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

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

1. Slow Doesn’t Mean Better

2. Difficulty Isn’t About Tedium
3. Flasks and the “Vision”
4. Crafting Is a Mess
5. Drops and Vendors
6. The Skill Tree Is Disappointing
8. The Campaign Is Too Long

9. Ascendancies and Trials

I disagree with 3, flasks only really resulted in piano game and in using automated at endgame. If they modified charms so that they could roll mods that would do similar things to the old flasks (like onslaught/movespeed) then there would be little issue. I mostly just think that the flask limit should be determined by the belt BASE(as in belts should have advanced and expert) and not by some vary rare affix.

I agree with 1, I can refer you to Holocure, in that it is VERY fast paced, but relies on a LOT of dodgeing. You can have a fast game with a lot of enemy attacks and also have said attacks be reliably dodgeable.

I agree with 2, most of the difficulty in this game is from players being undergeared for their current boss, not from the boss itself being hard. It seems balanced around the top 10% of builds when said builds get LUCKY on their loot.

I agree with 4, mostly because the crafting currencies like essence are WAY too rare, we are talking about the atlas passives only giving you a CHANCE of them instead of guaranteeing at least one per map. We should have a massive excess of Transmutes, augs, Regals and Alcs - because we are going to repeatedly slam them on bases until we get something worthwhile.

I especially think 5 is bad, not only are loot and currency drops way too low, they are also affected by "rarity" in a way that does not make sense - "rarity" is actually item quantity from PoE1 but way more overpowered.

I agree with 6, some things are completely missing, like non-ailment DoT. Too many of the nodes are generic, nothing referencing slams or combos or ammunition etc.

I disagree with 7, mostly because I like not needing sockets on my items anymore, supports are extremely common and we can get the skills we like easily. Uncut gems spawn like candy so you are unlikely to ever not have them. The grind only exists when trying for very high level gems.

In responce to 8:The length of the campaign is mostly due to zone size being about the same as PoE1 zones when the player has around a tenth of the movespeed. They just have to lower zone sizes.

I agree with 9

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_ZLoBny_#7128 wrote:

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MEITTI#3999 wrote:

Its not a fallacy. It happened in Blizzard games. It happened in WoW and it happened in Diablo 4. Now both of those games are ruined. Because Blizzard listened to players like you who simultaneously want a rollercoaster ride but then want to actually skip the ride. Campaign is an integral part for the game.

That's BS. Having the option to skip campaign on second/third/hundredth character did not ruin the games. WoW also lets you pick whichever campaign you like more (so you can level 1-60 in Northrend if you liked WotLK more than other expansions for example) or you can ignore questing altogether and just spam dungeons from 10 to max level.
WoW is still the most successful MMO in the market. And I don't see it changing any time soon.
D4 is one of the biggest ARPGs ever (you can call it a failure as much as you want but they still sold more than 10x amount of copies than poe 2 EA, and companies care about making money more than making universally-loved games, that's simple reality of business). Yes, the game has its own problems but none of them are related to campaign being skippable on alts.

I bet that if PoE2 had an option of leveling through tier0 waystones which would scale with player's level 1-60, a lot of players would use that option.

Here's the issue.

Wanting to skip to end-game is just showing you that the rest of the game needs work.

The solution isn't to put a 'skip feature' in, like WoW has with buying a high level character. The solution is to go and make that leveling experience more enjoyable.

People need to stop asking for the easy solutions. Ask for the game to be better, not to skip half of it.

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Nilaos#3809 wrote:

I think there are plenty of people who got interested in PoE2 precisely because the gameplay model diverged from the typical ARPG style, where you just run around the map clearing everything with one click. I'm one of those people, and if the final version of the game ends up being just a reskin of PoE1, it will mean the end of my journey with this title. In my opinion, the best option would be to give us a mode where the gameplay is significantly slowed down—not turned into a "Souls-like," since it's still an ARPG, but adjusted in such a way that it brings out the best of both genres. The question is, how feasible is this?

Otherwise, I can't help but wonder about the point of making PoE2 into a copy of PoE1, especially when PoE1 not only will continue to be supported but already offers more than PoE2.

You haven't hit maps yet, have you. They are the same game in the end. Except POE2 wastes your time more. Rolling does not make a souls-like.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

Here's the issue.

Wanting to skip to end-game is just showing you that the rest of the game needs work.

The solution isn't to put a 'skip feature' in, like WoW has with buying a high level character. The solution is to go and make that leveling experience more enjoyable.

People need to stop asking for the easy solutions. Ask for the game to be better, not to skip half of it.

Character boosts are stupid in my opinion (I have like 5 boosts laying around unused that were included from buying expansions and I don't plan to use them ever) but I wasn't talking about them anyway. I was talking about having a choice whether you want to level through BC, Pandaria, Legion or Shadowlands (I know there are people who liked that expansion). Or ignoring quests and spamming dungeons. Or doing pet battles. Or PVPing. These are all valid options to level in WoW, some are faster, some are slower. And not everyone wants to do the endgame grind (M+/Raids/Rated PVP), some people enjoy leveling characters over and over. I have a person in my guild who has over 30 alts and he just enjoys playing the leveling game.
Same with ARPGs. Alternative ways to get to the endgame are good. Idk why people argue about having options. You can still do campaign if you like but let others do whatever they want to do if it's more fun for them. Games are supposed to be fun and not endless chore, repetition and punishment.

+1

+1

+1000000

Listen to people like the OP, otherwise the game will not surpass Poe-1 and will remain far inferior. We want more and better, not more tedious and worse.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

6. The Skill Tree Is Disappointing
The new skill tree looks like POE1’s tree but feels hollow in comparison. The nodes are uninspired, and the restrictive layout makes it harder to create unique or unconventional builds. The inability to travel across the tree freely stifles creativity. And the absence of masteries? It’s a huge loss. Masteries gave builds flexibility and depth, allowing players to specialize and fine-tune their characters. Without them, the tree feels rigid and unexciting. Even basics like Life nodes, which helped define different defensive strategies, are missing, limiting creativity in ways that hurt the game.

This 100x

- Attribute requirements are way too high
- We get too little stats per passive point allocated
- Too many travel nodes

So... either play exactly what your class is "designed for" or give up

Played a lot of sequels, all of them take the core principles of the predecessor and expand upon them.
PoE2 seems to have been developed by a group of people who had played other dungeon crawlers (arpg my butt) and seen PoE but didn’t understand it.
PR and promotion before indicated a PoE but better game, what we have is a PoE with most of the game gutted out (no crafting to mention, weak passive tree, atlas tree that’s newer to PoE but has also been stripped down…all of these are core features of the GGG dungeon crawler).
The loot is weak, the atlas is a mess (seen guild members with 5 citadels and others with none in sight, both types with similar maps ran), server lag isn’t gone but it’s in the best state I’ve ever seen in the history of GGG yet one shots and random mechanics kill players from afar without the mob being even visible.
The argument for 1 or 6 portals, the xp penalty or not, the ruthless loot or a softcore mode rages on in forums like a pair of 10 yr old siblings squabbling.
The arguement for how much holidays a company is entitled to continues with bigoted comments like only US has national holidays off ( utterly untrue I can name uk,France and Germany by personal experience also follow that pattern but individuals can and often do use personal holiday entitlements to pad out the break).

TLDR the game lacks direction, the users are divided and the forums are bordering on toxic… and yet silence (whether a fully staffed or skeleton crew) from its makers. Anyone want to tell me that with forums like they are that JW hasn’t had a zoom call or 2 with people?

+1