Close to 1000 hours played. Can we retain ANY players until next patch ?
" My experience as an overnerfed Stormweaver Archmage while mapping is that my character gets killed almost only when she gets crowd-controlled and slain while I watch without any chance of reacting. That is: in order for the monsters to have a chance to win, the game has to strip the player of agency and prevent him from playing long enough for the mobs to kill the character. This is a consequence of the combat model being non-attritional, as Jonathan stated during the Zizaran interview: the characters recover so quickly when not pressed, that they are basically safe unless overwhelmed. This design choice is at the root of all the issues with the combat system and I'm convinced that there is no solution to the problem. The current design philosophy is incompatible with "meaningful combat" at a fundamental structural level and no amount of balancing will solve this issue. My gameplay sessions usually went like this: I logged into the game, running successfully multiple maps in a row just to basically rage-quit as soon as my character gets suddenly killed after having been frozen or stunned by a group of mobs I just activated. This kind of experience caused the accumulation of frustration to the extent that now I'm actively resenting the game, that I feel offers an unfair and dishonest kind of challenge and led to me quitting the 0.2 version. I'm very pessimistic about my chances of liking this game again because, like I said, I think that the current design principles are inherently incompatible with the kind of player challenge that I was looking for in the game and that the design team proclaimed to pursue. |
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the optimization must be a prior so badly here. i have a 2024 notebook ROG ZEPHYRUS with very good specifications and i literally cant do some endgame content like DELIRIUM. its literally impossible. 95% of the time the maps crashes and the other 5% stays and 10-20 fps. and even regular maps with alot of stuff in the screen my fps goes 40-50. and again my notebook its REALLY fine. all the other games run smooth. im not asking for a gigantic fps boost but its literally unplayable. breach content isnt as bad as delirium. I dont even dare to try to do simulacrum stuff, that might even burn something from my pc. for real.
my notebook stuff: CPU: AMD Ryzen 9 8945HS Refresh Rate: 120Hz AI Accelerator: AMD XDNA NPU up to 16 TOPS GPU: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070 Memory: 8GB GDDR6 (RTX 4070 models) RAM: Up to 32GB LPDDR5X 6400MHz Storage: 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD |
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" This is IMO one of the worst aspects of the game right now. it's insanity to think that I need to message A LOT of people to buy one item because there's so many price fixers or players that don't respond to you. And if you don't know a price of a item and try to look at the site? Bunch of 1ex posting, when the item actually cost 1~2 divs or more (looking at you Beacon of Azis). The whole "social aspect of the game" bothers me a little tbh. Like, who plays ARPGs for the social aspect? You play to blast thousands of mobs. |
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" yes you play to blast 1000's of mobs. but someone got it twisted that souls likes make you plays 1000's of mobs for no loot lol. as soon as your fighting zergs its not souls like. as soon as an item drops thats absolutely completely useless, its not souls like. as soon as you kill a boss and get no rewards its not souls like. i wish people were not so naive about the state of the game. |
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" Counterstrike 2 has 790,000 players on the steam charts right now and if you go to their forums there is no positivity. - API scam - Game is unplayable - cheaters - There is a guy who posted that the game is unfair, but only for him - I'm gonna sum this one up to "game sucks" because there are a lot slurs and homophobia in the title - not possible to get a good comp (in a game where 50% of the players win in every game) - Guy who didn't think he should have been banned for cheating when he was cheating because the rules should only be for other people - more players that were banned for cheating when they were cheating and are unhappy about it - Cheating is out of control - Player numbers are fake - Game is dying - Multiple "Quitting CS2" posts - Does anyone want to be friends...that is the closest post I can find to anyone on those forums saying something positive and not complaining. So by your logic because there are no positive posts on their forums, the game that is at the top list on the steam charts and has close to a million players playing it, is in a lot of trouble and is dying. If that is the case and the most popular game in the world right now is a flop because all of the posts on its forum are negative and saying they aren't having fun and they don't like the game...then I guess the entire gaming industry is a flop