GGG can't bring good combat to PoE2 without major changes - the "animation" issue.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

PoE2's intended direction

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rob_korn#1745 wrote:

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

PoE2's intended direction

Food for thoughts, what about you misunderstood what the intended direction is/was/will be, or project your own view over it ?
What if the conflicting ideas are not coming from streamers, PoE1, whatever else... but GGG directly ?

I'll just leave some references for those interested.

ExileCon 2019, Chris Wilson :
I'm not saying we're trying to achieve a slower Pace
but it's not going to be slow

ExileCon 2023, Jonathan Rogers :
Will PoE2 be much slower than PoE1 ?
"It’s not the goal to make it slower"
"it's likely that the 95th percentile of speed will be a bit slower"

Mark Roberts:
what do we actually want to bring down
"that is what we had to do because of where the numbers have gotten to."
"bringing both scales down doesn't mean everything's much slower"
"it certainly allows us to then have more room to add more pinnacle bosses with more life over another ten years of content."

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

There are fundamental issues that PoE2 has that can't be changed by just doing number tweaks or small balance tweaks alone... there are entire systems that work directly against good combat and there are a lot of those (evasion, cast on X, etc), but beyond even those.... there's an even more severe issue... the animation issue.

And it is present both on player skills and especially on the enemies we fight.

Now what do I mean by that?

In order to have meaningful combat, you need to have well-telegraphed attacks with good animations.

This includes:

-Readable attack patterns

-Distinct personalities in their movement

-Interruptible or non‑interruptible states

Bosses do posses some of this more or less but everything else outside of that is severely lacking. If we were to talk about bosses in isolation, they are the best execution of the animation based combat that GGG has produced so to speak. Quality varies quite a lot however... so keep that in mind.

Most normal enemies do not present any of that and their only behavior is to try to get in range of their basic attack and then basically fire their auto-attack animation so long as they continue to be in range.

As such, while there are a lot of different types of enemies... most of them are essentially the same.... and very simplistic in nature.. enemies still behave like PoE1 mobs wearing nicer skins. They do not have distinct movement personalities. They don't telegraph danger in a way that encourages tactical play.

So, in essence, enemy behavior doesn't leverage the animation system almost at all.

And all of this is before we even get to talk about the pacing of the game when it comes to density... which would undermine the whole thing even if animations were present. But that would be a much easier fix by itself, so I'm not going to focus on that.

Now, when it comes to player animations... if we were to draw a parallel to the boss/mob situation... I think the one in the boss position would be the warrior, more specifically mace skills.

A lot of the mace skills feel like they were made with that philosophy in mind and best represent that intention... and it's not a surprise since it was most certainly one of the first made. It showed what the intention was with the game most clearly. Others present some that too, but to a lesser degree... with skills such as comet, gathering storm, snipe, escape shot.

At the polar opposite we have.. well... everything else really. Most spells, most bow attacks, mostly all basic attacks.. and so on.


Now, do I think this is pure inexperience or similar? Not really... I think something else played a big role in this. I think the game had a change of direction during it's early stages.

I think it's important to mention that one of the biggest influences of the change of direction of PoE2 early on, before we even got to try the game ourselves... were the streamers GGG invited to test the game early on. The same streamers that caused a large commotion recently with all the temple issues, mind you.

PoE1 streamers were the worst possible audience for PoE2's intended direction, without a doubt. And this was GGG's fatal mistake.

They were conditioned to PoE1's speed, used to zoom-zoom gameplay loops, focused on efficiency and clear speed, playing 8+ hours a day.

They were the demographic LEAST likely to appreciate animation commitment, tactical pacing, slower combat, root motion and telegraphed attacks.

And that influence continues to linger... keeping the game in a confused and uncertain state.



Is it too late to change? In my opinion, considering the pacing of patches and the changes so far... I'd say yes. A lot of hard work would be needed to do that, and I'm almost certain they've given up on that idea too, to top it off.

Even the introduction of a damage reduction buff on bosses says a lot about the state of the game.

That being said, it's not like they've completely removed the animation elements that were already there even though I have seen some cases at a smaller scale... so the game continues to be in this perpetual state of middle ground, not doing either part justice.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

[...]I'm definitely not ruling out that GGG themselves might have had (or still do have) conflicting ideas to begin with. But like I've said, there was definitely a big streamer influence and PoE1 community influence as a result as well. My suspicion is that it's less about an internal conflict of ideas and more about that influence.

And this is something I've "lived through" if I can put it like that. I saw the constant chatter around it in the community in that period. I saw what the streamers were saying too. I think it's only natural that they would've gotten scared and caved to that type of feedback.

Aside from that, the videos you linked yourself proves this.. the questions they are asked about always revolve around "the slow pace"... those came as a result of the whole streamer influence. They never did self report on the pacing in that manner as far as I was aware. In fact, one of the statements Jonathan made that I clearly remember went along the lines of "we're not trying to make the combat slow but the slower pace is a result of good combat". In different words but that was the essence of it.


