Poe 2 - Analysis. Result of Professional deformation and degradation of game design?

Disclaimer - this post is not meant to be negative (although it is inevitable now, such is the environment). It is addressed directly to GGG, although I am not sure if any of the leading game designers will ever read it, and I don't insist on everything I say here, this is my opinion as a player with a lot of experience. I am approaching some details from a pessimistic point of view, because as a game designer I believe this approach is realistic and effective. I am also making some assumptions, and everything stated in the post is not a guide to action / holy writ / the last word on the issue

"

After spending half a day on reddit and here (because I'm starved for conversation, I guess) I've come to the conclusion that people are extremely extreme about any point of view, and on both sides. I am NOT saying that I "hate" PoE 2, or Souls. I am not saying that I wish them failure. I want only the best for PoE 2, and that's why I am talking about what I find problematic about it. I have the right to do so, because I am an experienced player, and just a player after all.

"

Introduction.

So, I'm a huge fan of poe 1 and have over 9k hours in the game. Before poe 2 came out, I watched all the interviews with Jonathan, and as a game designer, I realized one thing: the Poe developers have professional deformation.

One of the main points in Jonathan's interviews was always the following statement: we want to make the game as interesting as possible. And the thing is, this statement is true, but only half. You want to make the game interesting for yourself, so that you have fun making it. It's really fun to work out boss attacks, animations, think about how the player will dodge them in the style of Souls, how the mechanical gameplay will work in general - all this is really interesting, and if you like making games like this, then this is great.

The problem is that the development of Poe 2 was funded by Poe 1 players, and the main core of Poe 1 is a completely different gameplay. Any game designer knows: if your game has a roll and it is absolutely necessary, then most likely it is a bad game, or Katana Zero. Yes, this applies to action games like Hotline Miami, but it is unacceptable in an action RPG. And it's not that rolling is bad, or that there are some genre canons. It's just that you should have more than a choice of 1 thing.

The whole BASIS of an action RPG like Poe, is built around the characteristics of the character. Potentially, you should be able to develop your character so much that you can kill everything without even moving. This is what people loved PoE 1 for, and this is completely impossible in PoE 2, because the gameplay basis of PoE 2 is different.

If PoE 2 was called differently and was not created to replace patches to PoE 1, I would have no questions. But since it is a continuation and development of ideas, then I have something to say. I have some criticism.

"

Statement 1 - Mechanics vs. Stats

At the heart of it all is the principle of mechanical skill versus character stat development. Either you play the game mechanically, like in MGR Rising or Sekiro, or you play the game like Diablo - that is, you collect items and increase stats until your character becomes so strong that he can kill everyone with a look.

These are two extremes. While the king of the first (mechanical skill) is probably "I wanna be the Boshy", or, say, conditional "Sekiro". These are games where you win if you press the right button at the right time.

The king of the second extreme is Poe 1. These are games where you win if you have correctly calculated the numbers of your stats. (Btw, Elden Ring is roughly in between, since you can "pump up" there too)

But let's get back to it. The entire basis of Poe 1's design is literally the complete opposite of the Dark Souls principles. In the endgame of Poe 1, you could play even if you have no hands, but you have a head on your shoulders. As long as you have enough information about the game, as long as you can plan a build accurately and creatively enough and put everything together - you will pass the game. Even if your reaction speed is like a whale. Even if you do not know the boss's attacks - it does not matter. What is important is that your understanding of the game's build, your understanding of mathematics and numbers is encouraged.That's why the game feels like an ocean - it encourages you to KNOW and UNDERSTAND in a way that no other game does.

The passive skill tree in Poe 1 is literally a work of art. The concept of nodes on them and their usefulness change depending on what Timeless Jewel you use, whether you can put Thread of Hope. And note - all this has to do exclusively with stats.

In Poe 2, you barely feel the passive skill tree. You barely feel that you are getting anything from it, and objectively so, because the game was developed with a different design at its core. Poe 2 is currently the opposite of Poe 1, and I don't understand why every developer sooner or later comes to the point of starting a war against their own audience. This is not my opinion, this is just a dry analysis of the mechanics and decisions made by the developers.

