What happened to Engaging Combat? Video Feedback.
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I think the core issue with ARPGs where you are expected to play hundreds of hours is that players will ultimately want to press as few buttons as possible.
Pressing 10 buttons to play a game and needing to dodge, etc. does not fit with a game where you play for such a long amount of time. You will destroy your fingers/hands/wrists if you have to do a lot of things constantly. Complexity with systems is fine to have, but not "physical" complexity. If this was a 30hr once off game then the gameplay could be more slow and methodical where you press more buttons and constantly react to monsters. I don't see this type of game ever becoming that. |
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" I've played World of Warcraft for over 10 years in the past... I never got tired of pressing buttons... not a good excuse. And if an amazing Action combat MMORPG would come out that isn't pay to win trash, I would totally sink in a lot of hours into it. "Sigh"
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" They also has 1 button macros set up for entire rotations minus personals and consumables.... You might be fine with the piano key play style but many are not for long periods of times. Secondly, the pay to win part isnt they main reason they fail. Its the same thing of people dont want to have to full attention a piano keyboard for long grinds. They want to mind off grind. Those games fail (like most if not all mmo's in the past 15 years outside of wow) because they are all trying to be action packed 3D fighting. The idea of tab targeting is basically gone in most of them now instead its like playing marval rivals. No one wants to do that for hours on end in an rpg. The closest you will get to what you are asking for is legit dark souls... it just isnt mmo but the combat style you want is there. Timing, memorizing patterns, in and out attacks, etc. I am sorry to break it to you but they are right and like in another response here, they would have to redo almost everything in the game to make it like that. They contradicted themselves day 1 when they ported over all the swarm events.... you are not going into breach or abyss or ritual or simu and saying... yea parry. It is the complete opposite of what they claimed they wanted to make. Just for understanding to have that style of combat you want, they would need to probably cut the map sizes down by 90%, pack sizes by 99%, buff all hp x100 or nerf all damage by x100, remove all current swarm events, make bosses attack and move even slower, nerf all their damage by 90% so one shots are gone in level appropriate zones/gear and so many more insane changes just to turn it into dark souls but top down... |
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you also have a Global Cooldown in mmo so u aint really spamming buttons, not like say you when you are stutter stepping in an arpg
some good points about the business model for PO£2 and it is absolutely related to the problem of combat and loot grinders the whole thing is designed to flood you with items to promote the sale of stash tabs. look at the crafting changes, instead of streamlining it or altering what we already had they added more currency which means more stuff to clutter your stash even the merchant tab "upgrade" removes your stash tabs, a shitty move by GGG, and caught out many players. sure they need to make money but imagine the clutter we will have when the game finally releases. I blame the "free to play" model, thats also why there's so much busy work before you start playing and lack of QoL (eg. inventory size. need to identify everything). i dont think engaging combat can exist (apart from bosses) in that business model where we are heading is a campaign and then copy and paste POE1 endgame, this will please most of the streamers (who have way to much influence) as they are almost all POE1 vets. it's a shame but that's the reality แก้ไขล่าสุดโดย tarloch#1873 เมื่อ 19 ก.ย. 2025 05:08:07
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" Wow, you hit the nail on the head with your comment They advertised the game as more tactical and combo based, but at the very foundation all the systems, encounters design and gameplay loops are based on poe 1 which rewards quantity and speed They tried holding players in place with less movement speed and the option of combos but didn't offer any real incentive in doing that, in fact it only penalizes you since monsters are more dangerous in poe 2 (it's safer to just one shot them) and you also get less loot and exp per hour playing this way OBVIOUSLY players didn't like that and now they're rushing to appease the crowd, a.k.a finding the easiest and fastest solution which is to make the game as similar to poe 1 as possible And like you said, changing the foundations is not only expensive but time consuming too, which is kind of sad bcs i really liked the first gameplay videos of poe 2, mainly the ranger and the mercenary ones, it's what got me and many others into poe 2 in the first place, that's one of the reasons why in 0.1 poe 2 had more players than any other poe 1 league, and also why i think it'll never reach that number ever again, poe is too niche of a game to gather that many players at once แก้ไขล่าสุดโดย Vyend#2601 เมื่อ 19 ก.ย. 2025 05:27:32
