Why POE2’s Direction Is Worrying for Veterans and Newcomers Alike

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rob_korn#1745 wrote:

Ok, you're a troll. Bye

Yeah, pointing that you're projecting sure makes me a troll.
You don't know anything about PoE2 leagues.
You don't know for how long they run.
You don't know how their content will fit the game.
You don't know if you will be required to beat all the campaign before seeing anything league-specific or not.

You don't know anything, but you're already projecting and whining.

100% agree

GGG needs to take what is said in the original post to heart.

I just checked the Steam Charts. PoE2 has dropped 12.3% of its player count from 7 days ago. Monday to Monday.

10.6% drop from Sunday to Sunday.

24.4% drop from Sunday the 8th to Monday the 16th.

Going to be really curious to see how much it drops by NEXT Monday, but without big changes between now and then I won't be shocked to see it reach as far as a 50% drop from Sunday the 8th to Monday the 23rd. I've been seeing the discontent rapidly increasing as more and more players put in 50+ hours into the game.

I disagree about the length of the campaign -- it's long on a 1st playthrough, but gets faster on subsequent playthroughs. Yes, I've already bricked a character and needed to re-roll, and so far every area has taken less time than it did the first time. Like, a lot less. Like, "it only takes one third of the time" less.

I also disagree about the pace of gameplay, which is very much like 1.x era PoE1's in a way that I'm very much enjoying.

I agree with basically everything else, though.

* We some sort of deterministic crafting to fix things like elemental resists on our characters, since there are bosses in the game that are just miserable if you don't have enough of the right resists going in. It doesn't have to be bench again, and it doesn't need to be a system for broken end-game item crafting, but the game does need some way to solve itemization problems when random drops aren't cutting it.

* We need traversal options that can carry us quickly through huge areas that we've already cleared, or even just help us clear the 1-inch high obstacles that function identically to walls.
Just... something. Give us something that feels better to use. A fairly minor buff here could have a big impact.

* Using uncut skill gems to level up other skill gems is fine until all of your skills gems are at the current level, at which point uncut gems are useless but still being given out as quest rewards. Maybe let us exchange low-level gems for higher-level ones, five for one, with the Hooded One?

* We need to be able to re-try ascendancy trials, at least until we've ascended three times; gating crucial character progression behind sudden-death mechanics where a 2nd attempt is gated behind yet another layer of stingy RNG just feels bad.

On the whole, I'm enjoying PoE2. These are the only real pain points I have, so far, and they're not enough to spoil the fun; I'm still having fun. But with even modest improvements to these areas, I could be having FUN!

EDIT: Of course, no sooner do I post this than GGG put up a huge front-page news item outlining changes to several of my pain points. I'm sorry I doubted, GGG!

Time to try that Sekhema Trial again, I guess...

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1. Slow Doesn’t Mean Better

Obviously this is true, but only because it is badly expressed. Slowing down the gameplay and encouraging the use of multiple skills has been great and most people do agree with this, so you'll need to be more specific. If you are talking about travel skills, or the size of maps, then I agree with the latter, the maps could be trimmed a bit, but GGG already included the ability to teleport between checkpoints.

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2. Difficulty Isn’t About Tedium

This one is flat out nonsense. The difficulty is not about inflated health pools, it's about distinct monsters representing a real tactical challenge and that's exactly what POE-2 is providing.

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3. Flasks and the “Vision”

On this I am somewhat indifferent. It was tuned to be more of a challenge and encourage players not to be careless during fights. From that standpoint, it's a good thing, and the charm system is an excellent replacement for the utility flask, though I really would like to see more charms slots. Given it was designed as a replacement for the tedious situation with utility flask I would have expected to get three sooner.

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4. Crafting Is a Mess

Here I have to agree. The crafting bench was one of the best things about POE1 and still is. The current system, the lack of resources, the uselessness of Chaos Orbs and the fact that it all comes down to gambling away overly rare currency, is definitely a drag. I do hope this changes significantly. I made a suggestion in an earlier post about allowing us to choose the affix we want to reroll with Chaos Orbs. Whatever the eventual solution, it really should involve layers of specific, deterministic crafting.

Here I agree it the implementation is not yet ready for prime time. Another example of the mismatch between stated goals and the current implementation of the game is Runes. Runes were meant to provide that deterministic element, but since we cannot remove or overwrite them, every new upgrade throws your build off and is a problem, rather than what it should be - an unalloyed cause for celebration.

