Dawn of the Hunt - What We’re Working On

I been playing this game since 2011.

I freaking love POE, man. I'm playing it right now, and will, for a while. But it feels like the least fun it has ever felt. I really feel discouraged that the only feedback they could put forward is that they just want us to slowly wade into the nerfed "endgame" vision where they make the game less fun for because of the top 1% of the playerbase.

I'm not amazing at this game. But I think its crazy that my build in 0.10 will always be way stronger than ANYTHING I can do as the same class as 0.20.

I play minions, and lots of other builds, but just minions in poe 2. I know that's on me. I wanted specters to work. But I dunno. What's it matter. The best players who get multiple mirrors or hundreds of DIV's even, are how the entire game feels balanced around.

And MAN does it make the game feel like shit for some of us bad players.

Can you guys remove the ridiculous 15 second cooldown on Flameblast?

Nobody used the skill anyway, but it bricked my entire Infernalist build which was all about getting as much cast speed and area as possible to spam screenwide instant fire blasts.

It was super fun and not really strong enough to make it past T4 maps... yet you gutted the skill completely, making it and my entire build, useless.

Thats not a good response to the general Slog and the unrewarding feeling the game emits currently.

doing damage does not feel good, loot does not feel good, melee feels horrible, the ability for monsters to stun you has not been removed...

the Game currently feels like diablo 3 on launch once you got to act 2 on hell if that rings a bell to anyone

Ggg, please stop destroying the game play.
It is not funny anymore...
U totaly skin the game... My dps on stprmweawer lvl91 vs arount 140k and now is 11k... Plus mana drain is unplayable with archmage...
Fix this problem,

"

Many players are reporting that areas feel like they are too large. Normally when this is the case, the main reason is due to other concerns such as monster life or player damage being incorrect, or just a lack of entertaining content in the area.

No. They are just too large.

I am hoping for some help for minions, preferentially the skeleton options the playstyle feels terrible at the moment. Minions have the awful combo of being frail, weak, and having high spirit costs (especially in early game). I havent made it past normal mode but so far it has felt really bad. Another point I would like to make is that gear during normal mode is atrocious right now, I felt it necessary to interact with trade so that i could complete content.

Thank you for listening!

For minions, please give spectres some special love. Right now they are mostly on par with the skellies but generally have double the spirit cost. Please consider lowering the spirit cost and / or reducing cooldowns of their abilities.

Alright, I guess we're all giving feedback here.

Area Size
Many people in this thread are mentioning that the areas are indeed too large. I believe that there's a missing quantitative measure here, where I feel like spending 15+ minutes in a single zone is too much. For me, it is about the ability to chunk my experience in sizes between five and ten minutes. If some goal (i.e. progessing through a zone to the next waypoint) takes me more than ten minutes, it feels way more draining because I know that I will lose significant time if I have to step away (or if I die). The zones are beautiful, majestic, expansive... but they take too long because 15-20 minutes is a huge commitment (whether that be because of mob tankiness/density, combo complexity/time, or sheer walking distance).

Combat
I feel that much of my issue with combat in POE 2 stems from the idea that a random white monster is powerful. If I am doing content that is rewarding for my power level (i.e. progressing campaign or maps), it feels best to perform a stable combat loop to mow through or around white monsters, and only slowing to engage in responsive combat with rares ~30-60% of the time. The overall speed of that loop and those pauses should accelerate as I get strong relative to the games growth rate (i.e. endgame), but this is my goal when designing my builds.

However, there are extremely few abilities that even come close to meeting this goal in 0.2. This leaves little variety in terms of builds, and makes most things feel unsatisfying.

For me, a major contributor to random white monster feeling powerful is usually their alpha strike. Most monsters have a very fast, very accurate initial gap close and strike. This will regularly light stun, or push (VERY DISRUPTIVE) most builds. This alpha strike is just enough to interrupt my combat flow and require constant vigilance and reaction to these threats. Big offenders are like antlion chargers. I get it, it's in the name, but it's exhausting.

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That's my feedback, good luck with your changes, GGG.

"

ldierk#2564 wrote:

"

Many players are reporting that areas feel like they are too large. Normally when this is the case, the main reason is due to other concerns such as monster life or player damage being incorrect, or just a lack of entertaining content in the area.

No. They are just too large.

Learn the layouts, they will feel trivial.

Look... I don't care if you want the combat to feel more meaningful and take longer, that's fine. You want all of my damage to be gated behind a 6 skill combo? That's fine. But make sure the monsters know about it because while I'm over here charging up 3 whirling Slash, a frostbolt, a barrage and a twister, they're still coming at me like team ramrod and what happens when you leave the area of your whirling Slash? You start the combo over. Only now, the monsters are already on top of you and GG, you're cooked.

White mobs feel like actual raid bosses. Whirling Slash blowing up instead of following you around until you fire a projectile through it is stupid. I'll explain the gameplay for you:

Whirling Slash 3x > Frostbolt

Now you're charged. You can continue to hop (use Whirling Slash as a movement skill) until you come into some baddies > Barrage > Twister

It's pretty bad. Remove the Whirling Slash explosion and just have it follow the player by default since that's how we're using it anyway. Nobody is playing Whirling Slash for the explosion. Not a single build using Whirling Slash is stacking melee damage.

On top of that, there's another bug with it. Sometimes while using Whirling Slash to hop around the map, you will stop casting it and take a step or two which moves you outside the area of it and now you need to recharge it with 3x Whirling Slash and a frostbolt.

When this is the best possible player experience, there's a serious issue with the game.