PATH OF EXILE 2 IS A FORCED RUTHLESS MODE

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Phrazz wrote:

You've been "bitching" (your words, don't censor me GGG) about speed, some unknown religion that doesn't exist and people having fun for weeks. Now you don't like it?

The difference? In PoE 1 you can have enough defense or offense so you don't HAVE to roll anywhere, because PoE is a loot/gear based game more than it is a skill based game. That's where the comparisons to Dark Souls come from. To me, an old, slow dude, the idea of having to pay super-close attention to every single white pack, and having to dodge roll away from every other attack, seem VERY stressful and boring, and directly tiresome.

Now, that is of course somewhat hyperboling it, but you should be VERY accustomed to that from the way you form your opinions about people that likes PoE 1. The thing is, they went out of their way to show us a slow, difficult game where you HAD to roll out of danger "all" the time. So no one can really blame people for being somewhat skeptical about it.

I just don't get the incomprehensible dichotomy between "they took away movement skills NOOOOO BAD GGG" and "every character has a default dodge roll NOOOOOO BAD GGG."

Is evasive movement bad, or not?

Travel movement, i.e. using "movement" skills to replace walking and cover distance faster, has been on Grinding Gear's hit list for years now. It's blindingly obvious that while Grinding Gear is generally fine with short-range tactical movement options for repositioning in a fight, they really don't like people (ab)using Shield Charge to move at twelve hundred times the normal character rate. I'm not sure why it surprises anyone that this sort of thing is being reduced/eliminated in the new game when Grinding Gear has openly complained about being hemmed in by it for multiple years.

The desire for Path of Exile to have no reactive gameplay whatsoever and allow players to overgear to the point of being able to ignore all enemies up to and including multiple Uber Pinnacle bosses in the same arena is kind of its own issue. That's a fundamental divide between player types that's never really going to be settled save by the split between games. But I am truly baffled by the utter rejection of Dodge Roll as a base mechanic when this game is otherwise generally madly in love with any/all movement options no matter how much Grinding Gear tries to tell us to stahppit.

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1453R wrote:

But I am truly baffled by the utter rejection of Dodge Roll as a base mechanic when this game is otherwise generally madly in love with any/all movement options no matter how much Grinding Gear tries to tell us to stahppit.

That probably has to do with the removal of player choice, freedom and diversity, as well as character differences. "This is how you'll play, and this is the skill you have to use - on all your characters".

And when it comes to gear? Well, yes... I see the goal of being ultra-powerful and out-gear my opponents as a historically important factor in the genre. I see it as a very fun goal. Gear progression has always been my main driving force in ALL ARPGs. But the balance here is of course important; how much does gear matter? How often will a well-geared, well-built character have to roll? And how much does a bad-built, badly geared character have to roll?

Personally, I don't really mind the roll. I just want defenses to actually matter to the point where you don't HAVE to roll often. And I don't think that is an unheard of wish.

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Phrazz wrote:

That probably has to do with the removal of player choice, freedom and diversity, as well as character differences. "This is how you'll play, and this is the skill you have to use - on all your characters".

Y'know what? Fair. That's a legit answer and I can respect it. I can hope the different character classes have different ways to customize their roll via passives or gear, but in a game like Path where you're supposed to be able to create anything you can envision, being hard-locked into a single type of evasion is potentially not great. All right, I'll concede that point at the least.

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Phrazz wrote:

And when it comes to gear? Well, yes... I see the goal of being ultra-powerful and out-gear my opponents as a historically important factor in the genre. I see it as a very fun goal. Gear progression has always been my main driving force in ALL ARPGs. But the balance here is of course important; how much does gear matter? How often will a well-geared, well-built character have to roll? And how much does a bad-built, badly geared character have to roll?

My issue there has always been that the sort of gear progression you need to accomplish this objective has historically been utterly, utterly, utterly unreachable by the staggering, overwhelming majority of the playerbase. There's maybe two hundred players in the entirety of Path of Exile who've ever managed to gear to the point of being able to ignore Uber Pinnacle boss attacks, and yet that's the thing that's consistently held up as the sacred goal that everyone has to try and reach despite it being 100% ironclad impossible for virtually all players.

The gear ceiling being utterly beyond-bonkers outrageous is annoying but eh. The gear floor being only a few levels below the ceiling is entirely unacceptable.

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Phrazz wrote:

Personally, I don't really mind the roll. I just want defenses to actually matter to the point where you don't HAVE to roll often. And I don't think that is an unheard of wish.

They haven't shown any characters with any worthwhile defenses. We have no idea how often we'll have to evade. Could be that the Juggernaut or Champion equivalents in Path the Second don't ever really need to bother with evading and can facetank all the same shit the Jugg and Champion facetank in Path the First. Could be that certain build archetypes can turn their dodge roll into an offensive ability via the Cast on Dodge gem they sortakinna promised in the Q&A so you can focus on just evading and letting your automatic offense do its thing. Could be that they invent gems that modify your dodge roll entirely; perhaps they introduce a special skill gem equivalent to the PoE1 Guard skills that replaces your "dodge" function with a brief barrier of extreme damage absorption for people whose joy in life comes from taking boss slams to the chin and smirking at the boss.

