ZiggyD's "PoE2 Combvat Review" Video

I wanna talk about this video from ZiggyD, which hit earlier this morning (like, really early this morning). he made a lot of really excellent, insightful points I'd like to chew over with some of the folks who're thinking instead of reacting. If you have nothing to contribute beyond "SCUFFED RUTHLESS" or complaining bitterly about how PoE2 is not PoE1 Zoom Zoom Click Boom nonsense, please use the "Back" button in your browser and exit this thread gracefully and silently. I'm going to start doing the same on all the complaint threads and try to hold myself to not interrupting the Bitchfit Fests anymore, so please allow me this one thread to actually talk about the new game from an "I'm excited and I want this to work" standpoint.

Thank you.

Now. In short, Ziggy enjoyed the ideas behind PoE2's combat systems and liked a lot of what he saw, but there were some real standout issues that were getting in the way of the process. The main issues as I took away from his video are as follows.

1.) Mob Speed
2.) Stuns
3.) Mobility/Escapes

1.) Players in PoE2 moved at PoE2 speed. So did bosses. But the basic monsters in PoE2 were still moving and fighting at PoE1 speeds, moving and attacking at rates in line with the original game. This caused Issues, since players were less able to react than they were in PoE2 and had fewer mobility tools to deal with the rapid aggression of enemies that were hitting a lot harder than they usually do. If Grinding Gear wants to reinvent the combat paradigm this way, all the enemies need to adhere to it. This was especially apparent with the Sorceress gameplay, leading into...:

2.) Stuns. They were bad. We all saw Zizaran's Sorceress showcase, where he died four times in thirty minutes because he couldn't get a cast of any-damn-thing but Ice Nova off without getting stunned out of it. Damn near any time the Sorceress took a punch, she flinched and lost her cast. Given the Sorceress' lack of physical defenses/evasion and her lack of mobility, and Ziggy called the Sorceress demo "borderline unplayable" due to the stun issue.

3.) Characters in the ExileCon demo not named Warrior had no escape tools. Yes, this partially corresponds to the community's overblown outrage about "NO MOVEMENT SKILLZ?!", but unlike The Community, Ziggs was discussing the issue from the standpoint of the new tactical combat paradigm Grinding Gear is trying to create. We all watched Kripparian get swarmed by three billion hyenas during his Huntress boss fight, and he didn't really have any way to deal with it. He couldn't get away, his dodge roll had no phasing and so he couldn't use that to gain space or evade, and the stun issue meant that once the first hyena reached him and punched him, death was almost inevitable because that created an opening for the rest of the Fur Tsunami to crash down upon his delicate and tender Huntrss girlflesh. The huntress had a retreat skill, but "retreat" is not "escape" and the Huntress' retreat was very fiddly and difficult to employ properly.

Taken all together, these three issues meant the player had little real recourse when something went wrong for them. They didn't have any way to catch mistakes or unexpected situations, with the sole exception of the Warrior's Leap Slam. The character was significantly slower than the hordes, the hordes stunlocked the character and left them helpless, and the lack of escape tools meant the character had little real way to avoid this beyond playing with extreme caution and avoiding even minor mistakes or overpulls.

This is overcompensating from the PoE1 Zoom Click Boom paradigm. Making a mistake such as overpulling or positioning incorrectly should make your situation harder, yes. It should not render your situation immediately unsalvageable the way it often did for the Sorceress or Huntress. Ziggs offered a few potential solutions and discussed them, but I'll admit I don't entirely agree with them.

Generally? Obviously the monsters need to be adjusted for the game they're in, overall critter speed could use a tune-down. There should absolutely be room for fast, aggressive enemies you can't escape, but they shouldn't be every enemy. Flanker/skirmisher critters should have their own weaknesses and ways to play around them.

I also feel like the CC Threshold system they built into bosses should apply to the player, as well. The less stun resistance you have the more often you get stunned, but the enemies still have to hit you a few times to trigger it and there's a short immunity lockout period after it happens. It should not be possible to get chain-stunned and stunlocked during the course of ordinary gameplay, or like Ziggy said the playerbase will just consider stun/freeze immunity a mandatory build tax for every character. We need fewer build taxes, not more - shit like Corrupting Blood can fuck right off, and that goes for stun/freeze spam as well.

