Jonathan Rogers Interview about POE1 playerbase

It's so satisfying watching Rogers absolutely shred the brain rot at the AAA studios by just having a casual conversation and having competent knowledge of the game and gameplay mechanics.

GGG deserves every bit of their success and it's so great to see these guys keep their passion despite all the success.

Rogers is a master of his craft, for sure. Say what you will about the direction he chose to take PoE2, some of the things he talks about in this interview from a game design perspective are deeply insightful.

The idea that a 'Good Game' is one that gets a thousand tiny details right rather than just one that gets one big thing right is honestly huge. That line, "it's more important to not get anything wrong than it is to get one big thing right", is frankly words to live by. Weirdly inspirational, in a way - simply not messing up is oft times the most skillful, masterful thing someone can do.

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What's funny to me is that most of the PoE1 diehards aren't even really complaining about the difficulty per se. They're complaining - endlessly, and miles beyond the point of absurdity - about not being able to blast. They want to clear the game at literal lightning speed, moving through maps/instances in thirty seconds or less, one-tap a pack before the pack is even finished rendering, and the fact that they have to walk - with their own feet, no less! - and fight mobs and/or bosses for more than thirteen picoseconds is just excruciatingly, agonizingly unacceptable.

Like, they absolutely cannot deal with the fact that in order to get around an instance they have to walk, with their actual legs, instead of just using a movement skill to achieve escape velocity and dash around faster than the game can render frames. Or the fact that the bosses in the game get to actually use their abilities instead of being phased, stunlocked, and killed before their opening animation is done. Or the fact that packs in the game actually have health bars and aren't just there to explode into showers of thousands and thousands and thousands of drops the moment a PC gets within five screens of them.

To everybody else, it's like...this is just how games are supposed to work? PoE1 is the weird, ultra-niche exception; this is a regular game. And a damn good one at that, even with the early access jank. There's definitely Early Access Jank, for sure, but the bones are phenomenal.

I strongly disagree with this sentiment, it's expression, and it's core content.

Some people are upset about difficulty, I don't think they are the majority.

The speed of the game is a problem but I'm not sure how best to explain it. I have an analogy and a comparison.

Playing the game right now feels like... A very weird calculus class. At the end of each session you take a test where you calculate volume or rate with new-to-you methods (boss fights). Unfortunately before that test you are required to do 1000 addition and subtraction problems (the trash mobs in a zone) and if you fall asleep, don't answer one question, or smudge the sheet... you have to do a revised 1000 question sheet before you're allowed to take the test. The test is why you're there, the test is the thing you want and/or need to do. The rest of the time is just a giant waste. That's how it feels to me.




My comparison is to the original Starcraft (brood war) game. A game that can be EXTREMELY challenging and requires a TON of game knowledge to be competitive in. I was only ever slightly above average at my best. It also has a ton of custom games along side the core content and each one has it's own difficulty level, knowledge to learn, and varietal aspects.
Starcraft has a speed setting that allows you to make the whole game faster, the basic "fastest" setting is the most used speed, but for experienced players who want to really zoom past the boring parts or simply don't want to twiddle their thumbs when the game got remastered they added a command that allows players to multiple the "fastest" speed by up to an additional 3X.

This doesn't change the game, it makes it harder simply by requiring more input at a greater speed... but for me and other people who are not struggling it simply improves the experience by reducing downtime and boredom.

Doing the same thing without waiting is not a skill diff, it might not even be a preference difference in some cases, it's just a shortcut for people who don't want to be bored.

"

Rogers is a master of his craft, for sure. Say what you will about the direction he chose to take PoE2, some of the things he talks about in this interview from a game design perspective are deeply insightful.

The idea that a 'Good Game' is one that gets a thousand tiny details right rather than just one that gets one big thing right is honestly huge. That line, "it's more important to not get anything wrong than it is to get one big thing right", is frankly words to live by. Weirdly inspirational, in a way - simply not messing up is oft times the most skillful, masterful thing someone can do.

Yep, if you listen to the interview you can tell he is very passionate about POE2 and where he wants to go.

The thing that stuck out to me was when he said “ there would be people who play POE1 and say the gameplay was boring, and I never wanted to hear someone say that about POE2”.

Gameplay is phenomenal, so my hats off to you Mr. Rogers. And “Hello, won’t you be my neighbor “.

My issues with PoE2 as a PoE1 player is to do with lack of build diversity due to 1:lack of sustain on passive tree(hurts melee) and 2:lack of certain damage nodes on passive tree that certain builds need

Outside of a few enemies that have unfair moves(and the dodge roll being just a little too sluggish to deal with certain attacks) I do not care about the difficulty.

I am getting rather tired of people saying "oh game not for you" in order to shut down debate on it.

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Terzian#6850 wrote:

I strongly disagree with this sentiment, it's expression, and it's core content.

Some people are upset about difficulty, I don't think they are the majority.

The speed of the game is a problem but I'm not sure how best to explain it. I have an analogy and a comparison.

Playing the game right now feels like... A very weird calculus class. At the end of each session you take a test where you calculate volume or rate with new-to-you methods (boss fights). Unfortunately before that test you are required to do 1000 addition and subtraction problems (the trash mobs in a zone) and if you fall asleep, don't answer one question, or smudge the sheet... you have to do a revised 1000 question sheet before you're allowed to take the test. The test is why you're there, the test is the thing you want and/or need to do. The rest of the time is just a giant waste. That's how it feels to me.




