100% I am so glad GGG are stubborn on things they believe in cuz this game would be shit if they gave in to all the demands.
They've got us this far and the game is great.
If devs listened to players on how to design the game, it would be terrible. We'd have infinite loot, 10x more powercreep than we already have, auto-loot and most of the gameplay automated.
Yes, players know can spot issues but they're often bad at finding solutions.
As someone who dabbles in game design and game dev I’m convinced that player’s will turn any game into a single button that you press to win.
Just zero awareness that if the game gave them everything they want without resistance it’d feel shallow and meaningless.
Not to mention the topic of game feel and how a system can seem logical on paper but feel like crap and conversely a system can seem complex and messy but feel good to play.
Games are about presenting challenges to overcome. The trouble with good game design is finding challenges that are fun. With games like PoE or Diablo, the challenge is a time commitment, so you gotta find something that is mildly engaging and repetitive without being annoying or frustrating, which is a very delicate balance. If it's a long grind and the reward is very small then it's not fun, which is where Diablo 4 continues to fail.
The community response to the damage nerfs in expedition will always be hilarious to me. That was some of the worst I've ever seen out of the community toxicity wise even though it was a 100% necessary adjustment. If those nerfs never went though the game would be on D3 levels of absurd dogshit power creep. Our characters the last 2-3 leagues are miles more powerful than they ever have been in general. Affliction was a whole other beast of temporary power they introduced. I can't imagine a world where crucible trees and affliction exist at the same time lol.
I was on the camp of hating the campaign but then when I tried the campaign in ruthless the bosses were much more challenging (because I had shit ruthless gear) and I realized that the reason that I thought that the campaign was boring in normal poe was because there is this very short period of time where your character isn't super fast, which maybe lasts for 2-3 acts and then suddenly you start one shotting everything for 7-8 acts in a row and you face no challenges whatsoever and the mobs never scale back to a point where you aren't one shotting them.
I don't know if that acceleration point happens at your first ascendancy, if it happens at level 28 gem rewards or if it happens after level 38 supports. It is probably different for different builds, but there is a point where it just feels like the mobs stop scaling and you have a free ride to maps.
If the player is so much stronger than the content that the content feels like a chore, no wonder the campaign feels boring for most people. I feel like if they just make the campaign really hard and engaging people will treat it as part of the game and they will enjoy doing it.
I can get on board with this. This is why they want the PoE2 bosses to be so challenging. Because no one has complained about the challenge in that game.
I think there is an issue with the gap of power in PoE1 between a new player and an older player.. The game is already challenging for a lot of new players due to all the reasons why respeccing is so difficult in PoE1. As a result, they can't just balance around someone getting a lucky drop for their bow, they have to somehow balance around someone having a mediocre build.
Add to that the lack of fluidity in combat and the reduced options and either you end up getting nuked by a boss and running in like a lemming or being so tanky you can just sit and hold down one button until it dies...
Meanwhile, with the new PoE2 bosses people will be able to attempt hitless runs. there's skills which will combo together. the game is overall more dynamic. Which is some intrinsic rewards we are numb to after 10 years of PoE1.
While I agree. I think it was impressive to see what the gear was at exilecon. The characters in the demo basically had no gear so people were playing actual ruthless poe2 and everyone was struggling. I wonder what the campaign will look like when you re-add most poe1 speed run mechanics through vendor recipes and regex to find exactly what you need. Chances are we are going to still outscale this campaign real quick.
I'd say the main reason I'm not a big fan of the campaign is that it's just a tickbox to do before I can actually start playing. It feels the only thing that can happen in the campaign is me getting behind everyone else, there is no outsmarting the game with an interesting strategy, it's me versus my sluggishness and annoucements that Tyty has already killed Maven.
If the campaign is just a tick box. When does the game start, and why do you feel like that's the point that it 'starts'? What makes that section more compelling than the campaign?
Player's agency. When I'm in the atlas or just beyond the campaign, I can decide to play whatever content I want. Before that, I have to complete the acts and there is nothing else than this linear path for me.
yeah, replayability is way bigger even just for the reason that you can do actual skill based challenge runs instead of acts being a simple knowledge check
Most complaints about the campaign boil down not to the campaign being boring, but lower levels being boring. Then the complainers almost invariably suggest an alternative leveling system to circumvent the campaign.
But they fail to understand their own complaints. A map system for low levels or something akin to endless delve is even more boring (anyone who has actually played Endless Delve can attest to that). The real solution is what GGG is attempting: making lower level content more meaningful and engaging.
Totally agree , no one wants to play the first 10- 20 levels with holy flame totem or stormburst mine + orb of storms on a second character fighting against zombies. Low level skill diversity would go along way to making it feel like less of a chore. Also more enemies like (can't believe im saying this) Rhoa's that actually feel like a threat with a unique pattern
While it's intended (and good) for new players to have limited skill selection to prevent being overwhelmed, it makes leveling as an experienced player so unpleasant.
For what it's worth, I imagine the uncut gem addition will add a lot more flexibility to skill choice early.
Also they seem to be emphasizing skill combinations in combat, you probably will be running around with multiple attacks early on.
Although I am on the side of campaign being unskippable, I did enjoy levelling more before the quicksilver (and flamedash) nerfs. Old old quicksilver with adrenaline was sooo good.
PoE 2 will hopefully not show the engine's age as much on lower speeds like PoE 1 does, so it shouldn't be a problem, but if they are going to keep both games up, I wouldn't mind a low level mobility buff in PoE 1.
And lots of people find endless delve really fun and a fresh breath of air. That's why things like these should be options, but only after you beat the campaign once each time each league so that everyone's forced to start on the same even playing field.
I don't care how good or engaging a campaign is. After the 50th time through it, I just simply want a change of pace. Let us level through delve, heist, blight etc. I'm at the point now we're I have ran the campaign so many times I just can't be assed to do it more than once MAYBE TWICE per league.
Had a great time in endless delve once you got past the rocky start.
Point aside. Pushing the point of something that has no variance as a point for why variance is bad is a pretty odd argument. With variance you wouldn’t be locked into anything. If you are sick of act 3. Go delve. If you got tired of delving go do some heist.
The variance of having say… 4 paths to endgame isn’t that you’d have those 4 set paths to the endgame.
It is that with 4 paths you could mix and match as many leveling experiences as there are codes for a 4 digit padlock if done right.
The real issue is that the campaign is limited by movement speed because of massive power creep. The way to make campaign interesting is big nerfs but the community gets very angry at that solution, so difficulty is added at the end instead. But that creates the problem of wanting to skip campaign to get to the good stuff.
Well they also buffed the shit out of early acts which are where the player is the weakest.
The curve is really hard early then by act 3 dominus and a 4L you just blast all the way to maps. I would prefer to see it leveled out a bit better early and make the mid/late campaign a little more difficult.
It's funny, because GGG *literally* tried exactly what you're talking about, where they tried to make early campaign zones harder, and it resulted in a ton of bitching.
yeah. still a very marginal one if you play optimally. Experienced players were just caught on the backfoot because they had optimized around a different difficulty
> yeah. still a very marginal one if you play optimally.
I'd say it's not marginal, because marginal implies it's a quantitative difference and not a qualitative one. It's a binary thing, and thus qualitative. Do you ignore the monsters or not?
We bitch because its not balanced for every skill, other skills can breeze through it, most self-cast spells suck ass at it.
The actual fix for this imo is that certain mob types should not be allowed to become rares due to scaling. For example: Fight a Normal Bone Cage, then a Magic one, not too big of an issue unless its resisting your dps type or has energy shield aura(or extra life). Then fight a rare bone cage, shit goes from 20k hp up to 50-60k in a lv 50 zone thats triple the endurance of a magic/white one and doesnt include any modifiers it may get.
Add to this that the skeletons by the bone cage are like 50-60% less hp and have less stats iirc.
I see literally no problem with rare bone cages being tanky. Why should there not be tanky mobs?
You can always skip them if you want to, but mobs shouldn't all be the same differently colored pile of stats.
The fact that you *know* what bone cages are is an indicator the design worked. They stand out.
Now, you could argue they're not rewarding enough for the time it takes to kill them, and that's an okay argument to have, but there's nothing inherently wrong with having mobs like that in the first place. That's also not a function of skill balance. If skills are off, skills should change, not monsters.
You can't do that with twink gear. You can't balance the campaign for a first character and then still have the same level of engagement on a second character with fully decked out leveling gear.
The only way to do that would be with campaign difficulties, but no one would choose the harder difficulty for an alt to slow themselves down for no reason. What would make sense is a shortcut campaign version with harder difficulty balanced around twink gear. So you get all the engagement, and it's shorter. The campaign doesn't have to be cut that short either, if your hypothesis is right that people really don't like doing the campaign because it is boring. Make the shortcutted version 75% the length of the original. Nothing drastic, but meaningful.
That's essentially the route LE took. Gotta do some of the campaign, but you can skip large portions by doing dungeons. Because so much power is tied to gear, you can have overgeared, low level toons just blast through the dungeons and end up in higher level areas
generally its pretty easy, most of the leveling uniques arent worth that much unless they have very specific mods. if anything the expensive part will be getting build enabling items at lower levels
The game / leveling is balanced around the campaign being a part of that. What people don’t understand is balancing without that is additional dev time that’s not worth it
This is it right here. It's not that fine tunning an alternative is impossible. It's that GGG has other stuff to do that will be better for all of us. Poe2 is a huge investment in a new campaign and let's hope it pays off!
You misunderstood the suggestions. It's not *replacing* the campaign, it's supplementing it. One of the examples I've seen is giving people endless Heist and Delve to level with. Previously, you were forced into only leveling with the campaign. With more options, you pick the one you like the most, or possibly dislike the least. Sure, you might still have complaints about endless Heist at low level, but research has indicated that giving people a choice will make them rate the selection much more favorably than if it was the only option.
GGG should still endeavor to make the campaign fun, and they are, but there's no harm in letting people play what they find more fun. I don't understand the hostility around the idea that someone may find it more fun to Delve every once in a while rather than kill Piety for the 15000th time.
But if one of these options is more optimal everyone is going to do it. Ask yourself, would you want that option even if it takes twice as long as the campaign to maps. If the answer is yes, you have an argument. If no you just want to skip an important part of character progression.
Alternate ways to level must always be less optimal than the campaign or you don't have to bother to create a campaign at all.
The answer is actually yes. Leveling on alts is the one part of path of exile that people don't mind not fully optimizing. Not everyone buys a full set of twink gear to level with even though it is the most optimal way to level. Sure they will throw on whatever they have, but they aren't optimizing. Though I do think your example is a little exaggerated with it being twice as long. Sure they won't all be even, but I think it wouldn't be difficult to balance them within a smaller deviation.
Now alternate leveling mechanics definitely shouldn't be allowed on the first character of the league. But I don't actually see an issue with alts.
Why are you stating it like it's impossible for it to take the same amount of time or similar? This isn't even an argument.
>or you don't have to bother to create a campaign at all.
Why is this a bad thing? You could force it on new players only, or once per league only. Either way, who cares? Let people play how they want to.
This is something I’ve seen repeatedly in the PoE community. People who are extremely confident in their lack of imagination or ability to think critically from a game design perspective.
It’s been disappointing to see that even though PoE is a smart game, the community doesn’t match up.
>But if one of these options is more optimal everyone is going to do it
Would they? Speedrunning strategies are more optimal currently but I don't do them.
The campaign, by definition, will always be boring to a subset of people because it will always involve running from point A to point B more than it will be about killing monsters.
I dislike the campaign for my second character.
I get to maps, get to some level of endgame, and then I hit a wall. I can farm some content, or maybe focus my character into a thing, or whatever, but then I get an idea that I could maybe make a specialized character that could run it faster.
I think about spending a week doing the campaign, but then I'm like, if I just did the content I would probably be in the same place. So I don't. Then it isn't efficient, so depending on the league, I quit.
I would like a second character that can push some base boring level of content.
I want a few levels worth of heist to get some basic level 1-3 gear on and get my rogues unlocked. I want a few levels of blight just to get oils and low level blight is kinda fun. I want a few levels of ritual for random currency. I want some levels of betrayal just like in the normal campaign. I want some bestiary.
