PSA: All the PoE2 Footage You've Seen is from the Equivalent of Acts 1~3

I keep seeing endless whinging about how characters in PoE2 are too fragile, are too slow, are too weak, are too this/that/the other thing. Reminder: these are all low-level characters with rotten gear and an unoptimized allocation of an unfinished skill tree. Going on and on and on about how unappetizing the content looks compared to a thousand-Mirror endgame ultrablaster PoE1 character with over a trillion DPS is kinda disingenuous. And meaningless. And increasingly annoying to read.

Yes, the game will be slower. Yes, you will not likely be able to get Mavens-per-second levels of DPS within three hours of PoE2 dropping, the way people do with PoE1 leagues. Yes, sustain will be tougher and nigh-immorality likely trickier to reach.

No, the gameplay you've all seen so far is not indicative of the way endgame will play out. You have not seen one single Ascendancy in action, nor have you seen one single unique item since the game was announced as its own self-contained sequel. You have not seen a single Keystone passive, you have not seen any of the new item gen rules. You have seen very few of the currently-announced 240 active skills, and even fewer of the support gems for those skills.

You are all looking at footage which is equivalent to somebody running the Western Forest - badly - and saying the game is dead because this is what pinnacle content looks like and it's simply not fun.

D'ye think maybe that's not a very intelligent or well-informed stance to take?

Let them cook. They made the game you love, remember - and they did it without a single clue what they were doing. They're making this one as the world's foremost ARPG development team with fifteen years of experience under their belt. It will be better than you're anticipating from the equivalent of Act 2 content.

You are doing the God's work here.

No rest for the wicked, I guess.

Cool. I look forward to the melee viability in the equivalent of act 4 and beyond. I won't hold my breath given the laughable POE2 melee footage so far.

I was probably one of the biggest advocates for melee/single target viability for PoE.

Wrote some pretty chunky takes on it.

But eh. Fun is fun. Be it sword and board or spamming shit all over.

I think true melee viability (as in weapon swing, damage dealt) in a hectic arpg is a lost cause. There needs to be some aoe management at the very least.

Which is fine. We have much better games and genres out there for satisfying melee gameplay.

Best to remember what sort of games inspired the Diablo series to begin with. Gauntlet. Turn based rpgs. And action adventure games where the final weapons were often swords that fired projectiles.

It was a hard lesson because boy do I love melee in arpgs. I really do. But if melee now means a flurry of sword swings in a medium range, so be it. Or triggering aoe explosions per hit. All that. These games are ultimately power fantasies and to cater to that, it's almost impossible to balance true melee as a power fantasy with, say, a mage or an archer of comparable power.

Otoh once I accepted that I sought out arpgs that do the action better so that is also a factor why melee sucks in PoE I think. Inherently clunky game best played as a shooter. The fluidity of animation seen so far in PoE 2 gives me a little hope.

And failing that, damn the archery looks fun. :)

Honestly it hasn't impressed me in the slightest. It looks like it has a lot of fundamental issues. I hope its good, but I ain't going to play it until the bugs get ironed out.

I don't trust their team or vision, not that I look map blasting and zooming anyway.

Again, not for me, but I hope its good.

Thing is... What we have seen is only what they have shown. I am just not interested myself mostly because of the combo and skill switching for certain encounters looks more annoying than fun to me.

People will believe what they want, the number that automatically associate it with ruthless is pretty funny in itself.

Basically rational arguments aren't going to help here because its an irrational standpoint, just ignore them until the game comes out when we'll be able to zoom (or not zoom) to actually find out.

PSA: All the PoE2 Footage You've Seen is from the Equivalent of Acts 1~3

...and you know this how?

Having an absolute blast playing bash barb in d4. If D4 can get melee right why can't PoE? Bump up damage numbers, give a cleave effect, come up with some bombastic sound effects. What's stopping devs from making melee fun.

"If D4 can get melee right why can't PoE?"

Similar questions could be:

"If D4 has a brightness meter why can't POE?"

"If D4 has an optimized graphics/physics engine why can't POE?"

"If D4 can only kill me onscreen then why can't POE?"

The answer is because they don't have to. This is masochism central, and the hubris of the devs put anyone else to shame. Blizz can't even compete in this level of hubris.

Being able to stand still (not moving every 1-2 sec) and melee comfortably without dying instantly and without having crazy gear is somehow anathema to the mindset of the devs.

POE1 dev communication is near non-existent now with the remaining community, so given the lack of information one can only assume the current state is a combo of "we don't play X archetypes" (a position of ignorance, suggested/implied by Jonathan in interviews) and it simply being intended.