Path Of Exile 2's problem with content.

PoE 2 and PoE 1 are different games and they should not overlap in terms of playstyle, PoE 2 was given to us as a slower game with dodgeroll with interactive and impactful combat, well this combat is good in the campaign it get's lost in endgame where the game becames mostly PoE 1 where you zoom around oneshot everything, while i don't mind that on maps they should treat bosses differently it should always be a 2-3 min fight at high tiers.
They should not oneshot you and you should not oneshot them (only if you have perfect mirrors worth of gear).

The problem is that they take everything from the faster (PoE1) game and they don't rework it, look at breach, abyss, ritual, these are all mechanics where you need to screen clear mostly, and it does not enforce the slower combat style that was advertised for the game. They should pick a direction and go with it.

In my opinion it would be great if the 2 games would be different in the end not just PoE 2 becoming a copy of PoE 1. PoE 1 players can play their fast pased zoom around games, and PoE 2 players can play a slower game with meaningful combat, and they would have widened their audience with it, but as it goes right now they will lose their new playerbase who came in for the slower combat and just get stuck with their already existing PoE 1 go fast zooom and kill everything with one button press audience.

There is just no joy in that and no sense of progression when you do that at lvl 70-80 with 10 divsn into your build.

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Gery0724#5426 wrote:

They should not oneshot you and you should not oneshot them (only if you have perfect mirrors worth of gear).

I agree with everything you said, but this is a much harder problem to deal with than it might seem. The problem comes from how player power scales and how arpgs in general handle combat

The thing is, how does the player die if it's not from a one shot from a boss? You have flasks that will make you go full health almost instantly or even instantly, you have HP regen, energy shield regen in case of energy shield or evasion in the case of evasion which can scale quite high and will ignore most boss attacks (although now it's quite weak compared to other defenses)

If you balance the game around boss fights and remove some of those defenses, you also have to rework the entire game system from equipments to the passive tree, monsters during maps and everything else

This is also the reason we have those bs mechanics on mobs like on death effects or one shot from mobs, because otherwise the player just won't die. Unless GGG is willing to go through all of that, any talk of a more "souls-like" game is just dream

What we can realistically get is harder bosses that scale higher, with more interesting and harder mechanics, but will still have to one shot players

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iHiems#0168 wrote:

What we can realistically get is harder bosses that scale higher, with more interesting and harder mechanics, but will still have to one shot players

I agree they cannot really opt for it correctly. Some people have 3 k energy shield with 2 k hp some people have 11k energy shield.

The only way i can imagine it:

Is that are bosses deal damage based on your health but there are no boss mechanics that are that hard that you can't tank through it with the flask so it is a complex problem. I have no problem with oneshots if they are well telegraphed. a boss should have 1 maybe 2 moves like that, xesths hand attack for example.

Poe2 was designed originally to be connected to PoE1

so the whole premise is wrong xD know your history exiles and more than that observe your present, both games are feeding each other both finanancially and through creation and utilization of shared assets.. (this is what i was hoping for) though ultimately i wanted them to keep to their original concept.

here we are.

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SilentSymphony#3358 wrote:

Poe2 was designed originally to be connected to PoE1

so the whole premise is wrong xD

As far as I'm aware, that was just the campaign since there weren't any plans for a poe2 at the time. The campaign right now is the part that is the complete opposite of poe1 gameplay, so I'm not sure what's your point

Regardless, the whole poe2 was supposed to be connected to poe1 thing is quite irrelevant anyway given that ever since poe2 was announced GGG has been talking about meaningful combat, which only exists in the campaign right now. I'm personally fine with that as long as there are really challenging bosses, but if there's not then I have no reason to play the game past the campaign

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iHiems#0168 wrote:

As far as I'm aware, that was just the campaign since there weren't any plans for a poe2 at the time. The campaign right now is the part that is the complete opposite of poe1 gameplay, so I'm not sure what's your point

Regardless, the whole poe2 was supposed to be connected to poe1 thing is quite irrelevant anyway given that ever since poe2 was announced GGG has been talking about meaningful combat, which only exists in the campaign right now. I'm personally fine with that as long as there are really challenging bosses, but if there's not then I have no reason to play the game past the campaign

no....it was the entirety of PoE 2 being an expansion of PoE 1. From 2019 - 2024 this was the plan. Only the last YEAR of development did PoE 2 suddenly become a separate entity.

We see this in almost all aspects of current PoE2: same league mechanics and names. Same skills. Same weapons and weapon functions often. Etc.

