Sooo about Path of Exile 2 . . . . any news ???

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WNDSamurai wrote:

Greetings first of all

as far as I remember , GGG said that PoE 2 will have the Beta on the early of 2022

it has been I guess 3 Years since the PoE 2 Trailer video I guess ?

I am just asking if there's any news about the game or if there's a way to apply for beta testing in anyway

ty for your time
and sry if this thread has been asked before

No, don't apologize, its understandable and tho this question has been asked a bunch of times all over the forums, the fact that its spread across many areas of the forums it gets a bit tedious to track down actual updated info.

That being said, GGG are working EXTREMELY close with the folks who have worked on the game WIZ 'n LIZ and a freelancer who worked on Raid Shadow Legends.
The man by the name of Copr'op Hilia ESQ, I am total crap at pronouncing foreign names so don't even ask me how to pronounce it, anyway, Mr Hilia who headed the team that worked on the MTX system in the early days of RAID before he was dumped on and left the company has been brought in as a consultant.
That being said, I have heard many different ETA's but right now, its supposed to be the last quarter of 2023 IIRC.
I could care less if it came out in 2024, just as long as they don't rush it out and poop out a broken product. I'd rather have them fine tune the game and miss deadlines than to release a half cooked game just to appease the players.

POE 2 might already be almost finished, they just want to time it to the release of Diablo 4.

...As much as I doubt that, timing it *before* the release of Diablo IV would be make a lot more sense. In fact, 'As Soon As Fucking Possible' might be the official business term for it.

I don't think D4 matters much, these games are for completely different target audiences. They may have 1-2 months where casual players that don't buy MTX move to D4.

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The D4 environments and art-work look great i'll give it that, but the gameplay from what I've seen is very simplistic, it looks more like an arcade / MMO-light game than an ARPG.

no

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AmpegV4 wrote:

I don't think D4 matters much, these games are for completely different target audiences. They may have 1-2 months where casual players that don't buy MTX move to D4.

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The D4 environments and art-work look great i'll give it that, but the gameplay from what I've seen is very simplistic, it looks more like an arcade / MMO-light game than an ARPG.

This was the same argument we used to make for PoE and D3 co-existing, and I think it still holds for the most part...except that was back in 2012-2015 and Exiles were a lot more tolerable of PoE's shortcomings and GGG's then-lighter flimflammery regarding game balance. Now, though, as Exiles grow older and weary of the same old song and dance, I do think DIV poses a much larger threat to PoE '2' than D3 ever did to PoE. There is less commitment to playing PoE even if you do support ardently because the majority of that support doesn't enhance your experience or otherwise make you feel like you SHOULD be using what you paid for. So I don't really buy the idea of only non-supporters moving to DIV. Not when I've seen so many dolphins and whales just up and disappear from Wraeclast over the years.

'Simplistic gameplay' is relative and holds little real meaning when you're comparing it to PoE -- I'd say DIV looks about the same level of gameplay complexity as any other ARPG that isn't called PoE or Last Epoch. Which is fine: that's all most players want (as opposed to Exiles, whose wants are impossible to discern but seem to be fulfilled by PoE, give or take).

It would be naive to think that DIV's release isn't going to have a big impact on the perception of Path of Exile '2'. The relationship between Path of Exile and Diablo might seem thin or distant but there's one fact no Exile can ever deny: Path of Exile owes its success to the defection of a Diablo 3 streamer. He even got a special thanks in the game's credits.

And GGG know that if streamers can influence people to play PoE, streamers can also influence people not to. Especially if the Fresh New Thing happens to be a Diablo sequel: given how much shit Blizzard ate when an upstart Kiwi dev stole their crown, there was no way the next Diablo wasn't taking aim at PoE.

GGG knew which is why they went all-in on trying to position their 4.0 expansion as a sequel; before Covid, they were probably confident they could time it to compete with DIV. In fact, PoE '2' was announced exactly two weeks after DIV and there's no way on earth they didn't know DIV was coming -- the ARPG dev world is relatively small and quite....shall we say fluid in terms of who works for whom. I reckon the race was on probably as early as mid 2019.

