How POE1 felt after coming back from POE2

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exsea#1724 wrote:

everything comes at a cost. in poe1 you can potentially reach crazy amounts of speed. but every power you get, will force the devs to react and make content with consideration of that power.

we can see this in poe1 endgame bosses, where shaper slams have a short react time and has a huge aoe. having the ability to get a lot of movespeed and movement skills necessitates harder content.

by doing so, the amount of player skill required rises dramatically where in the end the best way to play is to forgo skill and just have good gear to be able to either tank/survive slams or outright burst the boss down.

sure we move like a snail in poe2, the caveat is most of the boss encounters are much more beginner friendly where we can actually avoid damage.

Well the game is faster but see, you surely played the arbiter of ash in poe2. This guy has a mechanic actually needing you to socket the one movement skill in the game or have at least 30% real movement speed or you're dead. And there you will also need catlike reflexes especially when the meteors are going down offscreen. No boss in poe1 needs that kind of skill set, nearest would be uber sirus with his teleport and diediedie beam. And there only need one good dodge, not 5+
So currently I see your argument more on poe1 side, at least concerning endgame. In early game its the other way around. Early game in poe1 needs the player to understand gearing. Funnily enough the answer to easily beat Merveil is the same as with the count. get cold res. But ech boss wants something different:
Vaal thing: movement. Dominus: lightnig resist and learning to use environment.
Malachai: Bullet hell dodging. etc. pp. In poe2 its one thing: Time your dodgeroll.

Also concerning Endgame:
If I'm lazy i can easily build a character in poe1 that actually tank the slam even from uber shaper. but arbiter meteor is always a oneshot. Speed is only partially the problem here. And normal map bosses? They seldomly have skills that oneshot rounded characters whereas in poe2 almost everyone of them has one of those slams that can kill players that don't stack ES to the moon

edit:

And don't forget the tried and true poe1 formula also existent in poe2: Just the delete the bad guy in 2 seconds and you don't need skill (which was my approach in the end)

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- snip -
i wont go too much more into that as it just serves to show my pov on why i think poe2's story is better. the player has a lot of drive and also a lot of why's are answered in game.

Well yeah, I didn't much care about the happenings because the revenge on the count story is kind of disconnected. I mean he didn't do anything to me, When I was standing on that scaffold I already knew I would escape. Outside of standing me up there he didn't do anything. Most characters also have no emotional connection to the people of rivenfell which is kind of weird. A well, there is still time to improve.

Seriously act 1 is actually decent, act 2 however was only believable with the witch, because shes already evil. All others should have massacred the whole damn tribe at any point of the story.

And I hate the new sin. hes is boring and so stereotypical he could star in the next marvel movie.

But you are right with the Story/lore in poe1. The game actually needs the player to read the stories in the maps, talk to all the npcs and read item descriptions to get the gist.
But this imo helps the atmosphere if you actually invest the time.

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100% agree. poe1> poe2 in the end game side. but i would say i really like how in poe2's atlas, league specific trees exist separately and can only be improved on if you engage with them.

That was one of my biggest beefs actually. I wanted to play ritual/deli/breach. But first i needed to farm the mechanic in some underpowered state for 50 maps to actually earn skill points.... no it should be the other way around. You be able to invest in a league mechanic at a cost the general atlas tree and earn points to mitigate that tradeoff until its even again. So basically poe1 Atlastree which is the peak of all meta endgame systems over all ARPG games with map/rift/shard mechanics.

To sum it up: Coming back to PoE 1 felt really good.

People are drawn to different things when it comes to ARPG's, and PoE 1 and PoE 2 have very different appeals. PoE 2 does a really good job when it comes to presentation, both mechanically and graphically. The three first acts are solid, and give a nice sense of progression. They are a lot more intuitive than the acts in PoE 1.

But for me, the positives of PoE 2 end there.

I will never be a "bosser". I don't really find boss fights that exciting in the long run. Sure, the first few times you fight a boss, it can be exciting, but the next 100 times, it quickly becomes "something you just have to do". And every system in PoE 2 seems built around bossing in a way that is very limiting when it comes to player agency.

