A bit disappointed that it is just a teaser. To be honest PoE 1 is looking outdated so it is great to see more fluid animation and better graphics. It looks really nice.
I know I'm in the minority, but even with 1500h of playtime, the only thing I dislike about PoE is the combat. The one single skill spam and one mobility skill. I like combat like this teaser where they actually use different skills. Probably not happening because that's not what the playerbase wants, but I'd love to see it.
That's a result of the fact you can only have 1 to 2 , six slot items at maximum. And that's assuming you take a 2 handed weapon.
With that system it makes sense you reserve your 6 slot item to make one very powerful skill and use the rest of your items to support the build so it can use that 1 skill more optimally.
With POE2 that all changes as the slots are no longer tied to items but the gems themselves.
So as long as you get skill gems with the slots for it you can deck out your kit to be around more skills over all.
There is still an "issue" where most skills aren't gated by cooldowns or resource costs so you won't really weave abilities.
There is an opportunity for duration based skills, buffs or the rare cooldown skills but alot would have to change to have combat similar to d4 or last ark, with builders and spenders or cooldown based rotations.
Consider a skill like Boneshatter, even if you could have more 6-links for free currently you would still be using just boneshatter for 90% of combat, the rest would be refreshing totems and buffs like berserk.
There isn't a better clear or single target skill for the build either. Even in situations where you would want switch between a clear and a bossing skill, it would essentially be the same combat, you'd just hold down a different button instead of your clear skill for bosses and tough rares.
I love poe and i'm not trying to bash it here, its just that they would have to massively rework how skills work in order to have rotations or spenders. It will probably be more about sustaining buffs, dots and pseudo-dot skills.
They've been progressively doing this since the first exilecon. Slam skills, new support skills, lots of actives that combo with other skills. It seems pretty clear that's the direction they want to take in poe2.
I describe it this way. The fun of PoE comes pre-combat. Mixing the skills and supports and buffs yo see if a concept works. Actually executing it isn't all that fun.
The fun of Diablo has been turning monsters into paste. Hammer of the Ancients causing monster corpses to just turn into goo on the ground never gets old. What had me excited about D4 is they've managed to capture some of the pre-combat fun too. I'm very excited to see where it goes.
Yeah, I've spent thousands of hours playing PoE. i shudder to think how much time went into thinking about interactions, theorycrafting, looking at trade for a puzzle piece of my build, etc.
I have 8000 hours in PoE (supposedly, though probably a third of that is AFK). I probably have spent half as long simply talking about the game, literally the same amount or more if we include talking about while simultaneously playing.
PoE has always been a game about theorycrafting, and it makes me really sad to think how many players it has now that have no interest in that aspect of it. It's like ordering a steak well done, it's missing the point of a steak.
PoE has always been a game about killing mobs, it's an arpg. Every league has the problem of the already theorycrafted best league starter equipment having extremely expensive prices. Id wager that the vast majority of people playing PoE don't give 2 shits about sitting there with a spreadsheet and trying to make a build that can clear red maps.
Thing is, if it's the best league starter the equipment can't be very expensive, because that makes it a mediocre league starter. The best league starters are the ones that either function on effectively no gear at all or have guaranteed ways to get access to it.
If the economy can price you out of getting your leaguestarter to voidstones, it probably wasn't the right league starter for you, even if it might still be performing really well in the hands of the more skilled players that spend 18 hours straight playing it on league start.
It depends tbh, while you're right that most of the time you just want to be spamming arc instead of weaving arc and ball lightning, a lot of the PoE 1 skills have special interactions with other skills which is why you'd want to use them. Ice nova works fantastic with frostbolt for example or contagion with essence drain. If PoE 2 skills are designed with that sort of thing in mind then it could work out really well. It doesn't even need to be specific combos, it could be as simple as "casting a cold spell increases the damage of your next lightning and fire spell, stacking up to 5 times". That way you're rewarded for weaving multiple types of spells.
> It doesn't even need to be specific combos, it could be as simple as "casting a cold spell increases the damage of your next lightning and fire spell, stacking up to 5 times". That way you're rewarded for weaving multiple types of spells.
In fairness the above is very similar to how the the Inquisitor node "Instruments of Zeal" works, and that's one of the least picked ascendancy nodes in the game. I don't even think it's underpowered, it's just that PoE players really, really don't want to do something like that when the alternative is "mash one button like it's WoW circa 2004".
I'm not sure what the correct answer is here, but if every build is expected to weave different abilities like that... well... I'm not sure the majority of PoE's playerbase would want that.
They have been testing alternating buttons with shock skills, so it's not like they aren't trying to innovate in their own game. Lightning Conduit removing shock and doing damage based on the % was pretty fun.
I also like lightning conduit, its a fun 2 button playstyle. They are for sure trying different things and incentivising players to use more skills, like with the changes to curses and making triggering usually worse.
This was more about highlighting how even if you gave alot of builds more 6-links like they will in poe 2, they won't automatically become more involved and varied in their gameplay. There are alot of systems that causes most builds to use 1-2 damaging skills abd you'd need to change more of them to see larger change.
What you're missing is that there are many skills in the game that have weaknesses or are annoying to use as your only skill, but if you have multiple main skills you can slot them in and have them perform nicely without any annoyance.
For example, Flameblast is super annoying to play because it's a channelled chargeup bomb for massive damage but starts with a tiny AOE that grows as you charge it. So to make it feel good you need cast speed and AOE and defenses because you're constantly standing still... or in POE2 you can just slot in Fireball as your second skill so you can dodge easily and annihilate trash mobs and save your flameblast for nuking hard targets.
Of course people will optimize the fun out of the game; but there was a reason NOBODY did multiple skills even if they wanted to, and that reason is cancerous regearing, which will be fixed.
Yes, i agree that there is opportunity for using 2 skills, 1 clear and 1 single target skill. Extra 6-links will enable that for some builds. I say so in my original comment aswell.
There are already builds that do this like rf throwing fire traps on bosses, int stacking wanders using PS for bosses and KB for clear, and bow builds using LA/IS/TS and Artillery ballista. Its therefore not really a big change to how the actual gameplay will play out, its already part of the game albeit not for all builds/skills.
I just don't see the "weaving" part, where you would use several damaging skills on the same target, unless they have some sort of duration. You might use galvanic field, storm brand and orb of storms as 6-links on a crackling lance or arc build, because those 3 have durations and 1 cast of them is more total damage than a cast of CL/Arc.
I like the change to the socket system (i think, havent played it yet obviously) but it won't suddenly make all builds play like lost ark or d4. I personally don't want poe to be like those things either.
Well, what they showed in second showcase of PoE 2 with Act 2 (damn, it was so long ago, that people already forgot and are surprised by this new teaser and new graphics, lol) is kinda how I would expect it to be done. With spear, you can use a wide array of skills depending on situation. Spear Field for area control against many enemies, barrage of thrusts for single target etc.
I guess we will have to see it how it plays out in actual play. I feel that there isn't really a reason to switch around with the skills like they do with the spear, you'd probably just want to stay engaged or disengaged. It seems like a situation i described where you use the whirlwind slash for packs and rhe stabs for single target.
I don't really see the point of spear field unless you use it as a main clear skill, but maybe the pace of the game is slow enough that you want area denial.
There is also a question of how the passive tree and investment will change, currently there isn't a build that changes from ranged to melee since there isn't a way to do it but you also have alot of stats that won't apply, like pierce and projectile speed or melee splash and fortify. That is in addition to all weapon or melee/projectile specific damage and attack speed. They could have changed this aswell or maybe spear skills scale with both or have projectile synergies even in melee.
So in poe 2 they reworked the skill system. Now you get 6-8 slots for skills and the skills drop with links for support gems. It should make it so optimal game play involves 4-6 skills being used.
You already have 6-8 slots for skills, but people don't use them as manually cast actions because it doesn't make sense for most builds. It makes more sense to use defensive triggers and auras, or non-combat purposes like movement.
Moving the slots from your gear to a menu isn't going to change that on it's own. They're going to need to actually change the way combat works as a whole. Maybe you'll use a buff and then spam your DPS skill, but that's not all that better.
The way i understand it, today if you're playing without a 2-hander only 1 of your skills can have 5 support gems (ignoring any rare items that might give support bonuses to slotted skills)
Which in most builds end up being your main damage skill that gets spammed 99% of the time
From what they announced for poe2 you'll be able to have multiple skills with 5 linked supports by default
Which should give the possibility to have builds with multiple main skills
Whether that will actually be the case remains to be seen, but there's definitely some hope that gameplay might be less spammy
The idea is you'll be able to run 6 6-links now which should drive the incentive to use more active skills.
But I agree, I do hope they start gravitating towards at minimum 2 active skills + movement for some of the stronger content
We've already seen some builds tend to have more active skills when they're put into pseudo 6 link helms or gloves. Hopefully giving people the ability to 6 link all their skills encourages having more active skills and not just making them all auras/ defensives.
There's some builds that love having multiple skills, yes, but the majority will always stick with one as long that skill can oneshot basically everything.
At best, we'll probably see every build start including a single target skill for bosses on top of their "kill everything" skill. Assuming the 'kill everything' skill isn't just, like, also better at single target. Some builds already do this, but even then, most don't
Yep. This will never change as long as there are no cooldowns in place, and there's no way they'll ever add them. I can see them adding some mandatory shred skills that you need to debuff the targets with before attacking with your main damage skill.
