PoE 2.0 or 1.5?

PoE 2 was announced back in 2019 (five years of development). At that time, we had already seen some gameplay footage, meaning the game has likely been in development for even longer.

We were promised a more measured, deliberate gameplay experience akin to the classic Diablo 2. Everyone was tired of the meteor showers of PoE 1, its breakneck pace, and the overwhelming number of enemies on the screen, making it impossible to see anything. In short, the entire world was looking forward to PoE 2.

And now it’s here.
In the first few days, it was thrilling! It was challenging! Players teamed up to take down bosses, and it felt fantastic...
Then, after sinking 20-30-50 hours into the campaign and transitioning to maps, the game’s collapse began.

Post-Act 3: PoE 2 Slowly Reverts Back to PoE 1
Enemy Density:
After Act 3, the number of mobs steadily increases to PoE 1 levels. Dozens of enemies swarm you, all brainlessly charging in waves. The only viable playstyle becomes "kill them faster or die."

Bosses:
Bosses become indistinguishable from rare mobs. They’re easily dispatched and have nothing in common with the challenging bosses from the early acts. They’re just another random mob at this point.

Build Viability:
Only builds capable of clearing the screen with a single cast remain viable. Everything else is discarded as useless. The game effectively boils down to five meta builds. I play as a warrior, and out of a dozen available skills, only two are viable (AA explosions and totems).

Visual Chaos and FPS Issues:
The abundance of mobs, each with unique effects, combined with environmental effects and player skills, results in an unreadable mess of FX on the screen—just like PoE 1. This chaos also tanks FPS. (Having to buy a 4080 GPU only to see 20 FPS on some maps is humiliating.)

Itemization:
I won’t even get into the early game’s lack of meaningful loot—everyone knows this pain. But even now, it’s the same story as PoE 1: 99% of items are junk no one will ever use. It’s exhausting (and pointless) to keep identifying items when they all end up in the trash. Each build/class has a specific set of stats players want, and most loot doesn’t even come close.

Atlas Gameplay:
The same mechanic: find a map, complete a map, find a +1-level map. Only now it feels even more suffocating and less engaging (thanks, Towers).

Trading:
T R A D I N G.
Or rather, the sorry excuse for trading that carries over from PoE 1!
Players have been begging GGG for over a decade to implement a proper trading system. Let us stop wasting time and patience on the horrendous trade interface that 90% of players don’t understand. GIVE US AN AUCTION HOUSE! Stop feeding the RMT economy.

Multiplayer:
Whether it’s PoE 1 or PoE 2, there’s absolutely no justification for requiring a constant online connection. There’s no multiplayer content! No group-oriented gameplay! What’s the point of being online? Just for trading? That’s not enough!

Where are group mechanics?
Where are group dungeons or challenges?
Where are ultra-hard maps designed for teams of 4-6 players?
Leagues:
Why hasn’t this been addressed? Why are players forced to suffer through the campaign again and again? What’s the point? Is it to delay streamers from reaching maps for 5-10 hours? Does that really benefit anyone?

The league system has been a major frustration in PoE 1. Hardcore no-lifers "completed" leagues in 2-3 weeks, while casual players only reached maps near the league’s end. This demoralized everyone. Every league consistently loses 50%+ of players within a month.

Why must I level a new character every time? I want to stick to one character and face increasingly challenging league mechanics and unique rewards.

Conclusion:
As it stands, PoE 2 isn’t much different from PoE 1 (aside from graphics and the new gem system).

Why did it take over 5 years to develop (to the detriment of PoE 1, by the way)?

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sanba#5661 wrote:

[...]Conclusion:
As it stands, PoE 2 isn’t much different from PoE 1 (aside from graphics and the new gem system)[...]

Poe 2 is Poe 1 with less possibility, way more slow action speed, less viable builds, less loot, lees crafting possibilities, less endgame contenu...
I see PoE2 as a good introduction to PoE1

I mostly agree with all you said

I still don't understand why there's so many people trying to protect "their precious"

I wanted to try by myself, I played many hours so I could compare to what I've played in the industry (Poe1, D3-4, LA, LE...)

Poe2 is kinda a joke right now, it feels like they used Poe1 code from 5 years ago with a new graphics engine, that's all. (but now that remember, that's what "poe2" was supposed to be at first, a simple graphic update, they just started to market Poe2 as a brand new game recently)
They didn't took the time to add the most recent QoL that the (reduced) Poe1 team added during these past years.
They even kept the same bugs, on death effect that was fixed previously.
AND the non-optimized parts, like CPU load.


The game was supposed to be slower -> Fail
The game was supposed to have less loot overall and more useful one -> Fail
IG loot filter -> No
IG AH -> No (why is there people trying to defend this, like "it's okay you have the website" ?!)

New game mode ? -> Reused from Poe1 (Breach, Ritual, Sanctum, Ultimatum, Expedition, Delirium...)

Map -> Same but worse (in my opinion), you can't really choose what to do, you get blocked on your way cause no link

Craft -> No comment...

There's OP build and balance issue ? It's an EA I don't care about this.

Their priorities should be correcting bugs, adjusting the game, resolve the security issues, open the APIs to allow all the people to use what you let your community do the work for you (Filter, PoB..) at least those are useful and work correcly.
The road will be long to give Poe2 a real identity and not "poe1 clone"

0.5

+1

Really enjoyed the slow methodical approach in act 1 and 2. It starts to fall off in Act 3 imo. Act 1 is peak POE 2 experience. That pushed my expectation so damn high and it all came crashing down at the endgame.

too much recycled content w the main feature: build diversity completely gone.

One of the few useful posts in this forum. Good feedback

More like PoE 0.5

It's worse than PoE 1 in every aspect except graphics and sound. And I'd rather have good optimization with potato 2010 graphics than pretty graphics that hide half the map and make me die to oneshots.

Imo the game can be divided into 3 groups

A-normal difficulty (challenging content)
B-cruel difficulty (less challenging but more fluid)
C-mapping (poe1 all over again)

Imo, these represent 3 different games. GGG gave us 3 different games (in terms of speed and difficulty) and I think they should now decide to focus on one of them.
I would prefer a type-A game with maybe a balanced version of type-B as an endgame. I don't want to be in their shoes however when it comes to balancing all of this. Plus, we haven't even seen all ascendencies, classes and weapon types. Jonathan said something about "at least 6 months of EA". I think they should take something like 2 years+.

I've played this game for over 1 month now and must say, if we judge it by its own premise, (delivering a challenging gameplay expierence (remember, Jonathan said: "it's gonna be really hard!")) it has failed. Atm, I don't see any viable way of delivering a somewhat balanced and rounded expierence with what they have been cooking up so far. But hey, maybe Jonathan has some tricks up his sleeve. I at least hope so :).

yeah rlly its POE 0.5 not 1.5 ^)) tnx all for feedback