Some thoughts on balance and design philosophy in POE 2

The more I play POE 2 the more I love it, but the more things begin to irk me. I want to see POE 2 do well, and I want everyone to love it, and for me, my biggest issue with the game, is it does not leave room for people with jobs, or who just want to jump in and have fun to do that.

The game very much is a "rich get richer" style mechanics in how most every single system snowballs, which means at the high end the top players are overpowered, at the low end, people just becoming horribly frustrated to invest into a game they WANT to enjoy so badly, but they can't because there is no carrot on a stick that entices them to play more get stronger and progress.

Another thing that is just so tiring, are the sheer volume of gear checks. Are you geared against poison? Freeze? Bleed? Fire? Ice? Lighnting? Chaos? Armor? Have high HP? Crit mitigation? Do you have enough mana tap? Lifetap?

It's like GOOD GOD! Can you guys give the players a little room to breath? How can we get excited for an item when our builds are forced into such a perfect cohesive whole that we remove 1 piece of armor and suddenly 3 parts of our build break!?

Another thing that frustrates me is how potions work and the general sense of "sustainability" in combat. POE 2 currently devolves into pure twitch survive the burst. There is no thought to healing over time, sustained damage mitigation over time, every single threat comes in the form of damage over a very short period of time, and as such, the game devolves into OMG I'M GOING TO DIE IF I DON"T USE MY HEALTH POTION every moment of play. This leads to player burnout and weakens the breadth of play experience. It also minimizes the depth of builds since the only thing players are building for is instant kills, and 100% max mitigations to EVERYTHING.

Players can't take solace that they might be able to heal through something, they can't try to outlast an enemy. And much of this design comes down to how quickly players gain potion charges, much too quickly, and then they have the well in town. So the game is balanced around this notion that any player of any build will just immediatliy gain all their health back instantly at any time. So the only challenge that is provided is quick bursts of damage that can kill the player instantly.

I would LOVE to see healing toned down, but have the enemy damage output toned down in the vast majority of instances. I want death to feel as though it is sometimes several mistakes over 10 seconds rather than just one singular flair up of damage.

There are so many elements of the game tht fall to pieces because the game is NEVER a nice, slower engagement where elements like regeneration and long term crown controls matter.

POE 2 devolves into one singular moment of life or death if you don't play perfectly at all times, and SO MUCH of the build diversity, and play diversity suffers because of this.

So instead of finding some regen and thinking, "Oh nice I can heal through some of that poison" we think "Well poison kills me in 2 seconds anyway, so I need to focus on immediate killing and max health.

When I'm just spamming my health potion endlessly, hoping to heal through a burst of damage every 2 seconds of the game, it doesn't ultimately feel like a great RPG with a lot of depth or diversity of play, it feels like I'm playing a one hit arcade game, and I'm on the hunt for very specific bonuses in a sea of noise that all other prefixes and affixes are.

There are many skills that will bestow X amount of regen if you stand still, up to 50% more damage if you stay still. But these are TERRIBLY underpowered.

These are EXACTLY the sorts of skills that incentivise the player to slow down, to take a deep breath, but they are TERRIBLY underpowered for the survivablity and farm you give up to sit in one space.

Imagine a skill that increases your armor by 50% per second (multiplicative) that you hold still, that can go all the way up to say a 500% multiplier. THAT would feel REALLY good, and it would also make you a sitting duck for most every other attack. Maybe throw some other things in there like global damage reductions for standing still.

I get the sense the design team wants to eat their cake and eat it too, there are SO MANY conflicting elements in this game.

I feel both that the game doesn't want me to tear through it and methodically move forward, but at the same time, holding still is a death sentence and there is danger from every angle that will one shot you.

I'm enjoying the hell out of the game, but sometimes all these compounding elements of mechanics just feel so overdesigned, they feel ultimately worthless.

Standing still effects are TERRIBLY gimped. I just spent 2 days farming for enough gold to respect to try my big hefty 2 hand mace in one hand, to try that one skill that allowed you to slam as a warrior and I socketed it with that gem that requires you to hold still for over a second to get more damage.

And gah damn was I just completely and utterly underwhelemd. I also try to indulge in other skills like the 5% health regen on leap attack, and other regen on armor and various other skills hoping 20% total life regen per second might make me survivable, but it's literally 1/20th the healing of a single press of a health potion.

I get balance takes time, I get that this is early access. But there are several points of balance regarding a great many skills and how health potoins function and the general feel of combat that I don't see this improving any time soon without radical revision to the core designs of the game.

It feels as though that you guys are absolutely terrified of the player making any forward advancement unless they have fulfilled their gearcheck sacrifice to literally every single system in the game across magic types, status types, health, taps, all that jazz.

And the game would be oh so much more fun to play, and have a broader base of players, if slow and methodical skills and abilities GREATLY enhanced the survivability of players. If players inherently knew that defensive skills that reduced their speed were OP as heck, and it was high level players who could indulge in speed and crit and such, this game would be so much more loved by a much broader player base.

Personally, I love how the game is, I think I've figured it out, but the talent tree is a damn MINE FIELD for people who don't understand what multiplies what, and what skills are dead ends and what's effective.

The talent tree does nothing to try to guide players towards working builds, towards what can be achieved with less gear. I had to go all over the damn talent tree and suppress the inherent drive to want to punch damage as it does little for my shield build, and invest ENTIRELY into mass survivablity.

And even doing that I found exactly 0 extra suvivability in holding still.

You guys both complain that players smash through the game and kill everyting in a fraqction of a second while giving them NOTHING that allows them to try the game any other way!

I did feel as though I got a build together that allows me to survive much further into the game than most players and I am enjoying my time tryting to upgrade my crap gear so i can get to the very late game, but I also feel so pidgeonholed into this build, with no room to expirement with other types of defnses like stationary bonuses that area ACTUALLY effective and powerful.

I also get burned out with each and every single engagment being an exercise in spamming my health potions. I am so very tired of most every single game devolving into this.

I would really like to see sustained and methodical combat where fights sometimes turn to a war of attrition where you don't feel as though you are 1 mini stun away from dying every single second