Campaign length: move 50% from the critical path to optional content

To preface: I really like this game. However, I’m also a mega casual with about 200 hours in PoE2.

I’ve now started the campaign about 6-8 times, and every additional time I’m noticing I’m feeling significantly less excited about it, and churning from it earlier than before. There’s just so much filler content that I already know is mandatory that I feel I’m about to waste a whole bunch of time.

I’m talking about:
- areas that are way too big
- mandatory bosses that can easily be optional instead
- hunts for quest items that are just too… too ugh. Valley of titans, waterways and machinarium are some examples

My hypothesis is that PoE2 will, if nothing drastically changes, have the same as PoE 1: most players never finish the campaign.

And that’s on top of returning players dropping off on subsequent seasons because they just don’t want to spend all that time walking walking walking walking without any ability to take shortcuts, get rushed, etc.

Lots of ideas for improvement exist, so I’ll use this post to simply iterate the issue rather than to sum up all the ideas how to improve it.

Thanks for considering working on this ❤️

No.

Campaign is the only good part of the game , please add 50% more.

I want something like LE campaign skip for future characters.

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Gilcroix#3433 wrote:

Campaign is the only good part of the game , please add 50% more.

Note that I’m not asking them to get rid of existing content. If they can make the critical path 50% shorter but put the other 50% on optional paths I’d be very happy

I think a lot of people only play for the campaign. Why there is a drop in player count after sometimes.
Thoose prob wont agree with you.

Personaly i like campaign a lot, but also probably cause end game is kinda meh lately, specialy after 0.3.1.

I wouldnt mind your suggestion of making the critical path shorter for people who dont want to redo it all everytime, as long as they keep campaign as it is for the others with optional content.

Because it's long for sure.
Like, really casual people, i'm not sure they ever touch end game.
My friend wanted to play this game, i made a trade character to play with him.
We went to like lvl 30 last league and now we're lvl 6 lol
He never have time to play. Told him next time we just continue in standard cause he'll never see the end of campaign otherwise.

Yep, same vibe here. The campaign is fun... right up until it turns into a walking simulator with occasional violence.

If the critical path was shorter and the extra chunks became proper side-quests, that would be a win for everyone.
Speedrunners blast through the story, explorers still get their buffet of stuff on the side.

Also, the permanent bonus style rewards rule. Bonk a boss, get a lasting perk, brain makes the happy noise.
Just make more of those bosses optional so the main run is not "mandatory cardio with loot breaks".

Main quest should stay main story, not "go find three damp widgets in the world’s largest hallway".
Save the filler for side content where it belongs.

And if side-quests become the playground, sure... add 50% more of those. Right now the side menu feels like plain toast.

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Jyrlep#4788 wrote:

If the critical path was shorter and the extra chunks became proper side-quests, that would be a win for everyone. […] Main quest should stay main story, not "go find three damp widgets in the world’s largest hallway".
Save the filler for side content where it belongs. […] And if side-quests become the playground, sure... add 50% more of those.

Exactly.
To some extent, there’s more “mandatory side content” than there really is “optional side content”. Most quests that are currently optional give passive points and other permanent perks. I’m not sure that’s really considered optional.
At the same time, we have mandatory things like “get 3 spikes from the rust king” and “kill 2 ghosts in mausoleums” that are mandatory but don’t give a perk.

Because of this you still end up feeling like you need to do nearly everything on every character…

Like others have said. Campaign is the best part of the game.
I think if you're a mega casual, finishing the campaign is finishing the game.
Levelling to 100, filling up the Atlas tree etc is not for you. That's for those playing 24/7...

I enjoy the fact that I get to spend a week+ playing the campaign as a casual.
Only thing I wish they could change is to make it more clear on the map what content I have missed. I often miss some optional bosses/quests that give buffs and I end up having to run through the areas again trying to chase down that buff I missed somewhere.

Call me crazy but re-running the campaign is enjoyable to me, like watching re-runs of your favourite show. Some areas feel slightly too big but you learn the fastest way through them and they might even reduce the size of some areas later on like they did already with act 3.