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

In my own experience and preference I find that I feel no sense of creativity or satisfaction in theorycrafting. My lightning monk ended up just being storm wave with electrocution support, resonance and combat frenzy to generate power charges and falling thunder to spend them. That's it by a process of elimination I ended with a Poe1 style two button build. None of the crazy clear speed of the YouTubers, but it was still the most efficient version of that build and the most boring.

The more I try to experiment or research the more guardrails I hit, or end up with a build that requires too much set up and therefore isn't viable in the late endgame.

In spite of trying to make a more methodical combat system they've created the exact same meta, but much worse since most of it's predecessors creativity is just gone. Yeah Poe1 builds where a bit chaotic but at least the options for automation made them creative. Apply curses with other skills, tones of spell trigger options, virtually any skill on a totem.

I absolutely understand the desire to move to the new combat philosophy, I wanted that too at first, but if the price for that is losing all sense of creativity, I'd rather just have poe1 with some of the improvements and convenience of Poe2.

It's not that I don't like the idea of Poe2, I just don't think it's going work. Also it's going painful to build anything half decent right now. Nerf bat will be swinging all over the place next month.

Campaign skippers and boost buyers are 1 and the same. Wrath & TBC were both trash btw. They removed focus from the world and placed in on WC3 heroes.

+1

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

1. Slow Doesn’t Mean Better

I completely agree!

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

2. Difficulty Isn’t About Tedium

Agree. The difficulty existed in PoE1, in PoE2 it's frustration, not difficulty. In PoE1 you had to consider your skills, resistances, flasks, passive points etc in order to progress. The flasks especially added a depth that made it interesting. Heck, even such thing as grabbing a cold res ring in act1 was a thing. In PoE2 it's a repetitive grind.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

3. Flasks and the “Vision”

I really don't understand why they removed the utility flasks, they added such nice depth and allowed people to customise their buiilds more. Flasks could be used to cover holes in a build, yet still require you to keep an eye on the flask charges. The current life and mana flasks are kinda pointless in PoE2 for spell casters anyway, because they're usually CI with EB and MoM, so flasks won't make any difference anyways.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

4. Crafting Is a Mess

Hilarious indeed. The depth and (optional) complexity in PoE1 is what I love about the game and in PoE2 they've just completely removed all of it and replaced it with repetitive grind. In PoE1 you could use your brain, get good and craft things. In PoE2 it's just dumb left clicks. Come on! What is this?

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

5. Drops and Vendors

Personalyl I find the loot fairly alright, maybe rares and jewelleries should be boosted in the campaign beacuse now they're really sparse.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

6. The Skill Tree Is Disappointing

This new skill tree is a joke. It's just a bunch of travel nodes and no complexity or depth at all. You're basically forced to take certain nodes or your build will be useless. The options are limited because either a node is very good or it's useless. Masteries do need to come back, they addded that "chase", you need to have some stronger nodes that can create versatility in builds.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

7. The Gem System Isn’t Fun

I absolutely hate this new gem system. It blows having to loot uncut gems, why do I need to fill my stash with uncut gems?
Why can I not level my gems past the area level? Why can I not use multiple supports of the same type? Why am I forced to grind for a jewellers in order to socket a gem only to later realise I want to change skill and have to redo this grind? Give me back sockets on equipment! Corrupted gear with 6L was a cool thing in PoE1, I loved it. Even leveling gems in simulacrum or 5-ways was a fun aspect because you could make currency in other ways than just mapping.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

8. The Campaign Is Too Long

Holy crap, yes. I made 2 characters past the campaign, I refuse to do it again. This is horrible. I don't even like the campaign, I just find it messy, unstructred and boring. The quest log don't even properly guide me on where to go, it's confusing and tedious.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

9. Ascendancies and Trials

This has to be a bug, of course we should be able to change ascendancies. I don't understand why they would remove thid. Regarding Sanctum and Ultimatum .. No idea why they did this, I can only assume it was a missclick by a dev. No sane person would force people to do sanctum or ultimatum considering they wanted to make "labs" less tedious. You don't make the ascendency less tedious by replacing it with something worse.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

I Want to Love POE2, But It’s Hard

I completely agree. The only reason I played so much PoE2 is because of my love of PoE1. Otherwise there's no way in hell I would've sticked around this long. I want to like it, but so far I can't. It has a lot of potential, but the direction is completely off.

