Act 3 needs to be remade.

So I played back on day 1 of POE 2, played the hell out of the game on that first day, but ended up never playing again after finishing the campaign back then, something in act 3 just killed the game for me 1 year ago, I didn't even want to go mapping because act 3 just took so long that I just thought the game felt bad.

It was too slow, too clunky, too much time spent only running. So I just ended up playing poe 1 instead, waiting for further patches.

Decided to try poe 2 again now because of druid and see how the game is going, I heard about sprint and rhoa, and thought that act 3 was probably rebalanced.

Turns out that act 3 is still by far the worst thing about the game. It's still very slow, I had a map tutorial open on my 2nd monitor and I still took 15 minutes on some maps that didn't have tutorials for them like Venom Crypts, and don't get me wrong, I played through poe 1 campaign many times and I do have some maps that I hate on POE1 like phantasmagoria, but it's like most of act 3 maps are worse than that and by a long long shot. The whole thing where you can't teleport to town by the end of the act is just unecessary friction that was added on top of a lot of previous unecessary friction.

I'm only saying this because now that I played Act 4, it just looks like a game made by another team, it's like you go from the lowest of the lows to the highest of the highs in terms of the game quality by itself, act 4 is amazing, no issues, just pure fun all the time.

So, yeah, here's my 2 cents on redoing act 3 flow, map layouts and feel in the future if possible

+1

Act 2 is bad, act 3 is terrible (in this context)

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TheBalrogslayer#7574 wrote:

+1

Act 2 is bad, act 3 is terrible (in this context)

Act 4 is annoying too. Fetch quest after fetch quest, go to boat, sail to waypoint, get off the boat, explore map, rinse and repeat.

Designed entirely to waste your time while adding nothing of value

I don't get the complaining. Do you want to play an Action ROLEPLAY Game or not? Besides, you know, acting out a character and a class in a story and a world, like you do in roleplaying, the point of Arpgs is to embody the whole "the journey is the goal" philosophy. You start out weak, you level up, you progress your gear, your skills, etc.

Have you ever played D1? You know the grandfather of this genre. Or even D2? The foundational game of this genre? You don't have endgame there, you don't have mapping, you don't have currency, you don't have crafting.

This genre is fundamentally not about div/h power zooming the same 15 maps over and over. Yet after 15-20 hours of actual arpg campaign gameplay you get it anyway. So what are you whining about? If playing the game causes you such dread maybe this is not the game for you

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Slart1bartfast#0332 wrote:

I don't get the complaining. Do you want to play an Action ROLEPLAY Game or not? Besides, you know, acting out a character and a class in a story and a world, like you do in roleplaying, the point of Arpgs is to embody the whole "the journey is the goal" philosophy. You start out weak, you level up, you progress your gear, your skills, etc.

Have you ever played D1? You know the grandfather of this genre. Or even D2? The foundational game of this genre? You don't have endgame there, you don't have mapping, you don't have currency, you don't have crafting.

This genre is fundamentally not about div/h power zooming the same 15 maps over and over. Yet after 15-20 hours of actual arpg campaign gameplay you get it anyway. So what are you whining about? If playing the game causes you such dread maybe this is not the game for you

I'm whining about the possibility of rushing through the whole poe 1 campaign without much effort in under 7 hours if I want to, or take longer and take up to however many hours if I want to.

I feel like act 1, 2 and 4 of POE 2 have this feel to them, even though they take longer, I can "control" how long I take to rush through the maps, exits and side objectives usually make sense.

Act 3 doesn't. I'm obligated to lose a lot of time for side objectives, any time a map forks, you need to go back and find the other exit, it's known to be a "kind of time loss", but when most of the maps have this kind of thing, it's huge time loss all the time. Having a map like Venom Crypts behave like a bigger version of Poe 1 Flooded Mine / Underground Sea (known for having very terrible layouts) doesn't help its case.

It's good if you can choose to roleplay if you want, or you can just -play without feeling the obligation to role- if you want, that's the thing.

