Paradox of Exile 2

Path 2 is difficult. but i find the game highly rewarding despite essentially being "ruthless". despite melee being in a very rough state i fucking love Path2.

i really cant go back to poe1 anymore.

but that said here lies the paradox of path2.

the beauty of path2's meaningful game play is the journey. the difficulty in obtaining your loot. your progression.

i overleveled to 70+ and ran all my low leveled trials to get a decent relic setup. then painstakingly ran the trial to get my 3rd ascendency. fucking hated it, but it was a fuck yeah moment when i passed it. fucking fuck yeah.

so much pride and accomplishment. so was farming up my gear which is mostly ssf.

so wheres the paradox? path2 suffers from its own success (djkhaleedmeme.jpg).

as mentioned. its beauty is in its difficulty and scarcity. but that is a double edged sword.

i DO NOT WANT to reroll. i DO NOT WANT to go through all that all over again. NO I DO NOT. i want to enjoy being strong and growing stronger.

to which it brings me to the main point. how can path2 successfully entice players onto temp leagues?

i have ZERO interest in temp leagues now. i dont want to go through all that all over again. this is an interesting revelation. also a reminder of how things used to be. a lot of standard deniers kept mentioning how poe1 was always designed to be temp league focused from the start. but theres a reason why standard exists. path2 is a solid reminder of why standard exists. there are players like myself that just want to continue progress rather than reroll.

the difficulty in path2 is similar to d2. people can play for LITERAL YEARS and not get a tyreals might.

if GGG made the game easier, made drops more lenient, made the trials more accessible. maybe that would entice people to play in temp leagues. but is that really enough? and if they did all that wouldnt that strip away path2 of its beauty? after all it's ruthless nature defines the game.

so there lies the paradox.

as is (still needs more polishing/balancing), path 2 is in a good place. but as is, players could feel discouraged from playing temp leagues.

if the game was changed in a way that let players progress faster and with less friction to entice them to play, the game loses its identity.

Edit: i would also add

i love how in path2 players seem to be able to have more freedom building their own builds.

if temp leagues came to path2, a long term timer is set. players have a limited amount of time to enjoy the league content.

coming from poe1, i m pretty sure this would inevitably lead to players being forced into efficient builds. starter builds will come back to path2. meta builds etc.

i m not a fan of this mindset but if i feel forced to go into a temp league now, that would seem the best option.

I'm not even inclined to start a new character how how dull their campaign is. The bosses clearly took the lions share of dev time and even they are just mediocre roll spams.

The boss fights of PoE1 were the most unfun part of it, but it seems that GGG wants to be Isometric Elden Ring rather than an ARPG.

The answer is (if they are smart) they won't design temp leagues in such a way that you get burned out on them. People are just thinking about transplanting exactly poe1 leagues into poe2. But you just end up with poe1 problems. There are many ways to do things.

Problem: No one wants to doe the poe1 campaign because there is no value in doing it for the 50th time and it's seen as a speedbump to the "real game."

Possible ways to start thinking of a solution:
- Think of ways to give the campaign more value to play.
- Think of other ways to do leagues than just dumping everything at the end of the atlas as a super elder uber pinnacle boss or whatever.

I'm not someone who supports campaign skips, but I fully expect the campaign to get slightly shorter and easier if they add a lot of end game stuff. It also happened in poe1. They removed several sewer zones, floors of lunaris temple, beaches, etc. Basically, just have some faith that they're smart and going to design the game well and make the right decisions.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

i love how in path2 players seem to be able to have more freedom building their own builds.

By what means compared to PoE 1?

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bachgaman#6713 wrote:

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exsea#1724 wrote:

i love how in path2 players seem to be able to have more freedom building their own builds.

