Dear GGG, this is why people play one button screen destroying meta builds.

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Jitter912#4278 wrote:

It can be

Diablo 3 was great at combo screen explosion.
It was a satifying strength of the game.

Group; all the mobs into the center , becasue at high level you would never be able to kill them with the time allowed.. you needed to aoe kill ...
Group up ... set up... KABOOOMM!!!!

In poe .. right now ... you are not grouping anything.
1) I will stun lock you
2) It will mass explode and kill you
3) It is faster than you, you will be surrounded and unable to move or attack
etc

They created a bunch of attacks that get you killed.

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Kraythax#2592 wrote:

Because they are the only thing viable in a game where every other skill just falls down. You want us to play fancy combos while a pack of 40 monsters are rushing at us with 9000HP at mach Jesus. If you play other builds you just die a lot. If you play the meta one shot spark / infernalist / monk before and now lightning spear you can handle the game. Until all skills in the game are viable, there will be no build variety. People will gravitate to the only thing that is fun (because it works). Right now if you try and play fangs of frost with parry its a slog through a Cambodian jungle with a pocket knife, not even a machete. Last league there were about 4 meta builds and the rest of the skills in the game weren't worth trying. Now its pretty much just lightning spear.

Again ... play your own product.

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MeanBob_Games#6853 wrote:

This is all nonsense. put the pipe down and go to bed, or at least stop with the shit posting acting like youre an expert of pop culture marketing. per capita PoE is ridiculously financially solvent, get wrecked nerd.

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KuroSF#6521 wrote:

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MeanBob_Games#6853 wrote:

This is all nonsense. put the pipe down and go to bed, or at least stop with the shit posting acting like youre an expert of pop culture marketing. per capita PoE is ridiculously financially solvent, get wrecked nerd.

Such incredibly inciteful retort. Nothing but insults. Typical for someone who has no cogent thing to say.

POE1 is certainly a "success", but it's a small one. In a world with games making hundreds of millions or billions, POE1 is just doing "okay". Make no mistake, POE2 is GGG's attempt (probably pushed by Tencent) to appeal to a bigger audience to make more money. That is what business is. And so far, it's working, as POE2 has a larger playerbase than POE1.

Nobody here has any idea what the future of POE2 is.. but I can tell you what it isnt... It isn't turning POE2 into a visually reskinned POE1, because that will not grow their revenue.

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KuroSF#6521 wrote:

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MeanBob_Games#6853 wrote:

As I understand it, the entire point of POE2 is to court the mainstream gamers who do not want engaging gameplay, not one button slot machines (or they would be playing POE1 in larger numbers). That's why the POE2 EA numbers are 2-3x bigger than POE1 ever was... because of their promise this would occur...but they are not delivering on that promise.

Disagree there. Majority of players that poe 2 has while poe1 doesnt have is people who would have played poe1 but there a 10 years worth of content and aditions to figure out and they have no time. Poe2 is a good entry point.
Then you have people who think they know what they want but they really dont. No rest for the Wicked, a true blend or argp and "dark souls", had around 700k copies sold but is today played daily on average by 350 players. Of course with faster updates that number would have been higher.

Anyhow, problem with the so-called meaningful combat (a term so overabused) is that most people don't even know what meaningful combat actualy is.
In games there are just two types of meaningful combat and those are:

A. Combat that a person enjoys and thus it's meaning is a player rlaxing after hard day and have fun. This type of combat is often to a degree terapeutical.

B. A challenging combat, not necessarily hard per say, but one that requires you to utilise your thinking capacibilities. This can resoult in complex mehanics coupled by top notch reaction time but it can also come in the form of one-shots-screen-clears as one did use their mind to come up with it (folks who copy such builds enjoy the type of combat under point A).

For a game to be sucessful long term it has to hit a sweet spot between A and B.

What isn't meaningful combat:
A. Combat that is not fun from whatever reason.
B. Combat that is hard just for the sake of being hard akka is hard due bad mehanics, bad visual clarity and telegraphing, mobs having tons of health to make them seem harder when they are just time consuming, mobs that hit to hard or too fast or come swarming at you while you have nearly no defensive capacibilities to mitigate it or in short a combat that is not fair. You know you have been subjected to unfair combat when you manage to beat the mobs or boss or whatever and yes, you do get your dopamin with it however at same time you just feel relief wash over it that you are done with that part and are glad you don't have to repeat it again.

Anyhow, a problem with the "meaningful combat" or if you want "dark souls tyoe of combat" is that it get tiering. Souls games are popular as they are because they have a beggining, a mindle and very importantly the end. They don't have seasons/leaugues with no end at sight. This is a very important aspect of it. If therfe would be no end in sight the combat would loose its fun, it would become a tedious chor and people would get tired of it. The end in sight is what makes people pull through to the end and then potentialy do new game plus which again each time there is a definite end to it too and the reruns are significantly easier that the original run.
Elden Ring sold around 700k copies. Atm it still has 30k players but that's only 4.29% of people who bought is. ( the soul's like agrp NRFTW is at 0.5%).

Anyhow, this whole meaningful combat terminology is overused on every turn to make it sound more "elite" and what not. Game, be it poe2 or an obscure card game will have players playing and returning to play as long as combat is fun. That's really all there is.