PSA: All the PoE2 Footage You've Seen is from the Equivalent of Acts 1~3

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JunkHeadJoePC wrote:

Threads like this one, where the statements made indicate a certain level of fandom and dedication, remind me how passionate people are over PoE.

The "i R mad" threads are easier to scan for intent, but you people actually have me reading line for line.

Good on ya.

Thank you. I know one of the reasons I rarely bother with these forums these days is that the place is just an unrelenting ocean of salt, bitterness, negativity and bile. They just make me want to play the game less, and even as much as I really do just not jive with the ultra-high-end Supah Zoom nonsense? I enjoy the game. I enjoy working on funky ideas, or trying my own take on funky ideas I found elsewhere.

Just this league I started with a Spectral Shield Throw Raider build guide that was loads of fun, reminded me how fantastic chaining Cold/Freeze builds feel. Heh, there's a reason I've got three Frost Blades characters in the Hall of Heroes over in Standard. After that, I switched into an Animate Weapon of Self Reflection Necromancer, because I happened to get the AWoSR skillgem doing Lab on the SST Raider and said "I've always wanted to do something cool with Oro's Sacrifice...and summoning seven ghosts of my sword to assault my enemies of their own volition sounds like the thing to do." It's a dogshit build by Streamer Diehard standards, barely 250k Ultra Uber Pinnacle DPS because I have no earthly idea how streamers scale to 500B DPS with the same crap everybody else uses, but it's still been fun to experiment with it, play around, and see how far a build purely of my own devising can go.

That's the sort of thing I love about PoE - the ability to try interesting things, experiment, assembly disparate pieces into splendid new wholes. I might give the AWoSR thing another go because I found a build someone else did with Ephemeral Edge, stacking tons of ES to both fuel their Animated Weapons' damage and their own tankiness, and said to myself "man that's a cool idea, now I really want to try it myself". It's why I'm so excited for PoE2 - this new game looks like it's gonna be so much cooler for doing Interesting Things, without all the weird and unhelpful pressure to try and scale to absolutely bonkers and unnecessary levels of Ultra DPS so you can put 100% Delirous T18 PinnacUberson AFK farm status.

I am legitimately glad the first game will still be there for people to whom getting ZA BEEGEST NUMBAH is the only goal and who couldn't care less about playing with interesting combos or builds, but the new game is builtr from the ground up for the kind of player I am and I couldn't be more keen to see what Grinding Gear serves up when they're done cooking.

No matter how frustrating, annoying, and just downright unpleasant it is to constantly find nothing but bitter whinging salt when all I really want is to find one thread here in The Official Path of Exile Forums where I can share my excitement with other people who are also themselves excited for PoE2.

Mandatory WASD is as close to a deal breaker for me as one can get. My left hand doesn't work that way and certainly not without having to look at what I am doing. I have never used a controller for any game, never played on a console. I'm an old gamer. The too many button builds with the current game are a challenge and the automated flask actions have been a godsend.

I also hope that melee won't be some kind of multi button action sequence fighting that is required. KISS

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ChanBalam wrote:

Mandatory WASD is as close to a deal breaker for me as one can get.

Same.

People are seriously downplaying the effect this will have on the game in the long run, when everything from skill gems to boss movement is being balanced and developed with WASD in mind. Soon we'll be forced into it. This is a "me" problem, sure, but I know I can never enjoy this game with WASD.

They can't Fix Melee, or improve any of their other animation and motion-related problems in PoE, without the ability to move while using skills. And you cannot do movement while using skills with click to move, outside ugly jankery like Cyclone.

Archers moving nimbly about while discharging arrows? Not with click to move.

Agile martial artsy Monk stuff weaving attacks and parkour? Not with click to move.

Literally the entire crossbow weapon type as currently revealed? Not with click to move.

With click to move, you can only ever execute ONE action at a time, and moving is an action entirely divorced from skill usage. Either you're clicking to move somewhere or you're clicking something to attack it - you physically cannot do both at once. If you want to be able to move and use skills at the same time - and you absolutely should want that - you need to be able to control movement and skill use simultaneously with each other as well as independently of each other. That leaves keyboard movement, unless you want to try and hack a flight stick or foot pedals into your game.

