Johnathan is too married to the idea in his head.

"

Warrax#2850 wrote:

It's their game, all we can do is giving feedback, the fact that you paid an entry fee doesn't mean you can dictate anything. Jonathan should not bend and should stick to his vision whatever you like it or not because a lot of people enjoy PoE2, it should not deviate.

I used the word "too" in the title for a reason. I am glad that Johnathan is married to the idea in his head. I think there's great potential in combo based gameplay and would actually enjoy a more meaningful combat experience in arpgs in general. Again though, he might be TOO married to the idea.

His response to a lot of issues ziz brought was "I don't have that problem so I don't see how it could be a problem for others. I don't think it's a problem."

That's just not healthy. There were times where ziz would make a point and Mark would say something along the lines of "I see where you're coming from. That could be an issue. Let's look into that more and see where the friction is". This is goated developer-player communication

Mark earned all of my faith in that interview. I think the guy has a level head on his shoulders.

I like the vision in Johnson's head, but sometimes when the reality doesn't match up to the grandeur of the idea, you've gotta be willing to tweak the vision because what's best for the game is sometimes more important than dying on a hill for certain things

Yah, most of that interview I was in shock that Jonathan had the responses he did and I think its because of two reasons:

tldr: I disenchant every single rare, I salvage every single rune slot gear, I sell off everything else. Each time. Throughout the campaign I had an extreme minimal amount of artificer orbs, regal orbs, and pretty much ZERO exalts. It was a miserable experience. I feel there are two groups of player experiences: One that sees plentiful crafting material drops and one that sees none.

1. There really are two different experiences in the game and I know this from talking to players in game and hearing Jonathan's response. The loot drop % "swing" as Mark stated might be out of wack. People in general chat were saying they have 10 exalts by level 39. I saw one. And then one more throughout the rest of the campaign through level 60. Only yesterday did they start dropping, maybe 5 or 6 in about as many hours. Still pretty crap. Hearing Jonathan say "I dont experience this...." was a shock to me.

So I say... one swath of players experiencing what Jonathan and some general chatters are where crafting materials ARE dropping regularly. The other half of players are experiencing what Ive experienced where next to NONE are dropping throughout the campaign and endgame.

Add to the fact, as Ziz mentioned... loot drops on the ground are scarce and when they drop, they are often disenchant/vendor trash.


2. Jonathan has a vision of the game and almost refuses to budge on it despite what we say we are experiencing and recommend. Even Blizzard changed their entire game philosophy with D4 when we said the game was bad. You have to be flexible here and not consider the smallest factor or % of players that might find some abuse in the mechanic you want to tweak.


Fact is: The game feels like ruthless poe1. Is that the direction of the game? I recommend GGG put out a manifesto on their overall decision and vision of the game so we know what to expect: Example, Combat should not be like poe1 and you should not be clearing maps under 3 minutes. Example, it should be expected and normal to spend 10, 15+ minutes in a map clearing it all with how slow our combat is. Things like that.

If they put a manifesto out for their design everyone would quit if 0.2 is anything to go by.

GGG has set a bad precedence by caving in on player demands for the past decade. There is nothing wrong with expecting the same noodle to continue in the new game.