We simply don't know. I'm not sure why the default assumption is "EVERYTHING'S RUINED FOREVER GRINDING GEAR IS LITERALLY WORSE THAN <Godwin's Law> THE SKY IS ON FIRE AND THE ENTIRE WORLD IS DOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!", and it's super depressing that I have to keep punching out obnoxious and idiotic complaints instead of celebrating the awesome new game we just got a glimpse of. Especially when people who disagree that the new game is awesome got confirmation that they don't have to play it, ever. They will always have the ability to throw a few thousand divines at characters in PoE1 and continue not caring about anything the game can throw at them.

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1453R wrote:

We simply don't know. I'm not sure why the default assumption is "EVERYTHING'S RUINED FOREVER GRINDING GEAR IS LITERALLY WORSE THAN <Godwin's Law> THE SKY IS ON FIRE AND THE ENTIRE WORLD IS DOOOOOOOOOOOMED!!!", and it's super depressing that I have to keep punching out obnoxious and idiotic complaints instead of celebrating the awesome new game we just got a glimpse of. Especially when people who disagree that the new game is awesome got confirmation that they don't have to play it, ever. They will always have the ability to throw a few thousand divines at characters in PoE1 and continue not caring about anything the game can throw at them.

I don't see many people using "DOOMED" or anything close to that. What I see, is people being worried based on what they CHOSE to show us. I agree, we don't know. So I don't get the hype, and I don't get the doom. What I have been saying in most threads about this: I need to see a well-geared, well-built character before really making up my mind (or preferably play it myself in a non-overtuned version of the game). And I don't really get why they couldn't show us that. Maybe so certain people wouldn't whine about the speed of those characters? :P

But hey, we can't have everything.

Eh. Yeah, showing an "endgame" thing might settle some folks' fears, but I don't see there being any real chance of that any time soon because that would amount to Grinding Gear "promising" that the video they showed us was exactly how endgame content would look/be balanced for everyone forever. They up and explicitly said specific balance points/axes are still up in the air, and that they'd rebalanced that level 1 Giant Worm boss over five hundred times.

Anything they showed in terms of "endgame" progression would be smoke that the community would try and treat as iron, instead. If I thought it was possible I'd be right there with ye asking for them to give us a demo of it just to shut people the fuck up, but I don't think they'll be willing to give us anything remotely like a peek into "Endgame" for many months yet.

For better or worse. Bleh.

I guess they didn't showed any "endgame" cause they either don't have it done yet, are not really settled with what they want or there's no large difference between the current endgame and new endgame other than the different playstyle with the new gem system. Like in every game you grow with your gear, at first you are gonna be weak and everything is challenging, especially during the first leagues while everything is still somewhat over tuned or subject to change, but I don't think there won't be any difference with the power you gain over time. As terrible as PoE1 maybe maybe not? Idk, but gear will for sure help to blast boss fights faster or face tank some stuff. Not to mention with all the different new classes and the entire different skill tree that could enable some pretty stupid stuff.

They most likely just showed the (larger?) campaign stuff and boss stuff as they are just proud of what they've created, and compared to PoE1 it's quite a big change worth to show off.

Doesn't look ruthless to me.

But the "hit trash mobs x times", "no more scouring orbs" and "boss heals but 10% XP penalty still in place" don't sound too good.

proposed system changes seem terrible for the game. if all of them make it through, poe 2 will be significantly worse than poe 1, because apparently they want to take away everything that makes poe 1 good/unique and call it a new game. that's not a new game fam, that's just d4 on steroids.

if we get to see an endgame trailer where the character zooms through a map, I'll be convinced but until then, no. if I wanted a slow arpg I'd just play grim dawn, as it's 100x better than ruthless/d4

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Ain_Soph_Aur wrote:

We were given roughly ONE HOUR of footage, game play, and discussion on a game MORE complex than POE 1 and its a YEAR away from beta and yet people ALREADY think they KNOW what it will be like.

POE 1 and POE 2 do not have to be exactly the same not EVERYONE wants zoom zoom blow up screen with one button mindless gameplay while watching another screen...some of us actually want a challenge. And I am CERTAIN within a year of release POE2 will have a meta with zoom zoom mapped out for those that ONLY want that playstyle...if not there will be POE1 D4 and other ARPGs or better yet make one and show us all how its done.

They just showed some characters without the possibility of modifying the tree, without any interesting items on them, and already panic what will it be...

It's true that Poe 1 and Poe 2 don't have to be the same, and as a colleague wrote, not everyone just wants to zoom mindlessly

Bruh. BRUH.

Gold? Normal mobs don't give flask charges? Boss resets on leaving area? Well in town? NPC to refill charges?

This is a prettyfied ruthless and no one will ever change my mind.

Let's see how endgame looks but for now I'm happy af that poe2 is 18 months away, they have plenty of time to change stuff because last thing I want is POE2 outdiabloing D4.

Also if I wanted elden ring we have that at home