@GGG Please get back to building an ARPG, Not Elden Ring nor The Witcher 3

Ever since the launch of POE2 early access I have been frustrated with the newcomers to the game and indeed GGG themselves. It seems everyone new to this game wants it to be either Elden Ring or The Witcher 3. It is neither of those. It is an ARPG. An ARPG of this style is not supposed to be the mechanical Skill of dodging Melenia or discovering the long chain of events of an epic story. ARPGs like POE are about build crafting.

The strategy is in combining the skills, passive tree and equipment to efficiently kill many .... many ... many enemies. The accomplishment is usually measured in efficiency of earning currency. Some play ARPGs to engage with the crafting system (in POE2 its getting better but still a slot machine). Some play ARPGs to find the niche combination of this skill and that equipment.

For example, a build called a Ward Loop in POE1 was able to leverage a side effect of ward break to trigger other skills and then make the mapping efficient. Another example is that my character in POE2 currently leverages Resonance keystone and Combat Frenzy. She pins enemies which generates a frenzy charge and with resonance this is converted to a power charge to empower bone storm.

Trying to turn this game into other games that are popular is a HUGE MISTAKE because they are incompatible. A game like Elden Ring with detailed mechanical interaction is not compatible with 300 enemies charging you at once. If someone wants a highly mechanical tactical combat experience they should play Elden Ring.

A game like The Witcher 3 is not compatible with the epic power creep that happens when builds are found out. ARPG players dont' want to delay the build crafting to play a 7000 hour campaign. So the rest becomes just a slog to get to end game. Look at the stats GGG. People who dont finish the campaign dont play as long in the game. In POE1 most hours, by your own admission, are spent in the end game. Its such a prelude that there are actually campaign racers and people who want to skip it altogether.

I really wish forum posters would stop trying to turn this game into one of those two games.

I really wish GGG would get back to making an awesome ARPG and stop trying to make other games. I wish they would make the bosses harder, the tedium less tedious. Maybe you should sit down and think about the campaign and the game and decide what you think is the best ARPG rather than "Well Elden Ring was hard so ..." You should look instead at other ARPGs and pluck the best things out of them. The boss design in Lost Ark is great. The way it drops red warnings and you ocasionally have to dodge inside changing rings of certain death then get back to damage. LE has good crafting design (but the rest is too easy).

What I really dont understand is GGG started scrappy POE with 1 / 1000th of the budget of Diablo and managed to threaten them enough that they felt compelled to fire off snarky tweets at the EA release. And then GGG promptly forgot 12 years of experience on how to create an amazing ARPG.

Amazing achievements in POE1.
* Crafting: Best crafting system in an ARPG ... well ... ever.
* Boss Design: Pinnacles are great. Some of the campaign bosses are easy but Innocence and Kitava constantly kill me if my attention strays a bit and when playing Hardcore that HURTS.
* Delve: Amazing gameplay, the toughest gameplay in POE1. You are building a new endgame and want infinite maps? You had that? Crib the idea, put on a new spin (integrate maps and delve).
* Skill Tree And Buildcrafting: No one can touch this. POE is the unquestioned king of this. Why dont you start everyone at the center like Scion and then let them choose class based on ascendancy. It would BLOW OPEN build options. Think a pathfinder using zombies. Worried about balance? Don't. POE and every other ARPG are never balanced. The balance shifts league to league. Enable anything and then fix on the fly.

Please get back to making an ARPG.

As it is I wont get to endgame because I got bored in the campaign. Cruel was better because I could blow through that. I wont play 6 acts where each act is as long as all the acts before combined. I am working through a story game, Expedition 33. I have beat Elden Ring and even Sekiro. Not interested in doing so in POE. At the same time my bonestorm char takes down campaign bosses a little too easy because their moves are predictable and you nerfed their HP.

NO ... STOP FLAMERS ... I DONT WANT AN EASY GAME ... I WANT AN ARPG. Learn the difference. I didnt get far in Last Epoch because it was too easy. I didnt get as far in POE2 because it was too tedious.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

The strategy is in combining the skills, passive tree and equipment to efficiently kill many .... many ... many enemies.

For example, a build called a Ward Loop in POE1 was able to leverage a side effect of ward break to trigger other skills and then make the mapping efficient.

You want a survivors game. Got it.

Arpg. Action Rpg. "Action".
What pray tell would that mean?

Well firstly we want genre labels to be specific enough that we don't end up using the same terms for every game ever, making genres useless.
PoE2 and Cyberpunk 2077 are both games with rpg systems and action in them, but we shouldn't call them the same genre or the genre label is meaningless.
So lets start by saying that to be called an "arpg" a game must be top down or isometric with hordes of enemies to fight.

With that matter of finding something generally specific to separate games to keep labels useful, lets get to being genuine.
Action rpg.
In order for a game to be an "action" rpg, it has to have ACTION in it.

That means tangible engaging gameplay that requires player effort.
That means skillful utilization of physically demanding mechanics.
That means dodging, aiming, combos, slower fights that take long enough that you have to survive what the enemy can do to you.
That means needing to move out of attacks and aoe's, needing to maneuver based on enemy position, needing to switch up what attacks and strategies you are using to deal with different enemies different defenses, abilities, and behaviors.

