Please GGG don't instantly nerf everything because guide gamers game journalists think its too hard

People rush to the boss without even crafting and are like "It's so hard I don't understand"...

I'm the type of guy that was leveling my first pokemon to lvl 16 before the first boss. While other where like "I'm lvl 8 now let's go kill the boss!!"

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Prapic#5112 wrote:

Problem isn't difficulty, problem is it's boring. The fights are easy, they just take forever. Everything takes forever. They overcorrected from PoE1. Game needed to slow down, but nowhere near this much.

You are right. All you need to do infinite spam the spacebar, for ALL bosses. No variety or interesting mechanics, just a waste of time on a boring fights. This is the worst thing that could happen with POE.
POE1 gained popularity due to its dynamics. Why developers made a game designed for a different audience is unclear. Or do they want to remake the audience's preferences? That's very bold even for GGG.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

100% this is not "too hard" and I am a low skill (old dad gamer) player IMO. its almost certainly player skill issues (so far IMO maybe later in acts it gets bullshit I dunno) I'm guessing lots of the complaints are coming from people who refuse to adapt, they barge into every monster on the screen and expect to 1 button them.

They expect to square up on a boss and hold a button down and can't game for shit or something.

Over the years we've seen POE1 league mechanics gutted countless times by knee jerk responses to bad feedback (Delve, Heist, Necromancy Nets many others) because the lousy players who can't throw a net, or can't hold off DPS'ing before they throw a net, or throw a flare in Delve, or look at a stealth meter in heist are sometimes the loudest and quickest to howl on the forums while most REASONABLE people are just getting a feel for things and playing the game.

Quick judgements aren't good judgements, I'm holding off myself but my initial impressions as a guy who thinks Ruthless POE1 is too much and Trade POE1 is stupid easy is that POE2 feels pretty good so far.

I think a complete failure to adapt or game; doesn't make for good feedback.

Yeah in a few days or weeks if everyone thinks its too hard, listen to the feedback.

But please don't knee jerk.

Alternately:

Easy Normal and Hard mode? I kinda think this should be a thing anyway as I'm tired of suffering the balance choices of edge cases like Ben's skill or Cute_Dog's edge case glass cannon speed on either end of the spectrum.

I partially agree with you. but consider what you need to do to "adapt".
in PoE 1 you could just buy diff skills from vendors. now if you do some mistake you need to grind for skills gems.. that doesn't feel good.

I'm all for diffcult games, but right now the game doesn't feel "diffcult", just unbalanced.

for example the mad wolf fight last phase almost 1 shots me with the beams from space. I'm kinda ok with it, but I get no chance to recover if the past phases leave me with no flasks... and as a summoner the ads of that fight also don't drop bodies I can use.
which leaves my skeletons unearth build basicly useless.
so I need to adjust right? see the frustration?

there are also other issues, but just wanted to say there is a difference between difficulty and balance.
diffculty usually makes you feel like you have a chance, while something unbalanced just feels unfair.

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Pistoll#2235 wrote:

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Prapic#5112 wrote:

Problem isn't difficulty, problem is it's boring. The fights are easy, they just take forever. Everything takes forever. They overcorrected from PoE1. Game needed to slow down, but nowhere near this much.

You are right. All you need to do infinite spam the spacebar, for ALL bosses. No variety or interesting mechanics, just a waste of time on a boring fights. This is the worst thing that could happen with POE.
POE1 gained popularity due to its dynamics. Why developers made a game designed for a different audience is unclear. Or do they want to remake the audience's preferences? That's very bold even for GGG.

They want us to want what they want. Problem is, those of us coming from PoE1 don't want what they want. We've had this happen before and Chris went on a damage control circuit because the players hated what they did.

Now we have EA for PoE2 and they're trying to do it again. I don't want to feel weak and slow. I play games like this to feel powerful. Even at league launch for PoE1 I feel far more powerful than I do in PoE2.

And then there's the loot. They want us to craft everything. Everything. Well, how am I supposed to craft anything when nothing drops? No currency, virtually no items. How am I supposed to progress at a pace that isn't a downright slog without anything dropping?

They want to cater to 0.001% of the PoE playerbase with PoE2 and they're going to lose unless they change the game.

who the hell cares about the opinion of braindead IGN employees? there's a reason nobody cares about what those clowns' say

I'm an older gamer at 46 and while I don't think the game is too hard, at least in my experience as a witch so far... I do think the act 1 final boss is way overtuned. I died maybe once getting to him and died 15 times yesterday to him and still haven't gotten the kill. There's multiple issues with the witch specifically. You are over reliant on pets at this level and they die within seconds every time they spawn in. You also don't have access to any of the big damage nodes especially chaos damage till around level 20. The boss is area level 15 iirc. This could be a class specific issue but toning that one boss down a hair might not be a bad idea. The difficulty spike is pretty insane.

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MrH#0517 wrote:

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PatrickFf#1965 wrote:

funny how I've played most ARPGS to end game...

Well that's not surprising, PoE 2 is more difficult than most aRPGs. If you don't enjoy, or can't play harder games then you don't have to, there's millions of people who don't play Souls games even though they're incredible, and that's absolutely fine. Video games aren't one size fits all. And remember, PoE 1 isn't going anywhere and it will be supported with new leagues as always. I could understand the complaints more if GGG were replacing PoE 1 with 2, but they're not.

The biggest difference between casuals and try-hards is time:

Casuals and Disabled folks don't usually have as much of it, and their ability to grow their skill is reflected in that consideration. The result is that casuals and disabled folks are more likely to spend money on cosmetics and the like, either for the emotional value or because they're impatient.

