What happened to Engaging Combat? Video Feedback.

Some playstyle are alot more chill, and some explode the screen. early or later.

Personaly i think its ok if under levling its more chill, "meaningfull" i guess, then later on if the build takes of and you get really nice gear you start feeling a bit more godly.

So far iv only had a somewhat godly experience wiht a sparker in 0.1

But im just pondering, where does the line go? Where should it go? its and ARPG still, by god i love Fromsoft game, and i love ARPG.

But unless you are forcing your hand to chill on the screenclear, you will eventually go more and more to the screen going boom in various ways or multiple ways at the same time.

Or, you play like i do most of the times. Minion build with only skelly warriors and Brutes. Or just base melee attack + leap attack on warrior. Or like the latest, a Chronomancer minionbuild, i press rewind and timestop and watch my mions beat up stuff.

Dont get me wrong, i had SUPER! fun with Icebolt of Nova build in PoE 1 blowing up anything way outside he screen. But in PoE 2 so far i just dont see any appeal going for a build that clutters the screen completely in poe 2.


I get what they want, but in a game like this with so many options to blow the screen up, i think most builds will eventually end there. And i think that is "ok", if you want to blow up the screen and you have the tools to do it, enjoy.

I enjoy my slower combat / clear screen so i can watch the game more and see whats going on. But i def feel for the once who push whats possible more or play meta builds, cause it looks like a mess and im not surprised at all the random deaths.

Guess you could tone down the effects & size of the AoE, but you dont want to remove to much so you loose that good Godly feel hen a build just pops off.

Its a damn hard balance to make, i dont envy them one bit.


At the same time, many do enjoy the screen just exploding in a big mess and loot drops, dont want to steal their fun or nerf the visuals for them.


Maybe just a Graphics setting for "Meaningful Visual or Standard" as a compromise?

And sure, might need "some" tweaks on the dmg numers hurr hurr

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

But there still have to be a objectively increase in power to force the players hands, to make them grind. Very few people would use a week of gaming to make one item 1% stronger. The majority would say "its done, it is, for me perfect, GG next season". So there is a real limit to if a upgrade is worth it. Very few people perfectly divines all their equipment at the cost of thousands of orbs, the majority says if the reward is not worth their time and its "good enough", even if we talk about a 5-10% increase in power.

And loot have to be desirable to make people grind for it, and the largest thing that decided that is power. I know there a few demi-god items worth hundreds of mirrors because of rarity and historical ties, but for the large majority the equation is based on power increase over time investment.

You have to consider "loot" equal to add more power, and "meaningful combat" as the need for less power. One breaks the other, they can not really co-exist.

I think you missed the entire point I was making. You're still framing the discussion in terms of "power" from a fixed point of view (POE1). I'm asking a simple question of, what if "power" is simply measured by what the player can do. So at that point, grinding gear to get more "power" is also about toolsets, utility, making the game feel smoother, etc. We already have some of this with things like movement speed. Movement speed doesn't inherently give the player more "power" in your terms. But it gives them more tools to deal with what's on the screen. The player can now more easily dodge mechanics, etc. "loot = more power." Sure, but couldn't you say that a pair of 30% movement speed boots vs. a pair of 10% movement speed boots is power, but not in the way you explain? Utility can also be power. Adding more IFrames on the dodge roll = more power. Making the dodge roll recover faster = more poweer. Increasing the parry window = more power. Adding more block threshold = more power. Having new abilities = more power. These are all in support of an action game and giving the player agency and expression for how they want to engage with the game.

Everyone is so fixed and boxing the design around pure numbers. With that way of thinking, things will never evolve. We'll end up right where we were before. And if that's what GGG wants, then so be it. But they should stop stringing along a part of the audience who still thinks GGG will make engaging combat.

Now I'm not suggesting a removal of all stats and just make a pure linear progression game. But for gods sake, engaging combat will never be achieved with the current scaling, item progression, support gems, passive tree solutions, not to mention monster balance.

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

I would grind 100 hours to increase my character power with 30%, but not 3%, and certainly not 0.3%. And the latter would make almost everyone quit their character.

Well guess what, I've quit the whole damn game, not only my character, because character power is freaking ridiculous. This thing swings both ways. Extremes are obviously bad, and nobody is asking for items to be useless, just powerful enough to make sense as an upgrade and feel good while not trivializing everything.

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

And there is where the "ruthless"-ideology shows its head, the point was to decrease loot(power) for players, with the purpose to control the damage parameters around meaningful combat. But it turns out players hated it in poe 1, and watching the community talk about it in 0.1 poe2 it seems player disliked it aswell. And there is a difference between the campaign start and the lategame grinding, there is two different games, the start is starvation and meaningful combat, the lategame is overflow of items, crafting and poe 1.

