I keep telling people PoE 2 is a beautiful souls like game the rebuttal is - NO IT ISN’T!!! It’s an ARPG!!! It’s PoE!!! Well here lies the problem even the players playing the game aren’t aware of what type of game PoE 2 is supposed to be.
The reason why GGG separated their game is so PoE 2 could be completely different type of gameplay from PoE without upsetting the players that want zoom zoom blasting. This is the Devs vision and why they did it.
I still think PoE 2 is a game of the year candidate especially once they fully launch. However it’s a game that will compete with No Rest for the Wicked another “Souls like” ARPG. Then players that like Diablo, PoE 1 etc will come to play Last Epoch.
So Last Epoch now will be in a great spot (as long as they don’t mess up their identity) Many players will come over who aren’t into souls like games and try LE after they get their fix of PoE 2 for the next couple weeks.
The GGG Devs let everyone know in this patch slower combo gameplay with a souls like focus on mechanics is their vision. The people complaining don’t understand what game they are playing. So PoE 2 has an identity crisis for now which will benefit LE season 2.
With that said really happy PoE 2 is trying new ideas for their next gen souls like ARPG. Innovation in design is always good. Now LE just has to have a great Season 2 launch and hopefully have solid servers for 200-300k players.
Played the new POE 2 patch/season for about 3 hours and gave up. It’s just not fun to do that slog of a campaign and Ascendency points all over again on a new character.
I think EGH had enough time to polish this cycle, and it looks like it will be very fun. They also fixed one of the biggest QOL issues with UI and Font scaling so now I won’t get a headache playing this on my TV after 2 hours. So yeah, pretty much done with POE2 for a while. I mean, they don’t even have Greatsword in that game yet. How do you make an ARPG and not have Swords in the game at launch, seriously?
Yea I’m very excited. LE is a very different game too which is a good thing. However EHG needs to be careful with their identity. PoE 2 was designed around WASD/Dodge. LE wasn’t and it’s a concern when they add these features. I don’t want LE to become this heavy mechanics game and change it’s design philosophy just because of PoE 2 success.
It’s one thing to add features in gameplay it’s another to have a game design around them and hope EHG knows the difference. LE is a blasting game where you facetank and build a powerful character to ignore mechanics. PoE 2 is going for souls like where if you fail mechahnics and don’t dodge constantly you die.
Souls games are finish them and move on. I’d say a major reason why so many players didn’t return for 0.2 is that there was no new story for those Dark souls tourists.
They clearly screwed up the balance of 0.2. The slowed down the players but not the enemies. And many skills/combos clearly don’t work as one would expect, i.e. no damage. It seems clear that they pushed it out early and untested.
They will absolutely roll back many of the 0.2 changes. And Jon will definitely respond to player numbers and feedback, whether he likes it or not.
Except, there is no longer any zoom zoom blasting, and that came at the expense of months worth of work by the players and their characters that are now nuked into dust.
I say this respectfully, but you couldn’t be more wrong. BG3 was GOTY because they put out a consistent product that was true to what it advertised. Great story, good gameplay. You got exactly what you knew you were going to get. There was no heavy handed, ill thought out changes handed down to the paying customers.
As I understand it, the patch notes came out about 10 hours before the servers went down for deployment of 0.2. They deliberately delayed the notes, seemingly because they didn’t want the bad press they knew was coming.
Hopefully there’s enough of people who share your point of view to pay their bills. I suspect they lost a lot of players, and to keep down this road is going to harm their success a lot. There was never a strong niche of people wanting a slow combat ARPG. Those who play an ARPG (read you vs hordes of mobs on a march to the head boss) don’t want to work hard all day to come home and work a second job for GGG. They want to blow things up and let off some steam. These players are the bread and butter of the success of ARPGs.
I know that, after losing all of my zoom zoom characters I worked on for months, I uninstalled the game and won’t look back. I’m far from alone. Before I left, I monitored their forums a bit. Sure, you had some cheerleading fanboys, but you had a lot more disgusted players either threatening to leave or have already left. And that’s just those who took the time to post.
