If you have 2 acts done for path of exile 2 then why are we still waiting for path of exile 2?

I get that a lot of people are newer around here and MIGHT not remember the facts regarding the initial beta of Path of Exile. The facts are that the game was in beta with 2 acts that were split across 4 difficulties. Then they had 3 acts across 3 difficulties (might have been 4), but then they had 4 across 3, then they did away with difficulties entirely (in spite of more requests than I can count to have each zone accessible at a high level and the ability to skip the campaign) and went large with the full 10 acts.

There was a nice little lottery timer that sent out keys every 5 minutes and all this happened before the first supporter pack went live. I'm certain they learned their lesson that people who would choose to ignore the TOS and just buy/sell accounts, but for the dozen or so of us that weren't trying to pull a fast one then getting a beta key or just hanging around on one of the forum threads talking about the superstitions that may or may not have contributed to the computer deciding to give you beta access.

But yea, if there is a bunch of tech just laying around to accomodate running a beta with 2/3 acts and you have 2/3 acts done then why are we not playing the game right now?

I started playing when Act 2 boss was the end of the game. I really liked seeing the game grow up around me.

I understand they want to release a fully realized polished game, but it feels special being involved in that early beta stuff and I kinda miss it.

I remember those times but i guess they can not afford to do things that tiny "garage"indie studio could 13 years ago with like 18workers. But I'd like to at least see poe2 supporter packs being released as sort of "pre-order" soon.
I'd totally buy it now with the risk that the game never comes out. After all, the points are still useful in poe1 shop. And tbh my belief that the poe2 does not get finished is 0%.

One of reasons to not release just first 2 acts is that people are simple-minded and first impression is very important, recently i've played game called Diablo 4 and people complained that some classes are very weak in the beta test (one of them strongest class in full release:druid) there were 17dmg memes and stuff about druid now they 1shot uber bosses. And then people complained that the world boss is too hard (it was 25lvl i believe and character level was capped at 20) we kill those in 1 second in full release. Problem is not them being too strong but too weak if anything. And many other problems that were exclusively beta issues. (some issues are still there, for example memory leak so I'm not saying all beta feedback is irrelevant)
It had also the opposite problem of everyone rating beta highly "this is the game duuude i got so much fun this is the game of the year" now they rate it 1/10 on release seeing there is no endgame, no economy, million exploits, performance issues, itemization with less depth than phone games have. New people got hired to save it from dying. Yes the most sold live service game of the year, in fear of dying in less than 3 seasons. I have it uninstalled myself.


In other words people would play 2 probably amazing acts and then complain on the forum about "lack of endgame activities" "no headhunter zoom zoom build in act 1"
Class balanced issues that will not be a thing in act 3+ and more importantly about performance issues, which is probably biggest reason to not do it early.
I mean just take experience of first 2 acts against endgame mapping in poe1 it is night and day.

I assume the machines in exilecon were at very least 1000$ computers, well most people play poe1 on equivalent of 550$ machine and poe2 will for sure want something more juicy than that before final optimization for minimum settings.

Sure many people reading this play on 1000$ notebook thinking that can not be true, but that is equivalent of what 450$ PC? Full sized graphics and power hungry CPUs with proper cooling blow these midrange notebooks out of water. That is why i say equivalent of 500$ pc.

Top rated notebooks under 1000$ have something like 8gb ram or less(dead on arrival) GTX 1650 Max-Q (equivalent pc graphic card cost 100$) 4core cpu 3ghz intel(good maybe back in 2008 can not compete against lowest budget ryzen builds)

Recent PoE1 patch already had very negative feedback when it comes to performance, crashing, compability, fps drops and I believe it is patch pushing us closer to poe2 beta demands.

If poe2 beta released with issues like that the dark knights would go rate it(boycott) 0.1/10 and it would never climb above 5/10 score. Killing the potential playerbase and earnings.

Maybe I'm totally wrong, it just makes sense in my head but i'll gladly hear the other side. I believe beta will be like 50% of the game and worth the wait.

Ok, so you're asserting that the sole reason we do not get to play the game is... marketing? They don't want me to play the game they want me to play because their marketing team isn't up to the task of marketing the game to me when the company thinks its the appropriate time for a marketing push?

Your entire argument would have flown a lot higher 10-12 years ago, or heck even before people spent 3/4th of a billion dollars on Diablo 4.

Betas are for testing and feedback - they don't need your testing or feedback right now.

So call it a "limited preview" or a "provisional release" or a "deepmind training simulation" or some other jargon that lets them connect people that want it to the thing that they want. Just blame it on the Time Witches or something, get it done.

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Andromansis wrote:

Ok, so you're asserting that the sole reason we do not get to play the game is... marketing? They don't want me to play the game they want me to play because their marketing team isn't up to the task of marketing the game to me when the company thinks its the appropriate time for a marketing push?

Your entire argument would have flown a lot higher 10-12 years ago, or heck even before people spent 3/4th of a billion dollars on Diablo 4.

Diablo 4 had amazing marketing. It did not receive those sale numbers by providing people with any gameplay, nearly all sales were done pre-order before beta test. Seems like you are making argument for me not against me.

>huge marketing on walls of big buildings
>diablo 4 paintings inside real church marketing
>kfc marketing
>porn actress marketing
>paid streamers and youtubers
>famous actors marketing
>tv adds
>battle net adds(lots of wow players tried d4 from there)
>best game cinematics ever made marketing(it was so impressive that people who do not game watched the 1. trailer and praised it for being so well made)

It would not surprise me if d4 marketing budget would be bigger than whole poe2 budget.

Hell, if the D4 was as good as its marketing was we would be playing it right now instead of chatting in forum.


It is hard to address the first part of your post because it makes no sense to me so I will just guess what you meant.
Are you trying to say that the few hours played in very controlled enviroment on pcs customized and verified to be able to run the game with tiny ammount of first-hand experience lasting 45 minutes, is the same thing as releasing it for millions of people on various hardware? If so, then no. It is not comparable in the effect, size, impression, audience or any other measure really.

You average Joe will not travel to exilecon and wait hours in queue to play 45 minutes and shit on it, these are invested people that relate to the vision of the game and are already poe fans, hell even among these guys some complain the game demo was too hard or too slow. Your average Joe will join the beta test and poop all over the game if it gets public in current state.

So yes I do believe it would harm the game long-term to release it before the lead devs consider it ready for global audience.

POE 1 beta is not applied to POE 2


some news article in game website wrote: POE 2 beta will be full game

No, he's a perfectionist. The game will never be ready if we let him sit on it until its "ready".


Also, no, what I'm saying is that any excuse they have for not having the game in people's hands, be it jargon, "marketing", "not being ready", them just not wanting us to play the game right now.... like none of it actually holds up to any real scrutiny when compared to... ALL THE STUFF THEY'VE ALREADY DONE.

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Andromansis wrote:

No, he's a perfectionist. The game will never be ready if we let him sit on it until its "ready".

This is just nonsense, man. Of course it will be ready. You're not seriously under the impression they're building the game but not going to release the game.

Take a breath. You'll be okay. There's a whole planet of other things to do in the meantime.