As for who Jonathan and friends are making POE2 for? They are making it for themselves.
Historically it would be difficult to imagine GGG not listening to their player base. They've had too good of a track record for too long... under Chris Wilson.
However ><. I would be lying if I didn't get this "Feeling" watching the Zizaran interview. It did feel like some top chefs were trying to sell gourmet food to people that just wanted a burger and the chefs were just all like "You don't understand, these are the best ingredients, this does actually taste good you just need to build up your pallet". They're going into the kitchen knowing exactly what they're going to cook, regardless of what people are hungry for.
Peoples harsh, brash, quick opinionated answers are the honest ones, and any walk back is for political purposes. So I have some concerns there that GGG went in to that in any kind of debating mode.
But this would be unprecedented for GGG, and I am still hesitant to give in to those feelings. Just raising one eyebrow now...
I love all these clickbait "the POE2 streamer community is raging" compilation videos. Every person in said videos is a hopelessly addicted degen goblin who will keep plugging away at the same frustrating things a week or month or year from now.
A lot of these folks make their money from streaming 1 game and their audience expects that content though. I'd frankly watch them play PoE1, however its a bit late in an old season...
In case people didn't want to read the OP (I didn't - thank god for AI) here is a summary:
The poster defends Path of Exile 2’s slower, more deliberate design and urges GGG not to cave to loud complaints favoring easy loot and fast gameplay. They argue that the game originally thrived on challenge, not accessibility, and that recent design choices in PoE 1 diluted that core. They criticize streamer influence and highlight the difference between thoughtful feedback and uninformed demands. As a veteran player and game designer, they believe GGG should trust their vision over popular pressure.
My most hated game.
My most favorite game.
Such is the duality of man.
Haven't posted on here for years and while I understand that some people aren't happy with the direction of the game, I want everyone who is happy with the current direction to also have a voice.
It's always those that have something to complain about that are loud and vocal, but the rest of the community who are liking the product are just quietly enjoying it - that's just the truth.
I urge GGG to not forget that.
Let's not forget two things about the game:
Originally, if you played PoE when it came out - this was back in the days when Piety was the "final boss" in the acts - it played just like PoE2 does now in terms of pacing and difficulty. And it was awesome and a breath of fresh air.
The philosophy of the game has never been about zoom-zooming through content and having incredibly accessible power levels for your character.
It had to be earned, and going back to that pseudo-elitist philosophy made me happy and come back to the franchise, and many other players that I know as well.
Most of these players lost the will to play when the game wasn't challenging anymore, and while you might not care about these players, like it or not, it's the super sweaty hardcore top-end dudes that put in most of the hours in games like these, and they are the ones who make most of the content you watch, and most of the guides that you use, and they are also the ones who keep the competitive part of the game alive by constantly pushing its limits and innovating through creative build-making.
We missed the slow, deliberate PoE that felt like a survival game (especially on Hardcore) - where you had to manage your resources carefully and make the correct game decisions to find success.
I stopped playing PoE1, for example, when it became 80% of sitting at base crafting and trading and only 20% of zoom-zoom gameplay where you encountered like 6 league mechanics in the span of a single minute. The game had no more soul for me, it was dead. The game I knew didn't exist anymore. I don't want to play an item-flipping economy simulator, I want to fight Lovecraftian scale horrors that want to take my head off and use it for supper.
I don't want PoE 2 to also turn into a braindead loot generator for cheap dopamine release just because Zizaran thinks he didn't receive enough loot (all respect to Ziz, but I think specific streamers are listened to too much by GGG and have way too much influence over how things are changed).
In the last dozen leagues in PoE 1, we were watching builds kill things off-screen without even seeing them, or without even getting to interface with most of the mods and interesting mechanics that even rare enemies had to offer.
Even rogue exiles melted like butter when, in the past, encounters like Haast were genuinely difficult. The last time I played PoE 1 - I oneshot Haast with my build without even seeing him implode. This is not engaging gameplay. What am I even playing if I can oneshot something that genuinely terrified me years back from off-screen without even seeing it? That particular moment felt so underwhelming and lame that I just quit the game.
And I was super hardcore about PoE1 as well. I was one of the first players to kill pre-nerf Malachai when it came out, etc. And from that point on - it just became more and more annoying to play it.
When they showcased PoE 2 I was finally like "hell yeah, we're back on the menu!"
I've worked in game design myself for a little over 8 years now and I honestly expected better game design decisions from GGG for PoE 1. I was weirded out about how much power-creep was allowed in the game and how much of basic game design theory was discarded and thrown out of the window.
I believe this happened because the "community" (actually just the loud minority who campaigned for incompetent changes) were listened to way too much. At their core, GGG are a diplomatic bunch and I think they take feedback to heart a little bit too dramatically. Or used to, at least.
I'm sharing this so the devs can hopefully read it and not forget that the average player is not well-versed in game design theory at all. They think they have all the simple solutions, but they don't understand that simple solutions don't exist in this field of work. They fail to understand the full implications of changing isolated elements when every system is interconnected.
