Did GGG really use this patch to double down on all things complained about?
" Alright, you don't think it's too difficult. So let's talk about "sluggish". I didn't experience this, but there's no doubt inconsistencies between the certain builds. The gear I found throughout the campaign (Huntress/Amazon) was very mediocre. And according to you, I was not using my most powerful attack, the basic default attack. I'm sure others like yourself had a different experience, but I found the clear speed to be fine, and I was consistently 1-3 levels behind the area level until later in "cruel". About exploits and bugs being the only viable option: Firstly, if the game is not difficult, then you shouldn't need bugs. I think what you're suggesting is that broken builds are required to get past the "sluggishness". But this was not my experience. PoE1 also had broken mechanics and exploits, and that is not a game in a beta stage right after a huge content patch introducing new mechanics, tweaks, and a new class on a deadline. Let's talk about the video and what it's trying to demonstrate: This is literally PoE1's gameplay if you used auto-attack. Their damage sucks, and they could have used other skills to take Jamanra down faster. Enabling your character to face-tank while pressing 1-button to win has always been the standard for most bosses in PoE1. Let's see him do that with some of the other bosses now, such as the act bosses. Because you can in PoE1. The difference, is that in PoE1, things die very quickly. So there is no need to even consider the mechanics of individual enemies, including a majority of the bosses. In order for combat to ever become "meaningful", it first has to become non-instantaneous. The fights needs to not be over immediately, for it to be meaningful at all. And you have to consider all this in the context of PoE2 still being in beta, with a new large update. Auto-attack having the most damage: The base attack has the most DPS, because otherwise it would be completely useless. Other skills better utilize their individual characteristics for CC, AoE, utility, clear speed, and eventually single target, etc. In the case of this particular fight with Jamanra, you could argue whether it should be viable for a character to face-tank him. If you think it should be viable, then any character could basic-attack the boss down; in PoE1 or PoE2. If the criticism is that Jamanra should have mechanics that force the player to react, I may agree. But really, what they are demonstrating in the video, is that the player has too much power in this instance, either in the form of defense, or that the boss mechanics in this fight don't punish this straight forward tactic. I would agree with that. Addendum: In the end, of course PoE2 still needs a lot of work with the help of fan feedback. We both find that there are problems existing in PoE2, even if we disagree radically about what those problems are, and the direction we want the game to take. But I think if you genuinly want it to be better, you have to offer some constructive sollutions to the problems, and then be open to disagreeing opinions. My apologies to you or anyone else who has genuine concerns or frustrations about it. I think I understand what they are building towards; something new and different where the central focus isn't on "how fast can I wipe the screen". Something a little more interesting. And with some good feedback, I hope they get there. Last edited by WhisperSlade#0532 on Apr 8, 2025, 10:01:28 PM
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" Be consistent - first you said AA is weak quote “ you used auto-attack. Their damage sucks” As intended Secondly you agreed that aa make more damage than other skills. Im not arguing that you must not face tank bosses, but it’s literally how it looks and feels - the best tactics to kill bosses just use aa or any sort of broken builds or you will never kill him. I’d like to ask few questions to understand your knowledge of game mechanics: what classes and builds did you played? Have you completed endgame content? what was your max level in poe 2? It’s important because i feel disconnection between your thoughts and understanding and real game |
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Generally speaking i understand what Jonathan wants - he wants elden ring in arpg style. And im telling you it’s unrealistic with their vision of balance. There is good example - “V rising”. You fight against small group of mobes, which is slow as you and they hard hiting, as you hard hiting them. the main thing - mobs have approximately equal power as you, so it makes gameplay to be more “meaningful” . And how it will be in poe2 - you start t16 map with increased attack speed to 125%, you are slow as hell, huge horde running through, chain stunning and preventing you deal any attack. To make game vore surviving you need…completely whole new game with completely different core mechanics and understanding how “surviving” game is working. Increasing hp to mobs and nerf all staff - the way of poorly designed “wannabe souls likish” game like lord of the fallen or surge.
