Who Is This Game For? - GGG's Dilemma

I think there's a lot for me to say after 70 hours of playing the game (I took days off work for the release). As I've played through the game, I have noticed that GGG doesn't seem to have an agreed upon idea of who their target audience is. Everything about the game works against some player types, and others for it, and I think they need to make up their mind about who their target audience is.

Do they want the game to playable, enjoyable, AND ACCESSIBLE to a majority of gamers? If that's the case, then the difficulty is fine, just look at FromSoft and Elden Ring. Normal players are comfortable with challenge these days. However, if that's who you want playing your game, then you need to take a MASSIVE look at crafting and drops. I played for about 12 hours yesterday, entirely clearing Act 6 and then running through at least 10 maps. I found 8 EX and 1 yellow that was decent but not an upgrade. I tried to sell it for 1EX and couldn't.

So, as a "normal" player, what can I do with 8 EX? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. That's 8 potential abilities on gear, but at this point in the game, I HAVE TO HAVE at least 3 or 4 different abilities on each piece of gear or it's not going to help me. What is the math on trying to get 2 good lines on a blue, then getting a 3rd good one on a yellow? That's already SOOOOOOO hard to achieve at that gear level. Even if you get the right mods, what's the odds that the Life roll you got is +10 Life. Bricked. Why is a level 65 item even capable of rolling +10 Life. It's worthless at that level and now you're done crafting. You get to do that a handful of times a day, and then MAYBE try Exalting a few of them and just...crossing your fingers like a gambler at the slots.

I dont think this is going to work for the vast majority of players. There needs to be determinism in crafting, or you are only going to keep players that are basically already part of your player base. This approach isn't going to encourage new players to come. There needs to be determinism, and there needs to be a way to limit low tier mods, or to increase ones that have already been rolled. Look at Last Epoch or Torchlight Infinite for examples of real crafting. This game doesn't have item crafting. It has item gambling. There's a difference.

Then, it appears that you are balancing the game around streamer level players that understand the intricacies of POE so well and so intimately that they can cut through content looking like an anime character fighting through minions. But, as a normal player that wants to try and make their own build, you are effectively balancing them out of contention.

Honestly, the entire game design encourages looking up build guides. By the time you start changing into maps, all normal builds with mid gear are going to hit a brick wall. So to advance you will either need to drastically improve your gear, or drastically improve your build.

The gear thing is impossible. You can self craft and then POE trade for B tier gear reasonably well. But if you want to push into deeper maps, using your paltry EX on self crafting is laughable. At that stage, you NEED at least 3 particular abilities on each piece of gear, AND they have to roll well. And you will quickly need 4. Do the math on how many EX that would take.

So the other option is to drastically improve your build. And for most people, once they try two or three respecs that just don't pan out, they will see how little gold they have left, and go out to YouTube to try and get help via a build guide.

The game is too obtuse, tells you too little about how things work and interact, and the level of knowledge required is too deep for most casual gamers to successfully navigate a build.

This was a problem with POE1, and it's a problem with POE2. It's just worse now because the hype train brought in a LOT of first time Exiles who expected to be able to progress through the game while crafting their own gear and finding meaningful upgrades. But that doesn't happen. Not once you get to the point where you need 3 abilities per piece of gear to be viable. This happens at different times for different characters, but it happens to all of them.

I dont think your current design philosophy will work for the majority of "normal" players, ie, people that didn't already play POE1. And that is fine, it's worked for you for years, it'll work for you in the future. But if you are looking to expand your player base and capture some of the people playing Last Epoch, Torchlight Infinite, or D4, then this isn't going to work. You're alienating them with how you think about the game from a balance perspective.

Also, why aren't Alchemy Orbs dropping like absolute candy in the first 4 or 5 acts? That's the only time in the game where Alching gear is actually viable, because you don't have to be too particular about your mods. You can get away with some janky yellows that just have like 1 great mod and a higher base stat. But I've found less than 10 in 70 hours.

I'd love to play your game and enjoy my time with it, but as soon as I get to Maps, everything comes to a crashing halt because of the problems above. I feel like I'm constantly fighting with the game in order to play. Not fighting a boss, but the game design itself.

Me

Real crafting would be POE.
And they should bring back the alteration orb and crafting bench.

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Fully agree to be honest, taking away crafting bench from poe1 was a big hit, reducing loot is another, then on top of that, currency drops that should be in vast amounts because you took away crafting bench ain't happening.

Campaign is fine in my opinion, but endgame needs work.

You should start by lowering the gold cost of reskill to encourage players to experiment with a lot of builds instead of encouraging people to check youtubes and guides. Then you should somehow encourage people to try crafting more by changing the way crafting works by increasing chances of good gear or by increasing the number of currencies dropped.

What was the first expansion in Poe1?

I remember. Forsaken masters who brought a crafting bench. Pre masters there was no bench. All your drops came from the ground.


There will be *some* bench or beastcraft or whatever on release or at least first expansion imo.

Crafting is non-existent and it’ll make me walk away from the game. I am praying for a decent drop (or from a vendor) and everything is RNG. It just makes no sense at all especially for certain classes that actually need specific elements on their gear such as + 1-5 Minions and so on. If these people aren’t incredibly lucky their build will just run out of juice. And with respec costs being what they are - you’re bricked.

I hope GGG fix this in some way - say 50% class focused drops would be fantastic for example. Don’t think it’ll happen but the core crafting experience is also borked.

I would love either a way to deterministically craft certain mods by gambling into chances it works or not. I don't even think multiplying the currency drops by 100 would help though, because you're still in need of bases, and once you NEED 4 or 5 particular mods to progress your build, AND they need to be certain tiers, then mathematically you just aren't likely to get it. It's RNG on top of RNG on top of RNG, on top of one more RNG. I'd love to know the % chances of certain mods appearing, so we could actually math out how statistically unlikely it becomes after a certain point.

Agree. If the lack of deterministic crafting/modification options doesn't change I will probably treat PoE2 as a great Storyteller, finish the Campaign with most classes once, then maybe again in coop and then drop the game because I'm really not interested in gambling to get good gear.