Developers talk about Path of Exile's clear speed

The Scourge League is one of the many extensions in Path of Exile, with a built-in timer to process its content, and its mechanism depends on the player needing a lot of POE Currency to enter the Scourge area. Once entered, the timer will start, which naturally promotes a style of play that quickly moves through the area while destroying as many monsters as possible in a short time. This is the need for a clear speed element. Players tend to optimize their construction around damage, mobility, and survivability in order to play the best role in the game.

Of course, a clear speed element is not unique to Path of Exile. Wilson explained very well what the essence of ARPG is and what it means to build a game that allows players to get the most benefits from the essence. As a whole, ARPG has been cultivating a certain type of game style, revolving around building the most powerful characters, acquiring items through POE Currency to become more powerful, reducing the time required to do so exponentially, thereby maximizing Improve results.

Wilson said that throughout the development cycle of Scourge, the idea of replacing the timer with something else is always repeated by the team. However, it was eventually shelved due to internal struggles and the fact that the game was already geared towards clear speed. Therefore, even though Path of Exile's new alliance seems to promote the same clear speed meta that has been discussed internally and with the community over the years, it is generally derived from game identity and ARPG-related factors.

Before Scourge, players would rely on extremely powerful aura skills, which can be stacked to provide extraordinary improvements for the entire team. Players also need Buy POE Currency to get the items they want. With the introduction of Scourge, this was weakened, and GGG seized the opportunity to compensate for a new party skill: link. These are targeted buffs that a player can cast on friendly targets. Although they are very effective on their own, if the target of the linked skill dies, the original caster will also die.