PoE 2 - will it continue zoom zoom trend?

Hello,

I can't say I am a long time player (first time tried out poe during harbringer, perandus, more seriously playing since abyss), what bothering trend I see - game is becoming faster and faster and also deadlier, playing a build that doesn't clear screens in 1 touch is a death penalty in t12+ maps (you will encounter random 1shot death every 5-6 maps with medium def build (50% phys red, 6k life, 75% all ress).
But I remember playing these past leagues, super fast screen clearing builds were mostly tied to headhunter/ultra high budget, reality now is - if you don't explode screens - you will die. And past few leagues this is getting more and more as a rule. I like playing fast, clearing fast, but being punished for not playing fast - that's what nothers me most. I mean if you left fow mobs alive and stoping to loot for 0.5s and getting gutted by 3 mobs 100 to 20% in a matter of moments - it is not the way to go. I love this game, I will play regardless, but hopefuly, things will slow down when PoE2 comes.
And I will not even start about over-the-top map juicing options (for me this is positive, but somewhere should be a cap on this, getting 100+ scarabs/map is not healthy for the game, even if such map costs 10ex to create). But this is different topic.

I think it'll probably be reduced, but speed is one of the prime precepts of character power so its not gonna go anywhere as a concept.

I think the real issue we have right now is there are a myriad of balance decisions/approaches applied in a fairly scattergun approach across the game. White mobs for example have like 15k life in a T16, the boss has 10mil.

Those numbers automatically mean a character that can kill the boss quickly, will absolutely wreck everything else unless you are killing one monster at a time though hell you could turn it into a 3 link and still clear fine.

If they can do a thorough rebalance they can make the game more challenging and just keep vast speed as a harder objective to reach, rather than one extremely trivial to reach.

They need to address their game systems though to achieve that and it isn't easy, in a way you have to guide players into what you actually think a realistic character is then you can tune more finely. Right now if they added more monsters with guaranteed hit spells (I feel like blackguard arcmages are nearly the onle ones) It'd actually break the game straight up.

Glass cannon on SC currently only has the drawback of being unlikely to reach the highest levels, levels which they already don't expect us to reach. Why wouldn't we play characters as fast as possible in those circumstances?

I hope that character possible speed would only be increased in the future.
It is what makes the game good.

Tailwind+Elusive boots are step in the right direction, more speed for everyone.

As I just wrote in another thread:

"

What I was referring to, is content like Timeless conflicts, regular Delirium encounters and other stuff, that directly rewards you for going fast, and that is idiotically bad for slower builds. I NEVER applaud when developers more or less directly tells you "this is how you're supposed to play the game", in an environment where diversity, depth and complexity are key. And with content like that, they DO tell you "you have to go fast".

Clear speed IS and will always be (indirectly) more rewarding, because you throw more dices per second, and hence get more sixes. The problem is when content starts directly rewarding clear speed, and punish everything else. That is hurting build diversity and depth options.

So, again; I'm all for going fast. It's fun. But I'm not a fan of you having to go fast, because of mechanics.

No matter how fun you (and I) think it is to go fast, it's not necessarily a good thing when the game starts demanding it through different mechanics. Clear speed should be enough rewarding by itself, it does not need to be further rewarded through (league) mechanics.

As far as I understand from what was shown and discussed at ExileCon PoE 2 is going to have 7 new acts that are to be an alternative way to play the main campaign. It will not be replacing the 10 acts we have now. So PoE 2 will give us a choice as to which way we play through the acts to maps, 10 faster paced acts (what we have now) or 7 slower paced acts. But when we're done we will still have the same endgame of Atlas and mapping so the current smash-n-dash speed of maps isn't changing much (or at all).

PoE has morphed into this hideous twitch shooter of a mess that has lost it's way over the past few years. Gone are any strategy elements and it's all this smashing of mob packs, grab the crumbs (loot) and dash off (race) to the next mob pack to rinse and repeat. It's all about building an exile to do this a million times and PoE 2 won't be changing this as far as I can tell (not enough info on PoE 2). Given the current high ranking of PoE 1 (in the top 20 according to Steam Charts) GGG can't change the endgame speed or risk a player base collapse. There are too many PoE speed junkies that are willing to pay (buy mtx) for their next ladder reset and racing fix every 3 months so why would GGG slow the endgame pace of play and risk losing a lot of players. The simple answer is GGG won't be. Same for any hope of a better (functional) trade system. It sort of works (barely) but is just enough to minimally get by so PoE.trade operators are not worried about becoming obsolete.

Op, better ask if there be any kinds of obtainable and useful defences available.

Not for .01% of players, so ultra expensive. So we can have a luxury to actually live in the fight. Today we avoid fights by instadestroying stuff, cuz defences are absent and usually not working anyway, too much damage sources players gets incoming.

Speed is everything
Power is everything
Progression is power

You people want to play slow by all means play a dookie build but you ain't dragging me.

"

I_NO wrote:

Speed is everything
Power is everything
Progression is power

You people want to play slow by all means play a dookie build but you ain't dragging me.

PoE wasnt always this way. It used to be much slower, and more difficult.

One of the major problems is that loot absolutely sucks, which over time, due to crafting power creep, has resulted in a currency farm and alt spam crafting slot machine.

The faster you collect currency the better. It's a fucked up way to play a loot based arpg but here we are.

It's likely the ship has sailed on speed in PoE. A change now would just "feel bad" even though its probably better for the game.

However if loot isnt fixed soon, well, I'm not going to say the game is dead, but this shit is getting old league after league, year after year.

If the current trend isn't going to get fixed, soon, there is only one build, speed build and there is only one way to play the game, speedrun. In a game that praise itself on diversity, we sure tunnel ourselves fast into a singular playstyle.

"

Phrazz wrote:

No matter how fun you (and I) think it is to go fast, it's not necessarily a good thing when the game starts demanding it through different mechanics. Clear speed should be enough rewarding by itself, it does not need to be further rewarded through (league) mechanics.

Timer based encounters are not always fun, I do agree.
Delirium partially fixes that through existence of Delirium orbs.

I personally think the timers should not exists, if your build is weak, you are already spending more time on an encounter and getting less XP/currency per time unit.