Thoughts on ARPG game design

People who want this "slow paced meaningful combat" will play something like No Rest for the Wicked, as it is exactly what the GGG devs claim they are trying to make.

Slow paced and deliberate will never work when mobs move a lot faster than you and are numerous, as they can easily swarm you to death or harass you over and over. There's only one way to deal with that, blast the suckers before they get near you. What else are you going to do? Slowly attack them as 13 jump on you? Slowly swing an axe as 10 shank you from behind? There's no reasonable counterplay that will work from the player except to kill them asap before they even know the player is around.

A great start would be to make the base speed of the player faster.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

i would say POE2 DID succeed in making the game slow and deliberate. playing on release, i went 2h mace.

with proper gearing i could dance around balbala slapping her with my mace and dodging her attacks skillfully.

better gear let me make more mistakes and take her down faster.

that is how i imagined a perfect d-like would be. also i m using d-like as that is what poe is. arpg is too broad.

the issue with poe2 is that ggg did not stop at the campaign. they introduced the end game directly.

this meant that theres no room to test out skills from the early game and tweak the numbers.

this led to EVERYTHING ELSE simply out performing actual trumelee.

GGG sacrificed POE1 to make POE2 separate so that they could make it slow/deliberate and accommodate truemelee.

they also made decisions to limit player movespeed/life. which i understand it. when things are limited, they can balance the game better.

but they let ES go bonkers? doesnt make sense.

currently there are NO modern d-likes that really fit into the slow and deliberate category. GGG tried, and actually succeeded. but they saw the feedback and saw the majority LOVED the faster zoomy gameplay. POE2 now is becoming another POE1. or already has become one.

there are actually d-likes that fit the slow and deliberate game play. namely titan quest 2 (has some zoominess), no rest for the wicked (more of its own thing than a d-like), and Oniro (mobile only and has some P2W features).

tbh i've given up on the genre. only tq2 and oniro are the current games that are close to what i want in a d-like.

I honestly think that TQ2 has the right mob speed/player speed and density that GGG is trying to get to.

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jdp29#1389 wrote:

A great start would be to make the base speed of the player faster.

speed is one part of the issue

my take is BASE speed needs to be faster.

playing mobas some characters hit much slower than others but fast enough that you dont feel like you're attacking in slow motion.

this also includes making base movespeed faster.

the next part is where most modern d-like enjoyers would hate.

NERF speed mods.

in GD melee attacks feel more meaty. you feel like you can dance around certain boss attacks. interestingly the game is made in a way that you would find it difficult to go past 3 attacks per second yet the game can feel fast enough.

with player base speed being decent. it gives the devs an excuse to reduce speed mods as players already have a decent speed. a lot of power creep comes from speed. its simply disgusting how players use speed as a multiplier.

the next part is MONSTER balance. a lot of modern d-like enjoyers never talk about this because most of the time its either they die or the monsters die. its pretty binary. if the monster is hard, its too hard. or else it dies almost instantly.

i would argue for the most part in poe2, at least in the campaign, the monsters are somewhat balanced. not too many overwhelm you.

but at the end game it can get.... unfair. also the existance of speed monsters on mobs/maps simply throws any notion of skill out of the window. either you can tank hits or you delete the enemies. in poe2 i can dance with balbala even while being somewhat underleveled. i can avoid all her attacks and slowly whittle her down. but a map with a speed mod, simply means i can no longer play this way. shes too fast. it a fast speed i can still avoid her attacks, but she will not give me an opening to punish her/do damage. at higher speeds? well, hope you have good defenses. you can forget about avoiding damage via skill at that point

and to your mention of NRFTW yes. indeed i have played that. and i played it a lot too. playing NRFTW makes me feel a little sad tho. it's melee combat is something i wished to see more of in POE2. ggg touted about how much they needed to separate the 2 games to give the game more balance, centered around melee. and my unpopular opinion is they actually DID do a great job (with some kinks). just that its only great only during campaign. NRFTW's melee combat is something that poe2 could have been but will never become.

