The core of Path of Exile 2 is not the campaign

I did not make a new character this season and I'm glad I didn't. I did enjoy my original grind through the campaign when EA released but the time it takes to do it isn’t appealing to me. I feel like the devs view of the campaign currently does not match the reality of what it is to players. The campaign is really just a vehicle to the real game which is the endgame. Players want to finish their builds and work on the endgame content.

When it comes to game difficulty and grindiness the campaign should be a smoother experience where players enjoy working on their builds. The endgame should be where the real difficulty starts imo. It doesn't make sense to me for the first few acts of the game to frustrate players this much. I do like bosses that test the players and demand some skill. I have no issue with that. I just don't get why early game should be anywhere near as grindy as end game maps.

Kripparian was absolutely right when he talked about how the current campaign isn't going to be appealing to people to do over and over again every league.

+0.5

ladder/league reset should be an experience - but one that is enjoyable. I do not relate with the idea that endgame is where we are all tryino to get, I think the grind of level 1 - 70 is actually the core of the game, endgame is just that, end game.

so, for me, make replayability enjoyable, if yow want people to replay the game every season, because endgame is not what holds indefinite interest in these style of games for the casual (majority playerbase).

I dont play games to rush to the end game and grind. Sorry.

I enjoy the entire game. I legit have largely only played PoE1 in its campaign. The end-game is entirely off-putting to me in multiple ways. Mostly because the rest of the game is neglected for it, and the entire game revolves around it, and the economy..

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

I dont play games to rush to the end game and grind. Sorry.

I enjoy the entire game. I legit have largely only played PoE1 in its campaign. The end-game is entirely off-putting to me in multiple ways. Mostly because the rest of the game is neglected for it, and the entire game revolves around it, and the economy..

I enjoy the entire game as well but I spend most of my time in the end game. If we are supposed to play campaign over and over again should it be a frustrating experience?

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

I dont play games to rush to the end game and grind. Sorry.

I think many gamer nowdays forgot how to enjoy a game throughout all the content it has to offer, starting from LVL 1.

For whatevery reason many people nowdays think that content starts to become "fun" as soon as they can 1-tap everything in T15+ after 3 days into a new league....probably while watching Netflix on the side and not even having to watch the game, becaue everything dies with 1-hit anyway. ^^

Think you're looking at this from what the current state is.

If you could finish the campaign in 5 hours, and all dev effort were mainly put into end game after campaign, even the "casual" gamer would get to end game.

That's what's so great about poe 1. First time you might spend 20 hours through the campaign, cause there's so much to learn, test and so on. Next time you prob cut that time in half. Then when you know what the campaign is about, know a bit about builds and so on, you'll jump through campaign in 5 ish hours.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

I dont play games to rush to the end game and grind. Sorry.

GRINDING Gear Games. You're literally playing an ARPG, known for being a grind, from a company with "Grinding" in their name. If you don't like grinding games, POE prob not for you, other than maybe a few campaign playthroughs.
Personally I hope they make this game for the players that will play for thousands of hours, not the ones that plays through campaign and have a total 100 hours played.

Lmao. In over 10 years of PoE, I still dont know any character names or anything of the story, because its irrelevant. End game and rank 1 dps builds are the core of the game, the rest is just a tutorial. You guys dont know anything about PoE hahaha.

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StrykerxS77x#8221 wrote:

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

I dont play games to rush to the end game and grind. Sorry.

I enjoy the entire game. I legit have largely only played PoE1 in its campaign. The end-game is entirely off-putting to me in multiple ways. Mostly because the rest of the game is neglected for it, and the entire game revolves around it, and the economy..

I enjoy the entire game as well but I spend most of my time in the end game. If we are supposed to play campaign over and over again should it be a frustrating experience?

Nope. It should be a good one. The reason it's in such a poor state is because they spent so much time making the end-game for players.

Just like I said, Neglected. You look at steam achievements and you can clearly see that most players don't care about the end-game, since most stop playing in the acts in PoE 1. 90% drop off by the time people start mapping.

WoW ran into this same issue after a few expansions. The leveling, adventuring, exploring, and community aspect of the game got washed out for emphasis on harder and harder raids, and the game lost most of it's playerbase over the course of a few years and only retained the hardcore players that liked to skip to end-game.

Neglected.

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CroDanZ#1818 wrote:

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

I dont play games to rush to the end game and grind. Sorry.

I think many gamer nowdays forgot how to enjoy a game throughout all the content it has to offer, starting from LVL 1.

For whatevery reason many people nowdays think that content starts to become "fun" as soon as they can 1-tap everything in T15+ after 3 days into a new league....probably while watching Netflix on the side and not even having to watch the game, becaue everything dies with 1-hit anyway. ^^

Definitely not at all what I said. I like difficulty. My point was the biggest challenges should be in the end game. Not act 1 or 2 campaign when you are building your character. PoE isn't a single player game which most people beat once or twice at most. It's meant to complete your build and take on bigger challenges.

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

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StrykerxS77x#8221 wrote:

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Akedomo#3573 wrote:

I dont play games to rush to the end game and grind. Sorry.

I enjoy the entire game. I legit have largely only played PoE1 in its campaign. The end-game is entirely off-putting to me in multiple ways. Mostly because the rest of the game is neglected for it, and the entire game revolves around it, and the economy..

I enjoy the entire game as well but I spend most of my time in the end game. If we are supposed to play campaign over and over again should it be a frustrating experience?

Nope. It should be a good one. The reason it's in such a poor state is because they spent so much time making the end-game for players.

Just like I said, Neglected. You look at steam achievements and you can clearly see that most players don't care about the end-game, since most stop playing in the acts in PoE 1. 90% drop off by the time people start mapping.

WoW ran into this same issue after a few expansions. The leveling, adventuring, exploring, and community aspect of the game got washed out for emphasis on harder and harder raids, and the game lost most of it's playerbase over the course of a few years and only retained the hardcore players that liked to skip to end-game.

Neglected.

I don't think we are going to relate much here lol. How do you play the game? Do you just finish the campaign and immediately start over?