What the Hell Happened to Gamers?

What happened is GGG catered to these people for 5+ years and they now think that ARPG means "collect loot while you hold down the movement key" when in reality it wasn't supposed to. GGG just really wanted money from the gamblers that will buy every MTX because they are easily manipulated.

Even the creator of this genre is disappointed in what has happened to it and doesn't like it. That says a lot.

cool story

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.

"

jhnsmth#0260 wrote:

They blanket nerfed all skills, then empowered all the monsters.
And so then the players are frustrated, rightfully so.

Cause not everybody are able to create a new build from scratch.
Some (maybe 90 percent) of the players are not (yet) capable.

I counted more buffs than nerfs to my build. That you're saying "all" means you're not paying attention, a symptom of being emotionally off-balance.

Now you make a good point that most players are not yet capable of making their own builds. Well, what's required to fix that? What is missing from the game for them to figure out how to make their own builds?

That's a big wall of text to just say to people "Hey, the game you liked before has been made worse. It is YOUR fault and YOU should leave and go play somewhere else."

When GGG makes objectively bad decisions, they should be called out on it.

People like you telling others to leave are going to be the reason why the game will only have 15k players in a few years time because it only caters to a super small niche. Then when GGG wants to make PoE3, they stop updating it like with PoE1. Then the cycle continues. People get mad. GGG scrambles to update the old title. PoE3 and 2 and everybody between the two games get to suffer equally. Then Tencent shuts them down.

If you look at the old game's numbers, every big content update brought in MORE people. Of course, the numbers for that game are smaller than here still... But GGG should be trying to replicate that success recipe. Numbers should go up with every big update. As it is, people are leaving. The game is at 1/2 its original count.

So yes, keep advocating for people to leave and go play something else. That's a real good mentality for long term support.

This thread is a perfect example of the problems.

TLDR

I have a day job and play a game for fun that just looks like a novel to me.

I wanted to make a hero kill mobs and loot sheet. Thats what this game was.

Now its run from hordes of mobs that didnt get nerfed like the rest of us and have them loot me.

LOL

"

Schverika#2698 wrote:

"

jhnsmth#0260 wrote:

They blanket nerfed all skills, then empowered all the monsters.
And so then the players are frustrated, rightfully so.

Cause not everybody are able to create a new build from scratch.
Some (maybe 90 percent) of the players are not (yet) capable.

I counted more buffs than nerfs to my build. That you're saying "all" means you're not paying attention, a symptom of being emotionally off-balance.

Now you make a good point that most players are not yet capable of making their own builds. Well, what's required to fix that? What is missing from the game for them to figure out how to make their own builds?

As an example, I started a Ranger, and was given Lightning Arrow as my first skill. I didn't have good results with it. If you've seen the video of the female streamer saying "This is the worst leveling experience I've had in any ARPG," she was playing Lightning Arrow. Once I saw that video, I realized it was time to wait for GGG to make some changes.

So a minimum answer to your question is that the suggested skills should retain players until the end of the campaign.

Another "players are to blame for not liking this" thread.
I don't want challenge in my games, I want fun. This game is not challenging, it's tedious. Also it's not fun for me.
For people who like it, good for you, stop blaming people who complain, they'll soon be playing something else.

"

Lebigcheez#8190 wrote:

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.

Great post, I agree 100%. Modern Diablo-ARPG gamers don't actually like playing video games.
Sadly, the streamers are these exact players and they have huge fan bases mimicing their thoughts everywhere, so we probably lost and POE2 will just be another vampire survivors clone slot machine dopamine simulator.
I have no faith in GGG having a spine and telling these players to just go play POE1.

I think the problem nowdays is that most of the people see streamers who play games for living beating all content in few days and expect to be able to do the same.....And complain that the game is "to hard" if they can't do so. ;)

And a lot of inpatience....game is automaticaly bad if they can't 1-tap all content the game has to offer within 24 hours into a new league.

But I blame TikTok and Co. for theyr short attention span and inpatience...the league runs for 4 months but everything has to be beaten in 4 days or the forum will be flooded with complains. ^^

"

Arriadanae#2084 wrote:

That's a big wall of text to just say to people "Hey, the game you liked before has been made worse. It is YOUR fault and YOU should leave and go play somewhere else."

When GGG makes objectively bad decisions, they should be called out on it.

People like you telling others to leave are going to be the reason why the game will only have 15k players in a few years time because it only caters to a super small niche. Then when GGG wants to make PoE3, they stop updating it like with PoE1. Then the cycle continues. People get mad. GGG scrambles to update the old title. PoE3 and 2 and everybody between the two games get to suffer equally. Then Tencent shuts them down.

If you look at the old game's numbers, every big content update brought in MORE people. Of course, the numbers for that game are smaller than here still... But GGG should be trying to replicate that success recipe. Numbers should go up with every big update. As it is, people are leaving. The game is at 1/2 its original count.

So yes, keep advocating for people to leave and go play something else. That's a real good mentality for long term support.

PoE 1 still exists. So the game you liked is still there. Go play it. PoE 2 in no way shape or form, needs to be a carbon copy, or even a similar copy of PoE 1. Don't need two games aiming at the same demographic, especially when the plan is to support both. If you don't like the direction PoE 2 is going in. Fine. But the entitlement behind 'I'm a PoE 1 player and demand the game should be made for me' is just poor.

GGG has every right to make a different game, aimed at different players. Give it a chance and see where it is in another few months instead of sitting on the forums complaining.

I fully support GGG if their goal is to test the waters with another style of game. You should too. The company making money off a game that reaches more people means that your PoE 1 game should improve too.

What I don't support. Is GGG making two of the same game, because a good chunk of the mechanics in PoE 1 simply do not appeal to a broader playerbase.