Please make the game harder :)

I have seen a lot of great games get ruined by the decision to make them easier in an attempt to be more inclusive and potentially attract a wider audience.

Some times due to a vocal minority pushing for such changes. Which is why I decided to write this post. I don't normally engage in forum debates, but I have regretted it in the past when games I cared deeply about were ruined by these types of decisions - And I care deeply about Path of Exile 2 :)

It seems like making a game easier would be a good thing, that it can lead to a broader range of people being able to enjoy the game, but it usually seems to have the exact opposite effect.
It causes the high-skill part of the player base to lose interest in the game, and I think it's underestimated how many are inspired by the challenge and achievement of overcoming it.

I think that's why games like Elden Ring and Baldurs Gate 3 have performed so successfully, as those are arguably difficult games.

And I think it's also one of many reasons that Path of Exile 2 had such an amazing launch -- Because PoE 2 is decently challenging when you initially start playing through the campaign, and this is inspiring to a lot of players.

I originally played through the campaign on HC SSF and found it to be an enjoyable challenge. Cruel difficulty and endgame are much easier in comparison, I haven't had a single death outside the first 3 acts and I've played all classes to endgame.

The game could have been even harder and I would have enjoyed it even more, even on my first playthrough, so I think it would be good to increase the difficulty a bit.
When I go back to the beginning of the game now and start from scratch (set my gold to 0 and don't use my stash), things feel a bit on the easy side.

So I hope the difficulty can be increased a bit for the existing 3 acts of the campaign, and especially for future content after that, please make act 4 much harder :)

A good first step would probably be to nerf all the broken things and then also the things that are a bit too strong after that. I think that would be the best way to balance things as that would effectively increase the difficulty throughout the entire game.

I love the game so far and can't wait to see what happens next! :)

It's players like you that end games. You actually think this is for you, that you OWN this game. Worse, you want to chase off everyone, especially customers who might pay.

There's a reason that GGG split PoE2 from the first game. Path of Exile is dying. Oh this new patch revitalized it, but it's not going to keep the people there. And it only brought back 75k, which is just 10x the USUAL player count.

GGG realized that PoE1 (As per their interviews) is too bloated and complicated for most new ARPG players to get into.

Their real problem, GGG isn't very good at making a game. They spent the last 5-6 years making PoE2, copying a lot of the PoE mechanics and they were only able to slap together half a game, with half the classes and campaign and cobble together a port of the PoE's endgame.

And this is after 14 years of promising PoE being better than what it is. Like making Melee and Armour matter, not have ES be the best defenses in the game. Which ES is for both games.

I have played Melee and Armour, and it's fine, energy shield should get nerfed to bring it more in line with where melee and armour is at.

And I don't think I own the game, quite the contrary, I have seen countless of games dying because developers either listen to players that want the game to be easier or because they think it's a good marketing choice.
And I have equally seen many examples of games that succeed because they make their games really difficult (I mentioned BG3 and Elden Ring as examples, Celeste is another good example).
I'm not talking about difficulty for difficulties sake, there have been so many quality of life improvements in PoE 2 over PoE 1 and that's amazing.

There's a certain player mindset that a developer needs to understand to not take seriously, and it's really obvious what I'm talking about to anyone who's played MoBA's - regardless of which rank people are stuck at, a lot of the players blame their "bad luck" in teammates they get randomly paired with. I guess it's because it's hard for people to admit when the problem is themself.

There has been a ton of quality of life improvements in PoE 2 over PoE 1, and I like that, the tutorial is great too, more of that is great as long as it doesn't subtract from replayability.

But it's funny you mention chasing off customers who might pay. Because who do you think pays? I think it's the players that enjoy the game to the point they want to master it. And I think that's a great point in why they should make mastering the game difficult - because that will inspire more players to attempt it and feel accomplished for doing so.

I already mentioned games that I think did well because of their focus on difficulty, and I think PoE 2 is definitely among those games and that it is a big part of PoE 2's success so far - the campaign is a decent challenge.
I'd like to see PoE 2 be even harder - and for the difficulty to extend beyond the campaign. And I think it would make PoE 2 more successful, in fact they are super lucky because it's almost impossible making it too difficult as difficulty in this game can be mitigated by simply grinding more! Genius!

Of course there's good and bad difficulty. I for example never liked "last hitting creeps" as a difficulty layer in MoBA's, it's pointless, but I was hoping that goes without saying.

Just as there are good examples of games that did well because they focused on difficulty, there are also games that did poorly because they focused on the opposite, most obvious examples being Diablo 3 and Diablo 4. IMO Hearthstone and Magic the Gathering are also good examples of this.

Inclusivity is good as long as it remains in the form of tutorials and quality of life - NOT at the cost of difficulty.

I'm usually not the outspoken type, but I've seen enough games I enjoyed die because of what I've tried to describe in this post to just spectate in silence, and PoE 2 has the potential to become my favorite game of all time.

