Absolutely disapointed -- This game is hard, and not in a fun way.

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LifeIsADream01#8363 wrote:

To be honest upfront, I didn't bother to read all of the replies, but I think that OP gave up to quickly. Once your build gets going (around act 3 for me), the game gets allot easier. And at this point, going into maps, everyone is already zooming around. So to me the game is not fundamentally too hard, it's just more of a learning curve/adjustment to get used to the bosses and mechanics in the beginning (especially coming from POE1, where we knew everything already. P.s., if you run act 1 and 2 with levelling gear (from a previous character), it becomes trivial.

See, this also run counter to their goal. POE2 was supposed to be easier for beginners to get into. For POE1 is was the overwhelming skill tree and confusing socket and skill system that kept people away. They somewhat solved this (still see people say the passive tree is too complex), but replaced it with a rough starting gameplay experience requiring a higher learning curve which will also push people away. People will stop before getting to act 3. This is the issue with making a game that relies on getting to end game to hook players and having hard starts. Make the beginning easier, and make the endgame harder.

Wow... 100 pages? That's... definitely a thing that happened.

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NicknamesOfGod#1810 wrote:

Wow... 100 pages? That's... definitely a thing that happened.

And 5 days later still no response from the devs over the backlash or concern. Not even a sympathetic nod of acknowledgement here. I guess GGG got their money, why should they care?

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Pimpmobile#4705 wrote:

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NicknamesOfGod#1810 wrote:

Wow... 100 pages? That's... definitely a thing that happened.

And 5 days later still no response from the devs over the backlash or concern. Not even a sympathetic nod of acknowledgement here. I guess GGG got their money, why should they care?

Exactly! They dropped this patch and pretending like people aren't raging about the most retarded things about this EA... Like yeah, we had a rough start bla bla bla bla... I mean did they even test this EA? They dropped the ball so hard... POE2 BAD

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drumcorp1986#0485 wrote:

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Pimpmobile#4705 wrote:

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NicknamesOfGod#1810 wrote:

Wow... 100 pages? That's... definitely a thing that happened.

And 5 days later still no response from the devs over the backlash or concern. Not even a sympathetic nod of acknowledgement here. I guess GGG got their money, why should they care?

Exactly! They dropped this patch and pretending like people aren't raging about the most retarded things about this EA... Like yeah, we had a rough start bla bla bla bla... I mean did they even test this EA? They dropped the ball so hard... POE2 BAD

I guess they want to see how the new loot changes impact difficulty, because it should in theory give people more options or ways to prepare better for boss fights and adapt themselves to overcome the fights. I.e., res checks, upgrading gear etc. Before big boss fights. I personally prefer that GGG sits quietly, listens and takes everything in rather than taking rash decisions on gameplay/mechanics (except for obvious exploits or balance issues). Especially after only 1 week of the EA being out. Because once you make a change it's not always soo easy to go back.

Yeah. Create a decent difficulty curve during the campaign and make drops meaningful. Most players use their level 10-20 items 20-30 level later. It tells us that the item system is in a bad state because it does not provide real progression.

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Nothv13#0740 wrote:

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LifeIsADream01#8363 wrote:

To be honest upfront, I didn't bother to read all of the replies, but I think that OP gave up to quickly. Once your build gets going (around act 3 for me), the game gets allot easier. And at this point, going into maps, everyone is already zooming around. So to me the game is not fundamentally too hard, it's just more of a learning curve/adjustment to get used to the bosses and mechanics in the beginning (especially coming from POE1, where we knew everything already. P.s., if you run act 1 and 2 with levelling gear (from a previous character), it becomes trivial.

See, this also run counter to their goal. POE2 was supposed to be easier for beginners to get into. For POE1 is was the overwhelming skill tree and confusing socket and skill system that kept people away. They somewhat solved this (still see people say the passive tree is too complex), but replaced it with a rough starting gameplay experience requiring a higher learning curve which will also push people away. People will stop before getting to act 3. This is the issue with making a game that relies on getting to end game to hook players and having hard starts. Make the beginning easier, and make the endgame harder.

I do not agree. First one was hard, because you had so many mechanics that it was overwhelming for newcomers. Now it is hard, because of the difficulty level, which IMHO is fine. I was playing PoE not hardcore, but rather from time to time (I had like 900 hrs) I have great time in PoE 2. My friends, which gave up on PoE 1 after few hours are having fun as well. Challanging is good. Dying is good. For me, that game is in very sweet spot. I don't want to go back to PoE 1 anymore. And I think that is why GGG wants to have these two games moving forward alongside. Becasue they know, that PoE and PoE have difference target audience, which again IMHO, is completely fine.