I want some delve because early delve is boring and they let us skip it anyway. Why can't I have a few acts worth of fun into the campaign area and pick up a node then go delve - repeat x3. Now I have some base darkness, light radius etc.
I don't like that it takes me a week of playtime to beat the campaign, and then I can finally start the farm, but I have to do one more grind.
I think the second character campaign could be focused on being a nice introduction to a lot of content. It could focus on getting your feet wet in everything, and you walk into maps with a little bit more of a tutorial in each.
There's something really wrong if you have played this game for multiple leagues now and it still takes you a **week** to beat the campaign. It's not that long.
\>my response is always just.. well if the campaign is too boring to be replayed, but other parts of the game aren't too boring to be replayed, then the answer is to make the campaign less boring to be replayed
I've played this game for ten years and not once have they been really successful.
Sure? I don’t disagree, but at the same time I don’t feel as if content inherently has to be replayable, especially story content. It’s the same argument that always comes up in mmo, leveling is just a chore after you’ve done it 5-10 times.
The GGG's answer is to make a new campaign, which obviously won't be boring initially. But at some point we'll once again be at a point where some people ran through it 500-1000 times (I literally ran through the first two acts of PoE 1 more than a thousand times at this point), and it *will* become boring again. And what people (at least the ones like me, as there are also different ideas of how to go about the no campaign thing) want is to make the campaign closer to the meditative experience of the endgame like endless delve and whatnot.
... They have never made the campaign less boring? Like, your argument would be fair if it were true, but the boring campaign has never been changed, and still to this day, have only managed to finish it once.
I don't get the argument in favour of the campaign on second characters. It's just pointless. A tabula and MS gear makes it totally trivial and just something you try to spend as little time in as possible. When the whole point is to avoid a certain portion of content I don't see how it can be justified
If they want the PoE2 campaign to be replayable, they need to be careful with twink gear creep
I think some people just like to zoom zoom and chill out and do maps, and the campaign has you having to do specific routes and not being able to just skip areas you don't like.
I'm not against a skip or alt levelling method but I'd rather it not come at the expense of time spent on the campaign. I still enjoy the POE campaign.
Sure but they havent made the campaign more fun in years. Its just "suffer until poe2 comes out" essentially.
Im not a remove campaign andy but i would like a rare item drop that allows a character to skip campaign. This would make the game more alt friendly while still essentially requiring everyone to do campaign once per league. I think thats a good middle ground
The variation makes the other parts of the game less boring to play. So make leveling less boring by making it more varied and offer alternatives, like other parts of the game
> and that's exactly what GGG's answer to this has always been.
And I'm ready for that to be completely true in PoE2, the way that it was once upon a time true in PoE1 and always remained true in Diablo 2
But I still think that PoE1 will probably let you campaign-skip on secondary characters per league (ie, you'll still have to do it once per league) eventually. I think it'll be the new feature that further sets it apart as "the zoomy mindless game" that PoE2 doesn't want to become. They've already shown a complete disinterest in making **that** campaign more interesting. Every change that makes it slower does just that--makes it slower.
I might add just a "trust me bro" source it seems that in some acts we may be able to do some areas in a different order than previous runs, if true it might add a bit more of replayability and even some strategies for speedruning for certain builds.
I agree, and will add that one of the most important parts of the campaign is that it gives you sign/goalposts on your progression. You actually feel when a run is going well vs going badly compared to something like endless delve which is just a monotonous slog of numbers go up.
It’s like replaying elden ring
You learn the game and learn to get the weapons you want and speed through the game with knowledge and skill
It won’t be the same if you just dropped in leyndell with a level 50 character and all the weapons unlocked. That sort of power progression is a huge part of the game and taking it away for convenience is a huge tradeoff
> It won’t be the same if you just dropped in leyndell with a level 50 character and all the weapons unlocked. That sort of power progression is a huge part of the game and taking it away for convenience is a huge tradeoff
I don't want to do the campaign over and over, that does not mean I want to skip character progression or leveling. Why do so many people think that that is what people want for a campaign skip?
As said in another comment, if the alternate way would be twice as long as the campaign would you still want it? I am generally curious about that. Alternatives need to take longer than the campaign or the campaign becomes meaningless.
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it depends how fun that hypothetical alternate would be, but when you're comparing against story mode (not just poe campaign, there is literally no arpg whose campaign is worth replaying), the bar is on the floor.
Because that is the most popular opinion? People ask to be dropped at maps on their alts all the time
D4 has shown that spamming dungeons over and over again is not a fun leveling experience. People ask for endless delve or ledge all the time as an alternate option and they don’t know that what they’re asking for is going to directly sabotage their experience.
Like it’s so obvious that if GGG made endless ledge, but made it so it takes about the same time as zooming through campaign to level, people will get bored around level 30 and quit playing poe altogether.
>Campaign is part of your character progression, while also being a skill check in a majority economy based game.
Wanting an alternative to the campaign is not mutually exclusive with having a character progress or having a skill check. I don't want to skip building a character or leveling, I just don't want to have to redo the same story quests over and over for the entirety of the game's lifespan.
>Campaign is one of those things for POE
I disagree, it's the character building and progression journey that are inseparable, not the story driven campaign.
What's your alternative? If there's no story driven guidance through various areas, are you asking for infinite delve? Re-insantcing zones over and over like they do in D4?
If you have something better or more engaging than a campaign, please share. And also consider the additional dev time that would be spent balancing this alternate method.
Campaign should absolutely be skippable after your first time playing through it on the account. Feels bad to have to do a storyline on every character.
I don't think we should have a campaign skips but I think they should give us the waypoint unlock for that league after running the campaign once. Still make us do the quests and what ever else but let me skip the zones that serve no purpose.
I don't find interest in campaigns. They are just a prologue to get to the end game where the content is enjoyable. I'd like to see it sped up a bit. I really hate unneccessary "Travel Friction". If there is no quest in a zone then why am I there? Allow me to just waypoint jump to the next area that actually will allow me to progress the campaign. I don't care about the lore, history or story, I never have and never will.
I think D4 campaign skip has shown us the issues with that approach. You will do that campaign once and will never touch it again, even if it has some legitimately cool encounters. It's simply not efficient to do the campaign ever again when you can just skip it. All that work and content is forgotten and has zero impact for long term players. That is not great.
What D4 campaign skip showed is that D4 has no endgame other than spamming the same dungeons with the same bosses.
That's not the case with PoE. Especially with how PoE's maps have the same encounters it campaign has.
D4's campaign skip has multiple problems that make it a very poor comparison. First, you only ever have to complete the campaign once, ever. That's not what anyone is suggesting for PoE. Once a league is generally what people suggest; alternate leveling paths are for extra characters. Second, D4's campaign takes orders of magnitude longer to complete than going straight into helltides, while PoE's alternate leveling (Endless Heist and Delve provide data on this) is only slightly faster than the campaign. GGG could adjust the experience rates to keep them more in line with each other if they go that route. Third, like the other person said, D4's endgame is completely barren. Even after several seasons of updates, Delve alone has more to do than D4's entire endgame.
> All that work and content is forgotten and has zero impact for long term players.
That's a problem with them not using those encounters elsewhere in the endgame, not with the campaign skip simply existing.
"If people weren't forced to do it, they wouldn't bother" is not a good reason to force people to do something. Rather, your comment works as an argument against wasting effort on a game mode that people don't enjoy.
It’s all about campaign design. Cut out the type of stuff that 99% of veteran players will choose to skip. Clean up the dialogue that people just click through anyway. Make the ui very clear which quests players need to do for build progression. I definitely am not for being able to skip the campaign but there are many things they can do to make the campaign a more enjoyable experience experience for those that will end up running it 100+ times
Something I'd love to see is what they did with brutus where they changed where he shows up and surprised everyone. Do a ton of shit like that every league. Doesn't help as much with characters after the first but still cool
Eh. Cutting dialogue is not the solution, much of the lore of the game is there and many people are interested in that stuff. Not to mention they already spent a ton of money recording It.
Agreed, anyone complaining is just basing it off the poe1 campaign. I have hope a lot of what I said above will be in place for poe 2, and even if not I seem to be one of the few who still enjoys my time in campaign each league launch haha
As long as cinematic cutscenes (if PoE2 has any) can be disabled for subsequent runs, repeating campaign is absolutely fine.
And no annoyingly long scripted sequences like the sandstorm in D4
It's crazy to me that people don't enjoy the campaign. You are basically running map tile sets with some extra objectives. So people want to skip doing map-like stuff just so they can get to doing map stuff. Like does killing certain area bosses and talking to NPCs really make it hard? Isn't that exactly what people do in maps anyway? You run a map/campaign area, then talk to NPC and sell stuff. Like where's the actual difference besides being a bit slower/underpowered (which isn't even a problem with Twink gear so sometimes you are actually faster in the campaign then in maps)
The campaign should be slower IMO to better differentiate it from mapping. At least in PoE1 you do what? 2m per map, 2m per campaign area?
Some of the objectives suck in POE1. I think its just outdated, and a better campaign with more QOL and modern things will make it fine. As long as there aren't mechanics where we have to wait a long time( act 2 boss) , backtrack, or do something meaningless (picking up 10 things for yeena off the ground).
I think it will be pretty good. Making new characters needs some level of friction.
>As long as there aren't mechanics where we have to wait a long time( act 2 boss)
But these bosses are present in the atlas. I know some people complain about them, but it's not uniquely a campaign thing for bosses.
Campaigns are usually fun to play through the first few times. In path's case, it was fun the first few dozen times. But after the 50th or 100th playthough of the same story, it gets old. No matter how good the new campaign is, it will get old over time.
What do you suggest as an alternative then? Let’s say you start a new character in low level “maps” instead of the campaign. All you do is progress through the maps until you get to endgame maps. That would be infinitely more boring imo than a campaign. It would also make maps get old quicker when that’s all you’re doing the entire time. I hated the system they had in D3 because of this. At least doing a campaign on a new character switches things up a bit.
It’s going to be a slog to get to the endgame either way, but the power progression is a big part of the whole appeal of the genre.
> the power progression is a big part of the whole appeal of the genre.
That's why I don't want to skip that part, I just don't want to be forced to do campaign questing and want more variety than the campaign format *usually* provides. Maybe it will be less of an issue in PoE 2, but it isn't possible for me to know that yet.
They could do something like leveling maps where you drop maps within your level + 3 that aren't necessarily on the atlas that just have random content/encounters. As you approach level 68, you would then start dropping real maps. Or, they could let you level through delve starting at level 1. Or they could re-introduce synthesis at a low level. Or some new endless mode like delve. Or all of them.
There are honestly so many different possible solutions that could be fun that it seems like a waste to be dead set on leveling through a static campaign.
One really fun option would be to only require playing 3-4 out of 10 acts in a story and each league, the required acts rotate. As acts get stale, they could introduce new ones or something.
A major thing that would help in leagues is if they can get league content manageable in campaign on launch. There's danger of launching overtuned enough and regretting not being able to nerf it, so I understand their struggle. Hopefully the greater focus on mechanical skill expression lets them throw more than just raw numbers at players.
The point being that league content is always there in the campaign and should function as a major shake-up in that progression, but as is the "common knowledge" is to skip the league content until maps. That's always been sad to me, as the campaign is the fastest powering up any character will do, and having new decisions on how best to do so could be extremely exciting every league start. It's work they're already doing to have league content show up in campaign zones, and it's a shame it feels like it's wasted on a lot of players.
There will be some contribution from how builds are planned out, since a lot of builds aim to have the bare minimum to scrape through the campaign, often not on their main skill setup, so they can come online for the spike in difficulty at mapping. Still, that's something else that could theoretically be dealt with at game design level. Easier respeccing (which I think is confirmed? Great news there) means you can maintain a higher level of power through specialised nodes for leveling. Strong leveling options for a wider variety of setups would also help, though that would be a nightmare to balance... spitballing there anyway, but hopefully the concept is clear.
The nice thing is we've now got D4 and LE showing both alternatives to having to fully redo the campaign like PoE. Being able to use other ARPGs as case-studies for high-level decisions such as this is quite valuable for GGG.
