PoE 2 looks potentially incredible, but I can't be the only one...

... who, when Jonathon said "we started off just fixing the character models", had a pang of regret that they didn't just do that and continue giving us PoE 1.

I'm not complaining, just saying. I doubt PoE 1 will ever be topped, and I'm thankful to have experienced it's golden age. I'll be playing 2 as soon as the beta drops, but I suspect it's a slow downhill march from here.

Can you explain more? Why do you think it will be downhill?

"

Bolander#6946 wrote:

Can you explain more? Why do you think it will be downhill?

Let me say I hope I'm wrong. But my reasons are these:

1. It splits the player base. This is a big one.

2. The design has been undertaken in order to correct "problems" that I don't think are problems at all. They are just personal bug bears or dislikes of the individual designers. This is a proverbial and common flaw in almost all designers, BTW. It's not a personal attack on anyone. I've seen it happen over and over again, and examples within the history of computer games are legion. The outcomes are almost always bad. Jonathon mentioned a bunch of these things over the years of PoE 2's development.

3. PoE worked as it did almost by accident. It fell together over years, and GGG lucked into a unique conglomerate of mechanics and (un)balance that even they didn't fully understand. PoE 2 has been created intentionally, and the mechanics are an odd conflation of PoE 1 and designer ideas of what they like/dislike/think the game should be.

My hope is that the new tech and both games are eventually folded together. IMO that's what should have been done from the outset. PoE 2 is a classic example of unfettered feature creep.

Again, I hope I'm wrong on all counts, but I've seen this all before and I don't think I am.

with a decade of experience behind the team PoE 2 can only be an improvement on PoE.

I love POE 1 but for me the game is just not the same. Speed freaks and streamers ruined it.

I will enjoy POE 2 until these same people ruin it as well.

The problem with POE has always been the toxic and entitled community.

"

t0lkien#7048 wrote:

"

Bolander#6946 wrote:

Can you explain more? Why do you think it will be downhill?

Let me say I hope I'm wrong. But my reasons are these:

1. It splits the player base. This is a big one.

2. The design has been undertaken in order to correct "problems" that I don't think are problems at all. They are just personal bug bears or dislikes of the individual designers. This is a proverbial and common flaw in almost all designers, BTW. It's not a personal attack on anyone. I've seen it happen over and over again, and examples within the history of computer games are legion. The outcomes are almost always bad. Jonathon mentioned a bunch of these things over the years of PoE 2's development.

3. PoE worked as it did almost by accident. It fell together over years, and GGG lucked into a unique conglomerate of mechanics and balance that even they didn't fully understand. PoE 2 has been created intentionally, and the mechanics are an odd conflation of PoE 1 and designer ideas of what they like/dislike/think the game should be.

My hope is that the new tech and both games are eventually folded together. IMO that's what should have been done from the outset. PoE 2 is a classic example of unfettered feature creep.

Again, I hope I'm wrong on all counts, but I've seen this all before and I don't think I am.

1. With the addition of PoE 2, they’re not so much splitting the player base as they’re expanding it to reach newer players that might not of played or considered PoE 1 because it has over a decade worth of content and game sense. With staggered league launches between both games core players are going to bounce between both games instead of playing other games a few weeks after league launches because they got what they wanted out of the league, and players who are still dedicated to PoE 1 are presumably going to get the same experience they’ve already had to begin with.

2. This is giving GGG an opportunity to try the alternative option to some key decisions they made, backed by over a decade worth of player feedback and experience. The idea to move away from piano flask gives them an opportunity to see how players react and does it result in better gameplay. If it doesn’t they still have the opportunity to re-introduce the PoE 1 flask system in a future league update. The idea of trying new fixes to personal problems the designers feel is an issue allows for those “almost by accident” opportunities to happen. If everything was a 1:1 clone of PoE 1 then there’s no opportunity for discovery of potentially better systems even at the risk of some of those changes falling flat.

