"The motivation there is trying to make combat as good as possible" - Chris Wilson

For all the gaslighters that keep trying to say that PoE2 was always intended to become a zoom zoom projectile filled screen clear simulator.

https://youtu.be/85YWm28CioI?t=696

"Jonathan always wanted to make it better. Jonathan loves, you know, good combat systems, and always, and I don't mean to speak for him, but I think he would agree, he always wanted the Path of Exile combat system to be better than it was, and throughout the years many improvements were made, and you know, it's in a much better place now than it was at release, but Path of Exile 2 was an opportunity for the company to actually do combat a lot better.. "

Indeed it was, a fantastic opportunity, a missed opportunity in the end... it seems. Once, the mace skills were being showcased as a path to pave the future of it's combat.. now it is only something zoomers like to point fingers at and joke about.

".. and this is pushed by Jonathan wanting better for the combat system, as a KEY GOAL. In fact, the entire reason Path of Exile 2 exists, is because we wanted to make new character rigs, so that we could do more advanced animation stuff, and that, you know, project ballooned out into the entire sequel that it is today, and so the motivation there is, trying to make combat as good as possible.

Jonathan being based, of course. Too bad the PoE1 community didn't let him cook.

".....you were alluding to, the turn-based games, were turn-based because that was the state-of-the-art they could do on old computers, right? If you're running on an Apple II or an Amstrad or something like that, you don't have the horsepower to have some complicated, you know, Soulslike experience. Yep. And so, they essentially had RPGs be turn-based where an awful lot of stats are used. It's essentially simulating Dungeons and Dragons where there's, you know, there's dice being rolled and so on, and you know."

EXACTLY what I've been saying since forever. A BIG PART of the reason why these games had bad combat wasn't because that was the intent.. it was the limitations at the time of the tech. The exact same thing is true for MMORPGS and tab targeting. A lot of stats like evasion, passive block, accuracy make no sense when you are physically able now to miss with your skills and react in real time to a complex 3d world. These should only still be a thing for turn based games only.


"....and, our mutual friend Daniel Stansens commented earlier this
year at the round table, in fact, he described it as, dexterity players versus intelligence players, where a dexterity player wants to test their hand-eye coordination, and how good they are with the controls, and an intelligence player is keen to come up with some clever character build, that is, you know, the best min-maxing of stats that does damage, and I found that a kind of, a cool way of looking at it."

While I agree that there are some people that sit tightly in one camp or the other, I think this statement fails to acknowledge that the large majority of players fit in both camps and would like to have both at the same time.

I want to be able to use my int side to craft a really cool build 100% but at the same time I don't want it to do the fighting for me with next to no input from me and overpower everything without any skill involved.

It's not nearly as black and white as people make it out to be.

Let me give you a simple example to illustrate what I mean better. If I were some sort of ingenious steampunk tech engineer that crafted himself a pair of amazing steampunk power fists... I would want them to be powerful, or perhaps just have clever gadgets that give me an edge in some way but not so much as to make it so that I don't need to move a muscle anymore and it does everything for me. I still want to wear the god damn things and actually feel skillful while fighting with them.... not get entirely carried by them.

And this is extremely important, because while you can feel good about a build you crafted, that doesn't last long by itself. Once it's online, and you figured out that it works... the excitement fades... very quickly. IT IS EXACTLY why PoE has one of the worst player retentions of all video game genres.

And THIS is precisely where GOOD COMBAT would come in to carry the excitement further paired with challenging content, of course.

Another big problem with the INT side these days, compared to 20 years ago, is that INT is extremely easy to outsource... further removing any enjoyment you might've had from that experience. And with ingame build guides, this will become even more obvious to everyone. But the "dex side" doesn't have this outsourcing problem. you can't outsource skill like that.

Just think about that one specific billionaire dude that tried to look cool by playing PoE2. He's the clearest, cleanest example of this.


"So Jonathan was working on the combat side of Path of Exile 2. My role on that project was mostly production, and he had played a lot of Elden Ring beforehand. I mean, it's better for him to discuss this, of course, and I'm sure he either has done or will do, but, he certainly was quite, you know, quite impressed by the combat in those games, and very much wanted to model aspects of that into Path of Exile 2, within reason, of course, you know, he still wanted to keep the Path of Exile DNA in there"

Jonathan knew what he wanted, sadly, too many people were against him.

I hope one day we get to hear his side of the story and how he truly felt about all that happened, for real, without filters because he is the leader and must preserve the company and everyone's jobs and such. How he felt about having to shift away from his Key Goal.

Yup. Tactical, methodical, meaningful combat in a game where you fight enemies, pick up loot, and the loot has meaning and value. You find upgrades as rewards for killing enemies instead of finding slot machine tokens to use to gamble for upgrades.

That's why a lot of us jumped on board with the game, and why... eh. Not investing any more money in it, and I'm likely not going to bother with .5

Jonathan if you're reading this and the original post, just know there's a lot of people that loved the product you initially put out and the vision you proposed. And if you were to ever come back to your original intentions we would all support you and the GGG team 100%. I guess we were silent during 0.1 when people were crying constantly in the forums because we were happy with the state of the game and excited for the future. Don't think our silence was complicitiy.

fells like they given up on synergies and all of the new stuff is just copying poe 1 - zooming one button style.

We was aware it will be to slow early - now we know.. synergies are waste of time if we want to be part of economy. So there's no option than automation and those brain-rot builds.

