PoE 2 Bad Design

There are a few design choices that just straight up baffle me. I will break them down in a list and let you all decide if you want to read the wall of text I am about to write or if you want to skip out.

Dodge Mechanics
WASD Movement
Boss 'Arenas'
Spongey Enemies
Ranged Targeting
Skill Gem System
Mob Respawns
New Player Experience
Conclusions

Dodge Mechanics: In theory this is a great idea, I can think of many situations in PoE 1 where a dodge roll would be amazing. HOWEVER. The whole game has been designed around you SPAMMING dodge. As a ranged character your whole experience is basically kiting circles around the boss while you Dodge, Attack, Dodge, Attack, Dodge, Attack. Around 25-50% of all button inputs are a Dodge. This is a TERRIBLE design choice. Souls-Likes aren't even this punishing. This game assumes you will be rolling constantly and so every boss spams AoE abilities. This needs to be tuned in a totally different direction. You should not be ABLE to spam roll and you should only need to dodge unblockable i.e. Red attacks. This is just not an enjoyable experience.

WASD Movement: Again the same issue with Dodge is prevalent with movement, you don't HAVE to use WASD but using point and click is nearly impossible because reaction times are keyed to WASD kiting in circles. Again, as an ADD ON WASD sounds great but the entire combat has been designed around it because it is too powerful for kiting enemies. This is also why you are so incredibly slow when you ranged attack and move, WASD would be far too powerful if you moved quickly. All in all I feel like it is a detriment to the game, we didn't NEED it yet it has been implemented in a way where now we DO.

Boss 'Arenas': I HATE the immersion breaking nature of the boss fights in this game. Nearly every single fight is in a tiny gated area that forces you to be in close proximity to the boss. This was something done in PoE 1 but very rarely and the 'Arenas' were MUCH larger. Crowbill is particularly frustrating as you have to fight him in three different close-quarters environments. I easily defeated him but the fight was not enjoyable because it was so laughable 'Oh look he shut a gate' then 'oh who woulda thunkit vines grew behind me' its just a silly design similar to mobile game design.

Spongey Enemies: Who thought that giving enemies the equivalent of twice the healthpool of PoE 1 was a good idea? This is not why we play ARPGs. I play PoE when I get off a long day at work and I want to buzz saw through mobs. If I want a challenge there are plenty of boss mobs that I can seek out but generally farming trash is a calm experience in PoE 1. This also makes clearing zones take so much longer and so it is not going to be economical with my time to dedicate the few hours a day I get to play. This is not something a little 'tuning' can fix. It is core to the design of the game.

Ranged Targeting: I don't know who tested this but it is bad. The flight path of arrows and their collision is so bad that the only way I could get comfortable with it was to play the splitshot build to make up for its inconsistency. Easy way to test this for yourself is to WASD movement around and fire at small or crawling enemies with your regular bow shot, you will have enemies highlighted and the arrow will pass right by them. This is worst when you WASD on the opposite axis as their movement. This does not happen with larger mobs because it detects the collision with their sprite.

Skill Gem System: The idea to tie support gems to static skills and to only provide 3 choices per weapon per tier was a bad idea. Every single Ranger in the game currently uses the same ability set as I do with tiny alterations because of passive skill choices. By level 15 in PoE I had so many skill gems I didn't know what to do with them all and it let me experiment. In PoE 2 I have fewer choices and am punished for experimenting. So many choices have been removed from the game that were core to my enjoyment in PoE 1. The final issue is that you cannot use the same support gem on multiple skills even though each skill only has like 3 choices for support. If you Split Shot Lightning Arrow you cant Split Shot anything else.

Mob Respawning: Why would you take the WORST part of the souls-like games and put it in yours. Why. This is the only thing that the majority of people DONT like about the souls-like games. Killing the same 10 trash mobs over and over on the way back to the boss fight to try again is not compelling or challenging gameplay. Especially problematic for people who have connection issues or children. This is hands down probably the worst decision in the game so far. As a part of this function it also DELETES YOUR LOOT. For example, I went all in on an Elite Mob to finish it off knowing its supporting mobs would kill me. It dropped a rare and I raced back. When I returned the loot was gone. Why would you design it this way? This coupled with the spongey healthpools and frustrating boss arenas is just bad design over all.

New Player Experience: In preparation for this games launch I sold my friends on playing PoE. They all started PoE 1 about a month ago and put in around 40-80 hours each, getting a feel for the game and loving it. They WERE hyped for this release. Then the launch went poorly and it dampened their hype but they were still onboard. After 2 hours one of my friends quit saying 'this is nothing like the other game' after 6 hours played they have all quit and gone back to PoE 1. I am the only one left playing because the new player experience in the game is so bad. They LOVED PoE 1 and will go on to play it for hundreds of hours likely and because of that I will go back too. One of them put it this way 'In PoE 1 I felt like a bad*ss immediately, in PoE 2 I felt like the bosses were way cooler than I was.' I think that sums it up for me, you ruined the power fantasy of the game. You feel like you are barely succeeding instead of being the 'chosen one' as most ARPGs make you.

Conclusion: I will stick around for this game and see where it goes. I have hopes that it will become more enjoyable over time but the hope that this would replace Diablo etc is a pipe dream. This game has disenfranchised the entire Dad Gamer and Casual Gamer demographic to appeal to its hardcore fans. I'm sure that the people who have 2,000+ hours in PoE are super jazzed about a lot of the things I complain about. It will however severely cap the reach of the game. Here is to hoping they support PoE 1 for years to come because it is the far better game imho. I know I'm going to be flamed for some of these opinions but I needed to say them because I am very frustrated. I would never have guessed my entire friend group would reject the game for PoE 1. What has been your experience? Thanks for reading if you made it this far.

You are not alone. This is not POE. Some people may like it but it's mind-boggling they had a hit in POE, and decided to make a sequel that is completely different.

I support your right to have opinions & to be able to air them in public without persecution.