Game is too punishing for a Casual players.

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z3mcneil#3966 wrote:

This is paid EA not f2p, customers who have spent money on this EA in theory are more motivated to stay put until at least they feel they've gotten their money's worth.

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Fhrek#4437 wrote:

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z3mcneil#3966 wrote:

This is paid EA not f2p, customers who have spent money on this EA in theory are more motivated to stay put until at least they feel they've gotten their money's worth.

That is the most disgusting part... isn't just paying for a unfinished product, is paying for a not well done product. This Early Access was a ripoff to bait people over the hype this was be a "masterpiece"... ends up being a worst experience than was PoE 1 launch 12 years ago.

Expectation was high for sure, so the fall was also huge.


If GGG intended to broad their playerbase with all the souls-like eske attempt or roguelike mobile ascendencies trials, they for sure were able to allienate casuals and PoE 1 veterans alike.

The EXP lost mechanic, the constants OHKO from nowhere, no crafting system... need to be adressed before the game real release. Otherwise, PoE 2 will die so fast, it will drag PoE 1 along.

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Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index#1288 wrote:

To be fair, it cost me nothing. I would have bought the 300 poecoins anyways for some mtx/stashtabs - since poe2 was included in my poecoins there was no reason not to take the deal.

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Fhrek#4437 wrote:

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Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index#1288 wrote:

To be fair, it cost me nothing. I would have bought the 300 poecoins anyways for some mtx/stashtabs - since poe2 was included in my poecoins there was no reason not to take the deal.

I would rather support only PoE 1, as I did buying stash tabs (don't give a damn for MTX), than supporting something that was made poorly.

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Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index#1288 wrote:

money goes to the same company

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Fhrek#4437 wrote:

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Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index#1288 wrote:

money goes to the same company

Yes, it goes. I understand your way of thinking. You do you.


But, as someone that worked in marketing, when the balance sheets will be demonstrated to shareholders the money will show coming from "PoE 2 EA" not PoE 1... so, decision making will favor a bad product that brings money instead a good product that is old and prime to be discontinued.

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KingAlamar#4071 wrote:

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diablofdb#3816 wrote:

I think any good game needs to be challenging and punishing in some extents.

One of the things that I'd like re-examined is to do a better job of equalizing challenge between various classes / builds. If the challenge was effectively the same across the board then that's one thing however some classes / builds have inherent advantages that may require GGG to go back to the drawing board and re-examine the game.

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z3mcneil#3966 wrote:

It's no surprise a lot of gamers have zero understanding of how business decisions are made so talking 'corpo lingo' isn't gonna work here, but just like in another popular thread there's a lot of defenders using Baldur's Gate 3 steam player charts as if poe2's sudden dropoff from 400-420k peak concurrent players to 300-320k when other top live service titles are staying steady or going up, there's people in this thread using Dark Souls/Elden Ring to justify certain decisions. Please stop comparing apples to oranges, different genres, different target audiences, different business models.

The AAA RPG titles are single player, single time one-and-done experiences, your average Joe casual gamer merrily spends a couple of months, maybe even using cheats, to finally beat the game once and that's it, the idea of NG+ or starting a new character sound weird to them, like why would I do that I already beat the game. Even 2.5 years after release, just look at the steam achievements on what percentage of players beat Malenia or Elden Beast. Your Souls or AAA action game crowd typically hardly touch ARPGs or live-service games, poe and Diablo are looked down upon as inferior, 'not skill based' games made for nerds who like looking at a skill tree all day doing maths.

PoE's live service model is revolved around the core concept of infinite replayability, not infinite boring unrewarding grind or infinite punishment. Right now the game is not the former, it's much closer to the latter. The game is NOT built around the campaign, even if the campaign is the best part of the game (also, with a bigger budget, can we stop imitating Diablo 2 in so many ways and have some originality for once? The acts and settings are still so close to D2's that if PoE2 campaign is a dissertation, it wouldn't pass the plagarism check).

GGG themselves stated that the campaign should take about 40h (still too long for the seasonal multi-char model most veterans of the genre are used to) and endgame about 200h. So please stop comparing Elden Ring, which is much better, much harder, and for 90%+ players has no endgame, to poe2. In this regard, the endgame right now is failing quite badly. Unless you're no lifer, most people who have already reached endgame won't be able to stomach grinding maps for 200h, not even close. Most casuals haven't even reached the endgame yet, and since most of them don't check these forums, they'll be in for a nasty surprise when they get there.

Which is why PoE2's peak player dropoff from 500-600k at launch which was fantastic btw, to 400-420k which was still good, suddenly this week to 300-320k when other top live-service games are stable or getting a holiday boost is not a good sign. The holidays are a major BOOST to entertainment activities, travelling only impacts businesses significantly on the 24th. Christmas -> New Year is the biggest window for film box office for decades and it's traditionally the same for MMOs. Last weekend PoE2 still had 400-420k, there's no reason it should be at 300-320k now. You don't lose 200-300k or close to half the launch players in the first 3 weeks of your endgame heavy (as in 80% heavy, according to GGG themselves) live-service game when most people haven't reached endgame yet. This is paid EA not f2p, customers who have spent money on this EA in theory are more motivated to stay put until at least they feel they've gotten their money's worth. It's not the launch of a new poe1 season, we have a lot of data on how that goes in a 3 month period.

Pre-release there was a lot of hype, lots of fans expected a masterpiece that is 'the true D2 succeesor' like BG3 was to BG2, and were fully prepared to invest a lot of entertainment time to play this game. I was one of them, but I didn't spend nearly as much time playing poe2 as I thought. The more you put deliberate time wasting and unfairly punishing mechanisms in a game, the more people reject the idea and play less, it's basic human psychology.

And I must stress here, instead of some users spending a lot of valuable time arguing with others pointless in the FEEDBACK forum, all of you should go check out the 2 major magic find threads. Increased item rarity/magic find is SEVERELY BROKEN right now and is destroying this beta's in game economy for everone, this is a much more urgent issue. If you're in maps, you need to know this.

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diablofdb#3816 wrote:

But in general the game needs to be challenging or else it'll become boring.