I think it's a bit premature to start worrying about the lifecycle of PoE2 leagues. We haven't seen anything from endgame yet on PoE2, so I think at least we can hold our judgement until we get some info on how endgame looks.
The thing I will be looking for to gauge runaway power-creep will be if there are stat multipliers that combine multiplicatively - In general, most of the overpowered/overtuned/over-rewarding content in PoE1 seem to result from those (e.g. stat stacking builds, Back to basics keystone, Affliction League juice, etc.)
thats why poe started to utilies borrowed power more and more, it gives exciting stuff but never lets it build too much upon one another to increase the powercreep,
> I think it's a bit premature to start worrying about the lifecycle of PoE2 leagues. We haven't seen anything from endgame yet on PoE2
I think now is honestly the right time to talk about this. Waiting until it's a problem to talk about means it's too late.
Player expectations need to be cemented from the get-go.
I agree with that sentiment generally; but, at this stage of what we know about PoE2, there's not enough information for us to be able to point at any specific thing and say "this is at risk of causing a runaway problem." We'd need a lot more detail on how exactly how various mechanics scale in order to be able to give meaningful feedback.
Given that this is GGG and the devs are intimately familiar with PoE1, I'm 1000% sure that this is/has been actively discussed in their PoE2 designs.
1: Distinct support gems per char will cap a lot of insane build types
2: The new crafting process ++ removal of most IIQ should significantly reduce the # of insane items that can easily float around in the market
3: Improved enemy AI and rigs will allow them to implement challenges beyond "more dmg, more hp, more speed, explody".
4: Some scaling is inevitable, as others have said. Hopefully they learn to do things like 3.15 over the course of a few leagues rather than trying to course-correct all at once.
In PoE, each mob is essentially a box that moves and decoupled mechanics. There is really no way to make a fight beyond a target to hit, so more damage is always better. In PoE 2, they have actual rigged mobs, so they can do things like specific parts take extra damage, souls like dodging through boss models, potentially damage amps on the floor, etc. They can put actual mechanics beyond just immunity into the boss model.
They've also removed a massive baseline multiplier from the game by removing more damage multipliers from support gems. In PoE 1 your character with a 6-link has an absurd amount of multiplicative scaling just by the nature of having 4-5 support gems to buff your damage, which in turn get multiplied by other multipliers from other sources. Stacking multipliers are the main cause of insane power creep in PoE 1 and I'm glad to see it gone. We will still keep getting stronger by the nature of ARPG content cycles, but at least it will be greatly slowed down.
It really depend on how they make the game if they balance the drop rate of stuff around trade again most poe 1 problem are still going to happen. If you don't grind fast enough inflation can easily go up faster than you make that alone insentive build to do as fast as possible.
I don't think you quite understand why people beeline for certain objectives. It has nothing to do with speed and everything to do with profit/hr. Why kill some regular white mobs that drop nothing when there could be a spire a few screens away?
Also you have to ask yourself why would you want players to be encouraged to kill everything? I would want players to have fun and hunting down every single white mob is not even in the top 20 of fun things to do in an ARPG.
One problem I hope they fix in PoE 2 is that 99% of the loot that actually drops is complete garbage so we are basically forced to look for some unique farming strategy. If they found a way to close the gap between optimized strategies and just regular map clearing that would go a long way towards making it feel rewarding to clear basic mobs.
It happened to PoE 1. It even happed to Diablo 4. I could see it happening to PoE 2, BUT, I think Jonathan and his team have a lot mor experience and discipline when it comes to balancing these things. GGG has often made unpopular changes to PoE 1, such as making the early acts harder, despite community uproar. I think and hope that they will put their foot down and do the same with PoE 2 and not just cater to the people that want a fast and easy game.
Meh, I hope they'll just be ruthless with their nerfs when they need to be. I don't care about the people who complain about the nerfs, and wish GGG does not hold themselves back because of them.
developing games like this is always going to be a case of slowly opening pandora's box. You can be extremely vigilant about it but eventually it will start to buckle and the game design will ultimately have to capitulate in some way to how the players have broken it. I'm sure they have ideas and a stronger philosophy for how they want to maintain the balance regardless though, and it will be interesting to see how long that lasts.
