Listening to the community too much is what ruined PoE 1 for many of us.

"

Raycheetah#7060 wrote:

And the exact same thing (as I predicted) is happening to PoE Deuce. Why? Because that's what players want. Zoom-zoom is the natural trend, and GGG isn't exactly discouraging it with race events and other timed mechanics. ='[.]'=

GGG- you guys need to slow down and actually play the game in a deliberate manner

Also GGG- oh btw follow this wisp, if you take too long it disappears WINKS WINKS

"

Pathological#1188 wrote:

You know hot take doesn't mean "information that everybody already knows, and that Chris functionally said himself", right?

The fact that he didn't let his ego overshadow his ability to make the game into what the players enjoyed out of it is why he was the right person for the job. The current trajectory of PoE2 shows that that is not a trait that Jonathon seems to have; his ego becomes bruised when people dislike what he likes and what he makes, and he makes it anyway.

not everyone knows this. in fact i have been defending GGG for a very long time on the matter of "ggg promised that poe2 would not affect poe1".

many people kept saying this and i kept saying GGG never promised this. i kept challenging everyone to show me proof that GGG said this. everyone that tried to disprove me sent me a clip of someone from GGG saying something that avoids saying that statement. always with enough room to disclaim themselves from actually making that statement.

this went on for the longest time. no one ever could challenge me UNTIL someone found that one clip where chris said it. chris definitely said it. but if you put everything into context, GGG has been avoiding saying anything this concrete for the longest time. in fact i would say chris fucked up in that one particular instance because now everyone can rightfully say GGG didnt keep their promise.

you can actually see this with a lot of issues. like GGG wanting the game to be deliberate. they mention it multiple times. poe 2 separate from poe1 partially because melee suck ass. multiple times. but that one very "promise" was mentioned once and never again. any other statements are very careful to not make that promise.

as for him not letting his ego overshadow anything. MONEY.

he and his buddies spent a lot of money funding this game. he has a fiduciary responsibility (god i cant believe i can finally use that word) towards his business partners to make money. if he was stubborn and the game failed. he would not only have failed himself, but many other people too. thus he was forced to bend to the will of the players.

also if we're being real about ego. his tongue in cheek response to standard players losing a huge amount of value because of a change he willingly approved is almost spiteful. that such a bitch ass thing to do as many standard players had farmed exalts for literal years. and hes remark of "oh you guys should have diversified your investments" while smirking is really an asshole thing to do.

"

Taking money and then drastically changing the goalposts mid-development is not ok.

100% agree to this. i dumped a lot of money on the game based on a false promise. to be real changing goal posts DO happen and i really do understand that. but the fact they chose to remain silent and reveal it as a grand feature in the last exilecon is such a bitch ass conman move.

"

Acaste7#4977 wrote:

The philosophy of the game has never been about zoom-zooming through content and having incredibly accessible power levels for your character.

It still didn't prevent Chris from trading vision for growth back in 2015.

"

Acaste7#4977 wrote:

In the last dozen leagues in PoE 1, we were watching builds kill things off-screen without even seeing them, or without even getting to interface with most of the mods and interesting mechanics that even rare enemies had to offer.

What pays the bills.

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

"

ocping#1733 wrote:

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

its equally the best and worst thing to happen to chris.

on one hand he solidified his company and its well known.

on another his company is now trapped by the expectations of poe1 players who understandably do not want poe2 to be too different from poe1.

it also meant that people hated his "vision"

"

mnieradko#6070 wrote:

"

Ner0suM#7473 wrote:

- no currency to craft with

Same issues as modern POE1 buddy. The devs in POE1 decided that useful endgame rares cannot drop OFF THE GROUND, so you must craft stuff through an unintuitive convoluted mountains of steps with horrible RNG at each step.

So where is said crafting currency for POE1 endgame players who don't treat it like a job? Nowhere to be found.

In POE2, powerful rare items are now allowed to drop OFF THE GROUND. Where's the crafting currency? Here are some alchemy and regal orbs peasant. Go watch your favorite streamer while you load up on MTX like a good boy.

Neither modern POE1 nor POE2 are ARPGs, they are abomination currency simulators in which THE ENDGAME CURRENCY YOU NEED does not drop in appreciable quantities.

As for who Jonathan and friends are making POE2 for? They are making it for themselves. I love all these clickbait "the POE2 streamer community is raging" compilation videos. Every person in said videos is a hopelessly addicted degen goblin who will keep plugging away at the same frustrating things a week or month or year from now. All of these dev talk videos are theater. They know their playerbase. It's the same playerbase as modern POE1. That playerbase isn't going anywhere. That playerbase wouldn't know introspection and self control if it dropped on their head like an anvil.

Lol.

I love this. There's a poetic elegance to it.

"

ocping#1733 wrote:

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

Initially, yes.

Last few leagues - it completely ruined it.

Sometimes some strategies only work until a certain point and it's OK to depart from those strategies as a developer and visionary.

