Thousands hours later: why players drops and how to bring more fun to the game loop

D4 is a good example of amazing uniques and uber uniques, also i would highly recommend GGG implementing Greater Affix, that way normal loot feels less irrelevant and we have truely endgame item chases

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Peeveswozere#2395 wrote:

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XxxPssySlayerxxX#5201 wrote:

I must say I believe the window for differentiating from PoE1 has already closed tho.

I disagree, but depends on what you mean by differentiating.
If by differentiating you mean the SLOW AND METHODICAL (TM) marketing pitch, i think it was never open in the first place.

But POE 2 can differentiate itself from POE 1 by doing something POE 1, fundamentally, can not. By going beyond what was estabilished in POE 1.

POE 2 has three fundamental differences to POE 1:
How skill gems are socketed, roll cancelling and Weapon Sets.

Roll cancelling implies that the code for animation cancelling an action into another is into the game.
The way POE2 lets you 6 link multiple attack gems also pushes for multiple buttons playstyle and so does the fact weapon sets auto swap to the relevant weapons.

What we need to get the full puzzle are more mechanical elements, additional properties to attacks, more offensive and commited mobility, action chaining and some form of RPS - we are playing RPS but we can only choose Rock (Evade) or become so tanky it stops being a factor. The game can't be slow and methodical, but it can be fast and calculated.

Currently, mechanically, we are playing a game lacking many pieces of an action game set - things that should feel good just feel clunky and bad.

What i Imagine for melee is a more engaged version of POE1's Flicker Strike builds, but now with buttons you can press at the right time to stop specific attacks and keep exploding stuff.

the loop GGG try to get is:

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grind > become stronger > grind > become stronger;

While in reality current loop is (in ssf):

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grind > 0.0001% chance to drop currency to try craft > grind > grind > grind > chance to drop > grind

What for you become stronger? To farm more?

While both loops lacking the main satisfactory step - goal (like killing Diablo in diablo? finishing raid in wow? etc). Proper gameplay loop should be:

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progress to the act/pinnacle boss > fail > grind > become stronger > overcome boss > nice, get next goal.

Current endgame lacks goals - all bosses are not goals, but part of grind. Killing Xepht, for example, is not a goal, its just a way to get +2 breach atlas points = improve atlas farm. There is no accomplishment there, he's just another pinnata.

Secondary, besides lack of goals, there is just grind and mechanics routine is what left after. There are no real steps in endgame until you face pinnacles. If your character is strong/op - you can instantly go for pinnacle and finish it. If your character is far from meta - you will hit maps for 1000h and didnt get out of the loop. Balance is huge issue there.

Campaign is only part of the game where killing bosses gives you feel of progression, because its true. Killing campaign bosses gives you access to next locations/acts, while at the same time farming them is not a good plan to grind.

3 major changes are required to at least start it off:

1. More information on deaths
--- some kind of death recap that just has the damage type you died to as well as the name of it (e.g. died to physical hit, died to corrupted blood, etc.)

2. Reduction in the ability for mobs to one-shot
--- I think this is relatively achievable easily by reducing the % increase to movement/attack/cast speed and crit chance/crit damage on waystones

3. More endgame options aside from mapping
--- don't really care what it is, just more aside from roll map, desecrate map, deli map, do the map

For me, the main issues with the game are:

Lack of multiplayer content and events.

Build testing feels too punishing.
When creating your own build, you don’t really know if it works until finishing the campaign. If it doesn’t, the process of grinding gold to respec is frustrating and not enjoyable.

Most uniques feel underwhelming.
Many unique items don’t open up new playstyles or enable interesting builds they just end up being vendor trash.

Team farming imbalance.
Aurabots/teams farm divines at a much faster rate than solo players (often 10–20x more efficiently). This gap makes solo play feel unrewarding and kills the competitive motivation.

Limited endgame content.
There needs to be more variety and depth beyond the campaign for long-term engagement.

Visual clarity issues.
The game would greatly benefit from an option to reduce skill effect opacity or brightness. Some flashy skills make the game uncomfortable to look at
I shouldn’t need to wear sunglasses to play.

Performance and upscaling options.
FSR4 support or whitelisting OptiScaler for better performance and quality scaling.

Skill balance.
A lot of skills feel weak or irrelevant compared to a small number of meta ones. More tuning and variety would help.

Chaos Monk limitations.
There are no proper attack skills that scale with chaos, which limits build diversity for this archetype.

Movement and terrain frustration.
Fast builds (like Molten Blast spin2win) constantly get stuck or blocked by small bits of terrain, making movement clunky and inconsistent.

Random one-shots, need proper def systems or dmg mitigations.

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BamBamy90#9285 wrote:

As a newcomer, I set myself a target to finish all pinnacle content for the first time before quitting this season. I've stopped playing at lvl 87 (2nd seasonal char).

The main reason is that gameplay isn't fun. If the gameplay isn't fun, I'm not gonna finish my POE2 PHD on Google/Youtube. Billions of mechanics...

POE2 has many positive going on. That's why I will play Druid next season. But the game also has so many negative things going on and that's why I will stop around 80.

Spamming one button to clear maps - using 2 button proc combo to beat bosses. Combat is too fast and not engaging in any way. Did you make a mistake? No way to recover and boom you're dead - one shotted. You're not human, you're not supposed to make a mistake. Enjoy losing xp.

Nothing carries more important than the gameplay. Even during campaign, the level of engagement in the combat isn't good. But it's definitely better than the end game I've managed to see myself, up until tier 15 maps.

Very tough job to do it right. I get it. But don't see how they will keep this new acquired players w/o getting the gameplay right. Let's see how the streamer hype circle jerk does for GGG after 2-3 seasons.

+1 same thoughts exactly

They need to stop taking inspiration from Path of Exile 1. The combat is starting to become a horrible 1-click RPG, just like Path of Exile 1.

I hope the remaining classes will be done better!