GGG failed to address what their vision for POE2. Zoomfest garbage or not? Maps suck

(Don't get me wrong. Some aspects of POE2 I absolutely love and consider a 10/10 experience. Especially the more balanced (for SSF) boss battles in act 1-3 before my character became too powerful. But there is a sharp devolution of gameplay in maps)


This is a serious issue. And for Jonathan Rogers to come out and say that at some point in the game you are meant to feel incredibly powerful... is a massive red flag. That power fantasy mediocrity that defined poe1 and diablo4 is gameplay that people largely get sick of. There is a reason why poe1's zoomfest screen clearing gameplay didn't appeal to the majority of players who tried it.

Instead of expanding the audience towards more sophisticated methodical gameplay like what they showed in previews it seems we may end up stuck with this... ''one shot or be one shot'' gameplay loop.

That kind of poor design might destroy the future potential of the game. But I guess they can take over diablo's audience and just turn poe2 into a shut off your brain stat check experience and a legion of people will be happy. But it will not make for the best gameplay experience.


People largely love the campaign... but map gameplay largely is mediocre and uninspired. feels like a copy paste from poe1. Last gen experience in a new next gen combat package. It feels undercooked imo.

Maps need more interesting things happening and I don't understand how the best feature of the game... BOSSES.... aren't available on every single map. They could even be OPTIONAL and NOT required to BEAT the map. But give us the OPTION to engage with that fantastic content. What a waste. All these resources put into 100 unique bosses and they make up 0.01% of the gameplay. I feel so sorry for those developers who will never get the respect they deserve while someone who traded 1 exalt for a good weapon shows up and the boss dies within 10 seconds.


PARTIAL SOLUTION FOR MAPS: more enemy HP, less enemy damage, smaller maps. = more meaningful combat.

Please share your thoughts and ideas...

I don't see what the point of putting any other ideas on this forum is. They're obviously just going to do what they want to despite feedback. I'm genuinely feeling scammed right now and if there was a way to get a refund, I would absolutely take it.

Ok so a few things to note here.

The first one is the "Red Flag"

This is not really as big of a red flag as you think. You can be super uber powerful and be able to take down every boss no problem if you have the best of the best gear. This is the point of getting that gear.

This does NOT have to equate to you obliterating screens of monsters. The biggest issue here is the STYLE of combat that has been implemented, not the character being too powerful.

There are many ways this can be done.

Projectile travel distances should be shortened and not increased with speed, this will solve a lot of the "Off Screen" killing.

Autobomber builds should have never been introduced into the game, but seeing as they are here change cast-ons to actually do MORE damage and give them an internal cooldown that cannot be adjusted. This should make them worth using for giving you that big hit after casting your other skills but prevents you from being able to cast 50 Comets at once.

Movement speed is probably TOO powerful at the moment, increase character base move speed by 20% and have the highest roll on boots to 15%. This will make it a LESS mandatory stat, and improve the sluggish feeling you get at the start of the game. For those arguing for implicit, if you do this then you may as well just buff move speed of all characters and remove it completley (Which would be my ideal but after this interview that is clearly not happening)

Reduce mob agro range. Monsters actually agro me from off screen, this should not happen. This is a difficult thing to adjust because we don't want to be able to just obliterate them before they even begin to attack. I have no fantastic suggestions on how to adjust this one but it is the biggest cause of the current combat style and build meta.


The next point I will adress is about maps.

I don't agree with every map having bosses. I think it is fine to not have this. I would like more agency in how my maps are done. I dislike the tower system. It is far too RNG, firstly I have to spend hours finding a good group of towers and then I need to hope that I am not wasting all the best map nodes before I get to those towers.

Corrupted should have a tablet, Bosses should have a tablet or be tied to corrupted/iradiated, Towers should give you the next X maps within range you complete are corrupted/irradiated/breach/delirium/ritual ect. Keeping it within a certain range prevents complete stacking but also prevents the tower from being wasted if you had bad pathing.

Secondly the progression of the endgame systems such as breach/delirium/expedition/ritual ect are far too RNG as well. If you are going to make killing the boss the only way to get passives then make them far more accessible. Reduce the unique drop rate to compensate for this if need be.

Somehow Poe2 seems to be heading for a worst of both worlds solution to all its problems.

