What the Hell Happened to Gamers?

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Lebigcheez#8190 wrote:

Edit: Reposted to this forum as I didn't know PoE 2 had a dedicated forum.

I don't post, but today's onslaught against GGG has prompted me to share my thoughts as the minority opposition to the hate majority of 0.2.0. Here's my thoughts and opinions of the current gamestate and, maybe more importantly, the state of ARPG gamers today.

TL;DR: This is Early Access, so if GGG is smart they'll pump out 4+ abhorrent beta builds before getting 1 or 2 right and then launching 1.0. PoE 2 is not loot simulator, and that's a good thing. The same gameplay elements that make a game like Dark Souls 2 "good" should also make PoE 2 "good"; for some reason, they don't.

I've been playing ARPGs since Chrono Cross on the PS1 when I was 4 years old. BG:DA, CoN: RTA, OSRS (lol) - I'm a lifetime gamer. PoE 1 instantly became a forever favorite of mine, and by a country mile PoE 2 outclasses it in every way I can imagine as far as pushing the limits of and exciting me for the ARPG genre. Because of this, I've come to believe that most people don't enjoy legitimate Action RPGs, but rather they enjoy gambling, loot collecting, and theorycrafting. Path of Exile's lineage was built on the latter as being the apex of theorycrafting, something PoE 2 manages to preserve. Unfortunately, I believe the dopamine hit and gratification associated with overcoming struggle is too delayed comparative to "mobile game"-like gameplay associated with the average ARPG: detonating a screen, leveling up, picking up loot, getting high. I sincerely hope that's not what becomes of PoE 2, but I fear that, due to extreme backlash like today's, it's where we're inevitably headed.

Which bring me to my first key point: the patch came out a day ago. Yes, many things were nerfed, including Perfect Strike, a core part of my league-start build. I adjusted and the build is fine in HC SSF mapping now. Even if I felt weak with it, I have 6 other build ideas to give a run before I feel like I've exhausted my immediate resource for builds that could be fun and HC SSF viable - and then, if they all fail in SSF, perhaps I could try HC; after that, perhaps I try SC. There is no way the others who are complaining like they are have exhausted all of their resources for builds, combinations, and approaches to the game and still continually fail to enjoy any content IN A SINGLE DAY. It hasn't been long enough to formulate a substantial opinion, especially not one that's more aggressively disparaging of the game and not disparaging of its player(s). Because of this, what's going to happen to PoE 2 is likely what we saw happen to PoE 1: we're going to jump the shark and powercreep the nuance out of the game IN EARLY ACCESS at a time when the devs should be tossing your stupid builds out the window and wiping every month to see what works. Why?

Well that's the second point: a dramatic change in the demeanor and expectations of gamers, specifically ARPG "enjoyers". A game like Dark Souls comes out, obliterates a million people for months, and is heralded as one of the greatest Action games of all time as a consequence of how exhiliarating it is to overcome a legitimate challenge through use of mechanical skill, character build, and dedicated effort. Transpose those exact (what I would consider "gaming universal") "good" gameplay loop elements into the otherwise fairly stale genre of ARPG, and you SHOULD end up with a community of dedicated gamers excited at the prospect of solving the problem of a "game that's too hard". Not the case. Why?

Third point: ARPG gamers by-and-large are not interested in contending with a game, they are interested in gambling and/or winning.

I ran into a Rogue Exile I couldn't kill today (lol). Too much regen. I thought to myself "huh, my build is outclassed by this one; I should have a second build that can handle this kind of content, too, shouldn't I." Upon thinking that, I thought to myself "I bet I know what Zizaran or Empyrian or 100,000 of their followers would have thought if they were in this situation." It seems like when ARPG gamers lose, they blame the devs and revoke their investment. They don't enjoy gaming, they enjoy winning. I have psychological theories for why that's the case for the addiction-adjacent gamers of the modern gaming community across genres (especially ARPG and MOBA), but I'll keep those to myself and off this post. Point is people seem to be angry at GGG for developing a different game than they wanted, because they didn't want a challenging and purposeful action video game like GGG did, they wanted a infinitely deep and complex dopamine hit to immediately gratify them, and make them feel special and like winners because they played, just like everything else in gaming (and the world?) today seems to do.

Contending upward and struggling to find solutions on your own is one of the keepsakes of great videogames, and when the reward is more for you, the player, and less for you, the character, that means you're playing something special. That's how I feel in PoE 2, even moreso after hitting rank 12 on HC SSF ladder with a 7-hour delay to my start with a homebrew melee build and after making a post like this. I feel like I, the player, am winning, even if it costs my many characters and some time to practice and understand the game better.

If that's not for you, PoE 2 is not for you. Please accept that and go away so that a good thing can have its fair chance before it's ruined before it ever left EA.

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They don't enjoy gaming, they enjoy winning.

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DistributedAutomaton#5739 wrote:

Simply put, a white mob should feel easier than a boss. There needs to be times the game lulls you into a sense of security, and then surprise it tries to kill you. This isn't the same as zoom-zoom. The pace can still be methodical, but it needs to feel like a wave, not a straight line.

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Lebigcheez#8190 wrote:

TL;DR: This is Early Access, so if GGG is smart they'll pump out 4+ abhorrent beta builds before getting 1 or 2 right and then launching 1.0. PoE 2 is not loot simulator, and that's a good thing. The same gameplay elements that make a game like Dark Souls 2 "good" should also make PoE 2 "good"; for some reason, they don't.