Complete backwards step

Pretty sure I took every arpg out for at least a spin going back to D1.

NO WAY could you recommend this to anyone but a poe 3/4+ or a legit hc in other games type, for 30 dollars. It is a "sure whatever" when it is free, as is. Tell them to hold off a bit before they get tabs maybe.

I don't think of any ARPG as the easy one, it is a lush genre and it is fairly simple; a primal video game genre so to speak. Poe 1 is so well documented, It is the hardest of ARPGs but the build guides infrastructure seems to onbard well.

Any balance problem is usually fixed 2-3 levels over a zone and a cheap gear once over after a few levels always keeps things moving. So far, My not too bad geared 14 was getting over run and mauled in a lvl 12 zone. So drops are anemic.

The dodge is mega inferior to...I think it was Wolcen. Besides Wolcen's cool cooldown meter and assorted gear dodge item bonuses , number of charges and faster recharge off the top of head.

Poe2 dodge has no cooldown and that seems to have driven terribad gameplay consisting of rigid spell-click, move-click, spell click, move-click patterns in mouse moda...forget wasd as mouse mode seems to be able to achieve the same strafe ability.

God forbid our dodge had cooldown and charges...like path of fire. But as is, the game is balanced so that we need to repeat for minutes rigid spell-click, move-click gameplay. Not fun.

Dumped cold sorc over this and hoping minion infernalist fares better.

The ironic thing is, the 'masses' that joined POE did so when it was complex the hardest and most ARPG in the market. Not as hard as POE2 EA is, but it really isn't as hard as people are making if you adapt your playstyle -

* gear up through vendors if you need to,
* utilise WASD movement to circle strafe and flummox the AI aiming,
* actually utililse your class synergies (ie don't try to make a 1 button build).

A huge number of players flocked to POE when D3 came out - they wanted something darker and harder as D3 was made far too accessible compared to D2.

At this point, there is a fair bit of overlap between D3 and POE1, which was never the intention - POE2 aims to correct that; it's highly likely they will adjust the difficulty (perhaps only in early A1) to *some* degree, but this paradigm that an arpg should be a 5 hour sprint to endgame and then just endlessly grinding maps while cookie cutting your favourite streamer's suggested build is actually self-destructive to the genre.

POE1 was never intended to be a 27MDPS zoom-fest. Full stop. The pain of this correction was inevitable and is actually a good thing, we didn't join POE1 to play the aprg equivalent of Candy Crush, as otherwise I would've stayed with the Diablo franchise.

That they have actually made the campaign challenging and not just a 'speed bump' for the memes on your way to maps is actually an incredible feat and one I'm enjoying a lot; every fight means something and I feel like the game finally rewards skillful play, as POE1 had originally intended.

* Edit - grammar, added a paragraph

I have thousands of hours in PoE 1, and thousands of hours in Dark Souls (I've played every game from Demon Souls to Elden Ring) and I can say this ain't it. I really wanted this game to be great as I've been a fan of PoE for a long time but having played into Act 3 now as warrior it's just not really enjoyable.

Maybe playing warrior didn't help, but bosses particularly as you get late into act 2 become incredibly spongey and have a ton of armour which almost necessitates carrying armour breaker and speccing into it to improve the effect. Jamanra for example has like 180,000hp while you're hitting for 1-1.4k? I'd done well over 60k before he hit 60% and went into phase 2, and the fight is just obnoxious and boring. In the end it didn't take any form of skill to beat it, I just stacked lightning res and beat on him at point blank range while trying to keep armour debuff up and abusing stun.

Took a few attempts to get it down but killing it didn't feel good, just felt annoying. Souls games when you kill a boss you get the satisfaction of killing it because you played well, but you also get rewarded for killing the boss with a ton of souls and usually souls you can use for good gear. This game I killed Jamanra and got some random trash that did nothing for my class like pretty much every named mob I've killed. Going into act 3 it's even worse, trash mobs get way more spongey and now a whole lot of them have over 1.5k armour so your wet noodle damage becomes even more wet noodle.

Not to mention the fact that the standard mace strike you get at level 1 is basically your best dps skill, even near level 40. It's like they wanted to pidgeonhole every melee into using the basic attack with a few utility skills for aoe or armour reduction and it's not satisfying at all. I had high hopes the level 9 skill gems and Sunder might be a viable replacement but it has a permanent non-reducible 1.4 seconds added to the attack animation, so about 2 seconds of animation every use.

When your best boss damage ability nearly 40 levels into the game is the basic attack you had at level one something ain't right, been trying to stick with it for the sake of POE 1 but honestly it's just getting more and more grindy and less and less fun.

"

CroDanZ#1818 wrote:

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mrtoothy#4394 wrote:

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EverquestOnlines#1488 wrote:

POE 2 is great ;)

Sorry, it's just not.

Sorry, it is.

It's just not for the TikTok generation who start to cry in the forums that it's "to hard" after wiping a boss 1-2 times with full blue gear.

It's an ARPG....if you stuck, make a step back and farm better gear....farm 1-2 levels and try again.

