Im not playing Poe2

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Let's end this debate once and for all because it's getting annoying:

Soulslike games have high difficulty and punishing deaths. You are not able to overcome enemies and bosses unless you use clear knowledge of their movesets and abilities. Until you master these encounters, death is frequent and setbacks happen until you learn from your mistakes.

Combat is slow and methodical, and always stamina-based. Other resources like health or mana / energy are limited and only reset upon reaching a checkpoint, or naturally through further progression (see Elden Ring and the way how flasks recharge through defeating an entire group of enemies in the overworld).

That means resource-management is mandatory and just mashing buttons leads to defeat.

Soulslikes also put heavy emphasis on exploration and world design, with many secrets and pathways being hidden away. You find none of these elements in PoE.

You being serious right now? Do you realize you literally just described PoE 2?

Monsters and areas reset on death, so loot is lost and enemies are back and at full health, bosses included. Some of them are long-ass fights that not only test your endurance but your focus and reaction time, plus your amount of available resources.

Combat is slow and methodical, you can't just bum rush into packs or you will get stunlocked, frozen or cornered and likely die. Literal checkpoints that reset your resources and serve as respawn and teleport points aka. bonfires.

Resource management is absolutely vital, as GGG toned down recovery quite a lot and made it harder to sustain.

Exploration is literally a huge part of the game. Hidden bosses give you permanent stats, there's hidden loot rooms, secret bosses for bonus loot, hidden pathways etc.

The comparison for a Souls-like(-ish) ARPG is absolutely valid in every way. Even the random bullshit enemies are in there, or random-ass bait mobs that look cute and harmless but hit like trucks.

No, no and no again, Baumi.

*sigh*

PoE2 is focused on loot, builds and progression whereas Dark Souls is about deliberate combat, fairness and reactive play. You'd have to ignore every thread about "I dont know what killed me" to come to your assessment.

You can beat the entirety of Dark Souls on a level 1 character because the game is focused on player skill rather than optimizing your build. The opposite is true for PoE2 where the decisions you make for your build and your items make up the most of it while player skill is secondary. These are completely opposed design philosophies.

Combat philosophy is also 100% opposed. Clear attack patterns and moves allow you to react to the boss and give a chance to dodge and/or counter, making dying feel fair. In PoE on the other hand people are often overwhelmed by attacks they don't see coming or can't dodge quickly enough. Mechanics that spawn a lot of monsters like last league's Abyss with mobs being faster than the player character are the exact opposite of Dark Soul's design philosophy.

Furthermore, you *remain* vulnerable in Dark Souls even if you focus everything into building more defence. Bosses will break your guard and hurt you to hell and back, whereas in PoE you can become basically immortal and faceroll bosses. The difficulty in PoE is front-loaded and not persistent.

You are making a highly misleading comparison that sets false expectations. Someone looking for soulslike gameplay in PoE will be sorely disappointed even if you can draw some fringe similarities like dodge rolls. What you are essentially doingg is confuse genre identity. A game can borrow elements like slower pacing or dodge rolls without becoming another genre. The overlap is purely superficial.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

PoE2 is focused on loot, builds and progression whereas Dark Souls is about deliberate combat, fairness and reactive play.

It literally isn't? The Dark Souls series is all about loot and progression, and "git gud". Overcoming obstacles is the core game, be it via better loot, skill or sheer will. Same can be said for PoE 2. That's why there's boss weapons, secret loot rooms, secret traders, unlockables, a level up system based on killing enemies etc. Every argument point you use can be applied vice versa.

They are different games, for sure, but the way you are arguing for them to be different is not it, man.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

You can beat the entirety of Dark Souls on a level 1 character because the game is focused on player skill rather than optimizing your build.

No, that's because the game has a minimum of 1 damage dealt (except for Elden Ring). And it's funny you say that specifically, as SL1 runs are entirely about optimization, from A to Z. Actually just go watch SquillaKilla.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Combat philosophy is also 100% opposed. Clear attack patterns and moves allow you to react to the boss and give a chance to dodge and/or counter, making dying feel fair. In PoE on the other hand people are often overwhelmed by attacks they don't see coming or can't dodge quickly enough.

Are we talking about PoE 1 or ...? In PoE 2, at least, you have a ton of indicators, and I feel it's far more fair than PoE 1 ever was.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Furthermore, you *remain* vulnerable in Dark Souls even if you focus everything into building more defence.

