POE2 is too punishing in endgame, and depends too heavily on RNG for gearing
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TLDR: There is FAR too much punishment for new and inexperienced players. Losing XP, atlas progress (corrupted nexus, unique maps), and boss progress on a single death is not fun when it takes HOURS or more to have another attempt, ESPECIALLY when there is zero communication to the player beforehand. For very experienced players and streamers, this isn't an issue, but for the rest of us, it's not fun to play for more than a few days after league start.
The game is heavily balanced towards RNG right now. - The passive skill tree is mostly pretty weak, so you have to rely heavily on gear for everything. - Meta crafting only shows up well into endgame when you have a build that can consistently clear T15/T16s and can farm enough currency either directly or through trade (the latter only if you're not in SSF). - You rely on runes to drop to fix resists and attributes during the campaign, and you can get unlucky or sometimes only drop a single rune for a specific type in the entire campaign. - If you get lucky on weapon drops you feel amazing, but if you have bad luck on weapon drops, you struggle with white mobs. I've been on both sides of this, and the difference is staggering. You cannot fix a build that has unlucky drops and rolls right now, and that's a problem. - The punishment is brutal in endgame. + A player should not lose multiple hours of RNG progress on entry keys when they lose their first attempt at a pinnacle boss fight. It makes it incredibly difficult for less experienced players to learn how to fight the boss, especially when they're fighting it the first time. Eg, Atziri. This lesson was already learned for Arbiter and the Citadels, but in less than a year we already have a repeat of the same mistake. We also see it on the Corrupted Nexus nodes, where dying once to a boss will prevent you from getting atlas points, which is a huge progress blocker that isn't explained ahead of time. + When you get to "red" tier maps, you basically need to at least 4-mod them, and for T15 you're 6-modding and corrupting in the hopes to get a T16, so you're stuck with 1 life per map. This puts a lot of pressure on players to learn how to build defenses on their characters, and again this is heavily dependent on RNG for gearing. For players with less experience in POE defenses, this means lots and lots of deaths on maps, which is lots and lots of wasted maps, corrupted nexuses, and unique nodes. Recommendations: - If you want POE2 to appeal to the masses, you need to include far more instructions in the endgame. Streams and patch notes aren't enough. You need to include these details in the game itself. This is especially true for console players, which are far less likely to watch the dev-streams and content reveals. - Bring the floor up on punishment. I'm not saying the game should be easy, but it's not a good thing when Dark Souls feels less punishing that POE2. Make the punishment throw progress back at most 30 min relative to player power, not 5+ hours. - For 0.5 and beyond, there needs to be a way to control the randomness of the Atlas. I think everyone has agreed the the current endless map we get is just not fun. Wading through the fog with zero guidance will never be fun, regardless of how much juice we can get in the atlas tree. It drives a massive feeling of FOMO, wondering if you've gone in the right direction or not. You guys desperately need to go back to the drawing board for endgame, otherwise, this game is going to continue losing players league after league. PLEASE take the time to listen to player and developer feedback within the team. Consider the costs for the punishments added, and look into doing blind tests with devs that haven't worked on a feature to see how they feel about it. If the devs aren't having fun, players are definitely not going to have fun. Last bumped on Mar 8, 2026, 11:49:06 AM
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The endgame is getting an entire rework for the next league. THey were going to do some of it during this patch but they said it was to much so they want to make a dedicated "endgame" league.
Im a casual (maybe 1-3 hours a day if im lucky) and I love the punishing aspect of it. |
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"Agreed Mash the clean
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" Yeah I think it boils down to 2 kinds of gamers Gamer group A- wants no resistance no downside and wants to never die. They want the easiest path forward and any or all resistence is seen as poor game design. Gamer Group B- Wants a slog feast where they are challenged to overcome it at every step. The slightest mistake ends in your death and you are punished for it. I think GGG knows this and this is why Group A has POE 1 and Group B has POE 2. |
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" this is bullshit. resistance is fine. the entire game being frustrating and getting one shot by rng is not fun. there has to be reward to salve the punishment. everything has a downside. literally nothing just feels good to do. ur always taking the lesser of 10 evils. impossible rare combos spawned right on top of each other who move like theyre on crack while u get 1 attack per 10 dodge rolls praying to god u dont get a badly placed cast where ur rolling to is not fun. thats not slow methodical combat everyone is always saying is so amazing. im running fully juiced and tab t15s for a week now. not a single divine. yes i have over 100 rarity. its all punishment. thats the problem. |
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" There are no one shots to rng though. " Personal experience bias. But divines dropping is in fact. RNG. Ive got more than you, and I have 0 rarity gear. Mash the clean Last edited by Mashgesture#2912 on Dec 20, 2025, 8:15:15 PM
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" Can you post your skill tree and gear? THere is clearly something going on cause that is not my experience and tens of thousands of others experience. If you are constantly getting 1 shot by everything and running t15 maps fully juiced...that is not the games problem. Your character is not built to handle that kind of content. Divines are the second more rare currency in the entire game. Stop thinking divine/per hour and think...Am i having fun? If not then log off for a bit and calm down. At the end of the day its a video game not real life mate. If you are getting frustrated at a game. Thats on you brother. |
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" This is what I want to see, and be able to enjoy each game for that style... but then they just nerfed the monkey, so I'm afraid we're just going to get two games for Group A. |
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Being punitive doesn't equal difficulty or challenge. This game is punitive for no reason and because of that they're actively turning away new players or who don't want to play a game that feels like its wastes their time.
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" The game poe2 is the king of arpg is precisely because the game is extremely difficult, challenging and very tough to play. The dev cannot make things too easy anymore. Otherwise the game cannot retain its crown among the competitors. Those people who want easy way out should not play poe2. They should play other easier games like last epoch or diablo 4 instead. Also, we need to consider that there are so many resources and guides out there for poe2. There are many content creators writing guides on websites, on youtube, discord, reddit, forum. Actually if players encounter difficulties, all they need to do is to search online for solutions. Actually because of all the guides available out there, poe2 is already very easy to learn and master. Actually if you think about it, all it takes is that the players show some effort and dedication to learn the game. If the players cannot even be bothered to spend the time and effort to learn the game, then very sorry. They deserve to have a hard time playing the game. They don't deserve to have an easy time progressing in the game because they are simply unworthy and simply unfit to be a good player. 34pre98qua
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