In the movie Analyze that there is a scene pretty early in when the mobster has been released in the psychiatrist’s care and they are in the psychiatrist’s home. After dinner, the mobster hires a prostitute and they proceed to have loud sex which the entire house can hear. When the psychiatrist conforms the mobster about this, he replies “what did you expect doc? I’ve been in the 2 years!”. “Well I thought that after all this time you would appreciate some home cooked dinner” psychiatrist says. “Oh yeah that’s what I’ve been jerking off to for the past 24 months” mobster says, “fucking meetloaf”.
This introduction is about Quality of Life, for which the total budget should as of now be 0 (zero). I’m seeing this with a lot of content creators who spend so much time praising EHG on the quality of life of the game and how good the loot filters are and whatnot, and they do have a point; when it comes to QoL there’s no one better. But nobody in the history of gaming ever said “oh my God I’m gonna go play LE and buy their cosmetics and whatever because the runes and the keys all go to my dedicated stash in the inventory with one click”, same way no one’s ever said “I’m quitting playing PoE2 forever because they make you click on the recombinator a million fucking times every league”.
Only exception here is the stash tab, that desperately needs to be transferrable in some manner.
On the plus side overall, the maps start to feel like there are stuff that you can do inside; you got the mage prisons and the nemesises and rifts and cemeteries and now also omens. FIrst time I feel like maps start to mean something and be overall somewhat substantial.
There is a problem that I want to talk about regarding Cemeteries and Rifts. On their own they are perfectly good mechanics in the game. When you compare them however, they are pretty much the same thing: find an entrance to a place, go through a few corridors, slay enemies and pick up the mats they drop, get to the dungeon boss and then pick up your reward.
They were doing an interview in the last PoE League reveal and they said something about they want to keep walls on Breaches because they want the different game mechanics to feel different when you’re playing them.
I’m not playing PoE1 but I do play PoE2. Here’s how it goes with the different activities in the game:
Breach - You do the fighting in an ever expanding circle and when you gather enough splinters you get to go fight a boss and you get a few exclusive unique items and some mats to improve your jewelery.
Ritual - You fight in a closed off space and you get favor to spend on either currency or items, and also with enough splinters you get to fight a boss with exclusive drops. Also the currency sometimes is for crafting and can be very valuable.
Delirium: You fight normal and delirium monsters in the entire map and you need to keep killing and moving forward to sustain the delirium. Also it becomes more difficult with distance and with enough splinters you go have a 15-round encounter and also you get mats to annoint your amulets.
Expedition: You get to place bombs to unearth monsters and chests. You get logbooks which allow you to do the same in dedicated maps and with enough splinters you go fight a boss with unique drops and you can get mats to gamble for equipment and recombine items.
Point here is that Rifts and Cemeteries are practically the same fighting mode and that’s not good. The Omens were a nice addition but at least one of the other two needs some reimagining.
Final point is the endgame. There’s one thing I’d like to point out here. Either echoes need to start feeling more significant or we need to move away from echoes and implement a new endgame. I’m sure the devs have some thoughts for this, I’ll wait to see what they have planned.
Good stuff overall, looking forward to 1.5.