But then Covid happened and both GGG and Actiblizz experienced setbacks. Thing is, one's still a fairly small studio and the other is a monster. The only thing really in GGG's favour was PoE '2' seemed to have a much stronger direction AND it wasn't going to be a truly new game starting from scratch. DIV was struggling with poor leadership and guidance. Entire teams were wasting weeks of work only to have it rejected. Blizzard was and continues to writhe under legal issues pertaining to toxicity, which then can be read as productivity issues.

Then there was another flip: some of DIV's leads were scrapped due to the above complications and replaced with younger blood eager to recapture D2's glory and distance DIV from D3 as much as possible. Then there were words of a beta. And another beta. The publicity went into high gear, with multiple videos of the new leads talking about every angle of DIV. Suddenly it seemed much closer to a reality than the old Blizzard 'soon (tm)'.

Meanwhile PoE chugs along with leagues and support blocks. Not a word on PoE 2 for well over a year.

Then the bomb drops: Blizzard announces a date for DIV and it's barely six months away. The crunch is going to be absolutely murder but at least the devs are no longer having their work rejected for lack of overall product vision.

Speaking of vision, that seems to be PoE's 'direction' right now and I can't for the life of me see it. It genuinely seems like business as usual, ignoring the weird blip that is Ruthless -- an impressive but undercooked attempt at reclaiming PoE's roots (or even imagining the game that never was).

The most telling thing is, however, how little backlash there has been by Exiles to DIV interest and discussion, even here. Compared to the violent clashes we had with D3 apologists here during beta and for a while after, there's barely been a whimper of disagreement that DIV's imminence poses a threat to PoE 4.0's absence.

Two things can happen: GGG either react before Exilecon 2023 or they don't. If they do, it will probably be to reveal a PoE 4.0 that may have planned launch features delayed OR expedited into the lead-up. If they don't, then they are confident that even now, there is little overlap between Exiles and 'mainstream' ARPG players. They may be right. I just see less evidence of it than in the past.

Either way, that reveal will definitely be for a beta and not the actual thing. THEN AGAIN, there's little difference for a Game As Service between beta, early access and release other than monetisation...and you can bet they'll be all into promoting 'Path of Exile 2 Support' packs the moment they can. Maybe higher tiers will grant earlier access to the beta or some such. Perfectly legal, perfectly moral.

Finally, I am not sure I agree with your making a dichotomy of 'arcade/MMM-lite' and 'ARPG'. Certainly 'arcade/MMO-lite' and 'PoE' are mutually-exclusive game designs, but most ARPGs these days skew closer to an arcade feel than the clunky 'we can see your turn based roots showing' style of PoE. And an MMO framework bringing ARPG gameplay into a larger world context wouldn't really change an ARPG *into* a traditional MMO, any more than FromSoft made Elden Ring into a traditional sandbox game: it was still, in terms of gameplay, very much a soulslike experience.

Well, we'll know in six months or so, when DIV either releases closed to as planned, or the crunch results in a DoA pipedream at which Exiles may then point and laugh, just as we did 10 years ago the last time Blizzard tried to reinvent the genre. And then a month later, we'll know GGG's next move too.

Whichever side one takes, even if one doesn't take a side, it's going to be a blast to watch it all unfold.

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Foreverhappychan wrote:

The most telling thing is, however, how little backlash there has been by Exiles to DIV interest and discussion, even here. Compared to the violent clashes we had with D3 apologists here during beta and for a while after, there's barely been a whimper of disagreement that DIV's imminence poses a threat to PoE 4.0's absence.

I think some of it might be down to how low overall forum activity is. We're a week into a new league, and past the initial spike, all we have is people posting on bugs/suggestions and very little else.

Even the trolls are quiet. It's quite noticeable if you give a gentle tug to their line as if nibbling on their bait, they pull and jump to the water with such alacrity and ferocity one can only conclude they're just desperate for any human contact at all.

And the weird thing is that, by the numbers (retention-wise), Sanctum isn't off to a bad start. Slightly better than Kalandra, slightly worse than Sentinel, so close that I'm not sure the difference is statistically significant, and well over Expedition which, with Blight in the rear view mirror, seems to be the yardstick for bad league numbers.

But the forums are just... quiet. There doesn't seem to be a lot of excitement for anything at all.

Maybe so. It could be just more proof that this is a graveyard with a ghettoblaster on loop. I'm sure the subreddit has a different groove going on, but I don't hate myself enough to look.