I know already (from numerous questions Mike answered on his friday streams) that the team doesn’t want the campaign to be a slog of difficulty that requires intensive farming and min-maxing - and that’s fair, I agree with that, even.
But as it stands now, starting from around the half of chapter 2 and all the way to the Maj’elka slums the game is braindead easy.
I’m sure that this is not intended - chapter 1 has enemies that can reliably hurt you with telegraphed attacks and you generally need to use your brain minimally at least when moving around and dodging attacks/grouping mobs and such (although I’d argue that even the first chapter has too much base HP regen on player characters).
After starting chapter 2 you quite literally don’t need to pay attention anymore if you just picked some normal HP and secondary defenses while leveling - it’s kind of silly the amount of non-damage older enemies and especially bosses do - it makes everything feel… soulless…
Bosses pose next to no threat, their mechanics don’t matter, mobs are just punching bags with varying amounts of HP (apart from the rare type of mob that appears every now and then that actually has damage randomly in each chapter).
What this problem actually causes, gameplay and theme-wise:
The campaign becomes boring half way through - look I understand that a hard game is frustrating for some people, but this level of non-difficulty makes it even worse - it makes it boring. There’s nothing worse than a game being boring, since a game’s only goal (when looking at its players) is for them to have fun playing it.
Campaign loses it’s atmosphere and importance - you can’t really have bosses that are iconic and actually memorable characters like the Butcher from Diablo or 2.0 launch-Malachai from PoE (or lots of famous bosses from other games - Vergil from DMC, Nameless King from DS3…) if they aren’t difficult enough to warrant satisfaction once beaten - this makes the player disconnected from the campaign, in which the NPCs cry about the Void consuming everything, while the player kills all void bosses while standing in their attacks and yawning while killing them in 20 seconds because of class and item powercreep.
There’s a reason why Lagon is actually kind of popular and talked about (either negatively or positively - I’m not gonna go into his design here) - it’s because he’s difficult enough and requires actual engagement with his mechanics.
Defensive mechanics aren’t explained to players and players aren’t taught how to play the game with an adequate difficulty curve - my friend was confused as to why he started dying randomly towards the end of the game (and especially against Majasa), since there’s a difficulty cliff suddenly in that last boss fight (which I personally love, and my friend would too, if the game actually had a difficulty curve that lead up to that fight).
This, of course, can lead into a bad experience once a player starts scaling end-game.
It appears to outsiders/potential new players like the devs don’t care enough about their game - If the campaign, which is already fairly unpolished by the standards games set these days, is on top of that too easy, it just feels like yet more lack of polish - why would anyone make a part of their game (no matter how unimportant it is - it’s still a mandatory part of this game) so… not important and basically redundant. What even is the point of it existing if it’s just to “get to the real game”. Why not have the entire game be the real game?
Closing thoughts - I know the campaign is old and that power creep has set in without rebalancing to the campaign, but I still think it’s worth mentioning that this is a problem that can and should be solved - if the classes and gear powercreep, so too should the mobs and bosses in the campaign.
I don’t want the campaign to be a slog, that’s not what I’m asking for - I’m just asking for a bit more engagement while playing it, so more people can actually think of it as “ah, time to make my character and test it out in the campaign before end game” and not “ugh, time for another waste of 3-4 hours to get through this boring ass campaign and start the real game”.
Ironically enough, as I opened the forums after posting this, here’s a new player complaining that Lagon is too hard because everything before him is piss easy and he’s a boss that actually deals damage.
Lagon isn’t even hard mechanically it’s just that the game before him is too braindead and non-engaging that this happens when a boss actually gets damage in the middle of it randomly (just like Majasa).
Have you been leveling with empty stash and without any items? Because I think that experiances can vary depends on what items you have already in your disposal…
I have to fully agree that the campaign difficulty scaling is in an awful spot. It’s boring for people with experience and it offers major pitfalls (like Lagon) for people without. I have to date no idea who EHG wants to cater to with it.
For me as a more experienced diablo-clone player the first experience of it was ‘damn, I need to play the game to see the next bit of the story’ and ‘when can I finally reach the end-game and start to at least build my character?’.
Which… to a degree is normal, I expect games to not provide a major hurdle to me in this genre at the beginning, I learn very quick but my ceiling is also a bit on the lower side as I tend to get lazy while playing.
The issue with the campaign is that it does a very bad job in providing proper turorials and explanations for the in-game mechanics… it’s the place to do that piece by piece though! And there is no proper ramp-up towards Lagon… and no proper difficulty increase either. As was mentioned, at the middle of Act 2 you become a walking murder-machine and not a single thing changes during the campaign even without any crafting… with? It becomes a walk in the park. Few exceptions during the campaign.
And then you suddenly get a boss with a minimalistic arena and - for a lot of characters at that stage - one-shot mechanics while needing to position yourself surprisingly well compare to everything else in the game. The former bosses are ‘clench button down to auto-cast and go for a drink’ difficulty rather then gradually easing the player into the prospect of more mechanical fights as the game gradually leads you to.
What part of my post that’s about the campaign being too easy did lead you to ask me if I have been leveling without items?
But to reply to your opinon - yes, experience varies with different item finds, but after playing around 15 characters the campaign is easy even if you don’t find any special items - just a normal, full rare item playthrough is too easy.
