I recently picked up poe2 (still on the campaign on cruel difficulty). LE is a great game and I have around 1k hours into it and even though it is far superior to poe2 in some aspects, the two major being the skill system and the crafting, there are some parts that poe2 does much better. My biggest issue with LE is the setting or basically the feel of the world it self. The maps in the campaign are to linear and corridor like and the campaign is not very good. The huge icons above the npcs (armor, brain-respec, etc.), the possibility to access a waypoint not standing on a waypoint or accessing a forge not close to one takes away all immersion and world building. What is the purpose to even have a forge if there is absolutely no need to approach it? All this makes LE feel like a test-your-build-simulation instead of an aRPG. I have not yet reached poe2s endgame but so far the world experience in poe2 has been superb and I really hope EHG will become inspired to focus more on the world-setting of their game.
Theyâve made some improvement to the campaigns over the years I think the first act got a pretty nice overhaul in 0,9 if Iâm not misremembering. But their focus is endgame right now, not campaign. I agree PoE 2 does campaign pretty well but the endgame is shit. I much prefer the situation LE or PoE 1 is in
dreadnought? Just to name one of many examples in PoE2 that is completely stupid ^^. But Yeah we have a lot of corridors in both games and none of them delivers an open world kind of feeling. Then again they are designed that way.
Like all other ArpGs where you need to do mental gymnastics to call it RP wihtout getting laughed at.
In 0.1 (the first open accessible version) PoE 2 is definitely vastly superior then LE. Though GGG is a large company already and hence expected.
But the focus to build a game âfrom the ground upâ is a overall better focus then the mismatched one LE does. If their campaign Acts would be released in a manner to make it feels like a âdecent story closureâ of some kind rather then not resolving anything ever (as currently is the case) then that would be a completely different perception.
Basically a live-service game has a severe importance on the âhook-line-sinkerâ concept of design, with us customers being the âfishâ in the metaphor there.
The hook being the first few minutes of gameplay, usually Act 1. With a faulty hook you can barely catch a fish after all.
The line being the campaign commonly, itâs meant to best-case cause you the urge to play more⌠and worst-case it simply shouldnât âsnapâ. A snapped line causes the fish to get away.
And the sinker is to ensure you stay, which is the end-game, providing simply great gradually more challenging gameplay which rewards you step by step all the way through. A bad sinker causes âmovementâ which the metaphor is for grating sudden changes. Like the flow from normal monolith to empowered, which is a grating change in difficulty rather then a fluent progression.
So people are hooked and the line is steady in PoE 2, people simply wait for it to solve the last bit.
But in LE the sinker is relatively decent, not perfect⌠but decent. The line though is as flimsy as it gets. Thatâs a worse return for them overall then it should be.
I donât think the focus there was on the RP segment. Rather the immersion. LE does a surprisingly bad job in immersing you in the world. The more immersed you are the more likely you simply forget things around you distracting you from it, instead urging you on to experience more. Combined with solid gameplay itâs a sale for the majority of people out there which could be a potential target audience, everything else are simply the âdetailsâ beyond. But itâs then universally seen as âgoodâ.
Letâs just agree to disagree
Not really⌠you canât expect a fresh release to have the content depth of a game having passed that stage and being more then 5 years on the market. Thatâs the whole development time of PoE 2 already⌠and LE also obviously had development time before people got to play it.
They got a campaign which ends at a reasonable position, explaining the transition and being overall a âsmooth experienceâ without grating difficulty changes. The balancing details need some work (crafting specific mostly as was said, and providing class content) but itâs as rock solid as it comes gameplay wise. LE is not after all that time.
PoE 2âs end-game is hence put on the backburner and you can feel it. Miniscule amounts of development time. Actually⌠as much dedicated development time as LE has since its full release roughly.
In the grand total PoE 2 has a solid campaign, a solid gameplay loop and a functioning market (as little as that aspect is liked, itâs functioning well comparatively).
LE on the other hand has a sub-par campaign, a barely functioning market, the crafting is also barely functioning (but still better then PoE 2 currently) and end-game is still lackluster too. It has no major redeeming qualities actually, theyâre all âokâ but not âgreatâ. Thereâs been a distinct lack of polishing all over the game.
Given that PoE 2 is known to focus on the end-game during EA as well as crafting through the content coming during that time we can expect a far more polished state by the end of it, for both major shortcomings. At the time of release⌠which is already known to provide the 3 Acts not implemented yet to finish the core story rather then enforcing a replay in higher difficulty.
Now look at LE. What exactly would you decide to be in a âpolishedâ state since 1.0? And not talking about the âcommon release issuesâ like balancing being wonky or technical issues overseen. I mean core mechanics which work properly together with the other ones provided in a smooth and long-term working manner that doesnât produce grating issues?
The only major weakness of PoE 2 is the lack of solo-player focus (you need the market basically like in PoE 1 or a hefty amount of knowledge) as well as the grating trade mechanic they have.
Cairn 
PoE 2 is basically in every relevant aspect worse than PoE 1. It feels worse, it feels less snappy, it doesnât feel as good to progress your character, I can go on and on, and thatâs not even mentioning the doomed endgame system they currently have and crafting system aswell. Doesnât matter if they import basically every single endgame mechanic into PoE 2 it will still be an inferior game to PoE 1. I like PoE 1 more than I do LE for reference. But LE gives me something different, its not just straight up inferior to PoE 1, it has some nice features that arenât there in PoE 1. So basically, besides the art I guess, PoE 2 just doesnât attract me at all. Iâve played it for about 200 hours now and it just doesnât click at all. Iâm sure there are many other PoE 1 players who feel the same way as me
Yes, and thatâs fine. Thatâs flavor. Flavor is distinct from quality though. A well created mechanic is a well created mechanic, personally liked or not.