You joking? For every Souls game, from 1-3 and Bloodborne + Elden Ring/whatever included, there are full on tank builds. I literally made some myself. You can laugh in even the hardest bosses' faces. I think you simply don't have enough experience in those games. Elden Ring's Realm of Shadow is the sole exception due to a new independent scaling system.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Bosses will break your guard and hurt you to hell and back, whereas in PoE you can become basically immortal and faceroll bosses.

See above.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Someone looking for soulslike gameplay in PoE will be sorely disappointed even if you can draw some fringe similarities like dodge rolls.

Not at all. PoE 2 does a better job at it than something that openly tried to be: No Rest for the Wicked.

I'm not saying PoE 2 is Dark Souls, but there are certainly similarities throughout the entirey of the game.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

What you are essentially doingg is confuse genre identity.

No, you were doing that, calling "RPG" an inflated term. Games are rarely ever one genre.

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Edit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUv40KWYHuI

You actually trying to tell me this is different from people Warcry/buff stacking for Ubers? Most buffs in the game are literally multiplicative.

I've been a mod for dinossindgeil for years so I'm intimately familiar with how much prep goes into No-Hit, SL1 and whatever challenge run they attempt. That wasn't the point, and you are ignoring the key argument there which was that Souls games boss fights allow you to win through sheer skill alone.
SL1 runs are highly optimized with what little can actually be used to make the runs as easy as possible in the chosen category. There's also SL1 no buffs but again, that wasn't the point.

I was talking about Dark Souls specifically anyway. Elden Ring balance is a whole another thing and if I say Dark Souls, Baumi, I mean Dark Souls.

I literally said that you can draw similarities, but that doesn't mean PoE2 is a soulslike. Games borrow mechanics from many things but that doesn't mean they become what they borrow from. Please go back and read nagisanzeninzz's arguments because I was responding to that nonsense.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

Please go back and read nagisanzeninzz's arguments because I was responding to that nonsense.

Ok, I did. I still don't understand why you insist on dismissing the Dark Souls argument.

I'd argue that me playing Souls games literally improved my pattern recognition skills and allows me to understand a boss' mechanics far more quickly than the average player. Only times I die is stuff like screen spam, i.e. Exarch ball phase, remembering shit, i.e. Maven's Memory Game, or when mechanics are not clearly communicated the first time (or because of something not playing out correctly). GGG has a track record of a bit of both, at times genius and at times super unintuitive design, most often plagued by a time sensitive design approach.

Your first fight against a PoE 2 boss will likely have you keep distance and checking for mechanics. That kind of dance is the same in Dark Souls. You learn very quickly that going all-in without any afterthought will not get you very far. Strategic dodge rolls are part of that, too. There's a lot of similarities here, and I don't mind if the devs draw/drew inspiration from those games, but at the same time it's a little silly to pretend otherwise. They are great, impactful games. No shame in admitting they inspired you to walk similar paths.

For what it's worth, I used to think the same, until I started playing it some more.

Just take one look at isometric Dark Souls and see what I mean: https://www.reddit.com/r/darksouls/comments/y8eadt/dark_souls_reimagined_in_topdown_perspective_full/

Once you factor that in and how both games play, it's hard to not draw the conclusion that there is definitely some Souls inspired content. At the same time, when you think about it, the genre itself is basically third person Diablo.

What clearly sets Souls games apart is how you can pick up your lost "experience" and "currency", one mechanic that serves both as currency and EXP (forcing a trade-off between getting better or buying better loot), bosses and enemies reset when you die, chapter-like levels with "final chapter" bosses and I guess third person.

You have any combination of 3 of those and most people will call it a Souls-like. What makes the Souls games specifically so unique is everything crafted around that, from obfuscated questlines and mysterious NPCs to crazy boss fights and a certain art style and world building. And the storyline is always centered around some form of cosmic/intergalactic/spiritual circle of life.

The guy has been cluttering the forums so much with posts you must have missed the one where he was literally calling PoE2 a souls game, or telling PoE2 players to go back to playing Dark Souls and leave his favourite game alone.

Throughout my posts I have highlighted similarties between the games while also showing how PoE2 maintains its core identity as an ARPG.