Which, frankly, steering your character with a flight stick while aiming/fighting with the mouse sounds awesome. Best of both worlds when it comes to M&K versus controller - the precision and pinpoint* targeting of mouse, the intuitive and natural movement of stick. Makes me pine for some of the killer flight sticks I had when I was younger and mostly played MechWarrior. Some of those things had, like... fifteen different control functions on them beyond just movement with multiple triggers, HAT switches, integrated throttles...mmm, that would be an incredible way to play Path of Exile.

Man, now I'm sad I can't do it. Heh.

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1453R wrote:

They can't Fix Melee, or improve any of their other animation and motion-related problems in PoE, without the ability to move while using skills.

Sure, we can view WASD as the greatest thing ever - you do you. But to claim that certain things can't be done when lots of games with click to move have done it in the past is just wrong. There's lots of ARPG Hack'n Slash games where melee "feels good". And attack while moving can also be done with click to move, just so we're clear on that. Hell, we even have skills in PoE that you can cast while moving.

It's not really worth discussing, as it's a matter of taste and preferences. You clearly prefer it - or at least the idea of it. I don't, and don't really feel it fits the genre. But then again, I don't like mice with tons of buttons, and the idea of WASD in a game where you have to manage 5 flasks and several skills just gives me stress-shivers down my spine :P

Just to give the example of Guild Wars 2; you have the option to make one skill (or autoattack) autocast itself when you attack someone just once. That's just one way of auto-attacking while moving with mouse.

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ChanBalam wrote:

Mandatory WASD is as close to a deal breaker for me as one can get. My left hand doesn't work that way and certainly not without having to look at what I am doing. I have never used a controller for any game, never played on a console. I'm an old gamer. The too many button builds with the current game are a challenge and the automated flask actions have been a godsend.

I also hope that melee won't be some kind of multi button action sequence fighting that is required. KISS

I am gobsmacked that you have never used a controller or a console. That's genuinely unusual for a gamer regardless of age. My mother is 68, raised me on a healthy diet of Sierra games and Star Trek. But she was absolutely into the controller thing once we discovered Final Fantasy on the super nintendo and stayed with it until...actually she has a Switch but did admit that the new Zeldas are a bit much for her. She also had probably one of the earliest diagnoses of Nintendo Thumb in our neck of the woods. So proud of all that.

Point being I see no correlation between "old gamer" and "not using a controller or console". Arguably the oldest gamers started on console -- didn't the Atari precede any IBM or Apple PC that could play any sort of genuinely engaging game?

Hell, I reckon a simplified UI made for a controller would probably be *better* for an elderly gamer than the cramp-inducing awkwardness of mouse and keyboard. Neither are going to do your joints any favours but at least with a controller it's mostly limited to digits -- wrist-related RSI from pc gaming is an old, old issue.

Gun to head, I would say the indolence, lazy nutrition and general sedentary nature of gaming would be a bigger health factor regardless of platform and peripheral. Something 18 year old me really put to the test when he found Diablo 1...

You do you, always. But please don't allow yourself to be drawn into false dichotomies. Plenty of old gamers prefer controllers/console.

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Phrazz wrote:

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1453R wrote:

They can't Fix Melee, or improve any of their other animation and motion-related problems in PoE, without the ability to move while using skills.

Sure, we can view WASD as the greatest thing ever - you do you. But to claim that certain things can't be done when lots of games with click to move have done it in the past is just wrong. There's lots of ARPG Hack'n Slash games where melee "feels good". And attack while moving can also be done with click to move, just so we're clear on that. Hell, we even have skills in PoE that you can cast while moving.

It's not really worth discussing, as it's a matter of taste and preferences. You clearly prefer it - or at least the idea of it. I don't, and don't really feel it fits the genre. But then again, I don't like mice with tons of buttons, and the idea of WASD in a game where you have to manage 5 flasks and several skills just gives me stress-shivers down my spine :P

Heh, fair enough. I don't technically game with "mouse and keyboard" as such - I use one of those MMO multi-button mice under my right hand and a contoured, hand-fitting keypad under my left. It massively cuts down on wrist fatigue and puts everything I need conveniently where it needs to be, I can't really imagine playing with an ordinary keyboared anymore.

