Tomorrow's Biggest Question: What type of Game will PoE 2 Be?

Maybe they ll come up with 2 modes Ruthless for slow play and Normal for zoomers. There is no other way to do it. But even Ruthless will be hard to make taking into account all those crazy systems with 10000 meters aoe.

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Hiwon#1217 wrote:

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

My question isn't their intention, its their intestinal fortitude to stick to their artistic vision slowing the endgame down (and balancing rewards and RNG to actually match that pace) so they didn't waste all the new design space on only the campaign. Thats the only real question.

I've already seen them capitulate to the vocal demands for dumb gameplay in POE1's clear speed meta debate; so its a reasonable question if they have the balls to stand up to them this time.

They split the game into its own thing so it could have slower pacing and POE1 fans could still have their dumb mindlessly repetitive gameplay that unintentionally resulted from GGG not having the experience to scope their game, nor the fortitude to fix it when this lack of scoping inevitably resulted in a dumb runaway condition that made their ARPG play like a space ship shooter.

Imagine throwing away 6 years of designing to revert POE2 into a graphics upgrade for POE1's clear speed meta space ship shooter game.

At least D4 doesn't have pretensions of being more than a dumbed down game.

What exactly is your imagined solution to prevent high end players from optimizing?

You'd have to take away the tools that allows that speed meta now wouldn't you...which would cause it's own furious uproar.

They put themselves against the wall releasing 2 in this state.

The next act should be interesting

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Hiwon#1217 wrote:

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

My question isn't their intention, its their intestinal fortitude to stick to their artistic vision slowing the endgame down (and balancing rewards and RNG to actually match that pace) so they didn't waste all the new design space on only the campaign. Thats the only real question.

I've already seen them capitulate to the vocal demands for dumb gameplay in POE1's clear speed meta debate; so its a reasonable question if they have the balls to stand up to them this time.

They split the game into its own thing so it could have slower pacing and POE1 fans could still have their dumb mindlessly repetitive gameplay that unintentionally resulted from GGG not having the experience to scope their game, nor the fortitude to fix it when this lack of scoping inevitably resulted in a dumb runaway condition that made their ARPG play like a space ship shooter.

Imagine throwing away 6 years of designing to revert POE2 into a graphics upgrade for POE1's clear speed meta space ship shooter game.

At least D4 doesn't have pretensions of being more than a dumbed down game.

What exactly is your imagined solution to prevent high end players from optimizing?

I don't think slowing the game down means preventing players from optimizing. I think it just means balancing the ceiling for optimization so that optimized builds still engage with content without trivializing it. For example instead of having the high end be melting a boss in 1 second have the high end be killing a boss in 1 minute. That should be something that's achievable.

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Ripto#7716 wrote:

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Hiwon#1217 wrote:

What exactly is your imagined solution to prevent high end players from optimizing?

I don't think slowing the game down means preventing players from optimizing. I think it just means balancing the ceiling for optimization so that optimized builds still engage with content without trivializing it. For example instead of having the high end be melting a boss in 1 second have the high end be killing a boss in 1 minute. That should be something that's achievable.

But the speed comes from that optimization. The ceiling in PoE isn't just "how much damage the best skill does" where there's an easy adjustment, it's generated from top end players finding weird and often not always particularly intended interactions between a half a dozen factors.

Even putting aside the difficulty in actually lowering that ceiling, in your new hypothetical where your highly optimized ceiling player are taking 60 seconds to down a boss, what is happening to the 90%? The regular players who are now staring down a boss that takes 20, 30, 60 minutes to kill?

If instead we're collapsing the ceiling and floor towards each other such that the ceiling is 1 minute boss kills and the floor for a somewhat run of the mill gear/build boss kill is 5 minutes (to prevent the above), then what are we doing with character progression? Does it really feel rewarding to kill a boss in 100 seconds, invest a hundred hours and endless currency in improvement, kill that boss again... and now it takes 75 seconds instead? Does it feel rewarding for a regular player to get a major upgrade unique or buy that really high end bow/mace/whatever and then drop into a map and the packs that took 4-5 attacks to clear instead take 3-4?

I feel like people are just saying "make it slower" without actually considering the other factors and effects of that undertaking. Everyone is saying to just balance it like Act 1 or 2 but I don't know that 6 acts and then hundreds of maps at a similar sort of pace and difficulty is a sustainable vision for player progression. To some extent I don't even think it works in Act 1 and 2. On my second or third characters (with zero leveling uniques or muled gear) just knowing what skills and supports were what, having a better idea of the item bases/mods, and knowing what order to approach encounters in meant I was pretty mindlessly blasting through early zones.

It's not about the "slower phase", some skill has way higher multiplier than other skill, resulting in 80-90% build using said skill, not to mention the huge bonus from certain item like HOWA. That's why the majority of endgame build always relied on a specific skill and item.