I played 10 minutes. Didn’t even make it to the miller, and I knew all I needed to know aside from reading the patch notes. Haven’t logged back in since.
No. This is what I mean by a false sense of authority. I always advised that you manage the community, but the community doesn’t manage you. However, if you can’t even listen to the community (as evidenced by their response to the imbalance of “we’ll add more checkpoints”), then you’re tone deaf and the early success went to your head.
The only way they come around is if they have only a couple hundred players left and Tencent says “Enough. We’re taking our money and going home.” The odds of even that working are pretty slim.
I don’t agree with this statement. The promises from EA mean nothing for GOTY. The jury evaluates the state of the game on launch. And their vote counts for 90%. The public might care about that, but they only account for 10% of the final score.
You can have a game in EA saying they want to make the best RTS ever and when they launch it turns out it’s an FPS and it could still win GOTY easily if it’s a good game.
All that matters is the state of the game at launch and whether or not it’s a good game at that point. Everything else isn’t really important.
PoE 2 is for a different gamer and has been all along. It’s why I said it has an identity crisis and from your statement thanks for proving me right.
That’s fine you quit because PoE 2 isn’t a zoom zoom blast game. If it becomes that then players will quit. You see the reverse is also true. If PoE 2 becomes PoE 1 then players like myself won’t play it either. I don’t like PoE 1 and the reason I’m playing PoE 2 is because it’s not.
You aren’t alone and why I made this post. I understand that PoE 2 is a souls like, engaging combat ARPG with a focus on mechanics and weapon swap etc. You don’t understand that. Players like you are pushing back that GGG didn’t make PoE 1.5 and instead have this idea of a different game.
Of course this will cause tension but in the end PoE 2 will be a better game if it isn’t like PoE 1 and stays the course to be a completely different type of stand alone ARPG in the genre. (their player base will be far larger and PoE will be more mainstream popularity)
PoE 2 early access is a enormous success already. So you can’t zoom zoom, who cares there are other games for that which conform to the mindless blasting like Last Epoch, D4, etc. Which I will enjoy on the 17. It’s okay to have different games with different paces that offer different gameplay.
I wish both games good luck and lets be real it’s great for gamers if they are different.
Think I’ve commented on this, but it hasn’t been “all along”. You don’t design a game one way, launch it as something else for months, then suddenly yell “Abracadabra!” and make it the game you want. That would make 0.1 deceptive practice.
Not to mention that 0.2 wasn’t “oops! we missed a few bugs”. They trashed everything…including things that didn’t need to be touched. And in the end, their “meaningful combat” means being zerged by white trash mobs that move faster than you, attack faster than you, and stunlock you every time. Meanwhile, all you have to fight back with is a wet noodle.
Sure, NOW it’s a different kind of game…AFTER they took the money of a lot of people who were fed something that looked like an ARPG. This “Dark Souls” thing should have been the norm at launch so people could make informed financial decisions.
No, they won’t.
If it becomes too similar to PoE 1 though it hurts both games. Hence why that’s to be avoided.
Gameplay feel needs to stay substantially different… but the severty of how strongly it’s handled currently is beyond any reasonable amount, especially since it makes a mockery of ‘slow-paced and meaningful combat’ plainly spoken.
There’s a german saying which goes ‘Schuster bleib bei deinen Leisten’, directly translated meaning ‘Shoemaker stay with your shoe last’ (a shoe last is a tool which makes the form of a shoe btw.).
The meaning behind it is to work into your strengths and not trying to work with your weaknesses. You minimize your weaknesses and increase the visibility of those strengths instead.
For Hack’N’Slash games it’s been the reaction-based combat which also has a large baseline of equipment power taken into consideration. Equipment deciding on the difficulty of content at any moment, not solely your skill. Meaning a player with low skill can circumvent getting stuck by respectively improving their gear and ‘powering through’ until then. This commonly goes up to a degree where content becomes trivialized even, given extreme amounts of time investment. The fulfillment of a power fantasy basically.
