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

Most wasted 30$ of my life, still in act 3 after a week.
Realizing you can make a game good once, doesn't mean you can do it again.
Or may be I'm wrong because GGG is looking for other group of players.

If less items drop, and bosses' health and damage are increased, is it harder?... you just don't know what difficulty really is. To make it harder, you need to improve the game, not artificially modify item drops to make the game more TEDIOUS and boring. Now that the game is out, we all play, but if they keep it up, it will be boring to play. And a boring game is the worst it can be. And getting few items is boring, because they are still like Poe 1, a lot of junk items in Poe-1, here few items but junk too.

There are two main facets to difficulty, and it is so freaking rare for games to tap the right one correctly. PoE2 has, like so many games before it, failed to do so.

There is difficulty through skill, and there is difficulty through tedium. It is ok for SOME difficulty to come from tedium. It is not ok for tedium to be the main vector of difficulty.

PoE2 has almost entirely forsaken the prior for the later.

Tedium-based difficulty is similar to when WoW increased mob hp in the world so that "people could experience rotations", even though the rotation on a meaningless white mob was still pointless and everything just took twice as long. It was "harder", you could pull half as much, but it wasn't more fun.

Skill-based difficulty is your favourite souls-type game, where the best player in the world can sprint to the final boss and kill it naked from the beach. It is the gems like Hades and Binding of Isaac and that sort of thing.

PoE2 has completely missed the mark on the first of the two, and it is vastly over-represented. It is fine from a skill-based perspective; it's slightly harder than PoE1 and that is ok. But it is extremely difficult to tease out how much of that change is because of tedium; bosses are harder only because the capacity to learn them has been cut in 6. Maps are only "harder" because gear is harder to get and everything takes 3 times as long. So on, so on.

"Difficulty" derived from tedium in an over-represented way is bad for the game, especially when the model aims to get people to return every 3-4 months and pay more money.

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accelerantqt#2560 wrote:

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composition2#1614 wrote:

This is a different game than PoE1. If you prefer that style of game, try going back to it.

Not sure if you have played poe 1 buddy but it's a dead game without a fresh league (which have been culled in favour of poe 2 development) so no, we can't "just go and play poe 1".

They take too long to put a new league. Poe-2 is bothering us twice as much, being a boring game and not having a league in Poe-1.

On top of that, they share chat and toxic people who complain about the slightest thing, at least in the hateful chat of "global 1 es", Hispanic-American. They didn't let me say anything bad about the "new" game, the one that throws you on the ground naked and tells you "now get a life" because without sacrifice there is no benefit. Without items, without movement skills like Poe-1's, huge and tedious maps. They told me to shut up and I said in the chat "budding dictators" and for something so simple without wanting to offend, just so they would let me speak, they punish me in an exaggerated way with a "mute", in a new game "Poe-2", which I am starting. And GGG is not very friendly to people, let's say, because it listens to all the reports and it's not fair even if you complain, if they answer the complaint at all...

All the bad things with Poe-2 are coming together, I've thrown my money away!!! with people who act as judges and executioners. If they keep this up and I find a game as fun as Poe-1 was, I'll look for another game to have fun with, because this is not fun. I want freedom, not senseless censorship.

The game was fun for me, difficulty is enjoyable, too many zoomers want to press win button and be done.

This thread boggles the mind. It's 7 days into early access and you're all vomiting absolute vitriol and making your mind up. They've said it'll be 6 months or more before 1.0. Judge the game then. At present it's completely unfinished. 3 acts are missing, 6 classes are missing, 24 ascendencies are missing. Like.. have a fucking modicum of patience. Give your feedback and see how it goes. So many tantrums on a game that is completely unfinished.

Indeed, it is just the usual battle between hype and expectations, hype was deservedly huge and expectations are from people that can't realize this is an early acces with a LONG way to go before actual release.

Nobody forced anyone on spending $ supporting this close to EA release, if you spent $30 then just realize you could have waited a week and decide, or just suck it up already.

Balance wise things will improve, it is GGG we are talking about, I am playing a Cold Sorc so believe me I am as pissed as everyone else is, but for the love of god take a chill pill and let them cook. Unless they want to take a completely different path than POE1 (which they absolutely can do, y'all remember this is THEIR GAME not yours) keep giving feedback and rejoice when everything will work as intended. They don't force you on paying anything, if you think spending $30 on an EARLY ACCESS TITLE WITH 6 MORE MONTHS OF IMPROVING BEFORE 1.0 entitles you to this amount of flaming just go play something else or be civil.

Have fun and as always PRAISE LE TOUCAN.

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GODOFWARSANCHEZ#4574 wrote:

The game was fun for me, difficulty is enjoyable.

Fixed it for youn, the rest was unnecessary.

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Menysk#7455 wrote:

Flasks don't recharge when fighting Trash???

Yep, garbage change, agreed. I mean this aspect worked fine in POE 1. Why change it? Rebalance it if necessary, but other than that it was perfectly fine.

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Menysk#7455 wrote:

Boss health bars reset on Death????

On this one I don't agree. I think there is value in forcing you to beat (adequately balanced!) bosses in one go. Some tweaking is certainly to expect (one-shots, timing tolerances, flasks economy...), but it makes sense to me that you have to beat the boss in one go.

Mobs in zone respawning after each death on the other hand is one of the worst design choices they seem to gave made.

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Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

I don't find football fun.
Too much running.
Remove the running, please.

Oh, another great take! What smarts!