POE equals kind of Ultima Online - POE2 is more like a Super Mario successor

sorry, I know this probably doesnt belong here but I'll drop my thoughts anyway...

When I started with POE, I was amazed that the economy and eco system are so huge. The first 100 hours, I didn't understand much about "maps", "runes", the mine and many other things. I even passed most of the challenges for the ore deposits in Wraeclast. I enjoyed the story, the possibilities of the gear and the skills and the amount of stuff I found and all the great POE-tools to create a good build and a good time.

Fog cleared a little after getting to Act 6. But even after, there was so much to discover. After act 10 I understood why people keep on playing even after they defeated Kitava - the final boss. It's good, that there is no "POE for dummies" - at least, I didn't find one which includes sentences like "you can't find maps of the levels, since they are randomized - but we talk a lot about "maps", they are something like the key to add-on-levels.

All the possibilities of gearing up and combining skill gems must add up to a billion. And the skill tree - wow - great! Every Player is unique. The fact, that I'm not good in observing stupid AI patterns of monsters, not good in coordinating 12 buttons on a key board and I'm surely not the quickest mouse mover didn't keep me from going to LV 78 in 300 hours.

Sure, POE should be more balanced, heists are tough, the mine sucks sometimes and many leagues like the temple quests are tough and not self-explaining. But hey, so what, its fun to gear up, enhance stats and erase passive skils for better ones and gather stuff.

Reminded me so much on ULTIMA ONLINE - the mother of all ARPGs / MMORPGs, and blueprint for WoW, Diabolo and all the others. I loved it! It was fun, though we played with 64k Modems (today that's a 200 Mbit Router", roughly 3000 times more data/s and way faster).

UO was a even bigger - a huge open world with an economy, a storyline, different weapons, gear and even houses build by players. It had Dungeons, cities and all in a huge single open world. But limited in stuff. POE is smaller, more liner but the graphics look much alike. 2D from top. POE is a slim version but with much more possibilities.


But now POE2 is simplified. Hardly any loot, a pretty strict given path for skilling up and due to the fact, that it's too tough, many players follow a pretty similar way for their builds - just look at the passive trees.

Spending 15 Minutes to clear a level with a strict routine and 30 min to figure out a way to kill and to finally defeat a boss after dozens of tries ?? Sorry, that's not going to work. That's like Super Mario in the 80ies. (Dont get me wrong, Mario was great, but there wasn't anything better due to the hardware...)

I'm out till the official start. Hope "standard" will be fun for casuals - for all the hardcore-beat-the-simple-AI-bahavior-of-bosses there will be surely a hardcore plan....

And the 30 bucks? Well they are reinvested in stash tabs for POE - great that transactions are transferable....