Be more bold with balance.

This is just my personal opinion, however i feel like it's a mistake to be hesitant and reluctant to balance things in early access.

I get the notion of respecting the time people invest into characters, but they all signed up to the same early access. If they cannot understand that things can and will change either for the better or worse then i don't know what to tell them.

Many people including myself have just stopped playing the EA (which is fine, you don't have to be permanently playing the same game) because nothing is changing. Please don't treat early access as if it was a full release game and only make changes when doing new leagues. That would beat the point of an early access where you have the one opportunity to actually be hands on with balance because people aren't expecting builds to stay the same and want to try many different builds.

Again, just opinion. But if we have to wait multiple months for balance changes i feel like you're wasting an opportunity.

And even if you DON'T want to nerf outliers, there are always underperformers or design flaws you can adjust. Stuff like gem level mana cost scaling, underperforming abilities. Skills on weapons only going up to level 19 so they can never get a 6l, lack of uniques above level 30 just to name a few. So many things that do not need a new league and would get people inspired to try more builds.

I agree. Treating this early access like a normal league where you don't touch anything feels like a bad plan. I liked the suggestion that you make it public that every week, on the same day, there is a scheduled balance pass. Doesn't need to always be major, but it would make it clear that the power levels aren't stable.

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Paimon001#6701 wrote:

Treating this early access like a normal league where you don't touch anything feels like a bad plan.

EA or Live Launch doesn't matter. Ignoring blatant balance issues is never a good idea. Letting bad design stay implemented is lazy.

Well they did nerf supercharged slam...

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

Well they did nerf supercharged slam...

That was both hilarious and sad. I'm pretty sure they only hardcapped the AoE per aftershock ramping on it due to a repeated aftershock bug that they didn't actually fix too. They nerfed melee instead of fully fixing a bug, all the while leaving the super broken stuff in place.

GGG's approach, or lack there of, towards actively balancing is deranged. It's like staring into eldritch truths and falsehoods trying to understand their approach.

With every early access you can get a good idea regarding the future of the game. In the case of POE2, the design decisions have been so bad that I don't see how anyone can have any faith that they will "fix" it.

It's not that this needs balanced or this needs changed...its that GGG has no idea what is fun and what is hated. That is not something that can be fixed.

i m all up for NERFS.

poe1's end game is the result of POE refusing to nerf and only buffing. the ceiling becomes higher and higher and players are forced to play hyper optimized builds to clear em.

as for GGG not nerfing enough, i think its fine too. i believe GGG doesnt want to make players feel punished for finding an overperforming build, nor do they want to make players feel punished for spending divines on something just to have it nerfed to the ground.

tho they did mention they plan to make changes during the next economic reset.

such words make me believe that ggg has a temp league planned for POE2.

lets wait and see.

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Rafkin4#7914 wrote:

It's not that this needs balanced or this needs changed...its that GGG has no idea what is fun and what is hated. That is not something that can be fixed.

a youtuber actually pointed something out

which is along the lines of what you said but in a slightly different way.

its actually "PLAYERS" who dont know what they want. because we are a collective.

some of us like zoom some of us hate zoom. the game devs definitely do not know what GAMERS want as a whole.

devs have to make the hard decision of just doing what THEY want and we should follow. if we dont like the direction then we just quit the game.

Fully agree. I suggested they remove a lot of the penalties while we are testing a buggy mess full of balance issues. We are supposed to be testing builds, finding exploits and balance issues and instead we have people quitting within a month of EA because its such a mess in end game mixed with over zealous punishments. The punishments only make sense when the game is balanced and functional. They are treating it as a live league when we are beta testing. Its not just weird but seems defeating. They have a year to focus on EA going by their own plans and at this rate, nobody will make it there or care to stick around to play test. Way too many facets from PoE1 have been carried over that were never good in the first place. People were used to them but the PoE1 player base was a niche of trade warriors. That is not the people playing and checking out already. They were expecting slower, more mechanical and skill based combat. It doesnt help that people keep mocking them or calling them ssf badge of honors. The trade hub types are the actual minority but they are loud as heck about keeping things how PoE1 used to be. No point in making PoE2 if its just PoE1 reskinned

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exsea#1724 wrote:

i m all up for NERFS.

poe1's end game is the result of POE refusing to nerf and only buffing. the ceiling becomes higher and higher and players are forced to play hyper optimized builds to clear em.

as for GGG not nerfing enough, i think its fine too. i believe GGG doesnt want to make players feel punished for finding an overperforming build, nor do they want to make players feel punished for spending divines on something just to have it nerfed to the ground.

tho they did mention they plan to make changes during the next economic reset.

such words make me believe that ggg has a temp league planned for POE2.

lets wait and see.

Not punishing for finding an overperforming build is fine, but when a good 80% of characters in the top 100 run grim feast, herald of ice, and maybe temporalis, there MUST be balance changes mid-league. Because at this point it's not about finding synergies and optimizing your tree, it's about some mechanics being ten times better than others and you're just shooting yourself in the foot by not utilizing them, and about a lot of skills being useless for clear without polcirkeln/three dragons since those enable HoI.