3. PoE 1 fell into the incredible game that it is now because GGG was always willing to take risks, both good and bad, in order to try new things and not always getting locked into hard set decisions. If this was a newer studio that was rushing to make a sequel after striking gold I would be more concerned, but GGG has a good track record after a decade of refining PoE 1, so why do you think they can accomplish the same thing over the next decade with PoE 2? We’re just at EA right now for this game and it’s already looking impressive but give them even more time to cook, with hundreds of thousands of people play testing the game and it’s quite likely they’ll be able to make loads more of those accidents that made PoE 1 the golden standard of ARPG. There’s certainly going to be good leagues along with terrible leagues but at least this is giving GGG a chance to learn what works and doesn’t and hopefully that will even bring better content to the other game and vice versa.

Now if only they could sort out the mess that is the PS5 MTX, and make a proper MacOS client…

"

lupasvasile#5385 wrote:

I love POE 1 but for me the game is just not the same. Speed freaks and streamers ruined it.

I will enjoy POE 2 until these same people ruin it as well.

The problem with POE has always been the toxic and entitled community.

I agree 100% with you, I have the most fun ever in videogame during 2012-2015 PoE, when it was what was designed to be. Then they changed to attract more people, which was a wise take, but not for me. Still the best arpg, dont get me wrong, but you know what we are talking about.

I thought a newer POE couldn't possibly outdo a previous POE, but boy, I was wrong. I'm excited to start slaying in December.

im so hyped for this game always played diablo but now i will just go poe2 and learn it from scratch what ive seen yday it looks far superior in every way :) gonna be fun to learn the game

"

t0lkien#7048 wrote:

... who, when Jonathon said "we started off just fixing the character models", had a pang of regret that they didn't just do that and continue giving us PoE 1.

I'm not complaining, just saying. I doubt PoE 1 will ever be topped, and I'm thankful to have experienced it's golden age. I'll be playing 2 as soon as the beta drops, but I suspect it's a slow downhill march from here.

I think that for every person who wishes the original plan had stuck and that PoE2 was just an upgrade to PoE1, there's probably a person who would've simply quit PoE altogether if not for the hope that Path 2 would be a new game that kept what they love about the first one without the decade of bloat.

Like, I absolutely get that Path the First is sort of a lightning-in-a-bottle dealie where it's become something unique in gaming. For a lot of people, that unique composition is exactly what they look for and it's why they love the first game to death. It's why they're so upset that the second game is taking away from the first one - they don't see what they love in the first game in PoE2 and they feel like their game, the unique-amongst-all-gaming accidental masterpiece they're super lucky to have, is going to wither.

The problem comes from the fact that Path 1 is a level of unforgiving and impenetrable to new and casual players that is actively detrimental to the business, and also the game truly, truly is showing its age. Path 1 is old, and very, very creaky. It's still got meat on its bones, it's by no means dead or desiccated, but updating character rigs would not be remotely all that's needed to make it palatable to a wider audience.

This is the only game I know of where you can have five thousand hours in it and still be completely and utterly terrible because the methods required to obtain the level of gear needed to simply hit basic endgame content are all so baroque and impossible to decipher that the average player will never do so. Ever. And that's assuming they even know what gear they need in the first place.

Without the idea of a Path of Exile that retains the creativity, flexibility, and freedom that make the first game special without burying it under an impossible avalanche of utterly unnecessary mathemagical obfuscation and anti-intuitive Reverse Subway Economics? I doubt there would be half as much hype for the new game. It's off-putting to PoE1 players, for sure, but I've got a number of friends who bounced off PoE1 completely due to its overwhelming and unnecessary finickyness who are extremely excited to try out PoE2. And these are not dumb people, not Fortnight losers who can't figure out how two plus two equals transmute orb, but folks who can easily grasp and master the mechanics and underlying principles of most every other game they play.

The things that make Path 1 unique to all of its most beloved and diehard fans are also the things that cripple it and make it unplayable to basically anyone else. Without this fresh start and rebuild? The game would never truly expand. Everyone who can play the first game beyond yellow maps is already doing so. There's no more audience left to find.