You keep saying 'countless games dying' and never name them.

Anyways, difficulty in games is good its actually part of games, but it needs to remain fair. No need for an essay to say whats already known in the industry.

I agree, make the game harder, but also make it less punishing.
Somehow GGG doesn't seem to understand that piling punishment on top of punishment is not challenging, it's frustrating.
So somehow we end up with an end game where builds wipe the entire screen with a single push of a button posing zero challenge and hardly provide any meaningful reward to balance out for the clear speed, but at the same time in case you should die you lose the waystone, loot, node and xp, or have a one hour long runback to the boss like in the trials, etc. and are punished severly.

There is no need to sugarcoat it: This is just bad game design.
And imho it is so deeply ingrained in the arpg genre, you can't even blame GGG for it (although they certainly insist on exacerbating it)

As I see it, the biggest problem this genre has is that everything is tied to rng, but especially loot quality. The only way to increase the probability for the "maximum" in loot quality is loot quantity. And loot quantity is directly tied to clear speed. Hence, clear speed is THE metric above all else. It is the only metric in fact.


A potential way this could be alleviated is:
1) Nerf AOE to the fucking ground. I mean complete eviceration. There should be no scenario where a comparably geared AOE build (and in particular ranged) should outperform a mostly single-target melee build.

2) This drastically reduces clear speed and hopefully puts everyone on a level playing field. Once that is achieved each encounter with mobs, especially magic and rare, can be really meaningful again (like in the campaign before chars have all the aoe skills and the build starts coming online)

3) Maps take a lot longer to finish now. Keep the loot quantity of the map, but significantly improve quality. Remove dogshit modifiers no one wants, or adjust the probabilities in favor of desirable one. Remove dogshit tiers that are not appropriate for the level of play. tier1 rolls on ilvl82 items should never happen. This way the "item quantity/time" decreases, but the "item quality/item quantity" increases, meaning much less trash tier items and the fewer items you get are potentially of actual use.

4) Balance trade. Introduce an auction house or a direct selling house if you will. Limit daily trades to say 3 items and weekly trades to 10 items. You can't play the market anymore. No more false advertizing, no more scamming, you can get the items you truly need but can't find, and the "friction" is still there.

5) Introduce meaningful crafting, that can have some rng and can be expensive. The improved item quality at reduced item quantity allows to give crafting that has a tinge of rng a shot. You will get decent items and not just 99% trash as it is currently with the currency crafting. The "pull of the lever" rewards you now regularly instead of just being a source of frustration.

6) The speed of the whole game has been severly reduced. You can remove xp loss since getting to 100 takes much longer now. Instead you gain a +25% xp buff for the next map upon successful completetion of your current map without dying. E voila, you turned a frustrating punishment into a rewarding boon.
You can keep the 1 portal mechanic, death should mean something after all. The node mechanics do not vanish upon death, only if they have already been started at the point of death. The modfiers from the precursor tablets are cut in half with every death in the map.

7) Remove all dedicated one-shot mechanics. They are lazy design.

8) ???

9 Profit

I mean, I am no game designer by profession. But tell me this approach wouldn't create an arpg that is 10 times more satisfying to play.

"

Somehow GGG doesn't seem to understand that piling punishment on top of punishment is not challenging, it's frustrating.

Those are a lot of great points on the current state of design. A lot of POE right now is just sort of frustrating mechanics, after you say that, I realize now going into difficult T15's or being forced to trade build breaking maps is annoying, and that's the same reason trials aren't fun, its just tons of punishments. Juicing up waystones also feels like a frustrating chore.

As soon as i saw him write this ""Vocal Minority"" , i stopped reading. Just too tired of all the fools that just recite crowd chanted repititions.

GGG was onto something great with POE1, but unfortunately, everyone in GGG believes a game should be more punishing then rewarding (not why most players play a game, the world is not mostly masochists and sadists)... and this is probably a large cause of lost fan retention over time.

Good day.

I think that piling punishment is only bad if it frustrates the player away from the game but I am not sure that's the case here. GGG makes you invest time in the game, then punishes you for it, occasionally throwing you a bone or two to keep you happy enough to keep investing more time. We can call it: a gaming version of Stokholm Syndrome. I genuinely think players only drop out once they believe that they're done with the content, not when it becomes too punishing to continue. Don't see why GGG would change their approach in the light of that. Should we keep complaining about the punishment? Absolutely, but the truth is deep down we kinda love it, we love it when things we want are (very) hard-to-get, the carrot is always dangling while we're whipped from behind.

"

Finalstan#5006 wrote:

Should we keep complaining about the punishment? Absolutely, but the truth is deep down we kinda love it, we love it when things we want are (very) hard-to-get, the carrot is always dangling while we're whipped from behind.

Brother, i just like going into epic battles against skilled enemies while using weapons and designing different builds, i think you're into something else there.

+1