"Your Build is Bad" Proves POE2 Missed the Mark. POE1 is Much Easier to Understand

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dreamstate42#3955 เขียน:

Very well written and thought out post!

I always have to chuckle though when I read "the vision" mentioned. To me, PoE2 does not have a clear vision. It might have had one at some point, but right now, it feels like GGG is scrambling to make very distinct groups of players happy at once, which make no one really happy at all.

As someone observing GGG for multiple years now, it seems to me like the standard way that GGG works (and that worked well for PoE1) completely fails to work for PoE2. In PoE1, they used to have crazy ideas and tried them out, because the playerbase in PoE1 was rather homogeneous, so feedback was generally more singular and GGG could immediately react to it and "do the right thing" (for lack of better words). In more cynical words: GGG tends to throw ideas out there, see if they work, and if they do, they become a core part of the game.

That just doesn't work for PoE2. The playerbase has become highly heterogenous.

You have completely new players brought in by the marketing push, which in my personal experience mostly left already, because the game wasn't as easy and accessibly as initially promoted. Anecdotally, I gave out 5 keys to friends who were eager to try the game, none of which played pasted January.

Then you have the "difficulty is the only thing that matters" players (we all know them, and their favorite phrases condescending on other games and "handholding", while not truly understanding the meaning of the word, and telling PoE1 players to go play that game, not "theirs").
They expect everything to be challenging, and reject every QoL they see as "making the game easier". Their goals are the complete opposite of GGGs "new player goal", so now GGG has to reconcile two opposite play styles.

Lastly, you have the PoE1 players. The ones remembering the history of PoE2, how it was initially designed, how it was promoted, all the promises GGG made. The players GGG knew how to deal with, because those players were around for more than a decade.

These players are rightfully miffed that GGG broke many of their promises, that had no game to fall back to for a year, yet still hope GGG can correct course. They have lived through a lot of GGGs past mistakes, and seeing GGG make them again is disheartening. Their feedback usually wants to bring PoE2 closer to PoE1, which again is another completely different from the other two groups of players.

And GGG is bouncing between all of these groups and tries to make it work for all of them, seemingly not understanding that they can't make all of them happy at once, but unwilling to change their approach to game design to account for this new situation.

It even feels like GGG is now tripling down on their current approach because they just don't know what else to do in this situation. They painted themselves into a corner treating PoE2 like a released game instead of iterating fast and hard on new ideas;, and they seem to have massively overestimated their ability to churn out content AND address feedback AND develop PoE1.

So they fall back into their old habit of radio silence, coming out with plans they are unwilling to change, only for them to hit the player base and immediately get changed according to feedback, leading to this awful feeling of directionlessness.

I truly hope they find their groove at some point. I was never concerned PoE2 will not be a great game, but I'm worried it won't be a fantastic game.

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Rakie1337#5746 เขียน:

I think the opposite, POE 1 is the more complicated game and the POE 2 noobs could never handle maven or sirus --


POE 2 is the baby game. It's tuned for children and the difficulty is even easier than POE 1 -- significantly easier.

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bewilder2#0356 เขียน:

All of that could easily, easily fixed by not designing and tailoring the game around trade.

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Kraythax#2592 เขียน:

One of the stated goals of POE2 is that POE1 is too complex for newbies to understand so it had to be simplified. This was stated in numerous DEV interviews but they blew it and actually went the other way.

However, I would contend that that POE1 is significantly easier to understand than POE2. Even for a newbie. A two videos I recently posted basically proved that.

For the videos, I took the idea of INTENTIONALLY playing Huntress Fangs of Frost and based the build only on the skills, the synergies in the descriptions and the empowering aspects laid out in the skill videos. I wasn't trying to build a meta build.

Starting from the beach the tone is set. Assuming you are new to the game you can cut one of four skills for a spear huntress. You get whirling slash off the beach. You can get twister, and its guide says you can power it up with whirling slash. You can cut disengage and use it to get frenzy charges as long as you parry. Then you can power up your tiny little firecracker explosive spear to a fire spitting BOMB with a frenzy charge. Right out the door they have set the tone. So you go out in clearfell and parry and throw a spear or use twister after powering up. You say "man I need more speed, or defense or parry power and you get those passive nodes.

