This is the end.

Have to agree regarding the XP. You die once, you lose hours of mapping progress because the XP you get in maps suck. You need to run an estimated 2 maps per 1% XP, That's 20 maps just to get back the XP lost. I gave up after level 96.

"

AXiD_#1761 wrote:

This game was fun, while it was about slaying monsters in story and experimenting with trash builds. It is the opposite of fun in the endgame. Currency hunting, inflation, efficient farming methods, complicated crafting system, xp punishing. It's like you go to free work to prove a point that you are a tough gamer. Sad tbh

Preach! Specially after 0.3.1. I can't progress after level 96 cause I die once or twice every gaming session over things I don't even get because I can't see due to the lack of visual clarity this game provides, and so, I die, can't progress to gain a little extra power, and can't farm cause I die - it's a vicious moronic cycle that made me quit for the season unless they come back with something good soon.

"

Toforto#2372 wrote:

"

iHiems#0168 wrote:

"

Toforto#2372 wrote:

Honestly PoE could learn from LE's crafting system and qol. Man the crafting is actually fun and deterministic, there's a way for normal players to use basically a mirror of kalandra equivalent for a practical crafting reason, AND its got a fun system where you can add any one mod you want guaranteed to any unique.

And you think this is a good thing? Take a guess why people are done with that game in a day or two

Crafting in poe2 is already too strong

"Too strong" means requiring the average player to look at guides and google spreadsheets, and spend multiple divines on expensive omens and other currnecies, to gamble and hope they maybe hit a good unveil at the final step of their crafting after having to hit a 1/4 or 1/3 fracture?

That's not strong crafting, that is gambling with extra steps. The definition of crafting is to mold something exactly how you want to. In other words, deterministically.

I don't play LE so I won't comment on it or its' systems. But I agree to a degree on what you said about PoE 2 crafting. What I mean by this is, the crafting is indeed strong and almost deterministic, the problem being that currency to craft is simply not accessible to the majority of the player base, specially now that farming got way worse. When league started, that was all good, mostly for blasters, but the average Joes will never get that, and in my opinion, that's bad, specially in seasonal games. I'm either lucky and craft something really good that I can use or sell for a lot, or I have to be content with being average or below average - again this is bad because GGG and basically the economy is catering to 1% of the players or bots, that play for 23h a day and completely blow up the economy for the first 2/3 weeks of the league and then leave, and the rest of the players are left sucking on big toes...

"

zepberonha#9748 wrote:

Its Funny to see people treating this game as a finished game. GGG is testing stuff on us. Its not their goal to deliver the "best option" to us right now. Is it that hard to see that they are testing things? And that is what i expect from an early access. Let them try everything out, so we can have a good game. Because once its released, they cant make big changes from on day to another.

I get your point, and I agree with it. Still, it's been 2 weeks more or less since 0.3.1 and the overall sentiment, judging by the forums is the patch was good and now it's trash... I get they need to test things, but not reverting some things that are clearly bad, it's just beyond me. Simply put it - less mobs, less loot, harder and unrewarding content = no fun for the majority of players, specially when we're talking about an ARPG...

"

Toforto#2372 wrote:

And yeah exp loss is just pointless, all it does is waste people's time

Exactly 💯!

They could make it a bit easier to get to get to 100, like 99-100 requiring the XP from 96-97, which seems a good spot for me... As a reward for hitting 100, give a free fomo skin for a skill with a theme from the league and a token to skip the campaign for the next character that league...

This would be a very good incentive to keep people playing and try new things... It would work for me...

I know this isn't a solution for many people, and people who play for leaderboards probably wouldn't like it, but then again, they could secure the place on the leaderboards by date.

There's no perfect solution I guess... But this sounds the most reasonable to me...l

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

And who are you? Another Elden Ring tourist who watched let's play on YouTube and now understamd whole souls-like genre? Because half of what you just wrote is utter bullshit.

You're sounding like the Blizzard guy who said other games are "Diablo" like... Soul's like games are a BS term people started to use to say a game is hard or too hard. Soul's like comes from, drum rolls, Dark Souls and its other cousins, they're not a genre per say, they're just extremely hard games, and they do work precisely because of the explanation that the guy you're replying too said. PoE is about character progression through a fixed amount of time (season) - talents + gear. Dark Souls and its' cousins are not about character progression (you have some progression, but you don't really need it and that's not the focus of the game) and are not locked behind seasons. If you want PoE to be "souls" like, that's fine, and if GGG want's that, that's also fine, but then don't call it an ARPG. If you want PoE to be Souls like, play it with base items only and 0 talents and basic gems at level 1, and see how far you can go - that would be a "fun" "souls like" challenge...

"

BabaVoss#9386 wrote:

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

And who are you? Another Elden Ring tourist who watched let's play on YouTube and now understamd whole souls-like genre? Because half of what you just wrote is utter bullshit.

You're sounding like the Blizzard guy who said other games are "Diablo" like... Soul's like games are a BS term people started to use to say a game is hard or too hard. Soul's like comes from, drum rolls, Dark Souls and its other cousins, they're not a genre per say, they're just extremely hard games, and they do work precisely because of the explanation that the guy you're replying too said. PoE is about character progression through a fixed amount of time (season) - talents + gear. Dark Souls and its' cousins are not about character progression (you have some progression, but you don't really need it and that's not the focus of the game) and are not locked behind seasons. If you want PoE to be "souls" like, that's fine, and if GGG want's that, that's also fine, but then don't call it an ARPG. If you want PoE to be Souls like, play it with base items only and 0 talents and basic gems at level 1, and see how far you can go - that would be a "fun" "souls like" challenge...

