Jonathan, you cannot make the campaign fun to run over and over for many players
" Why would you think low level content can't be rewarding? Some League mechanics in PoE1 are rewarding at low level. Players just level too fast and the stat difference is so massive that it's pointless to engage with. Settlers was rewarding. We were getting 5-links at level 30. Scourge was rewarding offering quick and easy weapon upgrades. In fact Scourge was the fastest 6-links I've had in 12 years playing. GGG has a problem with number bloat. Esp PoE2. There's no excuse for +6 staves starting a fresh game. mid-end campaign should be +1 and end-game should be +2-3 at most. That's why they have all these hard caps when they should be looking at better formulas and lower values. You engage with low level content because it amplifies your progression speed. "Never trust floating women." -Officer Kirac
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" Yep, and unfortunately engaging with content in a campaign slows your progression down. It's well known as far as PoE1 goes. Stopping and doing a mechanic will take more time overall (very significantly if you do it a lot too) outside of very rare edge cases where you get a crazy drop. However, if the gameplay loop you are leveling up in is not a campaign where you need to walk to the next quest objective and instead just need to get exp, then suddenly doing extra content is all upside and only increases your progression. |
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" you nailed it for me (well, sort-of, I will expand a lot), since the only ARPG I put any real time into was D2 and PD2... I don't understand in PoE2 why the campaign is so restrictive and linear. where is my Tristram runs, farming runes from The Countess, tomb runs, splitting up in act 3 with a team of other players to get all quest items fast, trying to beat diablo together in a4, hoping someone has a build that can handle ancients, then off to Baal runs, then I run normal cows to find more gear and help new players, then go to next difficulty and basically repeat all of that. yes, on subsequent characters you will skip this, pay for a rush service or ask a friend, of course. which is sort of OP's point, make it easier for 2nd, 3rd character. but this just made me realize how much this game is lacking in the feeling of a good campaign experience. for me the entire experience of "campaign" is missing, so much missing. it's too linear, there's no choice in how I progress through it, why can't I just farm 1 zone in an act to get the levels for that act if I want to?. well, I can, but it doesn't feel good, something about the rewards and XP scaling feels bad, you basically need to stay in a zone that is at your level or above you to gain meaningful XP. (side note, something I love about PD2, they kept all of that, and even improved it, and ALSO added maps to the end game as a bonus mechanic for fun). honestly, part of me is very mad at GGG, since it feels like they killed the campaign experience of ARPGs by introducing these map mechanics, which feel like glorified minigames to me, not the actual game. I know it's a hot and unpopular take. but yeah, as D2 player, the campaign should be an experience, but I guess not the one the devs intended it to be. the players should be allowed to create their own campaign experience, more freedom, more fun. there also needs to be some big-ticket items in the campaign. unlocking the cube in Act 2 which is used for many upgrades (at least in PD2), the Hell Forge where you have chance at a valuable rune drop, Ancients where you gain an entire level from one fight, saving Anya which rewards +10 all res and a rare ring, these are important milestones through the campaign you look forward to (at least on the higher difficulties). I am so often saying "what the fuck" out loud at the stuff NPCs are giving me in PoE2. like I just found that trash on the ground 5 levels ago and you are acting like it's some sort of gift now, I don't need that, give me a handful of crafting currency, or a level up, or a 6-mod rare weapon of my choice. also very easy to get a rush service in D2 for subsequent characters. seems about the same in PoE2 but the first experience of campaign is not very repeatable compared to D2. Last edited by rhorains#6760 on Apr 15, 2025, 12:42:23 AM
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" As I mentioned in my first post that's because the spectrum of level speed and gear scaling is scuffed. You can level a character to 90 in a day. Hell, I've leveled a character, cleaned out the atlas and all normal bosses in 2 weeks and it was my first character of the league. After that there's just a complete void in any meaningful progression because the only thing left to do it take on Ubers which requires notably better gear or some jank build. Frankly it sucks hard. Campaign progression isn't supposed to be that different than atlas progression. It's not supposed to be some entirely different game. GGG made it that way over time. "Never trust floating women." -Officer Kirac
