GGG - Stand true to what you said about player feedback

I just want them to turn down the HP of the basic mobs a bit. It gets tedious having a mini-battle every 2 steps.

I'm not going to die to trash mobs unless I fall asleep or get frustrated and run past them, or if they have insane mods and are ranged. It's bad for replayability and it feels like it's wasting my time.

Otherwise, love it. Brilliant direction. Bosses, great. Variety, fantastic. Skill combos, fun. New crafting/ rare items being valuable, awesome. Just absolutely hate slogging through some parts because the basic monsters HP (normal, magic, rare) is turned up crazy high and the maps are so big.

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

I just want them to turn down the HP of the basic mobs a bit. It gets tedious having a mini-battle every 2 steps.

I'm not going to die to trash mobs unless I fall asleep or get frustrated and run past them, or if they have insane mods and are ranged. It's bad for replayability and it feels like it's wasting my time.

Otherwise, love it. Brilliant direction. Bosses, great. Variety, fantastic. Skill combos, fun. New crafting/ rare items being valuable, awesome. Just absolutely hate slogging through some parts because the basic monsters HP (normal, magic, rare) is turned up crazy high and the maps are so big.

At what point in the game are you, and what build? I've had moments where I feel like each trash mob is a wall, get an upgrade or fix my build slightly, and then 1shot everything. Been this way across all my guild mates as well.

In maps you just eviscerate everything.

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Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

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ziggro#7495 wrote:

Yes, i hope they kep this direction, poe1 beta was harder then poe2 EA, i always disliked how they changed directions. Now we have 2 games, zoom zoom gamers can play poe1, and the rest that got bait and switched on poe1 beta can have their game again.

God I felt that part of your sentence so much... Look at my characters, my packs, etc. I've been around for a long time.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3398993 I had this thread longstanding for ages... People don't understand how I could have felt bait and switched

Ruthless was PoE's saving grace that made me come back from Diablo 2.

So because Ruthless is the mode you enjoy and its what you want PoE2 to be.

That's pretty much the entirety of your point..


The thing you totally missed about Diablo 2 is the difficulty scaled up. Even in 1.09 and earlier you could basically cruise through normal and nightmare pretty easily. Blood moore was a non threat even in 2001. Thats where this game gets it wrong, from the moment you leave town its sweaty gaming.

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Relationship#0359 wrote:

The thing you totally missed about Diablo 2 is the difficulty scaled up. Even in 1.09 and earlier you could basically cruise through normal and nightmare pretty easily. Blood moore was a non threat even in 2001. Thats where this game gets it wrong, from the moment you leave town its sweaty gaming.

This game gets it right. We don't need areas where you just "basically cruise". 3 sequential difficulties were Diablo 2's BIGGEST mistake by far, and even worse - it got picked by other game devs and so we have some ARPG gems like Grim Dawn STILL repeating that old mistake and then trying hard to fix it (and eventually GD allowed you to skip right to last difficulty).

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Kaboinglefop#0955 wrote:

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

I just want them to turn down the HP of the basic mobs a bit. It gets tedious having a mini-battle every 2 steps.

I'm not going to die to trash mobs unless I fall asleep or get frustrated and run past them, or if they have insane mods and are ranged. It's bad for replayability and it feels like it's wasting my time.

Otherwise, love it. Brilliant direction. Bosses, great. Variety, fantastic. Skill combos, fun. New crafting/ rare items being valuable, awesome. Just absolutely hate slogging through some parts because the basic monsters HP (normal, magic, rare) is turned up crazy high and the maps are so big.

At what point in the game are you, and what build? I've had moments where I feel like each trash mob is a wall, get an upgrade or fix my build slightly, and then 1shot everything. Been this way across all my guild mates as well.

In maps you just eviscerate everything.

Pretty much every streamer is foregoing any kind of defense in the tree because stuff is too tanky, and when your defenses matter most (boss fights), it's actually more of a DPS check in most fights to end the last phase before you run out of flasks.


The skills are terribly balanced. My ascended pathfinder with a fully upkept concoction felt useless. My unascended level 25 witch with some standard cold spells is doing 10x his hit damage.

Even with 10x hit damage, the campaign does not feel like "eviscerating everything" until you have 2 good ascensions and actually decent rares/uniques. Even after that, you will not go defense over offense in the tree, because you are only worried about the bosses still, since pretty much all uniques have insane DR in PoE2.


Anyway, point is, I've been OP in the start of campaign, and I've done it rough, both feel almost the same because the HP numbers on some mobs are just way too ridiculous for that level.

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just_dont#6539 wrote:

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Relationship#0359 wrote:

The thing you totally missed about Diablo 2 is the difficulty scaled up. Even in 1.09 and earlier you could basically cruise through normal and nightmare pretty easily. Blood moore was a non threat even in 2001. Thats where this game gets it wrong, from the moment you leave town its sweaty gaming.

