ARPG's are power fantasies of killing and finding cool loot, POE2 is top down Souls-like not an ARPG

POE2 is literally a zoomed out souls-like with lots of auto-pathing and mushy mouse control instead of precise gamepad controls.

I don't know how a game developer can be so unaware of the self imposed limitations of their chosen genre, nor so disconnected from who their playerbase is, or what kind of game most of us are fans of (hack and slash D&D combat loop inspired ARPG's).

How does a company founded by D2 players to make a D2 spiritual successor make a game that appears far more targeted at an audience that wants a Souls-bourne "but top down and mushy controls"?

This point was starkly and somewhat shockingly driven home when a GGG dev complained that the audience member who came up to the stage to fight the boss blind and live on stage was using shift to "attack without moving". because 99% of ARPG players HATE MOVING FORWARD ON AUTO PATHING TO ATTACK MOMENTS LATER. We don't want delays and "jesus take the wheel" pathing, and SOuls-like players want this even less than ARPG players do.

I would rather miss than ever allow my character to attack at the end of an autopath.

like 99% of us have "always attack without moving" on almost every skill, because auto-pathing even short distances is antithetical to character control and the feeling of power and connectedness to your characters actions. We're all (or at least most of us) control freaks and min maxers.

The GGG dev seemed to be saying "NOOOO you're playing the game wrong" a classical time worn attitude in game design and "dungeon mastering" that always leads to designs that the players ignore/mitigate/cheese. This is age old stuff from the days of Table top Wargaming and Pen and Paper D&D... DM's getting mad at their players for not doing what he expected them to do levels of classic... I'm talking 1970-1980's era deep wisdom here guys. Not trying to be toxic or disrespect Neon its a thing I've watched happen over and over in game design for over 40 years.

Now to be sure I want more engaging combat, but in a dungeon crawler, hack and slash game that is almost entirely about my build and gear... You know like Diablo 2. The game that birthed POE?

Not sweaty 10 minute boss fights that are 90% about having E-sport reflexes and APM.

[Removed by Support] I hope they make a cool game I hope I'm wrong after 2 days of absorbing exilecon content, but I expected to be super hyped for POE2... and now I'm just... kinda deflated...

Edit "Removed by support" never fails to make a casual term seem like I might have been calling someone something nasty... I guess thank support for making my post appear to be toxic/cussing/insulting when it was literally 0% the case...

I'm really looking forward to it. I quit D4 and started playing POE1 after seeing the trailer because I was so impressed.

The melee fantasy has never been realised properly in POE you need slower combat to make it feel meaningful and all the other modern bells and whistles like animations that POE2 has. Imagine playing Dark Souls at POE speed it would be near impossible. And Dark Souls is the gold standard. They are finding a really cool middle ground that I personally love the look of.

Dark Souls style combat makes it feel more real and immersive. POE1 was an eperiment in giving the player everything they want with huge power. How much more power can they give us?

I think that's why they made the right decision to split the games. You'll always have that playstyle in POE1.

And the power creep needs a reset so it can grow again over many leagues.

One of the main complaints you hear from outsiders perspective about POE is it's way too fast super OP light show. This is extremely common to hear.

I love punishing hard games with true skill based gameplay and more grounded combat as well as power fantasy. I like that they are leaning into both here. How much counter play, telegraphs or meaningful combat can you really have when everything is dead in under a second?

I appluad them for trying something new and realising the melee fantasy can never truly be realised without slowing down the pace of combat.

I think you got carried away by your first impression.

Having thought along similar lines and having digested the presented content (specifically Mathil´s attempt) more thoroughly, I came to the conclusion that this isnt the time to be worried - yet.


My reasoning in reference to the above mentioned content:

Mathil´s lvl45 Warrior/Marauder in act 4 out of 6 acts had 900 HP. Assuming the character just finished act 3 and passed the halfway mark, which would be the same as finishing act 5 in PoE1, its still a pathetic number as far as HP go.
Applying the 300hp per act rule of thumb, this build should have had at least 1500hp - not 900.
Also all ele res were very low at 30% across the board, chaos res sitting at a more reasonable -15%.

So overall - his character wasnt good whatsoever and it showed.

On top of that most of the presented skills had just one support gem, if that.
The weapon was pretty bad as well and we never got to see the skilltree, which is understandable.


However, I would conclude that its almost impossible to end up with a build this bad even in a SSF leaguestart scenario and even if you were limited to questreward only skills/supports.
Each and everyone of us can and will do better than that.

The available builds were weak to say the least and ofc GGG did this on purpose. Most likely to show off character and mob animations, environmental effects and stuff like that.
If Mathil was handed a proper build, he would have smashed through the content like usual or close to it and we´d get to see nothing but mobs rolling over - just the same or close to the same as it is in PoE1.
GGG also wanted to show off combo effects, whether those are even relevant down the road is debatable.