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" Believe it or not, you can have basic-attack doing the most damage, and have your damage suck all at the same time. So there's nothing inconsistent about it. This is important because you are talking about how it "looks and feels"; that the combat is dull and sluggish. So your problem is not that you can just hold down left-click on the boss and wait for him to die like in PoE1, but that there aren't enough visual effects on the screen and it takes too long? Personally I think the player should have to dodge more mechanics, and utilize more of their skills. The latter one, is something that most people argued against, preferring PoE1's one/two-click style. " I killed all the bosses without a broken build or aa. " Yes I've finished endgame. I have about 250 divine, perfect Ingenuity, HoWaA, Astramentis, etc. But none of that matters, because we're talking about people's campaign experience in the new patch. There are plenty of people who don't understand the game in great depth, and their opinion is valid in its own way. The OP posted a day after launch, about the changes (which there have since been patches for) and I doubt he was deep into maps at that point. Standard: 91 - Stormweaver/Frost Bomb 88 - Chrono/Quarterstaff 65 - Invoker/Bow Dawn of the Hunt: 72 - Amazon/Spear You only want this information so that you can try to invalidate my opinion based on comparing experience. Well here's some for you, I've been playing ARPGs my whole life since Diablo 1. And I've been playing PoE1 regularly since Talisman league. None of this matters, because we're talking about the objective pros and cons of different styles of gameplay, like adults, and the points stand and fall on their own merit. PoE2 isn't perfect, but I'm not going to be swept up in the popularity of a priori hating every aspect of it. I'd much rather have an interesting conversation about how it can be improved. If you disagree that it can or should be done the way I think, that's fine. Let me end by asking you a question, what did you prefer more in PoE2, the campaign or the endgame? Last edited by WhisperSlade#0532 on Apr 9, 2025, 9:26:02 AM
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" that what's i tryied to know. I don't care about your experience in any other games, even in POE 1 because it's mostly irrelevant if only just using for comparing or like expamples. But we are talking about exact game called Path of Exile 2. Not the first part. And im qualify good/bad in terms of exact game, which actualy exact same as it was before 0.2.0. >Let me end by asking you a question, what did you prefer more in PoE2, the campaign or the endgame? Acts are just a showcase in this game, like tutorial before the real game. But it reveals all issues of the game. I have around 1000 hours in POE2 ATM, with 1 mirror and level 97 (stopped at 40% and abandoned). I've completed all the T4 activities in the game, and I’m literally one-shotting all T16 map bosses. However, I’ve never played the so-called "meta" and discovered all the mechanics on my own. I understand EVERY aspect of the game (Xbow Deadeye - level 94, stat stacker Deadeye - 95, Pathfinder with Ice Concoction (40), 0 mana Infernalist/CWDT Infernalist (97), Lightning Warp Sorceress/Frost Bolt Sorceress (91), Spark Invoker (90) - everything with 0 RMT and no POE1 experience). I leveled up to 60 from scratch on Hardcore League with Deadeye, tried SSF League on a titan. I also know what a T16 map with 670% and 100% Delirium in a party feels like. Now, imagine you're in this kind of game state, and a pack of mobs with 175% attack speed and 75% increased life are rushing at you, on a 100% Delirium T16 map + 2 level maps. Do you get what I mean now? I think I should highlight my statements, which lead me to say that the game is poorly designed and these issues require urgent solutions: 1) To many hp of mobs. Inflating health just to make mobs take longer to kill in hardcore games is a dead-end. This doesn’t create difficulty; it creates boredom. In any good hardcore game you won’t spend more than 5-7 hits on a regular mob (Sekiro, all Souls games, Lords of the Fallen II, Nioh, V Rising, etc.). The essence of hardcore is that you and your opponent are EQUAL - they can oneshot you as you. Right now, it feels more like a slog. It’s just mindlessly beating a punching bag, hoping you won’t get chain-stunned. 2) Reduced ailment trashold. In a hardcore game mobs shouldn’t be faster than you, especially when micro-stuns and chain stuns are a thing. Fortunately, Ziz pointed out this problem, and Mike understands it, but Jonathan doesn’t. In current endgame maps, it all either boils down to zoom-zoom gameplay or death. With the current game design, where 50 mobs rush at you and chain-stun you, creating meaningfull gameplay on POE 1 engine and mindset is physically impossible. 3) Combo mechanics emphasis. This is more of a consequence of point #2. Imagine 50 mobs rushing at you with 175% attack speed and a boosted stun lock. The mathematical question is: how many combo attacks can you land in such a scenario? 4) Nerfing everything instead of analyzing working mechanics. I didn’t play POE1, but I’ve been told that you could take any skill in the game and build a build around it. How is it now in POE2? You have a skill tree with 20 skills, but only 3 of them are actually functional, the others just deal damage and have animations worse than a simple auto-attack. Herald of Corruption is nullified by regular poison and doesn’t scale with it. Herald of Ash doesn’t deal damage and doesn’t interact with Ignite status. Minions with +4 gems now die to regular mobs. Hexblast is practically unusable because the curse will expire before you can cast it. All the skills work poorly and are inconvenient. Instead of working with the community, the developers simply nerf everything instead of addressing the obvious issues. 5) Most of the endgame activities are useless. At this point, all activities have lost their significance. Delirium is only useful for the Megalomaniac, as the mana flask has become garbage. The Arbiter is only relevant for Prism Belief which there are 120+ and only a few are actually useful. Invictus is dead. Breach is dead because farming is was overnerfed, Metamorphosis is nearly useless as sockets were removed from the game, gloves are trash since attack speed and damage are now better on regular gloves, altars give too few rewards, and the belt is no longer essential and mostly useless. Trial is dead because socket removal and shield overnerfed, as Azkapa. Sekhema is dead because socket removal and dead temporalis. 6) There are tons of trash unique items that can't be used anywhere because they're worse than regular yellow gear. All these points lead me to the conclusion that GGG developers are wasting their time. Jonathan himself admitted he hasn’t played endgame, in a game where the endgame is the main part of the experience. All the flaws they have can be fixed with the addition of QA to the team and an adequate cycle of management that will push lazy developers to fix things. Last edited by ShaDarkLord#6528 on Apr 9, 2025, 4:37:43 PM
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Why are you guys so upset? Seriously, the game feels exactly the same as it did on launch day. It's still slow, bosses still take a little time to kill, areas are too big.
