Why POE2’s Direction Is Worrying for Veterans and Newcomers Alike
" is this a copy/pasta of what Ziz said in his latest review video? |
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"Tbh I agree with everything posted there but I never watched Ziz's video. But those are things I've also been thinking of, so it IS possible to come to the same conclusion. |
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First of all, for the love of Sin, please stop full-quoting the OP, we all read it already, only quote-highlight what specifics you're talking about, ugh, there's like no message board etiquette here.
As for the "vision"... "Nintendo Hard" games had a notable formula to them: You hit the boss three times during the downtime after you proved you could solve the boss mechanics, and it either dies or changes form one closer to death (usually with three forms). For the Ultimatum 2nd ascend, the fight was 20 minutes long. Not for all the Ultimatum, JUST the boss fight. I had mastered the mechanics. Damage-balance-wise, I could take one hit from the boss before dying, so I had room for a single error once every minute or so. I had all the patterns down 100%. I knew the boss, and every attack it could do, about two minutes in. So I hit that damage sponge. Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And Again. And if that feels spammy and annoying to read, imagine how it was to PLAY, for TWENTY MINUTES. I put in an extra spacebar every few seconds to simulate how the boss would on rare occasions do a minion-summon to mix up the flow, changing nothing gameplay-wise but at least it had some visual variety. Then a monkey one-shot me 100 times in a row shortly after. Good times? GGG noted the lack of HP nodes was to balance boss damage around everyone, so dying 100 times in a row in a deathloop was the intended gameplay experience. So clearly, investing in ANY defenses whatsoever is useless, might as well go all-in on DPS, at least until GGG finds out people have a risk of having fun and actually dealing damage with a build so they nerf it. With one support max, there's no room for build variety, because some supports are objectively better than others, meaning you MUST build one way. And why must you do so? Because otherwise, you'll be one-shot. Your defensive option is no longer positioning or movement speed, nor is it stacking health and resistances, it's invincibility frames ONLY. Which you will eventually fail. If you're going to be oneshot anyways, why have ANY defenses? Until monsters deal LESS DAMAGE, the answer will always be MORE DAMAGE by the players, because your only defense is, eventually, RNG of the iFrames matching your lag spike. The less rolls you do, the more you survive. In PoE1 this isn't an issue. You can stack resists, I did a 90-res-all Chieftain tank once, felt SO different than all my other builds. You can stack damage mitigation, I've tried ward-walls. You can do health-stacking. None of which are options in PoE2, at least in the first 20 hours of gameplay ("But the endgame!", I don't care, I played RF from act 2 once, I played SPELLSLINGER from act 3 once! You don't need to reach endgame! I did Tornado Shot as a league starter, EVERYTHING in PoE1 can feel viable early Acts, which lets you feel good playing them, which you will be forced to do every couple months several times). Instead, it's only DPS as a survivability tool, and so with objectively better supports, they NEED to all be in the dominant damage gem, which needs to be always up. Moving the game slower has reduced build variety. I remember the Ignite Frostblink build showcased by GGG themselves about a year back. Ignite... Frost. How wacky! How weird! You're a moron in PoE2 for experimenting; it's all semi-hardcore ruthless, bosses feel AWFUL unless you're following a specific guide online for damage because they're just HP sponges who are playing I Wanna Be The Guy while you're playing Getting Over It, etc. Their advertising blitz worked wonders, and their goodwill as a company got me to buy a pre-access pass (though I'd buy the New Years supporter pack anyways, probably). But I hope they're not diverting TOO many of their programmers and writers to PoE2. I hope they hired new ones. Because I actually LIKE the lore and story of PoE1, and would hate for it to be reduced in scale or quality to support what is, at its core, a product whose vision is, unfortunately, a short-lived product lifecycle. Notably not a poor one, it could possibly make good money briefly for sure, it already has even. But PoE2 feels like a one-time-play experience, and I don't buy microtransactions for a game I play once and never again. |
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I mostly agree with the initial post.
I completely disagree with the kids posting about vets that just talk crap. It was GGG who said PoE2 was a chance to fix things from PoE1 and learn from mistakes, not veteran players. The kids should just stick to actual feedback and keep their inferiority complex against older players to themselves.... Also the reason PoE2 concentrates on whites and blues is to counter the fact that seasoned players treated them as junk. For some kids to get on and say that the tedious loot for PoE2 is to satisfy the veterans is not even ignorant, its just plain foolish. No matter what GGG does. PoE1 and PoE2 will have comparisom. It doesn't even have anything to do with the inferiority complex that the newer 'one click phone gamer' generation has with veterans or older players. If they screw up PoE2, they will end up with an old game thats going nowhere and a short-lived new game that regurgitated the same old problems and operation that the original did. PoE2 has alot of problems. Ignoring PoE1 and just resting it on its own merits, it still doesn't have what it takes. I would consider myself a PoE1 veteran. I also don't expect PoE2 to be a clone of PoE1. I do expect it to be better than PoE1 or at the very least, not have problems that PoE1 has already been through that GGG professed to have learnt from. An example of this would be how half of building a character is basically just trying to get enough mana to not get mana-screwed. Having to pick only intelligence and mana nodes just to stop the game feeling clunky sucks. Over half of the players would end up playing mana stack builds..... (Yeah. It already happened......) It is such an obvious problem, and compulsory mana fix is something that players have already had to deal with multiple times with PoE1. Does pointing it out mean I want copy and paste PoE1? Nope. It does mean that I expected GGG to learn from past mistakes... like they said they did....and not screw it up...again... I don't need a braindead D4 Clone thats 90% empty and has the equivalent of kiddy restrictions. PoE2 has potential, but GGG seems to be building it exactly like PoE1, just with more restrictions. Overtune, patch and fix, overtune, patch and fix, all while ignoring the most basic of problems..... Sound familiar?....If it does, you've played PoE1 enough to understand veterans, and probably are one. Maybe PoE2 will just need time to mature like PoE1 did.... Maybe it will be really good after 4-6 years.......If GGG and the one click phone gamer kids don't wreck it first. Haha Universal Law - Balance
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Ascendancies feel bad right now. There are definitely issues. But this is Early Access. I'm not worried about PoE2's direction. They couldn't just start this game with it being juiced up as PoE1 currently is cause power creep is unavoidable. Right now the game is the most boring, tedious, and incomplete as it will ever be. In it's current state it's far more interesting that Diablo 4 was at launch or PoE1, or Last Epoch.
I mean, definitely speak out about concerns with current mechanics, but GGG has a good track record of making adjustments and creating a really deep fun ARPG. I have full faith the PoE2 will eventually surpass PoE1 when they get all the kinks sorted out with their new systems. |
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I agree with almost everything in the OP.
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Pretty solid feedback, although I personally am happy with the loss of flask play. It was bad in my personal opinion and in terms of controls for PoE2, it just doesn't fit.
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well said
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feel the same
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so, there is *one* thing that The Vision interacts with advantageously, and that is power creep: GGG can drip-feed us a gradual speedup over the years, as well as gradually reverting any of The Vision changes such as The Well that people continue to hate, and it will feel that the game is getting faster and overall more fun with each new league, while for some years they'll just be giving us back what we already considered to be fundamentals in poe 1, before they have to enter *real* power-creep territory like poe 1 eventually had to in order to keep people coming back
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