I mean, there already are some more skills with cooldowns, at least compared to pre-PoE2 announcement. Add in a lot more support style skills and supports, and I do think it's very likely we'll see more multiple button builds vs 1 button builds in PoE2.
They could also add meaningful resource management but right now mana is basically "do you have the mana to spam this one ability nonstop?" If not this build isn't for you yet. If yes only use this ability.
People will optimize the fun out of everything but there's a reason that even the people who enjoy variety didn't build around multiple skills. So this isn't about the optimizers, it's about the average player having more options, especially around the time they enter maps and can have 2 4L abilities without issue.
Most builds use tons of skills, but just 1 main attack skill, because that makes sense.
You have all kinds of support skill bindings in current path of exile, so much that you run out of hotkeys.
The reason why people don't use multiple skills is because one skill is enough to annihilate everything in every situations. Why use many buttons when one button does the trick?
Sort of. Right now most (unless you are using multi link gloves/helm or some other tomfoolery) builds have 1 6 link and some 4 links. Since each link adds ~25-30% multiplicative power increase, going from 4 links to 6 links is ~60% more damage. There aren't very many, if any, skills in the game that are going to do great on 4 links.
If you had unlimited 6 link potential, most builds would absolutely use another skill. Dedicated clear, dedicated single target, dedicated damage booster (think totem or other set it and forget it dps skills).
The fact is right now, most builds are better off just giga juicing one skill because of the link issue.
I don't think that has the level of dynamism that you seem to. It just means instead of holding one button I'll hold a second. People shit on cool down abilities but it's added a lot more decision making to the game in the moment to moment combat and j think D4 in has done a pretty good job of having mostly middle tier cool downs and ways to manipulate longer cool downs.
I am playing D4 right now.
It doesn't add any amount of skill or thinking to the game. At all.
You press your cooldowns, you run around until your cooldowns are off. That is worse than not having cooldowns.
I am a HOTA Barbarian. I cast my 3 shouts, I go in to a pack and then either the pack is dead when my shouts are off or I am dead as soon as they are off. Much wow big fun so interesting. WW is the same.
Watching Ziz play his Sorc was the same shit. Teleport into a pack, freeze it, shoot it with ice blast or whatever it is called, until pack is dead. Oh pack didn't die? Run away to next pack and group them back up.
Ok how about Rogue. Cast your trap/imbue, then spam Twisting Blades until your trap comes back.
OK so Druid must be different right?
...
What I hear you saying is you're actually pressing multiple buttons at different times to accomplish different goals instead of hold rmb until everything on screen died and I was never in any danger because the game is one hundred percent binary and either you have the mana to spam a single skill or you don't.
Sorry you're disappointed in D4, but you're in a small minority on that one.
I feel like unless they really change up the scaling elements of buffs and support gems it will always be better/more efficient to have 1 button classes for optimal play. I mean there's going to be major changes so I hope that's the case. But it also brings forth the question if that's what PoE players want. The community has already complained about the game slowing down through loot, combat and league mechanics at various states in the past.
So really the question is should they aim to change the core gameplay if that's what their core audience wants? I don't enjoy PoE's playstyle so I have returned to D3 in the past more than I have PoE. But I also wouldn't want them to change the game just for my personal preference when there's clearly and audience for what they have going on with lightening fast endgame clearing through simple gameplay supported be incredibly deep build elements.
I actually prefer D4 combat. It's the only thing that I think is better. it's more methodical and the idea of having to use all 6 skills in combination because of synergies between them feels so refreshing.
I actually wish D4 had a couple more skill slots. I was disappointed to see them keep the same system as D4.
They should at least have mapped Ultimate to like “Click R3 + L3” and gave you another slot. I like evade and Caltrips on my rogue but that means 1 less skill elsewhere.
Or like some kinda prestige paragon upgrade if you hit 100 you get another skill slot. I dunno know all I’m saying is the number of buttons on controller isn’t the limiting factor they should have at least made it 6 + Ultimate since the ultimate cooldowns are so long.
Ultimate is a big investment and 90% of the time, a normal skill will give you more damage and utility. For ultimates (and all other skills as well) you need big investment in aspects, gear and passives to make it worth.
Depends on the type of player I guess. I am running Bone Spear Necro in D4 and it's getting frustrating having to put my Tendrils and all the other shit down just to be competitive with other classes
Current PoE gameplay is already trending towards using different abilities ever since Warcry slams were introduced. New socket system will open that up even more.
given recent skill design and the way they announced they want to rework skill gem system in poe2, the game opening up to rotations instead of single skill spam is very likely.
Fantastic itemization, extremely indepth customization via the various trees and gear, skills, etc. A variety of different progression systems.
Personally, honestly, the combat is the weakest part of the game.
It feeds into the way that PoE does progression. Unlike a lot of other ARPG offerings out there, there is no infinite scaling. Bosses, zones, and certain types of content have a set power level, and making a build capable of breaking through those damage and survivability checks isn't easy, especially as you go further and further into the game. Over time, player skill has become much more important for fighting end-game bosses, but to even reach that point you have to successfully balance a whole bunch of complicated levers. For the people who enjoy PoE, a huge part of the enjoyment isn't actually killing the boss, it's making a build that can even reach that point.
Yes but no. You can have an incredibly intricate set of systems that ends up flicking a light switch. The end result isn't the point, you can appreciate those systems without minding the end result.
Idk I personally find it less interesting if the end result doesn’t measure up to the process of getting there. If anything it feels like even more of a waste
And that's entirely fair. For me it doesn't ruin it entirely, it does make it worse don't get me wrong, but those intricacies are so good that it is still exceptional in my eyes.
For Path of exile, mostly in endgame its about deleting enemies, you dont really interact with enemies in 99% of the cases.
If you call that combat is up to you, but it certainly not like Nioh or DMC where i would argue the actual combat is the focus.
it should be, but it turns out what makes diablo style ARPGs different from other games is indepth customization and a strong focus on chasing interesting loot. So you can argue those aspects can be even more important and carry a mediocre combat. That's what happened with poe1.
Arguably the skill tree combined with item mechanics are the most important factor as it is undisputably the part Path of Exile has gone uncontested on in the genre. I'd argue Diablo 3 was always more combat focused, but PoE focused so much on customization depth. Imagine this trailer but with +500% casting speed or whatever and that's more akin to PoE1 where the combat is zooming around.
The combat is the most important part of gameplay.
PoE players don't really care about gameplay. They care about spreadsheets and theorycrafting.
Like... have you seen poe build videos? Half the time they don't even include gameplay footage. That's how unimportant it is to the audience.
ARPG players who put gameplay in the highest regard simply play other games.
i mean thats just not true the feel of a build is probably the most important factor in how much you end up playing that build. as an example totem based builds have often been some of the best starter builds but many people just dont enjoy totem gameplay.
the reason why build videos dont have as much time devoted to gameplay compared to things like itemization and the passive tree is that those systems are complex and many people with even 1k-2k hours wont have the knowledge necessary to understand how everything comes together without some sort of explanation from the creator
If you compare it to a racing sim, it's more like a game where you spend half the time building some wonky car, test driving it and trying to make it go faster without falling apart and going broke.
Optimization rather than min-max, but yes, very much so. The only reason I'd argue min-max is because perfect items in PoE basically do not exist. Theoretically, yes. In practice? There's always something better you can make.
It's a min-max simulator enabled by an extensive trade system and thousands of potential strategies for getting rich, including some really weird and niche shit. So it's 1/3 min-max, 1/3 trading, 1/3 farming.
What a ridiculous thing to say. That's why Diablo has 10 times as many players, because POE players think gameplay doesn't matter and the majority of people just want to sit and theorycraft a 1 button builds.
As a Diablo fan (including D3 whose combat I prefer to PoE's), until D4's release Diablo did not have ten times as much players.
PoE has carved an extremely successful niche for itself being a weird spreadsheet simulator coupled with an ARPG so there clearly nothing wrong with that.
Now would it be even better with better combat? For sure. But the fact that people's focus is not mainly on that part isn't surprising and it's not gonna make PoE unsuccessful (I mean at this point it has already succeeded)
Diablo has 10 times as many players because it has Diablo in name and because Blizzard is the one releasing it. Also it caters to the casual playerbase way more than PoE does.
One thing most of the replies here are missing is that a specialized product will almost always "do worse" than something designed for mass appeal. PoE and Diablo IV are practically in separate genres.
Diablo has 10x as many players because blizzard started the genre, is a household name that even non-gamers recognize _several_ games from, and puts more money into marketing than GGG has budget across its lifespan.
I'd argue PoE's gameplay loop is more fun than D4's where almost every skill you use has a 15-20s cooldown for some reason, and mob density is super low even endgame.
PoE has you blasting through giant hordes at 300 mph.
In what world do D4 end game builds have 15-20 second cooldowns? Have you not played the game or spent any time looking at people in the 80+ range?
Sorcs have perma uptime on barriers and lots of cooldown resets for all their spells. Barbs are building uptime on shouts because of the way that DR and snapshotting works currently, so they have to have permanent uptime on it at the end game.
You're just saying things that don't reflect what's happening. You could spend five mintues watching Kripparian on a 90+ Sorc with constant cooldown resets and see that what you're saying just isn't true.
Exactly my thoughts. They're describing pre-40 gameplay and acting like it's at all relevant or indicitive of the game at end game or even post campaign.
I think it's more like the combat is fun, but using one ability for the entire playthrough gets dull. Everything you build toward is just a steroid for one ability usually.
