In the end it comes down to personal preferences but what he said about boss fights is right! When I fought the Arbiter in POE2 for the first time you truly get that feeling of being in danger and fear. But I still like LE way better when it comes to mapping and getting to bosses in POE2 is a nightmare.
Grim Dawn is relatively fast-paced, way faster than Diablo 4 at least. It’s very slow at the start, but end-game you’re fast, especially with the movement options from the second DLC.
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“sense of real danger or tactical decision-making” and “barely staying awake” are the opposite gameplay styles. Chess player might don’t touch any figure for a few minutes, but be in the maximum focus mode all this time. On the other side, some “fast-paced” player might spam all the buttons every second, while watching movie to keep himself awake.
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Sure but you cant really compare chess to this kinda game.
I dont think Arpgs will ever have tactical decision making. They are action games not tactical games. They instill you with muscle memory that you will use as you learn/improve at fights and playing the game.
PoE2 is probably the most long winded combat arpg so far, and I wouldnt describe it as “Cerebral” or “Tactical” it has more nuance in the button presses, but it quickly becomes muscle memory, you dont dodge roll because you thought about it, you make a split second decision to roll out of the way of the big ass slam incoming. You dont go “well if I dodge roll, then I cant do x y or z”
You learn the enemies tells, react to them instinctively and hit your combos based on the real time events happening.
Yes, totally. Still, it feels a bit different in POE 2, even though I wouldn’t call it tactical either. You need at least to assess situation in more details there. For example, choosing optimal moment to parry, managing your frenzy charges, even dodging is somewhat more meaningful usually, than my current experience in LE, where you often can’t see separate attacks because it’s way too swarmy. POE 2 is lacking tactical gameplay too, but it’s there at least at the very low scale, and even in such small dose, it changes feeling of the game quite a lot.
I wonder how it would feel like if instead of each pack of monsters there would be one strong monster instead.
This post sounds like it was written by someone who never even got to the FIRST actual boss, let alone multiple.
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Actually, I just played a bit more of POE 2 and decided that it currently sucks 
Endgame is not as bad as in 0.1, but it’s still not really interesting. Will probably not play this season anymore.
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What does poe2 whiteknight forget in LE
God forbid a new season comes out and players are trying to have fun
and relax… can’t be having any of that.
This sort of problem is super easy to solve. You want meaningful decisions in combat? Find something that relies on Cooldowns for a lot of its power. Then you have to decide when to use them, and will have less power outside of those windows for chunkier combat. Gate your power behind power windows, that should help.
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Stop embarressing yourself Jonathan. Dont you have a game to fix?
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Poe 2 is that way 
where you will get that “meaningful combat”
But I’m 100% sure you’ll be on their forums saying the same thing.
Also no one is making you play LE, there’s a uninstall button that you can fully have meaningful combat with 
What are the odds you losers stop wanting to homogenize every game into the same thing? POE1 is different than POE2 is different than LE is different than D4 is different than Torchlight yada yada yada.
You have plenty of options, all have their pros and cons for certain playstyles and preferences. So why you all get so hostile to the point you’re emotional and petulant over things you don’t like in a particular game baffles me, just go play the one with the style you want. It’s truly not as complicated as you hive-minded lobotomites make it out to be.
All of these games are fun, all do things well in areas and not well in others, all will continue to change, reiterate, add/remove, tweak and transform given time. So put your main character syndrome away for a bit and enjoy what you enjoy, and if you don’t like something just move on and try it again at a later date instead of trying to make everyone else as miserable as you.
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You could use same argument, for example, for arguing to keep ancient graphic because some people like it and improving graphics take time — let LE be different and have outdated graphic, why you want to make it better?
Nothing you mentioned except POE 2 is differs in terms of blindly fighting swarm of monsters, btw. Most of the time you can’t see and don’t care what monsters you are fighting.
No, that’s a pretty piss poor attempt at an analogy. If you are too stubborn, ignorant, ambivalent, or just a rage baiting troll to not be able to see very core difference in the ARPGs listed, then we have nothing to talk about. I don’t feel like going back and forth with a dullard, I’ll keep enjoying all of them regardless of the petty trolling and whining that is rampant currently.
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It’s a pretty poor piss logic, but it’s the logic you used.
