The campaign is too easy imo

Hello!

Background: I'm an experienced PoE 1 player with a full time job, dedicated the last 2 weekends and weekday nights to just playing PoE2 EA.

I've now progressed through the campaign twice. First a Chronomancer on HC Trade the first weekend, because I believed loot was going to be scarce enough to warrant trading with others. I had a little over 1k HP and good resistances at the end of Act 3, and like 1.5k HP with 1k mana and MOM at the end of Act "6". The damage that bosses were doing felt super fair, and it was the coolest gaming experience I've had in a long time, dropping to low health any time I played poorly and ate a slam. After getting to maps with the help of some farming and trading, the loot buff patch dropped and I thought I may aswell try SSF.

I made a HCSSF Mercenary and noticed how much more items were dropping. I capped out my resistances (not chaos) in act 2 and never ever struggled with them again. My health was absurdly much higher and I basically had no chance at dying throughout the campaign unless I ate attack combinations on purpose.

Now I'm in maps and I have progressed to t6 maps on my HCSSF merc. My stash has more currency than I know what to do with, since I'm pretty happy with my gear and still seem to have zero chance of dying in the current maps I'm playing. The upcoming removal of resistance penalties in maps is a great intuitive change, but also means that I don't really need to switch my gear for a while.



I know this post may come off as me trying to make myself sound good at the game, but the point I'm trying to make is that I'm not that good. Never close to winning events, not a speedrunner!

My main point of this post is that it's too easy to trivialize the campaign with just the gear we find from vendors and throughout the acts, currently.

The reason I'd like the game to be harder is because I had way more fun on the first character. I felt like fully exploring zones gave me a chance to over-level and gear up, whereas I just rushed through every zone on my second character because I didn't need any more power. I'd love end-of-act bosses to be a big milestone during league lanches, and for people who get past them to feel great accomplishment.

Do we want this game's campaign to be like PoE1, being supplied with everything you need by just rushing from boss to boss in the shortest, most optimized, pathing possible? Just something to get through before the actual game begins?

I sure don't.

Agreed.

I think the loot needs to drastically be reduced back to how it was initially at launch. Finding cool gear should also feel rare and like an accomplishment in itself, but it's beginning to feel trivial when we're ending up with screens full of loot.

Overall I hope things become more challenging over time as players learn and adapt to the game, not easier.

I think your feedback highlights that the game is in a good place overall. Many players complain that the difficulty is too high, while a few will argue it's too easy. This suggests that, for most players, the game feels challenging but fair.

That being said, PoE2 is definitely harder than PoE1. The reason your second run felt much faster is that you already knew the bosses and their movement patterns. It’s quite similar to Dark Souls: once you understand the boss mechanics and learn to read their telegraphs, you can defeat them with minimal or even no equipment.

In PoE1, avoiding all damage was rarely an option, but players were tanky enough to absorb 2–3 hits. In PoE2, however, a single hit can take away three-quarters of your health bar. This shifts the focus away from simply having good equipment and places it on reading and reacting to attacks. If you master this, the bosses will become a walk in the park—again, much like Dark Souls.

That said, not all players are equally skilled at reading boss patterns, and those who struggle will naturally rely more on their equipment than those who excel at it. And that's why higher loot drops are needed.

Haha yeah maybe I was a bit lucky with the gear/runes to have the resistances capped by the end of A2. Very open to balance changes other than loot drops being worse, because crafting while leveling is fun. Maybe bosses being balanced around your resistances being full, a lot of the elemental boss abilities currently hit like a wet noodle. Personally though, I like it when finding a rare item is something you're excited for, which I certainly was the first weekend.

> I know this post may come off as me trying to make myself sound good at the game

Well honestly yeah. I haven't beaten act 2 yet on HCSSF. And i've beat PoE1 acts on HC at my first try in 2013. So either i grew old or PoE2 is just a lot harder.

And there's certainly a couple moments that didn't feel fair at all. Like the poorly telegraphed titan boss's knife oneshot, or the act 2 last boss's "to me exile, quickly" phase where i SWEAR i stood in the right place *crying*.

The campaign is not hard, neither are bosses difficult. You just hit roll hit roll hit roll roll hit roll. That's literally the gameplay during boss fight.

It's the length of some encounters. Similar issue to ds1. It's an easy game you die because you get frustrated during fight you want to get over with it and you want to end it quickly. Then you die.

Not much of fun.

>oh look it's the boss at the end of act1. Yeah now he raises his sword and I have to roll 3 times.
>oh look I took another 20% of his hp down and now it's the same mechanic again. Yeah I'll be rolling 3 times again
>oh look now he's at 40% and raised his sword again. It's getting boring
>oh look he's at 5% he raised his sword (again) now the blasts have red color. Yeah let's roll 3 times (again)

Completely agree. I do not want that game to be any easier. Maybe I did not have as smooth a ride on the campaign as you, but it was fun to try to beat things I could not on the first try and work on my gear and skill points. And I think that at any point in the game, you should be able to respect your whole character and do it from scratch.
I like that I did not have enough currency to throw them on every white gear that I had fond and I needed to think what I do. Very refreshing.

campain is good. But closer to end game the more it looks like poe 1 and loses it's identity. First 3 acts are good but merc is just copy of poe 1.

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Sqarpi#7850 wrote:

Completely agree. I do not want that game to be any easier. Maybe I did not have as smooth a ride on the campaign as you, but it was fun to try to beat things I could not on the first try and work on my gear and skill points. And I think that at any point in the game, you should be able to respect your whole character and do it from scratch.
I like that I did not have enough currency to throw them on every white gear that I had fond and I needed to think what I do. Very refreshing.

No the campaign is terrible. This is a seasonal game. How many people do you think will be willing to spend 40 hours just essentially playing tutorial every season.

The campaign has no reason to be that long

-1 billion
L take
Campaign sucks and it's too long. Loot still needs to be buffed, not nerfed.


Go play HC SSF Ruthless if you want more difficulty, the rest of the playerbase doesn't have to suffer just because you find the campaign "too easy". This is a loot game, you're supposed to find loot and feel powerful. That's what makes it fun for most people.