Reviews Overwhelmingly Negative

The game on Steam has dropped into the "Overwhelmingly Negative" rating.
I deeply regret and mourn with everyone who believed in these developers.
They continue to stubbornly ignore us, assuming that everyone leaving negative feedback is just a Path of Exile 1 player mocking them for no reason — and because of that, they've developed an immunity to such comments.
But I'm not one of those people. I praised this game for four months, recommended it, even bought a second copy on another account just to support the developers.

We fell in love with this game — myself included — and I played it every single day for four months. I leveled over 8 characters to level 90. I completed the full campaign more than eight times. I lived in the acts. I genuinely enjoyed starting new characters. The game was fun, addictive, engaging.

I know for a fact that testers had already complained before release that player damage was too low. The devs fixed it — and released the game. Four months later, they reverted it all.
That’s madness, multiplied by pure hatred towards their players.
I'm heartbroken that the devs treated us so unfairly.
They took away our freedom of choice and are now forcing us to play builds we don't enjoy — and on top of that, without damage. It's unbearable. There's no fun, no enjoyment. Only grief, frustration, and no sense of relaxation. Just constant stress.

Please bring back version 0.1.0 with the new content, new classes, and the new skill tree — without the downgrades, please.

And yet, it's presently the 4th most played game on Steam. Someone once said, no one hates your game more than your biggest fans.

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plz#2115 wrote:

And yet, it's presently the 4th most played game on Steam. Someone once said, no one hates your game more than your biggest fans.

— I’m not playing. I might log in out of habit, just to check if anything has changed while I was asleep, because I still believe that, like many others, I’ll see the good old POE2 we all fell in love with.

I'm here trying to reach the developers, because it's disheartening when someone's personal vision takes precedence over the interests of the players. I understand — it's their game. But I would have never bought it if the game had launched in this state. It's terrible. And I have to say, even in 0.1.0 the campaign progression was very long — but it was interesting. I wasn’t fighting white mobs for 20 minutes, I didn’t feel constant stress. I was excited and genuinely curious to move forward in the story, even as I replayed it over and over again. Now it’s so boring that I spent two full days just sitting in Act 1 — and this is coming from someone who has completed the campaign over eight times in the previous "standard league." It's just awful.

And separate praise to the forum moderators who allow messages like this and similar ones to stay up. Sometimes they even get insulted harshly, but they still let the posts stand. Freedom of speech here works better than in some countries. Thank you, forum Moderators.

Those reviews don't even really have much to do with PoE2 in all honesty. A lot of the hate is from people wanting PoE1 to get new content.

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PARK#6058 wrote:

— I’m not playing. I might log in out of habit, just to check if anything has changed while I was asleep, because I still believe that, like many others, I’ll see the good old POE2 we all fell in love with.

That's good, there's way too many people playing still whilst being miserable.

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PARK#6058 wrote:

But I would have never bought it if the game had launched in this state. It's terrible.

Not trying to minimise your misery, but the nice part about this though is that you didn't really pay for early access, you got MTX and/or coins to spend on MTX, which you can use in PoE1. Although it has been neglected at the expense of PoE2 for sure.

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PARK#6058 wrote:

And I have to say, even in 0.1.0 the campaign progression was very long — but it was interesting. I wasn’t fighting white mobs for 20 minutes, I didn’t feel constant stress. I was excited and genuinely curious to move forward in the story, even as I replayed it over and over again. Now it’s so boring that I spent two full days just sitting in Act 1 — and this is coming from someone who has completed the campaign over eight times in the previous "standard league." It's just awful.

I only did .1.0 campaign once, so I guess the novelty is still there. I'm not sure how you could previously play it through multiple times and not get bored, but you are now. They lowered the HP of mobs considerably for this patch, so your white fights should be quicker than ever, not slower. I guess you must have had a lot of twink gear for your multiple playthroughs?

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PARK#6058 wrote:

And separate praise to the forum moderators who allow messages like this and similar ones to stay up. Sometimes they even get insulted harshly, but they still let the posts stand. Freedom of speech here works better than in some countries. Thank you, forum Moderators.

I agree.

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Genobee#2803 wrote:

Those reviews don't even really have much to do with PoE2 in all honesty. A lot of the hate is from people wanting PoE1 to get new content.

It's possible the developers think the same way when reading negative reviews — that everyone complaining is just a fan of the first game. But I want to say that I actually tried the first part, played through Act 1, and quit.

I can’t play the first game after experiencing patch 0.1.0 in the second one. That was the best patch of the best game I’ve played in years. I'm not a fan of the first game — they can release a new league there in 10 years for all I care. I want to play a playable second part where I have build choices.

I don’t want to play a spear build, or a warrior, or some chaos-based maniac setup. Right now there’s no choice, no damage, no fun. The mobs are overinflated, the characters feel weak.

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PARK#6058 wrote:

It's possible the developers think the same way when reading negative reviews — that everyone complaining is just a fan of the first game.

It's a difficult conclusion to avoid when you click through the reviews and see how many of them are from people with 0.0 hours played in the last 14 days. I clicked through ~30 and feel like at least two-thirds were from people who haven't played 0.2.

The patch has issues to be sure, but too many of these reviews are clearly coming from disaffected PoE1 players or the viewers of streamers who are angry and compelling their audience to leave negative feedback.

Unfortunate part is this pointless noise is going to drown out a lot of legitimate feedback from people who are actually playing the game.

Recent reviews are last 30 days, 39% positive. Most reviews are 100+ hrs, stop coping.

Shock to the system for people realing how shit ruthless loot is on a fresh account, and msjority of playerbase redusing to ise the trade site to fix the issue.

It does get better once you have some ok gesr, but a lot of people are rurned off by trading and wont force themselves to play ruthless ssf.

Loot needs to be fixed because the current new/casual expierence is awful.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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PARK#6058 wrote:

It's possible the developers think the same way when reading negative reviews — that everyone complaining is just a fan of the first game.

It's a difficult conclusion to avoid when you click through the reviews and see how many of them are from people with 0.0 hours played in the last 14 days. I clicked through ~30 and feel like at least two-thirds were from people who haven't played 0.2.

The patch has issues to be sure, but too many of these reviews are clearly coming from disaffected PoE1 players or the viewers of streamers who are angry and compelling their audience to leave negative feedback.

Unfortunate part is this pointless noise is going to drown out a lot of legitimate feedback from people who are actually playing the game.

Is defending this game your job? I do not see a critical thread without seeing you in it.