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

"

Kerkain#4640 wrote:

I feel like Act 1 itself is too much for starting a new character. It took a lot of effort just to get into Act 2 and now I'm starting to get a groove and flesh out a build. Like things are working out. But getting there was not fun.

Act 1 feels like you're supposed to already have a build going.

Its not "hard" but its extremely tedious and unnecessarily time consuming. Especially not having any crafting materials to make gear and no gold to buy any.

THIS! ALL OF THIS!

Regarding to the thread title - I completely agree.
I made two different chars so far - a witch and a sorceress.

The game feels unbelievable chewy and the movement - it simply doesn't feel smooth. I did not manage to kill a boss with the sorceress in ACT 1. They are simply to fast for me. It's a real challenge to dodge the massive aoe attacks, cause dodging is so unbelievable slow. I finally managed ACT 1 with a minion witch. But only, when I let the minions do the work for me. The final boss took me about 20 minutes, because I can't do damage myself, since casting is so slow that I will die until the casting is finished - useless. So, I had to wait my minions to be revived about 30 times.

I was so exited when POE 2 was announced and I really looked forward till Friday. Now, I have a couple of disappointments and I am really not sure, if I will continue playing.

Disappointments:

1. Graphics - I play with everything on ULTRA and I use Nvidia DLSS + HDR. The whole game looks grey and even more grey. For this I don't need any graphical details.

2. Movement - The movement is, especially in early stages, simply a joke. Ages to slow and dodging does not help at all since you will never kill anything coz you will need to dodge to survive. Casting against bosses = death.

3. Minions - Minions are so squishy. They die until level 5 of them about 100 times against normal enemies. Against bosses, they die on every hit - completely useless.

4. Item acquisition - I am on ACT 2 and did not even find a yellow item (not legendary, just rare) with two characters - seriously? I am not even talking about finding currencies - Until ACT 2 not even an orb of transmutation - just LOL.

Conclusion:
I played POE 1 for years. I did every content, spent a lot of money for supporter packs, and there was no boss I could not do with the right build. POE 1 brought me fun, relaxation and exitment. POE 2 is ages away from that. It took me about 4 hours to get a char to level 10, including 50 deaths - seriously? When I started with POE I could not wait till the next sparetime continue playing. At POE 2 and not even 10 hours of playing I am only disappointed and don't wanna play this anymore. Fun is definitely something different.

new player to the fanchise. Never got into PoE1 due to the complexity and insane amount of knowledge needed to even get into it.

thought a new game, with some consolidated systems, easier skill gem system would be worth getting into.

The game looks stunning, skill effects and interactions are great, but the fun factor is losing out fast.

Played as a mercenary for 9 hours to fully clear act 1. After around 4 hours i get a weapon, that despite my best wishes did not see any improvement for the rest of act 1. Even trying to craft with whatever paltry amount i got turned into a bust with worse overall stats than i had.

Im trying to go along the skill tree, but at some point in order to get to some nodes i felt were interesting for the build (no idea about effectiveness) i had to spend 5 levels doing travel nodes.

Getting random skill gem drops as a means of upgrading your gems is a mixed bag. For regular skills they dropped often enough and with increased level that i was able to make some choises. At some point however i got a bunch of gems but no skills to upgrade. Maybe crafting the gems together could make a higher tier, or perhaps serve as a partial unlock towards a new skill level.

finding support gems however is a pain. and ive only ever got 1 spirit gem, only to choose a skill i shouldnt have.

ive tried to play around with the skills, but found that i was still using 2 skills, freeze and shatter as that was the only way to deal enough damage to survive and kill even the most basic of white enemies. I did manage to kill the wolf on the first try, but failed against many bosses for sometimes over 10 attempts only to find out, theres a second phase.

to change it up, I rolled a ranger today. Instantly the game felt better as it has better AoE clear with lightning rod and shot. Got lucky on my weapon and movementspeed boots made the game and bossfights feel a lot smoother. Even counting for prior knowledge, beiing able to move out of the way of a move instead of dodgerolling and still failing felt better. I saw the move and was able to act accordingly.