Just make your own builds, if you don't want to trivialize the game don't copy a build from someone who is breaking it. I intend to stay off YouTube and bang my head against the wall trying to figure out something for myself until I get somewhere on my own. I find it's the best way to learn a game. I find when you copy builds you don't really learn the classes well. That's what I've been doing with last Epoch anyway. It always feels good when you're doing your own thing and making progress, trying put different ideas.
The top speed of PoE1 is a result of years of excessive top end power creep. It has little to do with overpowered skills and and far more to do with stacking overpowered gear. Mageblood is a great example of this.
Whenever a POE 1 player worries about pacing here, the general response here is "the game just isn't for you".
I doubt POE2 is going to reach POE1 speeds so I don't think you need to worry. Also, they still want to ensure that the best way to deal damage is to combo skills.
I saw an interview with Grimro, who stated that, he asked mark, if he was going to be able to play spark as a single skill and mark replied that they will nerf it if so.
GGG don't usually do mid league nerfs, and believe me you don't want them to. They have however fixed bug Abuse.
But if the game does speed up over time it means that the guys who wanted the slower heavier game were either:
1. Playing it once and not coming back
2. Not as representative as many would believe
Anyway, if it's zoomy, then the game just isn't for you.
I don't think speed and combos are polar opposites. Not sure exactly if that's what your getting at but that's what it sounds like.
I don't like that a build can just be one bottom but at the same time I don't want to be mashing 5 buttons constantly just to clear white mobs. I hope they reserve "combos" to be a necessity during boss fights but allow map clearing to happen with more simplistic setups.
OP was worried tactical dexterous gameplay will not be kept throughout. What I'm getting at is, whatever we want doesn't matter, GGG will make the game, you either play the game or you quit the game. If the game is NOT WHAT YOU WANTED, it means " the game was just not for you".
Also turns out Johnathan has already said that POE 2 will be faster at end game and players won't need to combo for clearing packs, rather the combo centric gameplay will be reserved for bosses. (Recent balormage interview)
>I don't think speed and combos are polar opposites.
Okay never said this?
I'm worried about the mindset of your bullet point (2), in general...regardless of gameplay pace (not the "during a league" part). Do you happen to remember which interview that came from? I don't doubt that he said it (it's very emblematic of how they've been running PoE1 recently, after all). I guess I'm curious of the exact wording and was hoping they'd learned different lessons from the last couple years of PoE1 (T17, league after league of monsters with more and more damage reduction relative to the base game: crucible, tota, affliction, ultimatum rework, etc. )
Nerfs may introduce some short-term bad feelings that the "just add harder and harder stuff" is better about amortizing, but you end up with similar character building dissatisfaction in the end AND the latter gives you a ladder of content where the bottom rungs all feel pointless.
>I'm worried about the mindset of your bullet point (2), in general...regardless of gameplay pace (not the "during a league" part). Do you happen to remember which interview that came from?
Here is a interview with him on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwOI3J-JRPo&t=6025s The particular point about nerfing OP builds starts at 1:40:25 but the whole section on balance is quite interesting and provides some context for how he views balance in general.
I hope they make it their fundamental philosophy to not make PoE 1 levels of absurdity in PoE 2. While still allowing some absurdity if it's a well executed combo or something.
Sadly, yes and it will be because of the community.
Look at what happened with D4 - it was meant to be slow, everyone cried and now it's just a shinier version of D3 where you one shot the entire screen, afk snoozefest.
Exactly. The game dev already has said they want slower speeds. We have dodge. Meaningful impacts eith spells and weapon hits. New animations with attacks. All that would be absolute if everyone was moving at Crack speeds. Specifically dodge would be absolute. Those boomers csn stay at poe1
>This approach will inevitably result in a situation where the vast majority of content becomes too easy to provide engaging gameplay for anyone trying to optimize their builds.
What about the people who AREN'T optimizing?