People just cry becasue they can't faceroll all content day1 in a new game while applauding themself by doing so....as they can do in D4. ;)

Farm better gear where? Stop being a white knight, i love PoE and GGG, but the game in it´s current state is awful, im on act 3 atm, and for example i to kill the titan in act 2 i had to stay in the same area farming for hours before i got some mild power to help me kill him, rares are scarce as hell, magic items do not provide the power for a relatively smooth experience, regals are rare as hell (because rares are too), i´ve seen my first alchemy in the half of act 3, the vendors mostly sell trash, the gamble vendor will make you spend the gold you farmed for 3 hours to get 3-4 pieces of blue gear just for you to sell them back right away, IT´S BAD, the game is gorgeous but has issues, people need to have fun and not be frustrated playing, my gf who played poe with me for years already quit, the player numbers will tank you can be sure of that 100%, and to be honest i find it really stupid that they worked so hard on the game, got a massive release full of hype and new customers just to lose them straight away along with some old players because of trying to artificially make the game hard, arpgs are about loot, give players loot, i like a challenge, i dont like frustration tho, and im a pretty presistant player, if i wast i would have quit by now too.

"

MakaveliPT#7753 wrote:

Farm better gear where? Stop being a white knight, i love PoE and GGG, but the game in it´s current state is awful, im on act 3 atm, and for example i to kill the titan in act 2 i had to stay in the same area farming for hours before i got some mild power to help me kill him, rares are scarce as hell, magic items do not provide the power for a relatively smooth experience, regals are rare as hell (because rares are too), i´ve seen my first alchemy in the half of act 3, the vendors mostly sell trash, the gamble vendor will make you spend the gold you farmed for 3 hours to get 3-4 pieces of blue gear just for you to sell them back right away, IT´S BAD, the game is gorgeous but has issues, people need to have fun and not be frustrated playing, my gf who played poe with me for years already quit, the player numbers will tank you can be sure of that 100%, and to be honest i find it really stupid that they worked so hard on the game, got a massive release full of hype and new customers just to lose them straight away along with some old players because of trying to artificially make the game hard, arpgs are about loot, give players loot, i like a challenge, i dont like frustration tho, and im a pretty presistant player, if i wast i would have quit by now too.

You can farm better gear by reloading zones so you can get supports, gold and what not.

Sounds like in your case that you might need to overlevel a bit or try a different approach. The game is forgiving enough that you can work around making mistakes.

Maybe try something different than what you are doing? It doesnt take 3 hours to get 3-4 pieces of blue gear so it sounds like you just are struggling at the beginner stages of this game.

Thats fine though, everyone has their pace

"

Poe2WarriorMan#6401 wrote:

You can farm better gear by reloading zones so you can get supports, gold and what not.

Sounds like in your case that you might need to overlevel a bit or try a different approach. The game is forgiving enough that you can work around making mistakes.

Maybe try something different than what you are doing? It doesnt take 3 hours to get 3-4 pieces of blue gear so it sounds like you just are struggling at the beginner stages of this game.

Thats fine though, everyone has their pace

but this is an ARPG, not an MMO.... End game in an ARPG is where you farm gear, not leveling.


ARPG = FAST and get tons of drops on the way and every once in a while "Ding!" you get something cool.

A lot of the conversation is about the difficulty, and personally as a long time enjoyer of difficult games, it all comes down to execution.

PoE2 is difficult in an unfun way, where you are less being punished for bad positioning or a poorly timed dodge, but more often because you nerve to get stuck on some random clutter or brushed up against an enemy, and thus get anchored to the ground.

The game demands correct timing, but doesn't give you reliable tools to do it.

"

passioncousland#3344 wrote:

The ironic thing is, the 'masses' that joined POE did so when it was complex the hardest and most ARPG in the market. Not as hard as POE2 EA is, but it really isn't as hard as people are making if you adapt your playstyle -

* gear up through vendors if you need to,
* utilise WASD movement to circle strafe and flummox the AI aiming,
* actually utililse your class synergies (ie don't try to make a 1 button build).

A huge number of players flocked to POE when D3 came out - they wanted something darker and harder as D3 was made far too accessible compared to D2.

At this point, there is a fair bit of overlap between D3 and POE1, which was never the intention - POE2 aims to correct that; it's highly likely they will adjust the difficulty (perhaps only in early A1) to *some* degree, but this paradigm that an arpg should be a 5 hour sprint to endgame and then just endlessly grinding maps while cookie cutting your favourite streamer's suggested build is actually self-destructive to the genre.

POE1 was never intended to be a 27MDPS zoom-fest. Full stop. The pain of this correction was inevitable and is actually a good thing, we didn't join POE1 to play the aprg equivalent of Candy Crush, as otherwise I would've stayed with the Diablo franchise.

That they have actually made the campaign challenging and not just a 'speed bump' for the memes on your way to maps is actually an incredible feat and one I'm enjoying a lot; every fight means something and I feel like the game finally rewards skillful play, as POE1 had originally intended.

* Edit - grammar, added a paragraph

They can aim to correct what they like the masses won't play this...

and that's fine - POE1 was originally created as the spiritual successor to D2, because the 'masses' had devolved to D3, as can be evidenced with how Blizz had to dumb down D4 over S2 - 7.

The Diablo franchise has always had a higher player count as that is what it was designed for - greater accessability, ease of play, a shorter gameplay dopamine loop that appealed to the masses. There's a reason Candy Crush was the most profitable and popular game in the world.

I've already stated that there's scope for tuning improvements, but the core concept should remain intact.

From many posts, I feel like a lot of players have become the equivalent of slot machine players and are now freaking out that they're at the baccarat table.

Yes, more loot, yes make it more forgiving - but let's leave an offering in the market that actually encourages skill uplift and requires thoughtfulness and engagement to play, as was the original mission of POE.

And even then, they're literally leaving POE1 intact and active, so you can swap between them as you like.

EDIT - polish

.