PoE2 is neither "Diablo 4.5" nor "PoE Permanent Ruthless Edition"

It's Devil May Cry with completely custom Devil Hunters.

Seriously.

One of Jonathan's stated primary goals for PoE2 was for someone completely unfamiliar with path of Exile to walk up behind someone playing Path 2 and say "oh wow, that looks like a really cool action game." And once the Really Cool Action Game has drawn people in, they will then discover "oh fuck, look at all this crazy depth and customization behind the really cool action gameplay! This is awesome!"

No one has ever once, in the entire history of humankind, looked at footage of Path of Exile the First and said "oh wow, this looks like a really cool action game." Path 1 either looks like a stiff, stilted, decidedly aged and dated D2 wannabe if someone's looking at early campaign gameplay, or an LSD-fueled kaleidoscopic nightmare of incomprehensible drug-addled lunacy if they're looking at somebody with a tweaked-out endgame build.

The whole idea behind the redux in PoE2 is to make the moment-to-moment gameplay thrilling, visceral, and exciting. Nobody feels any of those things playing Path 1; you're just Cookie Clicking your way through a map hoping your loot filter makes the "HEY DINGUS YOU JUST MADE MONEY" sound.

Path 2 is saying "Look at these twelve awesome demon slayer archetypes. Look at all these crazy dynamic and engaging demon-slaying skills you can use with your demon slayer. Look how awesome this is, with your character spinning and dashing and flying cinematically all over the place unleashing the power of the elements or smashing foes to flinders with displays of raw might. Doesn't this look like something you want to try? Wanna come slay some demons with us" without trying to force the 2000-node skilltree or the crazy item progression system down somebody's throat until they've decided the game looks worth trying already.

Path of Exile 2 is trying to put the "Action" back into "Action RPG". That will necessitate some changes. But when those changes are done the game will be better off for it.

So just chill, please.

It's Dark Souls with an overhead camera and PoE depth and customization.

In my opinion games like this shouldn't be like Dark souls. With smooth enough controls this could be decent, a lot of people play ARPG games to chill though and don't want this. I am sure PoE 2 will be a big hit, but many including myself will probably rather play PoE 1

Great. Play PoE1 then. Nobody's stopping you. If you play ARPGs to "chill" (what a bizarre choice for a podcast game), then Path 1's got your back and will for the foreseeable future.

Clearly however, Grinding Gear sees enough demand in the market to put a whole lot of eggs in the ACTION RPG basket. People here keep screaming and sobbing about how the new game isn't 103% completely identical to the first game and I cannot figure out why when the first game is still gonna be there to mindlessly random-click through faster than human reaction or perception speeds can keep up with.

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No one has ever once, in the entire history of humankind, looked at footage of Path of Exile the First and said "oh wow, this looks like a really cool action game.

I mean we all did to a certain degree else we wouldn't be here at all lol

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1453R wrote:

Great. Play PoE1 then. Nobody's stopping you. If you play ARPGs to "chill" (what a bizarre choice for a podcast game), then Path 1's got your back and will for the foreseeable future.

Clearly however, Grinding Gear sees enough demand in the market to put a whole lot of eggs in the ACTION RPG basket. People here keep screaming and sobbing about how the new game isn't 103% completely identical to the first game and I cannot figure out why when the first game is still gonna be there to mindlessly random-click through faster than human reaction or perception speeds can keep up with.

Meh, GGG built Ruthless mode. Was there a lot of player demand for it? There was developer demand for it though.

PoE 2 looks to be tougher and slower than PoE 1. I feel that the majority of players will stick to PoE 1.

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zakalwe55 wrote:

Meh, GGG built Ruthless mode. Was there a lot of player demand for it? There was developer demand for it though.

They did Ruthless to test out some concept ideas without implementing them directly into the base game. You can find a lot of "concept testing" across the last changes and leagues that made it into PoE2 in one or another way. You can even say that Sanctum gold/ Aureus coins were the prototype and Ruthless with gold was the more enhanced version of gold as currency.
Even all Sanctum boss for example were nothing but a concept test to see how the different boss design performs.

poe2 is 18 months away give or take.
its rutless 2.0 the way poe was back in 2011.
slow, metodical etc..

Some people just define "action" different than you, 1453R. Blowing up shit at high speed can't really be seen as a bad definition of "action", can it? Hell, I would even call it more action-packed than what ExileCon showed us.

I will chill with the "Ruthless" crap, if you chill with your hype. Deal? :)

There was a small discussion regarding this on the codex as well. The thing is there is a difference between a loot-based ARPG (POE 1 & Diablo 2) vs a skill-based ARPG (Dark Souls & POE 2).

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zakalwe55 wrote:

Meh, GGG built Ruthless mode. Was there a lot of player demand for it? There was developer demand for it though.

The idea of a "hard mode" was floating around for years and got a positive reception from players who liked the sound of a slower-paced version of the game with fewer more meaingful drops. Obviously the pulse had to come from ggg because they're the ones developing the game. I personally came back to the game because of it.