and if players love more deliberate combat, they need to understand and accept poe is not that kind of game. that ship has sailed

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jdp29#1389 wrote:

I honestly think that TQ2 has the right mob speed/player speed and density that GGG is trying to get to.

fully agree. before the recent episode being added, i've been farming the water horse boss.

with enough points invested in dodge and decent enough movespeed, i can literally get out of the way of all his attacks while sneaking in melee hits.

tq2 despite some aoe/projectile builds overperforming and melee possibly less powerful. its still in a very good state compared to poe in terms of meaningful combat.

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exsea#1724 wrote:

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jdp29#1389 wrote:

I honestly think that TQ2 has the right mob speed/player speed and density that GGG is trying to get to.

fully agree. before the recent episode being added, i've been farming the water horse boss.

with enough points invested in dodge and decent enough movespeed, i can literally get out of the way of all his attacks while sneaking in melee hits.

tq2 despite some aoe/projectile builds overperforming and melee possibly less powerful. its still in a very good state compared to poe in terms of meaningful combat.

I know people cried about ice shards being nerfed, but they still rock.

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jdp29#1389 wrote:

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exsea#1724 wrote:

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jdp29#1389 wrote:

I honestly think that TQ2 has the right mob speed/player speed and density that GGG is trying to get to.

fully agree. before the recent episode being added, i've been farming the water horse boss.

with enough points invested in dodge and decent enough movespeed, i can literally get out of the way of all his attacks while sneaking in melee hits.

tq2 despite some aoe/projectile builds overperforming and melee possibly less powerful. its still in a very good state compared to poe in terms of meaningful combat.

I know people cried about ice shards being nerfed, but they still rock.

lol yeah. theyre still quite powerful and i m happy that the game is actively rebalanced.

i really wished LE could replace poe but they seem to have just let sentinels be meta.

TQ2 really seems to be the game for me now.

poe2 is a console game design.
dodge roll was a dead give away
its so boring to play as the delay is watching paint dry filled with a thinner.

They had the best arpg with poe and made a worse copy.

Poe2 was the worst game I played in 50 years of gaming.
Its simply atrociously bad

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skjutengris#6643 wrote:

poe2 is a console game design.
dodge roll was a dead give away
its so boring to play as the delay is watching paint dry filled with a thinner.

They had the best arpg with poe and made a worse copy.

Poe2 was the worst game I played in 50 years of gaming.
Its simply atrociously bad

i really hated the trend of making pc first games console friendly as it normally takes away a lot of pc specific gaming features. in d2 we could have a ton of different active skills bound for easy switching for either left or right click.

when d3 came out, all the pc players could immediately identify that it was made with console in mind.

when the console version came out. people were disappointed but not surprised. that's where the first active roll/dodge was introduced into d-like genre.

many, myself included scoffed at it saying things like "console is so hard to play that they needed to actually give players a dodge roll to be able to keep up with pc players".

i've always hated it.

but when it was introduced in more modern games. poe2 and GD and others. i realized i actually LOVE the dodge roll mechanic. it actually encourages a more active playstyle. and yeah of course some people would just spam it. and if they did they're likely to take damage or they will have more dps downtime since they're rolling unnecessarily.

it in fact makes the game MORE exciting. in games like poe1 where dodge roll isnt really a thing, players typically have a gazillion movespeed. they kinda have little choice in this since they dont have dodge roll they have to GTFO of the way when theres telegraphed attacks. sometimes they need to preemptive run too. in comparison, in poe2 certain attacks can be avoided entirely by a well timed dodge roll.

i always love to use balbala as an example. she has cool abilities/attacks and can be rather deadly. but i can fight her underleveled using "truemelee". downing her with basic attacks and avoiding ALL her attacks. all thanks to dodgerolls.

as for poe2 being bad. i think its subjective. poe1 and 2 both have flaws but both have their highlights.