POE2 isn't "Hard." It's unfun.

I had fun until end game.

My experience with endgame:
I cant progress because my gear is weak, cant level because I die too often. Game wont drop items useful to my class. Stuck at Tier 4. Frustrated.

If I was a warrior though, things would be different. 99% of the gear the drops for me would be great on a warrior. I have so many orbs to get gamble on some Yellow gear but I can only get to yellow. I dont get enough of the +1 yellow orbs to anything useful with the white gear that drops.

Either drop more orbs so I can atleast gamble or idk, have the mobs drop gear that would be atleast useful for my class? I like the idea of the end game. but way to frustrating never getting useful gear. Spent 250,000 gold trying to gamble buy gear, nothing useful. I'm just poor and weak now.

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bachgaman#6713 wrote:

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FreeLookMode#1750 wrote:

Played all day yesterday and this morning. Tried several classes, respeced for more defense, shield, health, offense, everything.

It would be one thing if the game gradually progressed in challenge in a fun way. It would even be OK if as you approached end game there were tiers of encounters that really pushed even the most professional full time gamer to the limits.

If I couldn't defeat that content, I would at least still have a lot of game that I could play instead. This game starts you out on a mission to punish from moment one. It's not fun.

I am sick to death of every game trying to be dark souls. I've heard people saying that POE1 was "hard" in the beginning. First of all, no it wasn't - not like this. I wanted a game the felt like an evolution of POE1 or ARPGS in general. This has totally transformed it into the kind of game that is NEVER fun for me to play, and excludes me from enjoying the game at all.

I'm just gutted. It's such a disappointment.

It's amusing to see people who, just a week ago, were complaining that POE1 is too complex theoretically, now flexing that the mechanical difficulty of POE2 is the game's greatest advantage. It's obvious, though, that theoretical complexity > mechanical complexity, as even a monkey can be taught to time a dodge correctly.

That's just not true. There are people who can play literally for infinite hours and not even come close to mastering the mechanics of any game. I know a bunch of them personally, and that's OK. Not everyone is good at everything.

Likewise I feel I am a very strong player mechanically, but have no idea how people are one tapping bosses because I'm a dumbass that can't build that type of character and I don't use guides because I don't enjoy it.

It's def. not dark souls and anyone who engages with both games would know that straight away. It seems like they did take inspiration from that game, and rightfully so because it's amazing, but only superficially. Just having a dodge roll or being difficult does not make a game dark souls.

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Xyel#0284 wrote:

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bachgaman#6713 wrote:

It's amusing to see people who, just a week ago, were complaining that POE1 is too complex theoretically, now flexing that the mechanical difficulty of POE2 is the game's greatest advantage. It's obvious, though, that theoretical complexity > mechanical complexity, as even a monkey can be taught to time a dodge correctly.

That was before they found out that they don't have the mechanical skill xD

The majority of PoE1's difficulty was in the complexity and buildmaking. But you could skip all that by following a build guide, as you could skip game's mechanics by overstacking stats, be they defense or offense. Quite a few people play PoE1 that way, and when they easily plow through a game that's considered difficult, it provides an illusion that they are great at it.

Now, PoE2 is here, and the difficulty starts in act 1, where you can neither build guide your way through it, nor overstack stats to ignore the game's mechanics, and so quite a few people have a horrible case of cognitive dissonance from the game, because they found the hard way that they aren't all that good at the game.

You are way out!

Im ok at the game .

But my -40% damage
Can't see the next room
20% reduced movement speed
25% monster increase attack and cast speed
No Evasion
-95 honor after every room
-25 water on hit

Ya he is total crap .
I hate playing that character , i despise it .
I ALT-F4 often in disgust.

I have reached the why bother point.

I could keep mapping but why for what , some currency ... I dont use the market so .. what am i going to do with it ... stare at it ? count it ?

Im not wearing a single thing from the floor. Its all whites that i slammed casue i refuse to use the market .. it's mid. But im not going to play whack-a-craft, there are no shortage of free spin to win games on the internet.

My character is bricked until i ascend or get significant upgrades.
There is no place to do that, no place to go really .. I can push it but my XP bar will stay at 0 and ill just be what .. honestly what... I was logged in staring at my character..

See PoE1 maps were a way to progress have fun and gain power so you could work on killing mega mobs.

PoE2 the maps are too grindy, for no loot .. they punish you , you lose your stuff, you make no progress ... You are working for minimum wage. Me even less the currency means nothing to me. I see the odds hey 280 attempts and i might get an upgrade ... no thanks.

There is no get gud or any such crap .. Im just bricked at refusing to use the market. No market = no gear. Nobody is really going to craft ..

