"Meaningful Combat" Is Anti-ARPG

ARPG is too diverse of a genre. In 2025, you must call PoE and games like it something else like "Diablo-clone." Make Nioh 2 isometric and boom, you have a Diablo-clone with meaningful combat. You still have your loot and builds, albeit with less variety. You might find that you'd need to perform 10 actions per second to perform some of the more technical combat tech like Evasion Cancel into a different stance's dash attack into the start of a combo. There's a lot more buttons involved too. Do y'all really want the same gameplay in every Diablo-clone for the next 20 years with nothing but a fresh coat of paint or what? New generations retire the traditions of the past and make new ones. Please don't be a doomer boomer.

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SoFaux#7759 wrote:

ARPG is too diverse of a genre. In 2025, you must call PoE and games like it something else like "Diablo-clone." Make Nioh 2 isometric and boom, you have a Diablo-clone with meaningful combat. You still have your loot and builds, albeit with less variety. You might find that you'd need to perform 10 actions per second to perform some of the more technical combat tech like Evasion Cancel into a different stance's dash attack into the start of a combo. There's a lot more buttons involved too. Do y'all really want the same gameplay in every Diablo-clone for the next 20 years with nothing but a fresh coat of paint or what? New generations retire the traditions of the past and make new ones. Please don't be a doomer boomer.

HAAA you touched the most important point "You still have your loot and builds, albeit with less variety" this right here alone is why PoE 2 will never be like that, PoE is too complex with too much variance, you would have to gut 90% of the game complexity and freedom to have any slight chance of balancing it around meaningful combat, right now if you balance it around a 10 million dps anyone playing a 5 million build will just quit, and anyone playing a 30 million dps build will bypass any meaningful combat, but seems like that's hard to understand for some people.

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Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

There is no way to discuss with addicted people. It's exhausting and honestly i'm giving up. Keep your meanigless arguments. I just hope that GGG stays true to their vision which is all i want. Howgh.

^this

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MakaveliPT#7753 wrote:

HAAA you touched the most important point "You still have your loot and builds, albeit with less variety" this right here alone is why PoE 2 will never be like that, PoE is too complex with too much variance, you would have to gut 90% of the game complexity and freedom to have any slight chance of balancing it around meaningful combat, right now if you balance it around a 10 million dps anyone playing a 5 million build will just quit, and anyone playing a 30 million dps build will bypass any meaningful combat, but seems like that's hard to understand for some people.

That's not true, because you have a solid foundation in the combat alone in Nioh 2. You can completely disregard a build, gear, and stats to challenge yourself against the highest scaled bosses in the game through shear will-power and have an absolutely fantastic time. It's still fun because you can express yourself through mechanical prowess--something that is impossible in a game like PoE. You can actually kill endgame bosses in 15 seconds with the highest damage build assuming you don't get hit. Alternatively, you could use ranged abilities/spells and use melee to punish at the most opportune time to achieve the kill in a similar speed. This might make the fight take 25 seconds. If you choose to use a build that lets you survive at most 1 hit, then the kill time might increase to around 45 seconds. A build that survives at most 1 hit, deals less damage, but lets you incorporate more tools may take around the same 45 seconds. A build that makes you survive at most 2 hits might increase the kill time to a minute and 30 seconds. 3 hits? 2 minutes and 30 seconds. So on and so forth. Of course everything is unbalanced; you may not even have the reaction time to use a better build. The key point here is that no matter what the build is, you can always fall back to optimizing a fight to decrease the kill time with a dozen of weapon types and 100+ skills that you have in melee weapons alone which do not have any requirements to use.

In PoE, your abilities can suck but you can't actually optimize the fight mechanically to compensate. It'll be a drag no matter what because there is no depth to it. Low DPS builds would be a lot more fun to play if you had more than a marginal amount of survivability, a reason to be that survivable in the first place, and ways to cut down kill times through mechanical skill or fight optimization. In Nioh 2, it's about understanding enemy movesets, the amount of iframes for each of your 3 dodge types, when and how you can punish with one of your skills that have a longer recovery animation, etc.


I'm not talking about just adjusting numbers lol. Make enemies perform more than 1 attack and let us use abilities tactically rather than for applying a debuff that makes our main skill deal more damage. This is such outdated gameplay. Unless GGG reworks the game from the ground up, they will have to balance to power level of all builds. Making meaningful combat can still be possible to a degree, but this means nerfing everything you love. Another problem is the economy. No matter how fun and complex other playstyles are, only the build that brings in the most currency matters.