They don't seem to have issues with high enemy speed/density and league mechanics that lean into it. Means Most Mace skills are presumably going to be forgotten by the community. I'm sure they'll try to fix it with damage buffs not willing to admit that the problem is mechanical not damage. Same with any build that doesn't have a certain clear threshold. Eventhough confusingly there's a bunch of skills and interactions that seem very obvious but have very low clear potential.

Herald of ice I'm guessing will be nuked and there won't be much to replace it. Obviously many of the crazy builds that use it need to be nerfed. But that does often damage lower end builds that weren't abusing it. When the heavy nerfing starts it will just make me the already narrow meta even smaller. Balance won't magically make less viable skills better, the game itself needs to be redesigned to accommodate those less viable skills.

One portal per map? that's fine. Are they going to clean up visuals, hazards and on death effects to justify one portal? I'm guessing no.

The "Red flag" is actually correct you are supposed to feel overpowered........ Eventually. At least relative to how the game plays up until that point. However your not supposed to pressured into an overpowered build at the very start of the endgame grind, that's absolutely not how it's supposed to work and just raises the question of what does he think players will do after the nerfs hit and there might be significantly less options.

It's these kind of problems that cause stagnation down the line, and it's frustrating seeing them fail to understand that. Poe2 is in for a very long string of "melee bad" and boring narrow meta builds the community will be memeing all these problems for years.

The devs are obviously leaning to doing things like they always did for PoE1. By largely ignoring player feedback and advancements in UI/UX, and features over the past idk.. 20 years?

But that’s exactly how you make a niche game that PoE1 never managed to grow out of. You don’t just shut your eyes and ears and do the same thing over and over and hope it will work every time. That’s how you turn into Ubisoft.

What everyone is saying is true, certain abilities/builds play completely different games than others. The fact i can still flicker strike all around but armoured guys wind up a hit for an hour and have a hidden move-speed penalty? Makes me think the game-design is completely disjointed. I honestly couldn't tell you what their goal gameplay is, it sure as tish doesn't seem like its going to be good combat. Just another BoomZoomer.

This is the one area that ARPGs classically fall flat. Your battle was won or lost before you left camp and thats lame. I enjoy the numbers aspect of the game, i too am a programmer, i enjoy discovering the math. However, I also enjoy many physical things including but not limited to shooting, martial arts, and other sports.

ARPGS compared to other games like: FPS shooters, Fighting games, beat 'em ups, well... ARPG's couldnt be further from actual combat of any kind, fantasy or otherwise. Those other genres DESTROY ARPG's in terms of fun, engaging, combat.
I thought they really had something here, i thought they were going to combine beat 'em ups and ARPGs. Now i feel like i'm being taken for a ride(this is bad saying in english).

So the gameplay design some POE 1 players are demanding is basically something you can mentally zone-out on screen clearing Screen 1 and then looking over to Screen 2 and saying: "Thanks for the sub PeesPantsMan!" and i'm not sure GGG has any different plans.

If GGG turns poe2 into a zoom zoom fest it will be time to move on.

it's sad to see because when this game has engaging combat (early acts SSF with gear that isn't too powerful) it can feel like a magical experience.

yet there is this ingrained motto of how an ARPG must be and how it MUST be some power fantasy nonsense where everything just becomes easy and you click and kill and shut off your brain. horrible imo. GGG: please do your own thing and attempt that ''evolution of the aRPG'' that you were talking about. rather than diablo4 and poe1 style zoom junk that only satisfies streamers and elitists. 99% of players aren't streamers and they want something more meaningful.

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grubworm#3892 wrote:

If GGG turns poe2 into a zoom zoom fest it will be time to move on.

It is another Poe1 with more bosses and a longer campaign. It will become even more like Poe1 after a few leagues. No surprise here tbh.

+1

Power scaling should be far less exponential and mind numbing. Every game praised for it's game-play and/or boss fights has far more consistent scaling.

Raw numbers and speed are not the only ways to make a player feel powerful either. I use Elden Ring as an example, because the player can get crazier weapons, spells and tools and use them to face stronger and crazier enemies and bosses in later game content. The PoE2 campaign actually felt like this if the player wasn't using a broken build and it was great.

Not just the player, but also map content and volume, need to be scaled down so engaging combat actually fits, instead of the PoE1 mapping style we have now.

PoE1 should stay the zoom zoom audience's game and PoE2 should be the engaging combat audience's game. Simple as.