I didn’t say anything about core differences between them. We are discussing pace of the combat, and it’s pretty much the same in all these games. It’s like if I would say that all these games are ARPGs and you would answer the same, that how dare I not see the core difference between them and state that they all similar in something.
It’s called Path of Exile 2, or even POE1. Even Diablo 4’s end game is challenging and hard. If you don’t like Casual ARPGs don’t play LE and leave it to those of us who want the casual enjoyment that LE gives us. Don’t ruin it for the rest of us and go play POE2.
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Masochists gonna be masochists
“It’s too easy”
K
‘Meaningful combat’ does not come from a build, it comes from the fundamental game design. Builds just make it work or break it (by not functioning or being overly functional).
In LE the combat generally is focused on creating as much damage uptime as you can through positioning and foresight of the enemy abilities. Yes, some builds nullify that entirely (and often corruption does too… which is why I deem it a bad system still for balance) and hence it’s often missed, but especially with more tanky enemies like exiled mages, nemesis or champions it becomes fairly clear. Some of them are a death sentence without knowledge of their attack patterns, things like a sudden ongoing laser, ground effects without having evade available or a traversal skill.
So yes, LE definitely as a difficulty available, but it’s not as stiffling as the PoE 2 one (with their badly implemented light-stuns or nigh impossible combination gameplay unfitting to the mobs) or as defensive focused as Grim Dawn. It’s more about fast paced decisions for positions.
Exactly, you can’t do ‘fancy’ difficulty of combat there.
But what can be done - and is done - is to provide options to handle danger through positioning. Be it the ablity to damage enemies before they trigger and rush in… or lateral movements to avoid incoming attacks… or active needed repositioning to avoid specific abilities.
What can’t be done is walking forward, spamming the attack button and standing still no matter what. This will get you killed.
That’s something which can be done in PoE 1 though for example, with a myriad of classes and builds, mostly providing gear-checks and enforcing quite little in terms of positional gameplay.
Mind you… little… it still does enforce ‘some’ there, depending on content quite a lot even.
As for OP’s points:
Positioning is meaningful and a skill-based method of combat.
Yes, it’s called ‘chaff’ and a important aspect of Hack’N’Slash games. Without ‘chaff’ you don’t get the feeling of might for your character.
Saying there’s no build diversity is laughable plainly spoken, so I won’t get into that.
As for positional play… mobility is positional play…
Agreed, difficulty scaling is bad in the game and needs work.
Have you tried Uber-Aberroth?
Yes?
You beat him on HC?
Well… gotta say you’re a complete pro then since not even the world best speedrunners of the ARPG genre have done that yet with the challenge open for that.
As for ‘high difficulty’, yes, agreed, we need high-stakes content. Designed for it. Not the lacklaster method of corruption.
That only upholds for the campaign, and even then both Lagon and Majasa are those exact encounters.
But I agree that the other bosses are lackluster. They were designed very early on in development and never got any proper update with their mechanics. Albeit I’ll mention that Timeline bosses tend to provide more of a mechanical challenge, and they showcase that decently… they’re just not properly balanced.
And top-end bosses absolutely are mechanical, nothing but mechanics basically, you can kill the majority of them without taking any substantial damage if you know how to position and handle those mechanics.
PS: I recommend ‘No Rest for the Wicked’ for a properly implemented ‘meaningful and slow paced’ top-down looter ARPG. It behaves like a souls-like.
A Hack’N’Slash is no souls-like and it’s inane to try to make it into one. GGG does feel that currently with PoE 2.
It doesn’t feel as engaging as POE 2, and I think I have idea why. In POE 2, I’m interacting with enemies in different ways — I can parry their attacks, generate frenzy charges through freezing or marking, they can push me, block my movement, stun or freeze me. In LE, they just do damage and I just do damage, it’s the only dimension where we are interacting. I can do different combos with my shadows, like using cloud which generates shadow every second, generate 4 shadows with other skill, use health potion replaced with damaging potion before bursting enemies, have two different skills to activate shadows depending if I need AoE or single damage, but during all of this, enemies are not involved at all, they are just there. I just repeat those combos as if I’m alone, the same every time. The only interaction with them is auto-attacking them for mana, similar to auto-attacking for frenzy charge in POE 2. But it’s not enough, such combat doesn’t feel engaging.
I came back to POE 2 and the combat there feels so much better for me.