This game makes me feel terrible

Yes, I'm another one of those but I have to vent somewhere right now.

I was really hyped for 0.3 and started just when the league went live. Right now I am at 27 hours played and I have never felt so terrible about playing a game in my life, I feel physically sick and am in a bad mental state.

All I wanted to achieve over the weekend is get to maps and now it is monday evening. After having played every spare minute over the weekend I am still not there yet. The campaign is amazing, easily the best campaign in an ARPG I have ever played and I have been playing these games since Diablo 1 first came out. But it is insanely long for a game in which people want to get to the endgame quickly. It just goes on and on an on, having us look for specific places within extremely large maps. It gets tedious so fast and even though I didn't want to continue playing for most of the time and just take a break, I felt that I had to keep going to not fall behind.

Right now the only thing standing between me and the Atlas is Azmadi and this fight is just unbelievably frustrating. I can not play the entire fight perfectly. At some point he just will hit me and that hit will be a one-shot. No matter how far I've got or how well I played. I have been trying for hours at this point and sometimes I had him down to maybe 10% health and then he just killed me.

After having pushed myself through the entire campaign through the weekend it is just devastating to be stuck on an arbitrary progress block like this. I sacrificed almost three days to this game, just trying to get to the part I actually want to play. Now it just feels like a waste of time because so many people are already far into the endgame.

The worst part is that this campaign is still going to get even longer. The thought that we are supposed to play through this entire thing every four months makes me sick in my stomach. I really want to like this game and the gameplay, art direction and so much else are just top notch. But the length and difficulty of the campaign, which is supposed to be the entry level content, is just soul crushing and even though it is of very high quality, I honestly never want to play it again.

They have pretty much made all boss fights revolve around you charging up the stun gauge as fast as possible as safely as possible. That guy's fight is no different. If you aren't building up the stun gauge then you aren't gonna have a fun time bossing.

I have played for 12 hours so far this season (close to end of act 2) and i'm definitely not enjoying my time. It's the same deal as 0.2.0 that the campaign is just tedious and mind numbing. It takes way too long for my build (ED Lich) to come online. The contaigion/ED combo is clunky and unreliable in the early game with mouse controls. The spells that will make the build work are behind a high level requirement that i'm probably still couple hours away from.
Killing a simple white mob requires multiple spell casts. The maps are still way too large. Loot sucks as always for the most part. Finding a pair of Wanderlusts my only highlight so far. At least i can play with 20% movement speed.

I want to love POE2 but the game makes it really hard. I feel like i have to waste a couple evenings before i will even get to the part of the game that i want to play.

It is not made for you to enjoy. It is a sacrifice we all make for the Vision.

This patch really feels like 0.2 all over again. Maybe slightly different issues but they both are in the same theme of being monotonous and only a handful of builds are really feasible for advancing through the game in a decent manner, passive try is better but still kind of shit, all power coming from gear only is such a bad system compared to poe one where both gear and tree are roughly equal in advancing player power, also brining back being able to level gems would help if you get stuck on a boss in campaign then at least you would be able to grind for gem levels so you spells would do more damage. The whole game just seems like QOL nerf of POE 1 but with better graphics. If POE 1 had the graphics of poe deuce no one even bother with it.

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Johny_Snow#4778 wrote:

It is not made for you to enjoy. It is a sacrifice we all make for the Vision.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

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CDexWard#3774 wrote:

The campaign is amazing, easily the best campaign in an ARPG I have ever played



I honestly never want to play it again.

This is what we might call a "discrepancy".

It's safe to assume most people who play on launch and post in the forums are at least experienced in ARPGs. I wonder what the experience of a new player who got tempted by the algorithm and decided to try the game while its free to play looks like.

I doubt they even reach interludes. And if they do, I can't imagine them beating half the bosses in there.

I've been playing Path of Exile 1 since the beta and was hoping Path of Exile 2 would be just as good, but I was disappointed. I played a few hours in the new season and stopped because I wasn't enjoying it at all. I went back to Last Epoch and am having a much better time, even though the game looks much worse graphically.

well the game isnt designed to be fun, its designed to have downsides and friction. While its true overcoming challenge makes things feel more rewarding(true in life and in games) ggg just psychotically takes it too far. You can see it in literally everything. Even in the new sprint feature they intentionally make turning really hard, as if you are stearing a big boat. They didnt have to do that and could have allowed you to turn just like you would while walking but nope we have to add something awful to it too. Challenge and friction is only valuable when it adds to the game in a naturally flowing way. Such as a hard boss. But artificially injecting friction and downside into damn near every fkn aspect of the game just to have it is beyond stupid.

I like running, i enjoy the the reward of overcoming the friction of difficulty that comes from running several miles. It doesnt need any more friction than that to feel rewarding. If GGG was in charge of my run, they would add a weight vest, remove my shoes, and force me to run when its 120 degrees outside...expecting me to now feel accomplished and rewarded upon overcoming the unneccesary bullsht they forced upon me. This is really the best analogy i could give to describe how POE 2 feels when not playing deadeye/ranged.