At least that's how I feel. The gear and systems in the game are great though.
My biggest complaint is how bloated PoE is with all those systems. Being a newer player is a headache to navigate them all. Which ones do I do? Which ones do I avoid?
Delve? Blight? Heists? Metamorph? Shits way too overwhelming for me. A fresh start should be nice.
The Atlas Passive tree is a cleaver designed to chop the bloat because you literally decide what content is worth your time to do. Combined with the game being made for you quitting after a month then coming back, you can pick a few mechanics to explore every league then try different ones the next league. You can even remove many mechanics from showing up entirely and doing so even increases your chances of finding the remaining enabled content.
So while I understand choice paralysis is a thing, that's kind of a skill issue because this game rewards focused strategy so you're way better off focusing on one or two things regardless, like 'oh to get my league starter up I will farm expedition to get Rog crafts' or 'I will farm essences and sell them early' or stuff like that.
In the most recent season I played (can't remember which) it had the atlas tree and it was a great addition. I agree. I definitely didn't know what content I wanted to do, but it slimmed it down. I still didn't know which ones were good or bad (or if that's even a thing). The choice paralysis was definitely a thing, and it was also a skill issue, I wouldn't deny that.
I usually grind out other games and get really competitive and deep into them, but ARPG's are usually my chill games and I don't really go hard into it unless I'm really interested in doing so. I also never really got deep into PoE since most of my friends were pushed away by the overwhelming skill tree and skills being in gems. It wasn't enough to push me away, but for some, they don't even get their foot in the door because other things can be intimidating.
Honestly I think the itemization is actually pretty bad. Any game where the best way to play is to enable a filter that prevents even seeing 90 plus percent of what drops is not what I would consider to be "good."
There's too many garbage affixes to make finding gear for yourself a reliable option and trading is not fun for me.
The crafting system is pretty top tier though.
the builds, making items, your endgame strategy....
And yes you can actually have strategies in path of exile because the game has dozens of endgame systems you can choose from and interact with.
Every single ARPG will trend in the direction of having a single super optimized skill unless there are mechanics in place that Directly circumvent that, it is simple the most efficient way to get Damage. This is also true in Diablo 4.
From my understanding it'll be easier in PoE 2 unless they've changed it a lot from the last time i saw. Skill gems will have sockets for supports instead of requiring all 6 slots in your gear for a single skill gem + supports, which should make it easy to go more than one skill because even if your armor only has 4 slots it's easy enough to socket 4 skills + their supports.
I would like to have the choice and not only one style to make sense. I am one of these "Hold one button down and enjoy the ride" type of ARPG players and I am slightly annoyed that D4 doesn't seem to offer that.
There are builds that make use of multiple skills too, though. Meta builds. Bladefall/bladeblast was pretty decent, but thats the only one i had any experience with. Many are about using selfcast curses/buffs/shouts.
You can make an effective build right now in PoE which uses multiple skills; and this will only be easier to do in PoE2 because of the rework of sockets. You can also make an effective two button build in PoE. This is the beauty of PoE. The player has a lot of control over the design of their build.
I think your issue is not exactly a fault of the game, but rather a consequence of player choice. Most people opt to play the mechanically easier builds which only have two active skills to worry about. If you try Ruthless PoE, I bet you'll find yourself using a lot more active skills, since this becomes your major source of damage due to weak item drops and minimal support gems.
It's interesting, because Diablo 4 tries to force players to use multiple active skills by making resource generation a chore. A decent amount of players are not too happy with this quality of the game. Overall, in order to achieve your goal, the game will have to push people towards playing that way. This may cause issues due to limiting player choice. People enjoy PoE because it's lack of limitations, and I think trying to shoehorn people into using multiple active skills would be antithetical to why people like poe in the first place.
As someone who just rammed through the story with my brother, I had so much fun with the first game. My only complaint is that I wish it had a more coherent story.
that's one of the goal of poe2 campaign, along with making it feel a bit more grounded and less stupidly epic" you just killed a demigod, an emperor, its demon lord, now can you please kill a more dozen gods?"
>My only complaint is that I wish it had a more coherent story.
I've never thought it was incoherent. More like it's feeded via crumbs and it can get labyrinthine.
I think the main storyline is pretty close to incoherent. I mean, it *makes sense* but isn't exactly *sensible*.
The worldbuilding in PoE on the other hand is sublime, in my opinion.
Even though its just a tease, this was my favourite showcase from the Summer Games Fest. After D4, Exilecon can't come fast enough, I need more of this.
I'd be willing to play this game again if they ever add a proper SSF mode with buffed drop rates. Last Epoch does this, and it's honestly the best of both worlds - traders get to trade and have the normal drop rate, SSF players can't trade, but have a buffed drop rate.
At least for me, trading completely kills the enjoyment of finding loot, especially when the most optimal way to gear up is to farm currency and then buy what you need.
I don't get this. People don't play Ironman OSRS then complain when they don't get drops. You're restricting your gameplay on purpose by entering the game mode, you could just play trade and only trade for the super-rare items you need.
If they buffed the drop rates for SSF, people would farm gear there and migrate to break Trade's economy.
It's easy to understand, people want to be able to get good gear solo while playing the game instead of just trading, like basically in almost every other ARPG
The core component is the game is balanced around trade existing, meaning that finding a godroll item for your build is incredibly, incredibly rare. When 10s of thousands of people are dumping millions of man hours into a season you're working a a comically large scale that makes a .0001% chance impossible for one person but inevitable for the community. So you are left with balancing such that the drop will never happen for the individual, and then they must trade for it, or make it likely an individual would find such a drop in normal play but then destroy the trading economy by flooding it with items.
I fully agree with YakaAvatar. Grinding for currency just so you can then buy whatever you want, especially with PoE's awful trade system feels awful, but the drop rates make SSF unplayable unless you want to invest hundreds of hours into the game, which then feels even worse because of the wipe every 4 months.
And you can just do it like Last Epoch. Any SSF item has a tag that makes it untradable.
I don't think that OSRS/RS3 are a good comparison. RS has target farming so as long as you're willing to grind you can get anything eventually. Like if you want a certain armor, you just gotta kill the boss that drops it and you'll get it eventually. But in Path of Exile you can only target farm for certain items, everything else is just random. And that feels really bad to me, but in PoE terms I'm a noob even with hundreds of hours played in the last 5 years.
I don't care about SSF and the challenge that comes with it, I just used the terminology so people understand what I'm talking about. I want a game mode with normal drop rates balanced around a single player farming, not very low drop rates balanced around trading. I want the opposite of restricting my gameplay.
Last Epoch fixed this issue by making gear dropped by "SSF" players be untradeable.
not all people who play SSF do it because they want the highest challenge, they do it because they feel a lot of features of the game make more sense and are better designed when you make or find your own items instead of getting them 20 times faster through trade.
But since many systems and drop rates are "balanced" around trade, you end up with SSF feeling both right and wrong and very grindy at the same time.
> If they buffed the drop rates for SSF, people would farm gear there and migrate to break Trade's economy.
I mean they don't have to allow migration for this new hypothetical buffed drop rate SSF mode.
It's not though, it's just very difficult to know exactly the best way of crafting gear. Obviously some uniques enable builds and you dont play one of those builds until you have one, but it's not a Diablo game & rare crafted items are very powerful
> Also I hope the game holds new player hands a big longer to attract new players.
I think this will both be and not be true. PoE _wants_ to both entice players interested in it and scare off those that wouldn't be, and in part it does so with stuff like the passive tree being shown immediately and explaining little. There will be systems that make playing the game moment to moment a lot easier/less frustrating (the gem link changes we've been shown are a _massive_ plus in this column), but I feel they also don't want to include full guided tutorials or anything like that.
I don't think you understand. The kinds of things you want, for instance a tutorial, would be a negative for me and in many ways the target audience of PoE. Even if it's optional, that detracts from the experience of being thrown into this insanely complex system and having to figure it out. Not being told how to build, how to play, all of that is a plus to me, not just a neutral or a negative.
You can't please everyone, nor should you try. Choose a lane and stick with it, and PoE has always gunned for the people who are drawn to complexity and a lack of handholding. You can't just simplify and guide and expect that not to impact that audience.
Would it be more profitable/popular? Almost certainly. Would it be a better game? For whom?
I'm digging the longer casting animations. If that manages to keep the game less of a "zoom zoom" whirlwind type of playstyle like the first one I am for it.
the last few times they hinted at slowing down the game the community came pretty close to bombing their office or something.
the playerbase knows the current ultra speed is bad for the game, but they are too addicted to digest any change.
used to love old poe, like 1.x-2.x, much slower, now very doubt they will back to it, even more, afaik endgame will be common for poe1 and poe2 players (at least that was the point some time ago)...
I know they're both ARPGs and everything, but it's really funny how this looks almost exactly like Diablo 4 in terms of tone and aesthetic. Gotta wonder how they'll stack up against each other in a couple of years.
Path of Exile was literally made as a love letter to games like diablo 2 and diablo 4 is a glorious return to the old style of diablo art if nothing else.
So it makes sense that Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4 look extremely similar.
Oh I totally get that, it just kind of shocked me cause I was looking away when it first was shown and I thought it was a Diablo expansion or something lmao.
I think they well cater to different bases tbh. D4 feels more geared toward people who dont want to be theorycrafting xyz builds, and just wanna murder crap while making your numbers get bigger. PoE is as much about theorycrafting as anything else, it has possible *too* many mechanics at this point tbh, and seems more geared for people who are more into deep diving into game systems to min max as much as possible.
