Another typical day in PoE2... (Help me find the fun...)

GGG, I absolutely love this game's potential, but the current early access iteration of the game is all risk, no reward.

I've been thinking of how to articulate my thoughts for weeks, but today's short play session this morning might have encapsulated it the best.

I only share this in an attempt to provide useful, valuable feedback.

Today, I decided to spend some time on the game before work. I figured I'd knock out a few maps on my Monk. I was also excited because I wanted to test out the tweaks I'd made to my passive tree to improve my survivability. I was reluctant to drop the crit nodes, but I knew I needed more Evasion/ES to continue progressing. Even with Wind Dancer, Ghost Dance, Grim Feast, Chaos Inoculation, Acrobatics, Keep me from Harm, and nearly capped res—I still die way too much on my level 80 Invoker Monk.

I know I just need to get good, but that's the beauty of ARPGs. Just keep grinding, and you eventually get over the hump and get stronger.

Plus I figured during my mini-mapping session I might:

Reveal my first Citadel (kek lul).
Get a nice drop upgrade—any upgrade DPS or Survivability
Get some solid currency or at least sell something I've got listed.
If none of that worked out, at least I'd get to test out some of my gem swaps that I made to try to make my Monk tankier.

What actually happened...

I took care and only ran the "carefully rolled" T9 maps that my build could handle, to finish the next stage of the atlas questline. I did managed to ding lvl 81 in the process, despite narrowly dying at least half a dozen times. This was very exciting, as this meant not only did I get another tasty passive skill tree point, but the vendors would reset!

So after finishing my map, I was all too eager to check all the loot I'd scored, which included several rare epic staves. I'd already looted and recombined dozens (dozens) but eventually one of them will be something good...

They were trash of course, but I still had the vendors...

So I went and checked the refreshed shop, and lo and behold there were actually two items worth purchasing with cold hard gold. They were not usable items, but they were "good bases". Only one of them was a staff, but the epic 2h hammer had too good of a flat phys damage roll to not grab.

Since I knew both of those items would need to be further "crafted", I decided to go check my expedition vendors before slamming anything...

I had to burn through a few exotic coins before I found anything worth spending currency one, then I found a staff with some potential. It boasted a mid-tier phys/accuracy roll and a upper-mid-tier flat phys roll. I was excited, because expedition "crafting" is where it's at...

30 seconds and a host of expedition currency later and the staff is modified, but not better. I take it and then proceed to "craft" it further with my very limited supply of chaos orbs until the item looses all the worthwhile mods, retaining the trash ones.

In an attempt to redeem the "crafting session" I attempt to "craft" my other items by exalt slamming them. 30s and several exalts later I have a couple more disenchant worth items...

This was another disappointing crafting session, but I'm not going to let it break my spirit...
Besides, I'm now in T10 maps, this is where the drops should really start improving...

I carefully juice my newest tower and map. I defeat my first T10 map boss (Balbala) and go track down the final rare mob in my map so I can complete it. I find a small pack of vulture like birds in one corner of the map. A quick Ice-Strike into Tempest Bell combo should do the trick on this lightning enhanced pack. I am lightning res capped afterall...

You Died.

Ever after staring at the screen for several minutes after the one-shot, I still couldn't discern what it was that actually one-shot me. It wasn't an on-death effect, because I don't think I ever even landed the first attack. I didn't get swarmed. There was some kind of lightning projectile. It didn't look like I got hit by it, I thought I manually dodged it, but I guess the spell is bigger than it appeared or something...

Map gone.
Exp gone.
Drops gone.
Fun gone.

Log Off.

I knew what I was getting into with an early access game.

GGG, I have complete confidence that you will work hard to eliminate bugs and fix things that don't work. You're team has proven it and earned our trust.

However, I do have a genuine fear for PoE2—and it's not in your ability to fix stuff.

It's the fear of your vision...

PoE2 has many incredible design elements. The bosses throughout the campaign are amazing, but the gameplay loop is broken right now.