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" I didn't say it was, and I read the OP, you are just trying to argue the wrong thing, the thing that is in your mind bugging you. " This phrase is straight up misleading and biased, for start, the use of some and many is just what you think and what you want. It's not a given amount. So why bother writing about it? I can even write: "Like I said, many people like running the campaign over and over (like you). Some people do not." How can you argue against that? Even if you can, it does not mean they cannot like if something changes about the campaign. What if the "campaign" is the endgame? wouldn't they like that? so Your point is just weak. " It's not false, I play this way and I believe many do aswell. For every game I've played they have always been like this. Games with a progression sense based on chapters or story line are such a good base for the design that it pains me to hear ppl arguing ARPGs cannot excel at the same thing. It is a "crime" against creativity. " It is not fundamentally different, this is an good example of your so called "false statement", learn the difference: -1 You kill mobs and rares to drop loot; -2 You seek ways to drop good gear until you can do harder content; -3 You use mechanics to help along the way; The grind at the endgame can be perceived as just a result of "you already did everything we developed, now it is just mix with some extra taste and lore for you to kill time since it isn't required at all to have fun with the game. " If the GOAL for those players are only play the endgame, they chose the wrong game, POE1 is not like that, so even if you argue that POE 2 can change this behavior, there had not been a single good excuse to do so. Not a single convincing argument that will make the game better wo destroying the player base. " The use of "cope" for this is so generalist as it is biased or flawed, I can even use it to write another "copium": "players will be able to skip the campaign entirely". So my opinion still stands, the campaign can be fun, either for endgame players or non endgame players. There can be tools to make it happen that does not envolve skipping or even replaying the whole thing the exact same way everytime. It is just a matter of figuring it out. |
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" If you can still run the campaign, why do you care if other people who don't like the campaign have other options? " I mean it's as simple as searching "campaign" on the PoE reddit and looking at the feedback it gets. And sure you can say "oh but reddit isn't all players", which is just coping by going "no one can know how players feel about the campaign". It's super bad faith to try to discredit plenty of data that exists in opposition to your view because you have nothing supporting you, or do you have some magical place you can show me where tons of people overwhelmingly support running the campaign repeatedly every league? Link? " If you can't argue against it the point isn't weak lol. You're just saying it's weak with no argument. It sounds like the point is actually quite good. The campaign isn't the endgame btw. If the game was entirely different and had no endgame it would be a completely different game that many people like me don't play. I've done like 2 characters in D2, I'm never playing it again. The entire game being the campaign is boring. " Ok cool, no one is saying you can't do that. People who don't like the campaign are asking for an alternative gameplay loop. " Please try to actually address the points I've made about why it's fundamentally different. You didn't do this at all. Again: * The campaign primary objective is moving to quest objectives, not killing monsters or getting loot. If you kill 10,000,000 monsters and have BiS gear but don't go to the quest objective you get nowhere. * Because you need to go to specific locations, large maps, slow movement, and dead ends feel significantly worse. * Because you need to go to specific locations, doing extra content that has a higher "axis of randomness" as Jonathan puts it (league content) feels like a waste of time, since we know from many PoE1 leagues that it actually slows you down to do this. So you just do the same exact streamlined path. * Even Jonathan says replaying the same 3 acts twice is a drag, so why is repeating the same 6 acts for the Nth time any different? " Based on what? The endgame is there, players enjoy playing it for hundreds of hours, and many of those players do not like the campaign. You say none of my arguments are convincing, but you don't actually address my arguments, and you just say things like "it will destroy the playerbase" without actually providing an argument for why this would be the case. " Again, not something I've ever said. It's in the OP this isn't about skipping the campaign, all the solutions I've given as examples require the same amount of gameplay time to get a new character to maps, it just doesn't require the specific gameplay loop of the campaign. " You're doing the exact same things I was calling out lmao. You just say "it can be fun" "there can be tools" "they just have to figure it out". There is 0 substance there. No ideas. It's entirely fluff and empty promises with no backing. It's basically a lie, because you have no idea how to make the campaign fun for the players that dislike it, and neither does GGG, and yet you will keep saying they must run the campaign over and over and over because someday someone will have a magical idea that suddenly makes the campaign fun for them. If there's some way to magically just "make it fun", they would have done it to the PoE1 campaign years ago. Last edited by 0Yemallis#2343 on Apr 15, 2025, 12:20:52 PM
