Making Combat "Meaningful" in POE2, a 10y POE1 Vet View

I see lots of posts about making combat meaningful and I see Jonathan talking about it for the last year. Unfortunately they can never define what is meaningful. But let's try to define this and see if we can get it.

To make combat meaningful means that every fight should matter. Every fight should have some challenge, mechanics that have to be dodged, patterns that have to be learned, enemy types that have to be understood. You should have to know that sand worms are vulnerable to fire and polar bears are vulnerable to bottle coca-cola. In addition, you should need to combo your skills to empower them so that they actually do full damage in order to make the game mechanically interesting.

Do I have that right? If not, stop here and you define it.

Still here?

OK so how to we make combat meaningful like this in POE2? Its actually quite simple. Step 1: Delete the codebase. Step 2: Make a game in another genre like souls.

"Meaningful Combat" is the antithesis of an ARPG outside of boss fights. Boss fights should require that kind of skill and in POE1 of course they do. Go try to face tank Innocence in ACT 5 and tell me you don't need skill to survive that encounter (well skill or WAY over-leveled with Twink gear but I will presuppose you are not trying to solve that one.) Record it on OBS studio. Upload to the streaming platform of your choice. No? OK then you concede the point. I have to confess amusement at people on the forum that claim POE1 is too complex and hard and too easy at the same time. Play SSF, Play HC. Come back and lets talk.

Beating Dominus, Innocence, Brine King, Kitava (both times) require considerable skill and if you don't think so, play in SSF hardcore where your death matters.

The rest of an ARPG needs to focus on the A. Its OK If I have to know sand worms are vulnerable to cold but I shouldn't have to dodge a one shot from a white river hag with a ball of ice. She should die fast. This isn't "Witcher 3" or "Sekiro". I love those two titles but they don't send 300 enemies at you at once and if you wanted that mode in it, then you made the wrong game.

So what does "Meaningful Combat" do to an ARPG. It means that the ONLY skills that are viable are skills that clear screens. Of course since you want meaningful combat those skills that clear screens have to go. So they get nerfed. Then you are left with a game with formulaic builds dictated by the devs, with no flexibility because you need to rigidly control the builds in order to make combat meaningful. If a warrior can run contagion and perfect strike he might be able to clear a screen in a single hit. Can't have that right? So the game must be RIGIDLY controlled.

As a POE1 vet and a long time ARPG player POE2 isn't even an ARPG. Its what happens when From Software said, what if Malenia has 50 bodyguards? Its insane.

What do I want out of an ARPG? One button kill all? Well maybe ... if I have put 700 divines into a build I should be entitled to one button kill a god. Its a game after all, not a Masters Degree in IT. I am allowed to have some god complex. Short of that kind of investment and with the AVERAGE player experience I expect to slaughter white enemies like cannon fodder, I expect the blues make me go "woah "... back up and take another swipe and dead. I expect the yellows to make me go ... "WOOOT Yellow!!!", because I know this will be a harder mob (like a WHITE river hag, not a blue one, lets not get nuts) and I know that when I drop the enemy they will drop something juicy I can use, deconstruct or sell to another player.

I expect to be able to craft +5 skill and +200% damage on a scepter if I have busted my buns for the currency and I expect that means that same river hag will shriek and run away from me (metaphorically). Again ITS A GAME, NOT A PROFESSIONAL CAREER.

I expect when I get to the boss, I will have to be prepared, my resists have to be fixed, i have to understand the boss attacks but it will be fair with me. (As an Aside, Lost Ark had some amazing bosses even though the game is overrun with bots). I expect innocence to one shot me with his great balls of fire to the point where I reflexively find a stone post to hide behind if someone yells out "I am your GOD" on the street. I expect that defeating innocence on hardcore will make me leap out of my seat in joy, knowing I am not going to be thrown down on the stairs and violated by a white mob after I exit the arena.

Meaningful combat at all encounters is incompatible with the A in ARPG. Its unachievable and will merely result in an endless cycle of find the blaster build, nerf and iterate. It will never work. And all it will do is eventually kill the game. If you are looking for every fight, every enemy to mean something, go beat Sekiro.

What is the right balance? POE1 with some better boss designs and some fine tuning. it took 10y to get right and they have thrown it all in the trash to start over. Foolish.

+1

I Share this take 100%

I think they completely miss the concept from poe1 that clever use of skill and gear interaction in poe1 is literally part of the game's "chase" as much as a single item could be. The super experienced players, the content creators, the know godlike build theorycrafters is something that brings a playerbase that does not have the time to invest in that detail work behind their wake. The more they continue to treat that like an enemy to combat and refer to it as 'broken' the more builds are going to be homogenized with required steps to be met to even be able to progress.

In a game where they want to slow things down and have meaningful combat, how are there ever scenarios where single non-telegraphed abilities one shot you without any information provided during or after the fact to be able to adapt what took place. If you can't learn from deaths in a game meant to have meaningful gameplay, you will never attain that goal.

I've always thought they should pivot to a two prong approach, balance the entire game around HCSSF, once that is done, and I mean completely done eliminate anything considered unfair gameplay. Player immobilization without ability to mitigate or respond, boss immunity phases, unkillable mob affix combinations, etc. Part of this process would be ability and passives getting the attention to make blind builds and passive tree paths in themselves more viable from the bottom up.

Then when that task ( I agree its a big one ) then you can start looking at what the end game intent is, from that point the addition of tiered or progressive content difficulty to match the curve that balancing the HCSSF gameplay created. The regressive approach is always going to result in the player experience that is currently being discussed.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

I shouldn't have to dodge a one shot from a white river hag with a ball of ice.