I've watched enough YouTube videos and read enough posts online to say that I think most players are fans of challenging content, but the game CANNOT be this punishing at the same time.

If you want to retain a healthy player base you've got to pick one or the other: Hard or Punishing (not both).

Also, for players that want greater difficulty, albeit Ruthless or "Mediumcore", why can't we just let them opt-in?

The game currently has plenty of risk, but where are the rewards?

Loot is beyond bad
Most uniques are bad
Crafting is a misnomer
Progression is painful at best

As a long time time ARPG player with thousands of hours in PoE alone, I'm finding it hard to continue playing the current early access version of PoE2.

I hope this isn't truly your vision for PoE2, because it is ruthless—and it's not that fun.

+1, echoes my thoughts to a T and is better said than I managed.

A thoughtful and well written post, I really hope GGG has someone reading these. I wrote a similar "how I feel" post last week which I will update occasionally as time goes on.

I also had a similar 1-shot experience from a massive blue lightning doughnut of death that appeared then detonated within about 0.5s. Even if I knew it was coming and knew the mechanic, the time from being visible to detonating was ridiculously short.

But at least I knew what it was on that occasion. I often don't.

i would wait until they sort their mess, its mostly frustrating now. Besides, there aint much to do in endgame anyway

Well written and has been the exact same experience for me.

Well said in the post. I also like the game and really have the potential to be on top but need to attract new people, who maybe first coming to the genre or just want more chill/reward systems and less stressful from aspect of 1-shot mechanics that really cannot get it how and why. there is not a log or type of stuff to go deep into and see what really happen you see a flash and you get deleted..

I don't want to compare it to D4 and everyone should stop comparing. PoE need to stand as alone and successful game which develop in own style. Best idea on top of my head is why not make two modes of the standard path, one be really sweaty core for the big brains people and one for the semi players who just want to play and explore the content on its peace without stress out.. game is beautiful and more will come but don't lock it down to only try hard players.

Help you find the fun?


The only person that can do that is you

New player here, SSF lover which also doesn't like to use pre-made builds.

That said, I have to bite-the-bullet and end the campaign using a Raging Spirit minion infernalist to get the basis of the game. Still SSF... but I hate that character and have not played again with it afterwards.

I never engaged in "end-game". I don't see a deterministic path for progress... so I didn't bothered.

However, I am having some fun now. And it comes from trying to find something that reasonably "works" and it's not main stream for a new Witch character.

I started PLENTY of new witch characters and tried-out "a lot" between ACT 1and ACT 2. My current understanding is that all occult spells are awfully underpowered... and, believe it or not, I do much better with the biggest stick I can find around... So, right now, I am championing a two-handed "melee witch".

The basic two handled attacks are amazing on ACT 1. I killed the ACT 1 using basic attacks... several times already... so I am pretty sure that's a really viable way of crushing ACT 1 with whatever character :D

As for ACT 2 [where I am currently], I have always faced a wall mid of it since mob groups have much [MUCH] more health and hit harder... All previous iterations failed during ACT 2.

For this iteration, I am trying to use the second most basic mace attack: Earthquake. Yeah, that one that takes 4s to pop-off.

The point is that witch is "close enough" to the only two node groups in the tree that decreases the duration of skills. These nodes + the support gem should reduce the aftershock from the Earthquake from 4s to 0.24s [30+16+8+8+16+8+8]. The current plan is to find the biggest-stick-ever in ACT 2 and see how far I can go with this strategy.

Ah, I also want to poke with blasphemy curses.. specially the "vulnerability" one. If enemies have absurdly low armor, there should be a "easy way" to break it and abuse it somehow... didn't figure anything on it yet :P

I will probably end the campaign only once again [at max]... or leave it in the middle... but for now, I having my fun trying to fix "my" puzzle...

Sadly there is no fun to be found in Ruthless 2.0

Just waiting on 3.26 lmao

Similar experience, managed to get to level 89.
Stopped playing week ago, would still be grinding if not for the xp loss which makes grinding frustrating and seem pointless.