Why POE2 is dying

"

eldheim#2436 wrote:

Yes. It is dying. Can it come back? Sure!

Does that mean GGG shouldn't deeply care why hundreds of thousands of players that paid for access are quitting?
Of course not.

Disclaimer:

I already know a few elite GGG bootlickers will spam this comment section telling me I don't understand charts or numbers, that its "normal", or "everything is fine", or "play something else -stop whining".
Let them. It's all they do, all the time, and we can't stop it.


Firstly I'd like to say there are lots of positives about POE2, and it could have a decent foundation for a great game in the future. I'm not here to talk about those, however.

Problems:
1. Ascendancies are bottlenecked behind bad mechanics and RNG
2. Crafting is meaningless and random
3. Magic find ruined the economy completely, you are now either rich or poor
4. Maps and areas are way too big
5. Melee is dead, it feels clonky, bad, slow, and punishing
6. T1-T10 maps feels pointless and has little or no rewards
7. Endgame is a one-shot fest unless you run a meta 15k energy shield build
8. Armor is effectively pointless when it comes to mitigate dying
9. Building life builds are punished heavily, ES builds rewarded heavily
10. Build diversity bricked due to all the problems above
11. Campaign too long to incentivize multiple runs/leagues for most people
12. Death penalties makes no sense in normal game mode
13. Bosses too scarce in endgame

My conclusion? The game was dropped at least 6 months prematurely. A closed beta until mid 2025 should have been done. But that ship sailed.

Fast fixes:
Release ascendancy points throughout the campaign for now. Incentivize most players possible to engage with and try the content for EA purposes, and work towards a FAIR and non-RNG based trial with the full release.

Make exalted orbs the most common currency. It will still make crafting pure chance, but until the whole system is reworked, at least people will have a chance of trying to craft items. It is dead as of now.

Armor scaling have to flatly mitigate damage -but cap the total max mitigation. At least until you can fine-tune the balance. As of now armor builds are dead.

Increase animation time and attack speed of most warrior skills by a lot. At least until armor and life builds are fixed to become ACTUALLY tanky.

The passive tree have about 50 energy shield nodes and 3 life nodes. Considering life builds are the common melee characters, this is literally opposite of what would seem normal. I'm not even sure there is an easy fix here.

Remove XP penalty on death. This is a no brainer. Getting to 100 is hard enough as is. At least until all content is balanced. Stop the 1 death map bricking too. It makes no sense for a normal game mode.

Make teleportation map markers in maps too, until you can scale them better.
All maps should have a boss -bosses are among the best features of POE2, don't remove them from players.

Remove all magic find on gear, and boost MF with 50% as base.

Reward players for doing T1-T10 maps much better. Increase drop rates, increase waystones. Make it much easier to get 4 and 5 linked skills, at least in EA where you would think GGG want to playtest as much as possible.

You could do all this fairly easily and the overall experience for 90% of the player base would be better.
YES, I know there are some elite get good gamers that don't wont anyone but them to enjoy the game, but give them ruthless mode, and we can stop having to argue with them all the time.

What I would do?
Announce a rollback and restart servers 1. February. Until then, remove death penalties, give out ascendancy points in campaign, and increase drops by at least 100%.Let players go bananas for a month, really trying out builds and the full extent of the game.
GGG buys themselves a full month to dig deeper into fixing more problems, while making the game accessible until then.

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Hahahaha. I just realized that this is the 2nd post by the OP about this same topic in as many days. Looks like he abandoned the first try because of 21 pages of responses showing he was wrong. Yep....a new thread will certainly prove different!

Even seems to think the game has "dropped"....ignoring the fact that we are currently in EA which is just a fancy name for "beta" (which OP even claims is needed in his post).

When you are wrong, you are wrong. And when you double and triple down with multiple threads, it makes you look that much more foolish.

"

eldheim#2436 wrote:

How about you do better -argue my points, instead of sitting in moms dank basement trolling? I doubt you have the IQ nor the personality to engage in a constructive dialogue, but go ahead, put me to shame.

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

"

outlander19900#0213 wrote:

Is he lying?

I wouldn't call it "lying". He's just 100% wrong, and won't listen to anyone who explains why. He even calls out anyone who would correct him BEFORE he makes any points.

Not lying...just incorrect and a spammer.

"

eldheim#2436 wrote:

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Hahahaha. I just realized that this is the 2nd post by the OP about this same topic in as many days. Looks like he abandoned the first try because of 21 pages of responses showing he was wrong. Yep....a new thread will certainly prove different!

Even seems to think the game has "dropped"....ignoring the fact that we are currently in EA which is just a fancy name for "beta" (which OP even claims is needed in his post).

When you are wrong, you are wrong. And when you double and triple down with multiple threads, it makes you look that much more foolish.

I made a new post because people like YOU cried that there weren't any solutions in the first iteration.

So I made clarifications.

And to address your claim that 21 pages of posts "proved me wrong".
No, most of the ACTUAL feedback that contended with the issues agreed.
There was, however a lot of really impolite people trying to shame me with no actual arguments.
Just like in this post.

How about you do better -argue my points, instead of sitting in moms dank basement trolling? I doubt you have the IQ nor the personality to engage in a constructive dialogue, but go ahead, put me to shame.

"

Nyon#6673 wrote:

"

eldheim#2436 wrote:

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

Hahahaha. I just realized that this is the 2nd post by the OP about this same topic in as many days. Looks like he abandoned the first try because of 21 pages of responses showing he was wrong. Yep....a new thread will certainly prove different!