Edit: Also love seeing no number besides your name there, lovely detail.

campaign is part of the game

rework yes, but dont make it easier or way faster.
add more unique quests, more rewards and not just "go A and after A go to B and after B go to C".

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Takalol#4981 wrote:

I'm whining about the possibility of rushing through the whole poe 1 campaign without much effort in under 7 hours if I want to, or take longer and take up to however many hours if I want to.

I feel like act 1, 2 and 4 of POE 2 have this feel to them, even though they take longer, I can "control" how long I take to rush through the maps, exits and side objectives usually make sense.

Act 3 doesn't. I'm obligated to lose a lot of time for side objectives, any time a map forks, you need to go back and find the other exit, it's known to be a "kind of time loss", but when most of the maps have this kind of thing, it's huge time loss all the time. Having a map like Venom Crypts behave like a bigger version of Poe 1 Flooded Mine / Underground Sea (known for having very terrible layouts) doesn't help its case.

It's good if you can choose to roleplay if you want, or you can just -play without feeling the obligation to role- if you want, that's the thing.

Edit: Also love seeing no number besides your name there, lovely detail.

I don't even know what does numbers means. Some PoE1 thing I assume.

See, I never played PoE1. I only saw it online and friends playing. But to me it was a massive turnoff seeing people cutting the campaign down to a couple of hours and within a day of a new season zooming through maps, screen clearing everything and having solved the game essentially. But it's fine, not the game for an older dude like me who grew up playing the formative titles of the genre, others seems to love it. Good for them.

PoE2 is at heart truly a D1 and D2 experience. And I love it. There is some flaws I could complain about, like the zoomfest it turns into in maps and that ranged aoe skills need the nerfhammer, but having to clear maps in campaign is not one of them. In fact, you can entirely skip venom crypts, the rewards doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things.

I just looked around in the forums. There is a guy talking about "arbiter mechanics in 0.4" because he has just beaten him this season. My man, people are beating the pinnacle boss in less than 60 hours after season start of a 4 month season, people are already lvl98 on the ladder less than 3 days in, and you are still complaining that the game is too slow.

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Slart1bartfast#0332 wrote:

Have you ever played D1? You know the grandfather of this genre. Or even D2? The foundational game of this genre?

I’ve got around 20k hours in D2, and I’ve compared PoE2 with it in many of my forum posts. I think D2 campaign was extremely replayable because the campaign is actually very short but a lot of optional content, as well as a few locations that are very iconic and fun (like chaos sanctuary, throne of destruction and the cow level).

For example, Act 5 has a tonne of content, but you can (if you’re good enough) run straight to the ancients and to Baal right after. You don’t have to do any of the other content.
And in Act 1 you can even enter someone’s town portal all the way to Andariel straight after creating your character.

Obviously, if you want to role play, and immerse yourself in the lore, there is a tonne of content. There’s NPC conversations, there’s different environments, different types of monsters, etc. There’s even areas with no quests, like the Pit.

But in PoE2, nearly everything is mandatory (directly for the main quest, or indirectly for extremely important upgrades like +30 spirit).

And on top of that, the areas are much larger. D2 areas get much larger once you’re in Hell, not in act 2-3…

man act 3 and act 4 are too long and boring compared to act 1 and act 2.

They need to get those acts in a correct design and order similar to act 1 and 2.


The acts are way too long and maps are still super large .

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TheBalrogslayer#7574 wrote:

+1

Act 2 is bad, act 3 is terrible (in this context)

Act4 as well is really just ACT 2 but with a ship rather than a caravan.
People lost their mind at "you can do it in whichever order you want!!11"... well, so you could in Act 2?

I mean, some maps are really cool in terms of mood and theme, but there is nothing "innovative" really.

Overall, every act is just damn too long, builds come online way too late and playing different builds (that would give every season some extra longevity) is incredibily dull because you can only replay the damn campaign all over again.