I took to carrying the first 2 orbs in my inventory as stacks .. so i could field craft whites .. I just throw them on the ground .. Most insta brick on the first orb, some might even make it to the second, often enough to keep me exault broke.

And lets say i do ... I get the boots or whatever i need .... I can't use it .
80% it's not going to have the correct resists on it ... and because i wont wholesale buy a set of get to accommodate a new item ... whats the real point of getting an item if it downgrades your character.... who is getting worse as you level ... it's a hard sell .... what is my game play loop ? die or be bored to death ?

This is a big problem!!

As i was staring at my character I couldn't picture an upgrade. I mean just saying ok max out all the stats on what i have now ok .. but what are the odds of that?
The odds of getting anything of value is low, the odds of being able to integrate the new item into what you have is low. Which left me staring at my character askig myself , what am i trying to achieve ?

Without using the hyper deterministic marketplace where you specify the perfect item to integrate you have a problem. With the market the game loop turns into a scraping together of currency fragments to go shopping for gear. To me thats a big problem and leads to hypocritical stances of GGG saying determinism is a big no no but then driving you to use the absolute most deterministic outlet possible to pay to gear up, that bothers me.

Cause then you are where I am, Im not willing to endure i suppose, SSF is really how I play and without the assistance of the market the game play can be frustrating because of a lack of upgrade paths that are very RNG based fun.

I want to do things with the character .. im just not willing to do the trials they are garbage I hate it so much that just zoning into the area im agitated..
Im swearing at the screen the first set of choices .... and the whole time im just waiting for one just one thing to push me once... ALT F4

Totally agree! Its really not hard but unfun in so many ways.

If one death per map stays im outta here!

6 Portals only for a few Pinnacle Bosses...roflmao!


PoE2 Devs are stingy af, even with Maplayouts, too stingy too make paths a few pixel wider.

So i have reached t15s quite quickly on my ranger. After i had a perf jewlers orb drop, i was able to buy a decent bow and can easily one shot mobs in t15. Sometimes i get one shotted as well.
I still have 0 progress feeling. I almost get no orb drops, never had a divine drop despite juicing with towers and alch orbing my t15 maps.
It honestly gets quite boring to always run the same maps over and over again for nothing.
even wow seems to be more exciting.
Gameplay is quite fun of poe 2 but the progress system is awful.
I jump from t3 to t15 because of 1 item. if you dont get a good weapon you are stuck indefinitely on low tier maps, regardless of the build.
Once you have a weapon, you do dmg but you just randomly flop to white mobs from outside of the screen or you turn around a corner and get 50 projectiles in your face and die.

not hard but boring and too random

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Rhaa#4368 wrote:

Simple solution:
EASY
NORMAL
HARD
NIGHTMARE

Player decide.
Its been done before.

You are probably a Diablo player. Introducing multiple difficulty modes would result in unfair drops for players. Personally, I think it’s impossible to maintain a good balance between the player/league economy and drop rates in such a system.

An example of this unfairness: spamming the same boss at different difficulty levels with varying drop rates but still being able to obtain the same items is not what PoE is about.

If you need lower difficulty, just run lower-level maps, that’s a core mechanic of PoE.

Players don’t have to personally decide the difficulty, but the game probably needs an overall rebalance.

In fact, I agree with this thread: PoE 2 isn’t hard; it’s just not fun.

poe2 is fun. ive been playing poe1 along side it and just recently reached maps in that game for the first time. poe1 is also fun. i like the more deliberate skill based combat of poe2 but the old school mindless zoom zooms of poe1 is fun too. i like that theyre obviously very similar familiar experiences but offer a different feel.

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Rhaa#4368 wrote:

Simple solution:
EASY
NORMAL
HARD
NIGHTMARE

Player decide.
Its been done before.

It's called tiers 1 through 15, and normal/magic/rare maps. Player decides. It's been done before.

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Rhaa#4368 wrote:

Simple solution:
EASY
NORMAL
HARD
NIGHTMARE

Player decide.
Its been done before.

Has it really been done before in a game centered around an economy? I mean, SSF, SSFHC, Standard, Standard HC, all with 4 difficulties. And if all trading leagues had 4 difficulties, they would have to split the economy too. This seems needlessly segmented, don't you think?

I can't think of many games with player-to-player trading where difficulty settings is a thing. But hey, I'm no expert and I might be wrong. I just struggle to see how that would be implemented.

It's not Dark Souls though. Dark Souls is challenging but fair. It is calculated. PoE has a ton of variance and volatility that you can't really account for. You get to retry the same boss 20-30x per hour (depending on how fast you die, lol) in Dark Souls. Good luck getting one single additional attempt at a pinnacle boss if you're not grinding full time.