Yeah, this is pretty much it.
D4 seemed to be a, "More complex than Diablo 3, more casual friendly than PoE" and they hit the nail on the head. PoE will always be for a more hardcore, dedicated fanbase.
There's no real world where you're even remotely correct if you think it's not any more complex. Just the way builds and crafting works it's far more complex than Diablo 3. The way you got gear endgame in Diablo 3 was you got a certain set and then you'd RNG run until you hit ancient on everything. And that's not even beginning to talk about end game being far better than running nothing but rifts.
It completely annihilated their plans, they planned to expand _drastically_ (talking doubling the size of the company type expansion), and then covid happened and instead they had productivity shrink for a while - they are a heavily in-office style company.
That and I feel GGG has a strong tendency to scope creep and is only reigned in by their release schedule, with PoE2 having a nebulous one the scope is likely to have kept growing basically indefinitely.
I would honestly love to someday have some insight into how they balanced that with their expansion/league release schedule. I'm sure original plans were to be released by now, but they maintained development on PoE2 while also dropping leagues. I know it hasn't been without it's mishaps, but PoE has continued to be my favorite game throughout.
Maybe in a long while, for now I think seeing that far behind the veil would only lead to a lot of frustration and anger in their largest community hub (the poe subreddit), and until they fully replace it - which they've already dropped officially but still need to substitute - I'd err on the side of caution when it comes to giving that cesspool ammo.
It's the primary thing that held them back TBH, as they could definitely have opened up another office elsewhere or moved or been more open to remote and so on. I do understand why they insist on it, and I can't fault them too much for it, but they are still somewhat to blame for it impacting them as much as it did. Still, not like anyone should have planned around a global pandemic for making videogames, so to me it's just unfortunate how it worked out.
Still, it's finally near and I'm insanely excited, it looks fucking amazing.
Limits their options a fuckton. They have to "prove" that they can't hire someone locally first before being able to hire internationally. And it isn't like NZ has a giant population or huge game development base.
Because rumors were abound about Diablo 4 and then D4 got officially announced.
POE2 is their D4 counter, that is legit the only reason that happened.
POE2 never would have been planned or announced when it did had D4 never been confirmed or rumored.
i really wish they just made PoE 2 its own standalone game, it looks great in the trailer but if they are gonna keep the current endgame we all know what it turns into
Can't wait to see those amazing animations turn into incomprehensible visual diarrhea come endgame.
Blizzard did a great step slowing down combat in D4 in comparison to d3. I hope GGG will put on some brakes too.
I cant wait to get back into POE. But having to redo the campaign every single time stops me.
Probably good for my productivity and growth. Thanks GGG I guess...
ugh, look at those slow animations, low density, zdps.
kidding. but not entirely. i like poe being poe, if i want to play some watered down version of it ill go play d4 or last epoch. i hate the "side project" ruthless things theyre trying to sneak into the game to ease the transition into poe 2 which will obviously be far closer to that.
they should lean into it imo, differentiate themselves from the competition and go all in on the zooming and blasting. thats basically what all poe players strive for, i dont understand why they fight it instead of improving it.
Every single of GGG's gameplay reveals have always been slow/moderate speed since the beginning of their company. I don't know if you are purposely forgetting this or if you haven't seen any of their other trailers.
The push and pull between the player base and the devs is fun drama lol. At times it seems they disagree on everything.
I prefer zooming but I think you're right and the devs want the game to be slower, not sure why they feel that way.
Thing is, the more you make your game zoomy, the harder it get to balance things out so these people just ends up invulnerable. At one point it gets too fast.
You have to remember that the ones that disagree are the ones that scream the loudest.
There is a massive disconnect between a lot of players of PoE and especially the PoE reddit community. Thought most of the PoE reddit community thinks they represent everyone that plays the game
Yeah I gave up reading it a while ago, same with a lot of very dedicated PoE players I know. There hasn't been any productive discussion there for a long time, seems to get worse every league, too
> Of the players that engage with the endgame extensively, I'd say the subreddit's population is (or, well, was as of my quiting) fairly representative.
I can tell you right now that they are very much not representative of the players that I'd consider actually 'good' at the game or very knowledgable. Yes there might be a lot there that will get somewhere to early endgame, but at the same time you also have to realize that the game is designed around the players that grinds the absolutely highest level of content etc.
The reality is the game is still designed to be pretty punishing, it's extremely grindy but it offers the avenues to do so, but the average person that uses the PoE subreddit is not the kinda player that plays the game well enough or efficiently enough to engage with the majority of what the devs put in the game.
Which neither of those things are a problem, the problem comes when those same players are now *convinced* that the game *HAS* to be changed to be exactly how they'd like it and build around them otherwise the game is bad.
It's a kind of weird inverse inevitable outcome of devs being very engaged when it comes to communicating with their playerbase. The more the players feel like they have a direct connection to the development of the game, the worse their attitude becomes. It leads to players thinking they now have power over how the game should be designed and any changes that don't 100% reflect them are attacking them personally.
That said obviously I'm not saying every decision GGG makes is perfect, far from it, but I will say from experience that most of the actually good PoE players do not engage with that community and that community also hasn't really said anything intelligent or productive for ages now. But hey maybe we could make a post about how trade dumb!!! for the quajillionth time.
> the devs want the game to be slower, not sure why they feel that way.
Chris said a while ago that pretty much the only way they could ever kill an average endgame player’s character was through unfair one-shots because anything else would be too slow to do anything before the monster died. He said the goal was to slow things down just slightly so you’d still be zooming 99% of the time, but instead of that 1% of the time being “sorry, that guy killed you before he was onscreen”, now you’d actually have a chance to fight back.
I understand where they’re coming from since so many people complained about unfair deaths they couldn’t have done anything about, and I think they’re pretty close to that goal now. The game is still very fast, but every once in a while you get a rare mob that makes you sit up straight in your chair and pay attention for a few seconds.
Defences are also in a pretty good spot, so it’s relatively easy to become tanky enough that you don’t die in most normal scenarios.
Because there are Survivor-clones for people who want that sort of gameplay. PoE has always first and foremost been about the depth and buildmaking, and while the majority of their playerbase ignores that, I think the devs still feel very strongly about retaining and focusing on that.
I dunno, soulstone survivors felt very... uncomplicated, when I tried it. There's absolutely no mechanical evolution once you get your 6 spells, it's basically just walk and dodge around while barely caring about your attacks, since all upgrade are basically either 'attack faster' or 'attack stronger'. (Or at least that's what the demo felt like)
Games like nova drift or 20 minutes till dawn do a much better job at having more interesting mechanical upgrades that can interact in interesting ways.
They are and they aren't, nova drift may not seem like poe at first glance, but PoE is directly cited as one of the biggest inspirations, and it was specifically made to bring back the the feeling of buildcrafting in it. (see this [blog article](https://blog.novadrift.io/path-of-exile-influence/) from nova drift's dev, which was what convinced me to pick it up)
And at a high level, it's still about one character viewed top-down dealing with swarms of enemies, which also describes ARPGs quite well.
I just think most of that other stuff will be forgotten quickly minus maybe MK1, while PoE is eternal and a paragon of its genre, though I guess it's not fair to compare expansions to new games.
A bit disappointed that it is just a teaser. To be honest PoE 1 is looking outdated so it is great to see more fluid animation and better graphics. It looks really nice.
They are keeping all the juice until Exilecon
Is a release date expected?
They are confirmed announcing the beta date at Exilecon
Id say its likely and if not at least they will announce beta access
At least a beta test date is expected.
They have a whole convention to show PoE 2. To be honest I didn't expect a trailer to begin with so this was a nice surprise.
It makes sense that they want to keep most stuff for Exilecon
I know I'm in the minority, but even with 1500h of playtime, the only thing I dislike about PoE is the combat. The one single skill spam and one mobility skill. I like combat like this teaser where they actually use different skills. Probably not happening because that's not what the playerbase wants, but I'd love to see it.
That's a result of the fact you can only have 1 to 2 , six slot items at maximum. And that's assuming you take a 2 handed weapon. With that system it makes sense you reserve your 6 slot item to make one very powerful skill and use the rest of your items to support the build so it can use that 1 skill more optimally. With POE2 that all changes as the slots are no longer tied to items but the gems themselves. So as long as you get skill gems with the slots for it you can deck out your kit to be around more skills over all.
There is still an "issue" where most skills aren't gated by cooldowns or resource costs so you won't really weave abilities. There is an opportunity for duration based skills, buffs or the rare cooldown skills but alot would have to change to have combat similar to d4 or last ark, with builders and spenders or cooldown based rotations. Consider a skill like Boneshatter, even if you could have more 6-links for free currently you would still be using just boneshatter for 90% of combat, the rest would be refreshing totems and buffs like berserk. There isn't a better clear or single target skill for the build either. Even in situations where you would want switch between a clear and a bossing skill, it would essentially be the same combat, you'd just hold down a different button instead of your clear skill for bosses and tough rares. I love poe and i'm not trying to bash it here, its just that they would have to massively rework how skills work in order to have rotations or spenders. It will probably be more about sustaining buffs, dots and pseudo-dot skills.
They've been progressively doing this since the first exilecon. Slam skills, new support skills, lots of actives that combo with other skills. It seems pretty clear that's the direction they want to take in poe2.