I do agree with a lot of others points, PoE2 was pretty clear in what it was advertised as and what the goals for the game were. It's like you came to a place that advertises and sells choc chip cookies then getting mad at them for not selling you hazelnut cookies (and demanding they change from choc chip to hazelnut), when there is a place selling those right next door.

You want PoE1 and it's right there, can we not try and drag what is meant to be a new and different product into something it wasn't meant to be plz.

PoE# and any other isometric hack and slash will likely never have the depth to have multiple different dodge moves and fight setups that the meaningful combat brigade are imagining. PoE 2 is already PoE 1 with better graphics and a few better boss fights. Watched Ben last night one buttoning plus dodge roll through the campaign, he was not zooming at a billion miles an hour or clearing screens yet. This is the way it will continue to be.

Wow, we've reached the point where modern ARPG players think their genre should not have game play.
Amazing.

I do not want to blow up the screen with 1 button press for hours.

That is fun for 5 minutes then stops being fun.
The same way playing with cheat codes is fun for 5 minutes then stops being fun.

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SoFaux#7759 wrote:

That's not true, because you have a solid foundation in the combat alone in Nioh 2. You can completely disregard a build, gear, and stats to challenge yourself against the highest scaled bosses in the game through shear will-power and have an absolutely fantastic time. It's still fun because you can express yourself through mechanical prowess--something that is impossible in a game like PoE. .

here is a Nioh 2: Level 1 No Damage or No Hits, No Armor, No Items, No Yokai Skills/Shift - Part 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac8Fky8wnrc

Can you do a mental excersise if you want something like Nioh 2 for Path of Exile.

What's next, level 0 ranger all white item No damage no Hits uber pinnacle?

Does it make sense in Path of Exile? Because that is EXACTLY what you are advocating for.

They are completely different games, stop trying to pretend that PoE and other Dark souls / Nioh games can ever be the same game.

Fundamentally, largely different. These 2 genres exists on different side of the same spectrum.

Read more of my other post on this matter - Mechanical Skill (Dodgeroll) and Intellectual Skill (Build Theorycrafting) exists on a spectrum: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3883605

How terrible misguided.

You're using the 3rd entry into the genre as it's staple? Not Diablo 1, Nox or Revenant? What exactly makes you think Diablo 2 is a genre defining game over Diablo 1 which birthed it?

I modded both Diablo 1 and 2. I know quite a lot about the intricacies of their designs and I still find Diablo 1 to be superior in design. Dated for sure but more complex than most give credit.

Combat in end-game Diablo 1 (yes it's a thing) is far more engaging and meaningful than anything after. Nox as well and Revenant has rage videos floating around by players who never do a single combo during those videos. That game did WASD + Combos first in 1999.

Your claims are similar to saying any MMO that isn't a WoW clone is not an MMO and we all know that to be clearly false. An ARPG is simply a CRPG without turns. There's no other requirement.

EDIT: I'd like to add a comment on the 1 button thing. Depending when you played Diablo 2. It never used 1 button. The synergy patch towards the end of LoD is what caused that and made the game much worse. Every build used 3-4 main skills with others as utility.

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MakaveliPT#7753 wrote:

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Azimuthus#1135 wrote:

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The same can be said to you. Go play Dark Souls and leave poe 2 alone. :)

It cannot. I'm a new player for GGG. I don't play poe 1. Poe 2 was made to attract new people in the 1st place. And for old players they still keep supporting Poe 1. And this is where they all should stay.

First of all, PoE 2 wasnt even supposed to be what it is now, it was changed during production, it was supposed to be an alternative campaign for PoE 1, was not even supposed to have a 2 in it's name.

Second of all changes were made to attract new players WHILE KEEPING THE OLD ONES (you know, the ones that were part on making GGG what it is today).

And finally, PoE 1 is not getting the support it diserves, so it's getting slowly sidelined.

[Removed by Support] i've supported PoE even in it's darkest times and shitty graphics.

No, even before they spit it the game was still called PoE 2. It was basically like a new game that still had the content from the old game in it. And anyway they saw a chance to make a new game and have it be everything they wanted PoE 1 to be without all that left over baggage and took the chance. They are now different games, there is no reason to make them play the same. And if they did play the same, PoE 1 really would be dropped. Which is what you guys like to doom about, so maybe watch what you wish for.