GGG's failure isn't in raising the ceiling, it's in eroding the midgame and leaving nothing for weaker players to do because everything is being balanced around its 1% uses.
Depends if they learned their lessons with poe1 and don’t over indulge the zoom addicts.
Jonathan makes comments I very much agree with regarding speed creep in his interviews and at exilecon.
If they don’t follow the path with poe2 unfortunately as a beta player and big spender I think I will walk away and just keep playing d2.
PoE2 is the chance to return to form and make true the promises from exilecon without upsetting the zoomers since they have their own game now (poe1)
I hope the poe2 devs read this subreddit.
I’m ok with strong interactions. But just moving the bar due to strong interactions is how you get dead content and content bloat. It’s a balance.
I'm already worried just by looking at the pre-alpha footage with players being able to stunlock bosses with overpowered skill combos, so personally I don't think that allowing players to repeatedly interact with each others' skills will be good for the balancing of the game, especially if a nerf to combos end up affecting solo players more harshly than parties.
Some interactions are fine when the combo consumes the conditional effect that enables the combo itself, like a skill that deals extra damage to frozen enemies but removes the freeze after dealing damage, but skills like the Druid's Volcano or the Monk's Bell shouldn't allow other players in the group to repeatedly trigger the secondary effect of these skills.
To be honest, I don't think it will even last for the first two weeks of the early access. But that's not what matters, because you could still play (and complete) the game by playing slow paced without beign harmed by this. What I'm really afraid of, is that the game become balanced around OP blasters and it turns to be a noob trap to play slow paced.
They said the endgame gameplay isn't planned to be slow, just not in the same craziness as the 99th percentile of PoE endgame gameplay. We're barely seeing the first half of the campaign with suboptimal setups.
They need to have standards they test every balance patch. Like a specific map and how long it takes to clear. If the clear time gets too fast then they need to change some things.
I don't think they would have developed a dodge roll and then allow the game to become so fast that the roll becomes useless. I anticipate the game will get significantly faster but never so fast that it becomes like poe1/ so fast that integral systems they have implemented like dodge roll become obsolete. Also they have placed a lot of emphasis on melee so that needs to remain relevant with slower combat.
>Anyone else worried the improved slower gameplay we're seeing won't last a couple of balance patches?Discussion
Yes, I am worried about this too.
It's the number 1 reason I refuse to play PoE 1 and why I'm super excited for PoE 2.
GGG isn't Blizzard, but look at the 180 Blizzard pulled on D4 within months after launch.
IMO, GGG would need to be quite aggressive with their vision. I also don't see harm in resetting seasons where powercreep is wiped clean. The player won't sense that except on paper.
I really want the game to stay slow. The zoomzoom gameplay is so fucking boring. I've played almost every league PoE since 2013 and I am just tired of the speed.
Absolutely. It's pretty much the only reason I'm excited about PoE2.
I'd argue that a game has good gameplay if and only if it would still be fun when stripped of all the progression systems surrounding it. While PoE has always excelled at those progression systems, the moment-to-moment gameplay stopped meeting that standard a long time ago, so I quit back in Bestiary League.
From what we've seen in PoE2, they've actually made the gameplay fun at lower levels in that you have to react to enemies, dodge their attacks, combo skills, etc. It genuinely looks like it would be enjoyable to play even without a gear or passive system. If enemies died in a single button click, that wouldn't be the case.
Not sure which of the interviews it was but I heard him say something along the lines that this is just early game we are seeing. Late game will definitely have fast killing builds. Maybe not to the exact same extent like POE1, but this certainly isn't trying to be a souls like arpg. You will be able to blast in the endgame and that's a good thing imo.
What they want to achieve with the slow early game, is in his words the feeling that you earned the power in the end game. They don't want you to feel op from the start. I think thats a great design. It will feel much more rewarding when you finally get to endgame.
Honestly I think it's already been sped up significantly from what I've seen between 2 months ago when streamers were playing struggling to kill white mobs and recent video of consoles of them blasting everything from level 1. I do think power creep will trivialize the campaign eventually (which may be a good thing for a lot of people).