If the game is fast zoomy nonsense where you can just hold down the button for one attack and zoop accross the map without actually putting effort into engaging with any mechanics, then the game has no action.
Which means it's not an arpg.

PoE1, is zoopy zoomy mechanically lacking nonsense that requires no skill expression or actual effort from the player.
PoE1 is not an arpg. It's basically just an idler.
Last Epoch is not an arpg.
The Diablo's I've tried were not arpgs.
PoE2 actually is an arpg.

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Shrodin#0981 wrote:

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

The strategy is in combining the skills, passive tree and equipment to efficiently kill many .... many ... many enemies.

For example, a build called a Ward Loop in POE1 was able to leverage a side effect of ward break to trigger other skills and then make the mapping efficient.

You want a survivors game. Got it.

No, you don't get it. You aren't interested in getting it. You are not even discussing the post.

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

PoE1, is zoopy zoomy mechanically lacking nonsense that requires no skill expression or actual effort from the player.
PoE1 is not an arpg. It's basically just an idler.
Last Epoch is not an arpg.
The Diablo's I've tried were not arpgs.
PoE2 actually is an arpg.

Clearly you never played POE1. Because that is a load of rubbish right there. And guess what people are playing right now? 75% of the player base are playing dead eye so they can kill faster. Oh wait because that's the skill in this game. Its not a shallow learn the boss, play through once and measure your body parts. Its essentially a big puzzle game about the most powerful build.

Next league they will migrate to the best build there. You are in the wrong genre buddy.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

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The_Song#4903 wrote:

PoE1, is zoopy zoomy mechanically lacking nonsense that requires no skill expression or actual effort from the player.
PoE1 is not an arpg. It's basically just an idler.
Last Epoch is not an arpg.
The Diablo's I've tried were not arpgs.
PoE2 actually is an arpg.

Clearly you never played POE1. Because that is a load of rubbish right there. And guess what people are playing right now? 75% of the player base are playing dead eye so they can kill faster. Oh wait because that's the skill in this game. Its not a shallow learn the boss, play through once and measure your body parts. Its essentially a big puzzle game about the most powerful build.

Next league they will migrate to the best build there. You are in the wrong genre buddy.

I hit about 400 hours in PoE1 before I got entirely sick of the fact that every build devolves into not at all an arpg zoomy nonesne where I just hold down one button and zoop across the screen without even needing to pay attention to the game.

That is exactly what PoE1 is, and anybody with any real experience in it will say so.

Now that PoE2 exists, I'll never play PoE1 again, because 2 is so much better.
By actually having action in it.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

...that's the skill in this game...Its essentially a big puzzle game about the most powerful build

Ahh, yes. Such a skillful and difficult puzzle that somehow half the playerbase managed to solve it before the patch was live and rolled Deadeye immediately on day one like who are you kidding dude?

Sorry but this is just terrible feedback.

Youve provided almost zero information about what you think should be improved or what you think is wrong with the game other then comparing it to witcher 3 with zero examples. You somehow managed to write a wall of text with zero content.

Some of the few things that could maybe be considered examples:

Crafting - POE2 is in early access and doesnt have all its league mechanics and crafting mechanics added yet, but you can clearly see from what has been added so far that its on the right track. I also dont see how this has anything to do with witcher 3 or elden ring.

Boss design - POE2 boss design is so far superior to POE1 boss design its not even worth comparing.

Delve - Delve is a great mechanic. POE2 will probably have equally or even better mechanics when their added. The only "exclusive" poe2 league weve had so far is Abyss, the rest were just copy pasted from poe1 so that the game would atleast have some endgame to play. More great mechanics are sure to be added when they actually release a patch that focuses on the endgame. Again I dont really see the relevance or the point.

Skill tree and buildcrafting - What your explaining is excactly how it works in poe2 aswell.


Again reading your post provides no information on what you think they should improve and I fail to see where the similarities between elden ring and witcher 3 are.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Ever since the launch of POE2 early access I have been frustrated with the newcomers to the game and indeed GGG themselves. It seems everyone new to this game wants it to be either Elden Ring or The Witcher 3. It is neither of those. It is an ARPG. An ARPG of this style is not supposed to be the mechanical Skill of dodging Melenia or discovering the long chain of events of an epic story. ARPGs like POE are about build crafting.

Luckily for you there's THREE other games that have exactly what you're looking for and they're actively updated, too!
You should also try vampire survivors.

Let's not make the same game over and over, ok? Thanks.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

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Shrodin#0981 wrote:

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

The strategy is in combining the skills, passive tree and equipment to efficiently kill many .... many ... many enemies.

For example, a build called a Ward Loop in POE1 was able to leverage a side effect of ward break to trigger other skills and then make the mapping efficient.

You want a survivors game. Got it.

No, you don't get it. You aren't interested in getting it. You are not even discussing the post.

Read your own title. You aren't interested in getting it either. Just paying it forward