Did you guys even play 0.1? This combat was never present in PoE2. And it never can be due to how monsters and bosses are designed. No Rest For The Wicked toned down the quantity and upped the quality of monsters. That's what *has* to be done to make an ARPG with souls-like combat.

That said, expect a smaller player base. ARPG players love power fantasy, nuking screens and devising ways to farm loot best. And that's fine if you understand you'll have a smaller playerbase. I'm sure they would be rabid fans if the product was as described.

PoE2 from the start was an upgrade of PoE1. Built from the ground up to be a patch for PoE1. There's no fix to this and there never was. So it's gonna end up being the same and since it is a live service they'll continue to add on tons of mechanics, crafting, etc and the complexity will rise. It will be the same product because they didn't change how it functions from the start.

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FruitLord#0833 wrote:

Did you guys even play 0.1? This combat was never present in PoE2. And it never can be due to how monsters and bosses are designed. No Rest For The Wicked toned down the quantity and upped the quality of monsters. That's what *has* to be done to make an ARPG with souls-like combat.

That said, expect a smaller player base. ARPG players love power fantasy, nuking screens and devising ways to farm loot best. And that's fine if you understand you'll have a smaller playerbase. I'm sure they would be rabid fans if the product was as described.

PoE2 from the start was an upgrade of PoE1. Built from the ground up to be a patch for PoE1. There's no fix to this and there never was. So it's gonna end up being the same and since it is a live service they'll continue to add on tons of mechanics, crafting, etc and the complexity will rise. It will be the same product because they didn't change how it functions from the start.

Did you play 0.1 because the act bosses were actually challenging in 0.1.

You don't speak for all ARPG players nor do you actually know if it'll impact player numbers. Stop stating your opinions as facts.

Yes and POE 2 wanted to address the problems in POE1. Constant knowledge checks being a massive barrier to new players, too much ground loot, unengaging and repetitive combat. Did you read the original post and the issues Jonathan tried to address?

I dont think Jonathan would agree with your assesment of the situation, that they gave up on "the vision". I think they mostly achieved their goal of making the combat better compared to poe1.

One important caveat you left out in your post is that Jonathan also stresses you should be able to make a very powerful character that eventually overcomes the need to engage with the combat much! Now the pace at which you can currently get to that point is still too fast and easily achievable but I believe they will do a lot in the coming 0.5.x balancing patches to adress this.

While a game is in development you can only try to describe your goals for it with words and depending on who is listening you will have many different subjective impressions of what the final game will play and feel like. There is room for interpretation! I believe a lot of players just got a different impression than what was GGG's goal for poe2 and the actual game we now have is much closer to what Jonathan wanted it to be than they are willing to admit.

PS: And before anyone tries to bring up some of the currently available builds like CoC-Comet etc... I think it should be obvious that GGG doesnt think those are acceptable for the game and will be adressed in 0.5.

The early combat goal was real, but goals still have to survive contact with the rest of the game.

PoE2 can have better animations, better bosses, more active dodging, and more deliberate skill use, but if the economy, endgame, loot, monster density, and progression still reward speed above everything else, players will optimize toward speed. That isn’t the community “not letting Jonathan cook.” It’s the incentive structure doing exactly what it was built to do.

Slow and methodical combat does not really work with an RNG lottery reward structure. The moment rewards depend heavily on repeated pulls of the slot machine, players are pushed to increase the number of pulls per hour. That means faster clears, bigger density, stricter filters, and less patience for deliberate combat.

So I don’t think dev quote archaeology settles the argument either way. To make that original vision actually work, GGG would have to rework the reward structure around fewer, more meaningful encounters with more predictable rewards. Without that, the game will always drift back toward speed farming.

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cyranis#7939 wrote:

The early combat goal was real, but goals still have to survive contact with the rest of the game.

PoE2 can have better animations, better bosses, more active dodging, and more deliberate skill use, but if the economy, endgame, loot, monster density, and progression still reward speed above everything else, players will optimize toward speed. That isn’t the community “not letting Jonathan cook.” It’s the incentive structure doing exactly what it was built to do.

Slow and methodical combat does not really work with an RNG lottery reward structure. The moment rewards depend heavily on repeated pulls of the slot machine, players are pushed to increase the number of pulls per hour. That means faster clears, bigger density, stricter filters, and less patience for deliberate combat.

So I don’t think dev quote archaeology settles the argument either way. To make that original vision actually work, GGG would have to rework the reward structure around fewer, more meaningful encounters with more predictable rewards. Without that, the game will always drift back toward speed farming.

When you view the the entire game as a loot generator game sure, your viewpoint is valid.

But this is a videogame and not a slot machine, I understand it's the same mechanisms at play but not everyone plays for the dopamine from drops.

The drops are at the end of the day a means to an end. We need drops to clear more content, since the content is either a) challenging or b) fun (ideally both). If neither of these are satisfied the vast majority of players stop chasing drops for the sake of chasing drops. So your viewpoint while quite popular on reddit and forums I think is far too simplistic.

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cyranis#7939 wrote:

The early combat goal was real, but goals still have to survive contact with the rest of the game.

...

So I don’t think dev quote archaeology settles the argument either way.

It's not an argument. It was the stated vision and plan for the game, that is what caused a lot of us to sign on, and why a lot of us are disappointed.