And player agency will always be key for me. Progress through what you find fun. Fun. Fun? Yes, fun! And "fun" is 100% subjective, so the more freedom a game has for players to "find their own fun", the better (IMO).

And the endgame systems aren't the only systems that hurt player agency in PoE 2. The gem/skill system also put limitation on what skills to use at different points. The tower system puts limitation on what content you "have to" run. And the balance of the league mechanics put limitations on what mechanics to run.

That's why coming back to PoE 1 felt like freedom. Because it is freedom. You are free to do whatever you want, play whatever you want, do whatever mechanic you want, in whatever map you want - and I could go on. There are endless options and paths, as longs as you aren't a slave to the meta - and in PoE 1, you don't have to be, because can farm up enough to make 'everything' work while doing what you think is fun.

I'm an endgame player, mainly a mapper, and PoE 2 just isn't "the game" for a player like me, because every single part of "endgame" and "mapping" is worse in PoE 2 than it is in PoE 1. Everything, from speed, map layouts, juicing mechanics, league mechanics, build diversity and the most important factor of them all: Player agency/freedom.

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

[...]
Funnily enough the answer to easily beat Merveil is the same as with the count. get cold res.
[...]

Note how PoE2 telegraphs the element used by each boss early in that act, by giving you a mini-boss reward that permanently enhances the resist to that element !

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And normal map bosses? They seldomly have skills that oneshot rounded characters

Freaking Crimson Township boss as a T1 map...

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And don't the tried and true poe1 formula also existent in poe2: Just the delete the bad guy in 2 seconds and you don't need skill (which was my approach in the end)

In PoE1 that works in the campaign, but not any more as soon as you hit maps, because :
1.) Only 6 portals, then your precious map is done for.
2.) You now lose 10% XP per death
3.) You just got hit for -30% resists
So you also hit a freaking wall in terms of leveling up.
I experienced this a few days ago with a Static Strike Surfcaster, it was quite impressive the difference between how fast I was in Part 2 and how slow I became in early maps !
(I should have known better than to rush it...
sadly in PoE1 most of the Act 10 is quite unpleasant to farm (and Laby3 gets boring after a while)...
I get that Oriath under Kitava is supposed to be horrible as locations go, but look at D2's Act 4 (Hell) in how to do 'endgame' both horrifying and not a chore to play (after the Iron Maiden fix, heh).)

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the new sin. hes is boring

Hah yeah, compared to the first one...
(But then, remember how Sin only shows up in PoE1 quite late in the campaign : only after you've killed your first god ? So he gets more opportunity to be cool there I think...)

Wouldn't you get the gist of the story only from not skipping the 'mandatory' dialogue ?

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tsunamikun#0433 wrote:

Well the game is faster but see, you surely played the arbiter of ash in poe2. This guy has a mechanic actually needing you to socket the one movement skill in the game or have at least 30% real movement speed or you're dead.

But ech boss wants something different:
Vaal thing: movement. Dominus: lightnig resist and learning to use environment.
Malachai: Bullet hell dodging. etc. pp. In poe2 its one thing: Time your dodgeroll.

i agree with you on the arbiter. its bullshit. in fact i think GGG fucked up for the arbiter, as sometimes players can get in situations where the safe zone and death beam overlap. like what the flying fuck are we supposed to do.

i would even say another thing that i find is on GGG is the bird boss in trial of chaos. if you pick impending doom where your safe zone is one small circle. the bird can summon a tornado smack in the middle of the circle. like wtf.

but that said thats a failure on ggg's part on the consistency of the boss mechanics. i believe its not intended or not balanced.

i rather like poe2 where it simplified everything down to timing your dodgeroll, rather than running around to look for cover. as for bullet hells, poe2 does it way better. you did mention how crucial it is for players in poe2 to get 30% movespeed. i think that thats a "fair" end game requirement. which is not too difficult to achieve. most players look for 30-35% movespeed boots anyway so hitting that requirement is easy.

if we compare that to poe 2 where we have the eradicator which requires players to have much faster movespeed. then we get uthred (t17 boss) that i believe 30% ms is simply not enough. uber eater's tracking death beam requires a very fast amount of ms to avoid. it's a way higher requirement.

