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

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1453R#7804 wrote:

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Out of the loop, first message of yours I read.

But basically, this wall of text actually tells very few things.

- Your ppl were scared about the amount of stuff to learn in PoE1 (which is valid).
Funny thing is that the game is not expecting anything from anyone. You could have fun doing the campaign only in PoE1 as well as PoE2.

- They (and you) like PoE2, basically because it's dumbed down, slower/cleaner, newer. Truth is, PoE2 will get bloated the same way overtime by design.

- Finally, your billion DPS gate, and the shield charge nonsense is only you ranting for god knows what reason. You didn't kill endgame bosses in PoE1. Did you in PoE2 ? There are builds outputing billion in PoE2 right now.

What you highlight as problems are self-inflicted.
In PoE1, you put pressure on your mates to reach you because you are ahead in knowledge. While at the same time you get the pressure from top players because they do billions and you feel bad.
In reality none of this should matter to you, but it still does (I'm no exception)
In PoE2 you feel all at the same level, because we all started as noobs. So you don't have the same pressure, but it's all an illusion that will fade away reaaaaaaaaally quick.

Not saying what you like or don't is invalid, feel free to do so. But the reasons for it don't seem to be the one you think, respectfully.

Good luck, have fun anyway

Unpopular Opinion: I'm concerned that GGG wants their cake and to eat it too.


Specifically has GGG CLEARLY said who the game is for and, more importantly, who it is NOT for??


For example is PoE2 for the "hardcore" D1, D2, PoE1 Ruthless, crowd what want a challenge with scarcity being a driving factor??


Is PoE2 for those people that want to blend a Souls-like with an ARGP?? Are they trying to attract people with really good pattern recognition, processing & reaction speeds and blend those genres??


Is PoE2 for the PoE1 enjoyer?? The one in endgame that zoom zooms, has boss-trivializing damage, and the wealth of Midas??


Is PoE2 for the casual that averages maybe an hour per day over the course of a week but they still expect a viable end-game experience??


The thing is I see some design decisions that SEEM to support one thing and other decisions that look like it's going for something else.


I'm not convinced that PoE2 can be a jack-of-all-trades sort of game and be successful. It needs to find its voice and then become the best game it can once the vision is clearly nailed down.

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

Ah, you sound exactly like the people who flooded the Diablo 4 forums, defending every bad design decision while the game still had hype. Remember how that turned out? Hundreds of thousands left, and now barely anyone talks about D4 positively.

PoE2 isn't magically immune to the same fate if shallow systems and bad design choices are propped up by people like you. Maybe take a step back before history repeats itself.

Again - I personally know four separate people engaging meaningfully with PoE2 who all tried PoE1 and hated it.

You keep dismissing the opinions of people who disagree with you as being useless and of no consequence because anyone who understands PoE1 the way you do would obviously agree that it is the pinnacle of perfection and the new game must immediately abandon any attempt at differentiating itself from its predecessor or it will end up like...the most financially successful ARPG of the modern age.

Huh.

Is Diablo 4 a Masterpiece of Gaming Perfection? Not by a long shot. But boy howdy does it do a better job of attracting and onboarding newcomers than Path of Exile 1 does. D4's expansions sell, its seasons put up numbers. PoE1 supervets meme on D4, but even you have talked about how successful its launch was. And as someone who ends up with a fairly broad spectrum of gaming news in her feed, lemme tell ye - D4 isn't nearly as much of an abandoned ghost town as you think it is. I don't play it myself because ActiBlizzard is a chauvinistic transphobic disaster of a company I refuse to support, but the game still does perfectly fine even with its crap build diversity and constant actual balance problems. Here's the thing - ARPG fans hate D4. But they're not the ones Blizzard made the game for, and the people they did make the game for play and enjoy it just fine.

Of course, that's what truly scares the POE1 supervets, I think - the idea that Grinding Gear is right. That all this "lost depth, complexity, and engagement" the POE1 supervets are complaining about were actually just bloated barriers to entry that didn't need to be there, and the game will thrive perfectly fine without them. Not one single goddamn soul misses Orbs of Fusing. The three dozen interlocking, overpriced, obtuse and counter-helpful "crafting systems" POE2 currently doesn't have? Maybe they're just Orbs of Fusing in disguise.

