What POE could learn from No Rest for the Wicked

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karsey#2995 wrote:

Combat doesn't need to be slow or necessarily methodical for a player to feel actively and meaningfully engaged, they just have to feel like they're participating and choosing how to do so, for strategic reasons.

I think it's correct to interpret it in a way that means PoE2 would need to be slower than PoE1. But that game is so fast that slower than PoE1 still doesn't necessarily mean slow, in an absolute sense.

Chris said he didn't like the speed PoE1 had been pushed into. Specifically mentioning unlimited teleports. They targeted Second Wind claiming that reason during the Expedition changes fully intending to slow the game down which lasted for literally only that league.

Having worked with old tricks in engines. Speed is an illusion. It can only be compared within that medium and the player's general interaction with the world. Action Vs lull periods are how people see speed. Everything else can simply be design tricks.

The most notable failure is meaningful combat which is directly related to enemy density.
You can't have high enemy density and meaningful combat. They just don't mix.

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Superior?? So the big Dragon that falls like a paper in the ground or the two fool schizophrenics bosses with saws is considered superior fight? Try first boss in NRTTW between 2-3 level and we taking again...

Yes, superior. Boss fights are much more interesting and well done in POE2 than in NRW.

I think I see what you're saying, that a swarm implies use of a large aoe swarm-fighting skill and it feels brainless and non-meaningful but I don't think it's necessary to posture that one scenario as something that defines the entire scope of combat in the entire game. It's not always the case that monsters are dense and the amount of density can vary. There can be just as much dynamic in that element on a pack-to-pack basis as there is on other things such as the monsters that compose the swarm and the skill a player has to deal with it.

Eg. A large, AoE attack might be a great choice to lay down on the pack of monsters that just erupted out of the Abyss and maybe you have to deal with the rares that survive using more focused skills and movement. Or maybe it erupted while you were very close to it, and while surrounded (as a warrior) you raised your shield to block a flurry of incoming hits, procced some stuns, and with some guard from the vanguard support, you infernal cry/boneshatter your way out before re-engaging with any surviving rares or stragglers in separate relevant manner.

Boss fights aren't particularly dense either. If the game is just an endless dense mob of cannon fodder you're going to just find a mindless way to explode it all as best as you can and I would agree with you in that scenario, that's not really "combat".

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karsey#2995 wrote:

If the game is just an endless dense mob of cannon fodder you're going to just find a mindless way to explode it all as best as you can and I would agree with you in that scenario, that's not really "combat".

Yep, it's basically Brotato of Exile right now. Not what I signed up for.