POE 2 - Feedback from A Die Hard "Casual"

I don't normally write posts to try to influence game design as it generally turns in to arguing that there is only one way to enjoy a game but I'm really excited for POE 2 minus a couple key concerns that appear to carry over from POE 1.

A touch of background, I'm mid 40s have kids and a busy job. I grew up playing Diablo 1/2, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot, WoW, etc where I spent thousands of hours min maxing everything. I was a hardcore gamer for a long time so I still have that mentality but the reality is time becomes a challenge for many at a point in life.

I still consider myself a die hard or hardcore gamer but I have time constraints. This blend means I don't want anyone to hand me anything or make it too easy but it also means I can't power through the painful parts or respecs in a day any more to overcome time sinks.

I found POE 1 about a year ago and wish I had a decade ago. I wasn't gaming much the last decade because I couldn't commit to multiplayer games with specific raid times and the fallback Diablo series recent additions were so basic they didn't keep my attention.

There are two game mechanics I think that are dramatic detriments from "playing the game" if one is at all wired to min/max but also has moderate playing time (I play a couple hours most days of the week so I'm not super casual but I'm not playing the equivalent of a full work week these days).

1. Death Penalty

I get the reason GGG likes a death penalty and I think death having meaning is fine. But POE 1 the death penalty effectively stopped me from playing the game for days on end. Once I passed about level 95 it felt like I had to make a choice for the next number of days of play (weeks a bit later). It wasn't that I couldn't get to the next level but I had to pick content that didn't challenge me to ensure I didn't die. I couldn't try a new boss fight, push myself to add layers of difficulty to maps, zone out while playing because if I died it may be multiple days to offset one death. I have a level 99 (when I saw it took about the same xp to go from 1-99 as 99-100 I didn't bother). This makes the game feel more like a job than a game during leveling phases.

Some potential solutions that aren't a full removal of xp death penalty:
- Have some sort of pause where you can play the game but XP doesn't go up or down. This allows you to have some fun to break up the leveling. Maybe it can only be toggled once a day to limit just turning it off for one tough boss fight.
- Make the XP loss capped at some form of xp over time or xp per day. If I gained 1M xp in the last 24 hours make it so I can't lose more than that in the next 24 hours (this scales with play time so for racing, which isn't a discussion for me, it doesn't really save people). This way if I do die I lose my last days progress but then can go do something else without further fear.
- Break the upper levels in to quarter stop points so if you are level 99.6 you can never go back below 99.5. This results in the gear check that you can make proper progress but again doesn't mean weeks of no experimentation.

I'm not advocating for no pain while leveling but we should be encouraged to "play the game" and with the xp penalty in POE 1 I had a lot of time I felt like I was just obliterating easy content for safe xp as the harder content yielded less xp per hour and may result in a death (it wasn't even risk reward).

2. Juicing Game Mechanics

The addition of multiple trees helped but I think it's a mistake to make the mechanics so reliant on the juicing trees to be useful. It feels like a waste of time to play the mechanic with zero points in the tree so I've not even tried some of the mechanics at all. I'm all for sweetening the pot in some way but having 7 great game modes but making it so only the 3 you spec fully in to produce any meaningful reward just blocks out over half the content.

I understand part of this is to protect the economy and you can't have everything but I played POE 1 for over a year and never touched some of the mechanics past one or two tries as it seemed pointless with no points in the tree. Sure I could respec constantly after league start but with limited play time I'd spend half my time changing my trees and not playing.

I think POE 2 looks amazing but it seems the two pain points I have with POE 1 are carrying over. I just don't think boxing people out of playing the game adds anything for a "casual" gamer nor does changing it give that same person enough of an advantage that the hardcore gamer isn't still going to be miles ahead.

A word of advice on your first point: When you get to the low to mid 90s in level, stop worrying about leveling. You will enjoy the game much more if you do. 100 is a vanity goal, not something meant for every player in the game. The reward for it is almost non-existent compared to the time it takes (even when you aren't dying, I routinely solo play to 100 every league I've played). Especially with your limited play time, you will enjoy the game immensely more if you stop telling yourself you need to go past 95 or so. Progression is measured in content you can overcome and gear upgrades. The small handful of passives past 95 make very little difference to your character.

Additionally, there is now an omen where if you do die, you only lose a quarter of the xp you would've lost if it matters that much to you.

100 is for people who either have no qualms about paying for it through 5-ways (it personally disgusts me but I won't judge how others play), people who will only run super easy content, or people with much higher skill than most.

As for your 2nd point, they addressed it. Each league mechanic has its own tree in PoE2 now. There is no respeccing out of one thing to bump another.