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Also concerning Endgame:
If I'm lazy i can easily build a character in poe1 that actually tank the slam even from uber shaper. but arbiter meteor is always a oneshot. Speed is only partially the problem here. And normal map bosses? They seldomly have skills that oneshot rounded characters whereas in poe2 almost everyone of them has one of those slams that can kill players that don't stack ES to the moon

i 100% agree with you on that. that is where POE1 is better for players who want to have an easier time. which is where the 2 games diverge

"

edit:

And don't forget the tried and true poe1 formula also existent in poe2: Just the delete the bad guy in 2 seconds and you don't need skill (which was my approach in the end)

tbh i find it disgusting that this can happen. as much as i like poe2 i don't like the fact that some builds overperform so much that they trivialize content this way.

on the flipside, i've cleared bosses undergeared, while using mace which is the worse skill. took me 4-5 minutes to kill the trial of sekhema boss. but thats something poe2 players can do because you can make up for your lack of gear with your own player skill. (30% ms is a must tho). poe2, it gets unreasonable for players as time goes on, as there are permanent degen pools, which punish low dps characters.

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Well yeah, I didn't much care about the happenings because the revenge on the count story is kind of disconnected. I mean he didn't do anything to me, When I was standing on that scaffold I already knew I would escape. Outside of standing me up there he didn't do anything. Most characters also have no emotional connection to the people of rivenfell which is kind of weird. A well, there is still time to improve.

Seriously act 1 is actually decent, act 2 however was only believable with the witch, because shes already evil. All others should have massacred the whole damn tribe at any point of the story.

And I hate the new sin. hes is boring and so stereotypical he could star in the next marvel movie.

But you are right with the Story/lore in poe1. The game actually needs the player to read the stories in the maps, talk to all the npcs and read item descriptions to get the gist.
But this imo helps the atmosphere if you actually invest the time.

you not caring about the count is quite meta knowledge where you know you're going to escape. but the difference between 1 and 2, is it shows you escaping the gallows, and it does show you that the dude literally tried to get you hung. whereas in poe1, after your "sentencing" you just end up on the beach out of nowhere. i do agree that we have no connection with the npcs in rivenfell. and i too dont really care too much about them.

but i would say poe1 DID make me care for the NPCs such as silk and nessa. i tried replaying the game several times, doing quests in different sequences to see if i could save them. i guess, back then we had more time to care for games in a different way then we have now. we're a bit too spoilt with wikis. alva is my fav npc in poe2 as of now. its funny to see her get knocked out after being so boastful. if she gets killed of in poe2 i would not "try" to find a way and save her, instead i would simply just accept it as part of the story.

sometimes when i look back on older games with the experience of other modern games. i find that a lot of older games required a lot from gamers to get them invested. ff7 for example is lauded as the best ff. but if we are objective and not see it with bias, you start off as a mercenary working for a terrorist organization. the org you're gonna bomb is evil because you're told it's evil.

once done with the bomb run. you get to town and at a point your objective is simply "explore the town". i have zero drive to continue. nothing to push me on. but a younger me would push on because i m hyped that cloud has a huge ass sword and the game has awesome 3d graphics.

things hit different when you take away your bias.

oh and yeah i dont like the new sin too. he has a hunchback and i dont like bad posture lol

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That was one of my biggest beefs actually. I wanted to play ritual/deli/breach. But first i needed to farm the mechanic in some underpowered state for 50 maps to actually earn skill points.... no it should be the other way around. You be able to invest in a league mechanic at a cost the general atlas tree and earn points to mitigate that tradeoff until its even again. So basically poe1 Atlastree which is the peak of all meta endgame systems over all ARPG games with map/rift/shard mechanics.

one thing that grinds my gears with poe1 atlas/ggg is ggg seems to be intent on making the game as hard as possible.

we have a 10% xp penalty thats "not going anywhere" especially since we have an omen to mitigate it.

so the best thing that players can do is to block extra content thats too difficult or too risky for me. and we CANT block masters.

also i the issue you mentioned is so fucking frustrating to me. coz why isit that we have to rough it out for 50 maps before we can make the game easier?

its so counterintuitive. by the time we get those atlas points we're likely in a stronger state.

i would say regardless of all that poe's atlas tree is still the gold standard.

but other games are picking up. torchlight infinite also has an atlas tree which imho is a hybrid of poe1/2.

you dont need to waste points on "travelling" nodes. you just choose the league mechanic that you want to fine tune and dump them in.