Again - fix the Salvage Bench so it can extract items from sockets on gear and allow us to resocket the gear. Boom - almost all the "deterministic crafting" complaints relating to the POE1 crafting bench solved. Perhaps unfuck Essences so they give specific modifiers again rather than just Fossil-style modifier types. And frankly, knock the "+Gem Level" modifiers on the head so we stop seeing +42 to gem levels on gear and there stops being a single "correct" answer to itemization. Weapons have no bloody business giving +6 or more to skill level, and once that modifier stops being stupid other mods on weapons will be less of a Loss Condition by comparison.

The answer isn't "blow up the new game entirely and just make it PoE1", the way you keep arguing for. The answer is to tune and adjust the systems until they reach a state of comfortable equilibrium.

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Poe2WarriorMan#6401 wrote:

500k happens on the weekends

No, it doesn't

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Kaukus1#7461 wrote:

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janochocho#1159 wrote:

I hope POE 2 will be different from POE 1. If you really want POE 2 to be like POE 1, play POE 1 and leave POE 2 alone. And you have one less problem in your life and the rest of us have the game we want and that is POE 2.

Ah, a private account chiming in with bold claims, zero experience in PoE1 trying to tell others how to feel about PoE2—classic. Let me clear up your misunderstanding: nobody here is saying PoE2 should be identical to PoE1. The argument is about PoE2 lacking the depth and core systems that made PoE1 successful.

Your comment not only ignores the actual discussion but also shows you didn’t bother reading before replying. If you want PoE2 to be its own game, fine—but that doesn’t mean the game should be fundamentally worse by abandoning mechanics that worked. Perhaps spend some time understanding what’s being said before chiming in with unhelpful takes.

My world doesn't revolve around POE 1, it's boring to me. Have you played POE 1? Honestly, I don't care what you did yesterday or today. As I wrote, keep playing POE 1 and leave POE 2 to people who know how to use WASD and other keys. And not everyone needs to chase or brag about their success in the game.

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1453R#7804 wrote:

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Querker#1809 wrote:

But that will happen with POE2 anyway. The "pro" good at POE1 not because there is an option to blitz around, but because he knows how to do that, he has mechanical skills to sustain such speeds and react to something happening and he understands the game enough so his character is not dying after jumping in the next monster pack. POE 2 has a blink since day 1, together with other options of travelling like leap slams, stampede or flicker. And those, who invested more time to learning how to make them work will make them work. So prepare to get more frustrated.

"Enigma" is considered the most overpowered runeword in d2 for the same reason. People adapted to using items with teleport charges. And they are flying through the game with somewhat comparable to poe1 speeds.

There's zero "mechanical skill" involved in PoE1 play, nor does anyone using a PoE1 Zoomer Boomer Blaster Master Must-Go-Faster build "react" to a single goddamn thing. They can't. They physically, biologically cannot; they've made their build move faster than the human nervous system can process data. Those builds are faster than the physiological reflexes of the human body, and generally designed with some manner of autotargeted triggered movement like Bodyswap to account for this.

Someone running a "normal, ordinary, and expected" PoE1 build does not actually play PoE1 - they simply hold down the Explosions button, watch the utterly unreadable chaos on their screen, and listen for their loot filter to tell them when they need to let go of the button long enough to pick up one of their five hundred thousand drops.

This is the level to which all of you folks are trying to push PoE2. And the rest of us will protest vehemently until and unless it happens, at which point we will simply quit PoE2 like most of us quit PoE1, and the second game will wind up as dead in the water as the first.

that's because my dear uneducated wannabe gamer looter ARPGs are NOT balanced around "mechanical skill"... they're balanced around numbers, builds and game knowledge...

