PoE 2 Feels like a trip to the old PoE and I hate it

I gave it a chance. Played every day since the EA launch and finally uninstalled today. Being forced into mechanics I absolutely despise just to progress Ascendancy made me feel physically sick the first time I saw it. I pushed through, though. The campaign? Fun. I could see myself enjoying it a second time at launch. But a third time? Oh god, no. If they don’t address this, I’ll 100% skip the next league.

Since I bought into this beta test, here’s my feedback:

The whole game feels like a massive step backward.

Maps

They feel similar to the early mapping system in PoE1, which, in my opinion, was one of the reasons the game wasn’t initially popular with the general player base. They are gorgeous, but feel tedious and uninspired.

Crafting and loot

Glorified “wisdom slamming,” just like early PoE. These issues were addressed in some of the most beloved leagues for a reason and now we’re back to square one.

Atlas Tree

It’s boring, almost pointless, and progression feels unrewarding until very late game. This reminds me of the first iteration of the PoE Atlas with its weird regional trees, a system that was improved significantly by one of the best updates ever. The lack of rewarding maps is frustrating. Running huge maps, wasting time hunting rares just to unlock something decent, only to lose progress after one mistake? It’s a quitting moment. I play softcore because I hate wasting time. Difficulty does not equal wasting time. PoE2 seems intent on turning even softcore into pseudo HC.

Trading

Somehow, it’s worse than it was five years ago. Back then, we AT LEAST had functional proxy trade sites. Now? Oh god. I get that the trade site is developed by one intern in their spare time, but how has GGG not even cloned the PoE1 site properly? RIP pseudo affixes. RIP pricing. I expected at least a hint of something new after the success of currency exchange. Instead we get a step back.

Skill System & Weapon Mechanics

Binding skills to specific weapons? It’s odd, but okay... I’ll roll with it. My suspicion is that it was a workaround for animation constraints. But here’s the issue: build diversity takes a hit. The passive tree pathing funnels you into one predictable route, with limited flexibility in skill selection. Everyone ends up running near-identical setups. Even the option to go ZHP builds is gone now. Weapon swapping? Completely clunky. It’s slow, disrupts gameplay, and is borderline unusable for melee builds. If you have auras tied to or attribute affixed on your weapon, switching mid-combat becomes a liability. Support gems? Nerfed into oblivion. I no longer choose them for DPS or the cool factor. Just for what’s the least irritating. Around half of them feel bad, with no way to upgrade or quality them to offset their drawbacks.


If GGG reads this... The campaign was fun, but the overall experience? A step back in almost every way. See you in the next proper PoE league and, if this gets fixed, maybe on PoE2’s full launch.

Agreed.

What disappoints me is that GGG are being cowards with POE2, refusing to give POE1 a new season. We are set to go nearly a year without a new season by the time POE1 3.26 rolls around. No one is playing POE1 because we don't have a new season.

I guarantee that even if they re-released Settlers of Kalguur and added back in Necropolis league content, which should require almost zero development work, that POE1 would instantly overtake POE2 in player popularity. This alone would prove that POE2 is a failure.

Sadly, GGG are too much of cowards to do this and admit their mistake. But it will cost them in the long run.

see its the VISION ...

which translates to the systems that already failed once and were consequently FIXED


so they are doing them again thinking this time the "vision" will work out ...

except its FAILING ... AGAIN ...

I love it so far but I also loved POE before it became a space ship shooter game with fantasy loot.

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Asghaad#3967 wrote:

see its the VISION ...

which translates to the systems that already failed once and were consequently FIXED


so they are doing them again thinking this time the "vision" will work out ...

except its FAILING ... AGAIN ...

The vision is why you're hear complaining about this game instead of swelling the meager ranks of Diablo 4's player numbers.

EXECUTION is why you and some others are not happy IMO.

Core philosophy is unlikly to change and would result in the D4-ification of this game.

Execution can be improved.

"

alhazred70#2994 wrote:

"

Asghaad#3967 wrote:

see its the VISION ...

which translates to the systems that already failed once and were consequently FIXED


so they are doing them again thinking this time the "vision" will work out ...

except its FAILING ... AGAIN ...

The vision is why you're hear complaining about this game instead of swelling the meager ranks of Diablo 4's player numbers.

EXECUTION is why you and some others are not happy IMO.

Core philosophy is unlikly to change and would result in the D4-ification of this game.

Execution can be improved.

there is absolutely no way to have "execution" of "all gear is only creatable by random roll orb slamming" that will EVER work ...


same goes for "Delve 0.95" mapping that failed to realize one thing about the mechanic - EVERY SINGLE node in Delve has value, every pathway between nodes has the "side areas" rewards that often are more valuable than the main "nodes". What also helps is that messing up means you just have to try again and not losing the "node" ...



i like Delve ... i absolutely HATE the mapping system in PoE2

and you can continue like that with basically every "vision" core system in the current mess that is PoE2


these systems are FUNDAMENTALY broken because the "vision" is a boring punishing time wasting mess ... if i wanted a second job i would go play EvE online instead ...

