Please don't watter down the difficulty.

My main issue is not the difficulty - it is the lack of decent regen options in the early game. Players need to rely on getting lucky with affixes if they want even 5% regen early on.

Meanwhile ES builds simply do not care about hp regen.

Agree.

+1

The game is perfect as it is! Sure, there are things that could be tweaked, but the difficulty and pacing are spot on!

Please don’t make the same mistake as Blizzard, who listened to the louder (not necessarily larger) part of the community and ended up with a mindless, boring Diablo 4. For context, Diablo 4 originally launched with more challenging and deliberate gameplay, which was far more enjoyable than the watered-down version we have today.

The ARPG genre desperately needs games with real difficulty—games where defeating enemies feels satisfying. Even if some players initially disagree, their opinions might change once they spend time learning the game and experiencing that sense of achievement. The new God of War franchise is a great example of this approach done right.

Of course, there are players who just want to smash buttons mindlessly, and that’s totally fine. But there are plenty of other titles catering to that playstyle. In fact, almost every isometric ARPG released in the past decade has leaned in that direction.

It’s also crucial to emphasize how incredible the atmosphere of this game is! I’ve been waiting for something like this since Diablo 1 and Diablo 2. The challenge is a huge part of this atmosphere. If you could one-shot everything, the sense of dread and darkness the game strives to create would feel completely hollow.

So PLEASE, keep the game as it is. I understand that studios want their games to be widely popular, but I firmly believe that if GGG continues to be bold, innovative, and willing to challenge the status quo, it will maintain a dedicated and passionate player base. Over time, even players accustomed to mindless button-mashing will come to appreciate the beauty of a challenging game like PoE2.

That said, if you decide to pursue a more populist approach, introducing another difficulty tier (but not 8 like Diablo 4!) could be a good compromise. Just please ensure that the current difficulty and pacing remain intact for those of us who love the game as it is!

I also think it would be a good idea to have an easier difficulty level, but I would keep the current one as well. My suggestion is to rename the Standard difficulty to something else, like Legend, and make the new Standard much easier so that casual players can enjoy the game as well.

Agreed with OP. The complains about difficulty concern me, because this feels absolutely great to me, and hope GGG doesn't make it easier.

The game offers challenge, but fair challenge, character control feels great, enemies telegraph attacks well, there's audio cues..

A game without challenge is just not fun to me.

I've seen more than once someone say "there's not enough regen" and this confuses me. I never felt like I didn't enough regen, if you're getting hit often you're just not playing right, there's plenty of opportunity to move, dodge, reposition.


(And I'm playing melee, which some are saying is the issue, melee is soo good here, so much improved)

+1

Most of the game difficulty comes from people having trouble adapting to the new gameplay. Move forwards, progress, get slammed, go back to get stronger, come back, progress, repeat!

Another thing I want to get off my chest: 90% of the time, it is your own fault for getting surrounded by hordes and dying You weren't paying attention in the moments leading up to it and let yourself die. These monsters did not just materialize themselves next to you.

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Bakuryu#4306 wrote:

there's plenty of opportunity to move, dodge, reposition.

The problem is that there's nothing else to combat than this. Being forced to constantly spam dodge roll because white mobs have 500% of your movement speed in act 1 alone is cringe. I am spending more time moving around and dodging than actually killing monsters. This is not a good design.

Playing as an elemental monk, and it's incredible! The bell combo with elemental skills does insane damage. The difficulty feels fair. As I mentioned in my post here as well, if people want a braindead game, they should just go play PoE 1. The game is simple—you just need to read and pay attention, and that's it. But it seems like some people have 50 IQ.

I think saying the difficulty is perfect is a bit of a stretch. There are many things that need fine tuning! Especially when it comes to class/weapon feel and also controller support (I am mostly playing WASD but I care about controller and its support so I gave that a whirl for a while, was not particularly happy with the dynamic targeting system, it will override my right stick inputs too harshly.

In general though, as far as overall sentiment goes, I could not agree more that the game should not be watered down! Choice is the primary focus of a game like this: watering down the difficulty to the point where you can choose essentially anything in terms of combinations of nodes/gems/supports/gear actually eliminates choice, it doesn't create more. There is a lot to improve and I hope to continue to generate feedback, but everyone asking for phasing, never dying to bosses, 1 shotting white mobs, etc etc, please no.

I think the main problem ist that because of trivial games the last years people have forgot that it's OK to make a step back if they fail a boss.

If you can't beat a boss, just farm more gear....farm 1-2 more level and try again.

because of games like D4 people think that they MUST be able to beat every boss and every content with blue gear only without investing into theyr char.

I alos failed at some bosses.....but I farmed the last are 2-3 times, crafted some rares and tried again.

And after some small upgrades to my gear the boss was a breeze.