You can't argue with the numbers because that's what the developers have done. In Poe 2, your stats will not save you from mechanics that are designed in such a way that you are forced to roll. Even if you have 14k ES and you play in a well-planned group (as Empi showed) - you still get one shot. And the reason for this is the focus on the mechanical skill of players. You no longer teach us to think, you teach us to press the spacebar in time, and that's why I call it degradation. This may be a development for the ARpg genre as a whole, because no one has mixed Diablo and Dark Souls yet, but it is definitely a degradation of the principles that made Poe great.

Again, no negativity. I have always loved and will love Poe, but this is just weird. I am not a proponent of conspiracy theories and I believe in the integrity of GGG, but when such things happen... I can't help but watch who manages the shares and cashes out the money, if you understand.

However, with the 95% limitations, it was still done intentionally, based on professional deformation. It is important to understand that game design is as subjective as writing a book. When developing a game, the designer (if he is passionate) first of all wants to enjoy the development process, and try something new. Unfortunately, this opportunity is largely lost when you have an audience that gives you money. Well, or not.

"

Statement 2 - Depth of building, encouragement of creativity

One thing is that games like Souls, despite the lack of build-building through stats, have Movesets. Different weapons hit differently, move differently, and feel differently. Some movesets are convenient, some are not, but they are all a vital part of such gameplay, because without them you would literally have PoE 2.

In PoE 2, as movesets (in melee, of course), you have a set of skills (stones). Needless to say, this set is extremely poor compared to the catch of Elden Ring? Elden Ring has a dozen types of weapons and several HUNDRED movesets. And how many such stones does your game offer? I ask because at the moment even among the existing selection there are only a few options, some of which have already been heavily nerfed. So what is the specific idea?

This is important because movesets are a replacement for what was in PoE 1 and what is not in PoE 2 - build depth.

At the moment PoE 2 doesn't even encourage the gameplay approach that was appropriate in PoE 1. Experimenting with builds is not encouraged because they will quickly be nerfed to the point of being unplayable, while really weak skills haven't received any buffs in all this time. But the problem isn't even the nerfs. The ability nerfs aren't a systemic problem. The systemic problem is the design itself.

Is it a necessary part of the mechanical design to have objectively weak, situational abilities in the game? Why support gems only give you 25% damage and have drawbacks, while in PoE 1 you had conditional added lightning (500 flat + 1 gem lvl)?

And again, even a system like this has a right to exist, but it has categorically lost all depth, and creates only the appearance of depth. In fact, your choice is now as great as in Diablo 4, because using most skills is a painful gameplay. You do not feel that you are beating the game in any sense with your skill. All you feel is the meaninglessness of the fact that your skill kills monsters in 7 hits, although it could in 2, because you optimized your build to hell, but it just does not work.

- Why are numbers so weak in a game based on numbers? And if it's not a game based on numbers, then why is it called Path Of Exile? KING of games about numbers and tables, on par with Eve Online

- Why do unique items lose synergies? Some of them, especially those carried over directly from the first game, theoretically still work well (Doryani's Prototype) - but builds with them are no longer possible because the monster resistance system works differently. If I understand correctly, you can no longer lower monster resistances below zero, which means there is no point in collecting negative resistances, and therefore the entire depth of such builds is killed.

- Why did keystones lose depth and complexity? Eldritch Battery now converts all your ES into mana. This kills any interactions where you would want to have both mana and shield, but transfer the shield to the other side.

- Why did skill gems lose depth? While the current gem system may seem better at first glance, it has one major flaw - it interacts worse with items. You no longer have "gems placed in this item get #name" and that's a problem.This is why Krip said that the gem system in the Poe 1 was the best in the history of the genre - you had systemic influence and co-dependency of your items with skill gems directly, which added a lot of depth.

- Why did the skill tree lose all its meaning in the end? How did we get to nodes that give 20% mana regen? (5 mana with a base regen of 25) - did you make the sustain in the game so harsh by removing almost all leech, only to then force players to take nodes on the tree that no one had taken before (almost) and remove all the interesting nodes? Plus, the loss of tree symmetry can lead to even bigger balance issues. You also get less stats from the new tree than you did from the old one.