Game isnt too hard. ppl are just used to games that they dont need to think anything.
Dont listen the vocal crying minority and nerf everything to be too easy. Challenge is good and it keep the game going. Balance stuff is case of its own, but dont make this another diablo where everything is changed to suit the needs of forum crying ppl who just dont bother to learn the game.

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Raidboss_Aj#9936 wrote:

Game isnt too hard. ppl are just used to games that they dont need to think anything.

That's definitely not a case. There are situations in this game that just aren't winnable with certain builds. The only option is to keep grinding, respec, and change skill gems. Even then with the best builds it's possible to get backed into a corner with no way out.

The things that make it the worst, in my opinion, are the fact that maps reset when you die. All of the loot is gone and enemies respawn. The other is the massive size of the maps, so if you spend 45 minutes clearing through, to realize you missed an objective, then die on a boss, you have to spend another 45 min clearing to the other side for the objective you missed.

These issues mixed with the terrible rare/unique/currency drop rates, it's just a miserable experience all around.

Granted, on my main I'm now level 46, grinding through things and it just feels very unrewarding at this point. The loot is garbage and it doesn't feel like there's incentive to keep going. All I'm doing is killing stuff with virtually no rewards for it except for another 2 hour grind for a single passive skill point.

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Sqarpi#7850 wrote:

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Nothv13#0740 wrote:

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LifeIsADream01#8363 wrote:

To be honest upfront, I didn't bother to read all of the replies, but I think that OP gave up to quickly. Once your build gets going (around act 3 for me), the game gets allot easier. And at this point, going into maps, everyone is already zooming around. So to me the game is not fundamentally too hard, it's just more of a learning curve/adjustment to get used to the bosses and mechanics in the beginning (especially coming from POE1, where we knew everything already. P.s., if you run act 1 and 2 with levelling gear (from a previous character), it becomes trivial.

See, this also run counter to their goal. POE2 was supposed to be easier for beginners to get into. For POE1 is was the overwhelming skill tree and confusing socket and skill system that kept people away. They somewhat solved this (still see people say the passive tree is too complex), but replaced it with a rough starting gameplay experience requiring a higher learning curve which will also push people away. People will stop before getting to act 3. This is the issue with making a game that relies on getting to end game to hook players and having hard starts. Make the beginning easier, and make the endgame harder.

I do not agree. First one was hard, because you had so many mechanics that it was overwhelming for newcomers. Now it is hard, because of the difficulty level, which IMHO is fine. I was playing PoE not hardcore, but rather from time to time (I had like 900 hrs) I have great time in PoE 2. My friends, which gave up on PoE 1 after few hours are having fun as well. Challanging is good. Dying is good. For me, that game is in very sweet spot. I don't want to go back to PoE 1 anymore. And I think that is why GGG wants to have these two games moving forward alongside. Becasue they know, that PoE and PoE have difference target audience, which again IMHO, is completely fine.

Anecdotes. History continues to show that hard starts will push people away just as much as confusing mechanics. POE1 is in fact direct evidence of this as it started out harder in beta and changed to draw in a larger and longer term playerbase. They then added ruthless to POE1 and it has pretty much zero playerbase. Even streamers that loved it don't play it anymore.

POE1 and POE2 have the same target audience, which is why they are working to get all MTX from POE1 into POE2. The gameplay loop and goal is the exact same as POE1. Run league farm endgame get loot. In both, the loop makes the campaign inconsequential being nothing more than an annoyance. That is the gameplay loop of both and why they said they need people to reach endgame to keep them.

GGG can say all they want about how they want to develop the games side by side, but they have already admitted to cannibalizing staff from POE1 for POE2. They are not a huge studio and they certainly have not doubled their workforce to handle two games. Even much larger studios put live service games into maintenance mode to run the newer live service games. Hell the difficulty in this game I would call a false difficulty since if you get good gear it becomes no harder than POE1 beginning. If you get screwed over in gear and drops you suffer and there is nothing you as a player can do to counter being unlucky.

I like the idea of the difficulty, but history shows hard starts are counter to long term success in live service games. I want POE2 to pull a POE1 where its grows throughout the 10 years with its peak player numbers being 10 years after release rather than a helldivers 2 where people loved it for difficulty and then it fell off a cliff as people got tired of the continuous nerfs to keep said difficulty.