POE2 has an odd progression curve.

Normaly in ARPGs you start kinda easy with the campaign and the content becomes harder and harder as further you progress.

Not so in POE2, here we have the complete opposite situation and that not in a good way.

The campaign starts hard & challanging (what I realy like btw from the difficulty side) but with the downside that we miss all the required tools to improve the own character for this kind of challange early on....picking up all whites & blues and hope for a decent roll doesen't feel that great (and doesen't even happen in 99% of the cases)

But as soon as we enter maps/endgame the complete opposite happens, the game becomes super trivial instantly.

My gear is worth maybe 2-3 Divs and I faceroll red tier maps without any effort and haven’t felt a real difference bettween T1 and T15 on my way.

Today I've even finished a fully juiced 6-mod 3x Paranoia T15 map with the same 2 Divine gear effortlesly....I've practicaly beaten the game and every investment at this point is to half tap all content instead of 1-tap.

With this kind of progression curve you kill the most important factor & endgame activity in ARPGs....the MIN/MAXing and the need to constantly progress the own character further gear & skill vise because there's a lot of endgame content that requires to do so.

Yes they're T4 bosses and 8-mod map juice that require a bit more min/maxing but that's it...T4 bosses can be cheesed with just a little bit more investment (around 10 Divs max) and map juice is more a matter of min/maxing the own PC hardware than min/maxing the own gear, bcs it's a lagfest and simply not enjoyable at the current state to run the same maps with more monster but with only 10-15 FPS.

Suggestion: Play the UNO reverse card here.

Make the campaign just a little less punishing for certain skills/builds or at least give us early tools to improve our character for this kind of challange.

But in return make the endgame way more difficult even in white T1 maps + make a bigger difficulty gap between map tiers (Currently there's no difference in difficulty between map tiers beside monster level....if you give me a white T1 map and white T9 map blindfold I couldn’t tell any difference difficulty vise).

And with „difficult“ I don’t mean the 1-tap or get 1-tapped playstyle that we had in previous leagues (and still have)…..With difficult I mean challanging monsters that require either good gameplay or certain stats on good gear to come over.

Lets use monsters with shield as example: In my definition of difficult you either have shieldbreak on gear or some kind of CC to beat this kind of mob or if you have none of them you have to dodgeroll behind the mob and time the attack perfectly to do damage.

Or ES mobs: They mechanic here could be that they only lose ES if you damage them while they’re shocked (or with poison/chaos damage to bypass theyr ES)….this would encourage to use different skills later on, even if we play pure fire damage f.e.

Or mobs that are so fast that you consider to take 1 cold spell to slow them down so you can hit them easier (or have cold damage on better gear so you don’t have to use 1 extra skill).

Just 3 examples of many how to make the game more difficulty outside of more damage and life sponge enemies.

And as more the difficulty increases as more monsters with such special interactions cross our way where we either have to improve our gear for different situations or our skill as player…..even the step from T1 to T2 should make a big difference and require either better player skill or better gear to succeed.

give us the first time campaign difficulty in endgame please even in white T1 maps, so we have a reason to min/max our character constantly and not being done after a very short time and less than 10 Divs investment….Thank you. 😊

Ran a bunch of more juiced T15 maps, even few T16 maps (If I was lucky enough to corrupt one) to see if maybe my map rolls were lucky and therefore the maps to easy.

Same result, no matter what I've rolled on maps it offered close to 0 challange.

Endgame in POE2 needs a lot of work, currently there is no endgame challange in this game and as a POE fanboy it rly hurts me to say but the game is even more trivial than Diablo 4 atm in endgame (And this means something, bcs D4 is(was) currently the most boring & trivial ARPG on the market).

Even bosses feel like ordinary trashmobs and die instantly....with gear worth around 3 Divines, can't repeat that often enough.

The campaign is so much fun, the fight are immersive and impactful and require to think outside the box + combo gameplay.....yes the campaign misses early tools to improve the character, but this is rly a minor problem and can be fixed prety easily.

But the endgame is the exact opposite....sadly....it's like fighting placeholders becasue every mob & every boss feels like the same 1-tap pixel.

I hope that endgame get a lot of love in 0.4....An endgame where even after 2-3 month of playing we have challanging content & "higher goals" and not be finished after 2 week avarage playtime.

A endgame where even red maps require very good gear to be beaten, not being just the same as T1 maps just with a higher "Monster Level" number in the upper right corner when pressing Tab.

I know it's Beta and more content will be added, but more content won't change the waaay to trivial endgame difficulty and this thread is a feedback just about the current endgame difficulty that has to be adjusted for the sake of long term motivation in this game. :)

Are we still doing this "campaign is hard and challenging" bit around here? I can fairly quickly easily get through it on hardcore these days without a death. So even if you softcore folks die 10 times.. or 20 times.. seriously who cares? Is it an ego problem?

When you say the campaign is "difficult", I think what you actually mean is "it's not completely mindless zoomer mode and I have to pay attention". As long as you pay attention about what's happening, any novice can easily clear the campaign while only dying a few times when learning the mechanics. All of you veterans should be clearing it with relative ease.

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DreamAgain#4820 wrote:

Are we still doing this "campaign is hard and challenging" bit around here? I can fairly quickly easily get through it on hardcore these days without a death. So even if you softcore folks die 10 times.. or 20 times.. seriously who cares? Is it an ego problem?

When you say the campaign is "difficult", I think what you actually mean is "it's not completely mindless zoomer mode and I have to pay attention". As long as you pay attention about what's happening, any novice can easily clear the campaign while only dying a few times when learning the mechanics. All of you veterans should be clearing it with relative ease.

Thats not even the point of this thread mate, think you misunderstood me here.

Campaign is perfect....sure some skills need buffs for early level and some early progress tools would be nice, but thats just minor and totaly fine if it stays at it is.

The main critic here is about the endgame and that it's to trivial.....but maybe I didn't communicate it well enough.

When I say "difficult" I just mean more difficult than endgame, not being "to hard".

I would wish myslef to "pay attention" in endgame aswell even with 100ts of Divines investment....not being the 1-2 button 1 tap fiesta while sleeping as it currently is and the complete opposite of the fantastic campaign and it's difficulty.

I would wish myself the amazing bossfight that can take few minutes like in the campaign throughout the whole endgame and no matter the investment, not the 1-tap paper bosses as in the current endgame version. ;)