Time investment and pure effort plays a primary role in the genre. Skill is still important but a distinct second fiddle.
In a souls-like game the exact opposite is the case. Combat is slow, methodical and based on tight evasion and positioning times, learning the - utterly vast in comparison as well - moveset of enemies down to a ‘T’. Every singular mistake is heavily punished, often single mistakes leading to a cascading failure which can end your try immediately.
In this case player skill is the primary factor. Yes, equipment makes a vast difference as well… but it plays second fiddle. There’s no DPS checks, only skill checks, more then enough people have played through Dark Souls with the broken sword only. Not a single player has done that with the starting equipment in Hack’N’Slash games as it’s a default death by game design.
You fail to understand what GGG sold the community for years.
It’s not his fault, his perception is proper.
Yours is the issue actually.
And yes, many players want PoE 1.5… which wasn’t promised either though. So yes, the perception of those people is also at fault.
Agreed on the part that games can offer different things.
PoE 2 definitely has in-built ‘zoom zoom’ builds… and quite a lot as well, or well… did in 0.1, it’s around 10-15 in 0.2.
The overall complaints aren’t that you can’t zoom, it’s that the auxiliary systems for the campaign are badly designed still and end-game sucked because it was too simplistic and repetitive + sustain of maps was shit.
End-game sustain was fixed, campaign things are getting at least gradually fixed… but GGG overnerfed to a vast degree. Hence the majority of builds don’t feel like a ‘normal build’ but actively are unable to even do their baseline designed mechanics properly since the game isn’t setting them up to do that in a common way.
And that’s simply bad balance. If intended it’s bad design. The outcome in both cases is bad though.
Exactly, 100% agreed with that part!
Which is also a major reason as to why GGG needs to dial that back, otherwise it actually counts as deceptive practices per EU law even… but that’s only for the buying time and for updates it’s ‘only’ failure to adhere with clear intent which simply isn’t the case though. It’s simply a fuck-up, exactly.
This isnt even strictly true actually. You can 1 shot pretty much every boss in souls games with enough levels and equipment if you really want to. most people just dont make this their goal, but its possible. You can to some degree, grind out power in souls games through soul farming. you still cant just afk face tank, but you can greatly reduce your margin for error.
Both sorta can exist on the same line and scale across it. Elden ring allows much more power scaling then say souls 2, etc.
Where GGGs issue lies isnt that its not “Diablo” like enough, its that they simple dont reward the player enough power through exp/enough gear ot upgrade when griding. like lets say you get stuck on the count in act1, what are you even to do? you cant “Grind gem levels” your “peak” gem level is area level determined because they are drops. You cant grind gear, cause the drop rates are abysmal, and exp is extremely weak because any given passive point is weaker then it was in poe1. grinding 3-4 levels in poe1 potentially means a decent chunk of health, armor, or damage. you get basically half as much in poe2, so griding levels is way less meaningful way to improve your character.
They really just need to consider the scaling of players. the game works at end game, and mostly works during the campaign, but less optimal/meta picking players just dont have any option to “Fix” their build by getting better items/passives. its just pick new skills/weapon types lol.
All builds work in poe1, because there is always a way to improve your build during the campaign, be it grinding exp/gem levels, or grinding out gear in side areas. Thats just never an option in poe2.
Yes, exceptions apply, but this is not what the common player will experience. A few might, and even then skills are necessary to combine the respective - sometimes relatively odd - combinations together and time them.
Much like in Hack’N’Slash games there’s people which have insane amounts of skill and can do content vastly earlier then other people. Like in PoE 1 where ‘Tie23’ killed uber-elder at level 23.
Can I do it? No chance. Can you do it? Extremely unlikely… but people exist which are that good, the ‘magicians’ in that area.
Exactly, which is a necessity to handle, I fully agree there. There have been several issues named in the last interview, and some have been brushed off. As well as the ones named by you.