Even seems to think the game has "dropped"....ignoring the fact that we are currently in EA which is just a fancy name for "beta" (which OP even claims is needed in his post).

When you are wrong, you are wrong. And when you double and triple down with multiple threads, it makes you look that much more foolish.

I made a new post because people like YOU cried that there weren't any solutions in the first iteration.

So I made clarifications.

And to address your claim that 21 pages of posts "proved me wrong".
No, most of the ACTUAL feedback that contended with the issues agreed.
There was, however a lot of really impolite people trying to shame me with no actual arguments.
Just like in this post.

How about you do better -argue my points, instead of sitting in moms dank basement trolling? I doubt you have the IQ nor the personality to engage in a constructive dialogue, but go ahead, put me to shame.

The lesson to learn is that you made alot of valid points but you ruined it with your stupid title and your false blanket statements about how the game is doing.
The game is doing fine by any metric you would want to use. But its early access and it needs constructive feedback.

So you would be better off posting your feedback minus your fake doomsday tales

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

"

Nyon#6673 wrote:

Well thats completetly relative to what you mean by the word abuse. I dont mean like its cheating, maybe abuse is the wrong word to use.

But thats not the point. The point is that all top builds use es, because its so obviously superior. And ofc you can still play other defenses but it feels bad playing something thats litterally 3 to 4 times worse. Also some ascendancies are almost forced into other defenses

And this is why the other guy is correct....you are incorrectly stating your point and choosing inflammatory rhetoric while ignoring what is being said.

ES is in a good spot. It takes a LOT of investment to get to the numbers you mention and have seen on streams. With that investment, it should pay off like it does.

It is not ES that has the problem, it is the underperforming and underdeveloped defenses. Removal of life on the tree has created an issue that needs solving: investment in life is hard to the point of being impossible. Armor is almost entirely useless, even with high investment. These are the problems. Plus...we are missing a lot of defensive layers that we had in PoE 1 that favor life over ES. They will come.

Why does ES naturally have higher numbers than life? Because, for the most part, when you heavily invest to GET those high numbers...you need to use ES bases leaving your actual damage and hit mitigation way below other builds. Life won't need the same level of numbers, because it stacks much easier with evasion and armour and most other defenses that will come out. They just need to be careful not to introduce something like Aegis Aurora.


The call to action, especially in an EA, is almost NEVER "we need to nerf xyz". It should be "buff xyz to be more in line with a". The only time we need to cry nerf is if something is bugged or clearly interacting in mysterious ways (*cough cough, MF, *cough). If they feel the buffs go too far, then they can blanket nerf everything all at once. THAT is the appropriate way to balance, while respecting the players and the environment they created.

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

"

eldheim#2436 wrote:

Disclaimer:

I already know a few elite GGG bootlickers will spam this comment section telling me I don't understand charts or numbers, that its "normal", or "everything is fine", or "play something else -stop whining".
Let them. It's all they do, all the time, and we can't stop it.

You know why you might keep getting those responses? There are multiple reasons but the big two are:
1) The numbers show the exact opposite of what you claim, and also prove that you do NOT know how to read charts and graphs and refuse to learn.

2) You even decided not to even provide whatever numerical data you are claiming because....it doesn't exist. Which is actually even worse than misrepresenting it.


I am not happy with the state of the game. I don't play anymore. But it most certainly is NOT dying at the moment. It WILL see a massive decrease in 3-4 weeks if there isn't a major content update though.

Using the collective "we" to try to appeal to a broader base and single out those who point out your mistakes doesn't make the original comment any less wrong or unfounded. You know who starts comments like that? Setting up the us vs. them BEFORE you even begin? People who are generally wrong and know they are wrong.

"

eldheim#2436 wrote:

"

cowmoo275#3095 wrote:

"

eldheim#2436 wrote:

Disclaimer:

I already know a few elite GGG bootlickers will spam this comment section telling me I don't understand charts or numbers, that its "normal", or "everything is fine", or "play something else -stop whining".
Let them. It's all they do, all the time, and we can't stop it.

You know why you might keep getting those responses? There are multiple reasons but the big two are:
1) The numbers show the exact opposite of what you claim, and also prove that you do NOT know how to read charts and graphs and refuse to learn.

2) You even decided not to even provide whatever numerical data you are claiming because....it doesn't exist. Which is actually even worse than misrepresenting it.


I am not happy with the state of the game. I don't play anymore. But it most certainly is NOT dying at the moment. It WILL see a massive decrease in 3-4 weeks if there isn't a major content update though.

Using the collective "we" to try to appeal to a broader base and single out those who point out your mistakes doesn't make the original comment any less wrong or unfounded. You know who starts comments like that? Setting up the us vs. them BEFORE you even begin? People who are generally wrong and know they are wrong.

I gave the numbers. As has many others.
You just need to google POE2 steam charts.
They do not show the opposite. You are downright LYING, and worse, you know you are.

I use the collective "we" because 200k players have left the game already, and there are probably 200 posts from people with the same issues, and thousands of people upvoting them.
So yeah, I can use the collective "we".

We have already seen the massive decrease. In 3-4 weeks with no major overhauls there will be less than 10% left, in a game that promised about 250 hours of content. Considering the average player plays about 2 hours a day, that means the game failed massively.
A good game retains the player base and increase the first month. THEN declines. An ARPG with endgame, and 12+ build archetypes for replayability should do even better.

Instead it's doing much, much worse.