- My blood mage is literally unplayable at the moment because it consumes more total HP and Mana than I can possibly have. Now I have to downgrade my gems and lose damage, lose cast speed, lose all. Why am I being punished? For... extra HP? But i can't even get my crit damage bonus from ascend - I lose health right before the ability is cast, which means by the time it hits the enemy, I've already spent my health and my crit multiplier will be lower. So doubling my health simply doesn't improve crits, especially on bosses. And after that you remove from the game cast on freeze. And right before that you lower the number from 20 to 40. Can you explain the reasoning behind this decisions?

- Why does the skill tree now give 5 stats instead of 10? Not to mention that some items can be hard to equip - are you keeping the stacker concept/archetype in the game? Will it be possible to stack 2000 power using clever, clever methods, or is that not part of the design?[/span]

"

Statement 3 - Roll in Action Rpg

Mechanics based on dodging, rolling, and parrying have to be mechanically feasible, and for that you have to have few opponents. Path of Exile is a game about killing crowds of monsters. Even if we don't talk about the speed of the game - there are a lot of enemies. That's why the numbers matter, because mechanical skill alone is not enough. Right now Poe 2 is pretending that this isn't the case.

And yes, roll exists in other games, and those games handle it much better. At the very least, they give you enemies in batches - 1-3 max. This is done so that you can control the situation, and with the help of resource management the enemies, and then dodge them one by one. Now do this in Breach, where you have 200 enemies at once.

You can't just take the mechanics of one complex game of a completely different genre and add them to another complex game of a completely different genre. Tower defense is cool, but everything has a limit.

If you had managed to implement all this correctly, I would never have written this post. A long time ago, I was banned from reddit because I defended GGG from hate in the Synthesis league. I have always been a supporter of the idea that the developer knows best what he is doing, because games like Path of Exile do not appear by accident, never.

However, now I am not sure that you understand what you are doing, and what you even want, or what we all wants. I have spent nine thousand hours of my life on this game, and I am afraid for its future.

"

Conclusion

Maybe you're just not interested in working with numbers anymore? As developers, you're not interested in coming up with all these clever ways to expand the tree like clusters, like thread of hope. Maybe you are no longer interested in archetypes with stacks of corrupted jewels, stacks of stats, stacks of armor? Because I don't see any traces of the possibility of all this in the new game. Everything that concerns items in Poe 2 at the moment - looks like a decoration and a prop for a game about physically impossible dodging from a crowd of monsters on giant maps, where 50% of the time you spend just running, like in a walking simulator. Is this really funny, or is it a mistake that no one wants to admit?

If you're not interested - I can understand, you've been doing this for years, and you might get tired. But this is what we as players love. You're making a game not only for yourself, but for us - we pay you money, and in the end, we spend our own lives on your games. After all, this is the basis of the genre your game belongs to. At least you could not reduce the rate of support for Poe 1, so as to respect our opinion.

Yes, there will be people who like the game in PoE 2, and there will probably be a lot of them. They will probably make you money. But who has been paying you for 10 years? Why have we had a league for 6 months? People who like everything I listed above. Where do we go if PoE 1 closes? What guarantees do we have that the game will be supported if you have already broken your promises and siphoned resources multiple times?

What do I do if I enjoy spending 10 hours in POB and now the tree is so obvious that you literally have no choice? I checked the entire list of unique items and the only items that can be used to build interesting builds have already been nerfed.

I understand that this is Early Access, but that argument doesn't work - the problems I'm talking about here are systemic. They are, as Perturbator would say, Corrupted By Design. And theoretically, if you listen to people's criticism, you can fix all of this. It's still mostly a numbers question, because like it or not, numbers in action RPGs have absolute dominance over mechanical skill.

Giving players enough clever ways to improve their numbers will make people like me happy. That's why people like Megalomaniacs or Watcher Eyes so much - they're versatile, flexible and creative. The item itself having 400 uses is the whole point, the whole power and the whole essence of Poe 1. Does Poe 2 have that?