I think you should. That's what elevates PoE 2 above the slop and we need more enemies like the hag, with dangerous but fair abilities. That's the action. Not moving forward and blowing useless white mobs, but actually engaging with their ACTION mechanics.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Meaningful combat at all encounters is incompatible with the A in ARPG.

No it isn't incompatible. Meaningful combat is needed now more than ever when every other isometric ARPG is a screen delete slop.

Jonathan after reading your post: "They thought they knew how to play the game, fffffeel like they that, that, that suck now"

Quote comes from Dropped Frames Episode 425, timestamp:2:00:45 onwards

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Summoner#7705 wrote:

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

I shouldn't have to dodge a one shot from a white river hag with a ball of ice.

I think you should. That's what elevates PoE 2 above the slop and we need more enemies like the hag, with dangerous but fair abilities. That's the action. Not moving forward and blowing useless white mobs, but actually engaging with their ACTION mechanics.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Meaningful combat at all encounters is incompatible with the A in ARPG.

No it isn't incompatible. Meaningful combat is needed now more than ever when every other isometric ARPG is a screen delete slop.

This is where you and I wont agree. That WHITE river hag one-shotting me isn't challenging or interesting. Its infuriating and tedious since there are 20 of them on the screen all trying to one shot me. You may like that kind of game play but its incompatible with the Zerg mentality of white mobs.

But then I would guess you play lightning spear or one of the overpowered builds. They are coming for you. They dont like what you are doing. Play fangs of frost and get frenzy charges from parry. Play warrior perfect strike. Do it on HARDCORE. Upload it. Show us.

Unless you are willing to do that you are the kind of customer that will kill POE2 and take down POE1 as collateral damage. 98% of the player base ARE NOT YOU.

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Step 1: Delete the codebase. Step 2: Make a game in another genre like souls.

Don't delete anything - take a look at how it is done in old as mammoth sht D1 and D2.

I just let here my feeling about it.

I played PoE1 since beta, almost always in SSF (even before they introduced SSF league). I mostly died 4-5 times during campaign, more after during maps when you cant see the explosive thing above you.

Im playing in a guild and I always, since 1rst day, said for PoE1 : "I like creativity of this game, freedom you have to make your own build, but I dislike how the game dont push you to use your personnal skill to avoid death".
If you have a good build on PoE1, you can facetank almost everything just spam your pot and run around like a chicken with their head cut off.
Most of PoE1 players confuse being skilled enough to avoid ennemies hit/area with being tanky enough to be able to tank some hits/being in area.

In PoE2, I personnaly have the feeling that with my skill, as a SSF player, I can go through acts and end game. That my personnal skill could reduce the weakness of my build. And its very pleasant for me !!!

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

This is where you and I wont agree. That WHITE river hag one-shotting me isn't challenging or interesting. Its infuriating and tedious since there are 20 of them on the screen all trying to one shot me.

I have 600 hours in PoE 2 and I don't think I've ever seen more than 2 hags at once.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

But then I would guess you play lightning spear or one of the overpowered builds.

I play minions lich, and I played melee chronomancer in 0.1. Lightning amazon should be nerfed because it has negative impact on the game's economy. If lightning amazon is intended to be that strong, then PoE 2 is not a game for me, because even if I wanted to play something not op like minions, the design philosophy and league mechanics would have to cater to the screen delete slop.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Play warrior perfect strike.

As I've said, I played melee chronomancer and used perfect strike a lot.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Unless you are willing to do that you are the kind of customer that will kill POE2 and take down POE1 as collateral damage. 98% of the player base ARE NOT YOU.

Based on what? Because right now PoE 2 is the most popular isometric ARPG with the highest player retention after league start.

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Summoner#7705 wrote:

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

This is where you and I wont agree. That WHITE river hag one-shotting me isn't challenging or interesting. Its infuriating and tedious since there are 20 of them on the screen all trying to one shot me.

I have 600 hours in PoE 2 and I don't think I've ever seen more than 2 hags at once.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

But then I would guess you play lightning spear or one of the overpowered builds.

I play minions lich, and I played melee chronomancer in 0.1. Lightning amazon should be nerfed because it has negative impact on the game's economy. If lightning amazon is intended to be that strong, then PoE 2 is not a game for me, because even if I wanted to play something not op like minions, the design philosophy and league mechanics would have to cater to the screen delete slop.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Play warrior perfect strike.

As I've said, I played melee chronomancer and used perfect strike a lot.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Unless you are willing to do that you are the kind of customer that will kill POE2 and take down POE1 as collateral damage. 98% of the player base ARE NOT YOU.

Based on what? Because right now PoE 2 is the most popular isometric ARPG with the highest player retention after league start.

Highest retention? Not much browsing of Steam charts I see. POE2 is hemorrhaging players like an open wound. In the second patch they failed to get back even 50% of EA launch players and they are now down to 20% of the patch hype. Almost all major streamers have changed to other titles. To you this is good? Do remind me not to hire you to lead my business.

Lich minions is going to hit a wall. you aren't there yet. But like I said, play melee. All the way through. Roll a warrior, a huntress who needs frenzy charges.

At any rate this wont convince you. Nothing will convince you. You have a new account and never played POE1 so debating you is pointless. We wont agree. You wont change my mind and guess what, the migration of player base to new titles shows that I am right, not you. But you wont accept that. And if TenCent (GGG is dead) caters to you, this game is DOA and they might as well convert it into one of their Whale farming mobile games that they are NOTORIOUS for.