Game feedback: The game is mechanically simplistic

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It has been stated clearly enough that PoE2 is supposed to be a different game for a different audience.

Not exactly. They said they are "worried" that POE1 players give negative feedback and don't play POE2. They are ~50% of the game audience. So the "vision" is to sit on 2 chairs, pulling the game into 2 opposite direction. Unfortunately. Because they could just make better POE1 for poe1 fans and completely different game for new people. But now they will end with losing 50% of players (eventually), when they will finish copying everything from POE1. And POE1 itself perhaps will be closed as an outdated project.

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darrenrob82#3531 wrote:

If you make pulling the crank too difficult and complex, then people won't enjoy constantly pull it, and the slot machine will rarely be used.

In other words, the mechanics are simple because this game is a skinner box with action elements. You're trying to treat a slot machine, like an obstacle course. They aren't the same thing.

You are right in your assessment of the psychological and behaviouristic components, but you frame it in a reductionistic manner. That's not the whole picture. Otherwise, people wouldn't bother playing POE when they could be playing pachinko instead. There is an important ludic component that must be considered.

Let's see if i can better communicate what i imagine.

If pulling the crank involves a certain timing, certain judgements that allows you to pull more times or pull and get better results, there will be people who will enjoy that as well. Gambling is fundamentally about risk reward, there are many who like playing blackjack or poker as well due to the strategic awareness involved. Even Roulette requires some judgement on your chances and your current resources. Slots are not the only game, they're just the one easier to just sit down and play and even slots provide at least some illusion of skill requirement through reflexes.

I do not see the game becoming slower as the vision. What i'm imagining is it allowing you to play more risky so long you got the judgement and timing to back your decision - thus leading to more "pulls in the crank" than playing it safe from across a screen. With practice, it should eventually become second nature and not require much thinking, placing the player in a flow style. Currently, in POE2, this playstyle is enabled not by good skill choices and situational awareness but by massively investing into defences to the point of facetanking. I think both playstyles should be distinguished from each other and supported equally, something new could possibly emerge from this.

This kind of mechanical involvement associated to game play is possible and it has been done, just not in an isometric ARPG with a player dictated economy setting. Other than technical balancing challenges, such as more bugs leading to more broken interactions coming from certain movement or skill cancelling interactions, this isn't impossible nor fundamentally contradictory with a looting playstyle (what you call slot machine).

Imagine:
You can clear stuff from half a screen, wait for monsters to be dead and then advance, or you can dive into packs, time your skills just right so you can cancel into other skills that give you some form of timed mitigation (invulnerability, super armor, airborne state, parry frames) that then allows you to finish into a third attack benefiting from properties of the second (think slams consuming airborne state to deal extra damage, charge generation from absorbing attacks feeding the finisher , etc). All this without requiring you to stop attacking and dealing damage within the time frame of 1.5 seconds. Mistakes would be equally punishing. It seemed for a bit that this was the direction for POE2, but GGG couldn't pull it off so they just gave up halfway through.


People don't play multiple button builds just because it's more than one button, but because pressing more than one button takes double to four times and is a big commitment, you queue three actions but your character barely finished one by the time you pressed the buttons. In its current state, it slows you down compared to one button builds but this doesn't need to be the case. It shouldn't be some Blazblue or DMC level of comboing either - what i am saying is to keep it simple but give us options and adaptability, fluidity. Make skill variety a toolset we can use to adapt to more than two situations, to keep us advancing at a fast rhythm (so long we are paying attention) instead of always having to retreat. Charge generation, debuffs, "the combo system", parrying skills etc. They all just serve to support your main damage skill but don't do anything interesting by themselves - you are led to take them out of the equation through gear because all they do is enable damage.

There are some interesting skills, but they lack a wider toolset to support what they can not do or to make them less mechanically binary. It's as if we were playing Rock-Papers-Scissors but with only rock or retreat as options.

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Azimuthus#1135 wrote:

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It has been stated clearly enough that PoE2 is supposed to be a different game for a different audience.

Not exactly. They said they are "worried" that POE1 players give negative feedback and don't play POE2. They are ~50% of the game audience. So the "vision" is to sit on 2 chairs, pulling the game into 2 opposite direction. Unfortunately. Because they could just make better POE1 for poe1 fans and completely different game for new people. But now they will end with losing 50% of players (eventually), when they will finish copying everything from POE1. And POE1 itself perhaps will be closed as an outdated project.

Trying to sit into two chairs, couldn't've put it better.
"No, you play slow and methodical during acts and then you blast and zoom when you get to maps." Why can't we blast and zoom acts? We will, eventually. That "vision" will crumble.

They can pull the game into a third orthogonal direction if they integrate elements of both visions in a new synergistic whole. What the game presents still makes this possible. I'm more excited on what the game can be than what it currently is - it fits the Early Access spirit which is why i make these kind of feedback posts.
If it ends up becoming POE1 with better graphics, i would feel a bit let down but i like POE1 so yeah. It would be a bit of a waste.

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ken25698#9527 wrote:

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Ablan#1306 wrote:

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Ranged and melee combat are extremely unbalanced and treated differently. There's no reason to play melee weapons unless you have a specific build, and the experience is terrible.


The interaction cost GGG wants with bosses is too high. One mistake means death, and there's no real experience. I suspect these moves were designed solely to annoy players. So, to avoid being annoyed, people naturally choose high-damage builds, skipping boss interaction, making the game much easier after level 90.


The comfort build is probably what GGG doesn't want. They only focus on skill interactions, so the comfort build is an unbalanced or overpriced product.


Another reason is that the balance is terrible. Some high-value items give too much, exploding the damage and making the game easier.


Gear in version 0.3 is also very easy to make, allowing for faster completion, easier gameplay, and faster exits. Of course, this might be a good thing for players.

I feel the problem is that Ranged and Melee are treated differently, but they are also treated the same way. What are the fundamentals of playing ranged? Positioning.
What are the fundamentals of playing Melee? Positioning, but harder, slower and riskier. :|

If the two were actually treated distinctively, as if they were fundamentally different which they are, then GGG would demand and push other fundamentals for melee, make it play on different terms with different advantages and disadvantages. You can kinda get this by investing a lot into defences, but nothing stops ranged from benefiting from said defences as well so... Yeah.
There is a clear favoritism towards ranged playstyles.

Your read on the "difficulty" balancing is correct. I say it doesn't limit to bosses though, I died more frequently to random overtuned rares oneshotting me than i ever died to bosses. The interaction cost overall is to high, one person said that regen and leech are at fault because they trivialize resource management, so they need to overtune the damage as to stop leech and flasks from making your character unconditionally immortal. I think this is another piece of the puzzle.

As for gear, some people suggested adding more fodder affixes to make "desired affixes" rarer. I somewhat agree with this but I don't think they should be fodder affixes, but desireable affixes for different classes or playstyles. We don't need more Light Radius.