Path of Building's Controversial "Trending SL Latest" Section

The new SL latest section in the PO update is concerning due to potential pay-to-win features and lack of quality control.

### Concerns About Path of Building's New "Trending Builds" Section
* 🛠️  Path of Building (PoB) recently introduced a new "**Trending Builds**" section in its latest update, displaying popular builds from content creators.
* 💰  Initially, this feature linked to an external website, PoArchives.com, which had a Patreon offering **build promotion for a fee**.
* 🚫  This raised concerns about **potential pay-to-win practices**, with fears that bad actors could **manipulate the system for profit**.
* 🔍  There are also challenges in curating the builds displayed, as determining "**good**" builds is subjective and may lead to **gatekeeping**.
* 📊  The feature heavily benefits established content creators, potentially **disadvantaging smaller creators**.
* 💬 " I don't think it's a good feature. I think it should be **removed immediately**.
* 🤔  The speaker is unsure of a solution, as any curation process may have its own **drawbacks**.
* 🌐  The speaker emphasizes the importance of **content creators to the community**, despite acknowledging the potential benefits to **popular creators like himself**.

what's up boys? I know I've not really made a lot of videos recently, but I feel genuinely pretty strongly about this. And what I'm talking about here is this new trending SL latest section of the PO that you can find here in the newest update. I think it's a very bad idea for various reasons. There's two main ones, but before we go into that, it's kind of down. Now I complained about this, and I think they are trying to work on it. Yeah, so this is the way that it looked previously. If we take a look at this, basically in the trending and latest tab, it would pop up with a bunch of very popular builds from a whole bunch of content creators. Like you're going to see Zizaran here, you're going to see Jung grown, you're going to see Exile Cap, all popular content creators. It shows you like DPS and life and EHP and all of this, but the problem is that there's this little button here on each of these that says preview. And you

might notice up at the top right, it just says PO Archives, right? That just seems like a whatever. It's just like archives for PO. Maybe it's just like an autopopulated thing by the PO team. However, when you hit this preview button, um, it doesn't take you to some official website. It takes you to poarchives.com. And poarchives.com has a Patreon link. This is the very first thing I noticed when I came here. It has a Patreon link. This Patreon link brings you here for $1 a month, $3 a month, $5 a month, $8 a month. And right now, uh, this has been changed. I'll show you a screenshot in a moment. It says your builds will be highlighted for $5 a month, and you get like some live search slots and choose a build to be listed in the Hall of Grand Librarians and add your build to the curio display on the homepage. That's, uh, that's this, by the way. If we go to the homepage here, if it'll even load.

it looks like this website's being given the hug of death by the community, but you'll see there's this like curio display, and it's going to show a bunch of builds and stuff. so this is what it said previously: your builds will be favored in search. so here's the first problem: this function ultimately will end up here. this is just how everything always works. it will always end up with money. now as of right now, this has been removed. like this feature has been removed here. however, it did exist at one time, and what is to make me believe that the people or person who is running this would not be willing to take money from Bad actors behind closed doors to mess with, you know, the what happens with the websites that are linked here. so someone could come in, they could pay $5 a month or $8 a month, or go back behind closed doors and pay however much money per month to have it so that their builds are on the top of this website, right like all up front and center like you.

see her on this curio display or in the search rankings or things like that so there could be some bad actors right. If you guys aren't aware, um, there are some bad actors in the community, and I don't mean like haha content creator made a bad build. I'm talking about people like Path of Exile Builds on YouTube. So if you don't know, you should never ever ever follow any builds by this person. This is a front for RMT. They're trying to get your money. They don't care about making you have a good experience. They purposefully make their builds bad so that you have to come back to them and be like how do I fix this, how do I work on things, and then eventually you get funneled down into the system where you just have to purchase a whole bunch of currency or get their exclusive content and stuff to be able to improve yourself. Never ever ever ever follow anything here. It's very very sad that this like channel is so effective because you're get they're getting like thousands of

views on some of these videos, right? It's not as bad as it used to be. Like, they're definitely getting less views nowadays, but there are still people getting baited by this. People like this could go in and pay for bonuses on a website like this. Now, that's fixable, right? You could just make it so that there's no external website, right? You could just make it so that this is based off of like Po bin or whatever else, right? It could just be off of what PS are physically being opened the most on the PO bin website or in po itself. You could do that. However, that's also abusable, meaning that how do you realistically make a trending or latest tab here that has actual good builds in it? How do you make one like this that is not abusable? In my mind, I've kind of gone through the motions of trying to figure that out, and I can't come up with anything. But the problem is here is that this feature is very popular. A lot of people like this. Like, the Reddit is like

this feature is awesome. I'm going to be able to look at a bunch of builds. But when I was using this, I unfortunately don't have any footage of it. There was just a bunch of random stuff in there. In like the latest tab, there was just a bunch of random stuff. I'm very worried about this because what's the solution? Do you have some random moderators that need to check to see what builds are good? And they're the people who put the builds in here in like the trending list. But then why are those moderators the arbiter of what's good? Are they just going to gatekeep people that they don't like? What about smaller build creators? If smaller build creators aren't able to show up on this page and people just go here and look for builds here instead of YouTube or wherever else, it's going to kind of just funnel everything into the top. Now, now understand, I benefit from this heavily. Like this would funnel into me, right? It would funnel into me. It would funnel into

people like Zizan, Jung, Grown, anybody else that you see like on this list here, Exile, Cat, all these large popular YouTubers or streamers or stuff like that, they're going to benefit super heavily from that but newer content creators just kind of get shafted with stuff like this. Now I know most of you probably don't care about content creators but they are the backbone of the community, they are the people who actually make it so that you can play this game. So overall, I don't know how you fix this. I don't think it's a good feature. I think it should be removed immediately. It is worrisome that it went live in a state where there was literally a Patreon with like pay to win aspects in it. I'm very worried and I have a very bad feeling in my gut about all of this but um, but yeah, I don't think that this should be a feature in Path of Building.

This New Path of Building Features Needs to be REMOVED

Big Ducks

Critique of the New PO Trending SL Section

The new PO trending SL section is criticized for featuring popular builds with a preview button that leads to a Patreon page, raising concerns about pay-to-win mechanics.

Many are unhappy with the section's potential impact on the Path of Exile community and game balance, leading to widespread backlash and calls for reevaluation.

The use of a Patreon link and paid highlights for builds has sparked a heated debate about the ethical implications of this new feature.

Allegations of Unethical Practices on a Gaming Website

The website is suspected of potentially taking money to prioritize certain builds, raising concerns about ethical behavior.

There are allegations of bad actors in the community paying to have their content promoted on the site.

A specific YouTube channel is accused of being a front for real-money trading, advising users to avoid its content.

The Dilemma of Video Views and Build Quality on a Popular Website

The website is experiencing a decrease in video views, but still attracts users who pay for bonuses.

There is a challenge in maintaining a trending or latest tab with high-quality builds that is not easily abusable.

The popularity of this feature raises concerns about how to ensure fair representation for smaller build creators without relying on potentially biased moderators.

Concerns about the Impact of a New Feature on Content Creators

The new feature is expected to heavily benefit popular YouTubers and streamers, while leaving newer content creators at a disadvantage.

Content creators are seen as essential to the gaming community and the implementation of the feature is concerning.

There are strong objections to the feature, with a call for its immediate removal due to worries about its impact and the presence of pay-to-win elements.