Redoing the campaign was fine when it took 6 hours. It's not fine when it takes 20.

"

Urza_Mechwalker#7393 wrote:

"

onetruelai#7327 wrote:

I played PoE1 a lot and never really had the problem with redoing the campaign because it was SHORT. But THIS just can't go on like this. I bet the game will lose more players to this issue over any other.

The thing is they want a game where the campaign IS THE GAME, not an obstacle before the game. Their focus is that people play the game FOR the campaign. They are clear about that. They will not make it much shorter.. they will work to try to make people want to play it . Endgame MUST be secodnary to the campaign because MOST players NEVER reach endgame!

This is an interesting perspective... I certainly prefer *playing* the POE2 campaign to the POE1 campaign... The one time I tried to learn to quasi-speedrun the POE1 campaign felt really stupid to me. Shorter yes, but kinda stupid... running as fast as I could trailing mobs behind, "ignoring the game" to walk to the other game.


As for the notion that "nobody is going to do a longer campaign" - about 3M more players play through most or all of D4's longer campaign than play through POE1's shorter campaign. When I think about my more mainstream friends who play D4, they only create one character. They play a few hours a day, or maybe 3-4 hours on a weekend. It takes them a month or so to get through the campaign.. and the payoff accomplishment is defeating the "big final campaign boss" and seeing the "big final cutscene"...

In that respect... what POE2 is missing is more story payoff, and better cutscenes, the final Act 4-5-6 story, and the big final story payoff for the mainstream. I have always assumed that those monochrome matte-painted image sequences would be replaced by more flushed out and longer story cutscenes... and this is probably more important to mainstream players than the length of the campaign.

Well if most people never finish the campaign i don't see how it would hurt to allow those who alredy finished it this league to skip it. Those who didn't finish it won't be affected anyway.

I'd also like to see how retention is among that group. Will they come back next league, and the next league, and the next and the next and the next for many years just to kill the big bad boy in the end?

"

The thing is they want a game where the campaign IS THE GAME, not an obstacle before the game. Their focus is that people play the game FOR the campaign. They are clear about that.

BTW i'm not sure about that. Because as they said themselves, for EA they had a choice between finishing the remaining three acts or adding the barebones endgame, and they chose the endgame.