How to turn POE2 into a game w 5 million+ players. 2 Difficulty settings

I only have two mentions on this matter:
1. There is already an easier version, it's called Path of Exile (the first one). Considering that they warned us publicly aeons ago, before beta testing even, no sugar-coating, they said it would be brutal, as it is. Streamers tested it before EA, and made content telling you how hard it will be. If one decides to buy the game one should take the advertised product as it is, IMO, respectfully, of course.
2. Ever since the first game launched GGG is known and praised for making difficult games with intricate builds and enormous skill trees. You don't see FromSoftware bend over backwards to make the game easier when people complain how difficult Elden Ring is, why should you ask GGG to make such huge changes that will bring more work-load for the devs on balancing separately? Bottom line easier mode would be 100% atypical for what PoE stands for to begin with.

Am I a sweaty, hardcore gamer? Not by far. I only have around 1k hours, and I still don't know/understand a lot of things. It takes me ages to finish the campaign, and there were times I never dared thinking I would be able to beat any endgame boss.But with each league, I learned more and pushed a little further until I managed to beat all bosses except the Ubers. The core aspect of this game is to challenge you to become a better gamer, maybe a stronger person too.

I meant no offence, I have like 1-2 missions til the endgame (since day 1), it was hard af but beyond the frustrations and bad RNG, Sanctum and crazy bosses, I'm loving every minute of it.
I love you all and I know your pain, but the easier path is not the way to understand (and like) the (this) game.

"Wisdom is the offspring of suffering and time."

Stay sane exiles! xo

How to turn any restaurant into an establishment with 5 million customers:

Make it a McDonald's franchise.

You guys are operating under an extremely flawed set of presuppositions, where you think GGG wants their game to be mindless, casual, and shallow. GGG has both said and shown time and time again that they have no interest in making a game for everyone, they'd rather make the best game possible for people like themselves.

It's the most obvious and probably the only way to make everyone happy. Im sure GGG thought about this and were held back by something or some concerns. I completely agree adding difficulty is the way to go as long as it does not hurt the game balance or game in general.

Probably it would affect trading because now you have farmers on easy... unless you split the trading which going to cause a lot of other issues.

The way to fix that is to have bad loot on easy, and its meant for new players but then you will always get people who will cry about loot on easy mode, and then new leagues and patches will have to account for 2 game modes... just sounds like a can of worms to me.

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alhazred70#2994 wrote:

So after watching one of the streamers who complaining (polite way of saying tbh, its more like having a tantrum) about tuning and contrasting their play to my own as well as actual good players (not me) like Steel, Nugi and Quin I see pretty clear patterns of "bash head into boss, get swammped by everything on the screen thats available to be aggro'ed die predictably and respawn a lot"

That said I support difficulty levels. I'd hate to see the 1 button gamers get POE2 turned into a faceroll.

You lost me at Quin and good player

Forget the game reviews for now, but the D4 Team 3 often expresses goodwill around the campfire, right? Yet, the results...

Adopting a soul-like difficulty is perfectly fine, but when it comes to nerfing builds, forcing economy resets with every seasonal journey, and the excessively punitive measures for character death in the later stages (e.g., -10% penalty, map deletion, removal of uncollected rewards, etc.), these are often used to brainwash players, disguised as “good intentions.” In reality, there are much better ways to handle these issues, but they always seem to intentionally avoid mentioning those solutions. Some of these approaches have already been implemented in other games (LE & GD), yet they are either ignored or treated as if they don't exist, or when positive feedback from players is given, they just chuckle it off and move on.

What we can feel right now is that GGG (Grinding Gear Games) has created a ton of fun in their forums, and I think that’s true goodwill. After all, if the game does end up failing, like D4, at least there's still an official forum and a message board to hang out on! XD

I think a real issue in the future few are talking about is that the game is structured so far more like a long form traditional action rpg with big huge areas and lots of loot grind and character investment plus tough bosses, yet it presumably expects us to also play the league/season game of starting from scratch every few months just like POE 1, while like a lot of things, the fact it is POE 2 and structurally different can't just have that mechanic reused as-is imo without burning people out much faster than POE 1.

I like the idea, but I'm afraid it will be hard to balance classes and whole gameplay for different difficulties.

+1

The issue is not difficulty, the issue is loot and build diversity.

We do not have the player power on the skill tree to make certain builds work - while other builds are great.

You notice that peoples opinion of the game is very much based on 1:If they are playing a good build and 2:If that build got hit with the meta nerfs

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Glyff3083#1641 wrote:

I'm more in favor of 3 settings. The knobs and switches are already built into the game.

Casual - Normal - Hardcore

THIS.