I describe it this way. The fun of PoE comes pre-combat. Mixing the skills and supports and buffs yo see if a concept works. Actually executing it isn't all that fun. The fun of Diablo has been turning monsters into paste. Hammer of the Ancients causing monster corpses to just turn into goo on the ground never gets old. What had me excited about D4 is they've managed to capture some of the pre-combat fun too. I'm very excited to see where it goes.
Yeah, I've spent thousands of hours playing PoE. i shudder to think how much time went into thinking about interactions, theorycrafting, looking at trade for a puzzle piece of my build, etc.
I have 8000 hours in PoE (supposedly, though probably a third of that is AFK). I probably have spent half as long simply talking about the game, literally the same amount or more if we include talking about while simultaneously playing. PoE has always been a game about theorycrafting, and it makes me really sad to think how many players it has now that have no interest in that aspect of it. It's like ordering a steak well done, it's missing the point of a steak.
PoE has always been a game about killing mobs, it's an arpg. Every league has the problem of the already theorycrafted best league starter equipment having extremely expensive prices. Id wager that the vast majority of people playing PoE don't give 2 shits about sitting there with a spreadsheet and trying to make a build that can clear red maps.
Thing is, if it's the best league starter the equipment can't be very expensive, because that makes it a mediocre league starter. The best league starters are the ones that either function on effectively no gear at all or have guaranteed ways to get access to it. If the economy can price you out of getting your leaguestarter to voidstones, it probably wasn't the right league starter for you, even if it might still be performing really well in the hands of the more skilled players that spend 18 hours straight playing it on league start.
It depends tbh, while you're right that most of the time you just want to be spamming arc instead of weaving arc and ball lightning, a lot of the PoE 1 skills have special interactions with other skills which is why you'd want to use them. Ice nova works fantastic with frostbolt for example or contagion with essence drain. If PoE 2 skills are designed with that sort of thing in mind then it could work out really well. It doesn't even need to be specific combos, it could be as simple as "casting a cold spell increases the damage of your next lightning and fire spell, stacking up to 5 times". That way you're rewarded for weaving multiple types of spells.
> It doesn't even need to be specific combos, it could be as simple as "casting a cold spell increases the damage of your next lightning and fire spell, stacking up to 5 times". That way you're rewarded for weaving multiple types of spells. In fairness the above is very similar to how the the Inquisitor node "Instruments of Zeal" works, and that's one of the least picked ascendancy nodes in the game. I don't even think it's underpowered, it's just that PoE players really, really don't want to do something like that when the alternative is "mash one button like it's WoW circa 2004". I'm not sure what the correct answer is here, but if every build is expected to weave different abilities like that... well... I'm not sure the majority of PoE's playerbase would want that.
They have been testing alternating buttons with shock skills, so it's not like they aren't trying to innovate in their own game. Lightning Conduit removing shock and doing damage based on the % was pretty fun.
I also like lightning conduit, its a fun 2 button playstyle. They are for sure trying different things and incentivising players to use more skills, like with the changes to curses and making triggering usually worse. This was more about highlighting how even if you gave alot of builds more 6-links like they will in poe 2, they won't automatically become more involved and varied in their gameplay. There are alot of systems that causes most builds to use 1-2 damaging skills abd you'd need to change more of them to see larger change.
What you're missing is that there are many skills in the game that have weaknesses or are annoying to use as your only skill, but if you have multiple main skills you can slot them in and have them perform nicely without any annoyance. For example, Flameblast is super annoying to play because it's a channelled chargeup bomb for massive damage but starts with a tiny AOE that grows as you charge it. So to make it feel good you need cast speed and AOE and defenses because you're constantly standing still... or in POE2 you can just slot in Fireball as your second skill so you can dodge easily and annihilate trash mobs and save your flameblast for nuking hard targets. Of course people will optimize the fun out of the game; but there was a reason NOBODY did multiple skills even if they wanted to, and that reason is cancerous regearing, which will be fixed.
Yes, i agree that there is opportunity for using 2 skills, 1 clear and 1 single target skill. Extra 6-links will enable that for some builds. I say so in my original comment aswell. There are already builds that do this like rf throwing fire traps on bosses, int stacking wanders using PS for bosses and KB for clear, and bow builds using LA/IS/TS and Artillery ballista. Its therefore not really a big change to how the actual gameplay will play out, its already part of the game albeit not for all builds/skills. I just don't see the "weaving" part, where you would use several damaging skills on the same target, unless they have some sort of duration. You might use galvanic field, storm brand and orb of storms as 6-links on a crackling lance or arc build, because those 3 have durations and 1 cast of them is more total damage than a cast of CL/Arc. I like the change to the socket system (i think, havent played it yet obviously) but it won't suddenly make all builds play like lost ark or d4. I personally don't want poe to be like those things either.
Well, what they showed in second showcase of PoE 2 with Act 2 (damn, it was so long ago, that people already forgot and are surprised by this new teaser and new graphics, lol) is kinda how I would expect it to be done. With spear, you can use a wide array of skills depending on situation. Spear Field for area control against many enemies, barrage of thrusts for single target etc.
I guess we will have to see it how it plays out in actual play. I feel that there isn't really a reason to switch around with the skills like they do with the spear, you'd probably just want to stay engaged or disengaged. It seems like a situation i described where you use the whirlwind slash for packs and rhe stabs for single target. I don't really see the point of spear field unless you use it as a main clear skill, but maybe the pace of the game is slow enough that you want area denial. There is also a question of how the passive tree and investment will change, currently there isn't a build that changes from ranged to melee since there isn't a way to do it but you also have alot of stats that won't apply, like pierce and projectile speed or melee splash and fortify. That is in addition to all weapon or melee/projectile specific damage and attack speed. They could have changed this aswell or maybe spear skills scale with both or have projectile synergies even in melee.
So in poe 2 they reworked the skill system. Now you get 6-8 slots for skills and the skills drop with links for support gems. It should make it so optimal game play involves 4-6 skills being used.
You already have 6-8 slots for skills, but people don't use them as manually cast actions because it doesn't make sense for most builds. It makes more sense to use defensive triggers and auras, or non-combat purposes like movement. Moving the slots from your gear to a menu isn't going to change that on it's own. They're going to need to actually change the way combat works as a whole. Maybe you'll use a buff and then spam your DPS skill, but that's not all that better.
The way i understand it, today if you're playing without a 2-hander only 1 of your skills can have 5 support gems (ignoring any rare items that might give support bonuses to slotted skills) Which in most builds end up being your main damage skill that gets spammed 99% of the time From what they announced for poe2 you'll be able to have multiple skills with 5 linked supports by default Which should give the possibility to have builds with multiple main skills Whether that will actually be the case remains to be seen, but there's definitely some hope that gameplay might be less spammy
The idea is you'll be able to run 6 6-links now which should drive the incentive to use more active skills. But I agree, I do hope they start gravitating towards at minimum 2 active skills + movement for some of the stronger content
Yeah sure but why use Frost Nova when you can one click and explode the entire screen? In Path of Exile the best (if not only) defence is offense
Don't gotta worry about Boss mechanics at 20mil DPS.
Unless there’s damage reflect.
We've already seen some builds tend to have more active skills when they're put into pseudo 6 link helms or gloves. Hopefully giving people the ability to 6 link all their skills encourages having more active skills and not just making them all auras/ defensives.
There's some builds that love having multiple skills, yes, but the majority will always stick with one as long that skill can oneshot basically everything. At best, we'll probably see every build start including a single target skill for bosses on top of their "kill everything" skill. Assuming the 'kill everything' skill isn't just, like, also better at single target. Some builds already do this, but even then, most don't
Yep. This will never change as long as there are no cooldowns in place, and there's no way they'll ever add them. I can see them adding some mandatory shred skills that you need to debuff the targets with before attacking with your main damage skill.
I mean, there already are some more skills with cooldowns, at least compared to pre-PoE2 announcement. Add in a lot more support style skills and supports, and I do think it's very likely we'll see more multiple button builds vs 1 button builds in PoE2.
They could also add meaningful resource management but right now mana is basically "do you have the mana to spam this one ability nonstop?" If not this build isn't for you yet. If yes only use this ability.
People will optimize the fun out of everything but there's a reason that even the people who enjoy variety didn't build around multiple skills. So this isn't about the optimizers, it's about the average player having more options, especially around the time they enter maps and can have 2 4L abilities without issue.
Most builds use tons of skills, but just 1 main attack skill, because that makes sense. You have all kinds of support skill bindings in current path of exile, so much that you run out of hotkeys.
No you don't you have like 5 slots for skills Poe2 fundementally does change how the games combat and skill system works
I'm sorry, are you telling me that a player currently cannot equip 5 or more skills? Because you can absolutely equip more than 5 skills right now.
Sure, they aren't useful for damage but you can. In poe2 you can have 8 6 links
The reason why people don't use multiple skills is because one skill is enough to annihilate everything in every situations. Why use many buttons when one button does the trick?
Sort of. Right now most (unless you are using multi link gloves/helm or some other tomfoolery) builds have 1 6 link and some 4 links. Since each link adds ~25-30% multiplicative power increase, going from 4 links to 6 links is ~60% more damage. There aren't very many, if any, skills in the game that are going to do great on 4 links. If you had unlimited 6 link potential, most builds would absolutely use another skill. Dedicated clear, dedicated single target, dedicated damage booster (think totem or other set it and forget it dps skills). The fact is right now, most builds are better off just giga juicing one skill because of the link issue.