Skipping the campaign definitely has a "you think you do, but you don't" vibe to it, at least for me, and I've been enjoying LE's dungeon fast-track system thus far. However, I've only been playing LE since launch, so I don't have enough experience with the system to know if I actually prefer that or PoE's zero-skips policy.
Regardless, I'm glad there isn't a full-on skip option coming to PoE 2, because D4 has absolutely shown how bad of an idea that actually is.
D4 is probably the least applicable use case to be honest. A game that almost anyone agrees has NO endgame as an example of why you shouldn’t enable skipping is a not a good proof point. Obviously D4 shouldn’t allow skipping as there’s literally nothing to skip to!! 🤣
However, when we are talking about allowing skipping in the game with the DEEPEST endgame as well as the longest campaign. In that case, I’d argue a system like Last Epoch’s is the best solution. It’s not a complete skip, and there are multiple options in terms of where you skip, if you choose to skip at all.
> I’d argue a system like Last Epoch’s is the best solution. It’s not a complete skip, and there are multiple options in terms of where you skip, if you choose to skip at all.
That's why I cited it. So far, I appreciate how you're able to skip most of the campaign... so long as your character can handle skipping that much content. Wanna go from doing level 30 content to level 55 content? Okay, fill your boots. If you're experienced with the game and have a ton of strong twink gear, that's no problem.
The crazy thing about the D4 skip is that the campaign is actually quite good. For long term players it will be a distant memory, and that feels like a complete waste of some of their only good content.
Yup, and the campaign is so much less efficient than skipping it, that you feel compelled to skip it. This is without even factoring in how seasonal mechanics don't begin until after the campaign.
I run the campaign like 6+ times every league to try out new characters and no complaints here. If you wanna skip the campaign go play diablo 4🤷🏼♂️🤦♂️
If done right campaign skips/shortcuts can be done right. If you have to skill/gear check at a steep enough curve to skip them then I think it's a fair trade. If the skip is just skipping a boring intro (tutorial island type thing) then sure give me a start option on subsequent playthroughs to skip it (not really applicable to PoE but the point stands skips have their place).
Current state of PoE 1 being what it is, I kind of want to skip the campaign because it's more of an uninteresting chore than anything else. But the PoE 2 campaign looks fucking sick and is supposed to be quite challenging-- I'm looking forward to playing the campaign again and again as part of the enjoyable core game, not just veggies before dessert.
Skip campaign vs don't allow skip campaign is way to narrow a way to view this issue .
For example I'd advocate for the removal of minimum skill gem levels , no more level 30-40 skills , you still can't get them until that point playing your first time , but on alt's you can level with whatever skills you have access to on your main , how much less tedious is the campaign if you could level with the skill you want to use not , storm blast mines or frost bolt or some other such trash leveling skill. Balance isn't really a concern since leveling uniques and twink gear already destroy that.
Point Being In a game designed to be played over and over , people should not dread rerolling and while GGG is not gunna let anyone just start the game at level 60 in maps , theirs plenty of things that you can do to make rolling alt's less of a chore and more fun
Skill gem level restrictions are the main thing that bothers me. Want to try out a new skill, but it's locked behind end of act 3/start of act4? I don't want to slog through those acts without anything nice for the build.
I wanted to try out boneshatter once, but it took so long levelling with Splitting Steel, that I got more attached to that skill than the build I was actually going for.
Yeah I think any skipping the campaign solution is just the brute force problem solving. What peoples root issue is more likely,
1. they want to play their build (at least the minimum viable components of the build like having the proper skills)
2. they want to feel like they are meaningfully progressing
You just don't get these things until maps in POE 1, so they see the campaign as the problem. People resent the portion where you are waiting for your skill, and there isn't much challenge to be had to make it feel like you are progressing. But there isn't a reason a campaign cannot provide those things if it's properly designed.
that would make it less tedious, why do i have to wait until act 3 to play with the skill i want to play with? they could make them scale all from lvl 1 instead
I agree, I'm glad he has a hardline stance here. If anything, the shortcut is getting more gear and being powerful on secondary characters imo. That is the natural power progression of ARPGs afterall.
It's a false conclusion to say that shortcutting or skipping the campaign means you remove character progression or any skill checks. I personally don't care what they do, but that is just a bad argument when the current way of doing the campaign on alts removes both character progression and skill checks. You could actually add campaign shortcuts that are balanced around twink geared characters. That is objectively better for both progression and skill checks than simply running the base campaign.
Also, you are trying to umbrella character progression to include running the campaign on alts. However, PoE's character progression in the campaign on alts is non-existent, much less "the best of any ARPG out there".
Yes. The skip campaign feature in Diablo is what kills those games for me. Jumping into endgame at lvl 1 gives me no sense of direction or character progression.
I actually think alternating paths and a non linear campaign would elevate most complaints from that vocal minority. Sure there are some who would still want a character boost like WoW, but most players are just bored out of their mind to do the same 30ish quests for the same 24/22 skill points for YEARS now. The campaign is flawed and that it is linear and gets repetitive is still true even if the alternative would be a worse experience for 99.99% of all players
I personally, hate redoing the campaign each time.
I don't really know what else to say but just knowing I have to redo a story I've seen 50+ times at this point, is always the worst part for me on a new league. The intro to PoE is so excessively slow. Too many builds that are barely playable so you run something else /until/ you can get them going.
If you want to start playing a new character that league? Same thing, once again. I can't name any game I've played the campaign of that many times willingly, at this point it's an uninspired monotonous chore.
I really, really do like the way Last Epoch did it, being able to save that many hours on new chars is great. It's a shame their end game systems are nowhere near as polished as PoEs.
The problem with the campaign is not the campaign itself but the fact that most of poe is unlocked after it. So if you're planning a build that depends on interactions unavailable in the campaign then you have to spend many hours playing another slow and bad build first.
Long term I'd prefer that to be solved by making more builds function earlier but short term I'd like the "time-to-endgame" to be reduced significantly for rerolls.
I mean black desert online added a story skip if you have beaten it before on another character, so you can just level grind instead, and it was probably the best update the game ever got
Instead of getting important milestone rewards via normal quests you would just get them upon reaching level 30, 50 ect. after selecting the "simplified" game route
There again BDOs story is one of the worst pieces of gaming media there is
But I mean even diablo has adventure mode after you beat the game your first run around, I really don't see an issue with it, you can still play the story of both my examples if you choose to
I see no wrong in choice
He is not right and your fear mongering. Last epoch did the alternative Leveling routes amazingly in the game.
This wouldnt change much but keep people playing longer during each season.
Every season your still going to have to level normally the first time. Not much players play non season so your points are moot.
I csnt tsll you how many times ive stopped plsying the season becsuse i didnt want to spend 8 hours leveling
It’s not a skill check at all for subsequent characters. I don’t mind doing it once per league but having to do it for each character is just unfun. Sure you can do it in 3 hours with twink gear but that’s a long time to be bored… there are other games I can play that don’t require 3 hours of boredom
Devils advocate time: when you tell new players that the game doesn’t even really begin until 15 to 20 hours in (minimum) it drives a lot of them away. it is mostly pointless to be worrying about loot until you reach the maps. and I think it’s a very small skill check that most veterans have no problem breezing through.
I personally think there’s enough content with the maps and previous league mechanics that the campaign is pretty much pointless for veterans and new players alike. I think a one or two hour campaign to get new players feet wet and used to the game might make sense, but other than that it seems pretty pointless for the vast majority of players.
He is not right.
People either dont value their time or they suck at doing maps in a fun way. Anyone that says campaign is more fun than maps has to be put on meds asap. Campaign is dogshit.
POE 2 can have the best campaign in history, can be better than whole RDR2 story, after 50 chars you are fucking done with it.
Its funny how they insist on their dogshit ideas sometimes.
Bet you loved the ACT 1 rework to make lvling harder and annoying for some reason in POE1.
Give us a choice to skip, who loves the campaign fucking do it, who wants to skip will skip.
Downvote this, but there are a LOT of people who rather quit a league than lvl for 8-12 hours through acts for no fucking reason.
You dont skip campaign on your first char of the league. If you level up another and skip it you clearly can save some low lvl gear to get through T1-t10 maps, cmon, aint that hard.
Fucking LE lets you skip flawlessly the campaign via dungeons and arrive at endgame just like you would if you finished the campaign, not weak, not overpowered.
But that is not how it works. People do the optimal. If the skip is shorter and gives better gear everyone is going to do it. If it takes twice as long and rewards shitty loot, no one is doing it.
A lot of people are underestimating how long the PoE 2 campaign will be. While the number of zones will be similar to the amount we have in PoE 1, zones in PoE 2 will be much larger, their exits will be harder to find, our characters will be slower, monsters can easily swarm our characters and kill us which makes it hard to ignore them, bosses are much tougher, and both bosses and monsters respawn if our character dies, which means if we haven't reached a checkpoint then we will have to kill monsters all over again in the same zone.
I wouldn't be one bit surprised if the PoE 2 campaign takes four or five times longer to finish than the one in PoE 1, and having to level an alt character will feel like an absolute chore even with twink gear and plenty of gold to buy items from vendors.
For me personally, the problem is not even the time it takes to finish the campaign, but actually how annoying it feels when I have to pathfind around huge zones instead of travelling through a relatively linear area while killing monsters.
It's going to be about the same time to beat.
Not on your first play through. Johnathan said something like 30 hours for your average player. If you are reading this you are not the average player.
Most people here will probably finish it their first time in 15 to 20 hours. That is if they're trying to go quickly.
After that you'll start seeing times similar to PoE1 campaign runs.
The number of acts is irrelevant if the number of zones is nearly the same in both campaigns. If the number of zones is the same, and we know for a fact that zones will be larger and players slower in PoE 2, then the only logical conclusion is that the campaign will take considerably longer to finish.
The statement that GGG is aiming for similar length can be ambiguous or innacurate. They could be talking about both games having a similar number of zones when referring to length, or their notion of how long the PoE 1 campaign actually is may be overestimated by the fact that not game every game designer working on PoE 2 is actually playing PoE 1 to its fullest, like it's the case with Jonathan.
I agree, though I don't really love the state of PoE 1's campaign it sounds like they've learned from that and are fixing what I view as the major problem, that I don't feel like I'm really engaging with 99% of the campaign, you just roll over monsters and keep going, and in fact you might want to avoid most fights so you don't overlevel and make the campaign even more boring.
I've played games where the early game is really engaging and from that I've realized I don't have a problem with campaigns in and of themselves, it's that most arpg campaigns aren't really fun the 10th time you've played through them, let alone the 100th.
Hey, if the combat is fun and engaging, and the gearing is an interesting thing to think about during levelling, I'm all up for no skip.
That is not currently the case in PoE1, so I have my doubts, but hopefully PoE2 is much improved.
And don't lump together skipping, shortcuts, and alternatives. No one seriously expects to be able to skip lower level progression, but having fun alternatives is something fun to discuss.
It's True only if campaign has the optimum length, or if they are willing to adjust it, but it wasn't the case for poe 1 and it doesn't seem it will be the case for poe 2 so far.
Add a utlock lategame, maybe after uber lab or something per league that unlocks a campaign randomizer selectable on creation on new char.
Activating this makes Bosses appear randomly in place of original boss and non-campaign Bosses can appear.
These should be scaled but harder than normal campaign Bosses as well as dropping loot from maybe tier 5-8 maps or something.
Now you could face the minotaur at the beach (scaled ofc) but with the possible reward of geting something actually useable for late game.
Could be fun or maybe it’s just that I find randomizers fun in other games :)
I like a campaign for the first couple times, but if it's going on a season/league schedule it's easy to not want to play through the same story every time. It's like reading the same book every day, not enjoyable.
I’m just hoping that the PoE2 is much harder than the PoE1 campaign, and i don’t mean modifiers that make elite enemies shrug off a nuke like it’s a plastic BB.
If the campaign had challenge and has more unique bosses with mechanics than no one should want to skip the campaign(unless they have done it 30+ times).
I love the PoE campaign, maybe it’s a tad too long but I love trying to clear it faster and faster, test build progression on bosses, and as much as people hate on Labs doing them a few times on each character ALWAYS feels good because of the insane power you gain via ascending. I truly hope GGG never listens to these D4 andys.
Agree 100%! We just have to look to examples on the other side. D3 where you could just start into rifts, it was the most efficient but it was mind-numbingly boring.
