as much as i hate poe, the community is actually high iq

ive seen many people (here as well) that dont really complain the game is hard, just boring
which is worse

I tried PoE2 despite a high probability not liking it.

Well, I made it to the start of Act2 and then quit.

Feeling weak never is good in an ARPG. It's way too slow. It's mostly copied from PoE1 and then you use dodgeroll instead of Flamedash. It's unfinished ....

Nvm

This post was edited by trader on Apr 28 2025 01:01am

It is made by people who dont understand action-RPG at all - they dont understand what is fun, they dont even play their own game.

What most dont understand here, is that the current GGG leadership are not some business, nor programming experts. They simply lucked out - that their game became successful.
And how did POE 1 become successful? It was a bad, boring game (similar to POE 2), but then someone found an unintended interaction that one can make a spark totem build - that would clear a whole screen fast.
This brought a new life to the game, which became much and much faster.

Do you think Johnattan has any experience making any other game? He just lucked-out to become a game director. He was a tester before.
He maximizes your play-time in the game, in hope that you will buy more skins if you play longer.
The guy does not realize that you dont buy more skins, if you make more characters - he forces you to play one. And btw. if you choose the wrong one (the one that is not broken in current league), prepare for a world of pain, since they dont balance the game neither.

Of course it is not that it would have to be like this, that Mark guy actually seems to understand fun, he seems to understand that at least different bulds should be avialble (still does not seem to understand what is numerical balance - and buffs / nerfs based on some baseline ideas what should be the player power).

The worst is that they think that this boring combination of bad fights (engine does not allow for a real Dark Souls game, also note that nobody even wants POE 2 to be like Dark Souls), zero drops (ruthless 2.0), lack of fun.
You basically run in circles around opponents for hours at the time.

They also gutted the tree of any clever interaction, so the game becomes bland. Everything has to come with a disadvantage - in a nice game, having to choose would be the disadvantage. Here everything just has to be unfun (on a side note: after fucking 25 years since Diablo 2, the companies could realize that difficult choices of keystones could be made at the beginning of the tree).

Also you are very pidgeon holed now (something that POE 1 ascendancies introduced too) -> if you want to do X, you are supposed to play class Y, which is designed for X.
Btw. nobody balances the skills numerically, so good luck if you chose X that just has low damage.



The game is basically made by randoms, who managed to
They are not good designers - the good ones have often left. The POE 1 guy (Mark) has to constantly come to POE 2 to save it, becasue the team of POE 2 are: bad programmers (they dont know how to code their own game), bad designers (just look at the game), bad businessmen (they make a game that is unfun to play, they make acts artificially super long, so you cannot make multiple chars - maybe make the game require you to have different builds for different content? In POE generally 50-60% of players play the same build that they forgot to nerf, this one build that works usually can do all content)


If you read a book about how Diablo 2 was made, they had a ticketing system, where there was always a ticked opened that said "the game has to be fun".
Does GGG has such a ticket? I doubt it.
Also it all should start with a defintion "what fun even means". For them fun is Ruthless 200%.
For 99% of players it is not.

So they are now artificially trying to strangle POE1, so POE2 can succeed.
Cant wait for Tencent to just fire them, when Tencent realizes that this model is unsustainable.
Basically everything would have to be reworked in POE2.
POE1 also suffered a TON of those bad decisions. What were the most successful leagues? The ones where you could buy / craft items cheap, make multiple strong chars - that would use those weird skills. That made the game fun.

good read ! personally, ive never understood why people enjoyed poe

i thought it was because poe offered a lot of customization options, so people could make their very own builds
...but then i realized that most people just copies a build
......and then they grind with that copied build to get gear so they can grind faster

i seriously dont get it. making builds isnt fun because you just copy them, grinding with that build isnt fun, and it never ends because theres no player interaction so no endgame. you literally map get gear to map faster, and once you get the gear you want, it gets nerfed on next patch

at no point from the making of the char to its end is it by any means fun. i understand ppl who use poe for rmt, and i understand the builders who try something new. i honestly have no idea what kind of fun anyone else gets from it

You can copy a build and then modify it to your liking.
I don't really understand the black and white mentality.

