LET ME PLAY 0.1 AGAIN!

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

What makes POE POE is not related to combat in any way. The core/identity of POE lies in the build creation aspect and it's huge talent tree. If you remove that you no longer have POE, true. But nobody is advocating for that.

I dont think you can have it both though. Combat and build creation/creativity are inversely tied to each other:
If you want really interesting and good combat, you have to severly limit players ability to customize their character and gain power. Thats how it works in fighting games where you just choose a character with a premade set of moves, with no customization at all. They represent the combat end of the spectrum so to speak. Other genres like DmC / Darksiders / God of war are more in the middle, where they give you some amount of character customization, but combat stays intact throughout the whole experience.
PoE2 is way further on the other end of that spectrum though. Build creation and power progression is core to the games DNA, which means that the possibility to make combat a centerpiece of the game that stays meaningful is limited.

Another aspect of PoE that doesnt get mentioned at all is the camera perspective, which limits the way combat can be designed further.
In the types of games mentioned earlier or soulslike games, the enemies you encounter take up a significantly larger amount of your screen space and you see them from a head on perspective. Compared to PoE's isometric view, this means that combat-relevant information/ enemy movement is much more readable in a way that allows for better engagement with the actions enemies take.

PoE's isometric camera view makes it structurally more suited to be a type of game where you clear larger packs of enemies, resulting in less engagement on a per enemy basis.

I tend to agree with Argonio here. I've seen references to Hades 2 combat, and that would be great. But that really only works as well as it does because of the relatively narrowly controlled ranges of damage that you can deal and the fact that you don't keep the bond permanently, so your power level is always constrained, and sometimes you get a god run that feels great because you don't always do it. If you translate the same system into PiE, everyone just builds like those god runs every time and trivialize combat that way. It would be cool to see a system the meshes the best of Hades 2 and PoE, but I'm not convinced combat that tensions meaningful through the entire game is compatible with gear that scales up as high as it does.

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Argonlo#6237 wrote:

I dont think you can have it both though. Combat and build creation/creativity are inversely tied to each other:
If you want really interesting and good combat, you have to severly limit players ability to customize their character and gain power. Thats how it works in fighting games where you just choose a character with a premade set of moves, with no customization at all. They represent the combat end of the spectrum so to speak. Other genres like DmC / Darksiders / God of war are more in the middle, where they give you some amount of character customization, but combat stays intact throughout the whole experience.
PoE2 is way further on the other end of that spectrum though. Build creation and power progression is core to the games DNA, which means that the possibility to make combat a centerpiece of the game that stays meaningful is limited.

They aren't really inversely tied to each other though. The reason power goes out of hand in PoE is because of the way they've made scaling work. It's an entirely self-created problem that doesn't have anything to do with build creation.

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Argonlo#6237 wrote:

Another aspect of PoE that doesnt get mentioned at all is the camera perspective, which limits the way combat can be designed further.
In the types of games mentioned earlier or soulslike games, the enemies you encounter take up a significantly larger amount of your screen space and you see them from a head on perspective. Compared to PoE's isometric view, this means that combat-relevant information/ enemy movement is much more readable in a way that allows for better engagement with the actions enemies take.

And rightfully so, because combat can be adapted to that point of view. And while it limits some aspects, it does create opportunity for new ones as well, like most things in life.

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Argonlo#6237 wrote:

PoE's isometric camera view makes it structurally more suited to be a type of game where you clear larger packs of enemies, resulting in less engagement on a per enemy basis.

This here, is how you should know you have a biased view of it, and aren't looking at things objectively. I've played at least 3 action focused isometric camera games in recent years, none of them about screen clearing packs of enemies (I've even mentioned one in this very thread). According to your view, they were all structurally flawed. Yet I had an absolute blast in them.

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khuzvhan#0406 wrote:

here's your 0.1 meaningful combat...


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZnIzDfyK-k


Yall were just completely clueless back then, and you can't relive that.

Lategame build? this isn't campaign lol

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khuzvhan#0406 wrote:

here's your 0.1 meaningful combat...

Yall were just completely clueless back then, and you can't relive that.

That’s a huge factor. A lot of people ruined their own fun by learning how the game works, learning about good builds etc.

I deliberately don’t look at strong build related info, and the campaign is still somewhat challenging at times. However, they did definitely make a lot of things easier too.

I wouldn’t mind a difficulty option that makes the game as difficult for experienced players now as it was for new players back then.