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" Right now it doesn't seem to exist even for bosses in the endgame. Builds just trivialize them by one-shotting them or with perma-cc. And if it does work for bosses, why can't it work for something else? If its balanced so you need 1-2 min with a good build for a boss that you are expected to do — why not make rares more like bosses that need 10-20 seconds to beat? Shouldn't that work if, by your logic, bosses are possible to do? Why do rares have to be those stat sticks you need to one-shot? That's copy-paste of PoE1 concepts — ofc they don't work to create engaging combat. They even are the targets you need to kill for 90% of maps — shouldn't they be something other than what they are now? Wouldn't you feel more of an accomplishment if you would take some time to kill 5 rares in a map, and they drop what the 20 rares you zoom through in the current version would drop? As for cooldowns, right now it's more like “this skill does more damage, it gets a cooldown”. Why not actually make stuff that is conditionally good and give it a cooldown — something like blink would be a skill that might be good for that. Can be used if you notice a boss ability too late, you realize you don't get out in time, you use your blink. Then you don't have it up again for the next thing you should dodge, tho. Also as long as there is loot, they can promote their stash tabs. They don't need a fast pace for that. Also, with PoE2 being different from PoE1 they probably would have a bigger playerbase over both games, not just the same players for both. Which means more people to buy stuff — and if they can eventually port skins (other than the skills ones, obviously), they could even sell them in both games. Point with the streamers is a good one. I know that there are some that with for the original vision — but a lot of them, especially bigger ones, just want PoE1 again. Can see that GGG doesn't want to lose them, and they got to push for PoE1-style gameplay — which is a shame… |
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" Not my experience back when I used to play it, sorry. If that's what it is now, it's just as trash. " You're joking, right? I'm literally not playing any MMORPG right now because they're either outdated, with bad combat or because they're pay to win. You're seriously trying to spin everything around your point even if it makes 0 sense? You people are unbelievable. It's like I'm watching Trump speaking. Just stop already, it's embarrasing. I once again urge you to read the title of the thread, and understand that I don't care about your opinion. It's just your opinion, not facts. You know what an actual fact is? The fact that GGG said we'll have good and engaging combat. That's a fact. And that is what this thread is about.
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" While I do agree that the business model is a tad shitty, and I would've preferred they went a different route... I don't think it's as bad as people make it out to be. Aside from that, combat still has nothing to do with how many items they can throw or not at you. So, again, just an opinion. I agree that streamers are pleased by the mindless type game/farming the most though, which is why they pushed super hard against better combat. They are almost single-handedly responsible for the major pushback ever since they were given the chance to test the game at Exilecon years ago and provided terrible feedback. The PoE1 streamers at least. That being said, I'm starting to see a slight shift even on their side, as they've started to grow bored themselves of this. "Sigh"
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สปอยล์
" i think the issue stopping more engaging combat is the swarmy speedy mobs, add to that the density, on death effects and you dont have tactiful combat you have a "blast em before you are killed" situation that's the POE1 endgame shoe horned into POE2, you have this slower player/combat idea but use a system from an earlier game that is totally out of whack with that concept. you can do it in scripted boss fights but in generated maps with swarms of mobs? no it cant happen unless there is a major rework that addressed those issues. i agree about the stash tabs, yes it is still viable if the game is slowed down and the loot grind made less of an priority; but that really doesnt seem to be where the devs are heading. one of the core concepts is to grind for currency. that will expand as we progress not lessen. it's probably short sighted as i feel people are crying out for a different type of arpg and they would have a larger player base to make money from. they would also still have the POE1 crowd who would play both games. I dont want to be to cynical but if we end up with a POE1 clone you will eventually end up with just that playerbase sticking around and their attempt to make a different more accessible game to attract more players will ultimately fail |
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" I don't think the people here want 20 button playstyles with 1h boss raids. Just some easy grind against white mobs and engaging combat for rares/magic mobs. Right now, it's just zooming through all of them. It's not like I think using a full 6 spell rotation for every one of the 530 whites in a map is anywhere near healthy for the combat vision. I don't want a single map to be like a 1h raid — but I don't want is to be a 2-min zoom either — both extremes are not the way for what I would want, and what I think they wanted in their original vision. " No Rest for the Wicked has that more or less — but It's too much in a dark souls direction, I would say. I don't think engaging combat has to be blocking and countering all the abilities to get some frames you can attack in. Just that you need abilities that you can use, in certain cases. Let's say we had a blink with cooldown as a spell gem, that would be able to dodge enemy