So 0.4.0 Released yesterday. Already bored. Game play pacing is way off.

campain is best what poe 2 have to offer with it's slower pace and more.. still to fast and to easy campain - 0.3 trivalized everything and 0.4 is even easier and faster.

They should tone difficulty to 0.1 and SLOW, SLOW, SLOWED end-game or poe 2 will remain with poe 1 community - as even now players who liked poe 2 gameplay leaved

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Rabarbar_Lichy#7553 wrote:

Or just fried brains after years of playing basement size PoE 1 maps (probably technical limitation) with late PoE 1 power level. More, next, new, now, never in the moment.

Even car games get open worlds nowadays, but you want to reduce what already are just small pockets of space, basicaly demanding an absurd level of amusement park design.

Or maybe just start enjoying gameplay, instead of waiting too long for progression. IDK.

Or having huge patches of nothing inbetween gameplay is just a bad thing. Yeah i want the size of the maps i play in to accomodate the pack size of the mobs inside it. I don't wanna go "ugh fight 1 pack of mobs" into walking simulator into "here is the next pack of mobs". It's an ARPG and A stands for Action not Atrophy. I actually like the smaller pack sizes with bigger health bars i just don't like the vast patches of nothing inbetween each pack. Also gonna say it again, temple is by far the worst mechanic ever introduced in PoE and it needs a reimagining. Abyss was cool because it was intrusive and it ADDED CONTENT to my maps. Here you get like 2 extra packs of mobs or one extra unique into activate 6 CRYSTALS to even enter this dogshit temple and even then the temple itself is a timewaste that i could just be spending doing literally anything else in the game. The temple itself also has plenty of rooms noone gives a shit about. All n all let's hope 0.5 is cool.

Sure, that's up for debate, but I'm mainly about the ridiculous idea of reducing map size (further bc already happened here or there afaik, thanks to the whine and wail), which are already super small and tolerable only because of ancient genre traditions. I want randomly generated country, and they say cut the backyard, it's too long.

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Rabarbar_Lichy#7553 wrote:

Sure, that's up for debate, but I'm mainly about the ridiculous idea of reducing map size (further bc already happened here or there afaik, thanks to the whine and wail), which are already super small and tolerable only because of ancient genre traditions. I want randomly generated country, and they say cut the backyard, it's too long.

People are asking for the critical path maps to be shortened. I don’t think anyone is saying the optional areas should be reduced in size. In fact, I think a lot of people would enjoy optional areas with an open world feeling.

But honestly, who wants the 3 levers to open the cave of the giants to be spread across such a huge map? Do you enjoy that? I’m pretty sure most people just start running across the entire map, skipping most packs, in their subsequent playthroughs.

It’s worthwhile to mention that d2 had much smaller zones, and I’ve never seen anyone complain that the D2 zones were too small. Have you?

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saashaa#5518 wrote:

campain is best what poe 2 have to offer with it's slower pace and more.. still to fast and to easy campain - 0.3 trivalized everything and 0.4 is even easier and faster.

They should tone difficulty to 0.1 and SLOW, SLOW, SLOWED end-game or poe 2 will remain with poe 1 community - as even now players who liked poe 2 gameplay leaved

I actually don't think you are correct, the game itself has not overly changed in difficulty especially in the early game. The players are more efficient and have more knowledge about how to build a character, what items to aim for ect.

There really is not a lot WRONG with PoE 2. The biggest issue is the skill balance with a lot of interesting skills just not being viable to use, and a lack of combination variety. Some people don't like their idea of slower paced combat, but that is purely a design choice, the combat works, so there is nothing inherently wrong with it, they just don't like the design philosophy.

I honestly think people are just expecting way too much content. If you play for 6-8 hours a day you will run out of things to do very quickly, 6 hours a day is 500 hours a season. This is an insane amount of time to be playing a game.

I would expect the devs to balance content and farming around the maybe 2-3 hours every 2 days throughout the week and a bit more time on weekends. There is just no way they are going to keep up with creating some 300-500 hours of content every three months.

Balancing skills and ensuring that everything is playable and viable will give us far more repatitive content than "Fixing Endgame" or increasing/decreasing density. Giving players something new to try each season and making it interesting or viable is the best option.

Also for players if you are just going to keep playing the same build because it is 5% stronger than every other build then that is on you if you get bored.

I just can't envision any activity that wouldn't make me bored after doing it for 12 hours straight.

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TheBalrogslayer#7574 wrote:

It’s worthwhile to mention that d2 had much smaller zones, and I’ve never seen anyone complain that the D2 zones were too small. Have you?

That's my entire point, it's ancient, and was a technical limitation of both processing power and the tile randomization tech.

The small zones are accepted in PoE 2 exactly because how it was in D2 (and then PoE 1). But it wasn't like that in D2 because that's how a perfect zone in an ARPG should look like, it's just that Blizzard North knew how to balance stuff around the zone size.

There were small zones, pockets of the world in Baldurs Gate, Fallouts etc, yet noone argues for modern versions to get back to that, 2d map and small zones. Only in PoE 2 I see cries to reduce zone size and how maps are too big and take too long, imo an absurd level of amusement park syndrome.

Again, game of that budget and scope should be able to generate a random country now, with a desert mountains forests and cities. I'm not saying it should be that in every case, but in that context, talking about cutting 20% of little zonies is a bit small tbh.

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Rabarbar_Lichy#7553 wrote:

Again, game of that budget and scope should be able to generate a random country now, with a desert mountains forests and cities. I'm not saying it should be that in every case, but in that context, talking about cutting 20% of little zonies is a bit small tbh.

I don’t think anyone here is telling them they shouldn’t make epically sized optional content. We’re saying that the critical path for the campaign needs to be shorter, and a particular part of that is to reduce the zones in which mandatory campaign quests need to be completed.

For all I care they make optional content that’s bigger than the GTA map. But don’t ask me to do a tonne of traversing on huge maps only to talk with an NPC, and make that map a square with lots of obstacles to path between. That’s a terrible experience. The first time it feels ok-ish because everything is new, every subsequent time it gets more demotivating.

For example, I think Lachlan and the Mausoleum bosses are fantastic. But why the hell are they mandatory? They add absolutely nothing to the campaign story, and are clearly optional content that somehow was added to the mandatory todo list of the campaign. That’s a tonne of traversing that can be put as (fantastic) optional content instead.

Then you have the waterways, where you have to press levers to continue. Why can’t we just jump or teleport across?
In the valley of the titans, do the levers really have to be that far apart? Surely that running around isn’t considered “mandatory for a good campaign experience”?….

PoE 1 revolutionized how map traversing is done in its latest patch - by allowing us to see notable objectives from farther away. This is currently missing from PoE 2. If it is included it will satisfy both groups - the people who, for some reason, want giant maps will still have them and the rest can just beeline towards the objectives without wasting their time revealing the entire map.

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saashaa#5518 wrote:

campain is best what poe 2 have to offer with it's slower pace and more.. still to fast and to easy campain - 0.3 trivalized everything and 0.4 is even easier and faster.

They should tone difficulty to 0.1 and SLOW, SLOW, SLOWED end-game or poe 2 will remain with poe 1 community - as even now players who liked poe 2 gameplay leaved

Do you really think that's the goal? A game you come back every 4 monthsish for the campaign? XD