Redoing the campaign was fine when it took 6 hours. It's not fine when it takes 20.
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It's indeed too long, their vision is completely blind if they think ppl will like redoing the campaign over and over again
When they said that they wanted players to love replaying the campaign i thought they had come up with something interesting like a not linear storyline and acts, like each character could have a different starting location, you could choose which act to play in whatever order you want but instead we got more of the same but waaay longer To me the perfect solution would be: - Remake the campaign to be like i said (extremely unlikely ik) - Make every map 10~30% smaller in size - Give us more freedom and options to build our character from early on, like by act 2 i should already have access to 1 or 2 lesser jeweler orbs, 3 to 4 spirit gems, level 2 support gems and more attributes (or just debloat the passive tree tbh) - Only force us to complete the full campaign once per new league, and offer us a skip to endgame at the end of act 3 - Doing all the 6 acts gives us a small but considerable reward like: +3% movement speed +10 spirit +3~10% rarity If they did something like that i bet ppl wouldn't complain about the campaign so much Last edited by Vyend#2601 on Apr 15, 2025, 4:10:55 AM
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POE2 campaign does seem too long.
I did it on 3 characters in 0.1, and so far only one in 0.2.. I think my best time (softcore SSF), from memory, is about 20 hours to complete the campaign. (2h30m Act 1, 4h Act 2, 4-5h Act 3, 2h Act 4, 3hr Act 5, 4hr Act 6) I think 6-10 hours casual speedrun would be a better timeframe for repeating. Maybe they could change things so that the optional bosses are actually optional by making later act bosses give the earlier act reward for a skipped boss... I know they are redoing Acts 4,5,6 to not be clones, but while they are cruel clones, imagine if Azok or Freythorn or Molten bosses in cruel gave you the non cruel rewards if you had skipped that boss.... of course it would be harder to do this, but it would provide some means to save time when you are good enough. |
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" I do not know exactly, but it is more than 10. |
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Campaign is too much on-rails.
D2 had a good system, but it was player-created, which was enabled by the lack of restriction to things like - shops, XP scaling, area and quest order. You could, if you wanted, skip EVERYTHING and just come back later for the quest rewards. but what really ended up shining, and still does to this day IMO (at least for the PD2 mod, idk what vanilla D2 looks like in 2025 besides bot city), was this experience: - Starting a new ladder (league), immediately you can find a group to join to do some early quests. Make a friend or two, at least for that day. - Get to Tristram, start to run this area on repeat for XP with a group. Not the devs intention, but players found this to be quicker, and most importantly, more enjoyable than traditional story-based progression. - The theme of this continues, as you go through the acts, you progress the quests with a group, usually using teamwork to hasten things (splitting up to complete quests faster), and then several pit-stops of level grinding before moving on. - Eventually you get to the end of normal difficulty, there's more grinding here, then go to next difficulty, and again you can find a group to move through the acts on the 2nd diffiulty. or you can fight cows for a bit, grind for some loot. or you can at this point try and get a rush, if it's not the very first hours of the league. maybe it's just me, but a reoccurring theme here is grinding at different points throughout the campaign, rather than PoE2 where players want to get to the end SO THAT THEY CAN START GRINDING, since in an ARPG you want to be grinding, that's why you're playing (me anyway). If you can make a campaign where players can grind, I think then it keeps not only the heart of the genre in the campaign, but prevents this feeling of "there's campaign, and there's endgame, and the first one sucks and is irrelevant to the game". -- in PoE2 this heart of campaign experience for me is lacking a lot, it feels I am forced to walk in a straight line, along devs intentions, no freedom to explore or try a new way or use teamwork to make things shorter, I am stuck with their vision of the campaign experience and I get no liberty or autonomy to change it or do it differently, that's what will become boring to me. and playing with others in PoE2, joke, makes everything take 5x longer as people do not have similar movement speed, monster health becomes insane (maybe they fixed this last patch IDK I'm on HC SSF now), loading in and out to take TPs is a headache, of course to be fair we are early in this game and maybe some things get found, and party play isn't impossible, but for now we are stuck in this story-mode single-player experience that is not what I expect when I want to play an ARPG. Endgame is when you spend most time by yourself, farming, whatever, campaign is made much more tolerable with a group IMO, my experience. Last edited by rhorains#6760 on Apr 15, 2025, 3:52:53 AM
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+1
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In regards to the other games, that is your choice, plenty play those games over and in new game plus modes.
The issue i am seeing as in D4 is there is a player base in these games that considers the endgame the "real" game. That is fine. I personally play arpgs more like you play the other games, and lightly touch endgame, but by that point i move on. You highlight the problem though as sure if i was to want to get to endgame quickly it will feel like a chore. However for those that are not really into endgame, what can happen is the campaign becomes a joke and a boring walking sim. I think the challenge with poe 2 is that they are building a souls like game with the arpg endgame that is imo more for the arpg map blasting game. two different games i think. Perhaps a adventure and story mode or something would be easier, So story mode can still be a fun a viable way to play much like new game plus etc modes on souls, Witcher games. And one Adventure gives you a 6 hour viable campaign run or whatever feels right. Maybe they will come up with another way, but for me it's the core issue with online endgame arpgs. So it's hard to please both, and be two different games in terms of Endgame or replay's etc. Since just fyi, a player like me will think the game feels trash if i can blast the campaign in 6 hours on replays or each playthrough. Much like D4 is atm, I just don't get that appeal. Be interesting to see, but that is my input for the topic. |
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" +1 This is exactly right. The "alternate leveling" was leaping between the grinding spots, where you'd arrive somewhat under-leveled and left over-leveled enough to rush straight to the next grinding spot. PoE 1 had that too, to an extent. |
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yes once the first toon has done the campaign leave the map unlocked for alts and allow the player to choose how they want to grind. you would still need to do all the bosses that give rewards like points etc then the player could pick their favourite area and grind away until ready for mapping
Last edited by tarloch#1873 on Apr 15, 2025, 4:26:34 AM
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If it was only 20h. For most people its around 30h.
Either way its still way to long to do it every season. Other things that take to long is leveling to 100 (or it being impossible to do in reasonable time within season because you dont get xp at some point from normal maps. Its like 10x-20x longer than poe 1. Also current maxing atlas quest takes to long as well compared to 0.1 You are long done with your character before you are even half way done with the atlas, unless you are completely ignoring everything and only rushing T1 maps to skip to next node and rushing the maps 24/7. |
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Yeah it took me 20h and around 25 deaths in 0.1 for my very first character without informing myself whatsoever about the game before. I played until LV 94, beat all T4 pinnacles, made a second character, did the campaign in around 8h with 3-4 deaths. That felt ok (not good but ok).
In 0.2 First character (same ascendancy and build I played till LV 94 so I know the skills in and out and also all bosses and their mechanics): 32h for campaign, around 45 deaths....Am in the endgame now LV 91 but I will definitely NOT make a second character. Sure it would be faster because I have currency now and can always buy good stuff every couple levels but still....nah ty. |
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