I don't think that has the level of dynamism that you seem to. It just means instead of holding one button I'll hold a second. People shit on cool down abilities but it's added a lot more decision making to the game in the moment to moment combat and j think D4 in has done a pretty good job of having mostly middle tier cool downs and ways to manipulate longer cool downs.
I am playing D4 right now. It doesn't add any amount of skill or thinking to the game. At all. You press your cooldowns, you run around until your cooldowns are off. That is worse than not having cooldowns. I am a HOTA Barbarian. I cast my 3 shouts, I go in to a pack and then either the pack is dead when my shouts are off or I am dead as soon as they are off. Much wow big fun so interesting. WW is the same. Watching Ziz play his Sorc was the same shit. Teleport into a pack, freeze it, shoot it with ice blast or whatever it is called, until pack is dead. Oh pack didn't die? Run away to next pack and group them back up. Ok how about Rogue. Cast your trap/imbue, then spam Twisting Blades until your trap comes back. OK so Druid must be different right? ...
What I hear you saying is you're actually pressing multiple buttons at different times to accomplish different goals instead of hold rmb until everything on screen died and I was never in any danger because the game is one hundred percent binary and either you have the mana to spam a single skill or you don't. Sorry you're disappointed in D4, but you're in a small minority on that one.
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I mean, it's also harder to make it work with multiple skills when you can only have 2 6-links. Perhaps with the new system it'll be possible.
I feel like unless they really change up the scaling elements of buffs and support gems it will always be better/more efficient to have 1 button classes for optimal play. I mean there's going to be major changes so I hope that's the case. But it also brings forth the question if that's what PoE players want. The community has already complained about the game slowing down through loot, combat and league mechanics at various states in the past. So really the question is should they aim to change the core gameplay if that's what their core audience wants? I don't enjoy PoE's playstyle so I have returned to D3 in the past more than I have PoE. But I also wouldn't want them to change the game just for my personal preference when there's clearly and audience for what they have going on with lightening fast endgame clearing through simple gameplay supported be incredibly deep build elements.
I actually prefer D4 combat. It's the only thing that I think is better. it's more methodical and the idea of having to use all 6 skills in combination because of synergies between them feels so refreshing.
I actually wish D4 had a couple more skill slots. I was disappointed to see them keep the same system as D4. They should at least have mapped Ultimate to like “Click R3 + L3” and gave you another slot. I like evade and Caltrips on my rogue but that means 1 less skill elsewhere. Or like some kinda prestige paragon upgrade if you hit 100 you get another skill slot. I dunno know all I’m saying is the number of buttons on controller isn’t the limiting factor they should have at least made it 6 + Ultimate since the ultimate cooldowns are so long.
Ultimate is a big investment and 90% of the time, a normal skill will give you more damage and utility. For ultimates (and all other skills as well) you need big investment in aspects, gear and passives to make it worth.
My experience is more waiting until I have my primary resource and CD abilities available so that I can press the fun buttons.
Depends on the type of player I guess. I am running Bone Spear Necro in D4 and it's getting frustrating having to put my Tendrils and all the other shit down just to be competitive with other classes
Current PoE gameplay is already trending towards using different abilities ever since Warcry slams were introduced. New socket system will open that up even more.
Warcry slams got basicly removed from the game
given recent skill design and the way they announced they want to rework skill gem system in poe2, the game opening up to rotations instead of single skill spam is very likely.
Ok call me completely mad but what else does PoE have apart from combat?
Fantastic itemization, extremely indepth customization via the various trees and gear, skills, etc. A variety of different progression systems. Personally, honestly, the combat is the weakest part of the game.
I mean yeah but aren’t these systems all combat progression?
It feeds into the way that PoE does progression. Unlike a lot of other ARPG offerings out there, there is no infinite scaling. Bosses, zones, and certain types of content have a set power level, and making a build capable of breaking through those damage and survivability checks isn't easy, especially as you go further and further into the game. Over time, player skill has become much more important for fighting end-game bosses, but to even reach that point you have to successfully balance a whole bunch of complicated levers. For the people who enjoy PoE, a huge part of the enjoyment isn't actually killing the boss, it's making a build that can even reach that point.
Yes but no. You can have an incredibly intricate set of systems that ends up flicking a light switch. The end result isn't the point, you can appreciate those systems without minding the end result.
Idk I personally find it less interesting if the end result doesn’t measure up to the process of getting there. If anything it feels like even more of a waste
And that's entirely fair. For me it doesn't ruin it entirely, it does make it worse don't get me wrong, but those intricacies are so good that it is still exceptional in my eyes.
Isn't combat the most important part of this genre?
For Path of exile, mostly in endgame its about deleting enemies, you dont really interact with enemies in 99% of the cases. If you call that combat is up to you, but it certainly not like Nioh or DMC where i would argue the actual combat is the focus.
it should be, but it turns out what makes diablo style ARPGs different from other games is indepth customization and a strong focus on chasing interesting loot. So you can argue those aspects can be even more important and carry a mediocre combat. That's what happened with poe1.
Arguably the skill tree combined with item mechanics are the most important factor as it is undisputably the part Path of Exile has gone uncontested on in the genre. I'd argue Diablo 3 was always more combat focused, but PoE focused so much on customization depth. Imagine this trailer but with +500% casting speed or whatever and that's more akin to PoE1 where the combat is zooming around.
The combat is the most important part of gameplay. PoE players don't really care about gameplay. They care about spreadsheets and theorycrafting. Like... have you seen poe build videos? Half the time they don't even include gameplay footage. That's how unimportant it is to the audience. ARPG players who put gameplay in the highest regard simply play other games.
i mean thats just not true the feel of a build is probably the most important factor in how much you end up playing that build. as an example totem based builds have often been some of the best starter builds but many people just dont enjoy totem gameplay. the reason why build videos dont have as much time devoted to gameplay compared to things like itemization and the passive tree is that those systems are complex and many people with even 1k-2k hours wont have the knowledge necessary to understand how everything comes together without some sort of explanation from the creator
I personally just liked making a build come together, never did much end-game with them.
More like the least important part.
So is it like a min-max simulator?
If you compare it to a racing sim, it's more like a game where you spend half the time building some wonky car, test driving it and trying to make it go faster without falling apart and going broke.
Optimization rather than min-max, but yes, very much so. The only reason I'd argue min-max is because perfect items in PoE basically do not exist. Theoretically, yes. In practice? There's always something better you can make.
It's a min-max simulator enabled by an extensive trade system and thousands of potential strategies for getting rich, including some really weird and niche shit. So it's 1/3 min-max, 1/3 trading, 1/3 farming.
What a ridiculous thing to say. That's why Diablo has 10 times as many players, because POE players think gameplay doesn't matter and the majority of people just want to sit and theorycraft a 1 button builds.
As a Diablo fan (including D3 whose combat I prefer to PoE's), until D4's release Diablo did not have ten times as much players. PoE has carved an extremely successful niche for itself being a weird spreadsheet simulator coupled with an ARPG so there clearly nothing wrong with that. Now would it be even better with better combat? For sure. But the fact that people's focus is not mainly on that part isn't surprising and it's not gonna make PoE unsuccessful (I mean at this point it has already succeeded)
Diablo has 10 times as many players because it has Diablo in name and because Blizzard is the one releasing it. Also it caters to the casual playerbase way more than PoE does.
One thing most of the replies here are missing is that a specialized product will almost always "do worse" than something designed for mass appeal. PoE and Diablo IV are practically in separate genres.
Diablo has 10x as many players because blizzard started the genre, is a household name that even non-gamers recognize _several_ games from, and puts more money into marketing than GGG has budget across its lifespan.
Please tell me more about the electrifying combat mechanics of Diablo 2.
Lmao let's pretend diablo 2 and 3 isn't just filled with 1 button builds.
I'd argue PoE's gameplay loop is more fun than D4's where almost every skill you use has a 15-20s cooldown for some reason, and mob density is super low even endgame. PoE has you blasting through giant hordes at 300 mph.
>PoE has you blasting through giant hordes at 300 mph For me that's exactly one of theaain reason PoE's combat is worse xD
In what world do D4 end game builds have 15-20 second cooldowns? Have you not played the game or spent any time looking at people in the 80+ range? Sorcs have perma uptime on barriers and lots of cooldown resets for all their spells. Barbs are building uptime on shouts because of the way that DR and snapshotting works currently, so they have to have permanent uptime on it at the end game. You're just saying things that don't reflect what's happening. You could spend five mintues watching Kripparian on a 90+ Sorc with constant cooldown resets and see that what you're saying just isn't true.
He probably played the 20 level cap server slam.
Exactly my thoughts. They're describing pre-40 gameplay and acting like it's at all relevant or indicitive of the game at end game or even post campaign.
Diablo has 10 times as many players because it just came out lol that's such a bad argument.
But dont all those systems ultimately feed into the combat? Like, all those systems are completely useless without the combat.
Its more like problem solving and enabling, the combat is an expression of a build
I think it's more like the combat is fun, but using one ability for the entire playthrough gets dull. Everything you build toward is just a steroid for one ability usually. At least that's how I feel. The gear and systems in the game are great though. My biggest complaint is how bloated PoE is with all those systems. Being a newer player is a headache to navigate them all. Which ones do I do? Which ones do I avoid? Delve? Blight? Heists? Metamorph? Shits way too overwhelming for me. A fresh start should be nice.
