Two things - creative expression and SSF

1) Creative freedom

In my view GGG has always been willing to experiment and test ideas. Sometimes it works out and other times it doesn't work. Some key characteristics of the PoE 2 early access, I believe they have been ruminated on for quite some time now. The PoE 1 playerbase has experienced these ideas off-and-on since expedition league in 3.15.

It has the PoE framework, it is an arpg as it has a gazillion monsters and meaningful bosses, but during campaign + map progression they've given a lot of power to monsters and restricted availability of character power.

In PoE 1 its all about the P in a player vs environment (PvE) video game. Very few players care about the E component in PoE 1. As for PoE 2, my interpretation is they've really emphasized the environment portion. You must play within the map layout, and you must learn about monsters. Why have monsters if they're not meaningful? I think was the quote.

Will this succeed.

I have no idea as I don't work in the gaming industry. Its a really great start as the game graphics and visual actions are stunning, beautiful, and thoroughly detailed. A significant amount of work was clearly spent making the game look great.

As for the gameplay, it is provocative and is purposefully designed to tilt you + make you fail until you learn about the game mechanics, until you engage with the game. What is the average PoE 1 player? Is this what the average PoE 1 player wants? Its a good question. It is my belief there is a specific target audience, some PoE 1 players are part of this but not all, while the hope is to acquire some X population of strictly PoE 2 players. All I can say is I hope it works out as I can't forecast these types of things.

Lastly, I wanted to share an important interview from maybe an unexpected place as there are some artistic similarities. Steven Wilson from the progressive rock band Porcupine Tree talks about a variety of topics on being a musician in our time. Losing fans while also gaining new fans with upcoming records. The Beatles + David Bowie + Christopher Nolan doing unexpected wacky artistic decisions but still making profit. Absolutely worth your time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khY7ICfIxmw

Steven Wilson is an artist. GGG is an artist. GGG wanted to make a game, and the game is PoE 2. The game is a form of consumer entertainment but more importantly an attempt to satisfy their artistic expression. At their core creating video games is what they are about. Unapologetic to anyone. Only in the upcoming year(s) will we be able to fairly judge its impact.

2) SSF

In its current state I would not recommend players play past campaign. Currently I am at tier 13's in SSF.

Access to Expedition is very limited early on. You get a decent amount of exalts to slam an item but you need to pray to get a good affix. Gambling with Alva is ok but is pretty expensive gold wise. I did get pretty lucky with the reforger and got a +6 cold spells staff but it is quite annoying to do, the reforger acts the same as a transmute / alchemy orb.

The best option is to enter a map, kill a monster, hope it drops a rare item and it is an upgrade for your build. It is more likely you'll drop a good rare item for a different build, and to use it you would then need to make a new character. Or in trade you can trade for exalts and then buy an upgrade.

The trade economy is highly valued by GGG and by players in general, so I'm not sure what to suggest to improve SSF that has a good chance of impacting trade.

Regarding SSF, I'm a new POE player. I thought that this mode would mean higher drop rates for gear and currency as a replacement for trade. I was disappointed to learn that this isn't the case and that you can transfer your characters to standard/non-SSF.

I wish GGG would try something different. I understand that the POE1 community would probably hate this, but I'd love SSF to be it's own thing without an option to transfer a character to non-SSF that way we could have better drop rates for gear and currency.

I miss the Champions Return to Arms style itemization. The dopamine rush of getting amazing gear drops that were a clear upgrade. Sometimes a much higher level and having that to look forward to was so fun.

SSF could benefit from a tuned loot equation.

I don't trade because I think it trivialize the game.

As a non trader, I use exalts for slamming any rare with two good affixes, then chaos the item if it has at least two uninteresting mods.

I feel like exalt drops are not enough for this kind of crafting strategy in regards with the high chance to brick the item with chaos.

At least, it seems like there is less randomness than in POE1. Some mods seems to have a higher chance to be rolled depending on base, which is a good thing.

Fellow SSF player here. And I feel that the drop rate of orbs and upgrade materials is way undertuned because of existence of trading in standard.

I don’t play SSF because I like to kick myself in the balls now and then, I play because I want to earn my gear. GGG needs to rethink their approach.

SSF player here aswell. Give me last epoch ssf system that gives you the ability to target farm and and tune the currency drop and I won't be able to put the game down.

Obviously, ssf league needs to be locked.

SSF is fine, this is a challenge league for a reason. That's the goal. It feels bad because the crafting systems sucks and is extremely limited while the average trader joe does exactly what they were doing in poe1 which is accumulating huge amount of currencies and just buy their stuff instead of actually doing crafting with it.

For build making, let's remember it's an early access, there's half classes missing, all classes will have 3 ascendancies, so right now all early classes are missing one ascendancy and a lot of skills are missing. That being said, there's plenty of issues in terms of designs where one hand maces have no places because all maces skills reward slower attacks. Also, poe1 was struggling because it was always "spam 1 button". Now all builds feels like it's a "setup something then make it go boom", gas arrow into boom, skeleton sniper's gas arrow into boom, gas grenade into boom, stormrain arrow into boom, toxic growth into gas arrow into boom, the monk's bell etc... Anyway, let's hope they move from the same patterns, I'd like different ways to play the game other than two buttoners that just forced into synergy.

SSF is a concession from them in the first place. They refused to acknowledge anything but trade for the longest time, because the head dev at the time was the type who mainly cared about "hype" super rare items in D2, and not boring stuff like actually playing the game. It's only through constant cajoling that they finally caved and made SSF a real mode in the game.

It will probably be a real fight to get a well-balanced SSF mode. Even though most people just want to play the damn game and even trade leaguers are secretly sick of it after 10 years, all of the RMT interests will see their income stream slipping through their fingers and will organize a lot of fake opposition as soon as you bring it up.