Mechanics´ bloat

Hopefully, PoE 2 doesn't get all the bloat PoE 1 had, while keeping its complexity. But I don't see this happening, though. As I see, you're falling for the same design mistakes again.

As an example, why there´s pin, freeze, chill, stun, heavy stun, electrocute...? They all limit your mov/actions in different ways. I just saw a YouTube video where all these mechanics were explained, and I could only think of how confusing and messy this looks to a new player.

Just keep one or two basic ailments, call them whatever (slow and immobilise), and configure them through skills and talents to achieve all these things. Use traits to configure these effects. It would be much more manageable to explain, balance and design around.

Also, you have to recreate the same effect across multiple support gems and talent tree clusters to support these different named mechanics, where only one should suffice. Contributing to the overall bloat.

I also find that there are far too many similar skills. I'm currently playing with a crossbow. There are really 2-3 different real skills available. Instead, we get 15+ skill gems, with just variations of these skills. Why can't we have a core basic grenade skill and then configure it with a different support to do cold/lightning/poison/... It will do the same thing, while removing the bloat and opening design space.

These are just examples. I think you should be doing much more regarding reducing bloat. Before release.

I don't want my ice build and lightning build to do the same thing.
I want one to freeze people, and the other to electrocute people, basically hitting them with a tazer.
It doesn't matter that those are both just fancy stuns.
They are and should be different things done different ways that look different.

I want my archer to be able to shoot someone in the foot and pin them in place.
I don't want the game to pretend that's the same as hitting them with a tazer or trapping them in a block of ice.
I want it to look different, be different, have a different effect, and be built for differently.

I don't want to just have the one grenade, and configure it to add an element.
I want to separately fire a flashbang, then a frag, then a gas, then a Molotov.
And have them do 4 different things I didn't have to manually configure them fore, because they are different types of grenade.

It's not bloat, it's variety, options, and in some cases combos.

For the record, you keep saying the version with multiple separate things is messier and more confusing, while having less would be easier to understand and balance.

You are absolutely ridiculous.

By far having all these things be done with configurations to less starting options is the more confusing, more difficult to balance, more difficult for both devs and players to handle version.

Well having more separated options, that do the different things to begin with without needing to configure, is by far the less confusing, easier to balance, easier for both devs and players to handle version.

First of all, I'm trying to be constructive. You can disagree with me, but please try to understand what I'm trying to suggest.

You can have more depth without adding complexity. I want the same/more options we have now without the unnecessary bloat. Similarly, they already have with the support gems/traits, one step further.

I want to electrocute with my lightning skill, and I want it to do different things than with a cold skill variation that freezes. Sound, effects, area and ailment durations/power will all be different, as they are now.

I'm just trying to say that you don't need 6 skill gem variations of the same grenade skill. You just need 1 core grenade skill, and then you can configure it somehow.

I'm just suggesting a different design approach to get to the same goal. While reducing bloat and increasing depth. A more modular approach. Skill and ailments are two areas where this can be accomplished.


Edit: Also, you can have 16 different variations of grenade skills in your skill bar if you like. I'm not saying you are limited to one grenade skill per character. Hopefully, my point gets across now.

If you makes grenade depending on support to have ailments and damage type, it cause 2 major issues :

- Less supports for damage / QOL
- You can't have the same skill multiple time (i say that without verifying but it seems odd to that be possible)

So you want rewrite the entire game ?