My comparison is to the original Starcraft (brood war) game. A game that can be EXTREMELY challenging and requires a TON of game knowledge to be competitive in. I was only ever slightly above average at my best. It also has a ton of custom games along side the core content and each one has it's own difficulty level, knowledge to learn, and varietal aspects.
Starcraft has a speed setting that allows you to make the whole game faster, the basic "fastest" setting is the most used speed, but for experienced players who want to really zoom past the boring parts or simply don't want to twiddle their thumbs when the game got remastered they added a command that allows players to multiple the "fastest" speed by up to an additional 3X.

This doesn't change the game, it makes it harder simply by requiring more input at a greater speed... but for me and other people who are not struggling it simply improves the experience by reducing downtime and boredom.

Doing the same thing without waiting is not a skill diff, it might not even be a preference difference in some cases, it's just a shortcut for people who don't want to be bored.

I get it. the sentiment is that any time spent not exploding packs is time that could be better spent exploding packs. And that includes time spent attacking packs that are not in the process of exploding. Time spent traversing a level between packs is time wasted that could have been spent exploding packs. Time spent fighting tough rares that take more than one shot to bring down is time that could have been spent exploding that rare instead, and then getting to the next pack. Time spent fighting a boss for longer than the time required to see each of its attacks/mechanics once and exactly once is time that could have been spent exploding the next set of packs on the way to the next boss - and frankly even just seeing the boss's abilities the one time is asking an awful lot.

I understand the complaint. I simply strongly disagree with the sentiment and its core content.

This is called 'Blasting'. it's the thing POE1 players crave above all else - the sense that they can progress a character and make it so powerful that nothing in the game poses a remotest hiccup to it anymore. They have eliminated all time that is not "packs exploding" time. Movement between packs? Eliminated. Time spent actually fighting packs? Eliminated. Time spent dealing with bosses? Eliminated. There is zero time spent on any activity whatsoever that is not exploding packs. They have distilled their game down to the purest possible essence of Exploding Packs, and to the Boomer Zoomer Blaster masters this is also the purest possible expression of bliss a game can produce.

The rest of us fucking hate this. We do not consider it "playing a game" at all. By the time you have gotten to this point, there is no game left to play. It does not matter what you do, what button you push, what is on the screen - none of it. There is an absolute and complete utter lack of engagement. There are no decisions to be made, no changing situations to react to. There is simply an endless wall of unchanging chaos. the exact same chaos, every single time, because nothing in the entire game is ever going to warrant changing the plan.

It's like that quote from 1984 about a boot stomping on a human face forever. Except this time it's "imagine a pack of random monsters exploding. Forever." And that is the literal sum totality of your game. No combat, no buildcraft or build variation, no exploration, no engagement. Just packs exploding. Forever.

I will quit this franchise forever if PoE2 becomes the same experience as PoE1. I would have quit long ago if not for the promise of the new game giving players who want more than Packs Exploding Forever what we used to love about PoE1 that simply no longer exists in that game. It's why I try, over and over, to tell people who care about and desire nothing save blasting that they can still play the game that contains nothing except blasting.

This game is not for them. That game is. We've already had a game that ignores the rest of us to cater to the Boomer Zoomer Blaster Masters to the explicit exclusion of everything else, for years. Why can't the rest of us enjoy this one?

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hey have distilled their game down to the purest possible essence of Exploding Packs, and to the Boomer Zoomer Blaster masters this is also the purest possible expression of bliss a game can produce.

Dude boomer, zoomer blaster master LMAO.

But seriously that is what D3/D4 felt like and is why it was short lived for me personally. Watching the screen go splat, or seeing the the flashy bang bang feels like I’m about to go into an epileptic seizure.

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Turddog#8292 wrote:

"

Rogers is a master of his craft, for sure. Say what you will about the direction he chose to take PoE2, some of the things he talks about in this interview from a game design perspective are deeply insightful.

The idea that a 'Good Game' is one that gets a thousand tiny details right rather than just one that gets one big thing right is honestly huge. That line, "it's more important to not get anything wrong than it is to get one big thing right", is frankly words to live by. Weirdly inspirational, in a way - simply not messing up is oft times the most skillful, masterful thing someone can do.

Yep, if you listen to the interview you can tell he is very passionate about POE2 and where he wants to go.

The thing that stuck out to me was when he said “ there would be people who play POE1 and say the gameplay was boring, and I never wanted to hear someone say that about POE2”.

Gameplay is phenomenal, so my hats off to you Mr. Rogers. And “Hello, won’t you be my neighbor “.

You can want something different than the direction they choose to go, but you can't say that Rogers doesn't understand what he's doing, and understand the wants of the broader player base.

"

You can want something different than the direction they choose to go, but you can't say that Rogers doesn't understand what he's doing, and understand the wants of the broader player base.

That’s exactly it. He knows where he wants the game to go and the POE1 hardcore playerbase don’t like it.

Can't wait until everyone saying "difficulty is fine" finally gets to high tier maps and get exploded by ground effects and one-shot by massively overtuned mobs running at light speed.

The slower pace feels great in the campaign, where the enemy is usually manageable with slower movement speed/skills.

It feels terrible when you are up against mobs that feel like they are ripped straight out of POE1.