Game could be fun if faster

speed of this game is fine. go play poe 1 or d4 for breakneck speeds.

I want the game to be much slower. The endgame shouldn't be much faster than gameplay during the campaign.

Covering the entire screen in explosions and not being able to see literally anything every league is fun for about 10 minutes.

I'd rather have more damage and less skill speed.

I shouldn't have to cast 15 spells per second to trigger 200 projectiles to kill things. Why can't I just cast a few big spells that do the same amount of damage?

It would be so much less spammy, much more visually clear, and actually make different builds feel different instead of being the same blow-up-the-screen-instantly-but-pick-your-color-of-explosion simulator.

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Orbaal#0435 wrote:

This is where we disagree then.
Its not about some random league mechanics, placeholders or not.

Its about core mechanics like items (PoE1 affix system), bruteforcing said items either by clearspeed or spam-crafting (also PoE1), moving power from the skilltree towards gear (resulting in items and thus item acquisition being even more important), monster density (was PoE1 but slightly changed now) and monster AI/behavior (PoE1).

So the very core of PoE2 is PoE1. Nothing has changed.
Why would you expect a different outcome, if you implement the exact same core?


All of this rewards speed and speed alone.
You wont get anywhere near as much in terms of loot, XP or other means of progression if you go slow. You just shoot yourself in the foot instead - multiple times.

I dont care what GGG said or advertised the game as. Doesnt matter.
"Ignore what they say, observe what they do"
Goes for anything in life tbh and applies here as well.

The game rewards speed exponentially more than anything else.
Consequently players will go for that and abandon everything else.
This right there is the core issue plagueing this game.

I don't think this kind of argument really makes sense. Ultimately, sure, the game rewards you if you do things faster, but that doesn't say anything about whether or not they should make the game faster, because this will still be true no matter how much faster or slower they make the game. I mean, suppose the fastest that the best build in the game can kill a boss is a minute, and then the average player can do it in two or three minutes... is it no longer true that you're rewarded for doing it faster? Of course not.

The real issues at play here is that on the one hand, if you kill things too slowly maybe enemies start to feel like punching bags, but on the other hand they've implemented all these game mechanics that don't exactly make sense if you just kill things instantly. Like, what's the point of having a boss that has all these cool mechanics that you could theoretically learn if that boss dies in a second? They might as well have just created some blob that sits there while you unload your dps onto it, not bothering with all those mechanics. Similarly with skills, what's the point of having a combo of more than two skills if everything dies to the first thing you hit them with? They might as well have not bothered with any of those combo mechanics in the first place.

So GGG needs to find a good balance between these two places, such that the builds with the best dps still have a good fight, but a more average build doesn't find it impossible.

I feel like the effectiveness stat might be a good way of dealing with this issue though. It means that if you have good dps, monsters can still take a few hits, so all those combo moves could theoretically make sense, and you even get a reward of more loot and xp for taking on higher effectiveness. If they introduce atlas tree passives that allow you to adjust effectiveness to your liking, it could mean that everyone can adjust the speed at which they kill monsters to their liking, and you're rewarded for having higher dps without it becoming like you simply blast through monsters like they're loot pinatas.

"I want the game to be slow" translates to "I don't want feel more powerful at level 75 than I did at level 10" in the minds of many.

Devs explicitly stated they wanted "slow, meaningful combat" that transitions to traditional ARPG power fantasy in the endgame. That's basically what we have. It makes nobody happy.

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Kalistri#2788 wrote:

I don't think this kind of argument really makes sense. Ultimately, sure, the game rewards you if you do things faster, but that doesn't say anything about whether or not they should make the game faster, because this will still be true no matter how much faster or slower they make the game. I mean, suppose the fastest that the best build in the game can kill a boss is a minute, and then the average player can do it in two or three minutes... is it no longer true that you're rewarded for doing it faster? Of course not.

I dont disagree with your take and I never made the point that game should be faster or anything like that.