But now im in the graveyard fighting the 3rd boss in order to progress the story and ive hit a wall.. I keep dying to his moves, no matter how much i kite or dodge or run. But i have no idea what i'm missing or what i should build into. Do i need armour? but as a ranger you are steered to evasion/energy shield. I cant find a log that tells my i died to an elemental attack, or did the physical attack end me. And even if i need more armor, does the game now expect me to repeat clear previous areas in order to find gear, swap items just to clear this wall ? I quit the game after 10 deaths in a row with to clear idea how to progress after single attempt clearing all previous bosses up to that point.

A thought came to me about how they adressed that they shifted focus from campaign to endgame about 6 months ago. I feel like they have shifted so much into endgame that they forgot the story exists and earlygame needs to balanced around this. If you want endgame to be harder, sure you have the build, presumably gear, better skills etc. But for now earlygame is overtuned, undergeared and for newcomers into the game feels more like a dodgeroll simulater than an action rpg where im having fun killing monsters.

"

Hausgeist#5228 wrote:

Regarding to the thread titel - I completely agree.
I made two different chars so far - a witch and a sorceress.

The game feels unbelievable chewy and the movement - it simply doesn't feel smooth. I did not manage to kill a boss with the sorceress in act 1. They are simply to fast for me. It's a real challenge to dodge the massive aoe attacks, cause dodging is so unbelievable slow. I finally managed ACT 1 with a minion witch. But only, when I let the minions do the work for me. The final boss took me about 20 minutes, because I can't do damage myself, since casting is so slow that I will die until the casting is finished - useless. So, I had to wait my minions to be revived about 30 times.

I was so exited when POE 2 was announced and I really looked forward till Friday. Now, I have a couple of disappointments and I am really not sure, if I will continue playing.

Disappointments:

1. Graphics - I play with everything on ULTRA and I use Nvidia DLSS + HDR. The whole game looks grey and even more grey. For this I don't need any graphical details.

2. Movement - The movement is, especially in early stages, simply a joke. Ages to slow and dodging does not help at all since you will never kill anything coz you will need to dodge to survive. Casting against bosses = death.

Thats bad luck. I have 3 exalted, 2 uniques...hmmm come on go ahead...

3. Minions - Minions are so squishy. They die until level 5 of them about 100 times against normal enemies. Against bosses, they die on every hit - completely useless.

4. Item acquisition - I am on ACT 2 and did not even find a yellow item (not legendary, just rare) with two characters - seriously? I am not even talking about finding currencies - Until ACT 2 not even an orb of transmutation - just LOL.

Conclusion:
I played POE 1 for years. I did every content, spent a lot of money for supporter packs, and there was no boss I could not do with the right build. POE 1 brought me fun, relaxation and exitment. POE 2 is ages away from that. It took me about 4 hours to get a char to level 10, including 50 deaths - seriously? When I started with POE I could not wait till the next sparetime continue playing. At POE 2 and not even 10 hours of playing I am only disappointed and don't wanna play this anymore. Fun is definitely something different.

"

Aulyx#1181 wrote:

"

Kerkain#4640 wrote:

I feel like Act 1 itself is too much for starting a new character. It took a lot of effort just to get into Act 2 and now I'm starting to get a groove and flesh out a build. Like things are working out. But getting there was not fun.

Act 1 feels like you're supposed to already have a build going.

Its not "hard" but its extremely tedious and unnecessarily time consuming. Especially not having any crafting materials to make gear and no gold to buy any.

THIS! ALL OF THIS!

AND EVEN MORE! A LOT MORE!

"

Hausgeist#5228 wrote:

Regarding to the thread titel - I completely agree.
I made two different chars so far - a witch and a sorceress.

The game feels unbelievable chewy and the movement - it simply doesn't feel smooth. I did not manage to kill a boss with the sorceress in act 1. They are simply to fast for me. It's a real challenge to dodge the massive aoe attacks, cause dodging is so unbelievable slow. I finally managed ACT 1 with a minion witch. But only, when I let the minions do the work for me. The final boss took me about 20 minutes, because I can't do damage myself, since casting is so slow that I will die until the casting is finished - useless. So, I had to wait my minions to be revived about 30 times.

