You don't know what makes Dark Souls fun

+1 OP. Nailed it.

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keroysho#6433 wrote:

Methodical combat cannot exist in an arpg outside boss fights .
It is totally antithetic .

Poe1 has everything solved , Gegege needs to go back to the roots and build on what has already been working for decades .

Or if they want meaningful combat just delete everything and make a real souls-like game . This is a joke trying to have 1 foot here the other there .
50 monsters jumping you at the speed of light is not compatible with any form of meaningful combat like silly parry and disengage .

Arpg is character progression , blowing up hordes of monsters , getting a ton of loot rinse and repeat .
You cannot change that no matter how revolutionary ideas you have . Not going to work .
Souls like elements are for souls like games .
This is an arpg it has no business trying to be methodical.

This is categorically false. Kiting enemies, prioritizing enemies to prevent being surrounded or killed from greater threats, is the definition of methodical and I think what GGG is going for on the normal engagements. There's nothing methodical about the automaticity of flickering and screen clearing maps with one or two buttons. POE1 became the antithesis of methodical combat. I'm not saying that makes it a bad game but it is what it is. The direction POE2 is going in is a great one if that meaningful combat appeals to you.

Wanna hear something unholy?

I say, diablo ever was and still is the only arpg that really delivers on the actual combat.

Imo that is the reason it is still considered the gold standard.

Poe was better in every other aspect.

Nothing has changed. Exept the buisness models.

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TaintedVisage#8240 wrote:

This idea that "hard game is fun cuz it's hard" is evidence you've not put any real time or effort into those games to understand the appeal, and the design ethos of PoE2 is a failing one. Difficulty in those games comes from the split second consequences, the need to be aware of your surroundings, and the fact that combat is over in only 2-3 hits for either side. It's about stamina management, spacing, and finding your openings.

Now tell me where any of that is in PoE2. Huge packs of monsters that mindlessly sprint at you, where you die in one hit from an impossible to see effect on the ground while you spend 30 seconds hitting the same thing over and over trying to hack through it's health bar. It's boring, monotonous, and draining. There's no fun to be found in tedium.

My suggestion is this: Choose one. Either give players back the power fantasy that made PoE successful in the first place, you know, the only reason you're even capable of making a sequel, or actually buckle down, tighten up, lock in, and provide a balanced, methodical, moment to moment combat system that forces players to pay attention. And that second one? That means gutting this entire game. Random rolls and percent Stat bonuses don't work in a game meant to have tight combat.

Either give us back the game that made you successful to begin with, or stop screwing around and make an actual Souls like. This ain't either. It fails at being both.

To make it Souls-like with an isometric perspective would require a massive rework at least 1–2 years of rework. They would have to start from scratch with combat systems, martial arts mechanics, loot, and weapon design.
And yeah, I totally agree with you we definitely need to bring back that true power fantasy.

I agree with OP. Just saying your trying to make something like dark souls or Elden ring is all good but to an experienced player there are not many similarities beyond misunderstanding the punishment/reward system of the game. Also it's not a out meaningful combat...or slow progression. That is for new players...if you've been playing souls games for 10+ years then you wreck these games just like blasting through T15 maps. I don't think any boss took me over 3 minutes but most I clear in under a minute with ease if I build my character to do so. If I want a challenge I don't build him up and still wreck shit.

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TaintedVisage#8240 wrote:

Difficulty in those games comes from the split second consequences, the need to be aware of your surroundings, and the fact that combat is over in only 2-3 hits for either side. It's about stamina management, spacing, and finding your openings.

Now tell me where any of that is in PoE2. Huge packs of monsters that mindlessly sprint at you

The issue with making a comparison to Dark Souls is that it inherently shuts out thinking about how to deal with 1v50 battles. Everything you say is what I get in PoE 2 1v50 battles. The mobs are faster than you, you will die if they get 2 hits in, you need to clear them in 3~4 moves. Not all those moves should be dealing meaningful damage as they're battlefield shaping.

- Earthquake/Spearfield to mass slow
- Shield Wall/Frost Wall/Glacial Bolt to put up walls
- Totem/Minion to guard the flanks
- Sunder or some other big windup move to clear the pack

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TaintedVisage#8240 wrote:

Huge packs of monsters that mindlessly sprint at you, where you die in one hit from an impossible to see effect on the ground while you spend 30 seconds hitting the same thing over and over trying to hack through it's health bar. It's boring, monotonous, and draining. There's no fun to be found in tedium.

Agreed, that kind of gameplay would be boring. I don't know what people are doing to experience that in PoE 2.

The funny or disturbing part is, they already tried to do that. Ask why did they put movement penalty for heavy armour.
And many peoplke really get kind of a souls like feeling during campaign. Granted, it is fun like this during campaign.
But the moment you reach endgame, fun is over. And there is where balancing issues are pointed out.
So, you can have both.
But what excactly do they want to balance towards?
A single player experience?
A trade war?
A community effort?

Dont get it. Dont have fun.

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MeanBob_Games#6853 wrote:

I agree with OP. Just saying your trying to make something like dark souls or Elden ring is all good but to an experienced player there are not many similarities beyond misunderstanding the punishment/reward system of the game. Also it's not a out meaningful combat...or slow progression. That is for new players...if you've been playing souls games for 10+ years then you wreck these games just like blasting through T15 maps. I don't think any boss took me over 3 minutes but most I clear in under a minute with ease if I build my character to do so. If I want a challenge I don't build him up and still wreck shit.

Can you please source where they said they were trying to do that?

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Can you please source where they said they were trying to do that?

I see the confusion. They may have never said it explicitly. But world is not black and white. It has always been implied by their design choices. So much so that even Steam categorized POE2 as a souls like game.

Now it may or may not be a souls like but i think it is not a complete imagination of people that it draws inspiration from it and that it is likely that POE2 want to imbibe the characteristics that make souls game great. A hard difficulty and fluid and interactive combat system.

The biggest problem for me is the lackluster passive skill tree. It doesn't have defenses outside of evasion, ES, block, max resists, and armour (jk, armour doesn't belong here). All these debates people have (whether PoE2 is souls-like or not; that players are playing PoE2 while mobs are playing PoE1; etc.) happen only because players can’t even survive. The passive tree is full of unnecessary noise that masks itself as a "meaningful addition to your build." There are some defensive options that actually work, but they force us all to build the same things over and over again: ES, ES+Eva hybrids, or Life+Block characters. If your character doesn’t belong to any of these categories, you’ll die often. Right now, people tend to overcome this problem by making full glass cannon builds, which just shows how insanely bad the passive tree is. I get it — as a Huntress, for instance, it’s not entirely obvious that you have to travel to the Monk’s area just to build an ES+Eva hybrid.
And I have to be honest: I absolutely despise the current glass cannon meta. And GGG, this is 100% on you. What you did with the passive tree in PoE2 is insanely bad.
Oh, and one more thing I noticed in PoE2: the devs make something borderline unusable and bad (like Presence AoE in patch 0.2) and expect you to invest in it just to make it somewhat usable. And this happens despite the passive tree being so artificially stretched. This approach is so obvious — and the fact that it’s so obvious makes it even worse because you feel like you’re being played by the devs. They need to stop.