By the time you get to cut Fangs of Frost, the demo video talks about how Parrying allows you to do a big explosion. "Now that is cool!" you say while cutting and socketing it. Now we are going down thi route. Our passive tree starts to pick up atttack speed and parry help and goes for some defense. To support FoF we notice Embitter and Ice bite and they seem a natural fit Then we get into later areas and enemies are charging us down in mass. We put up the shield to parry and are stun locked .. dead. Wait ... I was supposed to parry and blow stuff up?! We find explosive spear is not good without a frenzy charge but to get off the parry is tough when there are 30 mobs chasing you down to beat your brains in.

And then a player posts a video of a cold build. People on the forums deride them and say "you suck at the game, quit now lol" (they always have to put the "lol" at the end.) But this is exactly the path curated by the DEVs. They introduced the skills and interactions with videos (on infinite repeating loop no less), you took their word for it and people say you suck. They say, "OMG your gear sucks" but you crafted what you could. You had 5 exalts drop and added some modifiers to your gear. You didnt drop a spear with +2 melee skills or +100% phys and there is no way for you to get them (unless you trade but you have nothing to trade with). The dismissive players show you the spear they bought for 15 exalts or crafted from the vast stash of their alt and say "see the game works." They say "Don't get parry nodes from the tree if you aren't parrying more, go to this obscure node over here and by the way if you don't weave in lightning with your skills it wont work, oh yeah and i never parry look at my videos."

Frankly the game has been lying to you. You dont have the currency to fix it and all you can do is slog along hoping to drop that spear. You get frustrated and quit.

The reality is that POE1 is much easier to play. I can harvest alt orbs from low level drops and re roll my item until I get what I want. I can pick up virtually any skill in game and get to end game with it, knowing jack all about the system. I have a slight learning curve of the sockets colors and support gems. The tutorials for the bench arent really there but that could be improved. Oh later I get cooler more powerful gems? Nice. OK maybe now I want to play molten strike, I want more projectiles, woot I am more powerful. I just beat Kitava, oh my resists are down. You know what I remember that crafting bench, I will go there and use some JUNK currency my stash is overflowing with and add some fire resist to my gear. Ok patched. I need more damage for sure to deal with act 5, let me sell some of my junk currency for better currency. I have 25 alc orbs and a bunch of scours now. Ok thats not a bad sword, and better than what I got. Whew now I defeated Kitava the second time. I am starting end game and getting my butt kicked.

By now you know about the systems, the crafting, the passive tree. You can go and re tune your gear with drops, or crafting. You have ventured in the passive tree being about level 60 and know basically how things work. you can look up a righteous fire or molten strike build and actually understand how it's played. A league later your next char is blasting smoothly through the opening acts on the way to being strong enough to kill Shaper or get to 200 in delve. The struggles you are facing is not having enough orbs to respec your whole tree and not having better tutorials about systems. But the systems are all there to be had and when you figure them out they work great.

The problem with POE2 is its not easy to make a good build. It lies to you all the time about what a good build is. This is what happens when you play it the way the "Vision" wants you to play. We know its the vision because it is in the skill tutorial videos and programmed into the tree. Its MUCH MUCH harder to be successful at POE2 than POE1. Can I personally wipe the game? Sure, all i have to do is pick the meta build and then the game gets one-shotted, until they nerf my meta build and I cant kill anything anymore. Can I do it with any skill I pick up? Lord no, only a few meta combos work.

POE2 went backwards. I can put anyone in POE1, explain a few things and they will beat the campaign. The rolling synchronized blaster builds dont happen until much later with much more playtime invested. Most newer players I have watched play POE2 get frustrated before they get to cruel and very few of them make it to end game.

I want POE2 to be successful so the vision needs some serious corrective lenses. You should have stuck to making a sequel to a game that was 90% genius.