POE2 already needs a PhD to be played.

Game is not even fully released yet, misses around 40% of the content but it's already way to complicated and overcrowded with content that requres you to follow Youtube guides or 3rd party websites constantly.

Best example is the new Vaal Temple...if you go in without any knowledge this mechanic is horrible and gives almost no reward.

But to get rewards out of it you need to have a specifinc constelation, but if this room creates a quarter to other rooms, than this happens and than rewards go back to near 0, yada yada....

Why the hell has POE2 be so overcomplicated?...it feels more like work than a game.

Ofc it's nice for those who play video games as theyr job and ofc the devs don't see a problem here bcs they work every day with this mechanics...But for the rest of us, who have other purposes beside gaming, this becomes more and more overwhelming.

Vaal Temple is the best example for that....But also all the support gems, 100ts of Currencies and many more.....

Tons of support gems in a horrible overlay, where we have to hower over every single one every time to read a wall of text where half of the information makes no sense and where noone knows if this makes my build better or worse (Some LVL 3 support gems f.e. can even completely brick the own build).

Yes complexity is nice till a certain point, but you already overdid it in terms of complexity and the game is not even fully released yet.

How will 1.0 look like for people who have never played POE2 or POE in general?....If you haven't played every league since 0.1 this will be a horrible experiance and way to much for new player.

So for whome do you create this game?.....For your own dev team and the 1% who play POE as theyr job, or for the other 99% of the playerbase who have a life beside gaming?

If you keep this amount of complexity at least release some kind of 1000 pages encyclopedia, so we normal human beings have all the informatins to read at 1 spot and don't have to search 100 different 3rd party pages or Youtube guides to learn how to handle all mechanics propperly.

More is not always better...Quality > Quantity

I mean who needs 3 different levels of the same support gem, where 2 of the only increases the number by few % but the 3rd level do something completely different and can even brick the build.....1 Support gem level is enough, reduce the support gems ammount by half but make support gems way more interesting at the same time (Not "15% more attack speed"..."25% more attack speed", etc...).

Same for league mechanics...if you make them complex at least include an ingame guidance that helps the player to get the best result out of the mechanic.

And so on....Thank you.

100% agree with you we have gone so far off the rails with video games being made to play for fun and turning them into full time jobs.

I already quit this league because of the non stop abuse of currency being printed like a 3d printer on steroids that guess GGG is not doing anything about.

It's smoke an mirrors, playing the game "right" is a purpose friction fest to turn you to trade an RMT.

The game is quite easy (if you put in hours and hours). That is the thing people always forget to mention.

It's literally recycling everything from POE 1 and the last decade so all the information is there. They are obtuse or obfuscate in order to build this false sense of depth. It's really corny to be honest.

+10

I also don't understrand why they do that.
I mean yeah - it is good there is something to find, to explore in the game. But you present it in such a way that newcomers just give up right from the start.

The main issue that plagues POE2 is that Jonathan Rogers is the co founder of GGG and got promoted to game developer and main face of GGG.

Jonathan is a very smart coder and some things trough his eyes are fun to figure out and worked in 2010+ where there was a huge demand for the huge d2 void
But we are in 2025 and while the rest of us have jobs and just want to play a fun game on the free time he still thinks the foruma that worked in 2010 works now.

Times have changed and GGG sufferes from talent following old forumlars like a doctrine.


It feels like there is a huuuuuge disconnect between the game departments at ggg. Like 1 guy does the animations for warrior, 1 guy does the skills, 1 guy does the items and so on, back in the day there was 1 guy or a small team that just discussed how the warrior or any other class should look and play like.
It's not coherent.


GGG is both plagued and blessed to have POE 1 playtesters but because of that they dont't have player opinions from outside. How the game feels for new players.

There is such a huge knowlege gap a new player has to fill in order to fit in , its crazy.

every league has its own stash , its own 10++ pages of condensed wisdom from the community how to approach it, ...

So much covoluted systems from POE1 make it into POE2 that they alienate the new players again.