and people should just stop making games altogether. I mean you can't get better evidence that a game is failing than negative forum posts right. And look at the ridiculous things people are saying about CS2, kinda sounds like the things people are saying here. - Can't get past the campaign, but it isn't because the game is hard, it is because the game is holding them back even though thousands upon thousands of people can get through it with ease. - Death is unavoidable even though HC SSF players like myself can play the end game content without ever running into unavoidable deaths and only die because we misjudged something, or screwed up in some way. - Player numbers are plummeting...player numbers are graduating declining which is going to happen no matter what and will probably level out once it hits between 20K-30K which is the norm for ARPG's and what it settled out to before the latest patch. 20K-30K is usually what the leading ARPG has without have a surge due to new content. However, when the flagship game only has 20K-30K players that is sustainable, that is not good for the market share of the genre in the game world and is why barely anyone ever makes ARPG's. GGG is trying to do something different because doing what been done over the last 20 years in ARPG's is not working and will lead to the slow torturous death of the ARPG genre. POE2 has been able to sustain at least 20K while in EA and once the official release is announced and it goes free to play, it will get a surge of players from outside the normal POE community. And most people won't even pay any attention to the reviews...at this point everyone knows that reviews are just a representation of how many fanboys and how many haters a game has. Most people look for actual gameplay footage on youtube, or something like that to see if they want to try it. I don't know what the reviews are of a single thing that I have bought other than POE2 and the only reason I know the POE2 reviews is because people who are desperate to manipulate other people into thinking they way they think keep bringing it up. If you want to look at plummeting, look at POE1 which has plummeted to the very bottom of the player rankings for the notable ARPG's and if even the so called "diehards" can't even be convinced to play a game unless it has some kind new content...maybe that should be a red flag that maybe that is not what the community wants and maybe that is not the direction you want to go in for a new game. Last edited by EllyParis#5023 on Apr 24, 2025, 9:17:56 PM
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very very good post. hope GGG read this.
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" Exactly. |
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I have been going to post something for awhile but kept wondering if it was worth the effort. However, the original poster hit most of my topics and I agree with what was said but I wanted to add to two major things that "fix" most of my problems with playing this game.
1. Experience Loss on Death I don't have much time for anyone that says getting to 100 takes skill (well other than the skill of having lots of time and the willpower to sit in a chair for days on end). It takes skill to get there to win a race, it takes skill to get there quickly in general (some skill) but anyone with enough patience can get there. I got to 99 in POE 1 on one character and easily skill wise could have got to 100 (I hadn't died in weeks) but I couldn't be bothered. I'm fine with keeping an elitist bar (I have a job and family and I'm long past worrying about being elitist) but make it higher like it felt in POE 1. It starts to feel painfully slow in POE 2 around level 90 whereas it took until 95 or 96 to feel that way in POE 1. The only reason I care about XP on death is it stops me from challenging myself until I level. I like the change to get rid of XP loss on pinnacle bosses but I am still not going to play any juiced maps unless I'm sitting at close to zero XP gain in a level. Playing safe for a day or two (assuming you have a few hours a day) to gain a level is one thing but waiting weeks playing safe content is a job not a game. Yes the Omen helps but that's such a stupid response to the problem. The two options in my mind are make the leveling curve way less steep up to about 96 and you can keep the death penalty or just don't turn on a death penalty until about level 96. The game ending at 96 for many feels better than now where I suspect it's low 90s. This does not destroy the elitist target for those that want it. 2. Make getting decent gear attainable (other than trade) POE 1 may have been too deterministic but right now "crafting" doesn't seem worth it until you are uber rich and could just buy most of what you wanted anyway. In POE 1 you could get a fractured base, roll plentiful essences to "guarantee" 2 more mods then you could bench craft a fourth mod. This allowed you with reasonable effort to get a solid 4 mod item. It was never best in slot but there was a path to doing it yourself at a rational cost mostly from