Jonathan said: They wanted to slow the game down and have it less silly in endgame than PoE1 but its still going to be plenty silly - Im paraphrasing but thats essentially what he said.


So again: I dont think this is the time to be worried just yet.
This isnt the release version, just a demo with terrible builds as far as I can tell.

no disrespect but this sounds like copium, there's no reason to expect that POE2 characters will have 4-6k life in maps, except our POE1 preexisting biases that can be (and probably are) off the mark. The designers may have set bounding and time to live based on 1000 life or 90,000 for all we know.

That said, I've literally never seen a POE Dev talk meaningfully about bounding and time to live/time to kill as design metrics, not trying to be disrespectful, but the "actions speak louder than words" takeaway I've always gotten is that they never actually managed to use bounding and time to live or time to kill.

Instead they've spent the last 10 years doing emergency triage to a game that was shipped without good bounding (remember when literally everything was uncapped? 100% max res? 100% block?).

I'm 100% sure they will do better in POE2 at these things, but having them as systematic parts of their balance I'm unsure about considering how casually they talked about "making it a little less one shotty than POE1" during the Q and A.

If GGG only understood how much easier they could make their lives by having these parameters well defined and understood... I've always gotten the impression (again actions speaking, and the history of the patchnotes being one triage after another) that this is one area they are lacking in.

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alhazred70 wrote:

no disrespect but this sounds like copium, there's no reason to expect that POE2 characters will have 4-6k life in maps, except our POE1 preexisting biases that can be (and probably are) off the mark. The designers may have set bounding and time to live based on 1000 life or 90,000 for all we know.

Both games share the same endgame, therefore its reasonable to expect similar numbers.

Even if that wasnt the case, the terrible res values and lack of support gems still stand. This alone would double the mitigation (assuming at least 60% ele res across the board) as well as dps output - roughly.

And that would be a decisive gamechanger with regards to the presented footage.
There is no way anyone would experience anywhere near as much trouble as Mathil did, if the res were at least somewhat ok and relevant skills were supported properly.

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Orbaal wrote:

Both games share the same endgame, therefore its reasonable to expect similar numbers.

They don't though. POE 2 will be it's own game with it's own endgame and endgame balance. Given the changes made it's impossible to throw POE 2 characters into POE1 endgame, they wouldn't make it past yellow maps given that there aren't any damage supports.

I also have my doubts whether zoom zoom won't be a thing in POE 2 but your assumptions here are a bit optimistic imo. I am pretty sure that GGGs goal IS along the lines of darksouls/ruthless. Whether they can actually pull that off while maintaining their "no hardcaps on anything" mentality is another matter.

It's also worth noting that every single version of PoE2 which players have touched thus far had the difficulty cranked up because that makes for a better demonstration.

Even before we get to all the changes which will happen in the next 2 years before release, the exact same content showcased at Exilecon is going to have about half as much life and do far less damage.

The counter argument of "it's for the sake of presentation" isnt helping.. not after they kinda enforced the "use you roll otherwise you will be dying alot"
18 months away from an alpha/beta and people is already making excuses for them? meanwhile certain other game that the community loves to trash talk got no free pass but 4.0 is getting already a free pass for very quesionable design choice..

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Baharoth15 wrote:

I also have my doubts whether zoom zoom won't be a thing in POE 2 but your assumptions here are a bit optimistic imo. I am pretty sure that GGGs goal IS along the lines of darksouls/ruthless. Whether they can actually pull that off while maintaining their "no hardcaps on anything" mentality is another matter.

Kinda agree and disagree at the same time.

They clearly want to slow the game down. Thats obvious and they tried to slow down PoE1 with little success for the longest.
They also stated in the 3.15 reveal that the goal wasnt slowing the game down the sake of slowing it down but to create room for more powercreep down the road.

I dont think this mentality changed at all.
So yeah Id expect PoE2 to be somewhat slower for a few leagues and then speed up over time. I dont doubt that for one second.


Just like you mentioned, Im not so sure about whether they can or even want to reign in the powercreep or to what degree.
The biggest mistake GGG ever made (from their perspective) was allowing PoE1 getting out of hand to the degree it did and then trying to slow it down out of nowhere. That was never going to fly and they reacted way too late for whatever reasons.

And if I had to guess: This is the real reason why PoE1 and 2 are separate games. But then again, I have my doubts whether they are willing to crack down on powercreep as hard as need be to avoid PoE2 also spiraling out of control years down the road.

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Xystre wrote:

18 months away from an alpha/beta and people is already making excuses for them? meanwhile certain other game that the community loves to trash talk got no free pass but 4.0 is getting already a free pass for very quesionable design choice..

Im not excusing anything and Im not giving GGG a free pass whatsoever.
When and where did I do that?

I merely stated the presented builds were trash and performed accordingly.
How is that an excuse?