Why Casual Gamers Don't Play POE2

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katsukai#1184 wrote:

I'm glad if you guys are enjoying the game and find it easy, just these are some of my thoughts playing the game. I can see the game being too easy when played by some content creator builds, these are just my thoughts what bothers me the most. I also think that endgame should be more challenging since T1 to T15 mapping feels mostly skippable. To be honest I don't even like the atlas system, lol.

I read this argument a lot in the forums and don't get it at all. In 0.2 most of the players played amazon and in 0.4 druid. Combining it with 0.1, where no one had a clue about anything it's 3 out of 4 leagues where the majority of people didn't have a build guide to follow in the beginning. And in 0.3 they disabled the most trending builds by content creators 1-2 days before launch leaving most of the players with build experiments again. And if anything your source behind the initial idea of a build should be poe.ninja and not a video guide that was made before a league.

Why is the game "too easy" then, you might ask? It was already in 0.1 and 0.2 that you needed barely an investment (like 2-3d for the weapon and same amount in defences) to see all content. Difficulty was fine to me for what it was.
Seeing what weapons you can buy or craft for 2d right now and comparing it to before should give you an idea of how much the player power curve went up with 0.3 and 0.4 (hint: My 95&96 chars from 0.1 and 0.2 never had something even close to what my druid was already hoarding in the stash in low tier maps). But instead of 1 portal playstyle you get to choose yourself. You are kind of allowed to fail and body brigade yourself to only have one last fight against bosses you killed already 3 times that you have to manage in one go and what after? Farming 500 div to make your build viable for 50 abysses in one waystone? For what? Does it make your build faster or does it enable you any content that is gated behind gear? For me and I think for the majority of people the game is done with full ascendancy, a few 6mod t15 waystones and killing all league mechanic bosses at highest difficulty (and arbiter if you happend to see all citadels by then?). That is really not hard to achieve even if you are a player that is below average.

edit: However I liked in your beginning post that it had nothing to do with difficulty.

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cavexs#4102 wrote:

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katsukai#1184 wrote:

I'm glad if you guys are enjoying the game and find it easy, just these are some of my thoughts playing the game. I can see the game being too easy when played by some content creator builds, these are just my thoughts what bothers me the most. I also think that endgame should be more challenging since T1 to T15 mapping feels mostly skippable. To be honest I don't even like the atlas system, lol.

I read this argument a lot in the forums and don't get it at all. In 0.2 most of the players played amazon and in 0.4 druid. Combining it with 0.1, where no one had a clue about anything it's 3 out of 4 leagues where the majority of people didn't have a build guide to follow in the beginning. And in 0.3 they disabled the most trending builds by content creators 1-2 days before launch leaving most of the players with build experiments again. And if anything your source behind the initial idea of a build should be poe.ninja and not a video guide that was made before a league.

Why is the game "too easy" then, you might ask? It was already in 0.1 and 0.2 that you needed barely an investment (like 2-3d for the weapon and same amount in defences) to see all content. Difficulty was fine to me for what it was.
Seeing what weapons you can buy or craft for 2d right now and comparing it to before should give you an idea of how much the player power curve went up with 0.3 and 0.4. But instead of 1 portal playstyle you get to choose yourself. You are kind of allowed to fail and body brigade yourself to only have one last fight against bosses you killed already 3 times that you have to manage in one go and what after? Farming 500 div to make your build viable for 50 abysses in one waystone? For what? Does it make your build faster or does it enable you any content that is gated behind gear? For me and I think for the majority of people the game is done with full ascendancy, a few 6mod t15 waystones and killing all league mechanic bosses at highest difficulty (and arbiter if you happend to see all citadels by then?). That is really not hard to achieve even if you are a player that is below average.

edit: However I liked in your beginning post that it had nothing to do with difficulty.

You pretty much nailed it here and I am a similar player and I think you will find that a LOT of players are the same, farm a little at the start, complete the pinnacle bosses on highest difficulty, kill arbiter (If I cant find citadels I just buy the tokens) and then generally re-roll to find a different toon.

I am enjoying mapping a lot more now that I don't have to think about tower placement, and it has opened up farming the special maps behind mists ect more for me, best change to end game content they made since 0.1.

Currently the game actually works really well for this type of play and I beleive this is actually the goal they have in mind. Now I probably play a lot more than the average person so its not unusual for me to complete all this in 2-3 weeks.

For people who are playing a game 8-12 hours day there will never be enough to do and it is unrealistic to expect devs to create enough content for this.

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cavexs#4102 wrote:

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katsukai#1184 wrote:

I'm glad if you guys are enjoying the game and find it easy, just these are some of my thoughts playing the game. I can see the game being too easy when played by some content creator builds, these are just my thoughts what bothers me the most. I also think that endgame should be more challenging since T1 to T15 mapping feels mostly skippable. To be honest I don't even like the atlas system, lol.