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" I didn't say I care about this, I've literally said nothing about this topic. " When "opposition" are players unsatified, yeah, they make it way more evident, you need to be the owner of the product to have access to the real data. So yeah, googling "campaign" is really bad to be based on. Specially if you are not the game owner. You also added "And sure you can say 'oh but reddit isn't all players'" which would have the same impact and be as damp as your argument on this. " I mean, I am not here to teach you how to provide solid arguments, if you believe that go on, be happy. I wouldn't do the same. " I never said it was, I wrote a "what if" to tell something about your statement. The Quest Objectives is a tool to help new players progress and it is also in the endgame. No difference there. New content added to endgame has NPCs with quests same as campaign, you can skip them, same as campaign. You need to pass through the content to see it same as campaign. The monster killing is even better in campaign since they have a good xp progression. And if you kill 10000000 monsters in endgame wo any goal you also go nowhere and maybe do not even levelup. " I didn't say people can't do that aswell, maybe you are misreading something. People asking for an anternative gameplay loop have been asking this since PoE 1. Pretty copious. But not impossible. " I did, you cannot agree, but you cannot negate. " That's not his words btw, quite different meaning. " Yeah, they removed the campaign? No. They provided an alternative to the campaign? Nope. The reasons? Ask them, in fact they said things like it would require more maintenance or balances and it would be a content targeted for a specific group of players and not everyone would play that feature making it funnel players experience. I unfortunately do not remember in which interview they said it so take it w a grain of salt. " I didn't say it will destroy the playerbase, I said and I will quote "there had not been a single good excuse to do so. Not a single convincing argument that will make the game better wo destroying the player base." I could have written without the sensationalistic "destroying the player base." and provided with "worse consequences". It is not my job to provide the Worse consequences hence I will not take time to write them down. I am not trying to convince you on this. You are trying to convince GGG to provide a feature. Either you or them have the ability to decide if it is better or worse. " I provided the quote you said. That is what I was talking. The skip campaign is an example. Not a statement. " I am, you failed to convince me. There are tools, they can figure out a solution, it may involve alternative campaign. I mean, I would like to do a 2nd run on campaign with harder paths as shortcuts. No problem there for me as a player. I am not promising anything, it is not my job to deliver the experience. It is not empty for me, it is not a lie because you said yourself, make alternative campaign... It is a way. So you already counteragued yourself there xD. Since it is not empty for me I can give it as an opinion and that is what I did. The interest on this is on you and the devs. Do your research. Provide arguments that embases your ideals, or don't and keep playing the game and the campaign. I really hope you find your way into this. " I believe tech and the whole game architecture could be a limitation to make improvements there. so no. They could not and if they could, they didn't do it for some reason. |
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" It's implied when you argue so vehemently against it. If you don't care, why are you arguing that alternatives must not be added? " There is no "real data". It's how people feel about something. Unless GGG does a survey, they have no idea either. The best data is feedback in the places people discuss the game, which is reddit and here. Also, I bet outside of all the people who dislike the campaign, most people also wouldn't care if they added an alternative. It's probably a very tiny minority of people like you that actively do not want an alternative. " I mean you're the one posting "I have no arguments" lmao. What are you even talking about. " You said "What if <irrelevant hypotheical that proves nothing>". I'm pointing out that we don't live in your hypothetical reality. The campaign is not the endgame. The campaign is different from the endgame. Many people play for the endgame, not the campaign, and actively dislike repeating the campaign. " There is no situation in the endgame where I run around for 20min looking for