Time will tell

Some quotes from other peoples:

"

"Every single thing you see in Dark Souls is intentionally placed, not randomly generated. That's why every encounter has a unique feel, and you never feel safe in your approach. Trying to recreate that with an algorithm is no different than replacing an artist with AI-generated crap.

PoE should aim to be a better version of PoE, not D2 or Souls."

"

As an aside to outline lack of fun things. If I wanted turrets to shoot my lightning arrows alongside me in PoE 1, I could do that. I could allocate whatever projectile skill I ~really~ wanted into a turret gem. That's not allowed in PoE 2.

Then when I got excited about Stormchain Arrow, like, WOW 10 CHAINS? Turned out it's even worse than the level 1 lightning arrow because it does jack shit for damage, consumes the shock (which is 50%+ MORE damage to a monster) and cannot possibly reapply shock to allow completed chains. It's better to just keep pressing the one damn button. The complexity that was assured would be there isn't there.

With this said, this isn't to say I'm struggling with content, my build is very very strong. It's just not complex, like, I use one skill three times, then another skill 10 times. That's it, boss dead, and a lot of the synergistic things to make things complex are getting torn apart or are being railroaded into not being possible between classes

so what you are saying is we should nerf CoX more. ill pass that along to prod.

Mark Roberts said a while ago that he doesn't read long forum posts. As a writer of long forum posts, I took that personally at the time. I don't anymore. I get it now.

OP, please condense your feedback into a 5x5 bingo card.

"

NicknamesOfGod#1810 wrote:

Mark Roberts said a while ago that he doesn't read long forum posts. As a writer of long forum posts, I took that personally at the time. I don't anymore. I get it now.

OP, please condense your feedback into a 5x5 bingo card.

Am I right in understanding that you want a three-line summary of a book on game design? Complex problems require complex criticism, and I took this seriously. I'm always amazed that people look for simple answers to complex questions. I'm afraid that the problems of this game are quite complex and they lie deep

"

SilverWF#6383 wrote:

- Why do you been thinking this should be 'poe1' 2.0 ?

Because I've been paying money for this for years, and because the game is called Path of Exile 2, not Path of Dark Souls 2

"

theslavagame#6814 wrote:

"

SilverWF#6383 wrote:

- Why do you been thinking this should be 'poe1' 2.0 ?

Because I've been paying money for this for years, and because the game is called Path of Exile 2, not Path of Dark Souls 2

But devs are clearly said: this WONT be POE1 !

You completely ignored their words and now it's someone's fault, not yours?

"

SilverWF#6383 wrote:

"

theslavagame#6814 wrote:

"

SilverWF#6383 wrote:

- Why do you been thinking this should be 'poe1' 2.0 ?

Because I've been paying money for this for years, and because the game is called Path of Exile 2, not Path of Dark Souls 2

But devs are clearly said: this WONT be POE1 !

You completely ignored their words and now it's someone's fault, not yours?

The fact that they said it does not mean that it is not subject to criticism, and my criticism in many points makes sense if you read the post

bump - (are bumps generally encouraged on this forum?)

"

Statement 1 - Mechanics vs. Stats

Any ARPG game (this one included) is mostly stats.
The only difference here is that PoE1 is 99% stats and PoE2 is 90% stats.

All the other comparisons you're making in this paragraph are nonsensical. Games of other genres have fundamentally different possible spreads of mechanics vs stats.

You're trying to push an argument that PoE2 went towards "mechanics" games a lot, while in reality it barely moved; and that's very obvious - an ARPG game simply cannot move too much towards "mechanics" while still remaining ARPG.

"

Statement 2 - Depth of building, encouragement of creativity

You have written a whole paragraph talking about literally half-finished game. Let me just disregard it whatsoever.

Talking about builds right now is simply premature and pointless. We can return to this topic when the game gets at least about 90% of its content and not just 50% like right now.

"

Statement 3 - Roll in Action Rpg

Here you're simply reiterating that a slight shift towards "mechanics" is bad.
Whereas it's a welcome extension that allows keeping the difficulty level high enough (it provides a "mechanics" failsafe that's always available independently of your build).

See, you have written quite a lot of words, but (not surprising, really) didn't made much good arguments.