Poe2 endgame "gameplay" through the eyes of an average Exile enthusiest.

-Regular league-

I'll start off by giving credit where credit is do. Poe2 is a great game. It's thematically brilliant balancing it's universe and violence. What a breath of fresh air compared to all the DEI bs in the gaming market right now. It's not trying to push propaganda, there are no controversial, delusional developers crashing out on social media, and the gameplay is fun and exciting. It's pure in it's own way and that is greatly appreciated, hats off to GGG team.

About that gameplay part. While it's great and clearly has a point of progression, that all stops when you max out and reach "end game, end-game"(T15+). By the time a player reaches this point they're really getting into the nitty gritty of fine tuning their build to tackle the even-higher tier'd content.

The gameplay from here on out, shifts from dungeon crawling to market engagement. While I love this aspect of the game and think it's fantastic, it subtracts ENTIRELY from the gameplay itself being dungeon crawls. Fighting monsters is no longer rewarding and loses all meaning as in dungeon crawls are no longer a viable option to progress your build. Stats become meaningless. Maps with 200+ IIR/Rare monsters does absolutely nothing and is subject to the same RNG as a map with SIGNIFICANTLY less! seriously, I think i dropped more divs in maps with not even half those numbers. RNG is crushingly dominant and ruining stat driven mechanics of Poe2.

I'll state the obvious here. Currency farming in maps is not a thing. The greatest bulk of currency is easily crafting and selling items which in and of itself is good, even great. The problem is the threshold at which these items sell to inflate the market place for all other items. For example; On a fresh new league all holdings are reset. Everyone starts from 0 currency. Then at some point an item is sold for let's say 100 divs. From the start of a league, who the hell had 100 divs to purchase that in the first place? That same person who had 100 divs to spend must also have sold an item to collect that amount of currency to spend in turn. Using inflation as an explanation does not address the initial start of a league. I'm genuinely curious of where this initial volume of currency comes from. It's the classic chicken and the egg.

I appreciate the producers and developers and everyone that contributed into maintaining this game. I'm simply addressing the viability of playing it for the average Poe2 enthusiast such as myself. As of now, it clearly has a quitting point and I'll just have to accept that and learn to simply stop and look forward to new leagues. Anyways, that's my rant.

SSF

Yup.

The game, experience, gear, everything dies once maps start. Currently you can't even get maps to continue playing.

The game is pretty fun even getting nothing, which is crazy.

Even crazier, you can't get maps, so you can't play the endgame, to get nothing. I mean... a top level game in the world of its type... and even if I don't die- I'm playing well, I can't get maps.


Besides all of that, to the op point... most of what he said doesn't even apply to SSF.

Currency farming is a thing, but to optimize it you're forced into a specific style of gameplay that isn't actually POSSIBLE in ssf.

Why they provides bonuses for teamplay, while there is an SSF mode, is quite confusing. If anything, you should be rewarded for playing the game without leaning on trade.

Yet its the exact opposite. Group up, make a rarity bot. Make a character whose primary purpose is not to fight, but to stack as much rarity as possible and run the easiest, most rewarding content as possible... to play the market... to buy gear?

Its disgusting.

At least be honest about it and have poe2 economy simulator and then the real game. OR at the very very least, call it easy mode or something. Call it what it is.

Fake gamers pretending to game. Economy Exploit Simulator. Grab the cookie cutter build that someone else came up with that exploits the game- get your rarity and play the market.

Trauma.