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Gresh12#7754 wrote:

It wasn't that I couldn't get to the next level but I had to pick content that didn't challenge me to ensure I didn't die. I couldn't try a new boss fight, push myself to add layers of difficulty to maps

this is the worst part of the death penalty really, this is where it really holds the game back.

im a firm believer in the death penalty in poe1 because dying HAS to matter for playing well and making good characters to matter. thats essential to the game systems functioning and in poe1 after 12 years of this being debated i have yet to see a single alternative to the death penalty which will work within the mechanics of poe1s content.

death penalty has issues, it sucks, but it sucks less than any form of not having it that has ever been suggested without essentially redesigning massive portions of the game in very controversial ways.







in poe2 i hope with the new mechanics we can see a way to use the new atlas and boss mechanics to have a better death punishment, or at least as a way to have death penalty kick in wayyyy later.

the xp loss is an ugly and wholly unsatisfactory solution to the problem imo. i think it would be a missed opportunity not to find a better way. the game was originally designed with hardcore mode in mind and honestly thats another mode where u get high adrenaline but ultimately a lot of avoiding risk going on for a lot of players. from an economic view that might be ok because those who tke the risk get the reward and can leverage that in a hardcore economy. but when you boil it to the reality for the vast, vast majority of players who are in softcore and not rly trading much at all it just means their game is boring because they avoid all the fun, skill based content.

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TemjinGold#1898 wrote:

A word of advice on your first point: When you get to the low to mid 90s in level, stop worrying about leveling.

this is rly good advice for poe1 in fairness.

i used to be a firm believer of death penalty. back in the early days of poe, to get to 100 took literally a month or more.

to me thats where getting to 100 is an achievement. the weight comes from the difficulty of getting to 100. t16 maps used to be 1 exalt a pop.

weaker players were NOT mapping and were doing dock runs or soemthing similar.

now? we see players getting to 100 in 1-2 days on league launch.

xp parties, rotations, carries etc exist. getting to 100 no longer was a matter of build strength, it became more of playing a certain way.

you had options to farm up currency and buy your way to 100, OR you could stock up on omens and run safe t16s.

i reached 100 for the first time ever in 10 years in settlers. the omens helped a huge bunch, i ate 10 of them. some of the deaths really felt unfair but on the flipside i was not running safe maps as safe maps were BORING AF.

with that said, getting a "good build" is over rated. the achievement of getting to 100 is over rated too. theres 3 ways. one, get a good build that has good survivability, 2 buy/get into xp parties, 3 run safe maps. its really not as difficult as before and the achievement for hitting 100 is not too impressive as it really isnt 2013 where you needed ages to hit 100.

i remember back just a few years ago, we needed what? 1-6 t16s to get 1% xp? but now we could instead just use an abyss strat even without juicing to get near 1-2% xp per t16.

xp penalty does give weight regardless and does encourage players to play more defensively but my opinion has changed over the years. xp penalty simply makes the game unfun.

as someone pointed out. if youre at 99 and have xp otw to 100. what happens? you're incentivized NOT to run tough content.

one of my guildies actively avoided the black knight when he was leveling from 99-100. it makes perfect sense. if the risk of dying is there and the cost of dying is high, players simply avoid harder encounters.

but that is BORING AS FUCK. it reminds me of GGG's trade manifesto where trade was intentionally kept difficult to encourage players to PLAY MORE rather than spend time trading.

in a sense this mentality should apply to leveling too. if theres no XP penalty players would engage in all content/harder content. they would PLAY more.

i remember clearly how i will hold off all tough content and go on a kamikaze spree whenever i leveled up to run all the tough content whenever i m at 0 xp. because i know once i start my journey to the next level up, i m gonna be a big fucking pussy that avoids danger.

thats no fun.

as for juicing mechanics.

i like the idea of the game being balanced around t14s actually.

this was the way POE always has been. all the new temp league mechanics were balanced around players "scratching" the end game via t14.

most of us play the game at t16. but for weaker players they would be scratching this surface via t14.

but t14 was where all the fun started.

if anyone cared to remember, all temp league content allowed access to the end tier league content.

beastiary monsters that led to the beast bosses start appearing at t14.

delve bosses start appearing at t14 equivalent depths.

sanctum allows you to fight lycia at her maximum strength at t14.

if you did not juice its fine.

however GGG BROKE this t14 balancing with settlers.

running specific atlas strategies was REQUIRED if you want to optimize your gold income.

this required you to unlock most of the atlas and JUICE UP. if you were weak

FUCK YOU.

you get pitiful amounts of gold.

running t14s is really not enough, and if you didnt juice up, it feels real bad.

running a good atlas strategy and actually running t17s felt almost mandatory as the gold income you get from running them in an optimal way is really night and day.

to me i hate gaps. for sure players should be rewarded for running a good build, but when the gaps between a weak player and good one is so large, it just makes the game feel bad.

the previous implementation of t14s was imho perfect. if you're struggling/weak you still had access to rewarding content.

but on the flipside for settlers, if your gold income is low, it feels REAL BAD. and that comes a lot from juicing.

you have to juice you're forced to juice. or else you get shit. i really am lazy to juice but i juiced and got rewarded greatly for it.

but on the flipside it made me feel real sad as it was an indicator that GGG had entirely neglected weaker players.

whatever happened to balancing things around t14?