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Phrazz#3529 wrote:

To sum it up: Coming back to PoE 1 felt really good.

for you maybe but for me its a hard no.

all i needed to do is get to level 80 for the final mtx reward but i'm so done with poe1 that i just didnt.

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People are drawn to different things when it comes to ARPG's, and PoE 1 and PoE 2 have very different appeals.
I will never be a "bosser".

100% agree with you on that. despite me no longer liking poe1, i feel poe1 has a lot going on for it. it gives players a huge amount of ways to gain player power. giving players a huge amount of powerfantasy. where you can literally face tank otherworldly avatars.

not wanting to be a bosser is fine. its as you say. different people have different goals. and poe1 blasting screens can be real fun and addictive.

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And player agency will always be key for me. Progress through what you find fun. Fun. Fun? Yes, fun! And "fun" is 100% subjective, so the more freedom a game has for players to "find their own fun", the better (IMO).

100%

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The tower system puts limitation on what content you "have to" run. And the balance of the league mechanics put limitations on what mechanics to run.

That's why coming back to PoE 1 felt like freedom.

are free to do whatever you want, play whatever you want, do whatever mechanic you want, in whatever map you want

I'm an endgame player, mainly a mapper, and PoE 2 just isn't "the game" for a player like me, because every single part of "endgame" and "mapping" is worse in PoE 2 than it is in PoE 1. Everything, from speed, map layouts, juicing mechanics, league mechanics, build diversity and the most important factor of them all: Player agency/freedom.

i agree with you on mapping. despite "loving" poe2. i actually hate the end game mapping system. i actually prefer if they just went back to poe1's mapping system.

i would disagree with you on build diversity and juicing to sum up the disagreement is because of my personal opinion. which is, i believe that players shouldn't be able to zoom too easily. zooming is the end goal. and thus with zooming being difficult, players would have a hard time juicing things to begin with. admittedly no current arpg does this even poe2. but poe2 is more closer towards this than poe1. i will also mention that i m aware that meta builds exist in poe2 too and the clearspeed is akin poe1.

all i can say is, if ggg makes it more towards poe1, then i think i might just quit both games entirely.

somehow playing poe2 using a mace i kinda changed my entire perspective on diablolikes. i actually like poe2's mace game play. its slow and methodical. but while "everything else" has better clear/speed etc, it simply sours my enjoyment as i rely on trade to get upgrade. being slow means earning less. earning less means other people buy up the good stuff easier. i'll just be behind all the time.

in fact now that i've learned to enjoy methodical games. i've actually rekindled my fire for monster hunter.

who knows, probably one day i'd stop bitching so much in these forums entirely. lol

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BlueTemplar85#0647 wrote:

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the new sin. hes is boring

Hah yeah, compared to the first one...
(But then, remember how Sin only shows up in PoE1 quite late in the campaign : only after you've killed your first god ? So he gets more opportunity to be cool there I think...)

Wouldn't you get the gist of the story only from not skipping the 'mandatory' dialogue ?

old sin was a chad. new sin has a hunchback. not as cool as before. they could have striped away his wings and it would be fine. he doesnt need to be muscular.

i prefer the old sin. but in poe2 "lore" he was bound to the tree for ages.

i would even go to say they should have made him thin and weak as a result. he looks really weird being "big under robes". maybe coz he's hiding his wings there?

pretty cool that he IDS everything for you tho

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exsea#1724 wrote:

[...]
but i would say poe1 DID make me care for the NPCs such as silk and nessa. i tried replaying the game several times, doing quests in different sequences to see if i could save them. i guess, back then we had more time to care for games in a different way then we have now. we're a bit too spoilt with wikis.
[...]

What «back then», PoE1 came out in 2012, not 1992 ?!
Heck, even in 1992 you could get paper guides.
It's just that you've played PoE1 many many times now (and also it isn't an RPG).