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5. Drops and Vendors

This goes back to the earlier point on crafting, if the currency was there, runes were adjustable and Chaos Orbs were deterministic at least in the choice of which affix to reroll, things would feel much closer to fun.

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6. The Skill Tree Is Disappointing

Sadly, I agree with all your points here as well. Especially the profusion of tradeoffs and downsides which were previously limited to Keystones.

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7. The Gem System Isn’t Fun

Completely disagree here. I thought it was limiting when lower level, but after having some builds mature, and playing around with the total package I am beginning to see how well done it is.

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8. The Campaign Is Too Long

Completely disagree and so does just about every streamer / content creator I've heard. Not sure where you got that. Endgame maps are certainly potentially too large, yes, but the campaign is inspired and offers real, permanent rewards which make it worth doing every time, imho.

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9. Ascendancies and Trials

I have to agree with this, the current systems gating ascendancies are far too hard and punishing. Many people, competent players, gave up on trying to get them early, relegating their completion to when we'll be massively overlevelled. Unfortunately, this also mean we don't get the joy of engaging with our Ascendancies either, it has become a horrible chore for, honestly, highly questionable rewards in many cases. POE1 Ascendancies were flat out terrific across the board. Once you got them you immediately saw the difference in your char. These are not impactful for the most part and come with yet more downsides.

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I Want to Love POE2, But It’s Hard
As a veteran, I want to see POE2 succeed. I want it to be different, but it also needs to respect the core systems that have kept players invested in POE1 for years. Right now, it feels like GGG is prioritizing their “vision” over what actually works.

I'm in the same boat, except for one thing. It's EA and it's only been a week. I believe they will come around and intend to give them the benefit of the doubt, which means time to test everything out. Remember, the rest of the game is being developed at the same time. That's a lot on their shoulders.

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TheGoodGoodMan#3816 wrote:

Is it still difficult? Thought we are pass it, seeing YouTube videos of people zipping through the endgame maps makes me think it's a ... drum roll ... Skill Issue, there I said it :)

There's been enough time for the very skilled and time wealthy to farm big currency and now that the "economy" is going you can buy your build on the trade site j u s t l i k e p o e 1.

There is no need to try to craft good gear when you can buy it cheap, not like we were going to craft good gear with tools available.

It's always a skill issue to some extent but what we've got here is the wrong mix of 1 parts added into this game and the wrong decisions on important mechs in 2. The OP did a good job.

Everything has been said. The approach is good but it is too far away from POE 1. It plays like a D4 in Dark Souls ambience and Ruthless mode and that at an extremely slow pace. No thanks, I'll keep playing POE 1

The skill tree is simply not complex and only gives you 1-2 directions. Ranger MUST play elemental/lightning because chaos and toxic are too far away, for example. And that's the case for all classes. Plus the gem system, which severely limits you.

Big yes to all this.

I like the bosses a lot. Most of the rest of the game feels needlessly tedious in a way that detracts from the overall experience.

It honestly feels like GGG sat down and spent weeks finding ways to add as much friction as they could to almost every system in the game, not to make the game more fun/challenging but just to make it more tedious.

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rob_korn#1745 wrote:

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just_dont#6539 wrote:

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rob_korn#1745 wrote:

What about you stop assuming things ?

I don't see how any data on a different game can help your argument here on PoE2, to be honest.

"type of player that hates rerunning content that were already visited"
I reran PoE1 campaign a hundred times. If you don't see how that invalidates the fact that I could be someone hating rerunning content, I don't know what to tell you.

I guess you just don't see well, or simply bad faith from you. So your opinion is irrelevant, that's about it.
Gl anyway

When I saw that comment of his, I immediately went and checked your profile... and yeah. Just ignore these people. They're either trolls or... whatever, I won't tempt the modos.

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akaelbenpfeil#7100 wrote:

Everything has been said. The approach is good but it is too far away from POE 1. It plays like a D4 in Dark Souls ambience and Ruthless mode and that at an extremely slow pace. No thanks, I'll keep playing POE 1

The skill tree is simply not complex and only gives you 1-2 directions. Ranger MUST play elemental/lightning because chaos and toxic are too far away, for example. And that's the case for all classes. Plus the gem system, which severely limits you.

wait...so when GGG said this will be nothing like POE 1 and that players should not expect that...they were telling the truth? Color me shocked.