Sick of elitist souls like difficulty

Got 10k hours in poe.

The difficulty and sluggish nature of the gameplay in POE2,is a colossal turnoff.

The devourer felt like and endgame pinnacle boss.

The loot drops are pathetic with no upgrades to assist the difficulty.

I'm disappointed and frustrated after all the excitement of the last 5 years waiting to play.

You must do something about this sadist souls like hell.

Not everyone loves seeing 'your dead' ala souls games ad nauseum...

The reload and constant stagger on the Xbox was absurd.

The barb feels weak and sluggish.

Even rare mobs were one shotting me and if I beat them, crappy drops.

Just don't want to play and that's maddening as much as its saddening.

I was hoping the campaign would be less annoying in this game but its way more work for less reward

Find it really hard to believe that you have 10k hours in PoE1 unless a majority of it is in Standard because you have barely any challenges done in leagues

Clear more monsters and make sure you level up being doing bosses. etc.

Somebody needs to make topic: Sick of Diablo 4 like difficulty.

Why desperately want to change something that was intended to be different, instead of moving onto other games?

I personally hate zoom zoom gameplay as many others, but we don't try to force changing it, let others also have fun.

Hate slower combat? Great, there is Poe 1. Where would enthusiasts of more grounded combat go if poe 2 changed again into the same thing? Why being so selfish...

There are different tastes, and I respect yours, but don't call it bad because it's not your preference.

In my case, the difficulty "spikes" against bosses are due to poor loot all around. I'm playing ranger, never got anything better than a plain blue bow without decent physical damage affixes. The game throw me absurd high damaging 2 handed maces, but no bow so I'm forced to buy/upgrade/rune subpar items all the time just to keep up and keep boss fights under 5 minutes. That and I'm not in shape today (flu XD), so I might not be paying attention as I should.

Playing in a group would probably help with gear sharing, but I'm playing solo so I'm out of luck there.

Basically, loot scarcity is my main issue with difficulty, and that may be what most people who are considering the fights to be a slog are experiencing. Those who are breezing through probably get relatively good weapons all the time, so they don't think too much about it. GGG said they increased the quality of vendor loot to make them relevant, but at lvl 27, it's mostly crap. I rarely see rare items (they're rare, obviously) or good magic items to upgrade, so they're mostly useless.

To OP : Gear and armor/evasion/shield value are extremely important in PoE2. Sure, it's better to hit more and faster to kill the boss faster, but IMO, not keeping up with our defense ratings really make it harder way sooner than in PoE1. Unless you're really good and have an incredibly high dps, you cannot go full glass cannon. It's also possible that some classes/skills are pretty bad compared to others.

Difficulty is Fine. Please don't change a thing when it comes to difficulty to please these Newbs.

Didnt they not learn from the failure of Ruthless, that NOONE wants to play Ruthless??

This isnt path of Exile II it is path of Ruthless II

It is 1to1 Ruthless from PoE1...

And THAT is NOT a good thing

I don't even think this is souls-like. That game has very slow combat except some of the bosses at the end. Here you got these bosses that just spam large attacks all over the screen and gives you zero opportunity to attack.

And the constant dodge rolling in an ARPG just looks dumb to me at least. I don't think they nailed this at all.

Yeah, I agree with the OP to a large extent.

Played Mercenary and had to dodge constantly and still died several times. Some suggest WASD movement with ranged classes and I might try that even though I hate WASD.

Combat feels very sluggish (I understand some people like this) and I cannot recall any arpg I've ever played (including PoE 1) that felt like I was moving in two inches of mud.

The other thing bugging me is Attack in Place. I expect it to stop me but it doesn't. It continues to move me to wherever the last mouse click was and I have to quickly click behind me. Again, maybe WASD fixes this.

But the near-constant dodging, especially in Boss fights, feels too souls-like and is a turn-off (to me).

I don't plan to refund since I'm close to 2 hours already and intend to give WASD a solid chance.