I read this argument a lot in the forums and don't get it at all. In 0.2 most of the players played amazon and in 0.4 druid. Combining it with 0.1, where no one had a clue about anything it's 3 out of 4 leagues where the majority of people didn't have a build guide to follow in the beginning. And in 0.3 they disabled the most trending builds by content creators 1-2 days before launch leaving most of the players with build experiments again. And if anything your source behind the initial idea of a build should be poe.ninja and not a video guide that was made before a league.

Why is the game "too easy" then, you might ask? It was already in 0.1 and 0.2 that you needed barely an investment (like 2-3d for the weapon and same amount in defences) to see all content. Difficulty was fine to me for what it was.
Seeing what weapons you can buy or craft for 2d right now and comparing it to before should give you an idea of how much the player power curve went up with 0.3 and 0.4. But instead of 1 portal playstyle you get to choose yourself. You are kind of allowed to fail and body brigade yourself to only have one last fight against bosses you killed already 3 times that you have to manage in one go and what after? Farming 500 div to make your build viable for 50 abysses in one waystone? For what? Does it make your build faster or does it enable you any content that is gated behind gear? For me and I think for the majority of people the game is done with full ascendancy, a few 6mod t15 waystones and killing all league mechanic bosses at highest difficulty (and arbiter if you happend to see all citadels by then?). That is really not hard to achieve even if you are a player that is below average.

edit: However I liked in your beginning post that it had nothing to do with difficulty.

On average, when I play the campaign, I usually end up with a Divine Orb by the time I reach the endgame. It just seems that most people dislike being forced to do things like opening the market window and checking for the gear they need to progress. In my opinion, the game shouldn’t force you to do this. Of course, there is the Self-Found League, which disables trade, but even there it still feels frustrating despite increased drop rates. Sure, this keeps casual players away because they can’t be bothered to learn a new mechanic, but I think this problem could be solved somehow. If you know "Talkative Tri", they crashed out by the very same reason, even when asynchronous trade was added.

The game is by no means difficult, most players complete the entire game, with all content done, in one or two weeks.

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katsukai#1184 wrote:

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cavexs#4102 wrote:

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katsukai#1184 wrote:

I'm glad if you guys are enjoying the game and find it easy, just these are some of my thoughts playing the game. I can see the game being too easy when played by some content creator builds, these are just my thoughts what bothers me the most. I also think that endgame should be more challenging since T1 to T15 mapping feels mostly skippable. To be honest I don't even like the atlas system, lol.

I read this argument a lot in the forums and don't get it at all. In 0.2 most of the players played amazon and in 0.4 druid. Combining it with 0.1, where no one had a clue about anything it's 3 out of 4 leagues where the majority of people didn't have a build guide to follow in the beginning. And in 0.3 they disabled the most trending builds by content creators 1-2 days before launch leaving most of the players with build experiments again. And if anything your source behind the initial idea of a build should be poe.ninja and not a video guide that was made before a league.

Why is the game "too easy" then, you might ask? It was already in 0.1 and 0.2 that you needed barely an investment (like 2-3d for the weapon and same amount in defences) to see all content. Difficulty was fine to me for what it was.
Seeing what weapons you can buy or craft for 2d right now and comparing it to before should give you an idea of how much the player power curve went up with 0.3 and 0.4. But instead of 1 portal playstyle you get to choose yourself. You are kind of allowed to fail and body brigade yourself to only have one last fight against bosses you killed already 3 times that you have to manage in one go and what after? Farming 500 div to make your build viable for 50 abysses in one waystone? For what? Does it make your build faster or does it enable you any content that is gated behind gear? For me and I think for the majority of people the game is done with full ascendancy, a few 6mod t15 waystones and killing all league mechanic bosses at highest difficulty (and arbiter if you happend to see all citadels by then?). That is really not hard to achieve even if you are a player that is below average.

edit: However I liked in your beginning post that it had nothing to do with difficulty.

On average, when I play the campaign, I usually end up with a Divine Orb by the time I reach the endgame. It just seems that most people dislike being forced to do things like opening the market window and checking for the gear they need to progress. In my opinion, the game shouldn’t force you to do this. Of course, there is the Self-Found League, which disables trade, but even there it still feels frustrating despite increased drop rates. Sure, this keeps casual players away because they can’t be bothered to learn a new mechanic, but I think this problem could be solved somehow. If you know "Talkative Tri", they crashed out by the very same reason, even when asynchronous trade was added.

The game is by no means difficult, most players complete the entire game, with all content done, in one or two weeks.

Honestly if players are not willing to engage with the systems then why are they playing the game? Those types of people are not the ones that GGG needs to apease because they will never be satisfied unless you hand everything to them. Then they will still complain that its too easy.

I think in general compared to a lot of other similar games, because of the crafting heavy focus it by sort of necessity, means the loot you get during gameplay is kind of garbage. Like, you are highly unlikely to find a usable rare piece of gear, and a large amount of uniques are also worthless.

