Monster and Modifier design from PoE1 fundamentally doesn't work for PoE2! (It's fixable!)

A big focus in PoE2 that was supposed to differ from PoE1 was the combat and how players would have far more engaging fights with enemies to the degree that the game has the "souls-like" tag on Steam. This has been made impossible to achieve with the copy pasted monster systems from PoE1.

I'm going to be honest here as a PoE1 players with thousands of hours... PoE1 combat was garbage. The fun part of the game-play was steamrolling a bunch of walking numbers as a bigger number and grinning as your spreadsheet of a build started to pick up steam and dominate. Poe1 combat was a megalomaniac lawn mowing simulator. Enemy design in PoE1 has negligible focus on fighting actual enemies. Rare mods on monsters typically had nothing to do with the monsters' innate design and were just randomly generated spells and effects happening on top of more numbers. Endgame boss design in PoE1 ended up becoming a bunch of mini-games with downtime where you hit an 80,000,000 Health target dummy.

If PoE2 is to distance itself from its predecessor in a positive way then GGG needs to change not just the boss design, but also the monster and modifier design.

Magic and Rare monsters should be upgraded and elite versions of their common selves rather than just a vessel for randomly generated spell effects that throw a wrench into a combat system that is supposed to be interactive.

Imagine with me for a moment a different Magic/Rare system. Instead of a poorly communicated slot machine of random spell effects all monsters instead have their own rarity evolutions. Imagine if when a specific enemy spawns as a magic or rare they not only have more stats, but also matching spells and attacks that they can now use based on the enemy type. Imagine if "River Hags" as an example were by default just water mages, but had their "Drowning Orb" along with other water spells unlocked if they spawn in as a higher rarity. Imagine if a "Molten Minotaur" could use "Molten Shell" if it spawned as at least a Magic enemy and also gained a "Big Fire Slam #43" as a rare.

Something like the above would make fighting different enemy types far more engaging and memorable while also taking away the extremely frustrating feeling of having random spell effects thrown at your character from random sources.

imo, it's actually not "Monster and Modifier design from PoE1", it's "Monster and Modifier design that poe1 steal from PoE2".

It's big change between old rare mods and Archnemesis. And GGG used that patch to test players' acceptance of archnemesis.

The rumors are true, the entire poe1 is a huge free testing ground for poe2.

You can see a lot of features and changes that were bad but GGG REALLY doesn't want to remove them during the leagues after 3.15.

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jojo1225#3785 wrote:

imo, it's actually not "Monster and Modifier design from PoE1", it's "Monster and Modifier design that poe1 steal from PoE2".

It's big change between old rare mods and Archnemesis. And GGG used that patch to test players' acceptance of archnemesis.

The rumors are true, the entire poe1 is a huge free testing ground for poe2.

You can see a lot of features and changes that were bad but GGG REALLY doesn't want to remove them during the leagues after 3.15.

That's a very interesting theory. It feels like many random features between PoE1 and PoE2 either have a lot of communication and developer interaction or the opposite and things that were "fixed" in the first game are problems again in the EA too.

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

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jojo1225#3785 wrote:

imo, it's actually not "Monster and Modifier design from PoE1", it's "Monster and Modifier design that poe1 steal from PoE2".

It's big change between old rare mods and Archnemesis. And GGG used that patch to test players' acceptance of archnemesis.

The rumors are true, the entire poe1 is a huge free testing ground for poe2.

You can see a lot of features and changes that were bad but GGG REALLY doesn't want to remove them during the leagues after 3.15.

That's a very interesting theory. It feels like many random features between PoE1 and PoE2 either have a lot of communication and developer interaction or the opposite and things that were "fixed" in the first game are problems again in the EA too.

It's more like "inheriting" the problem from poe1.

imo, if you don't like Archnemesis in poe1, it is still a dogshit in 2.

GGG is ridiculously holding on to unrealistic hopes that this terrible system will become a popular thing in poe2.