What I was saying is that the game does reward speed way more than anything else and that combo gameplay doesnt fit that reality.
Additionally a decade plus worth of PoE1 history strongly indicates that the game is only going to get faster as more powercreep arrives. PoE1 back in 2014 was way slower than current PoE2 is. Let that sink in for a moment.
Then ask yourself how viable combo gameplay is going to be, if PoE2 is going down that exact same road - which it will because thats GGGs bread and butter.


That is why Im arguing that combo gameplay doesnt make sense. It might sound cool on paper and it does work in other games for sure but PoE2 is already too fast for that and I expect the game to become much faster in the future.
Which then begs the question: Why even go for that approach?

Thats pretty much it.

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Orbaal#0435 wrote:

I dont disagree with your take and I never made the point that game should be faster or anything like that.

What I was saying is that the game does reward speed way more than anything else and that combo gameplay doesnt fit that reality.
Additionally a decade plus worth of PoE1 history strongly indicates that the game is only going to get faster as more powercreep arrives. PoE1 back in 2014 was way slower than current PoE2 is. Let that sink in for a moment.
Then ask yourself how viable combo gameplay is going to be, if PoE2 is going down that exact same road - which it will because thats GGGs bread and butter.


That is why Im arguing that combo gameplay doesnt make sense. It might sound cool on paper and it does work in other games for sure but PoE2 is already too fast for that and I expect the game to become much faster in the future.
Which then begs the question: Why even go for that approach?

Thats pretty much it.

Firstly I'd say that combo gameplay doesn't just sound cool on paper. I'm playing builds that use combos and I'm having fun with them. Secondly, they already have combos in the game, so it makes sense to tailor gameplay to their usage. Similarly, they already have bosses that do more than just stand there while you bash them, so it makes sense to tailor gameplay to players learning their mechanics.

I'd also say that gameplay that rewards speed doesn't conflict with combos. All they need to do is make combos as fast or faster than non-combos. Of course, ideally people who don't like combos and those who do are both happy.

The point you make later is the real conflict, indirectly. I mean, monster health is one aspect of how fast gameplay is, and it's not possible for a combo to be faster than spamming an ability if you can kill enemies on the first move of your combo. Therefore, in order to make combos viable at all, at minimum you need to not be able to kill monsters in a single hit, which basically sets a theoretical maximum speed for the game. The perfect solution would be a mechanic that allows people who want to combo to fight tougher monsters and be rewarded for it, which... is already in the game, as of this league.

This is why I was bringing up effectiveness. If we can simply increase monster health and get rewarded for it, then it becomes possible for slower gameplay to be just as rewarding as faster gameplay. You don't bother with effectiveness if you really don't like combos, or you can pile it on if you want to have some epic fights where you pull out every combo for maximum single target dps. In theory (and I believe in practice?) the fights with higher effectiveness are just as rewarding as zooming through enemies like they're loot pinatas. Everyone wins.

For this exact reason, I love temple this league. I can boost monster health to the point where it makes sense for me to pull out a combo for every fight, and get rewarded for it. There are other league mechanics if that's not your thing, or there are ways of building the temple so there's not as much effectiveness.

I can see there being issues with effectiveness and power creep, in the sense that we'll know if power creep is getting out of hand based on how much effectiveness we end up applying. I guess we'll see how that plays out.

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Kalistri#2788 wrote:

Firstly I'd say that combo gameplay doesn't just sound cool on paper. I'm playing builds that use combos and I'm having fun with them. Secondly, they already have combos in the game, so it makes sense to tailor gameplay to their usage.

Thats awesome, love that for you.

My issue is that a good build with mediocre gear can already 1shot anything except some random rare mobs and bosses, which is roughly 95%+ of all mobs.

Thats why I used the "cool on paper" phrase.
Its borderline irrelevant already and it wont get any better.
Hence the question: Why bother? Why go for that approach?

Its been like that for over year now. So its not a balancing issue imho.
If it was, they should and would have addressed a long time ago.