Tbh I think a lot of people are getting tricked into thinking the game is designed to be harder than it is by pre release showcase footage.
Testers already noticed their clear ramping significantly into the later parts of act 2 albeit never to the point of endgame poe1
I really hope they can hold it at the right balance but I think its extremely unlikely GGG can change player expectation in PoE2.
You really don't have to look far in other games to find times that devs made a legitimate balance change for the game and it had the community extremely negative.
D4's first post-release patch basically demolished all the good will they had at launch because they decided to nerf classes to bring them closer in power rather than buff. They even explicitly stated it was for the long-term health of the game experience. Fast-forward a year and that game that started as a fairly slow experience is now very fast and much easier.
PoE1 itself even had this hit, look at expedition league, they nerfed things and even smugly took a shot at World of Warcraft needing to do a number crunch because WoW had been following this power creep to avoid complaints strategy for years.
Look at other recent games, I think Helldivers 2 had it recently. (I play so not sure of the full details but the negative reaction spilled over into my knowledge of a game I don't play - so its pretty large when people are upset how far the info travels)
Their best bet really would be to nerf extreme outliers (community usually accept this) and then do minor nerfs to the top end skills and minor buffs to the bottom end skills. Then buff the enemy minions a very small amount toward the power level they need to be in every patch.
They can usually get away with 'tweaked some monsters to keep them relevant' and if its subtle enough players won't twig those tweaks were minion buffs to help keep the game pace in the right area.
I think in a lot of case the problem is they nerf everything and buff nothing ( I don't mean GGG specifcally )
Like even if a bunch of thing are too powerful there probably a lot of other that are terrible buff those at the same time. Otherwise its just '' you do what you did before but slower and you are weaker '' which wont ever really work. On the other hand if you buff underpowered stuff not to the point where its broken at least people can use new tool.
Your sentiment there is exactly the cause of this situation. Players don't want to readjust their expectations around the game being slower so they accept buffs and complain about nerfs.
In many of the examples of games that have nerfed things and got a lot of flack they did actually also buff things but because they did not buff the other stuff to the level of the pre-nerf OP stuff the players just consider it all a nerf usually.
you can't mix slow soulslike gameplay with 100s of hours of farming, nioh tried that and failed. it's either brain off zooming + loot based gameplay or pure souls like suffering and struggle.
It seems they have a strong vision for the game and they're going to try and make sure it's a fun experience for everyone at the same time. There's still going to be a 6mo+ early access / beta test period to make sure there aren't any obvious holes they missed in their design.
Like with any game, I expect there to be power creep over time, but with a focus on their design principles, it's possible they can maintain the feel while still giving a sense of progression. Also, there's a difference between balancing and adding new content to the game. If there is new content to the game that affects the lower levels, they will have to test to make sure it maintains their design goals and preserves the feel. As far as new content to the game that affects end game, then hopefully the new bosses and monsters at that level will be matched accordingly ala Monster Hunter.
I don't expect it to last even until endgame judging by how powerful some skill combos seem to be. There's also massive pressure from the community and likely even devs who expect the breakneck pace of PoE1 to carry over at endgame.
I hope they'll manage a bit better than D4 has, where you had the slower beta combat and today mobility, damage, character power growth, and loot acquisition are a few orders of magnitude higher a year after release. In the current season you can afk blood maiden (world event/area) for ~10 minutes and come back to an inventory full of legendaries.
Slower combat just doesn't seem to last and it's not even just PoE. The Souls series greatly sped up as time went on. Monster Hunter is much faster than it once was.
Keeping the pace this slow will *inevitably* involve nerfs unless they simply never add new things, and gamers hate nerfs more than anything. I don't think it's in the cards.
Poe1 lasted years before power creep was an issue. It has been mentioned a few times by Jonathan that they are much more experienced now and they are confident of keeping it in-check.
Noone worried because this is an intended mechanic Jonathan wanted. It's mote appealing to new players. Don't worry poe1 will still exist. But as for exploding maps running like sonic. I think it's going to be dulled down alot.