This is one of the main reason why enemies drop dead really quick on endgame content (and dev balance it by giving all of them thermonuclear damage as basic attack...weird). The other reason is the enemy level itself, where the level gap is just too huge once you reach level 90+++

Source: I always open T14-15 for public, and 9 out of 10 people have the exact same build doing the exact same thing.

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Hiwon#1217 wrote:

But the speed comes from that optimization. The ceiling in PoE isn't just "how much damage the best skill does" where there's an easy adjustment, it's generated from top end players finding weird and often not always particularly intended interactions between a half a dozen factors.

That is partially true, but a lot of the trouble comes from the quantity of multiplicative interactions. These work fine early in the game, when our gear, our ability to get deep into the tree, our number of points, and so on are all limited. But late game, that goes out the window. And doubly so when they then add new things like those ringed jewels. So suddenly a 1.2 x 1.2 becomes a 2.2 x 2.4 x 1.6. That's where the general issues come from. Like if you look at the spark builds, Spark scales with duration, projectile speed, number of projectiles, shock magnitude, double shock, extra dmg (hiya archmage), dmg, +skill level, and resist debuffs. And I'm probably missing a few things.

But this is probably the hardest thing to balance. It is good to have powerful nodes for people to chase, and so those further out should be rewarding. Keeps players going forward. But from a balance perspective, you want the opposite... weaker nodes on the outside, to essentially have DR built in.

It also doesn't help that GGG has always been bad at balance. They have abilities that are obviously good, and ones that are obviously bad. And some that are so obviously broken it makes you question the competence of their designers (hiya, Archmage, Bell, and a few other things). And so players pick the good abilities and that's what they apply all that scaling to. So if GGG actually balanced abilities better, that would go a long way to making it harder for the 90% to have a bad build, and at the same time, reduce the ability of the other part to as nuts.

And the nice thing about an interaction between half a dozen factors is that, while it is hard to foresee, it is easier to hit with a targeted nerf, one that won't hurt the general populace much.

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SolusiRadikal#3269 wrote:

Source: I always open T14-15 for public, and 9 out of 10 people have the exact same build doing the exact same thing.

typical poe meta gaming.. it's a balance issue, meta is no better than the average build x2 but x500

I agree, at the moment PoE 2 is "an hybrid between two different game styles", between the campaign gameplay and the Cruel difficulty with also the endgame that is literally the maps from Path of Exile 1.

I have about 4000 hours on PoE 1 and while playing the PoE 2 endgame I asked myself: "Why am I playing the PoE 1 endgame with improved graphics, without movement spells and without a real crafting?"

So they must let us clearly understand what their vision is for the future of PoE 2 because not everyone may like it and we must be free to play something else or just play PoE 1.

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KingAlamar#4071 wrote:

If GGG's vision of endgame is similar to the "really good" builds we see now -- I.E. is basically PoE ver 1.5 then let us know so players which are not wanting that can find a different game they do want.

It can be both. Just play the character through the campaign once they buff the drops, make respecs cheaper, and make it less of a slog, then quit. Come back for seasons and just don't grind the end game.

One initial thought that may defend the other (the 2 reps from GGG of the interview) side perhaps...their remarks were quite intentional (despite the lack of empathy), and it was in doing so for the best for the future, i.e. prepare those that think there will be change and that it will be diff from PoE1 (end-game/mapping) but he already knows it's a lost cause (currently leaning towards they are in-the-know re. general community sentiments [and perhaps there really is nothing they can/will do]). However, playing devil's advocate, given the past history of PoE1 and what many others have said for their track record - this also isn't anything new in a way...so perhaps this is again no different, and history repeats itself once again (in due time).

To re-iterate (TLDR): post-interview, (personally) my current (until more data arrives from the community/YT/forums/Reddit/etc) bet will side on past history, i.e. "melee < ranged" and "zoom zoom 1-shot" -- so, no real changes from PoE1, essentially (with the main outlier of the campaign for the 1st ~60 lvls or so...lol --- and new melee classes like Druid/Templar/Marauder...lol [bye Warrior...lol {I don't count Monk...lol -- nor minion/Witch...lol}]) -- and timing-wise, I'll just say 2026+ (so, guessing 1 more year of gamedev until full Release post-this EA).

(Post this interview w/ the 2 GGG reps, I just decided to bite the bullet and re-rolled Monk [finally?] for SSF [felt the additional handicap of SSF would help Balance it out...lol. {Merc lvl ~64, Witch lvl 21, Warrior lvl 66 -- considering trying out the Quarterstaff for my Merc -- Re-spec Again...lol -- and yes, will still be on the lookout for future Druid/Templar/Marauder...lol}])