😐 ... Ruthless has absolutely nothing to do with meaningful combat. What Ruthless created was item scarcity. Item scarcity doesn't create good combat out of the blue what the hell are you even talking about. Item power =/= item scarcity

Ruthless is just an artificial way to lengthen item progression.

Neither does item power or the lack thereof create good combat. These are only things that can actively work against or for good combat, if it exists in the first place. And it isn't quite there at all... like I've mentioned in my video on mobs... even if you made the density low, gave them more hp and gave them more damage... that wouldn't make the combat much better at all... there's much more to do to get to that result.

Item power is largely the same as in 0.1. The only thing that really changed was scarcity.

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

And loot have to be desirable to make people grind for it, and the largest thing that decided that is power. I know there a few demi-god items worth hundreds of mirrors because of rarity and historical ties, but for the large majority the equation is based on power increase over time investment.

You have to consider "loot" equal to add more power, and "meaningful combat" as the need for less power. One breaks the other, they can not really co-exist.

No, they god damn co-exist in any game that has gear, this is absolute nonsense. There is a push and pull between the two but only if you go completely on one extreme over the other do you have a problem.

1) Extreme situation 1: For gear to be completely useless it would have to go that extreme you've mentioned, and that will never happen here and neither anyone says that should be the case for good combat to exist... you'd essentially lose most progression through gear. You'd still have left other means such as the passive tree and skills but items would become irrelevant. Funny enough the game would still be fairly fun to play but it would probably fizzle out similarly as in the other extreme situation.

2) Extreme situation 2: On the other side you have gear overshadowing almost everything.. the power of it all making combat irrelevant and making you able to one shot everything with ease at ridiculous speeds. Guess what? you lose all purpose or drive to get better gear quite fast if there's no need for it. Why would you seek more power if you're already ridiculously overpowered?

Guess where we are now? On extreme side number (2).

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Shrodin#0981 เขียน:

Now I'm not suggesting a removal of all stats and just make a pure linear progression game. But for gods sake, engaging combat will never be achieved with the current scaling, item progression, support gems, passive tree solutions, not to mention monster balance.

you make some excellant points, alot of players seems to focused on specifics like the numbers and fail to see that the core decisions need to be addressed for a more engaging experience.

the devs pulled a bait and switch with the claims they made about gameplay and how the endgame actually is.

as it stands the POE1 type endgame and mapping actually promotes speed, look at the mechanics, delerium, ritual, breach and now abyss. you even have to path through the atlas doing maps you dont really want to do to find the "good stuff", so again clear speed is encouraged. then there is the race events..

i could even argue that the death penalties also promote clear screen builds as dying means you lose everything including XP (time)

like you mentioned changes would need to be made for engaging combat to actually work. that includes allowing the player to fail more (die) without the harsh penalties.

look at dark souls you will die alot and are expected to, but you can go again recover what you lost and try as many times as you like until you succeed.
this is also true in the campaign in POE2, the part that the majority of players say is the best and most fun part of the game.

currently the endgame does the exact opposite of promoting meaningful combat.
lets hope this is a placeholder for something better to come later; but i cant help but get the feeling we have been had by the devs and the claims they made

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tarloch#1873 เขียน:

i could even argue that the death penalties also promote clear screen builds as dying means you lose everything including XP (time)

like you mentioned changes would need to be made for engaging combat to actually work. that includes allowing the player to fail more (die) without the harsh penalties.

look at dark souls you will die alot and are expected to, but you can go again recover what you lost and try as many times as you like until you succeed.
this is also true in the campaign in POE2, the part that the majority of players say is the best and most fun part of the game.

currently the endgame does the exact opposite of promoting meaningful combat.
lets hope this is a placeholder for something better to come later; but i cant help but get the feeling we have been had by the devs and the claims they made

Indeed, the whole portal mechanic for example was a terribly bad idea to use as is from PoE1. It makes sense there but makes 0 sense in PoE2.

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Shrodin#0981 เขียน:

I think you missed the entire point I was making. You're still framing the discussion in terms of "power" from a fixed point of view (POE1). I'm asking a simple question of, what if "power" is simply measured by what the player can do. So at that point, grinding gear to get more "power" is also about toolsets, utility, making the game feel smoother, etc. We already have some of this with things like movement speed. Movement speed doesn't inherently give the player more "power" in your terms. But it gives them more tools to deal with what's on the screen. The player can now more easily dodge mechanics, etc. "loot = more power." Sure, but couldn't you say that a pair of 30% movement speed boots vs. a pair of 10% movement speed boots is power, but not in the way you explain? Utility can also be power. Adding more IFrames on the dodge roll = more power. Making the dodge roll recover faster = more poweer. Increasing the parry window = more power. Adding more block threshold = more power. Having new abilities = more power. These are all in support of an action game and giving the player agency and expression for how they want to engage with the game.