Monster speed will be partially tackled but the overall issue won’t be.
Stunlocks also won’t be handled properly, when your warrior has a friggin 1,5 second wind-up time for their skill and gets reset during that over… and over… and over… then something’s clearly badly designed.
And currency drops are also extremely lackluster in PoE 2. In PoE 1 you got the crafting bench, a severely higher amount of rare item drops and also several auxiliary mechanics supporting you when it doesn’t work out well. Like divination cards that can be farmed at specific areas for a target-farming method as well as alchemy orbs being a lot more prevalent, hence providing at least a ‘baseline’ to achieve relatively easy which ‘suffices’ to get through.
Those things are simply a difference currently.
The same reason as to why I even reply to troll posts at times. When there’s something viable to talk about I pick that up and then get into detail. Not only do other people join in on the conversation but it’s also visible for people not joining in. Arguments have value even beyond the person they’re addressed towards directly.
PoE isnt having an identity crisis, the player base is. We all went into PoE 2 knowing it would play very different, yet people still expect the game to play similar to PoE. If you know GGG, you know that they are open to and will provide huge changes depending on what we as a community suggest/criticize, the game we have now will change by leaps and bounds by 1.0.
We are still missing at least 50% of 1.0’s content along with the numerous balance changes that come with it, treat the game for what it is, a very early beta.
While I agree with this, im extremely apathetic to the game at this point. I enjoyed 0.1 after a few tweeks.
Then 0.2 was a shitfest just like 0.1 start.
Its like pulling teeth with GGG, thats the only reason we have this “Vision” meme, because no one signs up for a souls game or monster hunter and does not know what they are getting, but those games are enjoyable with systems that work and feel good enough to progress with, farming a rare gem from a monster is still very zen state and while rng, its target farming.
Meanwhile GGG makes a similar style of game to widely popular genres and has constant shit screaming in the community, why? because it just isnt fun.
I will play MH/Souls games leaps and bounds before I play poe2 again, its a steaming pile that goes 2 steps forward then 10 steps back as GGG in their own words “Force the medicine down”
I dont want to have the medicine thanks, GGG can kick rocks with PoE2, as we see with the current player values, they did not capture a returning core audience. it now has similar numbers to poe1, and we will see if players return for 0.3 and stick around.
Right now the game just isnt good, and GGG needs to rethink their own ideas about what makes a slow fun game. Grimdawn is leagues slower then any other arpg ive played, and I still had some fun with it, even if I dont really like it personally I can see what its going for.
PoE2 right now is just a famous name slapped onto slop with poor planning.
Clearly it has been, the Devs said this before launch. In many interviews and why they created a separate game to fill a different vision.
Acting like there was some sort of bait and switch is being hilariously disingenuous.
It’s early access, aka BETA!!! They didn’t want to nerf and gut completely broken overpowered builds that players found and keep nuking everything week after week. When you do that then players feel disenchanted because they have to keep switching builds or don’t know what to play next.
They decided to nuke everything from orbit in (the next big update and told everyone they were doing that, again they were transparent) .2 is to get everything closer to where gameplay should be. Which is much slower, engaging combo design.
Builds like Spark doesn’t belong or work in a game like PoE 2. You shouldn’t be killing mobs off screen or rares before you see them. That isn’t souls like or engaging. It was bad for the game. Everyone knows this. No single ability should be just nuking the screen in a PoE 2 type game.
It was, it was marketed that way since day 1. That’s why they highlighed combos, weapon swap, dodge roll, WASD, mechanics. I bought PoE 2 EA because I was looking for a next gen souls like ARPG to get into something different.
I say all this as someone who isn’t a souls like player. I typically don’t play the No rest for the Wicked type games. However I knew what I was buying with PoE 2 and I knew it was nothing like PoE 1. (which is good because I didn’t like PoE1)
This is also true. Player who wanted a PoE 1 clone are raging but they have no right to be.