The whole "we're not trying to be slow" answer that has been given on all occasions felt almost like a defense mechanism type of answer every time it was said, ever since that initial testing.

If you take out the knee jerk reaction answers to the slow pace type question, and look at what they're trying to say... Especially Chris Wilson in that older video. He specifically says the game will be balanced differently and that the game will have quite a bit more difficulty.

"We're definitely aware that there's a lot of speed and spam creep going on"

If you look at these three statements alone, and look at how PoE2 looks like right now... Do these statements have any ground to stand on? Has any of that been achieved? No.

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SumDumPhuc wrote:

It's been said before that "Players are playing POE2 but Mobs are still playing POE1" and this isn't just a problem with Mob speed, but how they fight in general. We see some Mobs with more complex attack patterns but I think the Mobs need a bit more group dynamics or something.

Like when they're in the same Pack they will have certain attack patterns, behaviors, or skills that they wouldn't perform if they were on their own.
Basically, just like Player Skills need to have better/stronger interactions (and payoffs) for combo'ing, this game would benefit that much by gaining better/stronger interactions when encountering different Mob combinations.

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rob_korn#1745 wrote:

You feel, you've lived through, you think, you remember. Good for you, but that doesn't make a reality.

GGG scared of streamers influence ? Now take some distance. What about the 10 years of PoE development where they identified their pillars ? What about the popularity growing slowly and steadily ? What about their internal analysis tools ?
Examples :
Checklist of things important to push
How we see we do things right or not and learn
They don't need streamers for that. They are marketing tools, not developpers. If a streamer voice isn't confirmed by their data, you can be sure it's not taken into account.


Back to the intended direction and what you've lived through (real starting set of questions to build a real opinion, no rhetorical) :

- Do you remember what PoE1 was 10 years ago ? Was it fast ? Was it growing at that time ? Does Jonathan remembers ? Does he care ?
- Why did it introduce power creep over time ? Was it necessary ? Did it grow because or despite that ?
- Did ruthless get any popularity ?
- Did PoE2 appear because they wanted to ? Was it necessary, to get a clean sheet again because it's getting complicated pumping updates and keep them under crontrol ?
- What even is good combat ?
- Do they want tactical gameplay ? Do they want it for the whole game or only for main bosses ? Was it only a starting point to be sure they leave themselves room for increments of player power for future leagues ?
- Is the conflictual vision across the whole company ?
Is it between Mark and Jonathan, Jonathan being hardcore nostalgic and playing mostly campaign, while Mark is more an endgame support lenient towards more quality of life and ease of play ?
- Do they realize there is a conflict ? Is it an issue ? Is it on purpose ? Do they believe they can mix them together and have a working solution where everyone is happy ?
- Are they targeting the masses or a niche ? Are they targeting at all ?

There are so many questions, many opinions, but for sure most of those questions don't even have a clear answer, despite what you feel, lived through or are convinced.

That said, animation is at no point the priority, the issue, nor the solution, you came so far only on so many assumptions that are just a projection of your own idea (common but wrong idea : "this game is for me").

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

Look, you can try to spin it around however you want it. I've clearly said that what I believe in terms of streamer influence is my belief based on my lived experiences.. so it's obviously not a hard confirmed fact in terms of "cause-effect". I don't work for GGG to know what's discussed internally.

However.. it is a fact that I can confirm and everyone else as well that there has been major backlash against meaningful combat, slower pacing long before PoE2 launched EA. Based on that, it is highly likely that it played a major role. It's only sensible to expect a company that receives targeted backlash on a very specific thing... to respond to that thing under the immense pressure it was feeling. Especially when they still were in early stages of development.

But that's the less important part of my post, really.

The main focus on my post is described in the title. And to that point... animation absolutely should be a priority, it absolutely is an issue and it is without a doubt part of the soulution.... that is, if they actually want to make combat good, to make melee good and many other stated objectives they've had. If they don't? ... well.. they can continue with what they've been doing so far.

And again, Parry is one of the most obvious giveaways of what direction they intended for the game initially. It's not some wet dream I developed myself or some idealistic image only true in my head of how I want the game to look like, or however else you're trying to make it sound like.

Magma Barrier also used to work very similar to a parry mechanic in 0.1 for example. However, that has changed. Which is why I believe their direction has shifted.

That being said, I don't think they would manage to do it at this point even if they wanted/tried to. It's just too much work involved and it's far easier to just go the PoE1 route.

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However.. it is a fact that I can confirm and everyone else as well[/b] that there has been major backlash against meaningful combat, slower pacing long before PoE2 launched EA.

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Based on that, it is highly likely that it played a major role.

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it's far easier to just go the PoE1 route.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 wrote:

... Based on that, it is highly likely that it played a major role. It's only sensible to expect a company that receives targeted backlash on a very specific thing... to respond to that thing under the immense pressure it was feeling...