Everyone is so fixed and boxing the design around pure numbers. With that way of thinking, things will never evolve. We'll end up right where we were before. And if that's what GGG wants, then so be it. But they should stop stringing along a part of the audience who still thinks GGG will make engaging combat.

Now I'm not suggesting a removal of all stats and just make a pure linear progression game. But for gods sake, engaging combat will never be achieved with the current scaling, item progression, support gems, passive tree solutions, not to mention monster balance.

I enjoy the discussion.
Well, about the movementspeed, going faster equals more income and makes you able to easily dodge boss AoE attacks, it makes re-position quicker and that makes your "damage window" larger. Actually one of the largest fields of power is movement speed.

But that aside, I kind of get what your trying to say here.

The problem is that the games need to be a loot-grind to keep people returning, its the key of their economical success, items, dreams and monkey like shiney object. A point to be made is that dark souls cant add a league function to their game and have the same amount, or more, people returning every three months.
It is because the game is a combat simulator of highest quality, and not a loot-theory-dopamine game.

I was watching my friends children the other day and one little girl was quite funny, she only wanted what the other children had, so in a sea of toys she was running around trying to take the other childrens toys as her own. That is the core of what im trying to say, the artificial value attributed to loot in poe 1/2 is the very basic of the league-mtx modell they are selling. In sharp contrast to the solo heroic gameplay of dark souls. It is all about replayability and longevity, and dark souls have little of that. That is exactly why they are selling DLCS and make new games instead of going with the league modell.(also 95% single player, hard to sell mtx if no one can see it, then the value is diminished).

And you are right about the current power levels and multipliers will never be able to combine with slow combat. A interesting thing is that you can see that they have came to the same conclusion, manifested with the skill tree, large drawbacks on common nodes, the same with support gems, a damage multiplier with serious drawbacks and negatives. What they would need to do is remove 90% of the power from the passive tree, ascendancies and items. But that kills the loot-grind, and turns the game from diablo II to darks souls III. And the loot grind is a their business model.

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Everyone is so fixed and boxing the design around pure numbers. With that way of thinking, things will never evolve.

Well, fine-tuning skills to make them more powerful, with i-frames and other mechanics, requires less power from passive tree or else the combat would be trivalized. It is the same problem.

Im trying to say that a loot-based game is almost impossible to combine with a meaningful combat simulator because of the very different range in power that is required. PoE 1 have, lets say, 70%-22.000%, in damage difference, that invites a gigantic amount of itemization, passive skills with power, ascendancies, cluster jewels and different builds. You can make almost anything work with enough of a budget.

A dark soul game have a range from, lets say, 70%-800%, in damage difference, that prevents itemization, a meaningful passive tree and any levers of power of real meaning. As a arbitrary example, added damage on weapons have a range from 10%-170% in poe 2, if you would port this equipment system to dark souls the damage range have to be around 4-6% to avoid breaking the "allowed damage window" of 70%-800%, and crafting and looting becomes quite irrelevant.

PoE 1 have poison damage cap, because of memory reasons, of 100.000.000 damage / second, and quite a few builds can hit that, but what is interesting is what that allows, inferior builds that only hit one million to be able to exist. If you would nerf the poison damage with 90% the one million poison damage build would now do 100k and be unusable, but the strong builds would still be working, but you would have culled the majority of non-meta in the process. Extreme damage numbers allows sub-meta builds to exist and creates a large window of personal creativity. How many builds does dark soul have?

It is just two very different kinds of way to play, one based on loot-grind with large differences in power, in a way un-restricted, and one with a very restricted amount of player-power that is allowed.

It is like trying to combine a first-person-shooter with a turn-base strategy game, one have to give way. Or a empire-war-simulator with a car-driving-simulator.

All you produce when you combine that is schizophrenic pancake. And that explains the current iteration of path of exile 2.

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

It is like trying to combine a first-person-shooter with a turn-base strategy game, one have to give way. Or a empire-war-simulator with a car-driving-simulator.

All you produce when you combine that is schizophrenic pancake. And that explains the current iteration of path of exile 2.

Oh brother, you really don't want to take those blinders off, do you?

Want to talk about "schizophrenic pancakes"? Have you heard of Expedition 33? A turn based game with active parry and dodge that was absolutely and undeniably loved by everyone and praised to heavens and back. You wouldn't think these would have worked together yet here they are.

You want to know what else is "schizophrenic pancake" as you define it? Bestiary, Blight, Heist, Sanctum, harvest and Delve in PoE1.

And there's a lot of other games out there that have tried all kinds of combinations... it's also a part of how some genres evolve to new heights.

That being said, its not even a valid comparison in our case.

Having good combat in a videogame isn't the same as comparing two different types of video games or merging such together like the examples I've given...

