Why POE2’s Direction Is Worrying for Veterans and Newcomers Alike

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Wauxx#0810 wrote:

People seems to forget what kind of game they are playing. The game is designed to promote/reward fast AoE clears, but not only PoE 1/2, literally every ARPG its like that, even DarkSouls or Elden Ring.

Is IMPOSSIBLE that PoE 2 will stay "slow" and you can see how maps work, almost all builds are zoomzoom and no one can do anything about it.

tell that to the devs. we definitely have a level of zoom in path2 right now but its nowhere near poe1.

nothing is impossible. the devs will do what they need to do. overperforming skills will get nerfed. tho from what i see they dont want us to zoom too much.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

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Wauxx#0810 wrote:

People seems to forget what kind of game they are playing. The game is designed to promote/reward fast AoE clears, but not only PoE 1/2, literally every ARPG its like that, even DarkSouls or Elden Ring.

Is IMPOSSIBLE that PoE 2 will stay "slow" and you can see how maps work, almost all builds are zoomzoom and no one can do anything about it.

tell that to the devs. we definitely have a level of zoom in path2 right now but its nowhere near poe1.

nothing is impossible. the devs will do what they need to do. overperforming skills will get nerfed. tho from what i see they dont want us to zoom too much.

But it is impossible, you can't keep nerfing everything and even then there will be ALWAYS a meta and, in this game, that meta will be fast AoE clears.

The objective needs to be having a lot of diferents builds that can do that and, for people who doesn't like zooming around, having heavy hitting builds that can do massive dmg in a short amount of time, or even having an inmortal character with zdps. That would be a dream scenario.

Even if the devs try to force just one type of gameplay (and that is really dangerous btw) the players will find ways to go as fast as possible, that is just the primal objective of this game so you just can't do anything about it.

Right now there are some builds that are technically faster than the average PoE 1 build because in PoE 1 slow builds exists and inmortal tanks exists, in PoE 2.... not so much.

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Wauxx#0810 wrote:

But it is impossible, you can't keep nerfing everything and even then there will be ALWAYS a meta and, in this game, that meta will be fast AoE clears.

The objective needs to be having a lot of diferents builds that can do that and, for people who doesn't like zooming around, having heavy hitting builds that can do massive dmg in a short amount of time, or even having an inmortal character with zdps. That would be a dream scenario.

Even if the devs try to force just one type of gameplay (and that is really dangerous btw) the players will find ways to go as fast as possible, that is just the primal objective of this game so you just can't do anything about it.

Right now there are some builds that are technically faster than the average PoE 1 build because in PoE 1 slow builds exists and inmortal tanks exists, in PoE 2.... not so much.

youre 100% right, there always will be metas no matter how GGG tries and curb it.

tho from what i m observing, GGG is trying hard to balance the game so that even if youre not meta you dont lag too far behind.

the only way ggg can do this is by curbing zooming. look at how ggg nerfed trigger gems.

and you're right, right now there are builds that are overperforming. will they continue to overperform or is ggg gonna do something about it?

and tbh its hard to tell since theyre gonna be off for the holidays soon.

EDIT: want to point out that the point you mentioned, players want to be able to do huge damage or do zdps immortal tanks. yes players would want that. but whether ggg will allow players to do that is a different story.

Except for the crafting weaknesses that are definitely there, I hard disagree on all of this. POE 2 is a superior product. Combat is no longer one button, so long as they can reign in the builds that still chase that meta, then the game will live forever. The gem system is vastly more interesting and less grindy. The ascendencies feel like an actual side challenge to acquire (realistically, too much of a challenge for some of the trials).

You're simultaneously saying you want POE 2 to be a different game then complaining about the big things they did different, which are really fantastic changes to anyone who doesn't have 8k hours into the first game. Movement is better, gems are more fun, the maps are more interesting (although admittedly empty, I expect this will get better once leagues start becoming a thing again).

I posted very similiar thoughts to OPs in the first few days of EA. This and Souls or souls-like (so as to include all challenging action games) are 2 different genres with different audiences. There are some overlap maybe, but the core values have always been different. Think of how many mobs you have to fight at a time in Elden Ring or Monster Hunter or even Wukong. Heck most duo-bosses in ER are disliked (Godskin duo, twin gargoyles, twin crucible knights etc) because the player charater's not very powerful, combat is mostly skill based, and if you don't cheese them, fighting 2 at a time is already a challenge. And these are 3rd person games, I can see a mob from a mile away unless it's hidden behind a wall.

