Personally, I think the biggest issue with PoE2 is best summed by a phrase one of the streamers said (I think Ziz?): “Players are playing PoE2 and mobs and are playing PoE1”.
The mob density, but especially their speed, don’t really fall in line with their vision.
At least someone does now 
Maybe in the next patch, monsters will join. It was already quite a lot of balance changes for one patch, I wouldn’t expect changing everything perfectly in one iteration.
I actually don’t think that’ll be possible without significant deep changes. As mentioned… AI wise.
The faster a game is the more direct enemies need to behave, complex changes can’t be reacted to with that after all. But the slower the pace is the more intricate the AI needs to behave to enforce choices to be taken to make up for the ‘empty time’ otherwise gained.
So that’s plainly spoken not something which PoE 2 will be able to achieve in 1 or even 2 patches plainly spoken. Also it has showcased nothing before to sustain the notion that this was actually the goal.
Slower paced yes, souls-like combat itself no… we still got the original ‘style’ of gameplay supported in 0.1 after all, just more similar to ‘early PoE 1 days’. But 0.2 specifically changed that in a rather severe way, it’s nothing like old-school PoE but rather a numerical mess from designs.
I think it’s quite obvious that GGG want and can to change POE 2 a lot. 0.2 already very different from 0.1. It has nothing with empty dreams.
Numerical changes and pure AI or mechanical changes are a different ballpark.
Ones math. The other is multi-level design issues.
Nevermind, I have no idea what you are talking about, doesn’t look interesting to argue about some abstract issues.
It’s not abstract issues, it’s pure workload simply.
Changing values for damage/health/skill damage and so on is easy. It’s a value. Needs thoughts about balancing but it rather easy to do.
AI changes which would be needed to allow the slow-paced method to work well is a different issue. It’s designing those behaviors, ensuring that they are used in the right amount and at the right time as well as also designing them so they improve the gameplay rather then hindering it. That’s simply much harder to do.
Hence why I say they can’t do the ‘souls-like’ goal easily. You can take a look at how enemies behave in ‘No Rest for the Wicked’ compared to PoE and see clearly what the difference is, that should provide enough feedback on what is roughly needed to make it work.
Well, then, that seems to be in contradiction. The videos they showed before launch, and the entire gameplay up and until 0.2 was the polar opposite of their “vision” that they clumsily implemented in 0.2. To make a finer point, the amount and level of the nerfs in 0.2 wasn’t on any reasonable radar of players and streamers alike.
Sure, nerfs are expected in any early access. However, what they did was an entire shift of the gameplay to a Dark Souls style game that the majority of players didn’t sign up for, largely based on what they’d seen and the gameplay being shown by streamers after launch.
So, in that respect, this “vision” came out of nowhere, even if they talked about it previously. That leaves one of two possibilities: Either they used 0.1 to pull in the playerbase and then pull the rug from underneath them once they had enough numbers, or they didn’t know how to implement their “vision” (and still don’t), so they went with the laziest route. As I think about it, two things can be true at the same time.
The end result? GGG lost trust with players. One step forward, ten steps back. Just my thoughts.
Yes, which I also mentioned.
It has not been showcased at all.
People are saying ‘but they only had 4 months to dial it in properly’… which is nonsensical, it’s simply a fuck-up of epic proportions in several ways at once.
They have over a decade of experience from PoE 1.
They had several years development while gathering further experience through experimentation in PoE 1.
They detached it from PoE 1 because of the experience being too different to handle in the ongoing game.
They had several play-tests before the early access.
And they had 4 months of substantial feedback amount from players on how their game feels.
The feedback also was clear-cut. ‘Campaign is hard but enjoyable, drop-rates suck though, we feel like we have no way to equip our characters properly, crafting is too lackluster, end-game is not fleshed out enough, several mechanics aren’t well placed or designed’. Fairly much a massive consensus on major points overall even.
Nigh nobody enjoyed Ascendancy being behind Sanctum or Ultimatum for example. And feedback was ‘Warrior feels clunky and slow’.
So what was their return? Broad nerfs through the bank… which is utterly idiotic to say it mildly. Everything brought down to ‘clunky and slow’ gameplay.
There was ‘meaningful combat’ during 0.1, outliers existed, they had to be reigned in, expected! Some bad ones also existed.
For example grenade based merc was ‘fine’, not well played since combination play without any major upside, explosive grenade sucks a little.
The answer? Increase cooldown from 3 seconds to 8 seconds! That’ll surely make it feel better! A clear no-brainer, right?.. That’s the level of thought which went into changes, they are mind-boggling.