"

Asghaad#3967 wrote:

there is absolutely no way to have "execution" of "all gear is only creatable by random roll orb slamming" that will EVER work ...

Lets talk about the philosophy behind that: they want ground items to still be worth picking up. POE2's currency design acomplishes that and its execution is quite lean, and can be made more forgiving and interesting with a little more agency. This is the definition of "execution" being off. Maybe put in the Recombinator, maybe a crafting bench and some weight changes.

POE1 crafting while long ago fucking over ground loot, does work and the POE1 currency philosophy isn't very different in intention only the execution and a lot of mistakes that ruined ground loot (scouring bases, and special crafting only bases like influenced rares that essentially can never be compelling ground loot)...

So yeah execution not basic concept. If you want an item editor sure, you'll not find any philosophical common ground with GGG (or me for what thats worth.

I want the items that drop to have a chance to matter. Item editors mean that dropped items only ever matter once. Thats terrible design in a loot driven action game thats centered on "grinding gear"

"

Asghaad#3967 wrote:

same goes for "Delve 0.95" mapping that failed to realize one thing about the mechanic - EVERY SINGLE node in Delve has value, every pathway between nodes has the "side areas" rewards that often are more valuable than the main "nodes". What also helps is that messing up means you just have to try again and not losing the "node" ...



i like Delve ... i absolutely HATE the mapping system in PoE2

SO yeah again its the execution, I also love delve but dislike the mapping system in POE1 AND in POE2 (I find fiddling with map rolling to be tedious and uninteresting micromanagement)... Now imagine they made it more like Delve: Execution improved. By definition you're describing the execution as the issue.

Like they eventually get at least some things dialed in. There's an old meme that GGG always nails things on the third try.

"

alhazred70#2994 wrote:

"

Asghaad#3967 wrote:

Spoiler

there is absolutely no way to have "execution" of "all gear is only creatable by random roll orb slamming" that will EVER work ...

Spoiler

Lets talk about the philosophy behind that: they want ground items to still be worth picking up. POE2's currency design acomplishes that and its execution is quite lean, and can be made more forgiving and interesting with a little more agency. This is the definition of "execution" being off. Maybe put in the Recombinator, maybe a crafting bench and some weight changes.

POE1 crafting while long ago fucking over ground loot, does work and the POE1 currency philosophy isn't very different in intention only the execution and a lot of mistakes that ruined ground loot (scouring bases, and special crafting only bases like influenced rares that essentially can never be compelling ground loot)...

So yeah execution not basic concept. If you want an item editor sure, you'll not find any philosophical common ground with GGG (or me for what thats worth.

I want the items that drop to have a chance to matter. Item editors mean that dropped items only ever matter once. Thats terrible design in a loot driven action game thats centered on "grinding gear"

"

Asghaad#3967 wrote:

same goes for "Delve 0.95" mapping that failed to realize one thing about the mechanic - EVERY SINGLE node in Delve has value, every pathway between nodes has the "side areas" rewards that often are more valuable than the main "nodes". What also helps is that messing up means you just have to try again and not losing the "node" ...



i like Delve ... i absolutely HATE the mapping system in PoE2

SO yeah again its the execution, I also love delve but dislike the mapping system in POE1 AND in POE2 (I find fiddling with map rolling to be tedious and uninteresting micromanagement)... Now imagine they made it more like Delve: Execution improved. By definition you're describing the execution as the issue.

Like they eventually get at least some things dialed in. There's an old meme that GGG always nails things on the third try.

you are mistaking core idea of teh system for "bad execution"

the CORE idea of RNG fest loot is that its RNG fest

teh core idea of mapping being filled with useless filler is because its BY DESIGN full of useless filler

thats the VISION or the "execution" as you call it


you mistake the " i want ground loot to matter" to be the goal when literally stated goal of the devs is to just keep it pure RNG that has one goal - waste time


and no the "ground loot matters" is a solved problem - Last Epoch basically perfected the "every drop can be a good one" formula by allowing players to extract resources FROM the drops instead of requiring the stars to align for item to drop with ideal base, ideal stats, ideal rolls on stats all at the same time ... thats not "ground loot matters" that "casino RNG goes BRRR" where the only reason drops matter is because there isnt any other way to get the result other than winning the lottery ... so you end up picking up the "lottery tickets" only to just throw them away 99.99999% of the time

All I can do at this point is assure you that you're wrong, that you have demonstrated that you don't understand, give up and move on.