Why do many people seem to be focused on speed?

When I look into myself what I enjoy doing within the game, I discover multiple things:

1) I enjoy experimentation: I always create my own builds and regularly switch them. I want to try out all the skills, how they feel and what I can do with them. This league for example I enjoy trying out all the infusion combos for my soceress. For me thats a type of play.

2) I enjoy challenge: I like it when a challenge appears that I need to overcome by observing (e.g. observing what exactly the boss does), thinking (e.g. about my build and game mechanics) and action (e.g. practicing to dodge a certain boss attack, being in the flow of the moment).

3) I enjoy the high quality campaign content - be it discovering all those points of interests, the new bosses, the handcrafted maps, the story...

Now all those motivations are indifferent to speed or even opposed to it:
Since I enjoy the campaign, I of course want to last it long. If a game is challenging, I need to practice to become better and repeat the same boss fight multiple times. That takes time. And the quickest playstyles are often quite simple and don't evolve more elaborate combos that first have a build up (time) before they become powerful. If I enjoy how the combat feels, it doesn't matter if its fast or slow, but I want it to last.

But when I watch youtube or read certain forum posts, I often see "fast clearing", "be quick through the campaign", etc. I don't understand this. What is appealing about this? It is as people are striving to "get somewhere", but there is actually nothing to be reached. I don't find such a motivation inside myself.

It's a mix of survivor Bias (Whiner bias) and the fact that the "thing" that PoE2 is can be WILDLY different substances for different people.

First, this game doin' numbers. Numbers so big that any ammount of internet talk will be a vocal minority. Who will complain then? Those that don't like what the game "is", or feels. Why go to a forum or youtube comment section to say "I just like it"?

You (And I, and many) have similar taste. Making a build and experimenting with things in a good feeling campaign is considered a good experience. In that regard there are two "Axes of enjoyment" based on knowledge gaining and experimenting + interesting mechanical challenge that are enjoyed. The feeling of "I was good at that fight AND my idea for the build worked, this game delivers this!" is not universal however.

@ good ammount of the playerbase wants PoE2's campaign to feel like "A powerful build at endgame": blasting and farming. Not making a build or experimenting, not learning the mechanics of a boss, not skill and knowledge expression for the most part.
This is how a lot of ARPGS are: bosses are gear checks that should be passable with mechanical ease, maybe some big and easy attacks to dodge just by moving (god forbid timing a dodgeroll).
A friend of mine that did not like PoE2 yet likes Diablo 4 said and I quote "I like ARPGs that I can play without much concentration, while listening to a stream, with splurts of interesting things like bosses or encounters, and a lot of loot". For these players, dying is a problem, they should not die ever as long as they "are following a build and farming".


And let's not forget that an ARPG is a game about having bigger numbers, the thing is how the substance, the thing that is enjoyable, is interpreted. You might think they want to be powerful so they can experience the next interesting thing, but they want to be powerful for the sake of it. You interpret loot as the means to experience more game, they interpret the game as a means to obtain more loot. When the second playstyle is "optimized", it is done by maximizing speed. Faster becomes more loot and feeling more powerful thus, more fun had.

It's a sign if the younger generation of gamers, which value quick dopamine hit, and a majority of POE 1 players, which have been conditioned (through disastrous design decisions from GGG) to only "go fast, get X nr.divines/hour, make profit by trading".

TL;DR: these people do not actually want games, they want an easy and fast activity to help them cope with a difficult and stressful life. And a few dopamine addicts....

POE1 conditioning.


Notice POE1 has basically no interaction of the player, need of focus or skill (other than ESC log off reaction time) for 95% of the game. You do not even look at what enemies are on screen.. you just run and blast, much faster than you brain can even register the type of enemy (so no space for you to have any tactics). POE1 is played on path of building. So All that there is to achieve or develop in POE1 is SPEED. That is why people got conditioned to speed.

POE1 is a minmax game
POE2 is a semi tactical game with SOME minmaxing.

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lupasvasile#5385 wrote:

It's a sign if the younger generation of gamers, which value quick dopamine hit, and a majority of POE 1 players, which have been conditioned (through disastrous design decisions from GGG) to only "go fast, get X nr.divines/hour, make profit by trading".

TL;DR: these people do not actually want games, they want an easy and fast activity to help them cope with a difficult and stressful life. And a few dopamine addicts....

yeah, no, its actually the opposite and this was a thing even at the beginning of poe1. it was always a thing. some people just make their leisure activity into a second job. They need to play 'efficiently' have good metrics (div/h or xp/h) and worry about economy and their wealth/stonks.... this sounds like employment, but this is how many like it.

My friend is a typical POE1 enjoyer. who wasn't even able to finish A3 of the Campaign, cuz was dying all the time, was constantly trying to rush/sprint past mobs, raging why he can't skip everything and why he do no damage with his 1 button build.

I mean.. there are people with just a totally different mindset which don't understand what the POE2 is about, and trying to play it like POE1.

My friend is a typical POE1 enjoyer, who wasn't even able to finish A3 of the Campaign, cuz was dying all the time, was constantly trying to rush/sprint past mobs, raging why he can't skip everything and why he do no damage with his 1 button build.

I mean.. there are people with a totally different mindset who don't understand what the POE2 is about, and trying to play it like POE1.

cause ultimately the goal of the game is to get better stuff. There are multiple roads to that point but most of them involve having to kill lots of things so the faster you kill stuff the more spins you get on the slot machine to get something that helps toward that goal be it gear to use/sell or currency or just xp for better skills. It all kinda revolves around killing stuff unless you just wanna play the game like day trader and just stare at the trade site all day to build up enough currency to buy everything. And some ppl do that, ya know there goal is to have piles of currency

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judikator#2053 wrote:

My friend is a typical POE1 enjoyer, who wasn't even able to finish A3 of the Campaign, cuz was dying all the time, was constantly trying to rush/sprint past mobs, raging why he can't skip everything and why he do no damage with his 1 button build.

I mean.. there are people with a totally different mindset who don't understand what the POE2 is about, and trying to play it like POE1.

Problem is when you do try to engage with the combos the reward is not worth the risk. You take more time to do so and while you are doing that you are getting swarmed by enemies and killed. When you do pull off the combo the damage isn't enough to warrant all the slowdown to set it up.

My first char was Monk, They nefed herald of thunder into the ground so It no longer is a good proc for the Electrocute combat efficiency combo that helped you gain power charges. So now I have to use Storm wave which is the only good viable skill on monk. I wanted to play a monk like a MONKK get in and use my hands, but since Evasion is trash I get smacked and killed before I can even attempt a combo.

Im playing Merc and Loving the game again. The issue is this desire for dark souls ARPG just isnt working. They want bosses to One shot you so They nerf your defenses, so Players want more power but they've nerfed that as well........so now melee just feels awful.

Mainly cause after you've done the campaign 10 times or more you're just tired of doing it and just want to get through it to see if whatever new build you're trying will actually work or not.