"

exsea#1724 wrote:

"

ocping#1733 wrote:

Listening to the community too much is what made PoE 1 the best ARPG ever for 99.9% of POE 1 players.

its equally the best and worst thing to happen to chris.

on one hand he solidified his company and its well known.

on another his company is now trapped by the expectations of poe1 players who understandably do not want poe2 to be too different from poe1.

it also meant that people hated his "vision"

I think there are many creative solutions that could fix these pains more casual and zoom-zoomy players are experiencing, genuinely.

It's up to GGG's creative team to make it happen though. While I'd LOVE to have input as I see myself competent in the field, they're just not going to pick off some random dude from the forums to conceptualise their game design solutions for them, right?

A simpler fix without breaking the grander vision of the game is to introduce a "power inheritance" feature for characters.

Meaning that your first and primary character will have to slog through the full campaign, but your next character will gain not only your inherited gear but also increased stats, let's say - from having killed the passive bonus bosses.

Let's say that your new character would start out with all of these bonuses already active - and they wouldn't need to kill the "extra" bosses to progress through the campaign. Resistances, more health, more spirit, more mana regeneration, etc.

This reduces campaign play time, makes it less repetitive and boring and allows you to spec far more points into pure damage to speed up clear speed until maps.

There are many creative solutions that can address pain points for both wings of the community, but it requires meticulousness and expertise.

power creep really hurt poe1 over the years but players running through content imho was just the symtom, the reason they were enabled to do so was the transparency ggg implemented into the game.

two examples:

1) their decision to show all item properties on pressing "alt" killed all the expert knowledge about how hybrid affixes interacted with single affixes, it took all the magic off itemisation.


2) the release of "path of building" killed build making by trivialising it and making it a simple hunt for more higher numbers rather than interesting skill combinations. it took all the magic away from making builds.
as a result, players asked for more damage rather than interesting skill interactions.

also it enabled the sharing of overpowered builds to the whole community in minutes. to be fair, ggg really fought it by making the skill tree more complicated with customised items but when they eventually did the right thing to employ the developer to stop him adapting the tool it´s been too late.

--

people rightfully complain that fighting monsters in poe2 feels like a slog but is it really because of in poe1 everything dies if you cough at it?

or is it the fact that every monster, the trees and soon every other entity like buildings in the game has a health bar?

--

ggg never really cared about what other games did, they reinvented and adapted other games´ mechanics and elements with a healthy knowledge of what makes sense for interesting gameplay. no gold, no auto pickup, no damage number pling pling, no bosses spawning in corners, no auto aiming ...

people did the old trick of calling poe a arpg and that typical arpgs need all those elements. the problem was ggg believing them over time instead of trusting their own sense (vision) of what belongs to a good game.

Saying that showing item stats or making mechanics more readable "killed the magic" feels more like gatekeeping than solid critique. If your enjoyment of the game depended on others not understanding the systems, was it really good design, or just obscurity? Accessibility doesn't remove depth — it just opens the door for more people to engage with it meaningfully.

Path of Building didn’t destroy theorycrafting — it elevated it. Sure, it lowered the barrier to entry, but it also enabled deeper min-maxing and planning than you could reasonably do by hand. Blaming a tool for trivializing builds is like blaming a calculator for making math less interesting. The problem isn’t the tool — it’s whether the underlying design still rewards creativity over raw numbers.

Complaining about overpowered builds being shared is just fighting the tide. It’s the internet age — information spreads fast. That’s not a design flaw or a moral failing, it’s a reality. The question isn’t "How do we stop sharing?" It’s "How do we make sure build variety and balance can survive sharing?"

If PoB can expose flaws in the game's design, then the issue was never the tool — it was that the game’s systems weren’t resilient to scrutiny. Good design shouldn't rely on opacity. If clarity kills creativity, then the systems weren't that creative to begin with.

And let’s not forget: build diversity is ultimately constrained by what the game actually offers — the pool of unique items, support gems, ascendancies, and mechanics. You can’t create a “clever” or “creative” build out of thin air if the tools don’t exist to support it. Path of Building didn’t narrow build variety — it just made the limitations more visible. If everyone flocks to the same builds, it’s not because the tool is bad — it’s because the game doesn't give enough viable or interesting alternatives.

On top of that, even the most creative or mechanically interesting build can be made completely unviable if the numbers don’t support it. You can have a build with perfect synergy, cool interactions, and satisfying gameplay — but if its damage output is too low compared to meta options, it’s dead on arrival. Balance isn’t just about raw power; it’s about keeping different playstyles functionally relevant. And when tuning swings too hard in one direction, players naturally gravitate to whatever actually works, not necessarily what’s most interesting. That’s not a community failure — that’s a balance issue.

Finally, the idea that “listening to the community too much is what ruined PoE1 for many of us” is fundamentally flawed — and honestly, a bit egotistical. The community isn’t a monolith. What you wanted preserved might be exactly what others found frustrating or inaccessible. Acting like your personal vision represents the "true" spirit of the game ignores the fact that PoE grew because it appealed to a wide range of players. Blaming the downfall on GGG listening to other players is just a way of saying they stopped listening to me. That’s not critique — that’s entitlement.