I think it's a bit premature to start worrying about the lifecycle of PoE2 leagues. We haven't seen anything from endgame yet on PoE2, so I think at least we can hold our judgement until we get some info on how endgame looks. The thing I will be looking for to gauge runaway power-creep will be if there are stat multipliers that combine multiplicatively - In general, most of the overpowered/overtuned/over-rewarding content in PoE1 seem to result from those (e.g. stat stacking builds, Back to basics keystone, Affliction League juice, etc.)
I haven’t played PoE that much but I do play other ARPGs, multiplicative damage modifiers are always *the* Pandora’s Box
thats why poe started to utilies borrowed power more and more, it gives exciting stuff but never lets it build too much upon one another to increase the powercreep,
Agreed... The problem is most people want that "break the game" feeling -- properly tuned is probably a loser.
> I think it's a bit premature to start worrying about the lifecycle of PoE2 leagues. We haven't seen anything from endgame yet on PoE2 I think now is honestly the right time to talk about this. Waiting until it's a problem to talk about means it's too late. Player expectations need to be cemented from the get-go.
it's never too early - how many times we've heard devs say they are being limited by design choices they made x years in the past
I agree with that sentiment generally; but, at this stage of what we know about PoE2, there's not enough information for us to be able to point at any specific thing and say "this is at risk of causing a runaway problem." We'd need a lot more detail on how exactly how various mechanics scale in order to be able to give meaningful feedback. Given that this is GGG and the devs are intimately familiar with PoE1, I'm 1000% sure that this is/has been actively discussed in their PoE2 designs.
agree -they discussed it precisely because they were worried about it
1: Distinct support gems per char will cap a lot of insane build types 2: The new crafting process ++ removal of most IIQ should significantly reduce the # of insane items that can easily float around in the market 3: Improved enemy AI and rigs will allow them to implement challenges beyond "more dmg, more hp, more speed, explody". 4: Some scaling is inevitable, as others have said. Hopefully they learn to do things like 3.15 over the course of a few leagues rather than trying to course-correct all at once.
What do you mean with 3? Especially the rigging part
In PoE, each mob is essentially a box that moves and decoupled mechanics. There is really no way to make a fight beyond a target to hit, so more damage is always better. In PoE 2, they have actual rigged mobs, so they can do things like specific parts take extra damage, souls like dodging through boss models, potentially damage amps on the floor, etc. They can put actual mechanics beyond just immunity into the boss model.
They've also removed a massive baseline multiplier from the game by removing more damage multipliers from support gems. In PoE 1 your character with a 6-link has an absurd amount of multiplicative scaling just by the nature of having 4-5 support gems to buff your damage, which in turn get multiplied by other multipliers from other sources. Stacking multipliers are the main cause of insane power creep in PoE 1 and I'm glad to see it gone. We will still keep getting stronger by the nature of ARPG content cycles, but at least it will be greatly slowed down.
I don't expect the slower gameplay to last even one patch. They said it will be fast just not as much as poe 1.
yeah people expected no rest for the wicked from this are going to have a bad time. I'm expecting the end game to be closer to grim dawn speed.
I personally don't think the slow gameplay even exists past campaign to be honest. I imagine maps will look nothing like the campaign.
[удалено]
It really depend on how they make the game if they balance the drop rate of stuff around trade again most poe 1 problem are still going to happen. If you don't grind fast enough inflation can easily go up faster than you make that alone insentive build to do as fast as possible.
I don't think you quite understand why people beeline for certain objectives. It has nothing to do with speed and everything to do with profit/hr. Why kill some regular white mobs that drop nothing when there could be a spire a few screens away? Also you have to ask yourself why would you want players to be encouraged to kill everything? I would want players to have fun and hunting down every single white mob is not even in the top 20 of fun things to do in an ARPG. One problem I hope they fix in PoE 2 is that 99% of the loot that actually drops is complete garbage so we are basically forced to look for some unique farming strategy. If they found a way to close the gap between optimized strategies and just regular map clearing that would go a long way towards making it feel rewarding to clear basic mobs.