abilities as well — but right now you just go for the kill the enemy before it even gets to be scary. And yes, memorizing patters for bosses should be necessary, they have voice lines for abilities as well. They should expect you to die on some bosses the first time you do them, not because of unfair mechanics, but because you just didn't know them. " True, idk how they expected just porting stuff from a game that is supposed to be different will work here. For some there would be easy fixes tho, for others probably not. For example, make ritual more like this: The first ritual spawns some normals, afterward it spawns a rare — much fewer monsters, tho. Then for the next one it either gets harder by itself — or you get to choose some difficulty by some kind of "offering" you choose to make. That would make you able to see how it gets harder, and maybe make you stop if you don't think you can do any of them. As for how to make it harder, they could give the rare a new ability, make the pack of normals into magic monsters (that would ofc need to change for the engaging combat in the first place), add some kind of the current mechanics like the blood-waves… Not perfect, but it could work for the style of combat. " They might need to cut the map sizes, but not by 90% or anywhere near that. In 0.1 they felt too large, yea, and we didn't have all the speed there. But now we do have waypoints and sprint, that alone will help a lot. Pack size is too large for meaningful combat, especially cause you can't expect a player to set up a combo against a rare when there are 50 other mobs swarming you. That's probably one of the biggest issues for this style of combat, with the terrible design of rares. Most bosses are fine tho, just some aren't. A lot of them are actually designed pretty damn good, especially the act ones. Good abilities, you can learn them, you could probably even go no-hit with a trash weapon if you put in the time. If they add stuff that is too fast to just walk out of — give players some kind of way to counter it. Warriors got active block, mages could get some kind of shield they have to activate and reduces the next damage instance, dex classes might get some kind of improved dodge roll or in-combat sprint where they don't fall down. And yea, the disparity between monster defense and player damage (at least in the endgame with some good gear) is too much. But what do you expect when adding 300% damage multipliers as support gems and item stats. There is just too much of a difference between a good item and a bad one. It's like if you got okay gear — that you can get at some point into the endgame without any trading — you do x amount of damage. But if you traded for all the stuff you need, more spell level on your amulet, a good staff, a higher level skill gem, more support gems… you get like 100 times the damage very quickly… there is just too many too large multiplicative scalings — somehow even more/worse than PoE1. Also, one-shot's have their place, just not random one-shots from a rare's basic attack — you can't expect a player to see that one coming. A one-shot should only happen if you either didn't invest into defense, didn't understand a mechanic, or didn't care. Like, if you go around only getting damage from your gear and still have that body armor you got at level 10 — it's your fault that you died. If you didn't dodge the boss slam, or didn't do the purple monkey mechanic right — it's your fault that you died. If you run into a pack of blue monsters, maybe even sprint into it — it's your fault that you die. But if a normal mob on a +projectile count and monster speed map just crits you out of existence because you didn't kill it from offscreen — it shouldn't be your fault. |
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" +1, monster design appart from bosses just doesn't work with it. I think less pack size and rares that go more into the direction of bosses would work, tho. " Yea, I hope it's still at a state where GGG can and is willing to do that. I don't see the reason they would make a separate game just to make it the same in the end. Especially if they want to support both games going forward. " A grind for currency doesn't exclude engaging fights with rares. Take Lost Ark for example, not a ARPG but a MMO with kind of the same top-down combat. I have my fair share of hours in it as well. They also made grinding bosses interesting — without you one-shotting them out of existence if you do the ones you are supposed to do. I don't want to say PoE2 should be like Lost Ark or anything, but that it's possible to have grind and engaging combat in a game. Also, they had mindless-grind content as well — called chaos gates. At the time I played, it was something you should do like 3 times a day with multiple characters — so kinda like running maps in PoE2 endgame rn. It was the first thing I got tired of and hated to do, and ik that I was not the only one who thought that. Completely agree with you that it might be short-sighted. I still hope they are not too far into it to still go to their og vision. " Yea — idk why they want to make a new game that's different, but then expect everyone to like it. They can't make it right for everyone. If it has more engaging combat and less zooming through maps — ofc not every PoE1 player will like it. If they make pinnacle content hard enough that you need an actual good build and skill for it — ofc not every casual will be able to do it in each league. But that's fine imo. The zoom-lovers still have PoE1, and the casuals have some easy version of the pinnacle bosses they can do. |
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