I'm confused as to why people enjoy the moment to moment gameplay of this game

PoE 2 is a hardcore game. Not in the sense of being "difficult" per se, but it the sense of "we're making a game where time investment is key to beating everything". It is a game, that in time, aims to be like PoE 1 in the sense of letting/wanting you to sink hundred of hours into it every league.

And while games like PoE is and will always be repetitive, they have to make that repetitiveness enjoyable in the long run. You having to sidestep and manually dodge white mobs in the endgame just won't do and players will burn themselves out. You don't want to be powerful in a "my dps number is high" kinda way. You want to be powerful in a way that translate to gameplay. A way that can be felt. A way that shows. This is where AoE, more arrows, speed, secondary affects/explosions and stuff like that comes into play. "Clearspeed" lets you feel that power. There needs to be a certain amount of "automation" when it comes to endgame gameplay.

For people that aim to play through the acts once, here and there, and treat it like Dark Souls or Elden Ring, where they don't return every 3 months to make a new character, they will probably struggle to understand this, which is OK. But PoE is and will never be that kind of game.

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AnimePillowCollector#2255 wrote:

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DingdongButtguy#6942 wrote:

arbitrary mechanics designed to create artificial difficulty

Oh dear, it looks like you've mentioned the artificial difficulty meme, even though all difficulty is artificial since it's a video game. Maybe you meant to say "Thing I don't like."

By "artificial difficulty" is usually meant by adding stupid things like timed-1-shot mechanics, exponentially stacking hp instead of bringing in interesting mechanics, adding on-death effects etc etc.

Those things don't really "challenge" you but it becomes or of a battle of attrition.

Especially leveling in the end game.

Losing 20% of your XP ON TOP of you gaining like 1% per map is legit insanity. I can still play the game just fine but that's what i'd call artificial difficulty. Nothing changed, the nobs just get pushed up.

I still enjoy the game but artificial difficulty is definitely a thing in this game. Less so than usually in ARPGs.

Also i would call "Honor" mechanic extremely artificial. It doesn't bring a layer of difficulty, just annoyance. The early trial runs suck ass and later the entire thing becomes obsolete. It's just not good.

I've seen and done all the Early Access has to offer and can say it's a solid foundation that has potential.

It's not a souls-like game, it's more of a rogue-like/arpg hybrid.

The biggest problem I see is who comes back every 3 months to replay a rogue-like game. I can't bring myself to go through the campaign again it's simply to long winded but the expectation is I come back every 3-6 months for a league and run it back? I ran through it twice (Ranger & Sorc) and it's just the worst. I don't know how 3 more long winded acts replacing cruel is going to make that feel any better but I hope they take the feedback and shrink the maps down to speed it up.

The crafting is terrible.

The Atlas I hate. I hate trying to scroll around it, repeating the same 4-5 maps, repeating the same 3 activities. There is hardly anything that happens on the Atlas that in any way matters. It's like Starfield where every planet is RNG so you never really feel like you are a part of something bigger, but just exploring randomness.

Like the entire Atlas could be a dropdown menu and it would be a better experience overall. I could go on about the citadels, the punishment for failure, etc but it all just boils down to the end game is not very well designed at a foundational level.

Finally comes the loot. There is none. If you aren't buying your gear on Trade the entire loot loop is you run maps to pick up white/blues of your basetype and currency. That's it. Outside of the odd decent Unique everything you kill just drops currency, maps and garbage. It's no longer exciting to kill a boss for just more currency. And yes this is the same from T1 maps all the way to T16 hyper juiced.

It's all just casino tokens you cash in to RNG some gear.

Judging the game as it is at release (I don't care if it's EA, it's still a paid product) I would say you absolutely would get your money's worth out of what is available right now but I honestly would recommend most players just take a year away from the game and see how things look closer to launch.

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Frankly i had a rough time the first hours like everyone else but the game is not that hard once you learned the core mechanics and understood where's the good stuff.

This is terrible game design if you want to retain new players, especially players who've never played an ARPG.