This game gets it right. We don't need areas where you just "basically cruise". 3 sequential difficulties were Diablo 2's BIGGEST mistake by far, and even worse - it got picked by other game devs and so we have some ARPG gems like Grim Dawn STILL repeating that old mistake and then trying hard to fix it (and eventually GD allowed you to skip right to last difficulty).

Well said. GGG was their own target audience and made a game for players like us, then dollar signs in the eyes.... I respect it, I understand it, but you did that game. Now make your real vision for those of us they alienated.

Great post.

Honestly, I feel like if loot was easier to get (as in better loot, not more loot), it would be easier to get prepared for the challenges that bosses are. With better loot comes resists and armour, and damage too. As long as we get many build/skills options, simply having better loot and maybe a slightly higher base running speed would make leveling less of a chore.

Right now, at lvl 63 (I think?), I'm still using an old lvl 35 bow. Never looted or crafted anything better despite 40+ crafting tries, and this is for the weapon only. I tried crafting other items and up until lvl 55 or so, I was still using a quiver and an amulet I looted at lvl 12-20. Most uniques are useless, and 30-40 lvl under what I need.

With better loot, the game becomes easier and yes, some broken builds will destroy bosses regardless. They don't need to adjust boss strength and health pool if we can manage to get better items ourselves. Right now, I feel like trading is the only way to get more powerful other than random crafting bricking items and hoping for the best.

All and all, slow movement speed, maps that are too large and loot scarcity are the main thing keeping the game from being fun for many players. Right now, it's not rewarding or very respectful of our time. You farm for 1 hour and get something worth a regal orb if you're lucky... which will be wasted by bricking an item.

I certainly down want it to become a zooming pew pew teleporting game like PoE or D4 currently are/were at one point, but there's an happy medium while still keeping the game challenging.

It's super early though, and tweaking loot is probably not that very taxing in dev ressources. With better loot could come movement speed on boots too which make maps feel less like a chore to "run".

But yes, the overall difficulty of the game is fine... but gem skills balance aside, it's mostly a matter of loot.

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pyrocyborg#0256 wrote:

Honestly, I feel like if loot was easier to get (as in better loot, not more loot), it would be easier to get prepared for the challenges that bosses are. With better loot comes resists and armour, and damage too. As long as we get many build/skills options, simply having better loot and maybe a slightly higher base running speed would make leveling less of a chore.

Right now, at lvl 63 (I think?), I'm still using an old lvl 35 bow. Never looted or crafted anything better despite 40+ crafting tries, and this is for the weapon only. I tried crafting other items and up until lvl 55 or so, I was still using a quiver and an amulet I looted at lvl 12-20. Most uniques are useless, and 30-40 lvl under what I need.

With better loot, the game becomes easier and yes, some broken builds will destroy bosses regardless. They don't need to adjust boss strength and health pool if we can manage to get better items ourselves. Right now, I feel like trading is the only way to get more powerful other than random crafting bricking items and hoping for the best.

All and all, slow movement speed, maps that are too large and loot scarcity are the main thing keeping the game from being fun for many players. Right now, it's not rewarding or very respectful of our time. You farm for 1 hour and get something worth a regal orb if you're lucky... which will be wasted by bricking an item.

I certainly down want it to become a zooming pew pew teleporting game like PoE or D4 currently are/were at one poiny, but there's an happy medium while still keeping the game challenging.

It's super early though, and tweaking loot is probably not that very taxing in dev ressources. With better loot could come movement speed on boots too which make maps feel less like a chore to "run".

1-2 regal an hour is wild. We are getting a regal or ex per zone. I address my thoughts on the large zones here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3609221

In case you don't follow links, I will quote it:

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When you are in combat and there's lots of action, it feels amazing and just like when PoE1 Act 4 was brand new traversing dried lake and aqueduct. I would not like to see this experience diminished.

I think the zones are really great size and setting wise. I am perfectly OK with large zones.

That being said, instead of fundamentally changing the map and zone design, giving players some kind of tailwind stat for when they are out of combat and far from any mobs would probably alleviate a lot of the player frustrations around zones.

Backtracking large zones was un-fun in PoE1 and is a design challenge to solve in PoE2. If you have no mobs around, just moving around a bit quicker would probably relieve a lot of frustration for players. You'd probably need to cap move speed the way FRW has diminishing returns in Diablo 2, though.

Just my thoughts. I have zero issues with backtracking, try playing Act 3 Durance of Hate in Hell Mode as a non-sorceres.. This is nothing. But it's an old ARPG problem.

A good way to solve the problem with some part of comunity is not happy with game difficulty, is creating anothe level o difficulty (easy). But the char created in that way, cannot change to other difficulties, like normal difficulty. Its to avoid players to start in easy to reach late game faster and then change it to normal.
This way, casual players going take fun with game (always in easy) and when they feel confident, maybe they try create a new char in normal difficulty.