hot take on difficulty. (the logical one imo)

so far, poe2 isnt hard in a good way.
now stop reading for a second, take a breath and put on your logical thinking hat.
hear me out.

i do NOT want a brainless exile-like game, at all.
i prefer the way POE2 plays.
BUT... lets think long term here.

boss fights are tedious and annoying through the mandatory campaign and thats gonna drive away lots of people, especially with all the new attention bringing in untold thousands of new players.

once we are in endgame the opportunity to make everyone happy is FAR more vast.
in endgame, the players who want HARD fights can have them, the people who just want to casually blast maps can do that too.

until that point (post campaign), bosses (and a couple elites) need to be toned down or a MASSIVE chunk of people will end up entertaining themselves elsewhere before completing act 1.
why not let a broad spectrum of players find their niche instead driving them elsewhere? over a campaign?! thats just silly.

we can have our cake and eat it too, but GGG needs to make sure everyone sticks around for the icing.

there is absolutely zero good reason to not make sure all the newbs can at least make it to see the glorious, ever important endgame (the thing that GGG shifted their entire focus to).


i hope they act on this very quickly, i wouldnt be surprised if a massive chunk of that massive chunk said goodbye sooner than later.
that doesnt benefit the players, that doesnt benefit the company. so why let it happen?

what we have right now is a one in a million opportunity to see POE take a large, long term piece of the market. THAT benefits everyone.

i hope to hear your thoughts on this.
cheers.

its GGG


so in closed beta for POE 1, I argued with Chris that racing was not ever going to be popular and it should not be the focus of the game, now a decade later and they finally admitted this reality.

Then now we have POE2. They want the focus to be on Boss fights. I think again, this is the wrong direction for the game and looking at the reviews so far, it seems many agree.

"

sultanica#4994 wrote:

its GGG


so in closed beta for POE 1, I argued with Chris that racing was not ever going to be popular and it should not be the focus of the game, now a decade later and they finally admitted this reality.

Then now we have POE2. They want the focus to be on Boss fights. I think again, this is the wrong direction for the game and looking at the reviews so far, it seems many agree.

im fine with it for endgame, if i wanted to faceroll bosses i would play the exile-like.
my main point is that bosses through campaign are going to drive people away before they ever get a chance to fall in love with the actual meat and potatoes of the game. its a bit saddening really.

I played PoE1 since beta. I want something different so I like the challenge but I do think there needs to be some tweaks.

"

JODYHiGHR0LLER#6171 wrote:

"

sultanica#4994 wrote:

its GGG


so in closed beta for POE 1, I argued with Chris that racing was not ever going to be popular and it should not be the focus of the game, now a decade later and they finally admitted this reality.

Then now we have POE2. They want the focus to be on Boss fights. I think again, this is the wrong direction for the game and looking at the reviews so far, it seems many agree.

im fine with it for endgame, if i wanted to face roll bosses i would play the exile-like.
my main point is that bosses through campaign are going to drive people away before they ever get a chance to fall in love with the actual meat and potatoes of the game. its a bit saddening really.

I agree with this sentiment. I am not sure the difficulty of the bosses is the main problem here though. I think its the lack of ability of options to better prepare after getting wrecked a couple of times.

There are massive gear/flask limitations to try and prepare better after failing and realizing your gear is lacking. The gold costs are extremely high on vendors for act 1 to try and maybe get gear with some better resists as an example.

Limited to 1 life flask is basically a death sentence once you run out.

"

KingRecycle#5316 wrote:

I played PoE1 since beta. I want something different so I like the challenge but I do think there needs to be some tweaks.

agreed. it needs to calm down early on.

"

xssarinx#0364 wrote:

I agree with this sentiment. I am not sure the difficulty of the bosses is the main problem here though. I think its the lack of ability of options to better prepare after getting wrecked a couple of times.

There are massive gear/flask limitations to try and prepare better after failing and realizing your gear is lacking. The gold costs are extremely high on vendors for act 1 to try and maybe get gear with some better resists as an example.

Limited to 1 life flask is basically a death sentence once you run out.

mechanics might not be the main issue, i agree.
still boils down to a lot of people hitting a HARD wall at those points.

100000% of my deaths are because the merc is too bloody slow to move out of the way. The only thing that makes this game difficult is the bad game mechanics.

There's definitely scope to

* scale down the difficulty for levels 1 - 4 *slightly to moderately*
* improve overall loot
* more movement tutorials - circle strafing / front and back dancing - a tendency to overuse dodging is an interesting trend based on forum posts

We're seeing a lot of blowback from the speed is good decade, and this is not going to fix itself overnight - the devs catered to this behaviour and mindset between 2015 onwards, and undoing this goes beyond technical / how to videos

I'm going to keep repeating these in the hopes that it helps others, but

* keep moving!
* buy stuff off vendors and pick-up sell / disenchant (at least while loot is at a low volume)
* don't try to do a 1 button build - synergies matter a lot
* frost and cc is chronically undervalued in POE1 and this has about-faced in POE2, going glass cannon raw isn't going to work

I'd rather see the forum filled with constructive support and problem solving, over pointless ranting, albeit I appreciate why some peeps have resorted to it

EDIT - clarity

"

sultanica#4994 wrote:

its GGG


so in closed beta for POE 1, I argued with Chris that racing was not ever going to be popular and it should not be the focus of the game, now a decade later and they finally admitted this reality.

Then now we have POE2. They want the focus to be on Boss fights. I think again, this is the wrong direction for the game and looking at the reviews so far, it seems many agree.

im fine with boss fights if im getting sweet gear thats actually making me strong. Sorry the random merc rare crossbow from a 1 hr long grudge match of death for my sorc isnt cutting it