POE 2 Bad

"

Stormlord#0481 wrote:

many claim PoE1 players dislike the game simply because they’re not used to it—this “new era” excuse is nonsense.

"

KuroSF#6521 wrote:

I'm loving POE2.... I will likely never play POE1 again as I don't care for POE1 easy-mode zoom-zoom light shows.. I want mechanics, and POE2 delivers.

Dark Souls and Elden Ring (~24M copies sold, EACH) are massively more profitable than POE1, and that this is the audience GGG is trying to tap into in order to get more audience.

POE2 already has a 578k steam peak in 2 days, and the *low* since launch is 250k. The peak for POE1 *EVER* on steam is 228k. And I'm willing to bet POE2 is *much* more popular on console. They might have as many as 1M concurrent or more.

If you don't care for POE2, be glad they forked the games and are keeping POE1 alive for you.... but also don't confuse your frustration into thinking players don't like POE2. The numbers don't lie.

------


I played ranger and monk to level 20, mid Act-2.... around 10 deaths the first time through act 1 on ranger, mostly on bosses, 60% simple game learning curve and 40% because boss fights are more mechanical (which I *love*).

Now I'm restarting the start on every class and it's literally faceroll the first few zones.. I walk directly to the bosses and just straight up insta kill them in garbage gear, because I understand the mechanics, stagger, and the skills.

This is proving to me that people who are struggling in Act-1 either (a) dont want mechanics, they just want a POE1 loot-pinyata, or (b) they didn't spend the time to learn the mechanics.

Here are some things I realized along the journey that might help players who are struggling....

1. You have to HOLD melee skills until they complete, tapping doesn't work and often results in a cancelled skill, especially when you are surrounded... HOLD skills (I consider this a BUG, hopefully they fix)

2. This isn't a hardcore first-time-through campaign (unless you play *very* safe), you need to learn boss mechanics and telegraphs... this is much better to me. I want some challenge. If it's easy enough to hardcore the first time through, think of how boring it will be the 100th.

3. The boss stagger mechanics are *VERY* important, especially for Melee. Below the boss healthbar is the yellow stagger bar. When it staggers, a mob takes 1.5x melee dmg and 1.5x physical dmg and these stack (see tooltip on stagger). For melee, this means you can do 1.5x1.5=2.25x dmg on the boss during stagger. This makes those formerly tough boss fights seem trivial once you understand it.

4. Dodgeroll is a massively overpowered invulnerability-frame. Use it. If you don't care for "watch and react" gameplay, where you see the attack coming and use your iframe to avoid it, then you won't care for POE2, since this is the entire structure of the game. However, many beloved games are based around it, and I hope this gameplay is here to stay in POE2.

5. The skill gem combos that work well in POE2 are *similar* to POE1, but not at all the same, and certainly don't have the same "progression". We can wield lots more skills earlier, with more support gems. It takes some time to experiment and understand where the power spikes are.

6. A good amount of the power moved out of single skills and into layered skill "combos". A simple example is putting a "chance to bleed" gem on one skill, and a "does 30% more dng to bleeding enemies, can't cause bleeding" gem on another skill... The first skill procs bleeding the second one exploits it. You can often layer 2-3 types of damage bonuses like this, in addition to the stagger mechanics, and really dumpster stuff.. but you have to actually pay attention, and not just spam one button like in POE1.

7. The passive tree respects are MASSIVELY cheaper (thankfully!), so it's very viable to start with most of the damage nodes near the beginning, and then when you get more dmg bonus from gear or other passives and don't need these nodes, to respec them by routing around them through survivability or attributes at the base... I do wish they would make respecs support "temporary debt" so you could allocate points first and then remove points, to make reroutes easier, but for now you can just spend a little more gold and get the same outcome.

8. The loot drops are definetly less than POE1 normal, but at the same time, the lack of equipment skill sockets means it's much easier to actually equip something that will help, or even swap out gearsets for particular situations. I personally think they need to massively increase the currency drops in the entire campaign (*especially regal orbs*), because players are experimenting, and these crafting items have so much RNG, the variability from one playre to another is VERY VERY high. So far I'm only noticing this as a progression factor in mid Act 2, where bosses get harder and there are more undodgable AOE skills. For now, I recommend grouping up (either in chat or public parties), as it can make things much easier.

Happy Hunting, Exiles.