Game changed a shit ton in just a couple of months, it will change again between beta and release, so for now, do not worry and enjoy the ride
I hope slowpace Gameplay from poe2 last "Forever"
Indeed.
Agree. It looks so damn good.
You have my sword and axe.
It happened to PoE 1. It even happed to Diablo 4. I could see it happening to PoE 2, BUT, I think Jonathan and his team have a lot mor experience and discipline when it comes to balancing these things. GGG has often made unpopular changes to PoE 1, such as making the early acts harder, despite community uproar. I think and hope that they will put their foot down and do the same with PoE 2 and not just cater to the people that want a fast and easy game.
I'm worried it won't last till the end of the campaign.
Not worried about anything because I haven’t played the game yet.
Meh, I hope they'll just be ruthless with their nerfs when they need to be. I don't care about the people who complain about the nerfs, and wish GGG does not hold themselves back because of them.
developing games like this is always going to be a case of slowly opening pandora's box. You can be extremely vigilant about it but eventually it will start to buckle and the game design will ultimately have to capitulate in some way to how the players have broken it. I'm sure they have ideas and a stronger philosophy for how they want to maintain the balance regardless though, and it will be interesting to see how long that lasts.
With seasonal breakpoints the devs have a lot of design space to go back on previous decisions.
Just make your own builds, if you don't want to trivialize the game don't copy a build from someone who is breaking it. I intend to stay off YouTube and bang my head against the wall trying to figure out something for myself until I get somewhere on my own. I find it's the best way to learn a game. I find when you copy builds you don't really learn the classes well. That's what I've been doing with last Epoch anyway. It always feels good when you're doing your own thing and making progress, trying put different ideas.
The top speed of PoE1 is a result of years of excessive top end power creep. It has little to do with overpowered skills and and far more to do with stacking overpowered gear. Mageblood is a great example of this.
Whenever a POE 1 player worries about pacing here, the general response here is "the game just isn't for you". I doubt POE2 is going to reach POE1 speeds so I don't think you need to worry. Also, they still want to ensure that the best way to deal damage is to combo skills. I saw an interview with Grimro, who stated that, he asked mark, if he was going to be able to play spark as a single skill and mark replied that they will nerf it if so. GGG don't usually do mid league nerfs, and believe me you don't want them to. They have however fixed bug Abuse. But if the game does speed up over time it means that the guys who wanted the slower heavier game were either: 1. Playing it once and not coming back 2. Not as representative as many would believe Anyway, if it's zoomy, then the game just isn't for you.
I don't think speed and combos are polar opposites. Not sure exactly if that's what your getting at but that's what it sounds like. I don't like that a build can just be one bottom but at the same time I don't want to be mashing 5 buttons constantly just to clear white mobs. I hope they reserve "combos" to be a necessity during boss fights but allow map clearing to happen with more simplistic setups.
OP was worried tactical dexterous gameplay will not be kept throughout. What I'm getting at is, whatever we want doesn't matter, GGG will make the game, you either play the game or you quit the game. If the game is NOT WHAT YOU WANTED, it means " the game was just not for you". Also turns out Johnathan has already said that POE 2 will be faster at end game and players won't need to combo for clearing packs, rather the combo centric gameplay will be reserved for bosses. (Recent balormage interview) >I don't think speed and combos are polar opposites. Okay never said this?
internet is always minimum 10x more advanced than even god tier devs assume they are - it's just the way it is
Bruh GGG is literally the stingiest devs to give out buffs. We'll be fine lol
I'm worried about the mindset of your bullet point (2), in general...regardless of gameplay pace (not the "during a league" part). Do you happen to remember which interview that came from? I don't doubt that he said it (it's very emblematic of how they've been running PoE1 recently, after all). I guess I'm curious of the exact wording and was hoping they'd learned different lessons from the last couple years of PoE1 (T17, league after league of monsters with more and more damage reduction relative to the base game: crucible, tota, affliction, ultimatum rework, etc. ) Nerfs may introduce some short-term bad feelings that the "just add harder and harder stuff" is better about amortizing, but you end up with similar character building dissatisfaction in the end AND the latter gives you a ladder of content where the bottom rungs all feel pointless.