There's no reality where everyone can make their own unique build and be equally efficient.

im really not into efficiency, i like making my own stuffs after all, i am the guy whos had a few hours a day in poe for like 5 years just creating hideouts

and mehh, i think that approach could work if theres a limited choice to begin with, for example in nfs underground 2 you pick some base car and rice it out. so since the initial choice isnt big, you add a lot of customization by just modifying it. i mean if i drive a custom nissan 240sx and you drive a custom nissan 240sx, we practically arent even driving the same car

and in poe if you copy something and change a few things, its like max 5% of the entire thing. it just feels...not mine because as you implied, people want efficiency. so they copy builds for it! which is imo the wrong mentality when theres no reason to be efficient because theres no real goal

This post was edited by Snyft2 on May 15 2025 03:39pm

After all the speculation, all your thoughts and more, shouldn’t you have realized by now that ARPGs just aren’t for you? The whole point is to grind gear so you can grind gear faster, so you can then grind gear even faster.

Standing in your hideout and decorating it was never really part of the core gameplay. It's great that you enjoy it, but comparing that to how people play efficiently is a bit off.
Also, especially in PoE1, the build variety is so vast that it’s not how you described it. Some ‘meta’ builds can be customized in unique ways, and even if not - what’s wrong with playing one of those builds when there are still 10+ other viable ones? Also, no one’s stopping you from creating your own builds. But if you can’t make it to the endgame with them, that’s your own problem.
In PoE1, you build or copy a specific build to farm a particular type of content. You need different builds just for mapping or bossing. In PoE2, that’s not the case .. the meta build can do everything. Endgame bosses with Lightning Spear? No problem. Mapping with Lightning Spear? Perfect.
In PoE1, try killing Uber Elder with a Lightning Arrow build and you won’t get far without a massive currency investment. But with a fully rare ‘bossing build’ that costs maybe 3-4 Divines in total, you can kill it.


I can understand that in PoE2 things are a bit lacking. Having just 2 - 4 meta builds is simply not enough.

For people ranting and hating at GGG because of the state of PoE2 - give them a little trust. i know you are mad because they took your poe1 away for so long, but still, this company delivered for almost a decade good ARPG content. The best, for some of us. I think, they atleast deserve that we wait and see what they deliver. Its also nothing wrong to share your opinion in the public about what you dislike and what you like.

This post was edited by behindme on May 16 2025 04:05am

hmmm well!11 i know im a bit "off" when it comes to arpgs, im well aware that i dont enjoy the same things as most people. i mean i think both poes are shit (with poe2 being bigger shit) games and obviously the majority disagrees. but i wasnt complaining, i literally dont understand WHY the majority likes poe. im dead serious, i dont get it and i AM an arpg fan, 90% of the games i play are arpgs. but each have stuff i like and poe has nothing of it!

for example d2, yes you grind to get better gear, but you have an end goal - pvp. dragon age/baldurs gate/mass effect, you have a good story to follow. titan quest has atmosphere. skyrim has mods. so basically i have to either enjoy the journey or the destination. and i think everyone agrees with that. but now look at poe, the journey is just repeating maps, alone. not fun. short term destination (pvp) doesnt exist. long term destination (perfecting a char) doesnt exist because everything is changed every 3 months. you cant mod it because its online, atmosphere is horrible and it has the worst story ive ever seen in a game. customization (which everyone praises) in reality doesnt exist because you either follow the meta or stay in yellow maps. which is why i cant really agree with the "if you can’t make it to the endgame with your builds, that’s your own problem" argument because most of us here CAN make a build that works, but the fact is those builds are very rare compared to the number of builds that dont work even if you make them perfectly. this is for example what grim dawn did perfectly as pretty much every idea will work if you know how to build it. you can take pretty much any class combo and it can do all content

so my theory now is that people play poe because of the sheer quantity of content and nothing else. this is very visible now cause they dont play poe2 since it doesnt have the quantity and feels empty compared to poe1, even though they are very similar. basically poe1 is like london, its a shithole but people like it because its at least big. poe2 is manchester, same kind of shithole but much smaller so everyone hates it, and no one realizes its only the quantity that sets them apart

oh and, you know this already, but i reeeeally dont trust ggg i dont like that company and never have. i trust that they will do their best to earn money, but i think they are extremely soulless, and i havent seen as much gaslighting even from guys like blizzard. and they have (((bobby kotick))) and its really hard to top that

This post was edited by Snyft2 on May 16 2025 09:48am

Basically all im reading in here is that all my PoE 1 shit i never got around to selling wont be worthless after all?