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katsukai#1184 wrote:

this keeps casual players away because they can’t be bothered to learn a new mechanic, but I think this problem could be solved somehow. If you know "Talkative Tri", they crashed out by the very same reason, even when asynchronous trade was added.

Talkative Tri appears to be a good interviewer and a decent guy, but he's not a good PoE2 player. His takes on the game are the least informed I have heard from any streamer. He's a good "voice of the casual" but if you want to improve your game, read PoE2.ninja, read the wiki, and watch streamers who are able to play SSF or hardcore, even if they also play trade.

+1

Endgame is strictly gear dependant, most effective builds using gear being really op chase uniques, how do they get these chase uniques? group play, even in a group, only 1 gets that item, so HC groups/guilds will repeatedly slave away and farm say expeditions over and over, gather logbooks, then spend a night doing all log books hoping for olroth and chase uniques

In theory thats a great way to play this game and encourages people to group up(not everyone wants that), yet sadly its the only way to actually see drops at a good rate....

Not everyone has time to dedicate hours upon hours to this game, guilds will kick you if you don't provide your service, some you pay a monthly fee to get/stay in, and you slave away untill getting that 1 drop, and now you finally get to have some fun and enjoy the game!!!!

this shouldn't be the case, to see drops in a map, 1 broken build will invite a bunch of leechers into map, that broken build will proceed to clear faster then I've ever cleared in my life, AND THOSE ARE ENEMIES HP SCALED TO 5+ PLAYERS, BOSSES ASWELL, wait outside bossroom, 5-10 secs later there goes 50 million hp and boss is dead yay woohoo what a challenge!!!!!
These are the players who dictate the economy and price, theres a reason chaos orbs and exalted start out at 1:1 then soon 20+ exalted for 1 chaos

Chaos crafts, chaos is needed to get the gear you want, and even then its still random dictated by RNG..... To get what you want can sometimes take 20+ chaos orbs its ridiculous xD early game you have these HC groups slaving away getting more drops then any solo will ever see and they buy up everything all chaos everything, then once solo's get some gear and realize they need chaos to get the affixes they want, oh now 1 chaos is 4-10 ex, week later, 20 ex ://

So now its constantly trying to keep up with the market farm for items to sell to buy that chaos or farm chaos trials all day end up with maybe 10-20 chaos orbs, have a go at your gear and either ruin it or make it better, if you ruin it? MORE FARMING now you need to buy new gear!!! you can farm for that gear just gotta do lower tier way stones with crappier drops!!!!

The unbalance in this game is a joke, never been straight up done and this frustrated so early into a season, from 0.1 to end of 0.2 I somehow realized I had 1500 hours xD was also healing from an accident but still, I didn;t even realize I had spent that much time there was much I wanted to do and try, slowly realized it wasn't working and theres truly only 1-2 ways to effectively play, group play + zoom zoom, this shouldnt be the case.....

Rarity on gear sucks, the party loot buff sucks. Look at all these leech games that exist because of the party buff, I was enjoying public games before they popped up. Easy fix, everyone gets their own loot tables, remove rarity and replace it* with a infinite scaling difficulty stat like, effectiveness. If builds are op, it will show, if they are weak, it will show.

Ummmmm...they do. Im a casual gamer (maybe 1-2 hours a day) and i fking love poe 2.

Personally, I think the main reason casual players won't play PoE 2 is that it has lost the essence of ARPG that was the soul of Diablo, namely the joy of loot for the build you play.

It's nice to get a bunch of divine orbs or some nice unique items for sold on market, but if the chance of improving your gear is the same as winning the national lottery twice and getting struck by lightning on the same day, then it's not worth it. Otherwise, it's pretty much a craft lottery, or you're forced to trade, and instead of an ARPG, it becomes a trade/stock market simulator. This is caused by several factors

Too many base items with a large number and range of explicit stats. And unfortunately, this will get worse and worse as individual classes are added, because we still have Daggers, Swords, Axes, and Flails to look forward to. Here, I would welcome some kind of mechanic that would increase the chance of dropping something that I could use, whether based on attribute type, explicit stat type, or a combination.

Another thing is the practically mandatory stats for items such as attack speed/cast speed, movement speed, +level to gems, and for attacks, weapons with the highest possible physical damage. Related to this is the large spread in power drops on individual items, with 99% of drops being junk that can only be sold for gold or broken down into raw materials. Personally, I would limit or remove (+level to gems) from rare gear and leave it only on unique items for some mandatory explicit stats, or move them to implicit stats so that the spread in power drops is not so large and variability is maintained. I would also reduce the number of tiers of individual explicit stats and set ranges within the item level. In my opinion, this would lead to a reduction in power characters, but on the other hand, developers could better balance content for average gear at a certain level and could better design boss fights that don't last barely 3 seconds from a certain damage level.