The end-result of following this sort of incompetent feedback will be to just remove the campaign altogether or make it optional and then package that as a "QoL feature". Make enough of these small concessions and you suddenly have another Diablo 3.
If you were a heart surgeon, you wouldn't just listen to some random people's opinions about how to do heart surgery because they've seen every episode of Dr House, right?
To the people saying "omg it's such a simple fix..." - I'm sorry but having used the toilet your whole life doesn't make you an expert in toilet design, okay?
There's a very fine line between feedback (the player's objective experience) and complaining (the player's subjective/anecdotal experiences) - and I believe most of what we see on these forums and on reddit is just that.
I'm genuinely curious, why does a random streamer who isn't even a game designer have so much input about what needs to change in a game genre as sophisticated as the aRPG genre?
I understand he's an experienced player, but some of the questions he asked in the interview and his inability to comprehend basic design philosophy really irritated me.
My brother in christ. ARPGs never had and never will have meaningful gameplay. It was always about blasting.
If you want a challenging game and experience the Eldritch horrors, boot up Bloodborne.
The AI in this game doesn't even allow for meaningful gameplay because 90% of trash monster attacks don't even have attack patterns compared to games like Souls, Nioh, Monster Hunter.
Jonathan and his game will fail big time, when they try to implement the souls formula into a game with Breach, Deli, Ritual (all blaster mechanics btw).
So you just want Poe2 to be Diablo 4, why dont you go play diablo ? That's game fit perfectly your mentality
Haven't posted on here for years and while I understand that some people aren't happy with the direction of the game, I want everyone who is happy with the current direction to also have a voice.
It's always those that have something to complain about that are loud and vocal, but the rest of the community who are liking the product are just quietly enjoying it - that's just the truth.
I urge GGG to not forget that.
Let's not forget two things about the game:
Originally, if you played PoE when it came out - this was back in the days when Piety was the "final boss" in the acts - it played just like PoE2 does now in terms of pacing and difficulty. And it was awesome and a breath of fresh air.
The philosophy of the game has never been about zoom-zooming through content and having incredibly accessible power levels for your character.
It had to be earned, and going back to that pseudo-elitist philosophy made me happy and come back to the franchise, and many other players that I know as well.
Most of these players lost the will to play when the game wasn't challenging anymore, and while you might not care about these players, like it or not, it's the super sweaty hardcore top-end dudes that put in most of the hours in games like these, and they are the ones who make most of the content you watch, and most of the guides that you use, and they are also the ones who keep the competitive part of the game alive by constantly pushing its limits and innovating through creative build-making.
We missed the slow, deliberate PoE that felt like a survival game (especially on Hardcore) - where you had to manage your resources carefully and make the correct game decisions to find success.
I stopped playing PoE1, for example, when it became 80% of sitting at base crafting and trading and only 20% of zoom-zoom gameplay where you encountered like 6 league mechanics in the span of a single minute. The game had no more soul for me, it was dead. The game I knew didn't exist anymore. I don't want to play an item-flipping economy simulator, I want to fight Lovecraftian scale horrors that want to take my head off and use it for supper.
I don't want PoE 2 to also turn into a braindead loot generator for cheap dopamine release just because Zizaran thinks he didn't receive enough loot (all respect to Ziz, but I think specific streamers are listened to too much by GGG and have way too much influence over how things are changed).
In the last dozen leagues in PoE 1, we were watching builds kill things off-screen without even seeing them, or without even getting to interface with most of the mods and interesting mechanics that even rare enemies had to offer.
Even rogue exiles melted like butter when, in the past, encounters like Haast were genuinely difficult. The last time I played PoE 1 - I oneshot Haast with my build without even seeing him implode. This is not engaging gameplay. What am I even playing if I can oneshot something that genuinely terrified me years back from off-screen without even seeing it? That particular moment felt so underwhelming and lame that I just quit the game.
And I was super hardcore about PoE1 as well. I was one of the first players to kill pre-nerf Malachai when it came out, etc. And from that point on - it just became more and more annoying to play it.
When they showcased PoE 2 I was finally like "hell yeah, we're back on the menu!"
I've worked in game design myself for a little over 8 years now and I honestly expected better game design decisions from GGG for PoE 1. I was weirded out about how much power-creep was allowed in the game and how much of basic game design theory was discarded and thrown out of the window.
I believe this happened because the "community" (actually just the loud minority who campaigned for incompetent changes) were listened to way too much. At their core, GGG are a diplomatic bunch and I think they take feedback to heart a little bit too dramatically. Or used to, at least.
I'm sharing this so the devs can hopefully read it and not forget that the average player is not well-versed in game design theory at all. They think they have all the simple solutions, but they don't understand that simple solutions don't exist in this field of work. They fail to understand the full implications of changing isolated elements when every system is interconnected.