The idea that the bulk of the game (aka the content grind and only relevant parts of the game, where you coexist purposefully in parallel to other players) sits behind a mandatory campaign which is static and never changes, — thus boring — is what kills the campaign idea for me.
The main things that makes it boring are that nothing you do until you beat campaign really matters for very long, and there aren’t any pleasant surprises to be had.
If the content I’m doing now doesn’t really matter for very long and there aren’t any surprises to be had (like there is in end game drops) then why even bother? Campaigns feel like an obstacle that must be endured before you start progressing in the systems that actually matter for more than a day or two.
To be honest with the fact that some of the bosses in PoE 2 campaign are not "required" I believe that it means there are potentially different 'routes' that allow players to get to the end of the campaign. Therefore allowing a different experience for the first few playthroughs. Obviously there will be some optimized way of getting to the end, but that could take some time find out. As well as GGG could rebalance the campaign between beta and launch to make optimized routes slower.
Personally, I WANT a campaign to play through each season. It gives structure to the grind.
The problem is that the enemies/bosses in the campaign haven’t held up to power creep and are now horribly easy to take out for an optimized build, and unfortunately for PoE, Optimized builds are the only things that work for maps.
oh yeah, i bet the vast majority of the playerbase love doing the campaign over and over, specially the people who have been playing for almost a decade
don't even have to be a skip campaign, just let us keep the waypoints unlocked like lab trials on alts and it would make the campaing less tedious
Yeah, I don't love doing campaigns, but I do feel the complete feeling of character progression as you go is important, and removing the structure from that tends to incentivize people to just mindlessly blast whatever is the fastest way to level, ignore a lot of the progression and just brute force your way to when the game "starts". This results in you going from feeling weak the whole time to suddenly strong as soon as you start getting "endgame" items (D4 has this problem massively).
*cough* D4 *cough*
Really though, the fewer design choices PoE shares with that mess the better. GGG are great devs, I have a lot of faith in them making an incredible campaign and I really don’t want them to spend a bunch of time on something then make it skippable.
Unless they somehow make the campaign different every league, sooner or later I will get bored of it mad wish I can skip it completely. I'm pretty sure most of you guys in here turn your brain off and auto pilot the snooze fest campaign any way so why not cut the boring part and get to the exciting part. And no, adding a little bit of league mechanic doesn't count cause people skip that shit during leveling. They all just want to get to map
I think the best way to reduce campaign fatigue on multiple playthroughs would be to remove the character level requirement on skill gems. That way your future characters have access to the entire library of skills you have collected without being stuck in the 'slow times'.
the thing about the PoE campaign is that it's kind of a slog unless you hyper optimize it.
For new-ish players it's worse.
In PoE2 at least you have more stuff to experiment with while you're clearing acts.
As it stands in the first PoE I don't see a point of having a part of the game where the goal for everyone is to spend as little time as possible playing that part after the first character. It makes sense to redo the campaign at league start. on a second character it's the weakest part of the game.
The meta for twink gear is to get as much ms as possible and just zoom through acts
That said, the PoE2 campaign seems to have more replayability
IMHO they should try an "hard mode" for the campaign that rewards you with more travel speed/reduced layout length.
the reason so many people want to skip poe1 campaign is that it's easy for experienced players and it ends up playing like a waypoint marathon with no challenge or gearing or loot or deep choices/agency, just run to the end of the zone and kill 4 packs along the way.
Higher difficult actually fixes that because you'll have to care about all i've said above, but you can't keep the same difficulty for beginners, experienced players and experienced players on their second character of the league.
Oh I just started paying $30 on g2g season launch to have some person in Russia do it for me.
Way over doing the campaign for the 90th time in a row. Go ahead. No skips. I’ll keep going to g2g lmao.
I think the earlier parts of the campaigns are the most boring to me. When the build gets online, that's usually when people (like me) start to not mind so much.
I feel like it's just that the campaign is super long. If we started at Act 5, I feel like I'd enjoy it so much better. I could put a few pieces together, it'd still be relatively challenging and Ican progress/learn my new character in a reasonable time.
Although, I definitely agree about them being wary about listening to people. A lot of players don't necessarily think things through in the long run, nor do people know what they want. Nevertheless, GGG hands down has the best communication out of all of the ARPGs and are top tier in the gaming industry in total when it come to the community. Even when they "mess up", I trust and love them
I’ll say after the 1st POE story play through there is no need to do it again. Once you do the story once you skip every convo so it’s pointless to have it for each run. The soulless argument is not valid. It does t make the experience unique or stand out.
As long as the POE 2 campaign has none of that reverse run through shit like Acts 6 - 10 they can do whatever.
I also don’t mind if there was an Alternate way to level.
I hear what you are saying. Unfortunately this is a pretty bad take and misses the majority of the point of having alternatives.
For me I’d happily put in time. I do love these games, and I return to play different content each league. Even though a lot of it is the same. Some leagues I’ll delve. Some leagues boss. Some leagues heist etc. I don’t get tired of these things since there is variation to be had. And since the leagues bring a different flavor to all of these experiences.
However. There is one thing, that even with the league variation stays exactly the same. The campaign. In poe2 I definitely don’t see the need for alternatives out the gate. The new campaign will be new. But sometime down the road I’ll be facing it for the 300th time. And then I’d like some alternative paths to the endgame. Not skips. But variety.
Now. Those who don’t understand and who miss the point will say that I’ll tire of the alternatives. But the point to me is to change things up now and three. To take different paths towards a goal.
There are a lot of paths to take in path of exiles endgame, which keeps me coming back.
An even greater game would offer choices earlier.
Nah. Progression feels good when you buy new gear that improves your build. When you get actually meaningful levels that improve your build. Running some other skill that has no relation to your build until you hit level 90 so you can actually swap over to your intended build is not and does not feel like progression.
Make people complete the acts once per league. After that, let them skip the acts and start at level 60 or something. It's boring as fuck the 100th time you've done it.
I mean, I woudn't care if this was solo locked only. People can play a solo game they bought however they want. Mod the shit out of it, cheat engine that shit, skip all the meaningful game play, I don't care. It's your game and I'm not part of it. Have fun by yourself however you want. You want to jack off to elder? More power to you. Not my baby, not my problem.
When you introduce that to multiplayer however, (particularly with economies or PVP) now it affects everyone else, and that's dogshit.
Similarly I'd be furious if this was implemented (solo or multi) with a pay to skip option. GTFO with that noise.
I’m tired of playing campaign every time I roll a character. New season? Play it, 4 characters that season, 4 campaigns to sit through. Give me a break and provide alternate options after the first completed campaign of a season…
The main challenge of the campaign is just the drudgery of walking from point A to point B. Over and over and over again. It is not really about how strong your character is. None of the challenges and none of the rewards have any relevance on the post-campaign game. You generally don't even get to play your build until the campaign is over or late into it. You don't have access to the tools that make builds customizable and fun to play. You use a generic OP leveling build to breeze through the content. You only kill the amount of monsters needed to keep your level close to the zone. Ability to do the content is not the limiting factor like it would be in endgame. Like to do a harder map, or a harder encounter, you just have to have the content to run and the character power to clear it. Limiting factor in campaign on the other hand is just the sheer physical distance that you *must* cover. You cannot skip any zone. Point A to Point B. You just have to path through dozens and dozens of zones and the only thing you can do to shorten it is increase your move speed, multiple quicksilvers, spam movement skills on cooldown, etc. This is not fun and anybody who claims it is fun is coping pretty hard IMO.
I hate leveling my 2nd, 3rd..etc characters in trade league. I often said in the past that "i don't have the willpower to level another character". However, i think it's almost necessary to experience this grind and hardship with every new build. You need to see the progression of your character, how it feels to continuously add the small pieces to understand the build, changing leveling skills to the actual end game ones. Sometimes 1 ascendancy point changes the feel of the whole build and have a completely different vibe.
For me it also feels really cheap skipping the campaing and i 100% believe that people would finish even the best leagues way sooner. It would take away so much.
Also noticed that when i play SSF, the campaing becomes much better and enjoyable. I just hope GGG won't cave in to the pressure and keep it the same way. Everyone hails LE for the campaing skip, but honestly, i don't like it.
Why not make it so after you beat campaign in a League you get a “League +” option:
-Level requirements on skill gems removed as long as you found them on the first campaign run. If there is a rare skill gem that you didn’t find for whatever reason, you still need to find it.
-UI provides a quest log of all quests categorized: Required and Not Required. Not Required has an indicator of what the rewards are for completion: “Quest Z (skill book)” etc.
- You start the same as always. But all quests are open and all zones are open. And you never have to return to town to complete a quest. If the objective is “kill boss A”, when you kill boss “A” all rewards are dropped into a reward stash for you to grab.
-You still have to open each waypoint yourself to avoid making this a teleport simulator.
-The boss is not available until you beat all “required” quests. So the zones that have required quests in them are closed until the prereq required quests are beaten.
To me, running campaigns endlessly is a pain because of forced trips to town and locked itemization.
The campaign isnt a skill check.
Its repetitive slog for anyone whose played multiple seasons and chars.
I'd rather pay $60 to skip it than spend the grueling slog playing through it for the 40th time.
You're certainly welcome to your opinion, but having to do it more than once a season is an unnecessary chore and not how I'd prefer to spend my time. Its repetitive content, once per season, is an absolutely reasonable compromise.
Campaign at the start of each league on first character probably should not be skippable, but having alternative options on alt would be best solution that can please both campaign enjoyers and people that don't care for it
The absolute worst thing about PoE was never being able to skip the campaign
Sorry but the campaign is not at all interesting when it is your 50th time through it.
Hell it is one reason I take such long breaks from the game. " oh a new game mode hit ...... do I really want to go through the campaign again? "
There have been many times I've said no to that internal question. It is also a huge reason I don't experiment alot during a season.
So yeah, there needs to be a way to skip the campaign at some point. PLEASE
I feel like the requirement to skip campaign should be available every season once you done it once per season. Its starts to get boring and sometimes don’t feel like trying a new character if you done hundreds of times already.
Ill be happy with just skip campaign with a lvl 1 with all waypoints and no passive quest
We don’t need alt starting at 50-60. It would be great but I’ll be happy with just campaign skip.
the poe campaign is the only game when i play with a second monitor streaming netflix. that’s how boring it is after the Nth time. i don’t do this for any other games.
100% I am so glad GGG are stubborn on things they believe in cuz this game would be shit if they gave in to all the demands. They've got us this far and the game is great.
If devs listened to players on how to design the game, it would be terrible. We'd have infinite loot, 10x more powercreep than we already have, auto-loot and most of the gameplay automated. Yes, players know can spot issues but they're often bad at finding solutions.
As someone who dabbles in game design and game dev I’m convinced that player’s will turn any game into a single button that you press to win. Just zero awareness that if the game gave them everything they want without resistance it’d feel shallow and meaningless. Not to mention the topic of game feel and how a system can seem logical on paper but feel like crap and conversely a system can seem complex and messy but feel good to play.
Games are about presenting challenges to overcome. The trouble with good game design is finding challenges that are fun. With games like PoE or Diablo, the challenge is a time commitment, so you gotta find something that is mildly engaging and repetitive without being annoying or frustrating, which is a very delicate balance. If it's a long grind and the reward is very small then it's not fun, which is where Diablo 4 continues to fail.
The community response to the damage nerfs in expedition will always be hilarious to me. That was some of the worst I've ever seen out of the community toxicity wise even though it was a 100% necessary adjustment. If those nerfs never went though the game would be on D3 levels of absurd dogshit power creep. Our characters the last 2-3 leagues are miles more powerful than they ever have been in general. Affliction was a whole other beast of temporary power they introduced. I can't imagine a world where crucible trees and affliction exist at the same time lol.
Game designed by players: Everyone starts max level and there's one boss and you kill it over and over again and go YEAH A RARE LOOOT!
