Game is dropping like a stone

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Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index#1288 wrote:

They pushed the start of EA back, it was supposed to launch in november before the delay

So poor planning then maybe? Should've pushed it till after holidays then. Sure, you'd still get some angry gamers in regards to that. But I still think that'd be better. My opinion of course.

A lot that was mentioned is true. I think to much of PoE 1 ideology and design was carried over into PoE 2 as well. I enjoy the game and have played quiet a bit but the economy, power curve of meta builds, etc. Has made the game a little tiresome.

problem with Poe2 is that it tries to be 2 things that are all at odds with each other and it doesn't do either of them well.

it claims to be souls-like, but that's only true until you start to get gear and abilities act act3/cruel act 1.

it tries to be for a broader audience, but that, again, only lasts until about act3 of normal difficulty. Then it just becomes the exact same game for the exact same type of people who like ruthless/HC POE1 only with a bunch of changes that make it worse and less fun.

The fact is that it's two different games and it fails to do a good job being either because you can't have a soulslike game with dozens of mobs bum rushing you every second and gears and abilities gated behind extreme RNG and you can't be a good ARPG with extremely punishing difficulty for failure from 1-shot on death mechanics amidst ten million mobs bumrushing you and your screen brighter than a 4th of july fireworks display.

The biggest problem, though, is that they took everything they knew people hated and had removed over the years from POE1 and stuck them back into POE2.

I agree with most of what you said about the state of the game but the steam numbers of the past few days are not a representative sample. It’s Christmas period people are away. Numbers are still going to drop though for several reasons. One is people are reaching end game and completing to a point they no longer want to continue; others will drop because it’s just not for them.

I personally won’t do another run until improvements are made. I like playing off meta and current state it’s like smashing my head against a wall on the Act bosses. They’re like end game difficulty in a campaign where the gear and skills doesn’t align.

Expect another big patch early in the new year. GGG have been monitoring the forums. Hopefully they’re listening.

GGG monumentally fucked up when they decided to open up early access and then just go AFK for 4 weeks after doing so.

They needed to be hands on maintenance every single day, with patches and updates every single day.

Don't know wtf they were thinking.

Just an observation...

Yesterday, Kripparian posted a video about issues with the armour system in PoE Deuce:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mw-uD-vz_5s

Since it dropped, it has had 286k views. Reasonably assuming that not every player has watched it, that's one helluva lot of views. Deuce may be dropping, but the numbers from this example don't support a precipitous drop-off, at least, not so far. ='[.]'=

I'll just provide my general problems to this thread.

1.) Difficulty is too high. While I am fine with most bosses have mechanics and things of that nature, that's not the thing making this game difficult. It's just power level is too low at start. On top of that, the vast majority of skills you have access to while leveling are neither fun or powerful so you're left spamming one or 2 skills the entirety of leveling.

2.) Gearing while leveling is worthless. All this gear drops for you while leveling but none of it means anything as you're almost always better off just getting any piece of random gear that gives you + level on it. If you take that off for an item that's even 20 levels higher without + level on it, you notice immediately you're weaker. The vast majority of gear I got while leveling wasn't from killing stuff, but rather just going to the vendor every level or so and looking for any random piece that offered + spell level, + projectile level, etc.

3.) Balance between classes seems way off. A lot of ascendency choices in this game just flat out miss the mark. Some of them have no synergy with how most people play prior to choosing it (perfect example of this is Blood Mage and how it doesn't work well with minions whatsoever despite the vast majority of players going Witch specifically for minions). Melee is nearly unplayable until you start getting weapon skills that effectively make you ranged. etc.

So that all said, I will say I never played POE1. I am generally not a fan of these types of games as I'll never dedicate myself long enough or hard enough to do the endless, mindless grind for grind's sake which is all any of these games offer you at end game. But I do enjoy leveling characters, experiencing the story, and trying out skills for various classes along the way. That experience in this game is quite lacking.

It hurts but I agree with this post. I haven't played in 48 hours I don't even want to say the dirty game I went back to after grinding to a halt vs trial #4. Anyways I hope the post-holiday patch is good and I will come back if it is.

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KingHadu#3474 wrote:

Yeah no one wants to play this game filled with scammers, Jonathan was about to finally implement a modern Auction House to stop all these scammers but Tencent stepped in.

An Auction House would eliminate their HideOut MTX sales people only buy these HideOuts to show off to buyers, if they implement a AH it would kill a large portion of their revenue.

Selling a paid game like this then making such bad game designs on purpose to promote Microtransactions is just pure scummy stuff like what Blizzard does.

But then again POE is owned by Tencent.

Source please; or this is just baseless conjecture.

What made Endgame worse in 3.24 (T17s) is the reason i also dont like poe2 endgame, moving from deterministic to completly random.

For T17s it was for example the fragments, you had a rotation and variation of bosses like shaper-guardians with maven and got your keys for (uber-)bosses pretty much guaranteed, then with T17 maps being completly random drops and uber-boss fragments also being random it removed alot of fun.
Jun is another factor, moved from pretty deterministic asling to it being a random 5-10% drop chance.

For poe2, citadels being random for arbiter "farm", ritual-invitation being random RNG on altars, expedition logbook RNG if a boss spawns or not, the only somewhat deterministic boss is the breach one... if you like collecting 300 splinters :). Delirium bosses are not even bosses imo.

Same for Sanctum, i LOVE poe1 sanctum cause it used to be very rewarding and while divines were random they had a very high chance to spawn, at least every second run(all 4 floors).
Poe2 sanctum is keys for chests containing random loot (trash loot).

Sure RNG is always involved, but too much rng is bad for them game(s) imo.

Even if they give back 6 portals and not remove mechanics on death for maps, i don't see current poe2 endgame being any better, still boring slot mashine