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

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Kraythax#2592 написал:

I played for about 12h yesterday after work and logged off not because I had to go to bed but because I was bored. I actually went to get some work done, I had to get thorough the whole Jira board for my day job. It wasn't urgent, it could have waited til Monday but I was bored. And that there tells you all you need to know about POE2.

I played 4 druid chars trying different builds and all four of them had to SLOG through act 1. So I rolled a lightning arrow and rust king was down in 22 minutes. Not 1h and 15m like the other builds. Why? Because either lightning damage is broken from the the beach or all the other classes are. Thee game is a slog. Its like invading Omaha beach but with less dire consequences of course. You have to tediously punch your way through every pack, every boss, its a complete drag. When you roll another character you look at the campaign and think, "Oh my god, another 40h? I think I have something better to do like clean the toilets."

Maybe that is the goal of POE2? To get us to realize we have better things to do in our life than play a game? :) Nah I am just kidding, I don't think this is "on purpose" it is either bad design or bad pacing. Basically when you get into the game you have to systematically take apart groups one at a time and dodge ground effect instant death circles by the witches that are, by the way, quite hard to see. Thee game throws a flood of creatures at you quickly and it takes until mid act 2 before you have any pacing to make it feel like you have a rhythm. Once we get to the sunken city the pacing is back off again.

The game is designed around having significant AOE clear so it sends enemies at you heavenly but the AOE clear needed is a lot higher than your level. So you end up backing out and trying again, or dying and resetting the whole zone.

Lightning damage is the exception. In act 1 if you play lightning arrow and to a lesser degree spark, it feels about right. You can handle thee flood of enemies and don't get overwhelmed. You still have to dodge ground effects but are able to keep distance.

If you are playing anything Melee you are probably dripping hot wax on sensitive areas of your body as a hobby. You are in point blank and the most devastating damage in the game comes from ground effects that you MUST stand in to do damage but if you stand there and do too much damage you will die. The enemies will surround you, you dont have enough clear and you are taking lots of hits but without appreciably more countermeasures than ranger. So you end up adopting a pick and run play style. Go in, hit, once twice, ground effect, GET OUT. If you go for that third hit the ground effect hits you and you die. If the enemy is on chilled ground or shocked ground you HAVE TO go through it to do damage but you are hit with ticking damage constantly. Meanwhile lightning arrows stays safely out of range.

This is why league after league lightning variants are the meta. I predict this league lightning arrow, lightning spear and Spark will be STRONGER than last league because they will pick up the storm gem from druid and increase their damage further. Meanwhile fire, physical, and every other damage type lags far behind. Chaos damage does OK until near endgame then it falls off which isn't a surprise, even in POE1 chaos damage is difficult to impossible to scale to end game.

Frankly POE2 has a pacing and identity problem. Is the goal the slog I just did with 4 druids? Or is the goal the clear with lightning arrow? At this point you might as well remove the other classes from the game.

These fundamentals are why constantly one or two builds dominate the meta.

As it is now, 12h into the new league, I am bored already. And I haven't even gotten a char out of Act 1. Do with this information what you will but without a STRONG rethink this game will not have the longevity of its predecessor, not even close.

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MarsAstro#7928 написал:

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Phrazz#3529 написал:

I don't know if the fact that the campaign in PoE2 already feels like a chore is a game problem, a me problem or just how we're "trained" for 10+ years playing PoE1. Maybe it's inevitable

I honestly do think that 10+ years of playing PoE has a lot to do with, because I get the feeling that most of the people like me who have little or no experience with PoE1 just don't feel the same way as y'all do.

I think it's way easier for us to engage with the game for what it is, instead of seeing it for all of the things it isn't. That's probably not so easy for you.

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Kraythax#2592 написал:

As it is now, 12h into the new league, I am bored already. And I haven't even gotten a char out of Act 1.

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Hyperspacing#5593 написал:

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MarsAstro#7928 написал:

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Phrazz#3529 написал:

I don't know if the fact that the campaign in PoE2 already feels like a chore is a game problem, a me problem or just how we're "trained" for 10+ years playing PoE1. Maybe it's inevitable

I honestly do think that 10+ years of playing PoE has a lot to do with, because I get the feeling that most of the people like me who have little or no experience with PoE1 just don't feel the same way as y'all do.

I think it's way easier for us to engage with the game for what it is, instead of seeing it for all of the things it isn't. That's probably not so easy for you.

This guy is part of the little 20-30 person crew on this forum that just sit here all day and try their best to make it POE 1. Its really kind of sad tbh

we get they don't like the game but they can play POE 1 whenever they want and they rather spend their time bashing a game they don't even like instead of having fun in POE 1

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kronenberg#4489 написал:

Lets be real though, I like POE2, but it's so, so much worse than POE1 in nearly every way.



They have a great template in poe1, but the Jonathan is intent on making POE2 his own game, even if it's to the detriment of the playerbase.


Map system : great in poe1, years of refinement. What did Jonathan do? A completely botched never ending, procedurally generated CIV looking thing, that takes time to load, offers less customization, is less user friendly and actually massively harder to use than the poe1 system. Not only is it simpler and less customizable, it's also harder to use. That's absolutely terrible from the devs.


Skill system: less customizable, actually harder to use than POE1 also.

Passive tree: even larger than POE1, and massively less impactful on the game.

Cooldowns, cooldowns and more cooldowns.


Back when Chris Wilson was still at GGG, they said they don't want to use cooldowns as a way to slow the player down, and think they are bad game design. Unfortunately it seems Jonathan disagrees with this, and you have constant cooldowns and charge required bs everywhere.

What the devs are doing right now is acting as the fun police. People are finding ways to make fun, fast builds like you see in POE1, and the devs are hitting it with the nerf bat each league.


They have a severe ego issue at GGG right now and it needs to stop. You can't tell people what fun is via nerfing popular builds, but they have to because most people don't want to play how Jonathan thinks we should be playing.

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Hyperspacing#5593 написал:

False. POE 2 is putting up 3x-4x the playerbase than POE 1 has ever had in its 10+ years of running. The numbers don't lie. The players OVERWHELMINGLY chose poe 2.

Its not a detriment to the playerbase. They are making a smart business decision on trying to capture 2 different playerbases...which they did and are doing very well. I'll never go back to POE 1 and there are tens of thousands of us.

The bones of endgame are there. They will make it better in the next league and they made it clear they know they promised it but don't want to put out a half ass job

THe game is not even 60% complete chill out

Thats cause if you want a fun 1 button clear game...go play POE 1.

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Thats cause if you want a fun 1 button clear game...go play POE 1.

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Johny_Snow#4778 написал:

Just to counter the shills - PoE 2 has already lost half of its population in an year - 570k at launch, 290k on Friday. Mind you, this was a FREE weekend, so in reality this number is even less. Despite the huge "hype" surrounding the Druid the league had a worse start than the previous one, which was in the summer. Finally, the issues are not only with gameplay but also with performance, pretty horrible when you are trying to make free players pay.