And PoE 2 is by design created in a way to feel different then PoE 1. Otherwise GGG wouldâve stayed with their plans to have it simply be a PoE 1 Expansion basically⌠but that wasnât done.
The gameplay feel is so distinctly different compared to PoE 1 that it mandated a new game to be made as the target groups are distinctly different.
But whatâs not up for discussion is the quality of the creation. While I personally also enjoy the PoE 1 campaign more in terms of the story itself and lore⌠PoE 2âs is simply better told in terms of pacing and presentation.
As for the gameplay⌠if you donât enjoy the style it has for it then obviously youâll like it less. But âsnappyâ? Outside of bugs (and thereâs still a chunk of em) the execution of their combat mechanics is actually better then in PoE 1, GGG learned a few things definitely.
They dropped the ball with content implementation though, the trials are atrocious for their positioning and method compared to the lab in PoE 1. And that has nothing to do with likling/disliking, itâs just unfitting. I personally enjoy Sanctum a lot over lab⌠but still⌠lab is better for where itâs put anyway.
Liking something and the objective quality are 2 distinct different things. I can congratulate game devs for a well done product and not touch it with a stick from 10 feet away.
Hence why I said lets agree to disagree but you seem to want to discuss why I donât like the game
Because thatâs not what you did.
You spoke against it being not a âsuperior executed gameâ compared to LE.
Which is simply wrong.
You like LE more? Thatâs another topic, and nothing to say against it.
I like âForever Skiesâ over âRaftâ as well, thematic and feel⌠but âRaftâ is simply the superior game in terms of execution. Far more polished and with mechanics that interact properly with each other while âForever Skiesâ has some seriously grating issues. Still like it more.
Uhh yeah. You said PoE 2 is âdefinitely vastly superior than LEâ.
It is. It has a better executed storyline, the combat mechanics are more refined, the core mechanics work better together and it has also a similar amount of content to LE 1.1 in total at the stage of 0.1.
Thatâs quite telling of the future prospects respectively.
Once more, it has nothing to do with personal liking there. Iâm not playing PoE 2 a lot given the end-game isnât polished enough for a Standard player like me which doesnât replay campaign often as well as the crafting mechanics being underdeveloped still.
But that just makes it less enjoyable for me personally but in the grand scheme of things⌠itâs better designed by magnitudes.
Also to put it into comparison⌠D3 is a game which is better designed then Torchlight Infinite⌠but I wonât even touch D3 while Iâll play Torchlight Infinite.
Again, lets agree to disagree that PoE 2 is vastly superior to LE
PoE2 just is more fleshed out because its new.
I promise you in 0.7 or 1.6 or whatever in the future its going to look entirely different, and have entirely different feel. it right now is more like a new single player game that got released.
The story in both poe1/poe2 is better told to the player then LE. And all them have nothing on the story aspects of diablo games.
I quite enjoy the thematic aspects of LE even if they are more game rule based. like for example sentinel was previously a smith/soldier in rahyeh army. He defected seeing the horrors said army was doing, he is morally opposed to this invasion/power grab.
So what are his 3 masteries? Void knight, Paladin, And forge guard. The masteries are explained iirc as almost âother yousâ you are selecting a timeline to follow, this was better explained when you had to go through the little quest and talk to the shades of the classes. A bit of a loss of story telling there. But it means in some timelines, the sentinel rallies against evil, becoming a paladin. other times he becomes touched and corrupted by the void in his fight against orobyss. And other times he simply focuses on what he always knew, the forge.
its a little bit like dark souls, where you sort have to pick up on the hints/information presented and piece it together yourself rather then it just being directly told to you.
unfortunately a lot of the story telling early on for characters and the world got deleted/reworked because people complained about the campaign being too long. the new chap 1 does a good job of introducing you to the epoch and stuff though and explains more about the last refuge and how it came to be. But you gotta again read the little lore papers spread about in chapter 2 to learn about what happened to balthus.
And tbh the stuff like the forge is extreme fluff. saying that this is world building or immersive is such a low hanging fruit imo. we are picking up magic shards to slam into the items, they could rework the forge to be part of the epoch and then suddenly it makes sense, we are using the magic of our pocket mcguffin to do it, now its totally in world cause thats not silly at all
And you wont even begin to understand the rage that would happen if you do any kind of crafting you had to walk up to the damn forge.
Yeah, likely. Past 1.0 the game will definitely transform like all live-service games do.
But⌠to put it into perspective⌠LE never had even remotely that magnitude of coherence, and itâs what the game misses as the biggest aspect.
Yeah, because it was âpower given to the playerâ and nobody wants that to be taken away. But to be fair⌠it would be sensible to have your own space in the end of time, where a forge is⌠and it being besides the campaign places the only parts where you can do it actually.
And the shards are a major issue actually, the prevalence of them is just so extreme (outside of rare ones) that theyâre overbearing. Solely from a itemization standpoint they shouldnât drop in the first place anymore since the inclusion of shattering runes, hence increasing the value of items indirectly since lacking affixes would have at least some value to be acquired that way.
But thatâs another topic in itself.
EHG has kinda a proclivity to provide QoL which could instead be used for a ton of immersion details⌠and ignoring QoL bits which would have no immersion impact but do have distinct gameplay ones. The âspreadsheet simulatorâ fear is massive while the answer to circumvent it is generally to cause everything which is displayed in such a manner (like the forge) to not only be functional (which shard storage is in no way) but also respectively rare enough (and balanced to drop in the according amounts at any stage of the game) to fit the situation nonetheless at least somewhat.
You might want to say that this is a personal matter because if you say so and claim that this a general objective observation then a lot of people will tell you that you are wrong⌠completely.