I was so exited when POE 2 was announced and I really looked forward till Friday. Now, I have a couple of disappointments and I am really not sure, if I will continue playing.

Disappointments:

1. Graphics - I play with everything on ULTRA and I use Nvidia DLSS + HDR. The whole game looks grey and even more grey. For this I don't need any graphical details.

2. Movement - The movement is, especially in early stages, simply a joke. Ages to slow and dodging does not help at all since you will never kill anything coz you will need to dodge to survive. Casting against bosses = death.



3. Minions - Minions are so squishy. They die until level 5 of them about 100 times against normal enemies. Against bosses, they die on every hit - completely useless.

4. Item acquisition - I am on ACT 2 and did not even find a yellow item (not legendary, just rare) with two characters - seriously? I am not even talking about finding currencies - Until ACT 2 not even an orb of transmutation - just LOL.

Conclusion:
I played POE 1 for years. I did every content, spent a lot of money for supporter packs, and there was no boss I could not do with the right build. POE 1 brought me fun, relaxation and exitment. POE 2 is ages away from that. It took me about 4 hours to get a char to level 10, including 50 deaths - seriously? When I started with POE I could not wait till the next sparetime continue playing. At POE 2 and not even 10 hours of playing I am only disappointed and don't wanna play this anymore. Fun is definitely something different.

Thats bad luck. I have 3 exalted, 2 uniques...hmmm come on go ahead...

"

jollydiablo#0370 wrote:

My first reply is in support of difficulty. 1 click room clear is literally every other ARPG, its also boring af and its the moment I quit playing.

If you like brainless, go for it you have options.

Keep POE2 hard and uncompromising.

Thats just brainless ! Do you think poe2 will be longterm the same quality if you loose half the players? We need solution for casual and for ruthless lovers. So let them tell their
opinion and tell us yours.

"

Gogolo30#6034 wrote:

Look I get it, but I am frustrated by everyone thinking their PoE1 hours will translate into PoE2.

They should.

"

The game is completely different,

It shouldn't be.

"

We need specific feedback for the devs not, this is useless, this is unrewarding, this sucks, this is too hard.

That is specific feedback.

"

They can't do much with that.

Sure they can.

I don't get why people insist on forgetting that PoE2 was originally going to be a massive update for PoE rather than a stand-alone game.

And that the only reason they made it a sequel rather than an update was that they decided they wanted to rework and add some systems that they couldn't if they were just updating the original. It absolutely is different from PoE, but not completely different, it still shares most of PoE's original DNA.

It's just that right now the game is overtuned to the point where all PoE's original methods of ensuring a character's survivability (building Armor for reduced damage on hits, building Evasion to simply ignore the damage of a certain percentage of hits, building Shield to take most of your damage on a regenerating pool of shield points rather than directly on your health or hybridising these three systems for effect) don't actually work as intended and the new dodge mechanic has become the sole way to stay alive. But those survivability mechanics are all still in the game, they're obviously supposed to be functional, they just aren't at the moment.

Acting like the game is fine as it is because 'you can just dodge', when if you look at how it's built you'll notice that dodging isn't supposed to be the only way you can survive doesn't help GGG make the game better.

Telling them that a system that's in the game doesn't work as intended right now does.

"

RobrechtvE#3064 wrote:

"

Gogolo30#6034 wrote:

Look I get it, but I am frustrated by everyone thinking their PoE1 hours will translate into PoE2.

They should.

"

The game is completely different,

It shouldn't be.

I stopped reading after this.

Go play PoE 1 friend, nobody will be upset.

PoE 1 is an amazing game.

PoE 2 is on track to be an amazing game as well. Do not destroy what makes PoE2 unique and exciting. No thank you.

100% agree with OP, hopefully this will not be a hill GGG want to die on...