Is the problem Jonathan?

I watched the last interview and honestly the thing that stood out the most is how defensive Jonathan was and how reluctant he was to accept the feedback he was given. I currently have 620 hours in POE2 and honestly I am still not having fun. Why am I still playing? Because I really want this game to succeed and I do see the potential. Unfortunately, it seems like there is some type of road block within GGG that is prohibiting the team from making the changes it needs to make the game attractive to the masses. This is not a personal shot at Jonathan, he is very likeable person, but sometimes we let our egos in the way of getting things done. Our way is not always the right way even though we may think it is. Listen to your players GGG. Below is some feedback I would like to include, mostly about the campaign leveling experience as I know there has been a lot of feedback about endgame/mapping already:

1. Leveling is not rewarding, the character progression is too slow. The build progression is gated by a lack of spirit gems dropping and skill gems dropping. I have noticed that level 7 and 8 skill gems barely drop. Also again in the late 30s.

2. Jeweler Orbs are too rare and this ties into my first point about build progression being too slow.

3. Mob damage is still too high. If the average player does not pick a Meta build like LS they found online, they will die and they will die a lot. Dying is not fun, getting one shotted is not fun.

4. There is no pathing in narrow areas and mobs will swarm you and trap you in. There is no dodge rolling out, you are just dead.

5. There is no build diversity. You are forced to play a meta build to have any type of fun. What is the point of all these support gems, skills and ascendancies if everything outside of the few Meta builds does terrible damage. Why is fire so bad?

6. Drops are not exciting. In other games you are excited to kill the next mob to see what drops, in POE2 you are killing mobs hoping for a spirit gem. Its sad. I know this has been brought up, but GGG apparently ran sims and they think its good so they are just going to increase boss drops. GGG your sims are wrong. Again, listen to your players.

I can't stress how bad the campaign leveling experience feels. I love to make alts and run the campaign an abnormal amount of times. Its just not fun. If it is not fun for someone that has put in 600+ hours, how do you think it will be fun for a casual player? Casual players will not play this game in its current state. I know this is pre-release, that is why I hope my feedback is received with an open mind and it is understood that I want the best for this game.

++1

they have live sims they can just take all the data from the servers, they are just blind

I mean, if we look at the timeline, we could come up with some sort of conspiracy theory.

In 2019, Chris Wilson announced PoE2 as the "4.0 Expansion of PoE1", that will modernise this decade old game.

In 2023, Jonathan Rogers announced that they changed their mind after 4 years of getting supporter packs, and that PoE2 will not be a PoE1 expansion anymore, but instead a separate game.

Then they got a lot of negative feedback from ppl who were able to test PoE2, that it's nothing like "Path of Exile".

A bit later, Chris Wilson was rarely in office and only voiced a few "PoE1 League Announcements", but had no involvement in the development anymore, aside from his personal project "Ruthless".

Then, around a year of advertising PoE2 with the new graphics and classes, we got the PoE2 "Early Access Announcement". There, they revealed that the access to PoE2 EA will cost ppl 30 bucks, unless you already spend at least 500 bucks.

Now, we know Chris Wilson is basically gone.

So, what's the tinfoil here?
GGG leadership already knew that it was highly likely that a huge part of the PoE community does not like PoE2, aside from the graphics and lore, because everything else that makes "Path of Exile" Path of Exile - is not present there.
Setting up an "entry price" for EA is to compensate for the financial loss they will face when many PoE vets aren't interested in "Diablo 5".

Sure. On "PoE2 EA realease" I would've called that just tinfoil stuff, but now, with all the additional information we got since then, the interviews where the "viSiOn" is more important than improving the game and making it the game the PoE1 commnunity is asking for - I am not so sure about it anymore just being tinfoil stuff.

Just milk your old fans one last time and get another "target audience".
Sounds hard, but so far - GGG hasn't shown something that would indicate something else.

I would wait until the next major patch to make up my mind on this question. It does seem as though he is finally listening. They've done a lot of great things with the game under his and Mark's leadership and I think people are only focusing on the bad right now. POE2 easily has the ability to be the best of the genre once some things are fixed, so faulting their lead dev for ruining it is kind of harsh and not giving enough credit where it is due.

Not sure if it is fair to say its one person or another, but playing 0.2 at the start it seemed like they took feedback from 0.1 and did the opposite of what people were commenting about wanting to change and doubling down on the things that some people were feeling frustrated over.
Anyways +1, before this thread gets sent to the Shadow Realm.

+1

Place your bets now on how many minutes until this thread is silenced!

They did some dumb ass shit and some necessary shit and i'm sure it was hard to know at the time what kind of results they would get from it. Unfortunately for those looking to have a good time playing EA it kind of sucks that this is the perfect time for the devs to try out these insane ideas and see what sticks. So long as they fix it on the next patch I don't have much issue with it. Game definitely is a bit unfulfilling at the moment

d4 also had a lot of potential.

"

SerialF#4835 wrote:

d4 also had a lot of potential.

How do you figure? It's a soulless studio with zero creativity that only continues a franchise to siphon money out of their player's pockets. POE2 is a passion project whether you like the results or not. There's no doubt that the devs care a lot about the game and have put infinitely more thought and effort into its systems and intricacies than any Diablo game ever came close to. It's just an empty insult to throw, saying something like that.