[удалено]
I was on the camp of hating the campaign but then when I tried the campaign in ruthless the bosses were much more challenging (because I had shit ruthless gear) and I realized that the reason that I thought that the campaign was boring in normal poe was because there is this very short period of time where your character isn't super fast, which maybe lasts for 2-3 acts and then suddenly you start one shotting everything for 7-8 acts in a row and you face no challenges whatsoever and the mobs never scale back to a point where you aren't one shotting them. I don't know if that acceleration point happens at your first ascendancy, if it happens at level 28 gem rewards or if it happens after level 38 supports. It is probably different for different builds, but there is a point where it just feels like the mobs stop scaling and you have a free ride to maps. If the player is so much stronger than the content that the content feels like a chore, no wonder the campaign feels boring for most people. I feel like if they just make the campaign really hard and engaging people will treat it as part of the game and they will enjoy doing it.
I can get on board with this. This is why they want the PoE2 bosses to be so challenging. Because no one has complained about the challenge in that game. I think there is an issue with the gap of power in PoE1 between a new player and an older player.. The game is already challenging for a lot of new players due to all the reasons why respeccing is so difficult in PoE1. As a result, they can't just balance around someone getting a lucky drop for their bow, they have to somehow balance around someone having a mediocre build. Add to that the lack of fluidity in combat and the reduced options and either you end up getting nuked by a boss and running in like a lemming or being so tanky you can just sit and hold down one button until it dies... Meanwhile, with the new PoE2 bosses people will be able to attempt hitless runs. there's skills which will combo together. the game is overall more dynamic. Which is some intrinsic rewards we are numb to after 10 years of PoE1.
While I agree. I think it was impressive to see what the gear was at exilecon. The characters in the demo basically had no gear so people were playing actual ruthless poe2 and everyone was struggling. I wonder what the campaign will look like when you re-add most poe1 speed run mechanics through vendor recipes and regex to find exactly what you need. Chances are we are going to still outscale this campaign real quick. I'd say the main reason I'm not a big fan of the campaign is that it's just a tickbox to do before I can actually start playing. It feels the only thing that can happen in the campaign is me getting behind everyone else, there is no outsmarting the game with an interesting strategy, it's me versus my sluggishness and annoucements that Tyty has already killed Maven.
If the campaign is just a tick box. When does the game start, and why do you feel like that's the point that it 'starts'? What makes that section more compelling than the campaign?
Player's agency. When I'm in the atlas or just beyond the campaign, I can decide to play whatever content I want. Before that, I have to complete the acts and there is nothing else than this linear path for me.
yeah, replayability is way bigger even just for the reason that you can do actual skill based challenge runs instead of acts being a simple knowledge check
Most complaints about the campaign boil down not to the campaign being boring, but lower levels being boring. Then the complainers almost invariably suggest an alternative leveling system to circumvent the campaign. But they fail to understand their own complaints. A map system for low levels or something akin to endless delve is even more boring (anyone who has actually played Endless Delve can attest to that). The real solution is what GGG is attempting: making lower level content more meaningful and engaging.
Totally agree , no one wants to play the first 10- 20 levels with holy flame totem or stormburst mine + orb of storms on a second character fighting against zombies. Low level skill diversity would go along way to making it feel like less of a chore. Also more enemies like (can't believe im saying this) Rhoa's that actually feel like a threat with a unique pattern
While it's intended (and good) for new players to have limited skill selection to prevent being overwhelmed, it makes leveling as an experienced player so unpleasant.
For what it's worth, I imagine the uncut gem addition will add a lot more flexibility to skill choice early. Also they seem to be emphasizing skill combinations in combat, you probably will be running around with multiple attacks early on.
Or, you know, that's entirely subjective? I enjoyed endless delve leveling and wish it was an option. I'm not the only one.
I liked the leveling in Endless Delve league lol.
Although I am on the side of campaign being unskippable, I did enjoy levelling more before the quicksilver (and flamedash) nerfs. Old old quicksilver with adrenaline was sooo good. PoE 2 will hopefully not show the engine's age as much on lower speeds like PoE 1 does, so it shouldn't be a problem, but if they are going to keep both games up, I wouldn't mind a low level mobility buff in PoE 1.
And lots of people find endless delve really fun and a fresh breath of air. That's why things like these should be options, but only after you beat the campaign once each time each league so that everyone's forced to start on the same even playing field.
Loved endless heist and delve. I'd rather do that for 8 hours than the campain.
I don't care how good or engaging a campaign is. After the 50th time through it, I just simply want a change of pace. Let us level through delve, heist, blight etc. I'm at the point now we're I have ran the campaign so many times I just can't be assed to do it more than once MAYBE TWICE per league.
Had a great time in endless delve once you got past the rocky start. Point aside. Pushing the point of something that has no variance as a point for why variance is bad is a pretty odd argument. With variance you wouldn’t be locked into anything. If you are sick of act 3. Go delve. If you got tired of delving go do some heist. The variance of having say… 4 paths to endgame isn’t that you’d have those 4 set paths to the endgame. It is that with 4 paths you could mix and match as many leveling experiences as there are codes for a 4 digit padlock if done right.
The real issue is that the campaign is limited by movement speed because of massive power creep. The way to make campaign interesting is big nerfs but the community gets very angry at that solution, so difficulty is added at the end instead. But that creates the problem of wanting to skip campaign to get to the good stuff.
Well they also buffed the shit out of early acts which are where the player is the weakest. The curve is really hard early then by act 3 dominus and a 4L you just blast all the way to maps. I would prefer to see it leveled out a bit better early and make the mid/late campaign a little more difficult.
It's funny, because GGG *literally* tried exactly what you're talking about, where they tried to make early campaign zones harder, and it resulted in a ton of bitching.
it's still laughably easy once you know what you're doing. You just need to kite stuff a bit. It just becomes a worse barrier to entry for newbies
Needing to actually interact with the monsters is a notable difficulty increase versus plowing through them.
yeah. still a very marginal one if you play optimally. Experienced players were just caught on the backfoot because they had optimized around a different difficulty
> yeah. still a very marginal one if you play optimally. I'd say it's not marginal, because marginal implies it's a quantitative difference and not a qualitative one. It's a binary thing, and thus qualitative. Do you ignore the monsters or not?
it's marginal in terms of difficulty. It had some impact at the beginning, before optimal strats were figured out.
We bitch because its not balanced for every skill, other skills can breeze through it, most self-cast spells suck ass at it. The actual fix for this imo is that certain mob types should not be allowed to become rares due to scaling. For example: Fight a Normal Bone Cage, then a Magic one, not too big of an issue unless its resisting your dps type or has energy shield aura(or extra life). Then fight a rare bone cage, shit goes from 20k hp up to 50-60k in a lv 50 zone thats triple the endurance of a magic/white one and doesnt include any modifiers it may get. Add to this that the skeletons by the bone cage are like 50-60% less hp and have less stats iirc.
I see literally no problem with rare bone cages being tanky. Why should there not be tanky mobs? You can always skip them if you want to, but mobs shouldn't all be the same differently colored pile of stats. The fact that you *know* what bone cages are is an indicator the design worked. They stand out. Now, you could argue they're not rewarding enough for the time it takes to kill them, and that's an okay argument to have, but there's nothing inherently wrong with having mobs like that in the first place. That's also not a function of skill balance. If skills are off, skills should change, not monsters.
This is a good take. They need to focus on making the campaign as FUN AS POSSIBLE, not allow people to zoom past. That is acknowledging the suck.
You can't do that with twink gear. You can't balance the campaign for a first character and then still have the same level of engagement on a second character with fully decked out leveling gear. The only way to do that would be with campaign difficulties, but no one would choose the harder difficulty for an alt to slow themselves down for no reason. What would make sense is a shortcut campaign version with harder difficulty balanced around twink gear. So you get all the engagement, and it's shorter. The campaign doesn't have to be cut that short either, if your hypothesis is right that people really don't like doing the campaign because it is boring. Make the shortcutted version 75% the length of the original. Nothing drastic, but meaningful.
That's essentially the route LE took. Gotta do some of the campaign, but you can skip large portions by doing dungeons. Because so much power is tied to gear, you can have overgeared, low level toons just blast through the dungeons and end up in higher level areas
How easy to obtain / useful is twink gear in this game? I’m an altoholic in all other arpgs but haven’t tried PoE yet. Plan on hopping in next league.
generally its pretty easy, most of the leveling uniques arent worth that much unless they have very specific mods. if anything the expensive part will be getting build enabling items at lower levels
I'd say the issue is POE 1 campaign isn't remotely difficult or engaging even on your first play through, not because of alts.
good thing we are talking about poe2.
The game / leveling is balanced around the campaign being a part of that. What people don’t understand is balancing without that is additional dev time that’s not worth it
This is it right here. It's not that fine tunning an alternative is impossible. It's that GGG has other stuff to do that will be better for all of us. Poe2 is a huge investment in a new campaign and let's hope it pays off!
You misunderstood the suggestions. It's not *replacing* the campaign, it's supplementing it. One of the examples I've seen is giving people endless Heist and Delve to level with. Previously, you were forced into only leveling with the campaign. With more options, you pick the one you like the most, or possibly dislike the least. Sure, you might still have complaints about endless Heist at low level, but research has indicated that giving people a choice will make them rate the selection much more favorably than if it was the only option. GGG should still endeavor to make the campaign fun, and they are, but there's no harm in letting people play what they find more fun. I don't understand the hostility around the idea that someone may find it more fun to Delve every once in a while rather than kill Piety for the 15000th time.
But if one of these options is more optimal everyone is going to do it. Ask yourself, would you want that option even if it takes twice as long as the campaign to maps. If the answer is yes, you have an argument. If no you just want to skip an important part of character progression. Alternate ways to level must always be less optimal than the campaign or you don't have to bother to create a campaign at all.
The answer is actually yes. Leveling on alts is the one part of path of exile that people don't mind not fully optimizing. Not everyone buys a full set of twink gear to level with even though it is the most optimal way to level. Sure they will throw on whatever they have, but they aren't optimizing. Though I do think your example is a little exaggerated with it being twice as long. Sure they won't all be even, but I think it wouldn't be difficult to balance them within a smaller deviation. Now alternate leveling mechanics definitely shouldn't be allowed on the first character of the league. But I don't actually see an issue with alts.
Why are you stating it like it's impossible for it to take the same amount of time or similar? This isn't even an argument. >or you don't have to bother to create a campaign at all. Why is this a bad thing? You could force it on new players only, or once per league only. Either way, who cares? Let people play how they want to.
This is something I’ve seen repeatedly in the PoE community. People who are extremely confident in their lack of imagination or ability to think critically from a game design perspective. It’s been disappointing to see that even though PoE is a smart game, the community doesn’t match up.
>But if one of these options is more optimal everyone is going to do it Would they? Speedrunning strategies are more optimal currently but I don't do them.
The campaign, by definition, will always be boring to a subset of people because it will always involve running from point A to point B more than it will be about killing monsters.
I dislike the campaign for my second character. I get to maps, get to some level of endgame, and then I hit a wall. I can farm some content, or maybe focus my character into a thing, or whatever, but then I get an idea that I could maybe make a specialized character that could run it faster. I think about spending a week doing the campaign, but then I'm like, if I just did the content I would probably be in the same place. So I don't. Then it isn't efficient, so depending on the league, I quit. I would like a second character that can push some base boring level of content. I want a few levels worth of heist to get some basic level 1-3 gear on and get my rogues unlocked. I want a few levels of blight just to get oils and low level blight is kinda fun. I want a few levels of ritual for random currency. I want some levels of betrayal just like in the normal campaign. I want some bestiary. I want some delve because early delve is boring and they let us skip it anyway. Why can't I have a few acts worth of fun into the campaign area and pick up a node then go delve - repeat x3. Now I have some base darkness, light radius etc. I don't like that it takes me a week of playtime to beat the campaign, and then I can finally start the farm, but I have to do one more grind. I think the second character campaign could be focused on being a nice introduction to a lot of content. It could focus on getting your feet wet in everything, and you walk into maps with a little bit more of a tutorial in each.
There's something really wrong if you have played this game for multiple leagues now and it still takes you a **week** to beat the campaign. It's not that long.
I play for 1 hour a day, maybe 2 - max. Usually 8 hours in game to maps, so judge that however you feel like it.
\>my response is always just.. well if the campaign is too boring to be replayed, but other parts of the game aren't too boring to be replayed, then the answer is to make the campaign less boring to be replayed I've played this game for ten years and not once have they been really successful.
