The excessive and unnecessary weapon-locks need to stop.

I think the vast majority of feedback on POE2 are focusing on entirely the wrong things. I have a few problems with how POE2 has turned out but I believe that the majority of them are either a lack of QOL from POE1 that are mysteriously missing or things which can be easily fixed as development progresses. There are a small number of problems though which are much more concerning and which display a unsettling shift in design philosophy from POE1. A big one that I'd really like to get conversation started about is the weapon locking of skills.

POE has always had some degree of weapon locking with skills, It doesn't make much sense to be doing a huge slam attack with a dagger. I think some amount of weapon locking is totally understandable and even a good thing. On the other hand what we have in POE2 is widespread weapon locking of skills for seemingly no reason.

I think the easiest offender to point out as an example is Barrage, why is barrage a bow-only skill? What reason is there for not allowing a crossbow to use barrage? There are currently no good interaction with frenzy charges for crossbow and very little options for utility cooldown abilities. There's no real thematic, logical, or mechanical reason that you shouldn't be able to use barrage with Crossbow.

There are other questions though which are less obvious but equally as concerning for the state of build diversity. Why is every attack skill weapon locked? Why can't I use Lightning Arrow's mechanics with a crossbow? Why can't I use Ice Strike with a mace? Why is the combo point mechanics exclusively present on quarterstaff skills? Why is Tempest Bell tied to quarterstaff? better yet why is Mantra of Destruction tied to quarterstaff, it's just a buff? I could go on for a while with terrible examples of weapon locking but I think I've made the point about what my issue is.

This brings us to the "why?". Now the steel man for these locks is that GGG is trying to create strong class identities. There is some argument for that being a positive thing in an RPG game, I don't think even this steel man is excusable though. POE isn't just some generic RPG, it's isn't about having a "Warrior who does Warrior stuff". It's a game about complex systems for a buildcrafting metagame sandbox which is both deep and wide. The core of what makes POE a masterclass of game design isn't about how fast the character moves or how chill mapping is or any of the other surface level things I see many complaints about. It's about being complex enough where you don't just figure out the whole game in 100 hours of playtime. A more cynical view of these weapon locks is that, like certain other issues with POE2, they only exist to dumb the game down intentionally. A cynical person might think that the only reason the weapon locks exist is to have the cute UI with all the different tabs for each weapon that is thrown in front of you as you progress. It's to prevent the person who wandered into the game from Call of Duty from getting scared about not being able to understand the game and noping out. POE was never a game that was good because of it's mass appeal, it was the opposite. POE was great because it actually required you to use your brain (or at least research builds from other people's brains). I would prefer not to have the cynical view that GGG is moving toward effectively destroying Path of Exile for money but I'm struggling to see a better explanation for the variety of design decisions which only serve to dumb the game down.

All of this to say that I think the biggest issue with POE 2 is the dumbing down of the game to appeal to a broader audience and in the process destroying the very thing that made POE1, in my opinion, the greatest video game ever made. This is the thing we need to be making noise about. Even if you're the guy who only copy pastes builds from the internet this will destroy the entire framework that sits behind the curtain of your experience. The thing to complain about isn't "Muh zoom zoom" and it isn't "This thing is overtuned", it's the dumbing down of the game. If people don't start making more noise about this it will continue to get worse and everything that made POE stand out from other games will disappear.

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Kamstew#1014 wrote:

On the other hand what we have in POE2 is widespread weapon locking of skills for seemingly no reason.

They said it many times. It's animation/visual/integrity issue. That's the cost if you wanna do fancy things above anything else.
The whole game is like this.

True absolutely true.

If you're so obsessed with weapons having specific/unique animations, well then I guess it's about time to hire some more animators and artists because weapon locked skills SUCK ASS and its STUPID.

Yeah, weapon restricted skills and 1 support gem copy limit is what's killing build diversity in this game right now. It sucks, no reason to have any of these arbitrary limitations that are only there so the devs can more easily "balance" this game.

How many 8,9 slots for gem and one 2+ proj support gem xD Vision

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Dxt44#4050 wrote:

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Kamstew#1014 wrote:

On the other hand what we have in POE2 is widespread weapon locking of skills for seemingly no reason.

They said it many times. It's animation/visual/integrity issue. That's the cost if you wanna do fancy things above anything else.
The whole game is like this.

Dumbing down the game for the sake of visual fidelity is still dumbing down the game. Visual fidelity is mostly there to appeal to the masses anyways so it really doesn't change anything. I would rather play a game with great design in retro 16 bit graphics than a game with toddler design with the best graphics imaginable.

If they intend to fix this issue that's one of the dumbing down problems fixed but that still leaves others such as the complete removal of actual crafting or the move toward every build being "I self cast this skill to deal hit damage".

Just look at the maps. It's the same shit. It only looks, gameplay is terrible. It was designed to be sold, not to play.

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Toforto#2372 wrote:

Yeah, weapon restricted skills and 1 support gem copy limit is what's killing build diversity in this game right now. It sucks, no reason to have any of these arbitrary limitations that are only there so the devs can more easily "balance" this game.

I think the 1 support thing could be fine if there were more supports. The real issue with supports is how clunky the design is on so many of them. For instance why isn’t there an “increased criticals” support? There’s “more critical chance when it’s raining on a Tuesday” but that’s fucking cringe as hell. Just like many of the skills the supports have this absurd forced combo design with things unable to generate what they consume or having drawbacks that make socketing the gem a wash.