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

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justhackitup#0426 wrote:

I paid $30 for an unfinished product to provide feedback. My feedback is the game is slow and boring with artificial slowdowns and a lack of skills or items for the first 30 hours.

1. Support gems locked to 1 skill - why?
2. Skill UI is a big ass mess. I have no solution today but its ugly.
3. Do Normal bosses really need 4 phases at Level 2? No. Instead of being boring why not add the phases into the later difficulties so it's actually different? Who in gods name wants a 10 minute fight at lvl 3 for a potion? Just silly.
4. OPTIMIZATION - runs like sh*t for the graphics it puts out. I'm sorry you spent 2 weeks designing the sleeve of an armor but the entire screen is flashing and smokey with ground AoE. Can't see it.
5. RUNS IN CIRCLES BACKWARDS RUNS IN CIRCLES BACKWARDS RUNS IN CIRCLES BACKWARDS

I'm not going to grind for 5 days waiting for a game to "get fun". I'll check back in a few days but I uninstalled after V0.2

Been playing PoE on and off since 2011. This is not PoE. This is a cheap mobile game.

I like that you defined it as artificial slowdowns, because thats how it feels.

Look up waypoint placement in Ziggurat Encampment, out of place and articially stealing players time moving from stash to its location. Waypoint should be placed above Well, its like natural spot which comes to mind when you walking in that city and i catch myself automatically moving towards Well and after that realising waypoint is placed out of touch on some shite debris outside of town in pointless location.

/rant xD

From another Vet player well put.

Devs you are out of sync with the type of players who stuck with poe 1 through thick and thin.
The new generation of players will not support you the way you think they will.
You need your playerbase to be entertained not tested and frustrated at failing.

Totally agree.

I like soulslike games. These games are carefully handcrafted and very predictables. You know exactly what the map layout here, what types of ennemies you will encounter and where they are placed.
Soulslike design just doesn't work that well in an environment that is procedurally generated, where you are swarmed by dozens of monsters at a time, and with the amount of RNG that we have here. It works for bosses, but not that much for mapping.

Some will say "PoE 2 is more played than PoE 1 was". Sure and what are people actually playing ? The rare classes that actually have good clear speed and feel powerful. Half the meta is Amazon LS right now. It was Archmage/Gemling in 0.1
If the vision is to have everything at the power level of Sorceress this patch, I doubt many will remain.

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Raedhys#5612 wrote:

Totally agree.

I like soulslike games. These games are carefully handcrafted and very predictables. You know exactly what the map layout here, what types of ennemies you will encounter and where they are placed.
Soulslike design just doesn't work that well in an environment that is procedurally generated, where you are swarmed by dozens of monsters at a time, and with the amount of RNG that we have here. It works for bosses, but not that much for mapping.

Some will say "PoE 2 is more played than PoE 1 was". Sure and what are people actually playing ? The rare classes that actually have good clear speed and feel powerful. Half the meta is Amazon LS right now. It was Archmage/Gemling in 0.1
If the vision is to have everything at the power level of Sorceress this patch, I doubt many will remain.

"but we got Dark Souls at home!" ;)

The Vision is still going strong it seems. We'll see if that lasts until full 1.0 release.

As someone that never touched PoE1 but is a veteran ARPG player since D2 launch, I always regretted not picking up PoE1 when it released and later it felt like I missed my timing and didnt wanna start when PoE2 was already under development. Played Lost Ark meantime, then some PoD (every couple years). Decided to wait for PoE2 release and immediately give it a go.

As soon as I booted up during 0.1, the game absolutely sucked me in. The story was interesting, the graphics look good, the skills feel good. The game not only looked but it also FELT D2-ish which is basically gods gift to humanity for ARPG veterans.

It is EA alright, which means there is certainly room for improvement but it was amazing to see how much 0.1 already offered, including endgame and pinnacle bosses. Before I knew it, it was end of March and I had 200h+ as a fully working adult put into the game which hasnt happened since I believe D3 season 1? And D3 was kinda bad compared to D2 already. That means in short: You did an amazing job with 0.1 already and laid a solid foundation for the future. I was convinced that this game could become the new titan of ARPGs given all the promising aspects already in the game. The only remaining issues were artificial slowdowns, lack of speed for certain classes unless they got Temporalis, armor not working, crafting being a lazy RNG fiesta and mapping even at T16-T18 not feeling like they drop enough loot considering even creating a single T16 map costs around 30 exalts, 10 regals and 10 vaals on average which means they need to drop at least that much loot to even break even.

But ok I thought these issues will surely be addressed, pinnacles will be buffed and some super OP builds nerfed to not be able to one shot T4 pinnacles which is completely fine. Also we still have 3 more acts and tons of classes to come so I was super hyped....

And then 0.2 launched. And it made my worst fears come true: The artificial and absolutely needless slowdowns in the game are there intentionally. They were not "slip ups", they are there because you WANT the player to be slow. You describe this as "meaningful" but thats not what it feels like to most players. Fast can also be meaningful. The argument that movement speed makes combat optional is invalid already when looking at ALL the endgame activities: They involve combat in some shape or form, so you have to fight something and some point. But what movement speed does is give you a flexibility of when to fight and when to back off. It is only good for the players and sure you have to make sure its not OP. But thats part of your job sry. D2 accomplished it 25 years ago, so can you. Artificial slowdowns, having enemies be 3x as fast as you and work in souls mechanics like parry which were designed for combat against single or a small number of enemies directly contradicts the classic D2 ARPG formula of dispatching of several hundred mobs quickly and looting a lot. You can still make that difficult mind you. But remember one thing: DIFFICULT DOES NOT EQUAL SLOW.

The anti-synergy between souls mechanics, artificial slowdowns and clunkyness with the D2 formula of clearing areas of hundreds of mobs quickly when farming and only having a slow down when fighting a boss (this change of pace makes bosses feel really meaningful!) is the death of an ARPG for me. It simply doesnt work together. Please listen to the community and make the game more fluid and optimize map layouts, character movement speed, enemy movement speed and endgame farming content in a way that it is still hard, but doesnt force us to stop, wait and waste our time for no reason.

Bumpity Bump, spot on

Great post! Btw, how did you see your steam library displayed like that? I can only see mine in one vertical column list.

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Here’s my Steam profile, just to put things in perspective:

Also, does anyone know how you properly quote someone in a long thread like this? When I first click on the "Q" button, it doesn't put their post in my draft; it's functionally the same as clicking "post reply". Then, I only have the last page of posts that I can quote (at this stage the Q button at least works). Thanks in advance!

It's like the original poster predicted everything about 0.2.0 and he did it back in December last year.

The games a hot mess at the moment. Even with all the 'fixes'.

(And this is only the steam versions)

Just to chime in here. Anyone trying to say that Path of Exile 2 is more Souls-like. It's not. If it were, it would be a better game because it would have better design. I'm not saying that Path of Exile 2 should be actually Souls-like, but it absolutely isn't, and based on 0.2 if they are trying to make it like that, they are failing miserably.