By what means compared to PoE 1?

ok let me explain.

ever want to be a witch who goes melee?

in poe1 its very implausible. for the fact that you dont have access to dex or str. AND for the fact that travelling costs too many points which can feel like a waste.

in poe2 you get to choose exactly what attribute that you need. in fact you will be forced to travel regardless.

next we can talk about how path 2 is balanced.

theres 2 main issues that poe1 enjoyers hate in path2 which is namely lack of MS/movement abilities and lack of defenses.

this is actually brilliant if you think about it.

when all players have similar movespeed and have similar ability to travel around the map, and when all players have similar amount of hp. the devs get the luxury of creating content that is more balanced for ALL players.

why does shaper slam have such a huge aoe? coz you're expected to dash away.

if you couldnt dash, ggg can make shaper slam smaller so you could simply walk/roll away.

why does the eradicator lightning strikes track the player so harshly? because players with high ms exist.

it doesnt need to be that high if the max ms is much lower.

why does damage spikes exist? 1hkos/bullshit deaths exist in poe1? average players could strive to get 5k-6k hp. but there are players that have 10-15k hp and many layers of damage reduction. GGG is forced to make the damage high because these players exist.

with all these limitations that ggg has set on us players, ggg can design content that is more balanced. the gap between a meta build and a player doing their own thing is much smaller in comparison.

a very easy comparison is in poe1 a new player could be doing 50k-100k dps, but if you know what you're doing and be hyper efficient with your build you could do millions to billions of dps.

in an essence creativity is stifled in poe1 because of all the harder content. you cant fuck around and do silly ass build in poe1 or else you simply arent able to do the tougher content.

this is the opposite in path2 where the difficulty is more linear compared to poe1's sharp difficulty curve.

you can be weaker in path2 and still go somewhere. i m level 80 now and i m using a pathfinder that bonks enemies with a huge ass 2 handed hammer.

that is "more possible" in path2 due to all the flexibility we have on the tree.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

"

bachgaman#6713 wrote:

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

i love how in path2 players seem to be able to have more freedom building their own builds.

By what means compared to PoE 1?

ok let me explain.

ever want to be a witch who goes melee?

in poe1 its very implausible. for the fact that you dont have access to dex or str. AND for the fact that travelling costs too many points which can feel like a waste.

in poe2 you get to choose exactly what attribute that you need. in fact you will be forced to travel regardless.

next we can talk about how path 2 is balanced.

theres 2 main issues that poe1 enjoyers hate in path2 which is namely lack of MS/movement abilities and lack of defenses.

this is actually brilliant if you think about it.

when all players have similar movespeed and have similar ability to travel around the map, and when all players have similar amount of hp. the devs get the luxury of creating content that is more balanced for ALL players.

why does shaper slam have such a huge aoe? coz you're expected to dash away.

if you couldnt dash, ggg can make shaper slam smaller so you could simply walk/roll away.

why does the eradicator lightning strikes track the player so harshly? because players with high ms exist.

it doesnt need to be that high if the max ms is much lower.

why does damage spikes exist? 1hkos/bullshit deaths exist in poe1? average players could strive to get 5k-6k hp. but there are players that have 10-15k hp and many layers of damage reduction. GGG is forced to make the damage high because these players exist.

with all these limitations that ggg has set on us players, ggg can design content that is more balanced. the gap between a meta build and a player doing their own thing is much smaller in comparison.

a very easy comparison is in poe1 a new player could be doing 50k-100k dps, but if you know what you're doing and be hyper efficient with your build you could do millions to billions of dps.

in an essence creativity is stifled in poe1 because of all the harder content. you cant fuck around and do silly ass build in poe1 or else you simply arent able to do the tougher content.

this is the opposite in path2 where the difficulty is more linear compared to poe1's sharp difficulty curve.

you can be weaker in path2 and still go somewhere. i m level 80 now and i m using a pathfinder that bonks enemies with a huge ass 2 handed hammer.

that is "more possible" in path2 due to all the flexibility we have on the tree.

My friend, what are you talking about??? POE 2 is made to please Strumers, at this moment Empyrian and his minions are causing trillions of damage killing perma stun bosses in seconds
with builds of 20k ES or more that literally ignore the entire game while 1k+ MF makes HH rain down dozens on their heads.

For YEARS, GGG has only harmed builds that are simple and direct, builds that NORMAL players use. Ultrabuilds are still going strong, POE2 will be a festival of loadout sales. I bet every boss will be a paid service, and now even the ascension will be like that.

EVERY inventive, innovative and casual BUILD will be destroyed (we've already seen this with 3 days of play) while the strumers continue to use builds that border on exploitation.