It's also NOT the exact opposite of PoE 1 gameplay. Early PoE 1 was eerily similar to current PoE 2 campaign. Slow, methodical, challenging, all the current aspects of PoE 2. If anything, its actually almost exactly the same as how PoE 1 started out, albeit with far more 1hkos and smoother combat.


It's NOT irrelevant: we are talking 5+ years of development versus 1 year of time. Combat issues are not going to be fixed overnight, or anytime soon, if at all. The entire foundation of the game being initially connected to PoE 1 is most of the problem here. Especially at the endgame when you have a fully geared, fully realized character. It's obviously easier to control combat when everyone deals basically no damage and has no defenses. But an entire game where that's the case?

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

no....it was the entirety of PoE 2 being an expansion of PoE 1

Expansion to the campaign... That's what exists and what was being done. We don't really have an end game exactly because of that

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

It's also NOT the exact opposite of PoE 1 gameplay. Early PoE 1 was eerily similar to current PoE 2 campaign. Slow, methodical, challenging, all the current aspects of PoE 2. If anything, its actually almost exactly the same as how PoE 1 started out

Early poe1 doesn't exist since a while ago. It's like me saying "this apple is rotten" and you come and say "well, but it wasn't rotten 10 years ago". So...?

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cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

It's NOT irrelevant: we are talking 5+ years of development versus 1 year of time. Combat issues are not going to be fixed overnight, or anytime soon, if at all. The entire foundation of the game being initially connected to PoE 1 is most of the problem here

The campaign is what was being developed, they clearly said the end game was done in like 3 months just so that EA wouldn't be dispatched without an end game, to avoid doing what d4 did. The mechanics we got of course had to be a copy in this case

But yea, the entire end game foundation is bad. I don't see any of it being fixed either, they clearly aren't going to give up on stuff like breach, we even got hints of breach getting an update on 0.4

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iHiems#0168 wrote:

Expansion to the campaign... That's what exists and what was being done. We don't really have an end game exactly because of that

And whyy was it that? Because they ALSO explicitly stated that it would be a SHARED endgame. That was the entirety of PoE 2: a new campaign, a shared endgame, new socket and gem system, combat changes, and balance changes. That was the ENTIRE scope of PoE 2, the whole game plan.

Which...hey....is the reason that 1) they hadn't developed an endgame at the time and 2) our CURRENT endgame is very much like PoE 1.

I brought up early PoE 1 because, like current PoE 2, it was new. Power creep is a natural occurrence on games, and just because something FEELS slow right now (we don't have a lot of power, monsters are sponges) doesn't mean the SAME DESIGN, with no core changes other than years of new content, won't end up exactly like PoE 1. Only difference is that the endgame happens to be based on much of those years of content that currently DOESN'T exist in the campaign. But it will.


Thats the point:
1) Initial design had PoE 2 as the SAME GAME as PoE 1.
2) Because of this, much of the foundation is essentially copied over from PoE 1
3) Also much like PoE 1's early days, the current feeling of "slow and methodical" won't last

I wholeheartedly believe that because of their poor planning in the development of this game, it WILL ultimately end up as an upgraded clone of PoE 1.


As I stated, it is NOT the "opposite of PoE 1": it is merely a (likely temporary) return to earlydays PoE 1 gameplay. It was never even designed or thought of to be the opposite of PoE 1. Just an attempt to fix years of neglect all at once.

Honestly, I feel a lot of the balance issues you mentioned could be fixed by introducing diminishing returns.

They'll probably never do it, but if they balanced with this aspect I could see it fixing a lot of the major issues and creating a situation where one shots aren't a thing anymore.

It would also make customization feel better as you would likely not need to take so many wasted lines on gear or passives for things like mana or energy shield.

Balance is so important for a good gaming experience and it just feels like its not a point of emphasis.

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TheVoyant#3002 wrote:

Honestly, I feel a lot of the balance issues you mentioned could be fixed by introducing diminishing returns.

Considering this naturally and already exists just about everywhere, what do you mean?

I presume you actually mean CAPS, not diminishing returns lol. We already have pseudo diminishing returns in nearly all aspects of the design.


If they assign a maximum value to all stats, and then work everything around that maximum value then yes, they would have a much easier to balance, much easier to control game.


It would also be a game no one would EVER want to play for any length of time.



Ex: If the highest possible ehp amount, taking every like-minded defensive mod on gear available, any life nodes that happen to be available elsewhere......and set that to 5000. Then set it so all recovery or regen mechanics at MOST net no more than 1000 recovery per second, then they can presumably set a maximum scaled damage of all monsters at 4999. No more one shots....and also no problem out-regenerating content allowing for death to still be possible within that environment.

But caps of any kind in arpgs are almost universally hated concepts.