Successful Looter + Dark Souls game already exists. GGG please take inspiration from it!
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Everyone has noticed, from the start, how PoE2 feels like the devs are trying to force Dark Souls style gameplay into a PoE1 style base game. This has caused much consternation to the playerbase as those mechanics have proven to be very clunky or at odds with the Looter ARPG scaffolding that they're building on.
Things like having bonfires and mob respawns on death (that for some reason don't persist into endgame, teaching players the wrong lesson during campaign). Or highly capable monsters that you have to pay attention (but instead of hand crafted encounters, it's a procedurally randomised swarm of random shit). And power scaling in the end game that still trivialises everything if you go with meta builds. But there is a game that has already combined the Dark Souls genre with the character building, item looting, equipment optimising, grinding end-game content genre that they can learn from! That game is Nioh 2!!! They could take inspiration from this game in many different ways, but I think the key ones are noticing that the endgame of Nioh does not include massive maps. They're actually quite small, but difficult, stages that always result in some kind of boss fight (or even a boss rush). While the game has procedural designed levels they are not completely random but rather constructed from many hand crafted encounters that can be tuned to be quit difficult, 100% skill based, but still randomised within reasonable parameters. Each enemy drops a lot of loot because you aren't being swarmed with random junk all the time so that you have to 1 hit the whole screen to make progress. Nioh 2 even has a PoE1 style mapping system called Scrolls which have randomised parameters, tiers, number of attempts allowed, and different effects. But each scroll is a small stage of high difficulty encounters with various monsters that give a lot of loot, so combat stays meaningful and fun even as character power starts taking off. What Nioh 2 recognises is that it's the meaningful combat that is the important part of the game and not slowly walking through huge stages and killing lots of plebs. The endgame cuts right to the interesting part rather than making you spend hours on an atlas pathing and setting up stages only for the stage itself to be mostly walking around. GGG needs to decide if it wants a PoE1 successor or a game with meaningful combat. It's not going to be possible to blend those two styles because they're at opposite ends of the spectrum. Every time you push the gameplay more towards one side or the other, the opposing side will be compromised. Last edited by RedaOu#0533 on Sep 25, 2025, 5:29:48 AM Last bumped on Sep 26, 2025, 2:24:35 PM
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" I'd say that not meta builds, but any builds. And not even in endgame. Swarming monsters lost their identity and ruins most of builds currently exists in poe2 which are based on combo mechanics and skills like parry or collecting infusions. |
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POE2 is not a soulslike game, and isn't attempting to be (if they are, they are WAY off base). They never claimed to be making a soulslike game.
The only people calling it soulslike are those that clearly never actually played Dark Souls. Dodge roll does not make a game soulslike. |
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" I'm one shotting everything before maps and through maps. so yeah, definitely too powerful before endgame. |
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" I've played every Soulslike game with challenge restrictions. GGG is very obviously taking major inspiration from Souls style "meaningful combat" game in MANY ways. Of course they're not going to claim that, devs don't usually do that, especially if its a source of criticism in the community. In fact, before PoE2 the phrase "meaningful combat" usually referred to commentaries and analyses of games that are Souls or soulslike. It's not just bonfires and dodge rolls, but active block, parry, enemies with big telegraphed attacks that you're supposed to avoid or counter with active mechanics rather than just "solving" the battle with your build (which, yes, they're failing at), stagger bars for PCs and enemies, attacks that take advantage of staggered enemies. |
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" All i'm going to say is that PoE2 kind of feels like it wants to be something more like No Rest for The Wicked. |
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" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UehsEJCfuns 2:20 😲😲😲 Mark noo.. why would you use those words... it scares the hell out of man-children that can't press more then one button and need to see their screens filled with pretty colors (but then somehow still complain about visual clarity..???). How will they solve the whole game through spreadsheets and mindless farm if you actually do that kind of stuff... MARK NOOOOO "Sigh" Last edited by IonSugeRau1#1069 on Sep 25, 2025, 6:21:38 AM
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" I'm surprised they actually said it, I know it comes up in interviews sometimes and they just kinda smile and nod without confirming it. But I guess they did confirm it. |
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" They have literally said that they are taking inspiration from Soulslike and that the entire team was playing Elden Ring a lot. But I guess that they think that Soulslike means getting 1-shotted by a boss no matter what your defences are. |
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" They did. It's the only reason I bothered playing an arpg, actually. They even paid for IronPineapple (a famous dark souls content creator) to play it You think GGG sponsoring a dark souls content creator is just coincidence? No, they wanted dark souls players like me to try the game https://youtu.be/P6FlsTetZgY?si=8m5tAqVPbgEzqqsi Last edited by iHiems#0168 on Sep 25, 2025, 6:47:12 AM
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