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Gresh12#7754 wrote:

1. Death Penalty

I get the reason GGG likes a death penalty and I think death having meaning is fine. But POE 1 the death penalty effectively stopped me from playing the game for days on end. Once I passed about level 95 it felt like I had to make a choice for the next number of days of play (weeks a bit later). It wasn't that I couldn't get to the next level but I had to pick content that didn't challenge me to ensure I didn't die. I couldn't try a new boss fight, push myself to add layers of difficulty to maps, zone out while playing because if I died it may be multiple days to offset one death. I have a level 99 (when I saw it took about the same xp to go from 1-99 as 99-100 I didn't bother). This makes the game feel more like a job than a game during leveling phases.

In the early years this mechanic worked properly but as enemy density increased, player recovery among a few other things grew out of proportion while crushing player defensive options. Death was no longer fully under the player's control and became simple probability.

A comparative situation would be in EverQuest when you pull a mod and it's pathing goes wonky and runs off. You choose to zone/port out or see what that mob brings with you. In either situation a resulting death is your fault. You take a wrong turn running out. Your fault. You decide to stay. The Enchanters Mez gets resisted and the healer fails to keep them alive to gain control. Wipe.

PoE essentially rolls you Resist chance 100/s so a trend will happen. Your only real choice is how hard you want to be hit when the trend occurs. Players can't have their power fantasy zoom and smash the screen while also having death being strictly their fault. It's a product of math.

A situation I've tried to explain for years now.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

what years would that be? prior de-synch era? rng death was always here and only times it wasn't its when you were immortal, which was slowly chipped at by GGG through various means like block rework etc, as much as i dislike mob density it had lil to do with it

Back when the game had 3 and then 4 Acts.

Never died to de-sync and played Hardcore back then. You had to understand each enemy type and be weary of any rare enemy. You had to side step Moa and shield guys. You couldn't run face first into Cobras. You had to stagger kill Porcupines. You had to use cover.

Most of all you couldn't zoom because you'd likely get stagger locked, drain your pots and die.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

people were using everything possible to distance themselves from the mobs, ranged skills, skele or other totems, summons. all this was done due to random and unpredictable damage spikes, and de-sync made it even worse. i wouldn't call death was in hands of a player as you portrayed it.

My highest level Hardcore at that time was a Molten Strike Duelist 68. Followed by a Ground Slam Marauder 66. I remember players hiding behind walls with totems like babies though.

The only thing I feared and avoided back then was GMP rares.

I quit Hardcore during Abyss when an invis/invulnerable Abyssal rare had Soul Eater. There was literally nothing I could do about that. The hardcore scene was dying by then as it became more obvious GGG wasn't bothering to balance league enemies.

We all know how that's ended up now. League enemies more dangerous than map bosses.

if we're talking about the past then we must bring up one of GGG's greatest failures. which is their introduction of damage spikes.

why did damage spikes exist?

as what xzorn mentioned, players had to play the game carefully. this then made players value defense.

which in turn led to the popularization of LAYERED DEFENCES.

anyone remember those?

we had 75% chance to block and if it got thru we had 50% chance to evade, and maybe another 40% chance to dodge on top of that.

people tend to strive for higher numbers than that. so in an essence, you were mathematically immortal as the chance of a stray attack actually landing was abysmally small.

back then GGG did not solve this problem by having debuffs or DoTs which bypassed needing to get hit. instead they buffed the numbers up so that the ONE TIME you get hit. it hurt real bad.

this is where ggg loved making monster damage mods. GGG COULD have hard coded monsters to not roll with certain multiplying mods to prevent damage numbers from going to high. but they didnt. they allowed it because it gave them a perfect excuse for the monster to be stupidly damaging. they loved letting RNG dictate a deadly encounter rather than solving/nerfing player defences.

hence the entire Arch Nemesis debacle where a huge portion of the playerbase hated it but GGG loved it as players were dying.

its really an unbalanced equation where ggg was playing a tug of war with the players, trying their hardest to kill the players. i would say its quite skewered toward players dying more easily rather than not. all the while the death penalty just looms in the background never changing despite the imbalance.

tho the omen did help out a great deal with that. i would argue the omen is just a band aid tho.