And by the way, if try to make one of those "PoE1 Zoomer Boomer Blaster Master Must-Go-Faster" builds on your own without the knowledge of the game I guarantee you that you won't make it out of the campaign or you'll barely make it into maps... and THAT is the challenge of the game... a challenge that is intellectual and not a "space key timing check" that is literally designed for zero IQ gamers that cannot bother to actually LEARN SOMETHING...

Go make a blaster build in PoE1 without a guide... I dare you!!!

You lack the game knowledge... but you don't want a challenge... you want an artificial bullshit challenge of only needing to learn to hit space key at the right moment because you don't have the mental capacity to learn to play an ACTUALLY challenging game that requires you to learn stuff...

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Blade_Dancer_90#3602 wrote:

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1453R#7804 wrote:

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Querker#1809 wrote:

But that will happen with POE2 anyway. The "pro" good at POE1 not because there is an option to blitz around, but because he knows how to do that, he has mechanical skills to sustain such speeds and react to something happening and he understands the game enough so his character is not dying after jumping in the next monster pack. POE 2 has a blink since day 1, together with other options of travelling like leap slams, stampede or flicker. And those, who invested more time to learning how to make them work will make them work. So prepare to get more frustrated.

"Enigma" is considered the most overpowered runeword in d2 for the same reason. People adapted to using items with teleport charges. And they are flying through the game with somewhat comparable to poe1 speeds.

There's zero "mechanical skill" involved in PoE1 play, nor does anyone using a PoE1 Zoomer Boomer Blaster Master Must-Go-Faster build "react" to a single goddamn thing. They can't. They physically, biologically cannot; they've made their build move faster than the human nervous system can process data. Those builds are faster than the physiological reflexes of the human body, and generally designed with some manner of autotargeted triggered movement like Bodyswap to account for this.

Someone running a "normal, ordinary, and expected" PoE1 build does not actually play PoE1 - they simply hold down the Explosions button, watch the utterly unreadable chaos on their screen, and listen for their loot filter to tell them when they need to let go of the button long enough to pick up one of their five hundred thousand drops.

This is the level to which all of you folks are trying to push PoE2. And the rest of us will protest vehemently until and unless it happens, at which point we will simply quit PoE2 like most of us quit PoE1, and the second game will wind up as dead in the water as the first.

that's because my dear uneducated wannabe gamer looter ARPGs are NOT balanced around "mechanical skill"... they're balanced around numbers, builds and game knowledge...

And by the way, if try to make one of those "PoE1 Zoomer Boomer Blaster Master Must-Go-Faster" builds on your own without the knowledge of the game I guarantee you that you won't make it out of the campaign or you'll barely make it into maps... and THAT is the challenge of the game... a challenge that is intellectual and not a "space key timing check" that is literally designed for zero IQ gamers that cannot bother to actually LEARN SOMETHING...

Go make a blaster build in PoE1 without a guide... I dare you!!!

You lack the game knowledge... but you don't want a challenge... you want an artificial bullshit challenge of only needing to learn to hit space key at the right moment because you don't have the mental capacity to learn to play an ACTUALLY challenging game that requires you to learn stuff...

Copying someone elses meta build is challenging, got it. This shows how much challenge you’re willing to take, you’ve self reported, thank you for your cooperation.

For all intensive purposes if a genre is called “action” rpg, lacking action is not what someone would expect. Might as well play jrpg when spreadsheet gives you deterministic results.

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Victini#7730 wrote:

goddamn this is a longass thread that no1 at ggg will ever see cos by the time they come off holiday it will be like 100 pages long and they will see it and be like "nah"

Do you genuinely believe that they have not been using AI to summarize threads?

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Sutopia#6937 wrote:

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Blade_Dancer_90#3602 wrote:

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1453R#7804 wrote:

There's zero "mechanical skill" involved in PoE1 play, nor does anyone using a PoE1 Zoomer Boomer Blaster Master Must-Go-Faster build "react" to a single goddamn thing. They can't. They physically, biologically cannot; they've made their build move faster than the human nervous system can process data. Those builds are faster than the physiological reflexes of the human body, and generally designed with some manner of autotargeted triggered movement like Bodyswap to account for this.