Yeah, you can finish DS and other FromSoft games at lvl 1 with basic gear but how many players actually did that? Majority of players upgrade their gear and lvl up characters as much as possible. And if you'll remove souls-like label from these games what you'll get? To me it looks like third-person action RPG. So ARPG + Souls-like seems like quite valid combo.

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

Yeah, you can finish DS and other FromSoft games at lvl 1 with basic gear but how many players actually did that? Majority of players upgrade their gear and lvl up characters as much as possible. And if you'll remove souls-like label from these games what you'll get? To me it looks like third-person action RPG. So ARPG + Souls-like seems like quite valid combo.

Not many, and most haven't even beat NG7+ which is the maximum difficulty.

It can be a valid combo for bosses, but even if we look at the pinnacle of gameplay in DS, there is a lot of frame perfect inputs, and PoE2 bosses aren't designed for that kind of engagement.

But taking and reproducing core mechanics of DS in PoE is perfectly valid... But both games have very distinct gameplay and feeling.

If you truly have 2k hours, you are likely being overly hyperbolic in your review, because otherwise it reads like "worst food I've ever eaten, pure poison" from a guy who still chooses the same restaurant for every meal.. lol

So with that in mind - all of your points could really have a secondary discussion about their "validity" (aside from Sekhemas sucks lol). Which I think a lot of the follow-up posts here have tried to do.. maybe...

I think, in reading "between the lines" of your feedback, that you find the game challenging and despite "grinding" against the content for 2000hrs (which is insane and likely adds a large chance for this to be a troll post, because that's like 6.5hrs every day since release...), it is more accurate to say that you do not have some combination of desire, patience, or capability to figure out how to properly interact with a lot of the game's content.

That's not an insult - Everyone has their preferences in how they want to play and no one's preferences are inherently "right" or "wrong".

However, there seems to be a lot of in-game playstyle, decision making, and mindset adjustments which could alleviate many of the items you have listed as pain-points and I would invite you to seek guidance and/or take some time to revisit fundamentals around how you can obtain what you are seeking based on how the game IS designed, rather than how you are presuming it is (or should be) designed.

But Sekhemas still sucks.

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

"

BabaVoss#9386 wrote:

"

Sakanabi#6664 wrote:

And who are you? Another Elden Ring tourist who watched let's play on YouTube and now understamd whole souls-like genre? Because half of what you just wrote is utter bullshit.

You're sounding like the Blizzard guy who said other games are "Diablo" like... Soul's like games are a BS term people started to use to say a game is hard or too hard. Soul's like comes from, drum rolls, Dark Souls and its other cousins, they're not a genre per say, they're just extremely hard games, and they do work precisely because of the explanation that the guy you're replying too said. PoE is about character progression through a fixed amount of time (season) - talents + gear. Dark Souls and its' cousins are not about character progression (you have some progression, but you don't really need it and that's not the focus of the game) and are not locked behind seasons. If you want PoE to be "souls" like, that's fine, and if GGG want's that, that's also fine, but then don't call it an ARPG. If you want PoE to be Souls like, play it with base items only and 0 talents and basic gems at level 1, and see how far you can go - that would be a "fun" "souls like" challenge...

Yeah, you can finish DS and other FromSoft games at lvl 1 with basic gear but how many players actually did that? Majority of players upgrade their gear and lvl up characters as much as possible. And if you'll remove souls-like label from these games what you'll get? To me it looks like third-person action RPG. So ARPG + Souls-like seems like quite valid combo.

Is the purpose of FromSoft games to grind to get more gear, to get more 'talent' points, to become more powerful? When you kill a boss does loot explode from it? Do you have tabs to store your gear - in some you have chests I know (although I haven't played any of them aside from 100% Elden Ring which is the easiest one apparently) but can you store gear to trade with other characters like you do here? Are those activities mandatory to progress in the game, or is progression natural as you play the game? Is it not the purpose of FromSoft games to start, and finish the game, no matter how long it takes you? You're comparing natural Single Player games, with some progression components to it, where you can indeed grind a bit to make the game easier and get more points or specific gear to make you stronger, but it's not a requirement nor does it matter that much, and it's not the purpose of those game. Those games have a story, you played them, and when you reach the end that's it - well kind of, cause in some you can start over with the same gear with increased difficulty, but still, my point stands - after the final boss there's nothing else, whilst in a pure ARPG, you grind to try and make yourself just a little more powerful, to squeeze the build you're currently playing and to try and max out your stats as much as possible.

We're trying to mix water with olive oil here in my opinion. For me, and using that term I detest so much, having an ARPG that's in it's core a seasonal game, and it's also "souls" like, doesn't work. Having an ARPG that's "souls" like that punishes you for dying, effectively impeding your progress and not rewarding you if you die - you don't get currency nor loot, doesn't work. The core of PoE is to get loot or currency to improve your build. The purpose of PoE is to kill mobs and get loot explosions that you need to filter to not see what you don't want/like. The purpose of Poe - and ARPG's generally - is to blast. Now, if the game didn't had so much dependency on your talents, gems, jewels, gear, sure, you can just go against maps and bosses and you would get the dopamine hits from killing a hard boss, but at the risk of being repetitive here, to me and to the majority of players from what I can see, that's not an ARPG as GGG and other companies made them - for this build a game, that looks like PoE, and make it so player progression is easy and natural, and you indeed are able to test YOUR KEYBOARD/CONTROL SKILLS against a hard boss or map or whatever, not the strength of your build mixed with gem's mixed with talents mixed with gear mixed with etc.