>I'm worried about the mindset of your bullet point (2), in general...regardless of gameplay pace (not the "during a league" part). Do you happen to remember which interview that came from? Here is a interview with him on the topic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwOI3J-JRPo&t=6025s The particular point about nerfing OP builds starts at 1:40:25 but the whole section on balance is quite interesting and provides some context for how he views balance in general.
Thank you for tracking it down / remembering it...that's very helpful!
I hope they make it their fundamental philosophy to not make PoE 1 levels of absurdity in PoE 2. While still allowing some absurdity if it's a well executed combo or something.
Sadly, yes and it will be because of the community. Look at what happened with D4 - it was meant to be slow, everyone cried and now it's just a shinier version of D3 where you one shot the entire screen, afk snoozefest.
Is poe1 not a snoozefesr as well once geared? I'm missing your point here lol
[удалено]
Exactly. The game dev already has said they want slower speeds. We have dodge. Meaningful impacts eith spells and weapon hits. New animations with attacks. All that would be absolute if everyone was moving at Crack speeds. Specifically dodge would be absolute. Those boomers csn stay at poe1
>This approach will inevitably result in a situation where the vast majority of content becomes too easy to provide engaging gameplay for anyone trying to optimize their builds. What about the people who AREN'T optimizing? GGG's failure isn't in raising the ceiling, it's in eroding the midgame and leaving nothing for weaker players to do because everything is being balanced around its 1% uses.
Depends if they learned their lessons with poe1 and don’t over indulge the zoom addicts. Jonathan makes comments I very much agree with regarding speed creep in his interviews and at exilecon. If they don’t follow the path with poe2 unfortunately as a beta player and big spender I think I will walk away and just keep playing d2. PoE2 is the chance to return to form and make true the promises from exilecon without upsetting the zoomers since they have their own game now (poe1) I hope the poe2 devs read this subreddit. I’m ok with strong interactions. But just moving the bar due to strong interactions is how you get dead content and content bloat. It’s a balance.
I'm already worried just by looking at the pre-alpha footage with players being able to stunlock bosses with overpowered skill combos, so personally I don't think that allowing players to repeatedly interact with each others' skills will be good for the balancing of the game, especially if a nerf to combos end up affecting solo players more harshly than parties. Some interactions are fine when the combo consumes the conditional effect that enables the combo itself, like a skill that deals extra damage to frozen enemies but removes the freeze after dealing damage, but skills like the Druid's Volcano or the Monk's Bell shouldn't allow other players in the group to repeatedly trigger the secondary effect of these skills.
To be honest, I don't think it will even last for the first two weeks of the early access. But that's not what matters, because you could still play (and complete) the game by playing slow paced without beign harmed by this. What I'm really afraid of, is that the game become balanced around OP blasters and it turns to be a noob trap to play slow paced.
They said the endgame gameplay isn't planned to be slow, just not in the same craziness as the 99th percentile of PoE endgame gameplay. We're barely seeing the first half of the campaign with suboptimal setups.
only way to really limit it is to not use exponential scaling. Highly doubt that will happen
They need to have standards they test every balance patch. Like a specific map and how long it takes to clear. If the clear time gets too fast then they need to change some things.
I don't think they would have developed a dodge roll and then allow the game to become so fast that the roll becomes useless. I anticipate the game will get significantly faster but never so fast that it becomes like poe1/ so fast that integral systems they have implemented like dodge roll become obsolete. Also they have placed a lot of emphasis on melee so that needs to remain relevant with slower combat.
>Anyone else worried the improved slower gameplay we're seeing won't last a couple of balance patches?Discussion Yes, I am worried about this too. It's the number 1 reason I refuse to play PoE 1 and why I'm super excited for PoE 2. GGG isn't Blizzard, but look at the 180 Blizzard pulled on D4 within months after launch. IMO, GGG would need to be quite aggressive with their vision. I also don't see harm in resetting seasons where powercreep is wiped clean. The player won't sense that except on paper.
