Poe2 = Dark Souls + Poe + Monster Hunter???

I'm certain there's many people with a similar opinion. I don't want to be fighting these particular conflicts for extents of time. I don't like slugging around in a very slow fashion. If I want this experience, I'll pick a game more like monster hunter. If I want something to climb numbers, I'll pick a game like vampire survivors. If I want something that blended a response to those problems seamlessly, I'd pick poe1.

I remember early on in POE's life, I thought; "The movement in this game is so much less clunky and more fluid than Titan Quest", because at the time that was the only alternative I had found related to D2 and I enjoyed it. So I had continued playing POE1 due to the added speed. I'm not inherently an impatient person, but there's a limit in my late 30s. F2P games were... bad at the time, to say the least. Very bad. The private servers made more than the main games because they would provide those same utilities as the main games as well, while often providing actual gameplay methods to obtain the premium currency. POE1 catered to those people, and provided a solid free game with monetary growth potential. You guys snatched up ALL those people with POE1 and we loved it. There was little NEED for premium anything, so here we are.

This... is not poe1. It FEELS like many games combined together, and to me feels more akin to dark souls or the more difficult genres than I expected from a Diablo-esque styled game.

I really didn't like to PLAY dark souls. I liked to WATCH dark souls, but playing it was intensely annoying for me. I'd rather just be making a game, engineering a backend, working on a GUI, or patching statistics for something if the game I'm currently playing gives me too much resistance.

The feeling I get when playing dark souls games is more akin to busywork, where I'm wandering around or along paths until I bump into something that tries to knock me into a pit, or is very difficult to defeat at strange intervals. POE2 reminds me of this, where I get very little from the majority of the effort I put in, and my reward is very little for large conflicts.

POE2, is more akin to dark souls than I like as player preference. The more I played it, the more it felt similar rather than different.

I say this with a heavy heart, because I hope these things are smoothed out for people like me; but I know that many of the younger people have different preferences than myself, so it makes me think that many of them are features rather than problems to solve.

----------------------------------------------------------------------
1. No movement skills.
Everyone is forced to simply lumber around and roll past things, instead of just not being somewhere by default. You can't simply avoid a multitude of white enemies because they're too fast, and you can't completely dodge the majority of boss hits without a dodge roll or movement speed.

2. The lack of utility based flasks.
No... quicksilver flask, on top of no movement skills. I'm sensing a pattern here. The game feels more like a time-sink than it does something to conquer as quickly as possible. I don't have enough time to devote a large spell to something like this, as my brain power and responses usually need to be spent making or patching various games during the week, rather than picking one to enjoy. I rarely get to play something I enjoy. By the time I'm done for the day I'm cooked to the point of picking a walking simulator many days. There's too much baggage in POE1 and POE2 to fit that slot. Backrooms games usually work because they're mindless, exactly where I'd rather be at that exact moment.

3. The strangely rounded damage numbers.
The front-loaded base attacks seem to... outweigh the skills and abilities, and the majority of the skills are either weaker, or provide very little bonus at all throughout the campaign. This is something I would often do during my work days, shave off a little time to make my POE1 characters better rounded, hit harder, faster, or whatnot; there seems to be little potential for this in the early game. It also seems to encourage more attacks rather than focused attacks or specializing in attacks due to having no real commitment to them, which devalues their utility in many ways. So I don't mind shaving off a bit of time from my calculations to have the perfect resistances, damage, and so on to clear t16 maps; but I don't see myself doing that here, not if the statistics are so carefully rounded in the campaign. I don't see myself reaching the end game before losing patience and simply uninstalling it, like many others have already.

4. The passive grid is massive.
You'd think this is a good thing, and it is in a lot of ways; when you're a higher level than say 30. You have a good set of points to play with and a bit of flexibility yeah. Before around level 20 you're pretty much stuck on a line if you want the best values, or to be more survivable, or to increase damage, and so on. If you don't choose the correct options to solo play, you'll probably have a bad time. You will likely need to respec a few points to make sure you can actually survive some boss hits.

5. Abilities are lacking in everything.
You get so little as actual impactful changes with many attacks. They are often too slow, so you end up hitting once and rolling; getting hit anyway. Which is inherently an annoying factor that builds up over time. I don't want to hit and roll every single fight, and I'm sure most people don't want to hit and roll every single fight. Every, single, conflict. Then you get levels, and new abilities, only to have it happen again, and, again, and again anyway. Like none of it truly impacts the outcome of the gameplay. Just like monster hunter, you work long periods of time, to get small bonuses, that combine together to do something; but without them combined together effectively, two hits is still three, so none of it matters.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
With better movement abilities; better capabilities to defend myself, better threat or knockback from my weapons, more potential early-game options to actually play other than hit and run... This game will retain many more players in my opinion, but I really don't know if that's certain.

I need to see the numbers and outcomes to be sure if my opinions hold any real weight, or if they're just the minority. I don't mind being the minority, and will even support the majority in the case of games like Elden Ring and Dark Souls, but I don't have to play them. I can sequester myself to POE1, which I don't mind doing.

I just want some sort of indication statistically that I'm that. If this is words of the majority however, I believe as well the analytics should change the game before pure launch. Otherwise, this could be doomed to fail, and the death of another classic isn't something I want to see.

No, Monster Hunter is actually a good game that does not try and pretend to be an ARPG.

Just forget about poe 2, we have poe 1 and that's it thanks, I deleted poe 2, just a horrible game experience.

"

ExsiliumUltra#5541 wrote:

No, Monster Hunter is actually a good game that does not try and pretend to be an ARPG.

What like this pretends to be a constructive intelligent post? Lol

"

VSwift#7054 wrote:

"

ExsiliumUltra#5541 wrote:

No, Monster Hunter is actually a good game that does not try and pretend to be an ARPG.

What like this pretends to be a constructive intelligent post? Lol

My post is more of a series of raw heartfelt musings from a fellow human. Take it how you will.

I mean well, but the road to hell is paved with good intentions.