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IonSugeRau1#1069 เขียน:

Have you heard of Expedition 33? A turn based game with active parry and dodge that was absolutely and undeniably loved by everyone and praised to heavens and back. You wouldn't think these would have worked together yet here they are.

you mean the visual novel with agility checks that tried to pass on as small studio rpg? I have a hard time understanding why people liked it beside the hype/herd mentality. absolute trash of a game and nothing 'worked together' there don't even get me started here lol

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Grayeye#1799 เขียน:

The problem is that the games need to be a loot-grind to keep people returning, its the key of their economical success, items, dreams and monkey like shiney object. A point to be made is that dark souls cant add a league function to their game and have the same amount, or more, people returning every three months.
It is because the game is a combat simulator of highest quality, and not a loot-theory-dopamine game.

I was watching my friends children the other day and one little girl was quite funny, she only wanted what the other children had, so in a sea of toys she was running around trying to take the other childrens toys as her own. That is the core of what im trying to say, the artificial value attributed to loot in poe 1/2 is the very basic of the league-mtx modell they are selling. In sharp contrast to the solo heroic gameplay of dark souls. It is all about replayability and longevity, and dark souls have little of that. That is exactly why they are selling DLCS and make new games instead of going with the league modell.(also 95% single player, hard to sell mtx if no one can see it, then the value is diminished).

And you are right about the current power levels and multipliers will never be able to combine with slow combat. A interesting thing is that you can see that they have came to the same conclusion, manifested with the skill tree, large drawbacks on common nodes, the same with support gems, a damage multiplier with serious drawbacks and negatives. What they would need to do is remove 90% of the power from the passive tree, ascendancies and items. But that kills the loot-grind, and turns the game from diablo II to darks souls III. And the loot grind is a their business model.

This is a cynical view... but maybe you're right about what is pulling GGG's strings here. I have been and am still under the impression GGG is trying to make the best game possible without sacrificing their vision for monetary gain, but I could be wrong. This is why I think it's important for GGG to make a fresh statement about their current vision and goals with POE2. If they come out and be honest about changing directions and explain why, I'd have no problem. The problem I have is what they say and what they deliver are two completely different things.

That said, I do think there is a universe where GGG builds a fresh, innovative experience that more people enjoy (than POE1) and give their money to support GGG each league. To me, it's like choosing the dark side. Sure you may gain more short-term, and it's easier and lazier to just copy POE1, but at the end of the day, does POE1 really offer a memorable experience like FromSoft games provide? To me the answer is a clear NO. And I've spent significantly more time in POE1/2 than FromSoft games. That's why I think there's untapped potential here to offer something new that no one has done before.

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IonSugeRau1#1069 เขียน:

Oh brother, you really don't want to take those blinders off, do you?

Want to talk about "schizophrenic pancakes"? Have you heard of Expedition 33? A turn based game with active parry and dodge that was absolutely and undeniably loved by everyone and praised to heavens and back. You wouldn't think these would have worked together yet here they are.

You want to know what else is "schizophrenic pancake" as you define it? Bestiary, Blight, Heist, Sanctum, harvest and Delve in PoE1.

And there's a lot of other games out there that have tried all kinds of combinations... it's also a part of how some genres evolve to new heights.

That being said, its not even a valid comparison in our case.

Having good combat in a videogame isn't the same as comparing two different types of video games or merging such together like the examples I've given...

Well, that with active block in a turn-based rpg is really nothing new, some iterations of final fantasy have the same system. But you do understand the problem with adding a turn-base system into PoE 2? It would on a fundamental level change the game as we know it.

But you are really missing my point here... Ask yourself how would you bring loot into dark souls? And I mean meaningful loot based on active trading... You see the problem that has arisen? You would bind player power to items to assign them value. Ask yourself how does that change player power in dark souls? What item would a dark soul player grind for a hundred hours to be able loot?

I have made examples of what have to be done to bring the endgame combat into the same shape as combat in act 1-3. Draconian and extreme culling in item power combined with ascendancies & the passive tree. It would naturally both kill the loot system and the sandbox-theory aspect.

The way they have tried to reign the character power in is with hardlocked skills to items, passives points with negative values, support gems with negative values added to them aswell, and a passive tree with 30% of the power of the poe 1 passive tree in pure numbers. It is clearly not enough, what also have to be done is to cull items and their power, but that also destroys their business modell that is based on selling mtx to loot-dopamine addicted monkeys(myself). No reason to trade when items have lost a large portion of their value with the purpose to reign in character power.
Or do you mean to have the same high variation in item power that is in the current version? That means, if you wish for meaningful combat, to have characters so weak that without using a top 20% item, based on power, that the game would be unplayable. It is only logic...

Or could you perhaps give me other solutions to this paradox? Also, I would love to discuss this, but not argue over it, if you understand what I mean.