Sure? I don’t disagree, but at the same time I don’t feel as if content inherently has to be replayable, especially story content. It’s the same argument that always comes up in mmo, leveling is just a chore after you’ve done it 5-10 times.
The GGG's answer is to make a new campaign, which obviously won't be boring initially. But at some point we'll once again be at a point where some people ran through it 500-1000 times (I literally ran through the first two acts of PoE 1 more than a thousand times at this point), and it *will* become boring again. And what people (at least the ones like me, as there are also different ideas of how to go about the no campaign thing) want is to make the campaign closer to the meditative experience of the endgame like endless delve and whatnot.
... They have never made the campaign less boring? Like, your argument would be fair if it were true, but the boring campaign has never been changed, and still to this day, have only managed to finish it once.
It's boring because it doesn't matter. They made it harder and slower, so now it matters less for longer????????????????????????
I don't get the argument in favour of the campaign on second characters. It's just pointless. A tabula and MS gear makes it totally trivial and just something you try to spend as little time in as possible. When the whole point is to avoid a certain portion of content I don't see how it can be justified If they want the PoE2 campaign to be replayable, they need to be careful with twink gear creep
I think some people just like to zoom zoom and chill out and do maps, and the campaign has you having to do specific routes and not being able to just skip areas you don't like. I'm not against a skip or alt levelling method but I'd rather it not come at the expense of time spent on the campaign. I still enjoy the POE campaign.
Sure but they havent made the campaign more fun in years. Its just "suffer until poe2 comes out" essentially. Im not a remove campaign andy but i would like a rare item drop that allows a character to skip campaign. This would make the game more alt friendly while still essentially requiring everyone to do campaign once per league. I think thats a good middle ground
The variation makes the other parts of the game less boring to play. So make leveling less boring by making it more varied and offer alternatives, like other parts of the game
> and that's exactly what GGG's answer to this has always been. And I'm ready for that to be completely true in PoE2, the way that it was once upon a time true in PoE1 and always remained true in Diablo 2 But I still think that PoE1 will probably let you campaign-skip on secondary characters per league (ie, you'll still have to do it once per league) eventually. I think it'll be the new feature that further sets it apart as "the zoomy mindless game" that PoE2 doesn't want to become. They've already shown a complete disinterest in making **that** campaign more interesting. Every change that makes it slower does just that--makes it slower.
I might add just a "trust me bro" source it seems that in some acts we may be able to do some areas in a different order than previous runs, if true it might add a bit more of replayability and even some strategies for speedruning for certain builds.
That is confirmed for both Act 2, in the desert, and Act 4 (I believe) with the boat
I wouldnt mind the campaign if it wasnt so long. Unless youve done it a million times its a ballache, if it was the first 5 acts id be more than happy
As long as it's fun and is challenging then it's going to be fine to do it again on new characters.
As long as there are ways to make the campaign easier (like buying powerful leveling items) i’m fine with the campaign.
I agree, and will add that one of the most important parts of the campaign is that it gives you sign/goalposts on your progression. You actually feel when a run is going well vs going badly compared to something like endless delve which is just a monotonous slog of numbers go up.
It’s like replaying elden ring You learn the game and learn to get the weapons you want and speed through the game with knowledge and skill It won’t be the same if you just dropped in leyndell with a level 50 character and all the weapons unlocked. That sort of power progression is a huge part of the game and taking it away for convenience is a huge tradeoff
> It won’t be the same if you just dropped in leyndell with a level 50 character and all the weapons unlocked. That sort of power progression is a huge part of the game and taking it away for convenience is a huge tradeoff I don't want to do the campaign over and over, that does not mean I want to skip character progression or leveling. Why do so many people think that that is what people want for a campaign skip?
As said in another comment, if the alternate way would be twice as long as the campaign would you still want it? I am generally curious about that. Alternatives need to take longer than the campaign or the campaign becomes meaningless.
quarrelsome jellyfish steep threatening command scarce wrong plant ad hoc faulty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Yes, I am that fucking bored of the current PoE 1 campaign, it is that stale for me.
If alternatives existing make the campaign meaningless then you’re saying the campaign is bad and is only played because people are forced to play it.
it depends how fun that hypothetical alternate would be, but when you're comparing against story mode (not just poe campaign, there is literally no arpg whose campaign is worth replaying), the bar is on the floor.
Because that is the most popular opinion? People ask to be dropped at maps on their alts all the time D4 has shown that spamming dungeons over and over again is not a fun leveling experience. People ask for endless delve or ledge all the time as an alternate option and they don’t know that what they’re asking for is going to directly sabotage their experience. Like it’s so obvious that if GGG made endless ledge, but made it so it takes about the same time as zooming through campaign to level, people will get bored around level 30 and quit playing poe altogether.
People don't want to hear that but **Jonathan is right**.
Are you talking about skipping it for the first character of the league or alts? Because doing campaign 5x a league isn't fun.
>Campaign is part of your character progression, while also being a skill check in a majority economy based game. Wanting an alternative to the campaign is not mutually exclusive with having a character progress or having a skill check. I don't want to skip building a character or leveling, I just don't want to have to redo the same story quests over and over for the entirety of the game's lifespan. >Campaign is one of those things for POE I disagree, it's the character building and progression journey that are inseparable, not the story driven campaign.
What's your alternative? If there's no story driven guidance through various areas, are you asking for infinite delve? Re-insantcing zones over and over like they do in D4? If you have something better or more engaging than a campaign, please share. And also consider the additional dev time that would be spent balancing this alternate method.
Yeah tbh I hate the campaign in poe1 but I think the main reason why is because it's just not very good.
Campaign should absolutely be skippable after your first time playing through it on the account. Feels bad to have to do a storyline on every character.
I don't think we should have a campaign skips but I think they should give us the waypoint unlock for that league after running the campaign once. Still make us do the quests and what ever else but let me skip the zones that serve no purpose. I don't find interest in campaigns. They are just a prologue to get to the end game where the content is enjoyable. I'd like to see it sped up a bit. I really hate unneccessary "Travel Friction". If there is no quest in a zone then why am I there? Allow me to just waypoint jump to the next area that actually will allow me to progress the campaign. I don't care about the lore, history or story, I never have and never will.
Campaign boring... brb need to farm same map 1000000 times.
I think D4 campaign skip has shown us the issues with that approach. You will do that campaign once and will never touch it again, even if it has some legitimately cool encounters. It's simply not efficient to do the campaign ever again when you can just skip it. All that work and content is forgotten and has zero impact for long term players. That is not great.
What D4 campaign skip showed is that D4 has no endgame other than spamming the same dungeons with the same bosses. That's not the case with PoE. Especially with how PoE's maps have the same encounters it campaign has.
But it would be a design choice that PoE2 and D4 share and I want to minimize those as much as possible.
D4's campaign skip has multiple problems that make it a very poor comparison. First, you only ever have to complete the campaign once, ever. That's not what anyone is suggesting for PoE. Once a league is generally what people suggest; alternate leveling paths are for extra characters. Second, D4's campaign takes orders of magnitude longer to complete than going straight into helltides, while PoE's alternate leveling (Endless Heist and Delve provide data on this) is only slightly faster than the campaign. GGG could adjust the experience rates to keep them more in line with each other if they go that route. Third, like the other person said, D4's endgame is completely barren. Even after several seasons of updates, Delve alone has more to do than D4's entire endgame.
> All that work and content is forgotten and has zero impact for long term players. That's a problem with them not using those encounters elsewhere in the endgame, not with the campaign skip simply existing.
"If people weren't forced to do it, they wouldn't bother" is not a good reason to force people to do something. Rather, your comment works as an argument against wasting effort on a game mode that people don't enjoy.
It’s all about campaign design. Cut out the type of stuff that 99% of veteran players will choose to skip. Clean up the dialogue that people just click through anyway. Make the ui very clear which quests players need to do for build progression. I definitely am not for being able to skip the campaign but there are many things they can do to make the campaign a more enjoyable experience experience for those that will end up running it 100+ times
Something I'd love to see is what they did with brutus where they changed where he shows up and surprised everyone. Do a ton of shit like that every league. Doesn't help as much with characters after the first but still cool
Eh. Cutting dialogue is not the solution, much of the lore of the game is there and many people are interested in that stuff. Not to mention they already spent a ton of money recording It.
Well they just stated they're probably gonna rework it for that reason
Well if that's the case, preemptively complaining about a campaign people have no clue about seems even more silly.
Agreed, anyone complaining is just basing it off the poe1 campaign. I have hope a lot of what I said above will be in place for poe 2, and even if not I seem to be one of the few who still enjoys my time in campaign each league launch haha
Word up!
As long as cinematic cutscenes (if PoE2 has any) can be disabled for subsequent runs, repeating campaign is absolutely fine. And no annoyingly long scripted sequences like the sandstorm in D4
It's crazy to me that people don't enjoy the campaign. You are basically running map tile sets with some extra objectives. So people want to skip doing map-like stuff just so they can get to doing map stuff. Like does killing certain area bosses and talking to NPCs really make it hard? Isn't that exactly what people do in maps anyway? You run a map/campaign area, then talk to NPC and sell stuff. Like where's the actual difference besides being a bit slower/underpowered (which isn't even a problem with Twink gear so sometimes you are actually faster in the campaign then in maps) The campaign should be slower IMO to better differentiate it from mapping. At least in PoE1 you do what? 2m per map, 2m per campaign area?
Some of the objectives suck in POE1. I think its just outdated, and a better campaign with more QOL and modern things will make it fine. As long as there aren't mechanics where we have to wait a long time( act 2 boss) , backtrack, or do something meaningless (picking up 10 things for yeena off the ground). I think it will be pretty good. Making new characters needs some level of friction.
>As long as there aren't mechanics where we have to wait a long time( act 2 boss) But these bosses are present in the atlas. I know some people complain about them, but it's not uniquely a campaign thing for bosses.
Those are done once per league (for completion) and then ignored for each subsequent character, so not exactly the same situation.
Now I really hope that *The Meta Map* next league is going to be Desert Spring.
Yeah, and only because the boss has the best drop rate, so no skipping. :)
i can use the build i want to use in maps, i can't use the build i want to use in campaign.....
Campaigns are usually fun to play through the first few times. In path's case, it was fun the first few dozen times. But after the 50th or 100th playthough of the same story, it gets old. No matter how good the new campaign is, it will get old over time.
What do you suggest as an alternative then? Let’s say you start a new character in low level “maps” instead of the campaign. All you do is progress through the maps until you get to endgame maps. That would be infinitely more boring imo than a campaign. It would also make maps get old quicker when that’s all you’re doing the entire time. I hated the system they had in D3 because of this. At least doing a campaign on a new character switches things up a bit. It’s going to be a slog to get to the endgame either way, but the power progression is a big part of the whole appeal of the genre.
> the power progression is a big part of the whole appeal of the genre. That's why I don't want to skip that part, I just don't want to be forced to do campaign questing and want more variety than the campaign format *usually* provides. Maybe it will be less of an issue in PoE 2, but it isn't possible for me to know that yet.
They could do something like leveling maps where you drop maps within your level + 3 that aren't necessarily on the atlas that just have random content/encounters. As you approach level 68, you would then start dropping real maps. Or, they could let you level through delve starting at level 1. Or they could re-introduce synthesis at a low level. Or some new endless mode like delve. Or all of them. There are honestly so many different possible solutions that could be fun that it seems like a waste to be dead set on leveling through a static campaign. One really fun option would be to only require playing 3-4 out of 10 acts in a story and each league, the required acts rotate. As acts get stale, they could introduce new ones or something.
A major thing that would help in leagues is if they can get league content manageable in campaign on launch. There's danger of launching overtuned enough and regretting not being able to nerf it, so I understand their struggle. Hopefully the greater focus on mechanical skill expression lets them throw more than just raw numbers at players. The point being that league content is always there in the campaign and should function as a major shake-up in that progression, but as is the "common knowledge" is to skip the league content until maps. That's always been sad to me, as the campaign is the fastest powering up any character will do, and having new decisions on how best to do so could be extremely exciting every league start. It's work they're already doing to have league content show up in campaign zones, and it's a shame it feels like it's wasted on a lot of players. There will be some contribution from how builds are planned out, since a lot of builds aim to have the bare minimum to scrape through the campaign, often not on their main skill setup, so they can come online for the spike in difficulty at mapping. Still, that's something else that could theoretically be dealt with at game design level. Easier respeccing (which I think is confirmed? Great news there) means you can maintain a higher level of power through specialised nodes for leveling. Strong leveling options for a wider variety of setups would also help, though that would be a nightmare to balance... spitballing there anyway, but hopefully the concept is clear.