What's the point of POE2 if they just copy paste everything from poe1 ?

no thanks

"

It's smoke an mirrors, playing the game "right" is a purpose friction fest to turn you to trade an RMT.

The game is quite easy (if you put in hours and hours). That is the thing people always forget to mention.

It's literally recycling everything from POE 1 and the last decade so all the information is there. They are obtuse or obfuscate in order to build this false sense of depth. It's really corny to be honest.

Look....as someone who has 5k hours in POE1 and around 1k hours in POE2 I know the drill.

But I'm talking from the perspective from people who didn't nolife POE1 before and simply don't have the time to nolife POE2.

1 friend f.e. wanted to step back into POE2 with 0.4 and asked me what to consider.

I just told him that he has to pay attention a little bit via Youtube guides + 3rd party websites how to build the temple to not brick it and therefore making the league mechanic practicaly useles (Bcs Vaal Temple outside of a certain tactic drops crap).

Also I told him that he has to pay attention with this build because some LVL 3 support gems can brick his build.

And told him some easy to follow 10-15 steps guides how to craft BIS gear for his build and what he needs to look for early, mid and endgame (Bases, Uniques, Essences, etc...).

Sent him a precreated lootfilter for his build and a description where to save, so he don't have to register on another 3rd party website.

And some more informations....just some basics, nothing in depth.

This alone is already overwhelming for 90% of the players and ofc his motivation to keep playing was 0 at this point.

The 100ts of Currencies alone, than 100ts of suppport gems with words that people have never heard before ("Bifurcates" as one example of many).

And all of that in a horrible overlay where you have to hower over every single support gem to read what they do.....as soon as I've red the 100ts support gems I totaly forgot what the first 1 did (and the recommendations are horrible most of the times).

It's to much man for those who need brain capacity for other things than just POE2. ;)

GGG promised simpler game, but current temple and crafting is opposite.

I did temples for about 5 or 6 days and didn't have a clue what the hell was going on. I found them to be tedious and unrewarding and really didn't want to spend hours watching you tube videos on how to properly do them. So instead i loot the box that comes out of the ground and completely ignore the mechanic and do other things.
If your going to make a league mechanic require a PHD at least put something on your website that gives a basic breakdown on how to properly get the most out of the mechanic.

Yes and no...
"Trve endgame" needs in-depth knowledge.

The campaign and early maps can be dealt with nearly any braindead random mish-mash.
Around lvl 80-85 you start to hit a brick wall and the difficulty spike is absurd.
That is when technical wisdom is needed, RNG manipulation is mandatory and "chances" turns into "just a matter of investments"

I am trying the game again, but so far I managed to hit endgame maps. Juiced T15 bosses went down, yet a T0 endgame boss smeared me on the floor.
The spikes are like fighting an enemy with 500k hp then suddenly you jump into the millions and you start wondering if you skipped a content?

You look up guides, but endgame bros clear dozens of maps the time you walk through one with one-tap zoom builds and the endgame is tuned for their knowledge and gearing up becomes so daunting because their "crafting guide" is burning literal hundreds of currencies that you MAYBE seen 2-3 throughout numerous characters.

you can have your own fun by playing the game as you want. DO NOT FEEL necessary to do what those who play this game for a living do.
A PoE2 streamer will reach endgame on day1 of patch. I am casual scrub, and just hit the map endgame.
And weird to see guides how to reach this part of the game in 6-8 hours...

GGG stated they consider both their games as "games within games". Majority of the playerbase play POE between two game releases. A quick hack'n'slash while you wait for another game release (or payslip)

Agree.... i want to go in and play... but doing that rewards you with absolutely nothing............



after work i gym and then get a bit of time to play i earn maye 1 divine a week.... yay boring... the temple .. sure cool but ffs i will never even get to see the final boss in 4 months.... everytime i get a bit closer the path gets destroyed... 1 step forward 2 steps back... who wants to spend the whole week reading and learning the temple b4 u can even get 2 steps froward and 1 step back.

GAMING not blow my brain extra work :D loooooool