Why POE2 is dying

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aremboldt#6825 wrote:

I was just reading this, curious what other people were thinking about it. I just tried the game again after playing 0.1, and all the issue that made me quit are still present. Most of this feedback is around Campaign and Early Endgame, as I could never really be bothered to interact with true endgame like POE1:

1. Unrewarding balance in skills and loot drops during campaign leveling. Either you're playing with full uniques and some OP skill like rake or whatever, or you are spending 30 hours doing the campaign.

2. Trying new things to work around issue #1 is extremely expensive and time consuming and you often cannot pivot. Not so much of an issue in a FINISHED game, but why block people so hard in EA?

3. Bosses in general aren't very fun. They all seem to heavily punish certain types of builds and be cakewalk for others. Even experienced streamers have had issues on normal act 2 final boss, because it's a multi dimensional gear/dps/survival check at a point where you probably haven't found much good gear yet, and don't have much agency. And if you take that boss and compare it to some others, it's difficulty to progression given seems totally out of line.

4. Melee feels like a wet noodle OR it does 95 million dps and 1 shots a boss. Very polarizing for no reason.

5. Ascendencies are way out of balance. Skill gems as well.

6. There's many pathfinding bugs which ruin your progress on maps that are way too large, especially act 3 maps. It's so slow you just feel like alt-f4.

7. Monster density and combat are either too easy, or some mob snipes you from offscreen and 1 shots you, leaving you asking "what just happened to me". No agency in any of this.

8. Visual screen clutter and performance drops exacerbate issue #7.

9. An app like Path of Building is still required to enjoy any time of far endgame, as no systems are explained well enough in the game to allow the player to make meaningful enough dps and skill interaction choices.