Predictions for ExileCon/PoE2

Innervation is pretty spot on with some of the predictions

A bigger opportunity cost for endgame content seems inevitable since "uber ubers" were supposed to be unsustainable, but here we have folks running 1600+ uber eats a league, and posting fairly representative spreadsheets of drop chances for things like flesh and ashes.

Sanctum seemed well-received overall and I suspect some more stress on solo achievements and soulbound or account-locked rewards in PoE2. It's one thing to tag along with a group to carry invites and voidstone battles to unlock atlas content. It's entirely another to have to earn those unlocks and ascendancies/choices on your own merits.

It's what makes me think many aspects of character development/atlas progression will be gated behind solo-only encounters, or roguelike encounters a la Sanctum that you can technically get a carry for, but in all honesty are inherently burdensome or prohibitively punishing for party play.

A move away from currency as a trading medium and towards better qualitative drops for harder content (e.g. smart loot, item culling, hidden lootgoblin rerolls, IIQ/R wildly fluctuating game efficacy) is another variation on the same theme of creating friction for trade economies and for trading services in particular.

Which will give rise to some increased elitism to be sure, but predatory cartels of services vendors will stand to lose out if ascendancy boss, voidstone unlocks, invitations, and other atlas progress missions are account-bound or roguelike mini solo encounters.

As for party play in general, I expect the party quant bonus to disappear entirely. They may or may not choose to give party play a qualitative boost instead, that encourages specialized and cooperative/coordinated roles and punishes idlers and leechers who don't coordinate beforehand. Link skills seem to be an indicator they are seriously considering this type of planned collaborative party play to become the norm. By limiting the functional number of auras a single player can sustain and boost, with nerfs to clusters and masteries, people have picked up the slack with blessing style auras and link skills.

More well-defined party roles lands PoE in the dangerous territory of raid waiting room drama but I don't think they care as long as the core elements of character ascension and atlas progression will be solo-only or soulbound and can't be held hostage behind teaming dynamics. You'll have to earn your stripes on your own merits whether you play a popular support build, or a maverick janky build.

One handed melee will definitely get a boost; no more mandatory 2H just for the socketage. =^[.]^=

Hah, very true. Man, won't it be nice when two-handed weapons and two one-handed weapons are actually something vaguely resembling equivalent and there's a for-real choice to be made in terms of playstyle?

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crunkatog wrote:

Innervation is pretty spot on with some of the predictions

haha thanks but I don't feel that way. I was 100% right about doubling down on link skills though!

One thing that stood out to me was when Chris was talking about the new league-specific crafting material 'Hinekora's Lock' or whatever and he said "this is going to be an exciting addition to the crafting pipeline'. Now look - I don't really buy into this whole 'PoE crafting is terrible' take. It's RNG heavy but it has a lot going for it. But what's crazy to me is what that quote represents. They don't just like the 'crafting pipeline' - they love it. They're still adding to it next league which shows me no indication that it's going anywhere.

And having played Last Epoch I say that's a damn shame because crafting is such a core feature that it feels like, on paper, an ARPG's crafting system should be for everyone. Right now it feels like the 'for everyone' part is adding 25% res to an item, and yeah at the top end ppl like Belton seem to love the pipeline but...what about that giant in-between space?

I can count on one hand the amount of 'medium' crafts that exist in the game - Harvest on cluster Jewels and decent +gem level bows aren't too crazy. Granted nothing is truly crazy if you follow someone's 16 step guide. Just like a cooking recipe at the end of the day I suppose. But still I think there's a big unexploited lower/middle ground that the more average player could enjoy if utilized.