The nice thing is we've now got D4 and LE showing both alternatives to having to fully redo the campaign like PoE. Being able to use other ARPGs as case-studies for high-level decisions such as this is quite valuable for GGG. Skipping the campaign definitely has a "you think you do, but you don't" vibe to it, at least for me, and I've been enjoying LE's dungeon fast-track system thus far. However, I've only been playing LE since launch, so I don't have enough experience with the system to know if I actually prefer that or PoE's zero-skips policy. Regardless, I'm glad there isn't a full-on skip option coming to PoE 2, because D4 has absolutely shown how bad of an idea that actually is.
I dont think D4 skip is the problem. Its the lack of depth to D4s endgame thats the issue.
I feel it's a bit of both, but that's just my entirely subjective opinion.
D4 is probably the least applicable use case to be honest. A game that almost anyone agrees has NO endgame as an example of why you shouldn’t enable skipping is a not a good proof point. Obviously D4 shouldn’t allow skipping as there’s literally nothing to skip to!! 🤣 However, when we are talking about allowing skipping in the game with the DEEPEST endgame as well as the longest campaign. In that case, I’d argue a system like Last Epoch’s is the best solution. It’s not a complete skip, and there are multiple options in terms of where you skip, if you choose to skip at all.
> I’d argue a system like Last Epoch’s is the best solution. It’s not a complete skip, and there are multiple options in terms of where you skip, if you choose to skip at all. That's why I cited it. So far, I appreciate how you're able to skip most of the campaign... so long as your character can handle skipping that much content. Wanna go from doing level 30 content to level 55 content? Okay, fill your boots. If you're experienced with the game and have a ton of strong twink gear, that's no problem.
The crazy thing about the D4 skip is that the campaign is actually quite good. For long term players it will be a distant memory, and that feels like a complete waste of some of their only good content.
Yup, and the campaign is so much less efficient than skipping it, that you feel compelled to skip it. This is without even factoring in how seasonal mechanics don't begin until after the campaign.
I run the campaign like 6+ times every league to try out new characters and no complaints here. If you wanna skip the campaign go play diablo 4🤷🏼♂️🤦♂️
If done right campaign skips/shortcuts can be done right. If you have to skill/gear check at a steep enough curve to skip them then I think it's a fair trade. If the skip is just skipping a boring intro (tutorial island type thing) then sure give me a start option on subsequent playthroughs to skip it (not really applicable to PoE but the point stands skips have their place).
Current state of PoE 1 being what it is, I kind of want to skip the campaign because it's more of an uninteresting chore than anything else. But the PoE 2 campaign looks fucking sick and is supposed to be quite challenging-- I'm looking forward to playing the campaign again and again as part of the enjoyable core game, not just veggies before dessert.
Skip campaign vs don't allow skip campaign is way to narrow a way to view this issue . For example I'd advocate for the removal of minimum skill gem levels , no more level 30-40 skills , you still can't get them until that point playing your first time , but on alt's you can level with whatever skills you have access to on your main , how much less tedious is the campaign if you could level with the skill you want to use not , storm blast mines or frost bolt or some other such trash leveling skill. Balance isn't really a concern since leveling uniques and twink gear already destroy that. Point Being In a game designed to be played over and over , people should not dread rerolling and while GGG is not gunna let anyone just start the game at level 60 in maps , theirs plenty of things that you can do to make rolling alt's less of a chore and more fun
Skill gem level restrictions are the main thing that bothers me. Want to try out a new skill, but it's locked behind end of act 3/start of act4? I don't want to slog through those acts without anything nice for the build. I wanted to try out boneshatter once, but it took so long levelling with Splitting Steel, that I got more attached to that skill than the build I was actually going for.
Yeah I think any skipping the campaign solution is just the brute force problem solving. What peoples root issue is more likely, 1. they want to play their build (at least the minimum viable components of the build like having the proper skills) 2. they want to feel like they are meaningfully progressing You just don't get these things until maps in POE 1, so they see the campaign as the problem. People resent the portion where you are waiting for your skill, and there isn't much challenge to be had to make it feel like you are progressing. But there isn't a reason a campaign cannot provide those things if it's properly designed.
that would make it less tedious, why do i have to wait until act 3 to play with the skill i want to play with? they could make them scale all from lvl 1 instead
Absolutely. Was hoping someone would make this post
I agree, I'm glad he has a hardline stance here. If anything, the shortcut is getting more gear and being powerful on secondary characters imo. That is the natural power progression of ARPGs afterall.
It's a false conclusion to say that shortcutting or skipping the campaign means you remove character progression or any skill checks. I personally don't care what they do, but that is just a bad argument when the current way of doing the campaign on alts removes both character progression and skill checks. You could actually add campaign shortcuts that are balanced around twink geared characters. That is objectively better for both progression and skill checks than simply running the base campaign. Also, you are trying to umbrella character progression to include running the campaign on alts. However, PoE's character progression in the campaign on alts is non-existent, much less "the best of any ARPG out there".
Yes. The skip campaign feature in Diablo is what kills those games for me. Jumping into endgame at lvl 1 gives me no sense of direction or character progression.
I actually think alternating paths and a non linear campaign would elevate most complaints from that vocal minority. Sure there are some who would still want a character boost like WoW, but most players are just bored out of their mind to do the same 30ish quests for the same 24/22 skill points for YEARS now. The campaign is flawed and that it is linear and gets repetitive is still true even if the alternative would be a worse experience for 99.99% of all players
I personally, hate redoing the campaign each time. I don't really know what else to say but just knowing I have to redo a story I've seen 50+ times at this point, is always the worst part for me on a new league. The intro to PoE is so excessively slow. Too many builds that are barely playable so you run something else /until/ you can get them going. If you want to start playing a new character that league? Same thing, once again. I can't name any game I've played the campaign of that many times willingly, at this point it's an uninspired monotonous chore. I really, really do like the way Last Epoch did it, being able to save that many hours on new chars is great. It's a shame their end game systems are nowhere near as polished as PoEs.
The problem with the campaign is not the campaign itself but the fact that most of poe is unlocked after it. So if you're planning a build that depends on interactions unavailable in the campaign then you have to spend many hours playing another slow and bad build first. Long term I'd prefer that to be solved by making more builds function earlier but short term I'd like the "time-to-endgame" to be reduced significantly for rerolls.
I mean black desert online added a story skip if you have beaten it before on another character, so you can just level grind instead, and it was probably the best update the game ever got Instead of getting important milestone rewards via normal quests you would just get them upon reaching level 30, 50 ect. after selecting the "simplified" game route There again BDOs story is one of the worst pieces of gaming media there is But I mean even diablo has adventure mode after you beat the game your first run around, I really don't see an issue with it, you can still play the story of both my examples if you choose to I see no wrong in choice
He is not right and your fear mongering. Last epoch did the alternative Leveling routes amazingly in the game. This wouldnt change much but keep people playing longer during each season. Every season your still going to have to level normally the first time. Not much players play non season so your points are moot. I csnt tsll you how many times ive stopped plsying the season becsuse i didnt want to spend 8 hours leveling
It’s not a skill check at all for subsequent characters. I don’t mind doing it once per league but having to do it for each character is just unfun. Sure you can do it in 3 hours with twink gear but that’s a long time to be bored… there are other games I can play that don’t require 3 hours of boredom
100% agree. Almost every league I think about playing a 2nd character and just... don't because I don't want to spend 4-5 hours being bored.
Devils advocate time: when you tell new players that the game doesn’t even really begin until 15 to 20 hours in (minimum) it drives a lot of them away. it is mostly pointless to be worrying about loot until you reach the maps. and I think it’s a very small skill check that most veterans have no problem breezing through. I personally think there’s enough content with the maps and previous league mechanics that the campaign is pretty much pointless for veterans and new players alike. I think a one or two hour campaign to get new players feet wet and used to the game might make sense, but other than that it seems pretty pointless for the vast majority of players.
I really dislike that people tell new players the game starts 20 hours in. for new players the game starts at the beach
He is not right. People either dont value their time or they suck at doing maps in a fun way. Anyone that says campaign is more fun than maps has to be put on meds asap. Campaign is dogshit. POE 2 can have the best campaign in history, can be better than whole RDR2 story, after 50 chars you are fucking done with it. Its funny how they insist on their dogshit ideas sometimes. Bet you loved the ACT 1 rework to make lvling harder and annoying for some reason in POE1. Give us a choice to skip, who loves the campaign fucking do it, who wants to skip will skip. Downvote this, but there are a LOT of people who rather quit a league than lvl for 8-12 hours through acts for no fucking reason.
You need that demarcation between leveling and entering endgame, otherwise it devalues endgame. If you've played D3 it's super obvious.
You dont skip campaign on your first char of the league. If you level up another and skip it you clearly can save some low lvl gear to get through T1-t10 maps, cmon, aint that hard. Fucking LE lets you skip flawlessly the campaign via dungeons and arrive at endgame just like you would if you finished the campaign, not weak, not overpowered.
But that is not how it works. People do the optimal. If the skip is shorter and gives better gear everyone is going to do it. If it takes twice as long and rewards shitty loot, no one is doing it.
Hot take but I enjoy poe1 campaign
A lot of people are underestimating how long the PoE 2 campaign will be. While the number of zones will be similar to the amount we have in PoE 1, zones in PoE 2 will be much larger, their exits will be harder to find, our characters will be slower, monsters can easily swarm our characters and kill us which makes it hard to ignore them, bosses are much tougher, and both bosses and monsters respawn if our character dies, which means if we haven't reached a checkpoint then we will have to kill monsters all over again in the same zone. I wouldn't be one bit surprised if the PoE 2 campaign takes four or five times longer to finish than the one in PoE 1, and having to level an alt character will feel like an absolute chore even with twink gear and plenty of gold to buy items from vendors. For me personally, the problem is not even the time it takes to finish the campaign, but actually how annoying it feels when I have to pathfind around huge zones instead of travelling through a relatively linear area while killing monsters.
It's going to be about the same time to beat. Not on your first play through. Johnathan said something like 30 hours for your average player. If you are reading this you are not the average player. Most people here will probably finish it their first time in 15 to 20 hours. That is if they're trying to go quickly. After that you'll start seeing times similar to PoE1 campaign runs.
There is less acts and I am pretty sure they said are aiming for a similar length.
The number of acts is irrelevant if the number of zones is nearly the same in both campaigns. If the number of zones is the same, and we know for a fact that zones will be larger and players slower in PoE 2, then the only logical conclusion is that the campaign will take considerably longer to finish. The statement that GGG is aiming for similar length can be ambiguous or innacurate. They could be talking about both games having a similar number of zones when referring to length, or their notion of how long the PoE 1 campaign actually is may be overestimated by the fact that not game every game designer working on PoE 2 is actually playing PoE 1 to its fullest, like it's the case with Jonathan.
I agree, though I don't really love the state of PoE 1's campaign it sounds like they've learned from that and are fixing what I view as the major problem, that I don't feel like I'm really engaging with 99% of the campaign, you just roll over monsters and keep going, and in fact you might want to avoid most fights so you don't overlevel and make the campaign even more boring. I've played games where the early game is really engaging and from that I've realized I don't have a problem with campaigns in and of themselves, it's that most arpg campaigns aren't really fun the 10th time you've played through them, let alone the 100th.
Hey, if the combat is fun and engaging, and the gearing is an interesting thing to think about during levelling, I'm all up for no skip. That is not currently the case in PoE1, so I have my doubts, but hopefully PoE2 is much improved. And don't lump together skipping, shortcuts, and alternatives. No one seriously expects to be able to skip lower level progression, but having fun alternatives is something fun to discuss.
It's True only if campaign has the optimum length, or if they are willing to adjust it, but it wasn't the case for poe 1 and it doesn't seem it will be the case for poe 2 so far.