PoE2, no matter how much it wants to evolve from PoE1, is still a top-down isometric ARPG. You still fight whole screens of mobs, and since it's isometric I can't see them until they enter the screen. Combat is now semi-skill based but also heavily dependent on gear and build. Mobs are still as fast and powerful as in PoE1 esp. later in maps and the bosses are much harder but the player character is much slower and less powerful, this makes combat more tedious than fun. Coupled with many severe, unfair punishing mechanics like 1 death bricking your map and the 2 trials, cause burnout much faster than poe1.

At the end of the day, the 'git gud' crowd should realize that the no-lifers are only a small part of the playerbase and likewise contribute a small minority of GGG's profits. If you have a life, or if you enjoy other games as well, who in his right mind would want to grind through this slog of a campaign + early mapping every 3-4months, let alone on more than 1 character? There's a reason even MMORPGs have real money tokens/boosts to let you bypass the entire levelling process.

I am a veteran and this post does NOT speak for me. I like the new direction better.
I am most worried about GGG KEEPING things from PoE1.

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Dr_Mayhem22#0135 wrote:

Combat is no longer one button, so long as they can reign in the builds that still chase that meta, then the game will live forever.

Dream on. I guess if some players don't play many other games then you'd think PoE2's combat is a breath of fresh air. Like OP, I played and even platinumed a lot of the so called hard action games, and I don't feel the combat in PoE2 challenging in a fun way. Once the majority of casuals realize it doesn't get better later in the campaign or in maps, in fact it stays just as slow and punishing the whole time, they'll never get to see their beloved, genre-trademarked loot shower or feel powerful, like ever, see if they'll stick around for Seasons 1 2 3 4 5 etc. They won't.

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PoE2 was a huge opportunity for GGG to get rid of the enormous complicated fundaments of PoE1 that caused many, many people to stay away. Even me, with several thousands hours of playing PoE1 have reached a point to leave PoE1 years ago cause i missed build diversity and real freedom. Mastering PoE1 bacame some sort of no-lifer prerequisition. I never had any char leveled to 100 cause of the insane amounts of punishment GGG put into trying to prevent me from reaching this.

Now i was REALLY excited for PoE2. And guess what: all the complicated stuff has been mixed into it 1:1. The freedom of chosing a build and finding my way in the skill tree ended up in a dead end, where my build is not able to get past the act 3 cruel barrier: i don't have the power to kill any of the level bosses. It's not my fault, it's heavy balancing issues destroying the experience. I spent 40 hours leveling having real fun. And i ended up spending 60 hours struggling with no way out of the dead end of my build.

Will i restart the campaign now to play a fresh char reaching endgame? Hell no!
Will i replay the campaign next season? Hell no!
The amounts of punishment of PoE2 has reached a level that it destroys the balance of challenge versus enjoyment. 1-life maps, 15% exp loss, items disappearing after death, all of this is not encouraging people to git gud. Cause a single mistake ruins your whole experience. So you don't experiment.

For that reason, people will NOT chose to create their own build, but will collectively use the current meta to circumvent the insane punishments. Punishments that have insane dimensions. No other game disrespects your time invested in such a huge scale, nullifying dozens of hours gameplay with a oneshot.

A game is still a game. And PoE2 delivers no loot, no crafting, enormous distances, build dead ends, while punishing the time you invested into Nirvana. I really wonder, who's the target group having that much time to play a game that fails to keep up a constant reward curve for motivation.

I played Elden Ring and the reward flow was constant. I killed the bosses in PoE2 for getting rings with '10% increased light radius' and i never felt rewarded. There might be people who are enjoying this. But if i could predict: i think the niche is even thinner than PoE1.

sorry but i'm so sick of this ''poe2 needs to be like poe1'' awful posts.


Listen: This game might die for me and it's a shame because my first experiences were so fun and so amazing. but each act is easier than the last and cruel difficulty feels like a joke. my character is becoming more and more like a speed runner and mobs are going down too fast. and i haven't even traded for any gear at all aside from vendors.


i want the challenge, i want the deliberate combat. people like you want some Zoom fest. where you go from point A to Z as quickly as possible. i'm so sick of this mentality. i want the campaign to mean something.


and sure leveling 2nd and 3rd chars can be annoying right? well how about they SOLVE it by giving us a L30 character when we make it to L60 or beat the campaign act 1-6 with a character? each char we beat the campaign with grants us a new L30 character of our choice.


There are creative solutions. meanwhile.... keep the game more challenging. make the later acts more difficult and maps too. TY