But the follow up discussion was about a potential ‘yeah, it’s still too quick, so how could GGG make it reliably slower without sacrificing enjoyability?’ and that led to the necessary changes for mob speed, which since the focus is on combination play now (unlike what was promised in interviews before… ‘No, cooldowns in ARPGs is bad design!’ and ‘Combination play is bad, it’s just muscle memory!’) mandates severe functional changes on a basic level.
Obviously GGG won’t be able to provide that in a short time.
Hence their options are returning to the baseline before roughly… or taking another extra year for development at least. So they’ll return.
Also I don’t think Jonathan is a good Game Director, showcased today. Confrontational, dismissive, easily offended. If you wanna create a product beloved by a large crowd then you gotta take some hits for the ‘vision’… because visions also can be wrong simply, unenjoyable. So your options is to create something which you personally enjoy (hence a nice hobby) or something which customers will also pay for (A job, can come close to the hobby but still a job).
100% agreed, especially after today’s disaster of a interview.
PoE 1 director needing to save the ass of the PoE 2 director at nearly every… single… question. Big ‘ooff’ definitely.
I could jump in and further your points, but you laid it out pretty damned intelligently. The explosive grenades nerf is a good example, but I feel strongly compelled to add the Hexblast nerf in there as well. There was just no reason for it at all. Hexblast needed a buff, not a nerf. This is what leads many to believe that they didn’t meticulously go through these changes and brainstorm them over pizza. They just blitzed through them.
Add in disabling GF until some future date TBD is basically telling everyone to stop playing mage types who don’t have armor (still broken) or evasion. Why they couldn’t just say it was going to have changes in the future and leave it in for the meanwhile is just pure laziness.
I get you but it was the right call. If the poe2 patch was amazing then imagine the devs that worked for x months for this patch to see how the players react to all the cool stuff they did but oh wait…not really that many players. Of course a lot would still play since there are many people who prefer LE over PoE 1 and 2 but yknow a totally different player count on S2 release.
I cannot wait for the update though.
I didn’t cave in the hype so I wouldn’t know how the game is.
But I’ll tell you this, the fact that you have to pay to play an unfinished game which will be free by the time it’s released is such a ludicrous practice. You are essentially paying to be their beta testers.
Tencent pushed for it to be separate game because they had the biggest stake in GGG, as soon as they took over completely the game was screwed, the final nail in the coffin was everyone who mattered left, now tencent gonna do what tencent does and beat that cash cow into dust
GGG seem to be working overtime to fix the 0.2 disaster. Good for them I guess, the game is probably going to be much better after a week
Tencent has a no interference policy with their companies unless they do badly… then they interfere heavily.
Also the split of the game was a decision from the developers, very clearly communicated for the reasoning as well… and also very very understandable for the ‘why’ behind it.
So that is simply nonsense, sorry to say.
I agree with the sentiment that PoE 2 isnt in a great place, but the playerbase is also a large part of the problem. The game is in beta and players, especially us PoE vets, are treating the game like its fully produced. Imagine if LE received the level of backlash PoE has had the past week during its what, 4 years of beta?
I still dont know wtf happened to Chris, he just went poof. Mark is a great dev and understands what we want, Jonathan on the other hand is trying to make a game for himself, he is weirdly out of touch with the playerbase.
i hope LE doesn’t introduce these combo mechanics, its terrible for an arpg it doesn’t feel good at all. I already have a hard time remembering how to play the game so adding combos would just complicate things to the point I would go do something else
If I were to say 1 thing I “hate” about PoE 2. its the combo system. First and foremost players should have as much agency as possible, but with combos GGG is effectively pigeonholing us into a certain playstyle. Not a fan at all.
I said a long time ago and hinted at it in this thread I hope LE doens’t lose it’s identity or try to copy PoE 2.
I was EXTREMELY nervous when they added dodge roll in this game. I don’t want to dodge in Last Epoch, I want to face tank and become a god. I’m also worried about WASD implementation. It’s fine as long as you don’t balance the game around Dodge or WASD. Just hope EHG realizes that.
LE was never intened to be balanced around these features where PoE 2 was created and balanced around Dodge, WASD and combos. They are completely different designed games.
I think the main issues is it’s in Beta and there aren’t enough Weapons, Skills or Combos. So onces we have twice as many weapons, more skills and then all of a sudden you can get creative with Weapon Swap and combos. That will feel great, smooth and fun.
This is another reason why people are judging too quickly the game is literally not even half finished yet. So they only can judge off what is currently in game which isn’t much.
Of course combos feel bad now, game is half done. It’s barebones. Give it a year and lets see what they cook up. I don’t think reversing now works when the games core design is meant for a souls like combo game.