Stop whining like a child.

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

"

FrigidMT#7044 wrote:

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

"Discovering strong builds" is the opposite of what PoE thrived on.

In PoE1 you CREATE your own strong build.
In PoE2 you DISCOVER a strong build put into the game by the developer.

The end result looks very similar, which gives new players the illusion that they experienced what makes PoE great. But what they experienced is something fundamentally different, and this new experience does not facilitate the kind of longevity that has kept PoE alive for so long.

It doesn't mean the game is garbage, but it does put the game at a much higher threat of not being able to retain long term players until they address it. This is probably not what you want as a developer after developing a new live service game for half a decade.

Jesus, you made my heart sink a little. I hope you end up being wrong about this, but the limit on supports and so many skills being limited to specific weapons does have me kind of worried about that.

The good thing is that the systems that exist in the game could absolutely be turned into something that captures the PoE magic while still being extremely different from PoE1, it's mostly just a matter of execution and design decisions.

The endgame will always be pointless unless they significantly roll back crafting changes.

It's a diablo 4 style gold grind or praying for multiple Aisling slams (chaos orbs) to hit.

They really turned all crafting into trying to hit synth implicits without imprints lol

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

"

FrigidMT#7044 wrote:

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

"Discovering strong builds" is the opposite of what PoE thrived on.

In PoE1 you CREATE your own strong build.
In PoE2 you DISCOVER a strong build put into the game by the developer.

The end result looks very similar, which gives new players the illusion that they experienced what makes PoE great. But what they experienced is something fundamentally different, and this new experience does not facilitate the kind of longevity that has kept PoE alive for so long.

It doesn't mean the game is garbage, but it does put the game at a much higher threat of not being able to retain long term players until they address it. This is probably not what you want as a developer after developing a new live service game for half a decade.

Jesus, you made my heart sink a little. I hope you end up being wrong about this, but the limit on supports and so many skills being limited to specific weapons does have me kind of worried about that.

The good thing is that the systems that exist in the game could absolutely be turned into something that captures the PoE magic while still being extremely different from PoE1, it's mostly just a matter of execution and design decisions.

Lets address the easy stuff first. Why was POE1 so popular? It's a great game, that people enjoy a lot!
So GGG have two options:
1: Try to make a better game, updated graphics, better mechanics, better audio, but with the same feel and content.
2: Shift radically and discover content people love even more

So far, they did neither. Less than 1% of players play ruthless mode in POE1. POE2 trends clearly towards ruthless playstyle. If this was intentional, it means they are giving up the broad player base and cater towards that 1%.
Are those the people who spend the most cash on microtransactions?

I don't understand the logic from GGG here.

The premise for successful ARPG's is easy -its heavily loot driven towards some greater goal. The gameplay must be engaging and exciting.
The consensus so far clearly tells a story of a game that does not deliver the loot/rewards, nor the exciting gameplay to drive people towards more difficult content.

This needs to change if POE2 is to be broadly successful, and not become a niche game for a small fraction of players.

"

Gkek#1581 wrote:

The endgame will always be pointless unless they significantly roll back crafting changes.

It's a diablo 4 style gold grind or praying for multiple Aisling slams (chaos orbs) to hit.

They really turned all crafting into trying to hit synth implicits without imprints lol

I agree, but i do think solving the crafting issue can be done by adding more crafting options to the game. Whereas the issues with skills / supports need more than just new stuff or bringing back old stuff, they need to actively change the design of what is already in the game for those.

An issue of "not enough" on the crafting and gear side versus "what's there isn't working, and adding more won't fix it" on the character building side

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

"

Gkek#1581 wrote:

The endgame will always be pointless unless they significantly roll back crafting changes.

It's a diablo 4 style gold grind or praying for multiple Aisling slams (chaos orbs) to hit.

They really turned all crafting into trying to hit synth implicits without imprints lol

I agree, but i do think solving the crafting issue can be done by adding more crafting options to the game. Whereas the issues with skills / supports need more than just new stuff or bringing back old stuff, they need to actively change the design of what is already in the game for those.

