Endgame reveals flaws in game design that were there all along

Hello everyone,

I am grateful for being able to participate in the early access launch, so I took some time to note down my observations. Please bear with me - this might be a rambling post - or feel free to skip ahead to highlighted sections where I will do my best to structure my points.

First of all, let me get the positive feedback out of the way. I believe the team has absolutely killed it with the campaign. Environments look stunning and maps have impressive scale to them. Character models and equipment look incredible. I was pleased with the WASD movement implementation and the dodge roll mechanic. I liked the fact that even some normal enemies have moves that require the use of a dodge roll or tactical positioning. All the boss fights have left a strong impression on me, both from a cinematic aspect, as well as their well-telegraphed mechanics. In fact, I think this campaign playthrough has changed how I view Path of Exile in general - from a mere stat optimization game, to something that rewards tactical play and good understanding of mechanics.

Before long I had reached the endgame. At the time of me writing this, I believe I am running about T12-13 maps. Unfortunately, my experience with the endgame so far has been rather monotone and rife with problems. After pausing for a bit to figure out what caused this strange dissonance between how the campaign felt and how the endgame feels, I now believe some core aspects of the game are in tension with its new development direction.

I. Rare enemies

The design principles of rare enemies have remained largely unchanged from the early days of PoE. Enemies get augmented with modifiers, which keeps their base behavior the same, but has them gain effects that passively pose danger to the player. I was initially under the impression that specific effects were a problem, but upon further reflection - I think this entire concept is broken at its core and a poor fit for the type of game that PoE2 is trying to be. Let me explain:

- The effects are active basically all the time. For example, a volatile spawner will send a bomb at you every couple seconds without missing a beat. Not only is it boring, being equivalent to a boss that has only one move and constantly spams it until defeated, it fails to offer clear windows of opportunity for counterplay.
- The effects do not play into the enemy moveset whatsoever and are therefore poorly telegraphed. You can add as many glowing ground indicators as you like - it doesn't change the fact that nothing about an enemy's animation indicates that it is "doing a rare ability".
- The effects are not stopped by crowd control. Heavy stun, freeze, pin and the like do not prevent the passive hazards from playing out as normal. Frost walls and pins can hold an enemy in place, but most effects will either home in directly on you or create wide range hazards.
- Some effects very nearly disable entire character types. Sorceresses become completely disabled because a dog with mana drain rushed them, and I don't even know what a far shot ranger is supposed to do against proximal tangibility.
- The best way to deal with these mechanics is to just scale your damage enough to one- or two-shot rares and simply not pay attention to any of this.

Despite all these issues, the entire endgame is centered around rare enemies. Rares drop the majority of loot. The goal of all maps is at minimum to kill every rare. I believe something needs to change in order to preserve the unique feel the game had conveyed during the campaign. Perhaps rare effects should merely augment "powerful moves" - that is, visually distinct, well telegraphed abilities that pose a serious danger - such as a spider's web barrage. Perhaps at a minimum it should be possible to stop rare enemies' hazards with crowd control. Unfortunately I'm at a loss for solutions.

II. Comparative uselessness of active utility

I liked the initial focus on "active defense" that PoE2 introduced. Things like obstacles, stuns, pins, dodges seemed tactically important throughout the campaign, more so than just having high body armor stats. However, on reaching late game I realized that:

- Only about 1 or 2 skill gems from each weapon category are explicitly dedicated to a utility function, meanwhile we're spoiled for choice when it comes to damage dealing skills.
- Few support gems are a good fit for explicit utility skills. Things like bonus status accumulation are better placed on a strong damaging ability, which reduces the comparative usefulness of purely defensive skill gems in the endgame.
- We're offered many synergies for amplifying our damage, but precious few for amplifying defensive abilities.

III. Endgame mechanics feel like they're made for a different game

I'll get straight to the point:

- Implicit timers (breach, delirium) demand that we move quickly and cover a lot of ground. There is little room for tactical play since we're implicitly punished for taking it slow.
- Swarms of enemies reward stacking high dps and building for fullscreen clear just like in PoE1.
- Swarming rare enemies compound the problems with that enemy archetype as I already outlined in section I.
- Interrupting dps in order to dodge roll, or use a utility skill, seems like a losing move while being swarmed. Any move not spent purely killing threats as quickly as possible is just liable to put you in more danger the very next moment.

IV. Camera issues

This is something that was always somewhat of an issue, but I feel that PoE2 has made it more tangible than ever. We're looking down at the game world through an angled perspective camera, which means:

- We can see more space towards the top of the screen, and much less towards the bottom.
- Being unable to see threats when moving in the "south" direction puts us in a severe disadvantage and makes it far too easy to walk into danger.
- Enemies appear to attack from off-screen "south" even though they would be visible at the same range from the "north"
- Endgame maps seem to be randomly oriented, which means at least half the time we're forced to move in a completely disadvantageous direction.

I believe these are some of the general shortcomings that were revealed and amplified by the current endgame. Granted, my understanding of the game is still inadequate in comarison to others, which could make my opinions irrelevant. Or perhaps I'm just Vinderi levels of mad.

If you made it all the way through, thank you for reading.