POE 2 Feels Unfriendly to New Players

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FPSPV#4195 wrote:

The problem is the balance. Good luck getting a friend to league start sorc or monk. They'll quit the first day.

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I don't know about the "many" there. Clearly some people feel this way, but I don't think it's nearly as many of them as you seem to believe. Some of us are having a great time, and the steadily climbing player numbers would seem to indicate that the new player experience, in particular, ain't all that bad.

I'm enjoying the patch. I can't play this game with friends though. LE and Diablo 4 are much better for playing with normal people.

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For me and my friends - game is too easy now.

That's because you are playing OP builds with OP items. Because balance in POE 2 is complete trash. It's the worst I've ever seen in an ARPG--ever.

Correction: Balance with starters is trash(you need to know what works without gear to have easy experience in campaign). But when you get to maps with one char and make even a small amount of currency the world is your oyster, pick almost anything and you can make it work.

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pick almost anything and you can make it work.

Completely false. The skill and ascendency balance is dreadful throughout the game. It's the worst of any game I've ever played.

Try to main supercharged slam on your smith of kitava and tell us how it goes.

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Paragon1#4769 wrote:

I’ve been playing Path of Exile since the 2012 beta, and I’ve always loved the depth and challenge the game offers. For me personally, leveling has never been an issue for the most part, although I do struggle with certain classes at times. That said, for the first time in POE 2—even as a veteran—I find the early leveling experience in a new league to be noticeably rougher than in the past.

What really stands out to me, though, is how discouraging the game feels for new players. [...]

Maybe they could add an optional pre-act 1 tutorial, where your char is already gear up with higher level skills available, then they lose their gear and power at the moment they are hang at the start of the game. It would give a pre-taste of what the build can be depending the class, to motivate new players to outcome the difficulty of act 1 and know better what skills they want for leveling. It would also reduce the issue that players have about "i can't experiment because not enough skill gems and support gems in early game".

It could be just one 5 min map you can retry, with possibility to try many supports and skills, even ascendency ?

They care about making streamers happy more then they do new players bro why the game keeps getting more and more like poe 1. Instead of fixing glaring issues with your game design you allow your community to degrade everyone who doesn't think the way most poe 1 players do its why the game will never grow outside of its die hard poe 1 fan base

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FPSPV#4195 wrote:

The problem is the balance. Good luck getting a friend to league start sorc or monk. They'll quit the first day.

Monk is an insanely strong league start. I crushed everything. SSF, no guide. A lot of the "game is bad" beliefs are just wrong. (There are also serious problems in the game, but please don't repeat things that are false.)

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Monk is an insanely strong league start. I crushed everything. SSF, no guide. A lot of the "game is bad" beliefs are just wrong. (There are also serious problems in the game, but please don't repeat things that are false.)

When i see vids of late game monks, i want to play it, but when i tryed it, i instantly gone back to range. You don't represent "everyone".

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Carnivori#5538 wrote:

Correction: Balance with starters is trash(you need to know what works without gear to have easy experience in campaign). But when you get to maps with one char and make even a small amount of currency the world is your oyster, pick almost anything and you can make it work.

And that is the issue. I play PoE since… ever and in PoE2 I like to make, as in PoE, weird builds. I did two iterations of a build, one that was balanced and had good defensive layers but not forgetting damage… yeah, no. That’s an unbelievable miserable task. I had to forget about defences and go all in on damage and even so it was a crappy experience.

Some skills breeze through the campaign and those who know which ones they are use them and say that the game is fine. Everyone who wants to try something different, wants a bit more of survivability or doesn’t know how things go with what will suffer hard.

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MykroPsykoz#6286 wrote:

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Monk is an insanely strong league start. I crushed everything. SSF, no guide. A lot of the "game is bad" beliefs are just wrong. (There are also serious problems in the game, but please don't repeat things that are false.)

When i see vids of late game monks, i want to play it, but when i tryed it, i instantly gone back to range. You don't represent "everyone".

I put my Act 3 monk into my signature, because people were saying things like this. It's literally something anyone could do. Your point, and OP's point, might be that some classes are more forgiving of inexperienced play. But if you spec into damage and ES recharge, you can clear fast. Don't worry about resistances until Act 4. As long as your ES keep coming back up, you won't die in the earlier acts.

Have to agree with the op's post, i even wrote my review (while positive) on this sentiment, agreeing that veterans can have a good time but new to the genre or game series as a whole will absolutely suffer. While there is obviously a very hard learning wall on the do's and dont's, picking the wrong build will brick any and all enthusiasm.

There's very little wiggle room with builds, some are so far down the hole in terms of performance that it's actually laughable. Unless you already have a kit ready for leveling them, it's going to be a major pita to get some of the under performers up to maps.

I introduced a friend and main hangup for him was the crafting. He found it confusing and too overwhelming. He is someone who usually enjoys this type of game and overall the heavy reliance on rare crafteds rather than super rare boss loot is something that irks him, as well as how seemingly overpriced a lot of market stuff is along with the general state of melee.