I'm confused why all the uproar. The game feels exactly the same. |
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"this game became like twice slower, clunky and sluggish.before the nerf and hp buff/ailment nerf was like few strong builds and around 10 medicore. For now you have 3 medicore builds, other just unplayable. There is litteraly 0 defence mechanics for spell casters, all spells do 0 damage instead few. ggg told that they fix mana issue for high level spells but they nerfed it even more. Minion builds are dead, concoction builds litterally unplayable. You have literally 3 playable classes, others are dead. You have 3 playable endgame content, others are dead. Power cap was cut off for 60-80% - no jewels/adorned, most passives are gimmicks, few strong uniques, ailment became ridiculous and mobs can easily stunlock you. So to became “strong” in poe 2 i need twice less time and ill be three time less stronger that it was before. And the way to power became sluggish, unrewarding. More over to level up new character i need to spend like 20 hours instead of 8 like it was, so zero interest to try few characters. Ssf is literally unplayable due to rarity nerf. Hardcore became tedious gringing of low level locations and became 4 times slower and unrewarding. What i noticed you guys never hit endgame content, never tried to reach 100 levels, never tried to play few characters. If you tried all this stuff you will never argued that this 0.2 is literally is digsh8t Last edited by ShaDarkLord#6528 on Apr 9, 2025, 11:56:39 PM
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" So, this is pretty much what I expected. You wanted to compare progression to add credence to your perspective. Got news for you, that vast majority of players are not going to level to 100, so it's not the most legitimate way to assess the game. Once I have a character easily clearing t17 maps and killing bosses, there is nothing I can learn from grinding to 100 that will give me insight about most player's experiences in the campaign or endgame. The OP talked about their early campaign experiences. You haven't played PoE1, but you're making prescriptions about it. Have you even played Dawn of the Hunt? |
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" Yep, i’ve played since launch on standart league, tested all stuff on juicy maps, like how all classes feels except huntress of course. Then i came to league server and reached 2 act by finding abuse with tornadoes and did it for like 4-5 hours. All was like slog, slow, and tedious. Like you trying to kill elephant by spoon. And you can’t fix that just “git gut”. You gyus dont understand most of nerfed mechanics, how ailments works, how formulas works, what difference between global crit and common cri and etc you just playing tutorial for game, im talking about wast majority of engame and why this nerfes killed every aspect in game and not because they nerfed 1 button builds and sparks/stat stackers (which still viable and strong compared to other builds). There is 0 room of build versitile, there is 0 room of upgrading characters, there is nothing left. Just stupid run for 26 hours of boredoom campaign which you have to run over and over again, killing white mobs by 20 hits. Then you come to juicy map and stunchained and do literally 0 damage with like 500+ divines gear and dying because all defennces are dead. |
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" He really doesn't, whats more i don't think he really knows what he wants over specific gameplay snapshots which is why the idea is in conflict with the result. I might be throwing him under the bus here but my gut instinct is Jonathan doesn't have time to play games largely which is why he gives answers occasionally that are just blatantly wrong when placed infront of the players. That isn't a slight on him more of a bet he hasn't even played elden ring or completed a substantial amount of it. I actually agree with most balance statements the GGG team talk about including their reasoning (there are key exceptions like nobody plays melee lul) but their problem is they don't actually adhere to them when making the product and they frequently go for ideas that sound good but in reality just don't work and should have been thrown out immediately. This is exacerbated by the fact their experience is inherently dictated by PoE1 experience, which is why we have a game with the allure of being a slower more measured ARPG like grim dawn or TQ yet endgame content is awash with PoE1 values because its what they are familiar with. You can't have intricate combat then require 300 splinters for a breachstone they are completely at odds, try 30. It only functions currently because the players collectively conform it to their will by finding the most straightforward effective tactic to clear screens to play it like the values dictate. This dichotomy is the heart of their issue right now and them working through it slowly is definitely irritating the playerbase as its completely mixed messages depending on what your playing at what area of the game. tldr: They don't know what they want, combat is designed for small scale encounters, loot/xp is designed for very large scale encounters. Last edited by Draegnarrr#2823 on Apr 10, 2025, 3:29:23 AM
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