"Jank" in an optimized game is fine; Jank in an unoptimized game makes me not want to play it.

For the record, I'm using "jank" to mean cheap mechanics that are neither well thought out nor especially interesting. They're only challenging because they're cheap.

Frankly, it's surprising to me how horribly optimized this game is, and while I understand and appreciate this is Early Access, from what I've read online there are some similar optimization issues with POE1 that have never been addressed (or only went obsolete due to technology, not because of anything the development team really did). I have a good computer that has virtually no frame rate drops on 95% of other games, and even then the drops are nothing like what I experience from POE2. This game is truly in a league of its own when it comes to how terribly optimized it is, how ridiculously cheap some of the mechanics are, and how bad players seem to be punished for not being able to overcome the technical ineptitude of this game's development team. And yes, I've deleted shader and minimap files and followed everything I've read online to optimize it further, but it's such a problem that I'm probably just going to stop playing until it's fixed (if it ever is, which I'm not confident about given the issues with POE1).

The amount of time I've spent having to regrind for experience due to a mana siphon aura rare enemy appearing out of nowhere and killing me because of latency issues, horrible frame rate drops, and outright screen freezing is just absurd. I tense up when I encounter a shrine because I may or may not be able to activate it before being killed by the mobs around it due to the latency or frame rate drops. Trials are no better, and arguably even worse given how unforgiving the base mechanics are. Gatekeeping ascendency points behind unoptimized trash encounters like the Trials screams "we don't actually care about the experience of our players." Punishing players by docking experience on death is totally fine in an optimized game where players can at least properly react; punishing players by docking experience in an unoptimized, lag filled game seems to be a way to covertly force additional grinding, thereby adding more time to gameplay, thereby increasing the likelihood for a microtransaction.

And while there's plenty to be said about Blizzard, Diablo 4 is hands down a better overall experience; even though POE2 really is the better game in just about every other metric aside from jank and optimization. It sucks because what the developers have gotten right they've gotten REALLY right, but what they've gotten wrong is so bad it just annihilates the enjoyment.

It's fine for the game to be difficult. It's fine to have cheap mechanics. It's not fine for a difficult game to run this poorly on good hardware, and it's especially not fine for a game that runs so atrociously to be this punishing.

Ah, game optimisation: the long forgotten art of anything that is outside of Nintendo stable.

Yup - been saying this for awhile. The game is nothing but punishing, when drop rates are tuned for RMT and Bots, and 99% of real players never see anything other then mediocre currency, with them nerfing the ever loving shit out of everything decent (including drop rates), and then, the final cake, the performance.

Gawd, this games (POE1) performance has been nothing but an issue since the get go, and for the most part, was never ever addressed.

You're prolly best off to pack ship and shuttle off dude, as its definitely not getting fixed.

Theres quite a few that will say "not an issue", but theres jsut as many and more than have called it for what it is.

But, to be fair, though GGG will never, and probably cant fix all the issues at this point, most companies these days arent much better. Constantly relying on the user to provide more power for their garbage unoptimized games to get by on.

Its actually become pretty standard now, alongside selling access to completely unfinished, half baked games. POE2 being no exception.

At least POE1 had a beta, and you didnt have to pay to get into it. I remember the clock. Thats how i got into the game.

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JoannaDark#6252 wrote:

Yup - been saying this for awhile. The game is nothing but punishing, when drop rates are tuned for RMT and Bots, and 99% of real players never see anything other then mediocre currency, with them nerfing the ever loving shit out of everything decent (including drop rates), and then, the final cake, the performance.

Gawd, this games (POE1) performance has been nothing but an issue since the get go, and for the most part, was never ever addressed.

You're prolly best off to pack ship and shuttle off dude, as its definitely not getting fixed.

Theres quite a few that will say "not an issue", but theres jsut as many and more than have called it for what it is.

But, to be fair, though GGG will never, and probably cant fix all the issues at this point, most companies these days arent much better. Constantly relying on the user to provide more power for their garbage unoptimized games to get by on.

Its actually become pretty standard now, alongside selling access to completely unfinished, half baked games. POE2 being no exception.

At least POE1 had a beta, and you didnt have to pay to get into it. I remember the clock. Thats how i got into the game.

You are correct, the majority of issues were never seen as a problem in poe1 for 10 years so there's little hope they would change in poe2. It's just not a fun game for me and I'm a 1%er in ARPGS. It is just extremely unrewarding compared to any other ARPG.