Try-hards seem to have more time. Their skill at a given game is higher. I cannot presume to say they value their time less as I haven't been that kind of gamer since I was in my early college days, and that was over 20yrs ago and gaming was very different then.

Either way - before you summarily tell casuals and disabled folks to depart for other games please consider that without money GGG doesn't make games, put out new content and none of us who play either PoE have anything to enjoy as a live-service game that runs out of funding shuts down. You might consider instead encouraging GGG to pursue means of attracting/satisfying both sides of the aisle.

One of the biggest draws to POE is the massive build options but the try-hard emphasis also tends to make many of those choices irrelevant because everyone starts adopting a handful of meta builds. The game economy circles almost exclusively around those builds and many players just read a build guide, spend real money for the gear and further diminish the game experience for the community. While I can honestly say I don't enjoy build guides or the souls-like experiences, I'm not gonna tell people they're wrong for choosing that.

The whole "my way or the highway"/Ownerism/Superfan partisanship is why, as gamers we have such a bad reputation in the wider world, from the non-gamers. Games are entertainment. If it gets to bad feelings, bullying or worse behaviour, it's no longer entertainment, but a dangerous behavior (for society).

TLDR: PoE 1 pushed further and further away from casuals quite some time ago. There's a lot of ARPG fans who felt like PoE 1 was "stolen" by the try-hard community and now they've been rewarded with another game "just for them". With a free-to-play business model supported by microtransactions and points where PoE 1 was more casual-friendly, The high skill requirements are unappealing to many.

I'm disabled too and am playing. I'm not enjoying myself yet, but I'm trying to get there. There's some AMAZING new features in PoE 2, but the dexterity requirements are HIGH and so far the emphasis seems to be on a lot MORE clicks per second than PoE 1, which, despite the difficulty was more friendly overall to those of us with dexterity issues. Lots of automation with support gems, etc that just isn't there in other games, and that makes an ENORMOUS difference for some folks. I'm getting better, not dying quite so often. Still in Act 1, graveyard. I feel like if I can get past the hump, maybe some more automation it might be enjoyable. One of the frustration breaking points for me with PoE 1 was the try-hard community ALWAYS pushing for more difficulty, and then the inevitable waste of time grinding to get to a hard stop due to resource attrition (stupid RNG) and XP progression loss. I'm really glad they've seemingly removed the XP loss. Like the new checkpoints system. We'll see how it goes.

The Mad Wolf is unkillable as Witch with minions. Too much dmg especially on fog phase. Sadly this will turn me off from the game.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

100% this is not "too hard" and I am a low skill (old dad gamer) player IMO. its almost certainly player skill issues (so far IMO maybe later in acts it gets bullshit I dunno) I'm guessing lots of the complaints are coming from people who refuse to adapt, they barge into every monster on the screen and expect to 1 button them.

They expect to square up on a boss and hold a button down and can't game for shit or something.

Over the years we've seen POE1 league mechanics gutted countless times by knee jerk responses to bad feedback (Delve, Heist, Necromancy Nets many others) because the lousy players who can't throw a net, or can't hold off DPS'ing before they throw a net, or throw a flare in Delve, or look at a stealth meter in heist are sometimes the loudest and quickest to howl on the forums while most REASONABLE people are just getting a feel for things and playing the game.

Quick judgements aren't good judgements, I'm holding off myself but my initial impressions as a guy who thinks Ruthless POE1 is too much and Trade POE1 is stupid easy is that POE2 feels pretty good so far.

I think a complete failure to adapt or game; doesn't make for good feedback.

Yeah in a few days or weeks if everyone thinks its too hard, listen to the feedback.

But please don't knee jerk.

Alternately:

Easy Normal and Hard mode? I kinda think this should be a thing anyway as I'm tired of suffering the balance choices of edge cases like Ben's skill or Cute_Dog's edge case glass cannon speed on either end of the spectrum.

Nope. dodgo dodge dodge dodge dodge attack is not good game. Having to redo an area 5-10 times to get any kind of item progression for the area boss, with that area having no variety at all is not good game. Adding a dodge mechanic at all just because "Souls-Like" is not good game. Walking backwards while firing a bow looks and feels clucky, not good game. The list goes on but i'll stop there. EA for money is not any excuse any more specially when they are not a startup needing the cash to continua towards completion.

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CBFTW#0432 wrote:

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Pistoll#2235 wrote:

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Prapic#5112 wrote:

Problem isn't difficulty, problem is it's boring. The fights are easy, they just take forever. Everything takes forever. They overcorrected from PoE1. Game needed to slow down, but nowhere near this much.

You are right. All you need to do infinite spam the spacebar, for ALL bosses. No variety or interesting mechanics, just a waste of time on a boring fights. This is the worst thing that could happen with POE.
POE1 gained popularity due to its dynamics. Why developers made a game designed for a different audience is unclear. Or do they want to remake the audience's preferences? That's very bold even for GGG.

They want us to want what they want. Problem is, those of us coming from PoE1 don't want what they want. We've had this happen before and Chris went on a damage control circuit because the players hated what they did.

Now we have EA for PoE2 and they're trying to do it again. I don't want to feel weak and slow. I play games like this to feel powerful. Even at league launch for PoE1 I feel far more powerful than I do in PoE2.

And then there's the loot. They want us to craft everything. Everything. Well, how am I supposed to craft anything when nothing drops? No currency, virtually no items. How am I supposed to progress at a pace that isn't a downright slog without anything dropping?

They want to cater to 0.001% of the PoE playerbase with PoE2 and they're going to lose unless they change the game.

Lame.

PoE1 still exists, go play that.