To that point, ChanBalam: Razer Tatarus Keypad. I don't use this model, but I use one of its predecessors and have for over a decade. They're a real gamechanger for ergonomics, I highly recommend them even if you don't pair it with an MMOuse the way I do. I don't know if it might help with your situation, but I hope it's an option for you, at least.

There are so many things to say about the conjecture and copium in this thread. There is no way I have the time to touch on them all. Perhaps I will write something larger, but really, if im honest, I'm just not sure its worth it.

What I would say is that there is little evidence to suggest PoE2 will be "new" in terms of the problems GGG already have in core desgin with PoE1. And I'm not talking about technical limitations. There are fundamental design issues, on top of the extreme development creep we have seen since PoE2 was originally announced.

The amount of bugs, performance hangups, calculation errors, balance problems, cheese mechanics missed, and so on, will be absolutely enormous. I've always joked about PoE1 still being in beta and tested by players constantly, but PoE2 will be in a whole other universe in that aspect.

Hell they cannot even balance the current ascendancies properly for example, after MANY years. You think they will have 36 of them even remotely close to appropriate? No fucking chance, it's not achievable for them. Not to mention all the new skills & weapons, and then scaling, multiplied with group play. Two passive trees based on weapon swap? Snapshot nightmare incoming, bet your house on it.

I'm not even going to touch on the player efficiency and funneling either. We haven't seen anything of real substance yet, so it's tough to comment on, but it stands to reason with a scope this large, that optimal flows will manifest quickly. Sure over 100 bosses and "maps" sounds awesome, but players will narrow it quickly. I'm not talking about Meta shifts, which is expected, but rather player decision making in real time. "I'm not running that map, or that boss, especially with a Warrior", or "this rainforest map is quick to run and the boss is easy on Sorc". There will be this kind of shit on steroids.

Lastly as my comments have already gotten larger than I intended, if PoE2 is as complex as PoE1, it will be a disaster in terms of player reception. Keep in mind PoE1 has grown into this meaglith over time, where as PoE2 is seemingly trying to do a significant portion at once. If the game is as frustrating, hard to understand, hard to find information, and doesn't display better than the horrific tooltip we have now, then it will be DoA to a massive amount of average/casual players. Especially those that are joyfully blasting helltides and pits right now.

Unless Tencent don't care about those players (which seems incredibly unlikley)

...and?

No, seriously. And?

The new game will have a Wild West period of unstable balance, and people who're prone to optimizing the fun out of their games will find ways to do so. This is hardly news, nor is it some grand indictment of the new game or a sign of sure and certain failure.

Hell, your last point's already been refuted - the game has much improved in-game tooltips and tutorializing; every single stat, keyword, or Thing-With-A-Definition is going to have a hover explaining that thing. A huge focus for the PoE2 team since they announced the new game is streamlining without sacrificing depth, making things that don't need to be as dense and complicated as they are less dense and complicated. That will inherently benefit new players.

You call it "conjecture and copium", but really? What I see far more often is "Nopium" - the knee-jerk rejection of the new game based on nothing but an instinctive dislike of 'New'. The idea that a player has decided PoE2 will be an absolute train wreck, dead on arrival with no hope of resuscitation, based on...basically nothing whatsoever, really. Certainly not information the developers have released or reasonable examinations of their words. Just the idea that "IT'S NOT POE1 SO IT'S GUARANTEED TO SUCK", despite the fact that all the same Nopium addicts are also the ones who despise PoE1 with every fiber of their souls.

At least Phrazz and Chan have reasonable justifications for their apprehension and dismay - they don't care for the idea of WASD controls and see Grinding Gear heavily emphasizing the new control scheme, with the perfectly valid inference that WASD will be treated as the default control set-up moving forward. This is a logical thing to assume given what the devs have announced and said, and if one is not keen on the idea it's perfectly sound to be annoyed or upset by it.

"Balance won't be 100% spot-on on release!", "there will be optimal farming methods!", "the game's complexity will turn off newbies!"? All Nopium. Manufactured reasons to decide the game is dead before even getting one's hands on it, not at all based in any reasonable take on what the team has said and shown. There's no reason to take Nopium seriously at all.

So let's not. Moving on now, please. every other thread in the board is overflowing with Nopium, let's have one with reasonable, evidence-based discussion of the new game.