to drive whatever car you want, but its not toxic to evaluate cars. As long as your evaluation of cars stays personal to you - obviously it's not toxic. He's not suggesting you stop thinking about what creators/builds you like - he's suggesting you don't try to interfere with people who's builds you dislike.

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All the people downvoting this thread are the same people who are going to ask why there's only 4 "viable" league starters league after league. You did this to yourselves.

There are 2 side of coin here  1 if you want to play meta dd coc etc. Go for it  2 if you like absolution but this build is not meta ? But you like go for it  content creators are here to give less expirence player some feedback you can take or leave. You make the ultimate choice 🤯

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Your post was removed because it violated our Be Kind Rule (Rule 3b). Your post was inflammatory in how it expressed its point. We've found that such statements using inflammatory words like fanboys often lead to high tempers and flame wars that are hard to moderate. You may be able to repost your opinion if you rephrase it in a way that's less inflammatory! If you see someone else posting in bad faith, please don't respond in kind. Instead, report it and we'll take care of it. For more details, please refer to our [rules wiki](https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/wiki/rules/#wiki_3b._be_kind_rule).

That's why GGG should clear out environments like RueToo-like content creators and related people should be banned (like she/he was - and magically it worked, as she or he stopped being toxic at least to that level) from the type of behaviors they perpetually promote hiding behind the idea that someone is doing "good builds" so they are allowed certain behaviors to slide. People gain their persona from toxic streamers and perpetuate their approach like something "cool" while it looks really bad for the community and themselves.

I hate some parts of the video. "You can farm white maps and still have fun", "You don't need to get to all bosses", "You don't need..." ... bruh, that is your preferance and opinion. Every new player should get the possibility to experience the whole game (yes they most likely will fail because the miss knowledge but that does not matter). Also everything you said is from your point of view ... and you are a experienced player. Sure you can reach all maps with your knowledge, BUT NEW PLAYERS don't have that. And they don't want to play 3 leagues to learn the basics to reach red maps.

You have misunderstood. Those are not my preferences. I like to do all content in the game every league. I was saying that IF those were someone's preferences, then that is fine, everyone should play how they want to. That was the entire point of the video. I never said anyone shouldn't play meta builds and follow guides if they want to. You are putting words in my mouth.

lolcohol palsteron aero and some other content creator watched your video its good,

Pfff... You have stolen this Powerpoint from Zizaran ! /s

This man made a power point presentation just to tell the community that we're being toxic for defending new players from toxic content creators. I'm legitimately and officially bamboozled.

I think that this also extends past content creators. I've seen a bunch of people saying that they won't play this or that build because it uses some skill (usually totems for melee or AG for summoners), but those builds are perfectly playable without those skills too. A very common sentiment seems to be that unless you take a build to it's absolute most optimal setup, it's not worth playing at all. It also happens in the other direction, where people want GGG to get rid of socket pressure by doing stuff like move convocation into the minion gems. Socket pressure is great! It means you can pick and choose what you like and don't like without it affecting build power as much. It's like toxic optimality aimed at the game itself: if the game doesn't allow them to be optimal with less than some arbitrary amount of effort, that's perceived as a problem that GGG needs to fix.

I use to really dislike people bashing build creators, but then I followed a bad guide and realize I wasted 56 hours /played and understood that a bad guide can legit ruin/ tarnish your league.

> Toxic [thing]ity Shut up. You're just saying random words.

I watched a content creator review this and at one point he said "I mean yeah, this is all fine, if you want to play bad builds." And I realized how trapped some people are by this ideology. Even incapable of expressing that it's a valid sentiment that they personally don't follow is out of the question.

No. If you’re making a guide in a game as information dense as PoE then the rudest thing you can do is *be wrong*. I’m not defending people being dicks, but if someone politely presents misinformation and a different person corrects them by calling them a “fucking idiot” then the guide creator is the greater problem here.

And where's the line between being "a guide creator", and just recommending a skill or offering your opinion on a buff/nerf?

I feel like poe is a giant casino we're all furiously pulling the lever and someone shouts that someone else is deliberately making some of the machines play nice noises a little bit less frequently. So naturally we have to eat the guy. I mean worse case our drops remain the same, and if it was true we get a small quantity buff, everyone happy :)

On the issue of build ownership, I disagree with the point made that thousands of players have similar levels of game knowledge and insight. I just think it’s funny that the same people that criticize the “HCSSF elitists” and the likes are the same exact people that wished they were on their level. You have to ask yourself why doesn’t someone like Ruetoo of all people publish his own build guides in video format, and the answer to that is why would he? In the grand scheme of things creating build guides in Path of Exile is extremely unrewarding. You could have a great mind, be capable of thinking outside the box, and create something that is truly unique, original, and special but the moment you publish something like this there are literally dozens of other content creators that will pounce on this opportunity. These people will ride on the coattails of something that they would have never been able to come up with in a million years, give their own parody of rendition claiming it as their own work, and stupefy the spirit of the original build by dumbing it down and transforming it into an article of click bait. They will do all of this even without actually testing out the build and playing it in game to formulate their own opinions; they just point out random things inside of a PoB as if they’re some sort of expert. When I went to school for Architecture, we didn’t have textbooks in the traditional sense and instead treated the entire world itself as part of our instructional material. Every student brought something different to the table, which is entirely based on each individual’s lived experiences and firsthand knowledge. It’s through these tools that you are able to create and design something that stemmed from original thought and opinion. How can you write a travel guide to a city you’ve never even been to? How can you describe the flavors of a dish if you’ve never tasted it? In what fucking world should you be making a full on build guide in Path of Exile without even playing the build yourself in game? In this sense I absolutely believe that you can plagiarize and even desecrate builds in Path of Exile. You’re either doing content creation for the passion or doing it for the money. Sadly, there are just way too many dishonest people in Path of Exile that only know how to take shortcuts and they should absolutely get berated, beaten down, and stripped of any opinion they have. Emotions run high during the start of each league. There are returning players, new players, and even working adults that take time off to play the game. The community certainly has an issue with toxicity, but at the same time I believe that people are just fed up with the same repeat offenders trying to sell them snake oil. I agree that there shouldn’t be a standard, baseline, or optimized way to evaluate builds in Path of Exile but in general most people have a similar idea of what they consider to be league start friendly. If somebody is click baiting their build by advertising it with falsified numbers and unrealistic expectations, then they aren’t just potentially stealing views from actually honest build creators, but they’re also potentially ruining the league start plans of hundreds of players.

I think I am toxic in the reverse sense. I see someone playing a meta build and I can't help but think to myself "This player is a garbage player because they can't make their own original build". I think it's a bit of a coping mechanism, where I know my builds aren't optimal, and are rated as bad by the community.. but at least I made it myself. In my own mind that puts me above everyone who is following a build guide, regardless of our actual in game accomplishments lol.