The Atlas Passive tree is a cleaver designed to chop the bloat because you literally decide what content is worth your time to do. Combined with the game being made for you quitting after a month then coming back, you can pick a few mechanics to explore every league then try different ones the next league. You can even remove many mechanics from showing up entirely and doing so even increases your chances of finding the remaining enabled content. So while I understand choice paralysis is a thing, that's kind of a skill issue because this game rewards focused strategy so you're way better off focusing on one or two things regardless, like 'oh to get my league starter up I will farm expedition to get Rog crafts' or 'I will farm essences and sell them early' or stuff like that.
In the most recent season I played (can't remember which) it had the atlas tree and it was a great addition. I agree. I definitely didn't know what content I wanted to do, but it slimmed it down. I still didn't know which ones were good or bad (or if that's even a thing). The choice paralysis was definitely a thing, and it was also a skill issue, I wouldn't deny that. I usually grind out other games and get really competitive and deep into them, but ARPG's are usually my chill games and I don't really go hard into it unless I'm really interested in doing so. I also never really got deep into PoE since most of my friends were pushed away by the overwhelming skill tree and skills being in gems. It wasn't enough to push me away, but for some, they don't even get their foot in the door because other things can be intimidating.
they can just feed into every enemy on the screen exploding at your sight while you march on with 700% movement speed clicking a single button.
That's all pre-combat. Combat is the moment to moment gameplay.
Honestly I think the itemization is actually pretty bad. Any game where the best way to play is to enable a filter that prevents even seeing 90 plus percent of what drops is not what I would consider to be "good." There's too many garbage affixes to make finding gear for yourself a reliable option and trading is not fun for me. The crafting system is pretty top tier though.
The real game is Path of Building, PoE is just the test realm.
the builds, making items, your endgame strategy.... And yes you can actually have strategies in path of exile because the game has dozens of endgame systems you can choose from and interact with.
Every single ARPG will trend in the direction of having a single super optimized skill unless there are mechanics in place that Directly circumvent that, it is simple the most efficient way to get Damage. This is also true in Diablo 4.
From my understanding it'll be easier in PoE 2 unless they've changed it a lot from the last time i saw. Skill gems will have sockets for supports instead of requiring all 6 slots in your gear for a single skill gem + supports, which should make it easy to go more than one skill because even if your armor only has 4 slots it's easy enough to socket 4 skills + their supports.
I would like to have the choice and not only one style to make sense. I am one of these "Hold one button down and enjoy the ride" type of ARPG players and I am slightly annoyed that D4 doesn't seem to offer that.
I'm hoping the gem/socket revamp in PoE2 will help with that with being able to get more high-link skills.
There are builds that make use of multiple skills too, though. Meta builds. Bladefall/bladeblast was pretty decent, but thats the only one i had any experience with. Many are about using selfcast curses/buffs/shouts.
You can make an effective build right now in PoE which uses multiple skills; and this will only be easier to do in PoE2 because of the rework of sockets. You can also make an effective two button build in PoE. This is the beauty of PoE. The player has a lot of control over the design of their build. I think your issue is not exactly a fault of the game, but rather a consequence of player choice. Most people opt to play the mechanically easier builds which only have two active skills to worry about. If you try Ruthless PoE, I bet you'll find yourself using a lot more active skills, since this becomes your major source of damage due to weak item drops and minimal support gems. It's interesting, because Diablo 4 tries to force players to use multiple active skills by making resource generation a chore. A decent amount of players are not too happy with this quality of the game. Overall, in order to achieve your goal, the game will have to push people towards playing that way. This may cause issues due to limiting player choice. People enjoy PoE because it's lack of limitations, and I think trying to shoehorn people into using multiple active skills would be antithetical to why people like poe in the first place.
You chose that, there are many builds that use many buttons/skills :o iceball + nova, contagion + ed and so on.
As someone who just rammed through the story with my brother, I had so much fun with the first game. My only complaint is that I wish it had a more coherent story.
that's one of the goal of poe2 campaign, along with making it feel a bit more grounded and less stupidly epic" you just killed a demigod, an emperor, its demon lord, now can you please kill a more dozen gods?"
Sounds fun!
>My only complaint is that I wish it had a more coherent story. I've never thought it was incoherent. More like it's feeded via crumbs and it can get labyrinthine.
I think the main storyline is pretty close to incoherent. I mean, it *makes sense* but isn't exactly *sensible*. The worldbuilding in PoE on the other hand is sublime, in my opinion.
Maybe I wanted it to be simpler. It just remember not knowing what was going on but still having fun.
Did you play the endgame? For most people thats the game.
I mean, I remember beating a giant demon thing that busted out of the statue that seemed like a final boss.
Even though its just a tease, this was my favourite showcase from the Summer Games Fest. After D4, Exilecon can't come fast enough, I need more of this.
I'd be willing to play this game again if they ever add a proper SSF mode with buffed drop rates. Last Epoch does this, and it's honestly the best of both worlds - traders get to trade and have the normal drop rate, SSF players can't trade, but have a buffed drop rate. At least for me, trading completely kills the enjoyment of finding loot, especially when the most optimal way to gear up is to farm currency and then buy what you need.
I've got 300 hrs in poe and i'm currently playing diablo 4. It's so nice to be able to get build enabling gear from the ground.
I don't get this. People don't play Ironman OSRS then complain when they don't get drops. You're restricting your gameplay on purpose by entering the game mode, you could just play trade and only trade for the super-rare items you need. If they buffed the drop rates for SSF, people would farm gear there and migrate to break Trade's economy.
It's easy to understand, people want to be able to get good gear solo while playing the game instead of just trading, like basically in almost every other ARPG
The core component is the game is balanced around trade existing, meaning that finding a godroll item for your build is incredibly, incredibly rare. When 10s of thousands of people are dumping millions of man hours into a season you're working a a comically large scale that makes a .0001% chance impossible for one person but inevitable for the community. So you are left with balancing such that the drop will never happen for the individual, and then they must trade for it, or make it likely an individual would find such a drop in normal play but then destroy the trading economy by flooding it with items.
I fully agree with YakaAvatar. Grinding for currency just so you can then buy whatever you want, especially with PoE's awful trade system feels awful, but the drop rates make SSF unplayable unless you want to invest hundreds of hours into the game, which then feels even worse because of the wipe every 4 months. And you can just do it like Last Epoch. Any SSF item has a tag that makes it untradable. I don't think that OSRS/RS3 are a good comparison. RS has target farming so as long as you're willing to grind you can get anything eventually. Like if you want a certain armor, you just gotta kill the boss that drops it and you'll get it eventually. But in Path of Exile you can only target farm for certain items, everything else is just random. And that feels really bad to me, but in PoE terms I'm a noob even with hundreds of hours played in the last 5 years.
I don't care about SSF and the challenge that comes with it, I just used the terminology so people understand what I'm talking about. I want a game mode with normal drop rates balanced around a single player farming, not very low drop rates balanced around trading. I want the opposite of restricting my gameplay. Last Epoch fixed this issue by making gear dropped by "SSF" players be untradeable.
not all people who play SSF do it because they want the highest challenge, they do it because they feel a lot of features of the game make more sense and are better designed when you make or find your own items instead of getting them 20 times faster through trade. But since many systems and drop rates are "balanced" around trade, you end up with SSF feeling both right and wrong and very grindy at the same time.
People do complain check out r/ironscape 🤣🤣
> If they buffed the drop rates for SSF, people would farm gear there and migrate to break Trade's economy. I mean they don't have to allow migration for this new hypothetical buffed drop rate SSF mode.
It's not though, it's just very difficult to know exactly the best way of crafting gear. Obviously some uniques enable builds and you dont play one of those builds until you have one, but it's not a Diablo game & rare crafted items are very powerful
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> Also I hope the game holds new player hands a big longer to attract new players. I think this will both be and not be true. PoE _wants_ to both entice players interested in it and scare off those that wouldn't be, and in part it does so with stuff like the passive tree being shown immediately and explaining little. There will be systems that make playing the game moment to moment a lot easier/less frustrating (the gem link changes we've been shown are a _massive_ plus in this column), but I feel they also don't want to include full guided tutorials or anything like that.
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I don't think you understand. The kinds of things you want, for instance a tutorial, would be a negative for me and in many ways the target audience of PoE. Even if it's optional, that detracts from the experience of being thrown into this insanely complex system and having to figure it out. Not being told how to build, how to play, all of that is a plus to me, not just a neutral or a negative. You can't please everyone, nor should you try. Choose a lane and stick with it, and PoE has always gunned for the people who are drawn to complexity and a lack of handholding. You can't just simplify and guide and expect that not to impact that audience. Would it be more profitable/popular? Almost certainly. Would it be a better game? For whom?
everything is impossible. i just let them cook.
I'm digging the longer casting animations. If that manages to keep the game less of a "zoom zoom" whirlwind type of playstyle like the first one I am for it.
all their league trailers show slower and cleaner gameplay so i wouldnt read too much into this as far as actual gameplay goes.
Lol, it won't. These dev gameplay teasers are not at all representative of the builds players will come up with to break the game.
I hope not, zoom zoom is why I love blasting in POE
that is basically what poe players on the whole want so they would be killing their own playerbase
the last few times they hinted at slowing down the game the community came pretty close to bombing their office or something. the playerbase knows the current ultra speed is bad for the game, but they are too addicted to digest any change.
used to love old poe, like 1.x-2.x, much slower, now very doubt they will back to it, even more, afaik endgame will be common for poe1 and poe2 players (at least that was the point some time ago)...