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once done with the bomb run. you get to town and at a point your objective is simply "explore the town". i have zero drive to continue. nothing to push me on. but a younger me would push on because i m hyped that cloud has a huge ass sword and the game has awesome 3d graphics.

Is it ? Don't you get told to find Avalanche's bar or something ? With the most important information in the quest log ?
Also, FF7 is an RPG, so exploration is a huge part of it - and even today you won't always get map quest markers telling you where to go (at least in RPGs that lean into the exploration side).

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BlueTemplar85#0647 wrote:

What «back then», PoE1 came out in 2012, not 1992 ?!
Heck, even in 1992 you could get paper guides.
It's just that you've played PoE1 many many times now (and also it isn't an RPG).

even back when poe had wikis, there were many things unknown. vendor recipes is one of them. GCPman made bank because he knew the GCP recipe.

just because guides were available, it doesnt mean everythings been discovered. do we know that nessa/silk could have been saved? no we didnt. did ANYONE know? only GGG.

dont forget sometimes game devs like to do sneaky stuff to reward gamers who explore the game a lot. in old FF's some places would reward you for NOT looting the place on your first run of an area but would reward you for looting it later.

some games gave special events for running things in certain orders or NOT running certain things too. in d2 you COULD abandon deckard to which he wont ID your stuff for free anymore.

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once done with the bomb run. you get to town and at a point your objective is simply "explore the town". i have zero drive to continue. nothing to push me on. but a younger me would push on because i m hyped that cloud has a huge ass sword and the game has awesome 3d graphics.

Is it ? Don't you get told to find Avalanche's bar or something ? With the most important information in the quest log ?
Also, FF7 is an RPG, so exploration is a huge part of it - and even today you won't always get map quest markers telling you where to go (at least in RPGs that lean into the exploration side).[/quote]

you do get told to go to the avalanche bar. the team talks to each other, cloud does talk because he's an edgelord. then after all the talking is done. the quest is "explore town".

14 year old me would be happy to.

old me would be. urgh. can we just tell me what you need me to do next?

yeah i get exploration is a big part of RPGs. but thats also why i would advise people not to look back at things with rose tinted glasses.

things were different, we were younger and our expectations were different.

i think in ff7's case. mass effect blew me away. you start off needing to address an attack. a colony is under attack you need to save them! people die. people get betrayed. the council doesnt want to give a fuck but i get them to make me a spectre. now its my duty to get shit done. and when they finally get me to explore i m all hyped up.

when i explore things i always have something pushing me to explore. i m in a new planet where theres x thing thats rumoured to be important. lets find x!

objectives, drives. i m pumped.

in ff7 what even is the drive? you start off as a merc and you're infiltrating a mishra facility coz mishra is bad. why do we push on? our main character is here "just for a job". he barely cares about any of his team mates. the drive is very basic. and once you're finally done you get back to town. finish the "avalanche bar" thing and you will eventually reach a point where they simply tell you to "explore town".

now step back awhile and analyze the situation. you've just finished your main task. and now all you're told to do is "explore town".

wheres your drive? theres literally nothing in game to push you anywhere.

in dragon age2, the game handles this is a different way. after talking to your team /important cutscene over, the quest becomes "Head back to rest". You are given a clear objective. but it gives players choices. do you want to just hit the bed? or do you want to go out and explore? usually in rpgs this is when i would explore. its free time out side of the main plot that i can explore and see if i can get stronger.

what do you get by "explore the town". whats the drive?

in modern games, usually theres a vague sense of direction. "oh a monster is in the area" - objective "explore the area". Look for clues - explore. Locate missing person - explore.

FF7 - ermmmm you have nothing better to do so go explore the area until you hit an invisible trigger to get to the next part of the story.

also when you actually finally get to the world map. the drive is still low. i really cant remember what the objective is after reaching the world map. but i do remember that i felt so detached. why am i doing this? why am i here? what am i fighting for?

i would easily have overlooked this if i was back in 1990s-2000s playing ff7. the drive would simply be IMA DUDE WITH A HUGEASS SWORD!!! LETS KILL THINGS!

i apologize if it triggers you but if you take away your bias, the game really has poor drive.

modern RPGS do so much more.