things you could acquire playing the game. In POE 2 to "make ground loot matter" you pick up infinite bases and gamble, you 3 to 1 crap items and keep going. Hint, no one gets excited that the white base they want to gamble on dropped and calls that ground loot that matters. My Amazon (yes overpowered and I picked the spec before I knew but glad I did at this point) I spent roughly 30 ex at level 70 to buy decent gear as I came out of campaign in mostly act 2-3 items as there was no upgrades to be found and I'm level 90 now and I think I upgraded 2 items (both cheap on trade). Exactly zero items have been found on the ground or "crafted" and I have more currency but honestly I don't see the point of buying moderate upgrades I may as well save for top end gear if I'm buying it (again this feels like my job where I work every day to pay for an exciting purchase down the road). Similarly, not being able to change resistances (Harvest POE 1) or ideally also attributes through crafting is painful. Runes are not a replacement for this as I rarely am using runes for resistances anyway as I'd rather have other things. When I get way over capped on a resistance (or missing an attribute) it feels awful having to go replace 2-3 pieces of gear to address that. This is a problem to solve but a crappy one. The solution in my mind is pretty simple, keep fracturing orbs attainable, make essences plentiful and operate like POE 1 and add a harvest like craft to change resistances as needed. This "guarantees" you can get yourself 3 good stats with some work and not be resistance jammed plus you aren't starting from a white item every time (honestly collecting white and blue items is probably the worst part of the game for me). This leaves the top items still as stretch goals but means I'm not forced to use trade (which would still be a simpler path to get a 3-4 stat item but not the only path). Related to gear, make chase uniques easier to obtain but make the RNG on them way higher. Ingenuity needed a nerf but I liked that I farmed one myself in 0.1 even though the roll was awful. Let me be excited to find a great unique for the build feature and then let me chase the best one because the one I got was unlucky. Instead right now I save in my bank account (sorry currency tab) until I can buy it which brings very little joy when you get it honestly. I've intentionally not sited Last Epoch much even though I think they have some cool concepts but I do think their unique system is great where I can get a bad one with no upgrade potential to get my build online pretty readily but to get the best in slot I'm likely to never see it. I actually was super excited to spec in to Rogue Exiles thinking this would be an awesome way to get uniques. But they are so infrequent the points seem like a waste, and even the big marque point to give them sockets and corrupt actually seems worse than not taking it where I can quality first, maybe divine if it was a great unique, adds sockets then corrupt. With the "great node" I actually can't get all the steps. The above two things take the game from a job to something I don't mind grinding in but I can't get behind carting back white items to gamble and throw out all day. While the above fixes 90% of my issues (hard is fine if you fix the above two things) the following are quick hitters: - If you effectively force trade you need an auction house full stop and I don't care about some manifesto on friction it's ludicrous. - The ascension trials are too RNG for how long they take. Playing 45 minutes to get bricked by bad luck is stupid (eventually you get them to farm state but some builds just don't do well in either mechanic). - Meaningful combat every minute of play is not this genre. I'm all for hard (but fair) boss fights but when the sole power growth is kill thousands of mobs you need to tune out for some of it. Make difficulty spikes happen but players should know when to focus (e.g,. a boss or map mechanic). - Reduce one shot mechanics (even the intended ones unless they are very avoidable) or better yet eliminate them. This is particularly true if you want 5 minute boss fights. - Wandering around the atlas searching for 3 towers together to then juice an area to actually play the game for awhile is another work task. - Audience with the King and the Expedition boss being RNG is again stupid. In 0.1 I bought 4 audiences and got all the nodes to farm them (that was going to be my currency strat) and I found one in weeks and it still took multiple deferrals'. I like parts of this game, I found POE 1 about a year ago and whish I found it a decade ago (I mostly stopped gaming after years of WoW), but if you want to keep casuals (pains me to call myself that but it's the playtime reality) around to buy things off the store making most of the playtime feel worse than my day job is not a good approach. I'd blame EA but the worst parts of this game always align with what the devs say they are happy with. |
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" Good points |
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