The end-result of following this sort of incompetent feedback will be to just remove the campaign altogether or make it optional and then package that as a "QoL feature". Make enough of these small concessions and you suddenly have another Diablo 3.
If you were a heart surgeon, you wouldn't just listen to some random people's opinions about how to do heart surgery because they've seen every episode of Dr House, right?
To the people saying "omg it's such a simple fix..." - I'm sorry but having used the toilet your whole life doesn't make you an expert in toilet design, okay?
There's a very fine line between feedback (the player's objective experience) and complaining (the player's subjective/anecdotal experiences) - and I believe most of what we see on these forums and on reddit is just that.
I'm genuinely curious, why does a random streamer who isn't even a game designer have so much input about what needs to change in a game genre as sophisticated as the aRPG genre?
I understand he's an experienced player, but some of the questions he asked in the interview and his inability to comprehend basic design philosophy really irritated me.
stop being shill poe 2 is going down hill bad and has a serious problem, you need to understand budget & cost for poe 2 is 1000x more expensive than poe 1, they cant be having these fk ups or they will end up in ubisoft situation
In case people didn't want to read the OP (I didn't - thank god for AI)
Score one more for not wanting to put in the work of slow careful analysis, I guess.
To pivot to the OP, I think it's a good idea to have different playstyles rewarded. My experience in SSF is going to be different from somebody who exclusively trades. It took me more than six years to complete a league's challenges (just today!) given that constraint. I would have loved for the XP penalty to be lower, or drop rates to be increased, or a variety of things to have made easier. Automated flasks was a godsend. The 3.15 support gem nerf was a nightmare. So it goes.
I'm not willing to play POE2 until I see more development, because I would probably dislike the experience as it is today. POE1 can sometimes be too fast, but I had to learn a strange form of patience when dealing with ubers this past week. Everything I knew about fighting the normal forms was woefully inadequate when I was doing 30% damage and the fight was allowed to unfold more slowly. I guess I would advocate for a system that minimizes fast kills on uber bosses for that reason, but it's not a priority.
At the end of the day, I guess I do subscribe to the idea that players identify problems better than they can identify solutions. That said, devs, please make the rewards commensurate with the effort needed to access them.
Kind of disingenuous argument that PoE 2 is more popular. It's like the guys on WoW retail who claim Classic isn't popular when a new retail expansion launches. One gets annual updates and the other one hasn't really gotten any new content since maybe TBC?
If PoE 1 is left on maintenance mode that's really the only answer you need as to why PoE 1 is losing popularity. Jon understands nobody would have bothered with PoE 1 if as an offering they gave us standard and nothing else.
Some of what's being said on both sides makes sense to me, honestly. There are a lot of things I do like about the game, the aesthetic is excellent, the variety of mobs is decent enough for now, and I am happy with the amount of loot for the most part. The quality not so much, at least in the early game.
On the one class I've played where I got lucky and got a really good weapon, everything felt great. On most of my characters though, early game was a bit of a slog, especially bosses. I kind of look at it this way, if you are at an appropriate level, using a skill with proper support gems, you shouldn't go through your mana pool 4 times to kill a boss. Then it feels like a sponge, and that's not good.
I personally think the early campaign curve should be adjusted to make drops less impactful overall, with more power coming from skill levels and passive tree, and as you get toward the endgame, that curve should start to favor better gear more.
As an example, my current main skill gets 7% damage increase each gem level. The campaign would feel a lot better if that was 15% 1-10, 12% 11-20 10% 21-30 etc. Obviously those are numbers I just threw out there that would require a look. That's what early access is for though, right?
Another option would be to lower boss health a bit, maybe 10-15%, at least prior to maps. There are a few bosses that require q lot more movement, and those I would do a little bit more.
I think I'm the end, the sweet spot is a feeling where the player feels powerful, but the bosses also feel powerful. I should feel like I can be killed, but if I go on and dodge roll like a champ, popping up and hitting my skills at the right time, I want to be rewarded with the dopamine hit that I just spanked that fool, not barely beat him to death with a giant Q-Tip.
I loved POE1. Unfortunately I just can't play it anymore, because it was the game I played throughout my last relationship. When she died, all those places in the game, the music, all of that stuff turned from nostalgic to painful. So I'm invested in trying to help make this game as good s it can be. Just one guys opinion, of course.
POE1 in its current state was not chris's original vision.
he wanted the game to be slow and deliberate.
the game is this way because he "listened to his customers".
his customers liked to break his game, finding powerful interactions that multiplied damage. he saw that his customers loved power.
he kept giving them more power. more speed. and added tougher and deadlier content to challenge the crazy amounts of power he gave them.
he sacrificed his game to make sure his company had money and could grow.
he will never say it but the poe1 that most people have grown to love is not exactly what he wanted.
poe2/poe1 ruthless is more of his vision.
And the exact same thing (as I predicted) is happening to PoE Deuce. Why? Because that's what players want. Zoom-zoom is the natural trend, and GGG isn't exactly discouraging it with race events and other timed mechanics. ='[.]'=