If you happen to find extremely good items the campaign becomes even more of a joke, especially the bosses that just melt like normal mobs.
Well I am asking because I have quite similar experiance when leveling with low level 3lp uniques so I decided that next time I will go HC solo char found, empty stash etc. It should be quite different journey, dont u think?
Agreed. The game has a difficulty spike that the devs have talked about before at the point where you enter empowered monoliths for the first time and it’s supposed to feel that way.
There should be a similar feeling starting at the campaign at some point.
Monoliths to empowered monoliths are a very distinct and clear-cut increase in difficulty, one which is to be expected as a player as well. ‘Did all the common stuff, not it goes to the hard things’ after all.
The campaign though does not offers this increase in difficulty plainly spoken. It is supposed to - supposed is the word - gradually ramp up in difficulty, hence causing you to have gradually harder fights and a ‘common’ progression causing you as a player to need a bit more skill. The same is supposed to happen with bosses and their mechanics, becoming more mechanical over time.
This doesn’t happen though. Act 1 promises fights which do cause you to have to act a little bit… but the scaling of the ‘old’ Acts where the bosses have never been adjusted mechanical since Lagon was implemented causes that section to be lackluster, leading over to ‘suddenly Lagon’ which throws a massive curveball as nothing prepares you properly for him, the game actually getting easier until the stage leading to him becoming far more chaotic in terms of thrown around abilities from enemies then anything you encounter before.
Yes and no.
Long before the power implosion (far too brutal to be called a creep) of 1.0, there were many, many threads stating that the campaign was too easy. In each and every one of these threads, the answer was that EHG was aware of that and that a balancing pass was on the cards before launch.
It never happened.
And yes, later, the enormous increase in power has made the campaign even easier than it used to be.
I had some hope around 0.9, when chapter 1 came out (perhaps strangely, the latest chapter added), because it turned out more interesting and challenging than the other chapters. I thought things were going in the right direction, that it was the beginning of the long awaited balance pass. But nothing else came, apart from more and more and more power to the players, and frankly I have given up hope.
To me, it is the only way to play. Sadly, it is still super easy.
In that kind of game encouraging players to create alts to use the leveling items they find, the campaign SHOULD be relatively hard for a first character. Otherwise the entire process of saving items for alts is completely pointless.
It is a walk in the park with an empty stash, why would I ever use leveling uniques, not to mention crazy stuff like 3LP legendaries, and take out every tiny bit of fun / challenge from the campaign?
Because currently those leveling uniques simply cause you to get past the boring chore without any resemblance of challenge of any kind. Which is the only reason to use them.
Actively searching for them? Just if you want to do the skips extra early, and the 10-20 minutes of saved time is simply not worth it to search for hours for those uniques and set them up accordingly to then be great to use for a second character… just not worth it, it stands in no relation.
The main problem I see that weavers items are so strong, also 2-3lp items are so common when my first char is fast running 700cc+, so when switching to fresh char and having avaliable all those low level slamed legendaries… the experiance is "one hit everything ". Maybe the level requirement of lp items should go with level of affixes decked into it? IDK, but my second char is deadthless till empowered monos which is well okish for me… but if someone looking for challange while leveling alts… there is none avaliable in the cureent state of the game. But that is just imho. Ive been only playing sentinels with suppose to be the weakest, so maybe with different chars situation is worse. Idk.
Don’t want to switch focus to another game, just want to mention that I love the policy of GGG about such things. They are making the game for themselves and hope that there are enough of players with the similar taste. Since going through very easy campaign without challenges would be a bit boring for them, they are making it hard enough to be interesting. In one interview, Jonathan said that doing otherwise would fell like they are patronizing players, which never feels good, and here we can see that it is true — by making game for someone else and patronizing poor players who can’t get trough campaign easily, LE team made campaign somewhat boring to play through.
First of all let’s not act like GGG are saints in this regard - current POE 1’s campaign is literally a “run through in a couple of hours and 2 shot bosses even with a non crit shield and 1h melee strike build” and has been like that for years, a decade even - the last time something was actually difficult was Act 4 launch Malachai.
Powercreep caught up to GGG a long time ago, POE 2 is a finally an adequate restart button that was severely needed.
Second of all, if the LE devs want to make the campaign easy, then they are doing exactly what you said GGG is - making the game for themselves, how they want it to be.
The problem at this moment is obviously power creep and lack of recent balancing to the campaign, rather than the whole design philosophy.
I remember when I first heard about LE when it was in 0.8.x beta patches still that people were actually praising parts of its campaign for “actually having to pay attention in the early game”, unlike its cotemporaries.
Oh yeah, PoE 1 campaign is way too easy too, totally agreed. But it’s not what I’m talking about, I mean that this policy of making game for themselves is very cool, in my opinion. In that interview I mentioned, it wasn’t even about difficulty, but about dark cruel atmosphere and censorship.
if the LE devs want to make the campaign easy, it doesn’t necessary mean they are making the game for themselves, most likely they are doing it for other players, while they would enjoy more playing more difficult campaign (though I have no idea about their tastes, just assuming, because it’s hard for me to imaging how to enjoy such lack of difficulty).
I am as surprised by that as Llama…
I started in 0.8 and I remember many posts at that time saying the campaign was easier than other games in the genre, none praising it for its challenge.
Maybe we all remember what fits our own feelings…
So it is working as intended 