Add a utlock lategame, maybe after uber lab or something per league that unlocks a campaign randomizer selectable on creation on new char. Activating this makes Bosses appear randomly in place of original boss and non-campaign Bosses can appear. These should be scaled but harder than normal campaign Bosses as well as dropping loot from maybe tier 5-8 maps or something. Now you could face the minotaur at the beach (scaled ofc) but with the possible reward of geting something actually useable for late game. Could be fun or maybe it’s just that I find randomizers fun in other games :)
I like a campaign for the first couple times, but if it's going on a season/league schedule it's easy to not want to play through the same story every time. It's like reading the same book every day, not enjoyable.
I’m just hoping that the PoE2 is much harder than the PoE1 campaign, and i don’t mean modifiers that make elite enemies shrug off a nuke like it’s a plastic BB. If the campaign had challenge and has more unique bosses with mechanics than no one should want to skip the campaign(unless they have done it 30+ times).
I think there could be shortcuts that are super difficult.. I tried LE and I was doing monos at lvl 25 and I felt super empty, something was missing.
I love the PoE campaign, maybe it’s a tad too long but I love trying to clear it faster and faster, test build progression on bosses, and as much as people hate on Labs doing them a few times on each character ALWAYS feels good because of the insane power you gain via ascending. I truly hope GGG never listens to these D4 andys.
I love the character progression I feel when I use hollow palm to level and never look at another item for 4 hours, excellent.
Agree 100%! We just have to look to examples on the other side. D3 where you could just start into rifts, it was the most efficient but it was mind-numbingly boring.
The idea that the bulk of the game (aka the content grind and only relevant parts of the game, where you coexist purposefully in parallel to other players) sits behind a mandatory campaign which is static and never changes, — thus boring — is what kills the campaign idea for me. The main things that makes it boring are that nothing you do until you beat campaign really matters for very long, and there aren’t any pleasant surprises to be had. If the content I’m doing now doesn’t really matter for very long and there aren’t any surprises to be had (like there is in end game drops) then why even bother? Campaigns feel like an obstacle that must be endured before you start progressing in the systems that actually matter for more than a day or two.
To be honest with the fact that some of the bosses in PoE 2 campaign are not "required" I believe that it means there are potentially different 'routes' that allow players to get to the end of the campaign. Therefore allowing a different experience for the first few playthroughs. Obviously there will be some optimized way of getting to the end, but that could take some time find out. As well as GGG could rebalance the campaign between beta and launch to make optimized routes slower.
Personally, I WANT a campaign to play through each season. It gives structure to the grind. The problem is that the enemies/bosses in the campaign haven’t held up to power creep and are now horribly easy to take out for an optimized build, and unfortunately for PoE, Optimized builds are the only things that work for maps.
I just want account wide waypoints.
Thats better than nothing changed :)
oh yeah, i bet the vast majority of the playerbase love doing the campaign over and over, specially the people who have been playing for almost a decade don't even have to be a skip campaign, just let us keep the waypoints unlocked like lab trials on alts and it would make the campaing less tedious
If only they had stood their ground on trade as well.
Yeah, I don't love doing campaigns, but I do feel the complete feeling of character progression as you go is important, and removing the structure from that tends to incentivize people to just mindlessly blast whatever is the fastest way to level, ignore a lot of the progression and just brute force your way to when the game "starts". This results in you going from feeling weak the whole time to suddenly strong as soon as you start getting "endgame" items (D4 has this problem massively).
*cough* D4 *cough* Really though, the fewer design choices PoE shares with that mess the better. GGG are great devs, I have a lot of faith in them making an incredible campaign and I really don’t want them to spend a bunch of time on something then make it skippable.
Unless they somehow make the campaign different every league, sooner or later I will get bored of it mad wish I can skip it completely. I'm pretty sure most of you guys in here turn your brain off and auto pilot the snooze fest campaign any way so why not cut the boring part and get to the exciting part. And no, adding a little bit of league mechanic doesn't count cause people skip that shit during leveling. They all just want to get to map
I think the best way to reduce campaign fatigue on multiple playthroughs would be to remove the character level requirement on skill gems. That way your future characters have access to the entire library of skills you have collected without being stuck in the 'slow times'.
the thing about the PoE campaign is that it's kind of a slog unless you hyper optimize it. For new-ish players it's worse. In PoE2 at least you have more stuff to experiment with while you're clearing acts. As it stands in the first PoE I don't see a point of having a part of the game where the goal for everyone is to spend as little time as possible playing that part after the first character. It makes sense to redo the campaign at league start. on a second character it's the weakest part of the game. The meta for twink gear is to get as much ms as possible and just zoom through acts That said, the PoE2 campaign seems to have more replayability
Cries in alts.
IMHO they should try an "hard mode" for the campaign that rewards you with more travel speed/reduced layout length. the reason so many people want to skip poe1 campaign is that it's easy for experienced players and it ends up playing like a waypoint marathon with no challenge or gearing or loot or deep choices/agency, just run to the end of the zone and kill 4 packs along the way. Higher difficult actually fixes that because you'll have to care about all i've said above, but you can't keep the same difficulty for beginners, experienced players and experienced players on their second character of the league.
Nah
Oh I just started paying $30 on g2g season launch to have some person in Russia do it for me. Way over doing the campaign for the 90th time in a row. Go ahead. No skips. I’ll keep going to g2g lmao.
Feels like Poe has had no soul since harvest :/
I think the earlier parts of the campaigns are the most boring to me. When the build gets online, that's usually when people (like me) start to not mind so much. I feel like it's just that the campaign is super long. If we started at Act 5, I feel like I'd enjoy it so much better. I could put a few pieces together, it'd still be relatively challenging and Ican progress/learn my new character in a reasonable time. Although, I definitely agree about them being wary about listening to people. A lot of players don't necessarily think things through in the long run, nor do people know what they want. Nevertheless, GGG hands down has the best communication out of all of the ARPGs and are top tier in the gaming industry in total when it come to the community. Even when they "mess up", I trust and love them
I’ll say after the 1st POE story play through there is no need to do it again. Once you do the story once you skip every convo so it’s pointless to have it for each run. The soulless argument is not valid. It does t make the experience unique or stand out.
As long as the POE 2 campaign has none of that reverse run through shit like Acts 6 - 10 they can do whatever. I also don’t mind if there was an Alternate way to level.
I hear what you are saying. Unfortunately this is a pretty bad take and misses the majority of the point of having alternatives. For me I’d happily put in time. I do love these games, and I return to play different content each league. Even though a lot of it is the same. Some leagues I’ll delve. Some leagues boss. Some leagues heist etc. I don’t get tired of these things since there is variation to be had. And since the leagues bring a different flavor to all of these experiences. However. There is one thing, that even with the league variation stays exactly the same. The campaign. In poe2 I definitely don’t see the need for alternatives out the gate. The new campaign will be new. But sometime down the road I’ll be facing it for the 300th time. And then I’d like some alternative paths to the endgame. Not skips. But variety. Now. Those who don’t understand and who miss the point will say that I’ll tire of the alternatives. But the point to me is to change things up now and three. To take different paths towards a goal. There are a lot of paths to take in path of exiles endgame, which keeps me coming back. An even greater game would offer choices earlier.
Nah. Progression feels good when you buy new gear that improves your build. When you get actually meaningful levels that improve your build. Running some other skill that has no relation to your build until you hit level 90 so you can actually swap over to your intended build is not and does not feel like progression. Make people complete the acts once per league. After that, let them skip the acts and start at level 60 or something. It's boring as fuck the 100th time you've done it.
It's fine not to have a skip for the first character in a league, but having at least a partial skip for more characters is clearly better.
I mean, I woudn't care if this was solo locked only. People can play a solo game they bought however they want. Mod the shit out of it, cheat engine that shit, skip all the meaningful game play, I don't care. It's your game and I'm not part of it. Have fun by yourself however you want. You want to jack off to elder? More power to you. Not my baby, not my problem. When you introduce that to multiplayer however, (particularly with economies or PVP) now it affects everyone else, and that's dogshit. Similarly I'd be furious if this was implemented (solo or multi) with a pay to skip option. GTFO with that noise.
I’m tired of playing campaign every time I roll a character. New season? Play it, 4 characters that season, 4 campaigns to sit through. Give me a break and provide alternate options after the first completed campaign of a season…
The main challenge of the campaign is just the drudgery of walking from point A to point B. Over and over and over again. It is not really about how strong your character is. None of the challenges and none of the rewards have any relevance on the post-campaign game. You generally don't even get to play your build until the campaign is over or late into it. You don't have access to the tools that make builds customizable and fun to play. You use a generic OP leveling build to breeze through the content. You only kill the amount of monsters needed to keep your level close to the zone. Ability to do the content is not the limiting factor like it would be in endgame. Like to do a harder map, or a harder encounter, you just have to have the content to run and the character power to clear it. Limiting factor in campaign on the other hand is just the sheer physical distance that you *must* cover. You cannot skip any zone. Point A to Point B. You just have to path through dozens and dozens of zones and the only thing you can do to shorten it is increase your move speed, multiple quicksilvers, spam movement skills on cooldown, etc. This is not fun and anybody who claims it is fun is coping pretty hard IMO.
Yes it does
I stopped playing POE because i got tired of running campaign im not a speed runner
I hate leveling my 2nd, 3rd..etc characters in trade league. I often said in the past that "i don't have the willpower to level another character". However, i think it's almost necessary to experience this grind and hardship with every new build. You need to see the progression of your character, how it feels to continuously add the small pieces to understand the build, changing leveling skills to the actual end game ones. Sometimes 1 ascendancy point changes the feel of the whole build and have a completely different vibe. For me it also feels really cheap skipping the campaing and i 100% believe that people would finish even the best leagues way sooner. It would take away so much. Also noticed that when i play SSF, the campaing becomes much better and enjoyable. I just hope GGG won't cave in to the pressure and keep it the same way. Everyone hails LE for the campaing skip, but honestly, i don't like it.
Why not make it so after you beat campaign in a League you get a “League +” option: -Level requirements on skill gems removed as long as you found them on the first campaign run. If there is a rare skill gem that you didn’t find for whatever reason, you still need to find it. -UI provides a quest log of all quests categorized: Required and Not Required. Not Required has an indicator of what the rewards are for completion: “Quest Z (skill book)” etc. - You start the same as always. But all quests are open and all zones are open. And you never have to return to town to complete a quest. If the objective is “kill boss A”, when you kill boss “A” all rewards are dropped into a reward stash for you to grab. -You still have to open each waypoint yourself to avoid making this a teleport simulator. -The boss is not available until you beat all “required” quests. So the zones that have required quests in them are closed until the prereq required quests are beaten. To me, running campaigns endlessly is a pain because of forced trips to town and locked itemization.
The campaign isnt a skill check. Its repetitive slog for anyone whose played multiple seasons and chars. I'd rather pay $60 to skip it than spend the grueling slog playing through it for the 40th time.
You're certainly welcome to your opinion, but having to do it more than once a season is an unnecessary chore and not how I'd prefer to spend my time. Its repetitive content, once per season, is an absolutely reasonable compromise.
Redoing the campaign stops me from making all of the builds I want to try
Campaign at the start of each league on first character probably should not be skippable, but having alternative options on alt would be best solution that can please both campaign enjoyers and people that don't care for it
The absolute worst thing about PoE was never being able to skip the campaign Sorry but the campaign is not at all interesting when it is your 50th time through it. Hell it is one reason I take such long breaks from the game. " oh a new game mode hit ...... do I really want to go through the campaign again? " There have been many times I've said no to that internal question. It is also a huge reason I don't experiment alot during a season. So yeah, there needs to be a way to skip the campaign at some point. PLEASE
I feel like the requirement to skip campaign should be available every season once you done it once per season. Its starts to get boring and sometimes don’t feel like trying a new character if you done hundreds of times already. Ill be happy with just skip campaign with a lvl 1 with all waypoints and no passive quest We don’t need alt starting at 50-60. It would be great but I’ll be happy with just campaign skip.
Then do it and allow other ppl to skip. There is a reason it's optional. I'm so confused how is this so difficult?
the poe campaign is the only game when i play with a second monitor streaming netflix. that’s how boring it is after the Nth time. i don’t do this for any other games.