I feel like I need several people in this thread to tell me they understand the difference between "taking inspiration from Soulslike games" and "utilizing Soulslike mechanics" and literally making a Soulslike.
Like, the developers of Diablo talked constantly about how inspired they were by Rogue and how the random nature of Diablo's loot mechanics were based on the randomization present in Roguelike mechanics.
If you haven't seen a screenshot of Rogue, here it is:
Does that look like Diablo to you? But I can quote the Diablo developers just like you guys are rage quoting Jonathan about how much Rogue mechanics inspired their game.
If this doesn't help you understand the difference between taking inspiration from or borrowing certain mechanics from a genre and literally making a game in that genre then I can't help you any further. Last edited by Kerchunk#7797 on Sep 26, 2025, 2:35:15 AM
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Posted byKerchunk#7797on Sep 26, 2025, 2:32:23 AM
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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.
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.
Except you are only fighting like 2-3 enemies at a time before you walk 2 screens over to do it again. Yes the combat is more "engaging" but there is zero attempt to be similar. First pack you encounter on the beach is the closest the game is to NRFTW. After that not even close.
Side note, with the new update they announced... they are nerfing pack sizes in maps... Are they increasing drops and xp to compensate?
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Side note, with the new update...
"...that I absolutely didn't bother to read fully despite the announcement being very clear and concise."
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they are nerfing pack sizes...
"...in early endgame maps where I have not been playing for weeks already and so this change will have no impact on my whatsoever."
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Are they increasing drops and xp to compensate?
"...is the kind of question I expect to see from someone who is so dedicated to being constantly pissed off that they will stop reading the patch notes immediately as soon as they have something to complain about even if there are details later that make it very very clear that the change in question is not going to impact them."
Last edited by Kerchunk#7797 on Sep 26, 2025, 3:07:44 AM
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Posted byKerchunk#7797on Sep 26, 2025, 3:06:31 AM
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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.
Jesus, stopped!
Game is severe like Souls games. This people mention.
PoE2 is ARPG but is called by people Souls ARPG (include me) because of gaming severity , how we can call it: Mario Bross? Floppy Bird?
This is not normal in gaming when player is freeze for entire life, killed by critical kill system by random mobs, having no crafting (slot machine), having drops like never existed drop engine, XP penalty... and billion other things.
Nobody claimed this game Souls ARPG...is just community creation.
There is a lot skilled people who played this game for hunderest hours and still calling this game Souls ARPG.
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Posted byDarkDredd#2184on Sep 26, 2025, 4:27:35 AM
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Side note, with the new update...
"...that I absolutely didn't bother to read fully despite the announcement being very clear and concise."
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they are nerfing pack sizes...
"...in early endgame maps where I have not been playing for weeks already and so this change will have no impact on my whatsoever."
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Are they increasing drops and xp to compensate?
"...is the kind of question I expect to see from someone who is so dedicated to being constantly pissed off that they will stop reading the patch notes immediately as soon as they have something to complain about even if there are details later that make it very very clear that the change in question is not going to impact them."
1. I did watch it.
2. I know it scales back up to be the same at T15 maps.
3. Is the kind of question that is a simple question to see if the leveling and gear curve will be the same since they scale up the density to be the same. Not all builds/players jump from campaign to T1 maps, to T10, then 3 maps later being pure 15+.
At no point in my question did I dedicate myself to be pissed off. At every point in your reply you did dedicate yourself to just being a complete troll.
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