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fredjesus1#3795 wrote:

My friend, what are you talking about??? POE 2 is made to please Strumers, at this moment Empyrian and his minions are causing trillions of damage killing perma stun bosses in seconds
with builds of 20k ES or more that literally ignore the entire game while 1k+ MF makes HH rain down dozens on their heads.

For YEARS, GGG has only harmed builds that are simple and direct, builds that NORMAL players use. Ultrabuilds are still going strong, POE2 will be a festival of loadout sales. I bet every boss will be a paid service, and now even the ascension will be like that.

EVERY inventive, innovative and casual BUILD will be destroyed (we've already seen this with 3 days of play) while the strumers continue to use builds that border on exploitation.

you know, youre right on this and that is a big fucking shame on GGG's part for not addressing it.

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

i love how in path2 players seem to be able to have more freedom building their own builds.

if temp leagues came to path2, a long term timer is set. players have a limited amount of time to enjoy the league content.

coming from poe1, i m pretty sure this would inevitably lead to players being forced into efficient builds. starter builds will come back to path2. meta builds etc.

i m not a fan of this mindset but if i feel forced to go into a temp league now, that would seem the best option.

I don't think *most* people will have any harder of a time accepting re-doing the campaign for leagues than they would have in PoE1. That being said, I do agree this last part is... not a concern per se, but something I haven't heard anyone else talking about. Viewing league starter builds as *necessary* is a symptom of the FOMO generated by the time limit.

I believe that was the only reason I never got much into build creation in PoE1, because I simply didn't have time to mess around if I wanted to get as many of the challenges done as a I could or experience the league content thoroughly before it changes/gets dropped for Standard. There are plenty of reasons for how they do it, though, so I'm not sure what the solution is.

Meta builds will exist no matter what, as will "starter" builds, as in builds good for your first time playing a certain playstyle. Plenty of games have build guides like that. But what you're talking about, guides for getting from League launch to endgame or 40/40 as quickly as possible, that comes from people wanting help so they don't feel like they're going to "fail" otherwise. Definitely a good thing to keep an eye on and try to avoid.

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UnashmdCreatvty#5633 wrote:

I don't think *most* people will have any harder of a time accepting re-doing the campaign for leagues than they would have in PoE1. That being said, I do agree this last part is... not a concern per se, but something I haven't heard anyone else talking about. Viewing league starter builds as *necessary* is a symptom of the FOMO generated by the time limit.

I believe that was the only reason I never got much into build creation in PoE1, because I simply didn't have time to mess around if I wanted to get as many of the challenges done as a I could or experience the league content thoroughly before it changes/gets dropped for Standard. There are plenty of reasons for how they do it, though, so I'm not sure what the solution is.

Meta builds will exist no matter what, as will "starter" builds, as in builds good for your first time playing a certain playstyle. Plenty of games have build guides like that. But what you're talking about, guides for getting from League launch to endgame or 40/40 as quickly as possible, that comes from people wanting help so they don't feel like they're going to "fail" otherwise. Definitely a good thing to keep an eye on and try to avoid.

seeing how ggg is improving the game, if the transition from campaign to mapping is smooth enough, more people MIGHT play temp leagues. as what ANIMEPILLOWCOLLECTOR mentioned.

an issue is some players might be "addicted" to the hard earned power that they managed to get on "standard" that they could feel awfully weak in a temp league. we no longer have proper deterministic crafting so it really can make people more attached to their old gear.

as for meta, yeah they will exist and already start to exist. its up to GGG to hammer them down if any overperform. i actually dont mind "strong" builds as long as the gap between strong and decent isnt too big. poe1's gap is too huge.

currently i've been made aware of a few outlying overperformers which are honestly disgusting. dont get me wrong. i dont mind players having fun, but in a trade league, people who overperform tend to get a huge economical advantage.

i also do know that some players make it a point to just go in, get 40/40 and quit as soon as possible. its reasonable to believe theyre using a meta build rather than just enjoy the game for what it is.

The game is not even out of the oven yet, they'll keep cooking. As for all the crafting we have in poe1 - keep in mind that it was nowhere near at beta/launch compared to where it is today. Give this game like 5-6 years' worth of accumulated content (who knows, maybe even less).

It's ill advised to play this game with a poe1 mindset. That's not gonna work.