As for the "Escape" issue? I honestly think it would be extremely cool, and solve a lot of the issue, if they eliminated the Galactic Standard Universal Dodge Roll and gave each of the twelve classes their own unique Dodge/Evade/Escape action. The Monk would tumble lithely away, phasing through enemies because he's nimble enough that he can weave between the horde. The Warrior bullrushes wherever he goes and shoves enemies between him and his destination aside. The Sorceress blinks from Point A to Point B and skips all the stuff in between. The Huntress could dragoon-leap, a sort of mini Leap Slam minus the slam. The Witch could briefly turn spectral and phase through enemies because she's immaterial. So on and so forth. ALL dodge rolls should also have CC immunity once their animation begins, no getting bullshitted out of your dodge once you commit to it.

In all cases though, the character has some way of using their dodge roll to escape a terrible situation while also reinforcing the core class fantasy of that character with the precise method used. This has the benefit of neatly solving the "I use my escape skill to traverse the map at eighteen trillion times normal movement speed!" issue PoE1 is plagued with because the dodge is not inherently faster than moving. You can also use your dodge to try and absorb stunning hits/blows with the CC immunity, if you can see them coming.

What about you folks? Any interesting commentary on Zigg's interesting commentary, or novel ideas for dealing with the issues identified in the gameplay demos?

nahh ppl have same copium with poe 2 as ppl had with D$. thats all there is at this point until beta.

its what like 3 years till poe 2 more or less. no1 can have any valid points at this point. it be positive or negative. without playable beta

I don't watch stuff from POE [Removed by Support]. I liked what I saw at Exilcon, just waiting for the closed beta to laugh at those "Poe 2 is ruthless" people.

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bauermayers wrote:

I don't watch stuff from POE [Removed by Support]. I liked what I saw at Exilcon, just waiting for the closed beta to laugh at those "Poe 2 is ruthless" people.

HAHA loled so hard for what was removed :D cant believe thats a bad work in forums :D

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1453R wrote:

This is overcompensating from the PoE1 Zoom Click Boom paradigm. Making a mistake such as overpulling or positioning incorrectly should make your situation harder, yes. It should not render your situation immediately unsalvageable the way it often did for the Sorceress or Huntress. Ziggs offered a few potential solutions and discussed them, but I'll admit I don't entirely agree with them.

How do you know this wasn't what GGG intended? They did cherry pick the demos.
Religion of Zoom meet Religion of Vision.

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zakalwe55 wrote:

How do you know this wasn't what GGG intended? They did cherry pick the demos.
Religion of Zoom meet Religion of Vision.

I know because I listened to the developers when they spoke on the subject. Several times.

Again - if your only desire is to complain about how the game doesn't move as fast as PoE1, please go elsewhere. Literally every other thread in the forum is a giant raging tire fire of complaints about the demo. Let me have this one, if you would?

Thanks for sharing the info for those of us who don't watch streamers.

Enjoyed the read. Thank you for the post.

Sure thing. Ziggs brought up some really good points I figured were worth talking about. He talked about porting in "escape"-style movement skills like Frost Blink for the Sorceress as one example, and that's a possible fix for the issue.

I really do feel conflicted in some ways; tactical movement should absolutely be part of a Tactical Combat Paradigm and movement skills are cool, but this playerbase can't generally be trusted to use movement skills responsibly. I think Grinding Gear hit on a good potential answer with the "Dodge isn't faster than running" thing - let you have a fast reposition but with a aftercast or something at the tail end so the reposition is strictly for getting out of a Hot Zone rather than replacing your legs. That would be difficult to balance though, and it'd put Grinding Gear in a tough spot for the future and really cut into their design space.

I know the company's trying to avoid cooldowns as much as they can - hell, Ziggy said they told him exactly that, they see cooldowns as the "easy"/"lazy" solution for 'Skill Diversity' - but they might have to use cooldowns if they reintroduce movement skills. A skill like Whirling Blades would be absolutely broken in PoE2 and invalidate the entire Tactical Combat Paradigm since you can just freely blink away from everything all the time without cost or penalty. But Ziggs is also correct - there need to be escape/"Panic!" options for when you get caught out, as a way to try and salvage a bad situation.

It's a rough issue, and a tough thing to try and properly balance or implement. I'll be curious to see where Grinding Gear goes with it in the future.

already wanting an easier game. git good plz.