Jonathan, you cannot make the campaign fun to run over and over for many players

Every time the topic of shortcuts or alternate leveling methods on subsequent characters in a league is brought up to Jonathan, he responds with "well we should just make the campaign more fun". This happened again in the recent Dropped Frames podcast. This is not a realistic solution and will not fix anything for many players (after all if it was, they would have "just made the campaign more fun" in PoE1 years ago and no one would complain in that game).

Many people are coming back and tolerating the campaign to get to the endgame. It's understandable that you need to run it at the start of the new league, if only for a level playing field between players, but there's no reason that the gameplay loop to reach maps couldn't be different on subsequent characters in that league.

You say that the campaign and the endgame are the same game with the same gameplay, but you need to understand that the gameplay of the campaign feels fundamentally different from maps for many players.

In the endgame, you don't run around the Apex of Filth or the Chimeral Wetlands for 20 minutes because you didn't run down the right hallway.

In the endgame, you don't feel like you're wasting your time if you're farming for exp while not moving to the next objective.

In the endgame, there is a much larger "axis of randomness" as you've put it with overlapping mechanics. It's far less repetitive and more rewarding. If you add these mechanics to the campaign, you feel like you're wasting your time doing them since if you stop to do a league mechanic you are not moving towards the next quest objective. PoE1 campaign clears where I do the new league mechanic are always FAR slower, so many players (me included) choose to ignore them completely (also the static league mechanics they added to the PoE1 campaign, just skipped, waste of time).

The endgame is primarily about killing monsters and doing league mechanics for rewards to upgrade your character. The campaign is not, that is secondary to completing all of the quest objectives. For a lot of people, if killing monsters for loot gets in the way of completing all the quest objectives, it starts to stop feeling fun to kill monsters, and it feels like you're wasting your time, which leads to resenting the campaign.

The PoE2 campaign is also fundamentally not different in any way from the PoE1 campaign. You run to the quest objective, kill monsters on the way, kill a boss, move on to the next zone. You have not actually innovated on the gameplay loop in any way, besides making it slower, and in some cases making it a bit more difficult (but it can really vary based on build and gear, you can still 1button through the campaign with no gear on some setups). In many ways it's the same thing but significantly worse, requiring 2-3x as long to complete and reach the second game you're actually playing for. Chris acknowledged that the PoE1 campaign had a replayability issue years ago, and that GGG wanted to fix it, and again the PoE2 campaign is even worse in this area.

Keep in mind that twink gear does not change the gameplay loop. It only speeds it up. Also if the PoE2 campaign is supposed to be so much more fun because of "meaningful combat" (it's not), how does that mesh with the supposed solution to campaign fatigue being using gear that completely invalidates the meaningful combat?

People have been giving this feedback about the PoE1 campaign for years. When are you going to realize that it is not something you can fix by doing slight tweaks and leaving the overall structure in the same state but even less tolerable than PoE1?

There are certainly people that do have fun playing through the campaign repeatedly. Some people are just different. Your mindset of "I won't change anything unless I find it not fun personally" is not good when certain people fundamentally find different things fun, and this is feedback you have been getting en masse for years. Please believe us.

Not to mention, you did say you don't find it fun personally on the podcast. You said that repeating the first 3 acts 2 times is "a drag" in your own words. How do you not understand that repeating 6 acts for the 10th, 20th, 50th, etc time is the same thing but far worse? Repeating 6 acts instead of 3 does not make it better.

Also this is NOT asking for a straight up "campaign skip".

I want an alternate method to bring a subsequent character in a league to maps with a different gameplay loop from the campaign. Some ideas for this are:

* Account-wide waypoint/checkpoint unlocks in a league. This allows you to play the campaign far more similar to maps, where you can pick certain areas you want to farm, and then once you feel ready you can jump over to the next objective/boss. This cuts out a lot of the feeling that focusing on killing enemies and getting loot is impairing your progress through the campaign.

* Alternate leveling. Basically low level maps (or in the case of PoE1 endless Delve/Heist). This can be balanced to be a similar overall leveling pace to the campaign, but again this cuts out the feeling of killing monsters being secondary to moving to the objective, because the objective is just to kill monsters.

* Campaign skip specifically earned through endgame gameplay. Something like if you sacrifice a large amount of exp/currency on an existing endgame character, you can boost a new character to maps in the same league. This allows you to functionally level to endgame by playing endgame. Again, you can balance it vs campaign. It allows you to feel like if you want to play a new character, you can keep playing maps and start working on gear for the new character while working towards the boost, and then once you reach that point you can just jump in to your new character.

And people who like running the campaign over and over like normal... they can still do that. If you say "well if there was an option to do something other than the campaign, I would feel obligated to do that" you're straight up admitting repeating the campaign is not fun.

I hope they never add any kind of campaign skip because it is going to completely kill the game even for people like OP because they don't understand the psychology behind things. Mapping isn't really that interesting. The only reason it has any staying power is because you're rewarded with it for working your way through the campaign. I know you wont understand this concept but it will have a more devastating effect on the game than buying a max level character in an MMO.

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Kashou#2868 wrote:

I hope they never add any kind of campaign skip

I guess I should specify I am NOT asking for a "campaign skip".

I want an alternate method to bring a subsequent character in a league to maps with a different gameplay loop from the campaign. Some ideas for this are:

* Account-wide waypoint/checkpoint unlocks in a league. This allows you to play the campaign far more similar to maps, where you can pick certain areas you want to farm, and then once you feel ready you can jump over to the next objective/boss. This cuts out a lot of the feeling that focusing on killing enemies and getting loot is impairing your progress through the campaign.

