The state of PoE2 development

Dear GGG and community,

So, PoE2 has been in early access for a while now. Lots of things a good. Some things are even great. And some things are absolutely horrible and i can't help but wonder why the horrible aspects have not been adressed long ago.

Here's a few of the horrible things from the top of my mind:

- If you happen (for whatever reason, the reason does not matter here) to die on a map boss, you instance regenerates and your explored map goes *POOF*. This makes sense during the campaign, but makes ABSOLUTELY no sense during a map, as mobs do not respawn (that would be exploitable for xp). Instead, it forces the player to either reexplore a new map where the player may or may not have parts of the map tagged as cleared already. Or simply quit the map.

- Portals are no longer teleport limiters, but death counters. This is all good and fine (excellent even if you are a loot/disenchant hoarders). But it feels odd that the more modifiers you have on a map, the less portals (deaths) you get.

- IF you use up your last portal (death), the last portal STAYS up instead of vanishing, and the world map will state that the map is in progress rather than saying "map attempted". This part worked before Dawn of the Hunt league. Why broken now?

- Minions (and yes, i am an avid minion player and therefore also slightly biased) movement AI seem to have improved slightly, but they STILL block eachother during narrow pathing, as does regular mobs. This seems like a major core issue that ought to have been looked at and solved before even going early access.

- Speaking of the above pathing issues, this also means that you (GGG) will have trouble balancing minion build in general, as pathing issues (and more) give a wrong impression of minion build strengths and weaknesses.



There are many MANY more issues, but these were just a few of which i find extremely odd to be allowed to exist for such a prolonged period of time.

- Important addendum of a large and GLARING issue:

If a player (client) does not have all graphics streamed/loaded/insertinternaljargonhere, do NOT allow large encounters to start as this will/may mean that the player (client) can not see/render effects. Noone likes to die to something they can not see.

"

Onds#6941 написал:

- Important addendum of a large and GLARING issue:

If a player (client) does not have all graphics streamed/loaded/insertinternaljargonhere, do NOT allow large encounters to start as this will/may mean that the player (client) can not see/render effects. Noone likes to die to something they can not see.

if you haven't lifted the size limit form your shader cashe already i highly recommend doing so. it helps with that a lot

i play minions too, and they perform not well.

also if i use the key to move the minions they not attack for a few seconds they stand next to the mobs and dont attack every time i command them i got this delay.

there should be a command toolbar to set these to defensive or aggressive or move to my direction.

the survivability is also bad i got a bunch of defense minion nodes and the most of the time they dead and i need to wait for the respawn, some bosses oneshot all my minions with some attacks and the fight takes then minutes.

i think they are in a really bad state also since the dmg nerf i invested around 30 div in gear and its not much better.

"

Reactor#5977 написал:

i play minions too, and they perform not well.

also if i use the key to move the minions they not attack for a few seconds they stand next to the mobs and dont attack every time i command them i got this delay.

there should be a command toolbar to set these to defensive or aggressive or move to my direction.

the survivability is also bad i got a bunch of defense minion nodes and the most of the time they dead and i need to wait for the respawn, some bosses oneshot all my minions with some attacks and the fight takes then minutes.

i think they are in a really bad state also since the dmg nerf i invested around 30 div in gear and its not much better.

I can relate to some of these issues.

Since spectres were reintroduces with their new mechanics, the only low cost spectre (for the variety node damage bonus, i forgot which one) is the terracotta soldier.

Without using the minion-move hotkey, they do absolutely nothing.

And even when using these, skills (support gems) linked to them seem to not work at all in most cases, whereas they gain different movement abilities and graphics in (VERY) rare cases, indicating that something is blocking their proper function in most cases.

But, tl:dr; general mob pathing (which ought to be a SUPER priority), and by proxy minion pathing (class inherited i am guessing), is in a very poor shape right now.

glad game is in EA and some of those things will be adressed in later patches...

"

GatoPreto1718#7829 написал:

glad game is in EA and some of those things will be adressed in later patches...

Here's hoping... But i am not sure what is happening to PoE development in general these days.

They used to fix things rather fast and develop new things rather fast too. Over the years everything seems to have slowed down. That isn't necessarily a bad thing quality wise in general, but in this case quality also seems to have gone downwards.

- They implemented expedition with PoE2-EA, but there _still_ isn't an expedition locker, which ought to be extremely simple to implement.

- The pathing issues are still present in PoE2-EA, although an obvious issue from the start. It ought to be relatively easy to have pathing entities "speak" to eachother (Short example: Tell entity i wan't to move in your direction, but you are blocking me // Receiving entity moves if possible, or sends a similar message to the entity blocking it // and so on). Sure, this might make pathing cost slightly more performance and/or make it slower, but heck, not a bad things as the mob speed in general is often on the stupid side of fast. Very far from the initial PoE2 demo videos of tactical movement and skill usage.

--
Edit:
- Not to mention a "new league" which is basically just ghost haunting with a side of shallow NPC dialoque
--

So yeah...

I don't know what is happening at GGG, but something is going downhill for sure.

I just checked out the game for the last few days after quitting at Launch. Almost all of the issues that caused me to quit back then are still present:

1> Non-rewarding loot drops during campaign in league start/SSF scenarios.
2> Terrible imbalance in end-game skills/power level, and really clunky skill progression for some classes.
3> Weird terribly OP builds 1 shotting everything, and bosses which are "1 shot them or die instantly" in difficulty.
4> Pathing and other bugs which really stall your progression, forcing you to reset long campaign map trudges that get REALLY tedious.
5> Seemingly, for no reason, making certain things total progression stalls that seem to only exist to slow down/ frustrate the player instead of introduce legitimate gameplay dynamics.

I had told myself to wait for release to fully gauge this, but I am really disappointed that I paid money for such a terrible experience. It wouldn't be bad if it was a one time fee, but adding in micro transactions to such an unfinished game should be against Steam developer TOS.

I agree that development is extremely slow... They must have made absolute BANK when they released this game. There were hundreds of players playing at the same time so they have easily sold a couple of million copies. At least 100 mil straight cash from a pre-release... Then you got the packs, I got hooked and bought the last supporter pack which I can't even believe myself. I have never spent more than $10-$20 on a game with microtransactions..

So basically, no excuse. The development of this "pre-release" is terribly slow give the experience of GGG and the amount of money they made and also not just slow, completely non-dynamic. Like I get it big patches take time but little bugs should be getting fixed DAILY! Instead we haven't seen a real patch in months. The last one was for microtransactions only which was a joke. People paid money for this game.

Also, the saddest part is, I don't think ANYONE from GGG even reads these forums. People post some good stuff on here and we never see any replies from GGG staff.. I'm a bit disappointed given that I spent $500 on this game and I'm one of the few people who doers enjoy it and more so than poe1.