a hallway that leads to another area. There is no situation endgame where if I decide to stop and do some side content, I feel like I'm wasting my time because I'm not progressing my quest objectives. " Level progress is fasting in campaign sure, but the loot is far far worse, and it's secondary to moving to the quest objective. Endgame primarily about killing monsters and getting exp/loot, not moving to the quest objective. " This is like the 5th time it feels like you just didn't read the OP. I made a thread. To sum it up the OP says "A lot of people don't like rerunning the campaign, here's an explanation why, please add alternative leveling gameplay loops for subsequent character in a league". You replied with "I disagree, campaign for me is an integral part of the experience and it surely can have improvements as it can have more content. The goal is not to reach endgame, but to have fun either being in the campaign or doing procedural map modifiers with end game bosses." So your initial post is saying you disagree with adding alternative leveling gameplay loops. That's the entire point. You DID SAY people can't do that as well. Do you not understand the meaning of the words you are writing or did you not read the OP? Which is it? " You quite literally did not. Maybe you will here. " Ok so you again didn't address any of the points I made. Just straight skipped over all of them, and then lied about the last one. Those were his literal words. " I think you quoted the wrong thing here. None of this makes any sense with what you quoted so I have no clue what you are talking about here. " You literally said that, and now you're saying it was hyperbole and shouldn't be taken seriously or something. What's the point trying to discuss anything with you if the things you are saying aren't the things you mean (or more realistically, you're using that as an excuse, but it's basically pointless either way). You still don't actually back up what you said with any actual reasons. Just "there will be consequences, no I don't have to explain why I think that". " An example that looks like a strawman, which is what I was pointing out. Maybe don't use examples that can be misconstrued in that way? " Ok great, because you don't like the specific examples I've given, you think people should just run the campaign over and over until the devs magically make the campaign fun. You have no actual reasons for any of your beliefs and provide no arguments against any of the reasons I have given for why there should be an alternative. You just think it should be the way it is because you feel that way. Man with people like this I see why the world is so messed up lol. Also I would recommend against trying to argue like this when your grasp on English isn't that great. It seems very clear you don't understand what you are reading and writing quite often, and it is very hard to understand what you mean in some places. " Again with making things up and basically lying. "There's a technical reason or they just didn't do it". Or it's what I said, there just isn't a way to do it. It contradicts the nature of this kind of campaign. Last edited by 0Yemallis#2343 on Apr 15, 2025, 5:06:49 PM
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hahaha "with people like this.. blablabla..." ok, now you're just arguing about how I write and how I think, isnt this about the game's campaign ?
It's not implied, you are overthinking stuff. There is real data, you do not own it tho. No point in argue against a weak statement. No you're not pointing out, you simply didn't read and assumed the worst. There are, you may run 20 min to kill all rares, or find the boss. There are, you can do a side content non related to your goals, then you may say: "what a waste of time". Loot is not worse, since wo then you cannot progress. Same as endgame, wo gear you cannot do content. Yeah, I disagree, that we need a different way for ppl who do not like the campaign. I disagree that adding a different way to play the subsequent playthroughs have to differ from the main campaign. I do not disagree that different experiences can be obtained with different playthroughs. The interview I listened to didn't mention what you wrote as "jonathan's words". There is no situation endgame where if I decide to stop and do some side content, I feel like I'm wasting my time because I'm not progressing my quest objectives. No, I do not like the solution you provided. Pretty bland. I'd ratter see another solution to the problem you are having. I'd recommend you find better solutions, or give up on trying. |
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I don't mind the campaign, as in i dont mind going through all the zones in order and killing the bosses.
BUT I do think that it would benefit alot if we could streamline that experience on subsequent runs. Examples include interacting with the hooded one at the end of act 2 and porting back and forth from the tree 12 times in act 1. Like if I've done the quest before just let me kill my way through it instead of clicking through all that dialog and wasted teleports. |
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