Game is dropping like a stone

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KungFusedMike#3670 wrote:

GGG managed to forgot so much of what they *should* have learned from POE 1. It's pretty disappointing because at the same time, they did some really cool stuff. It's such a shame.

I'd be more optimistic, but I know how this usually goes. They have a vision, and they will spend 2x more effort trying to convince us of why they made the right decision rather than take the ego hit and admit they screwed up.

The biggest issues can't be attributed to EA. These are fundamental mechanics built into the core game.

BTW GGG, nobody liked ultimatum. Why on earth would you a) bring it over to PoE 2 at all to begin with, and b) make it required for ascendency. What an "F you" to the playerbase.

Why on earth did you just copy paste a bunch or random league mechanics into PoE 2? Imagine starting fresh and building the game from a clean starting point.

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fouquet#0993 wrote:

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eldheim#2436 wrote:

Yeah. Check steam charts.

For those that does not understand player count and ratings, its both going down, fast.
No, it's not "expected" or "normal", and any serious company should treat this with great respect and worry.

This is a game with 40 ish campaign hours and about 250 endgame hours if you go by GGG's estimates themselves.
It shouldn't have peaked until about mid January.

The drop-off is happening before most players even reach the worst part of the game, which is early mapping (sub T10), and point 5/6 and 7/8 of ascendancy.
For the people not playing meta builds, another brick wall will be found in late maps, as you die constantly and brick your XP gain.

When the players that are now battling through cruel reached that stage of the game, expect both ratings and player numbers to drop like a stone.
The hype train audience that came from one hit wonders and told everyone we should find it fun or go back to POE1, will take their leave around that time too.
They will move on to the next great big thing, that isn't POE1 or 2.

Campaign A1-3 is great. The difficulty should have been more of a curve, but the story is good, bosses great, art and sound on point.
That's where it all stops for me.

Melee is atrocious, ascendancies locked behind content most people dislike a lot, magic find is bricking the economy, crafting a random joke, early mapping is completely joyless and has no drops, late maps are horrible of you are not one of the meta 15k energy shield builds or some sort of one-shot exploit.

Passive tree massively unbalanced, and the overall pace combined with map size makes running maps a chore, not an action-filled fast little run you could do between work and dinner.

Death penalties beyond silly, punishing most builds while incentivizing a few handful of others.

Yeah this is early access.
But GGG, this is an abject failure, and I expected so, so much more after all the experience and feedback you have accrued over the years.
No, I don't expect POE1 -I expected a lot more. But got less. A lot less.

+

my feelings are the same. Disappointed by the fact that GGG seems to have actively unlearned everything the learned from PoE1.

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BrainVs#6980 wrote:

if there next "update" only has "end game" stuff in it.. im done

they are clearly only listening to streamers at this point

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Pestilence_PoE#6339 wrote:

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KungFusedMike#3670 wrote:

GGG managed to forgot so much of what they *should* have learned from POE 1. It's pretty disappointing because at the same time, they did some really cool stuff. It's such a shame.

I'd be more optimistic, but I know how this usually goes. They have a vision, and they will spend 2x more effort trying to convince us of why they made the right decision rather than take the ego hit and admit they screwed up.

The biggest issues can't be attributed to EA. These are fundamental mechanics built into the core game.

BTW GGG, nobody liked ultimatum. Why on earth would you a) bring it over to PoE 2 at all to begin with, and b) make it required for ascendency. What an "F you" to the playerbase.

Why on earth did you just copy paste a bunch or random league mechanics into PoE 2? Imagine starting fresh and building the game from a clean starting point.

The most puzzling thing for me is that they brought over a bunch of unpopular mechanics and made them mandatory, but somehow also made a ton of mistakes that had already been corrected in PoE1. It feels like the people making PoE2 were just entirely segregated from PoE1 and given snippets of stuff to work with…