As it is right now, I enjoy PoE1 a lot more than PoE2. There's just so much more depth in PoE1, PoE2 has no depth, the only thing PoE2 has over PoE1 is the larger player base because of the new-game-hype.

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Skiller2009#5689 wrote:

I for example love poe2 crafting.. we had in a group a super deep and successfull crafting session in the morning.. it was awesome and thanks for implementing it this way..

Tell me, what did you do?
Throw transmutation orb at the white items in your inventory and then sold it to vendor because it was trash?

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SkyPrince30#4110 wrote:

Do people read these replies? Because I hope the devs do.

I read them.

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Skiller2009#5689 wrote:

24k peak players..

Poe2 500k .. early access.. with sold key.. lol..i think you are making fun here.

You are comparing a fresh new game with very big hype to a 10 year old game.

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Skiller2009#5689 wrote:

Its better than your poe1.. recombinator.. mash two items crafting..

Recombinators were one league and are not part of the core game. Stop talking about it because it's completely irrelevant. But if you really want, then remember you actually have recombination in PoE2.

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Skiller2009#5689 wrote:

Makes sense to me.. that poe1 crafting was a progress blocker.

Crafting in PoE1 was always optional. A lot of players just bought whatever they needed. Have you even played PoE1 before?

Everything that comes from 1 to 2, for me, is a downgrade.

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YokomaruWP#1199 wrote:

Everything that comes from 1 to 2, for me, is a downgrade.

The whole game came from poe1 ....

As before in the patch notes thread I made a summary of the comments. I'll do the same here.

So these 4 images represent most of the comments in this thread. Of course, it's not 100% accurate because it don't account for the same person posting multiple times etc. It's also chatGPT compiling the information, so take it with a grain of salt. Either way it should summarise everything pretty well.

New PoE player here (coming from D4)....

The OP is spot on. That post puts into words exactly what I have been feeling, despite not having played PoE 1.

Particularly the Drops and Vendors section.

I am 55 hours in and have not even finished the 3rd Chapter for the first time (that is crazy). But, the progression and loot (especially the crafting aspect) feels very, very slow. And that is not something you want in a game like this. It is so slow, in fact, that it is making it hard (read: frustrating, not challenging) to create viable build and progress. This should not be how it is in, what I would consider to be, very early game. the first half of the campaign should be pure fun and progression, not a grind.

Here's what the OP said in that section, just as a reminder:

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5. Drops and Vendors
If you like the current loot drops, more power to you. But even if you do, they’re still poorly designed. Vendors have been given more power, but drops feel so sparse that crafting currency barely exists, especially in the early game.

Low-level progression suffers the most, with players struggling to find basic resources to make meaningful upgrades. The early game should feel rewarding and set a strong foundation, but instead, it feels barren. Later on, the problem shifts entirely, creating a different set of frustrations that make progression feel disconnected and unrewarding at all stages.

I want more ability to add rune slots and modifiers to gear and weapons.

Thanks for the post OP.

PS - I am absolutely LOVING the game though and I am very hopeful the balance the loot, progression, and build diversity and this game will be INSANE.

first of all, welcome to poe.

personally i dont like the change to gold and vendors. its a game about killing monsters and looting them to get better gear and orbs to craft better gear.
the fact that half the loot is replaced by gold and we have to check the vendors every level to get some upgrades feels wrong. i simply want to loot or craft my gear. but drops suck so i have to buy from vendors. and crafting sucks so i have to buy it from tradesite. that sucks