Someone running a "normal, ordinary, and expected" PoE1 build does not actually play PoE1 - they simply hold down the Explosions button, watch the utterly unreadable chaos on their screen, and listen for their loot filter to tell them when they need to let go of the button long enough to pick up one of their five hundred thousand drops.

This is the level to which all of you folks are trying to push PoE2. And the rest of us will protest vehemently until and unless it happens, at which point we will simply quit PoE2 like most of us quit PoE1, and the second game will wind up as dead in the water as the first.

that's because my dear uneducated wannabe gamer looter ARPGs are NOT balanced around "mechanical skill"... they're balanced around numbers, builds and game knowledge...

And by the way, if try to make one of those "PoE1 Zoomer Boomer Blaster Master Must-Go-Faster" builds on your own without the knowledge of the game I guarantee you that you won't make it out of the campaign or you'll barely make it into maps... and THAT is the challenge of the game... a challenge that is intellectual and not a "space key timing check" that is literally designed for zero IQ gamers that cannot bother to actually LEARN SOMETHING...

Go make a blaster build in PoE1 without a guide... I dare you!!!

You lack the game knowledge... but you don't want a challenge... you want an artificial bullshit challenge of only needing to learn to hit space key at the right moment because you don't have the mental capacity to learn to play an ACTUALLY challenging game that requires you to learn stuff...

Copying someone elses meta build is challenging, got it. This shows how much challenge you’re willing to take, you’ve self reported, thank you for your cooperation.

For all intensive purposes if a genre is called “action” rpg, lacking action is not what someone would expect. Might as well play jrpg when spreadsheet gives you deterministic results.

No, copying a build is not challenging... making your own IS!!! In PoE2 you HAVE to copy one of the 10 at most viable builds to even play the game...

Also I wrote MAKE A BUILD ON Y0UR OWN!!! I specifically said that but you have no arguments because you're not capable of coming up with one...

Go tap space key all day monkey brains!!!

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maquino85#7657 wrote:

You’ve got 4 friends and one of them is in endgame where 99% of the problems mount up? Well that’s just swell. You made a great point. Maybe if you add another friend who has heard of poe2 and shows signs of interest we can just put this whole argument to rest.

Mm. Your block chance. vs. The Point seems to be very high.

I was providing evidence, anecdotal as it might be, that what Kaukus and other PoE1 supervets claim to be the case - the idea that nobody expect POE1 supervets has any long-term interest in POE2 and no new players trying PoE2 at the moment have any intention of sticking around - is erroneous.

Kaukus' entire argument rests on the idea that the only thing PoE1 supervets value is the "depth" of the original game's decade of bloated, patchworked interdependent systems, and the only possible audience for PoE2 is the PoE1 Supervet crew. He dismisses out of hand the idea that new players could be interested in PoE2 for any reason beyond those reasons he thinks PoE1 did better than the new game - the only people who will EVER play Path 2 for any length of time, for any reason, are PoE1 supervets.

It's honestly a ridiculous argument on the face of it - if the only possible audience for this new game is the exact same audience PoE1 has already captured, why the hell did they make a new game at all? They already had that audience, and could've easily retained it indefinitely for a tiny fraction of the cost and effort. All they had to do was keep adding ridiculous levels of power gated behind obscure mechanical quirks one can only discover by watching Ziz or Mathil for a thousand hours, then continue to tune literally the entire endgame of POE1 specifically and solely for those builds. PoE1 supervets eat that shit up and can be fed an infinite amount of insane powercreep for the rest of their lives with a smile on their face and a song in their hearts.

The rest of us are tired of chasing that garbage. The million-plus DPS builds I've done the last couple of times I've bothered with Path 1 that would've been excellent achievements five years ago are now trash meme ultragarbage in modern POE1, and the endgame shows it. Builds that reasonably could have challenged the Furthest Endgame in War for the Atlas now can't even access the content in the current PoE1's "endgame." The outrageous level of scaling is no longer a gratuitous "reward" for Winning The Game and a way to show off or enjoy your power trip, it's an absolute necessity.

Why should that level of nonsense be an absolute necessity simply to see the content and attempt to challenge it yourself?