* Alternate leveling. Basically low level maps (or in the case of PoE1 endless Delve/Heist). This can be balanced to be a similar overall leveling pace to the campaign, but again this cuts out the feeling of killing monsters being secondary to moving to the objective, because the objective is just to kill monsters.

* Campaign skip *specifically accessed through endgame gameplay*. Something like if you sacrifice a large amount of exp/currency on an existing endgame character, you can boost a new character to maps in the same league. This allows you to functionally level to endgame by playing endgame. Again, you can balance it vs campaign. It allows you to feel like if you want to play a new character, you can keep playing maps and start working on gear for the new character while working towards the boost, and then once you reach that point you can just jump in to your new character.

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Kashou#2868 wrote:

I hope they never add any kind of campaign skip because it is going to completely kill the game even for people like OP because they don't understand the psychology behind things. Mapping isn't really that interesting. The only reason it has any staying power is because you're rewarded with it for working your way through the campaign. I know you wont understand this concept but it will have a more devastating effect on the game than buying a max level character in an MMO.

You are the one not understanding if you think the average casual player gonna be bother with this long tedious campaign over and over and over again. And casuals make for overwhelming majority of gamers, without casuals a game will not survive.

Most returning players i know took 25-30hours to complete campaign in this league, that´s after they already did it several times last league. And this match the info i find on google estimating the average complete time at 30+ hours.

Maybe can get down to 20+ hours on alts with better gear. And this does not only include new players but returning players played PoE2 campaign several times already.

If you think majority of players gonna be bothered with that slow and tedious campaign not only every single season reset, but also every single alt char they do every season. You are straight up delusional.

Either they need to half the campaign time or make it so it´s only required one time per season.

The benefit of having a campaign in general is that it serves as a series of benchmarks for your character, validating that it can actually function in the endgame by the time it reaches it.

That's not a bad thing. But the obstacle it presents and the effort required to overcome it needs to be appropriate for this purpose.

The current campaign doesn't really feel like it is, because the things you need to be good at to get through it don't really help you in the endgame.

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

The benefit of having a campaign in general is that it serves as a series of benchmarks for your character, validating that it can actually function in the endgame by the time it reaches it.

In the last 2 days I played Rake/Stomping Ground and respecced in A6 to the build I actually wanted to play but doesn't function very well at lower level. It was basically 12h of holding down rake.

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0Yemallis#2343 wrote:

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GregoryAdams#7051 wrote:

The benefit of having a campaign in general is that it serves as a series of benchmarks for your character, validating that it can actually function in the endgame by the time it reaches it.

In the last 2 days I played Rake/Stomping Ground and respecced in A6 to the build I actually wanted to play but doesn't function very well at lower level. It was basically 12h of holding down rake.

Yeah, that's what I mean. It "should" function as a benchmark, but currently it really doesn't.

Campaign skip could have been available for those who passed the campaign last league. And if you're participating in current season, next season's campaign can be avoided again. No need to force players to play campaign every season. This is very outdated concept. Low-level "leveling" maps system would have been very interesting and refreshing mechanic. But for sure, if you're a fan of campaign you can chose to run it.

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0Yemallis#2343 wrote:

The endgame is about killing monsters and doing league mechanics for rewards to upgrade your character. The campaign is not, that is secondary to completing all of the quest objectives. For a lot of people, if killing monsters for loot gets in the way of completing all the quest objectives, it starts to stop feeling fun to kill monsters, and it feels like you're wasting your time, which leads to resenting the campaign.

well, I'm of the much opposite opinion.. it seems to me a properly designed game would have a progression arc that is at least 50% campaign, meaning if the league is 12-16 weeks, the "campaign" is, yes, 6-8 weeks.

now before you roll your eyes, clearly the campaign of this game is not in any way shape or form resembling how that would look. it would require a "campaign" that is in the scale and style of AAA RPGs to accomplish such a feat. It would need to be open-world, as a start, rather than entirely on-rails and linear as this game and most if not all other ARPGs are.

however, in my opinion, this would be a more fun game than this regurgitation of the quickly-wearing-out style of, skip campaign, go right click in maps.

bad opinion, maybe, many of mine are (:

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rhorains#6760 wrote:

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0Yemallis#2343 wrote:

The endgame is about killing monsters and doing league mechanics for rewards to upgrade your character. The campaign is not, that is secondary to completing all of the quest objectives. For a lot of people, if killing monsters for loot gets in the way of completing all the quest objectives, it starts to stop feeling fun to kill monsters, and it feels like you're wasting your time, which leads to resenting the campaign.

well, I'm of the much opposite opinion.. it seems to me a properly designed game would have a progression arc that is at least 50% campaign, meaning if the league is 12-16 weeks, the "campaign" is, yes, 6-8 weeks.

now before you roll your eyes, clearly the campaign of this game is not in any way shape or form resembling how that would look. it would require a "campaign" that is in the scale and style of AAA RPGs to accomplish such a feat. It would need to be open-world, as a start, rather than entirely on-rails and linear as this game and most if not all other ARPGs are.

What is the logic behind this? PoE1 has a massive amount of fans that probably spend 5-10% of a league in the campaign, and love that style. This 50% number seems completely arbitrary. What is even the point of an endgame if the campaign is engaging content for 6-8 weeks?