The vision is dying

The faster the "vision" dies, the better. The vision seems to have been more about punishing players than providing a fun experience.


They wanted us to go slower, combat be slower. Which is essentially fine.

BUT then they made the monsters very fast, which meant it was hard to evade them or actually read their cues and respond correctly. -- Player solution: Nuke the screen.

They wanted combat to be "meaningful", but made it so, players got constantly swarmed. Player solution: Nuke the screen.

They wanted players to explore huge maps - but the rewards simply are not worth the time and effort. -- Player solution: speed through

Dodging is made a core mechanic and totally overused - which actually is counterintuitive to a slower more methodical approach.

Players get confronted with problems early (monsters dealing chaos damage early for example) but do not have any means of solving them, as crafting is a slot machine, early game has no deterministic crafting and all the solutions seem to be: trade. Unfun. A well designed game would allow for the problem and the solution to exist in the same part of the game. Meaning if you have chaos puddles all over act 1, then you should be able to find/craft the corresponding resists in Act 1.

I remember one of Ziz's interviews with Jonathan, where Jonathan did not even seem to get the problem with players slow/monsters fast.

The "vision" as we see it, is making the game long and tedious, instead of fun. So, the faster the vision dies, the better.

I think GGG made a mistake by designing PoE2 around the campaign only, without a clear plan for endgame in mind.

They had a vision and it worked (kinda) during campaign, but then they hurried to slap an endgame ontop of that without enough time to iterate.
So they took alot of PoEs systems and put them into PoE2 for endgame, which created a design mess.

Now they are struggling to find a balance between those two and honestly I think they already gave up on the campaign vision. Right now we're moving more and more into PoE territory, which is a shame in some aspects.
I love PoE, but PoE2 was supposed to be different.

For PoE2 to get the meaningful combat it was supposed to have, endgame needs to be reworked completely.

Monsters and Bosses blending into the background is a massive issue for this game from a technical stand point.

Three weeks ago, during mapping I had the displeasure of encountering a reskined version of Silverfist in a cavernous themed map. His skin was made to appear rocky and blended effortlessly into the background, making it imposible to see the windup mechanics without squinting.

Imagine if during the campaign, Silverback would bug out and his fur would become green...that's how bad it was.

My map had three portals, I died 3 times in a row because I had to pass him in order to progress the map.

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Lobo#4398 wrote:

If POE 2 ends up being similar to POE 1 in terms of gameplay, it will probably still be a great game and one of the best ARPGs on the market.

However, I can't help but feel disappointed. Not because the game is bad, but because it is wasting the potential to become something much greater.

I never saw in my life such waste of potential like PoE2 development.
Game would be great for WIDE gamming community...instead transfer to Souls ARPG for minority

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Lobo#4398 wrote:

multiplayer...

Sight.....this is the worst ARPG speaking of playing with other player in combat...there is no META system, no strategy, everybody has same gear, no healers no gathering players, no boss killers characters...ZERO

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Lobo#4398 wrote:

evasion

again weird feature which was created because GGG drawn in difficulty level so they had to gives something...otherwise players will get outrages with death amounts.

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Lobo#4398 wrote:

On top of that, I get the impression that GGG is shackled by the expectations of the POE 1 community.

...and GGG forgot also i not anymore 2013!!!! There is not SOULS game market anymore.

I thought the point of a ARPG is to fulfill the power fantasy? Like you become a god among men or monsters. But the Dark Soul genre is like you are always a cockroach struggling to survive. 2 opposite phylosophies cannot mix together, it only create an abomination if you force it. They want to make poe 2 soul like but affraid the poe community won’t tolerate it and thus losing the support to continue developing the “vision”.

Agreed.

I also rly hope PoE 2 doesn't turn into an ultra zoom zoom screenclear flashbang fest like PoE 1.

A lot of the issue is the absolutely INSANE power gaps in skills. Some base skills, completely unmodified are just giga leagues beyond other skills, and the crap skills never get buffed.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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The vision wasn't ever honestly clear to begin with. Just buzz words like meaningful combat, and using "fun" as a metric. Lol

Why is that funny? Should fun not be a metric?

What are your metrics?

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I still just cannot believe players are okay with Dodge Rolls being a core element of combat.

One of the best parts of the game. What's the problem?

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If GGG were ever to put that in PoE, I would quit.

They did put it in PoE though... what is going on?

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It's not "meaningful;" it's a direct lift from another genre of game which has no place in a PoE game

Yet here it is.

The Dodge Roll was the Devs' replacement for all the diverse movement skills they apparently disliked being used in Poe (Deuce ain't PoE, brother; as many have observed, it is a different game set in the same milieu, no matter how many elements have been cannibalized from PoE). It was an element clearly added to fill that niche in a manner limiting tactical utility, while emulating the gameplay of Souls-likes. ='[.]'=

Some of you think the vision is like playing Diablo 1 or something. Go look at preview videos back from 2019 to 2022, you can see both slow and fast killrate, what's not the vision is being godly fast and clear maps excessevely quick like you can do in PoE1, they don't want that anymore.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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If POE 2 ends up being similar to POE 1 in terms of gameplay, it will probably still be a great game and one of the best ARPGs on the market.

But PoE2 already is a great game and one of the best ARPGs on the market.

The game is not finished or fully released yet.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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Unfortunately, this approach prevents the game from ever offering a solid multiplayer co-op experience.

I've played the better part of 0.3 with my son and it's been incredible; he's loving it.

I think the campaign in co-op could be pretty good, but the mapping already feels chaotic for a single player. Now imagine three more players sharing the same screen. It's a mess. This isn't a great multiplayer experience, and I believe that's one of the reasons most players choose to play solo.

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Kerchunk#7797 wrote:

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How can you create great and meaningful combat system with such an inconsistent experience defined by stats and RNG?

3. What's inconsistent about it? Can you try and be a little more specific? What do you mean "defined by stats?"

There are many layers of RNG, but let's focus on items as an example. Two players are in the same location and at the same level. One finds a great weapon with both flat and percentage-based damage rolls. The other isn't as lucky. The first player is having a great time, while the second, no matter how skilled they are in combat, ends up feeling sluggish. In other words, performance in the game depends more on character stats than on skillful play. I'm not saying gear progression shouldn't exist, but the current system creates massive power gaps. Item modifiers have such a strong impact that the base item itself becomes almost irrelevant. Have you ever seen a well-designed game with skill-based combat that allows such extreme power disparities? And there is a good reason for that.