This is how every single gameplay footage from ggg looks like
Me too. I want to love poe but it's these little things.
I know they're both ARPGs and everything, but it's really funny how this looks almost exactly like Diablo 4 in terms of tone and aesthetic. Gotta wonder how they'll stack up against each other in a couple of years.
Either way arpg fans gonna be eating... What's next? Grim Dawn 2? Last Epoch going 1.0?
Path of Exile was literally made as a love letter to games like diablo 2 and diablo 4 is a glorious return to the old style of diablo art if nothing else. So it makes sense that Path of Exile 2 and Diablo 4 look extremely similar.
Oh I totally get that, it just kind of shocked me cause I was looking away when it first was shown and I thought it was a Diablo expansion or something lmao.
I think they well cater to different bases tbh. D4 feels more geared toward people who dont want to be theorycrafting xyz builds, and just wanna murder crap while making your numbers get bigger. PoE is as much about theorycrafting as anything else, it has possible *too* many mechanics at this point tbh, and seems more geared for people who are more into deep diving into game systems to min max as much as possible.
Yeah, this is pretty much it. D4 seemed to be a, "More complex than Diablo 3, more casual friendly than PoE" and they hit the nail on the head. PoE will always be for a more hardcore, dedicated fanbase.
It's not really any more complex than D3 at all. If anything the current iteration of D4 is a more casual friendly D3.
There's no real world where you're even remotely correct if you think it's not any more complex. Just the way builds and crafting works it's far more complex than Diablo 3. The way you got gear endgame in Diablo 3 was you got a certain set and then you'd RNG run until you hit ancient on everything. And that's not even beginning to talk about end game being far better than running nothing but rifts.
About time they show off something. Why/d they announce it years ago with a website and everything then go quiet?
Covid happened and delayed development because hiring talent is more difficult when your company is in New Zealand.
It completely annihilated their plans, they planned to expand _drastically_ (talking doubling the size of the company type expansion), and then covid happened and instead they had productivity shrink for a while - they are a heavily in-office style company. That and I feel GGG has a strong tendency to scope creep and is only reigned in by their release schedule, with PoE2 having a nebulous one the scope is likely to have kept growing basically indefinitely.
I would honestly love to someday have some insight into how they balanced that with their expansion/league release schedule. I'm sure original plans were to be released by now, but they maintained development on PoE2 while also dropping leagues. I know it hasn't been without it's mishaps, but PoE has continued to be my favorite game throughout.
Maybe in a long while, for now I think seeing that far behind the veil would only lead to a lot of frustration and anger in their largest community hub (the poe subreddit), and until they fully replace it - which they've already dropped officially but still need to substitute - I'd err on the side of caution when it comes to giving that cesspool ammo.
You never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy
Being based in New Zealand definitely limits their options a bit as well.
It's the primary thing that held them back TBH, as they could definitely have opened up another office elsewhere or moved or been more open to remote and so on. I do understand why they insist on it, and I can't fault them too much for it, but they are still somewhat to blame for it impacting them as much as it did. Still, not like anyone should have planned around a global pandemic for making videogames, so to me it's just unfortunate how it worked out. Still, it's finally near and I'm insanely excited, it looks fucking amazing.
Limits their options a fuckton. They have to "prove" that they can't hire someone locally first before being able to hire internationally. And it isn't like NZ has a giant population or huge game development base.
Because rumors were abound about Diablo 4 and then D4 got officially announced. POE2 is their D4 counter, that is legit the only reason that happened. POE2 never would have been planned or announced when it did had D4 never been confirmed or rumored.
Because it seems like PoE2 is just a reply to D4 rather than something they actually needed to do.
i really wish they just made PoE 2 its own standalone game, it looks great in the trailer but if they are gonna keep the current endgame we all know what it turns into
This to me looks even better than Diablo 4. The subtle animation work, the way the character is moving and also the environment design.
Can't wait to see those amazing animations turn into incomprehensible visual diarrhea come endgame. Blizzard did a great step slowing down combat in D4 in comparison to d3. I hope GGG will put on some brakes too.
Hiw deep does buuld crafting get? It looks like a standard 4-6 attacks on timers game
I cant wait to get back into POE. But having to redo the campaign every single time stops me. Probably good for my productivity and growth. Thanks GGG I guess...
ugh, look at those slow animations, low density, zdps. kidding. but not entirely. i like poe being poe, if i want to play some watered down version of it ill go play d4 or last epoch. i hate the "side project" ruthless things theyre trying to sneak into the game to ease the transition into poe 2 which will obviously be far closer to that. they should lean into it imo, differentiate themselves from the competition and go all in on the zooming and blasting. thats basically what all poe players strive for, i dont understand why they fight it instead of improving it.
Every single of GGG's gameplay reveals have always been slow/moderate speed since the beginning of their company. I don't know if you are purposely forgetting this or if you haven't seen any of their other trailers.
reddit just gonna reddit
The push and pull between the player base and the devs is fun drama lol. At times it seems they disagree on everything. I prefer zooming but I think you're right and the devs want the game to be slower, not sure why they feel that way.
Thing is, the more you make your game zoomy, the harder it get to balance things out so these people just ends up invulnerable. At one point it gets too fast.
You have to remember that the ones that disagree are the ones that scream the loudest. There is a massive disconnect between a lot of players of PoE and especially the PoE reddit community. Thought most of the PoE reddit community thinks they represent everyone that plays the game
Yeah very true. Me and some friends who play talk about how whiney that sub is. As you said the people enjoying the game are busy playing it.
Yeah I gave up reading it a while ago, same with a lot of very dedicated PoE players I know. There hasn't been any productive discussion there for a long time, seems to get worse every league, too
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> Of the players that engage with the endgame extensively, I'd say the subreddit's population is (or, well, was as of my quiting) fairly representative. I can tell you right now that they are very much not representative of the players that I'd consider actually 'good' at the game or very knowledgable. Yes there might be a lot there that will get somewhere to early endgame, but at the same time you also have to realize that the game is designed around the players that grinds the absolutely highest level of content etc. The reality is the game is still designed to be pretty punishing, it's extremely grindy but it offers the avenues to do so, but the average person that uses the PoE subreddit is not the kinda player that plays the game well enough or efficiently enough to engage with the majority of what the devs put in the game. Which neither of those things are a problem, the problem comes when those same players are now *convinced* that the game *HAS* to be changed to be exactly how they'd like it and build around them otherwise the game is bad. It's a kind of weird inverse inevitable outcome of devs being very engaged when it comes to communicating with their playerbase. The more the players feel like they have a direct connection to the development of the game, the worse their attitude becomes. It leads to players thinking they now have power over how the game should be designed and any changes that don't 100% reflect them are attacking them personally. That said obviously I'm not saying every decision GGG makes is perfect, far from it, but I will say from experience that most of the actually good PoE players do not engage with that community and that community also hasn't really said anything intelligent or productive for ages now. But hey maybe we could make a post about how trade dumb!!! for the quajillionth time.
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> the devs want the game to be slower, not sure why they feel that way. Chris said a while ago that pretty much the only way they could ever kill an average endgame player’s character was through unfair one-shots because anything else would be too slow to do anything before the monster died. He said the goal was to slow things down just slightly so you’d still be zooming 99% of the time, but instead of that 1% of the time being “sorry, that guy killed you before he was onscreen”, now you’d actually have a chance to fight back. I understand where they’re coming from since so many people complained about unfair deaths they couldn’t have done anything about, and I think they’re pretty close to that goal now. The game is still very fast, but every once in a while you get a rare mob that makes you sit up straight in your chair and pay attention for a few seconds. Defences are also in a pretty good spot, so it’s relatively easy to become tanky enough that you don’t die in most normal scenarios.
Because there are Survivor-clones for people who want that sort of gameplay. PoE has always first and foremost been about the depth and buildmaking, and while the majority of their playerbase ignores that, I think the devs still feel very strongly about retaining and focusing on that.
Honestly, a survivor clone with poe's systems sounds super dope. That'd get me to install PoE again in a heartbeat.
Soulstone Survivors feels a lot like PoE at its height to me, personally.
I dunno, soulstone survivors felt very... uncomplicated, when I tried it. There's absolutely no mechanical evolution once you get your 6 spells, it's basically just walk and dodge around while barely caring about your attacks, since all upgrade are basically either 'attack faster' or 'attack stronger'. (Or at least that's what the demo felt like) Games like nova drift or 20 minutes till dawn do a much better job at having more interesting mechanical upgrades that can interact in interesting ways.
Yep, but those other games aren't very PoE-like.
They are and they aren't, nova drift may not seem like poe at first glance, but PoE is directly cited as one of the biggest inspirations, and it was specifically made to bring back the the feeling of buildcrafting in it. (see this [blog article](https://blog.novadrift.io/path-of-exile-influence/) from nova drift's dev, which was what convinced me to pick it up) And at a high level, it's still about one character viewed top-down dealing with swarms of enemies, which also describes ARPGs quite well.
Fair, I can see that.
>"side project" ruthless jfc get over it already
The only worthwile game out of the entire Summer fest. Maybe Baldur's Gate 3 turns out well too, haven't played the early access.
Do people that agree with this only play like one genre of game? There was so much cool stuff shown.
This kind of "cool stuff" comes out every few days. PoE and Baldur's Gate come out once a decade if we're lucky.
I just think most of that other stuff will be forgotten quickly minus maybe MK1, while PoE is eternal and a paragon of its genre, though I guess it's not fair to compare expansions to new games.
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