The reason why I am refuting it so vehemently is that assertions like that create false expectations who want a skill-first, loot-light experience. Those people will have a bad time with PoE2.

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

The reason why I am refuting it so vehemently is that assertions like that create false expectations who want a skill-first, loot-light experience. Those people will have a bad time with PoE2.

I don't think most people will come to those specific forum threads to build their expectations. More realistically, they will watch somebody else showcase it on YouTube/Twitch/whatever, watch the trailer, maybe read a few reddit posts and Steam reviews, then hop into the game and have their face pushed in. Then they either stay or leave.

What I don't understand is why GGG decided to double down on PoE 2's complexity, making it even more obfuscated than PoE 1, a game already notorious for its "complexity", and then again doubling down by changing mechanics that were already established in the first game. Not only does it make it more difficult for newcomers to google the mechanics or remember them when they play vice versa, but it also makes it annoying for a long time player like me to have to re-learn the mechanics and not get them confused with either game.

That's a topic that could use some of that energy you are spending on someone who will have no relevant impact on a new player's experience. Let them preach, who cares, people will never read those threads because they won't even pop up on Google for them.

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BaumisMagicalWorld#0673 wrote:

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

The reason why I am refuting it so vehemently is that assertions like that create false expectations who want a skill-first, loot-light experience. Those people will have a bad time with PoE2.

I don't think most people will come to those specific forum threads to build their expectations. More realistically, they will watch somebody else showcase it on YouTube/Twitch/whatever, watch the trailer, maybe read a few reddit posts and Steam reviews, then hop into the game and have their face pushed in. Then they either stay or leave.

What I don't understand is why GGG decided to double down on PoE 2's complexity, making it even more obfuscated than PoE 1, a game already notorious for its "complexity", and then again doubling down by changing mechanics that were already established in the first game. Not only does it make it more difficult for newcomers to google the mechanics or remember them when they play vice versa, but it also makes it annoying for a long time player like me to have to re-learn the mechanics and not get them confused with either game.

That's a topic that could use some of that energy you are spending on someone who will have no relevant impact on a new player's experience. Let them preach, who cares, people will never read those threads because they won't even pop up on Google for them.

I'm just here for the love of the game. Personally I'm still having a ton of fun in PoE1 and will tend to my PoE2 cravings later on. I'll use my time debating topics I find important thank you very much

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ArtCrusade#4438 wrote:

The ARPG genre name is deceptive and indescriptive. Hell, even RPG as a genre name is misleading in a lot of cases, or at least used inflationary.

I went through this with @nagisanzeninzz before and he received a ton of ridicule from others for the "PoE2 = Dark Souls" assertion. Let's end this debate once and for all because it's getting annoying:

Soulslike games have high difficulty and punishing deaths. You are not able to overcome enemies and bosses unless you use clear knowledge of their movesets and abilities. Until you master these encounters, death is frequent and setbacks happen until you learn from your mistakes.

Combat is slow and methodical, and always stamina-based. Other resources like health or mana / energy are limited and only reset upon reaching a checkpoint, or naturally through further progression (see Elden Ring and the way how flasks recharge through defeating an entire group of enemies in the overworld).

That means resource-management is mandatory and just mashing buttons leads to defeat.

Soulslikes also put heavy emphasis on exploration and world design, with many secrets and pathways being hidden away. You find none of these elements in PoE.

Even if you only focus on the combat aspects of Dark Souls and other games from the Soulslike genre, the only overlap you can find and point to is the dodge roll, and that one wasn't even invented by Dark Souls. It's a ridiculous statement that can only be made if you make the shallowest of observations while ignoring all the other elements of the game.

*Yawn*

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In an interview with IGN, Path of Exile 2's director, Jonathan Rogers, explained that the game deliberately avoids an MMO structure reminiscent of the solutions from Diablo IV. Instead, it will follow the path of Elden Ring and will bet on a more "hardcore flair" .

"It [Diablo - ed. note] certainly has a lot of advantages, such as cooldowns, rotations and the like, but also just more open world design and that kind of thing. We, on the other hand, are going more in the direction of Elden Ring. We're much more action-focused, but with some hardcore flair," the developer explained.

Source: https://www.gamepressure.com/newsroom/path-of-exile-2-more-like-elden-ring-than-diablo-4/ze5c42