An issue of "not enough" on the crafting and gear side versus "what's there isn't working" on the character building side

I don't think you can make a crafting system feel meaningful if it isn't at least partially deterministic.

What they have right now is too trivial to be deterministic. It has to be random or it's as simple as just choosing what you want. They have set up a base of a system that feels like Lost Epoch where your endgame loop was to grind gold, buy a unique you needed, and hope that the revealed suffixes were the ones you wanted and high tier... or grind 100x as much gold to buy something already good or a god drop someone couldn't use.

Lost Epoch died because that loop sucked and the endgame didn't exist. PoE 2 has set itself up for that same failure.

POE has to be complicated to be PoE. They should have focused instead on making very hand-holdy tutorials that let you play with temporary crafting mats to teach people through experience instead of setting up whatever this yolo slam crap is.

Yeah i agree with that too. When i say adding more to crafting i don't mean giving more of the same items, i mean adding more deterministic systems on top of what exists like adding the crafting bench, new currencies, influenced items, etc.

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

"Discovering strong builds" is the opposite of what PoE thrived on.

In PoE1 you CREATE your own strong build.
In PoE2 you DISCOVER a strong build put into the game by the developer.

The end result looks very similar, which gives new players the illusion that they experienced what makes PoE great. But what they experienced is something fundamentally different, and this new experience does not facilitate the kind of longevity that has kept PoE alive for so long.

It doesn't mean the game is garbage, but it does put the game at a much higher threat of not being able to retain long term players until they address it. This is probably not what you want as a developer after developing a new live service game for half a decade with 10+ years of experience and hundreds of people on staff.

It very much is this, there is a critical lack of specific damage nodes that would be used to create a specific build. For example if trying to make a corrupting cry build there is nowhere near enough strength on the tree or even within the games unique pool to make it happen. Currupting cry does not scale with "ailment damage" either(because it isn't an "ailment", it is a "debuff"), so it can only scale with "debuff" damage, which is not even on the tree. There are no "damage over time" nodes on the tree either.

It really feels like if the devs didn't specifically but something on the passive tree for your build then you are screwed. Incidentally I notice that they actually put some thought into the top of the tree as the witch/sorc area is the ONLY PLACE where there is an abundance of specific elemental nodes, it is also the only place you can find physical damage nodes, which really does not make any sense.

When you compare to PoE1s tree, you notice that PoE1 has different elemental nodes everywhere, several nodes for almost every mechanic, nodes for almost every ailment, DoT nodes, crit nodes - if you can think of it then it is probably somewhere on the tree. It also has actual sustain on the tree which is severely lacking in PoE2 and actually more important in PoE2 given that everything kills you so fast.

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

Yeah i agree with that too. When i say adding more to crafting i don't mean giving more of the same items, i mean adding more deterministic systems on top of what exists like adding the crafting bench, new currencies, influenced items, etc.

Deterministic crafting is almost necessary while leveling because you could just get shafted by RNG and have a bad time.
In my opinion though, PoE should have made deterministic crafting methods progressively worse the higher you got.

These games are most fun when it's fast.

PoE1, Diablo, even other games like WoW are most fun when it's fast. A pattern we can easily see on the various seasons where the slow ones are more often reviled.

Dark Souls games are also somewhat fast-paced. Yes you can move slow, or you can sprint through killing everything with ease.

PoE2 as of now, is a slow league. Or to say it's only slow for the player, enemies are anything but.

"

Xendran#1127 wrote:

Yeah i agree with that too. When i say adding more to crafting i don't mean giving more of the same items, i mean adding more deterministic systems on top of what exists like adding the crafting bench, new currencies, influenced items, etc.

100%, but they won't do it.
That would just make it POE 1 but really really slow.

They're determined to do everything opposite consequences be damned, and they're going to take player numbers as a sign that everything is fine.

They'll launch in July-ish and the game will lose 85% of it's players before 2025 ends. At that point they'll either acknowledge they made a game for nobody or they will blame PoE 1 for splitting the playerbase and kill it to salvage poe 2.

Don't forget Tencent is in the picture.