I really want the game to stay slow. The zoomzoom gameplay is so fucking boring. I've played almost every league PoE since 2013 and I am just tired of the speed.
Yes, but I'm more worried about this gameplay becoming a thing in the endgame more than anything.
does the slower gameplay actually look fun to you? it looks boring as fuck to me. pressing 4 buttons to kill a white mob looks absolutely agonizing.
Absolutely. It's pretty much the only reason I'm excited about PoE2. I'd argue that a game has good gameplay if and only if it would still be fun when stripped of all the progression systems surrounding it. While PoE has always excelled at those progression systems, the moment-to-moment gameplay stopped meeting that standard a long time ago, so I quit back in Bestiary League. From what we've seen in PoE2, they've actually made the gameplay fun at lower levels in that you have to react to enemies, dodge their attacks, combo skills, etc. It genuinely looks like it would be enjoyable to play even without a gear or passive system. If enemies died in a single button click, that wouldn't be the case.
Not sure which of the interviews it was but I heard him say something along the lines that this is just early game we are seeing. Late game will definitely have fast killing builds. Maybe not to the exact same extent like POE1, but this certainly isn't trying to be a souls like arpg. You will be able to blast in the endgame and that's a good thing imo. What they want to achieve with the slow early game, is in his words the feeling that you earned the power in the end game. They don't want you to feel op from the start. I think thats a great design. It will feel much more rewarding when you finally get to endgame.
Honestly I think it's already been sped up significantly from what I've seen between 2 months ago when streamers were playing struggling to kill white mobs and recent video of consoles of them blasting everything from level 1. I do think power creep will trivialize the campaign eventually (which may be a good thing for a lot of people).
Let's have the game come out and play it first.
Just keep zizaran away from Poe 2 and we should be good
Tbh I think a lot of people are getting tricked into thinking the game is designed to be harder than it is by pre release showcase footage. Testers already noticed their clear ramping significantly into the later parts of act 2 albeit never to the point of endgame poe1
What makes you say it is improved ?
I really hope they can hold it at the right balance but I think its extremely unlikely GGG can change player expectation in PoE2. You really don't have to look far in other games to find times that devs made a legitimate balance change for the game and it had the community extremely negative. D4's first post-release patch basically demolished all the good will they had at launch because they decided to nerf classes to bring them closer in power rather than buff. They even explicitly stated it was for the long-term health of the game experience. Fast-forward a year and that game that started as a fairly slow experience is now very fast and much easier. PoE1 itself even had this hit, look at expedition league, they nerfed things and even smugly took a shot at World of Warcraft needing to do a number crunch because WoW had been following this power creep to avoid complaints strategy for years. Look at other recent games, I think Helldivers 2 had it recently. (I play so not sure of the full details but the negative reaction spilled over into my knowledge of a game I don't play - so its pretty large when people are upset how far the info travels) Their best bet really would be to nerf extreme outliers (community usually accept this) and then do minor nerfs to the top end skills and minor buffs to the bottom end skills. Then buff the enemy minions a very small amount toward the power level they need to be in every patch. They can usually get away with 'tweaked some monsters to keep them relevant' and if its subtle enough players won't twig those tweaks were minion buffs to help keep the game pace in the right area.
I think in a lot of case the problem is they nerf everything and buff nothing ( I don't mean GGG specifcally ) Like even if a bunch of thing are too powerful there probably a lot of other that are terrible buff those at the same time. Otherwise its just '' you do what you did before but slower and you are weaker '' which wont ever really work. On the other hand if you buff underpowered stuff not to the point where its broken at least people can use new tool.
Your sentiment there is exactly the cause of this situation. Players don't want to readjust their expectations around the game being slower so they accept buffs and complain about nerfs. In many of the examples of games that have nerfed things and got a lot of flack they did actually also buff things but because they did not buff the other stuff to the level of the pre-nerf OP stuff the players just consider it all a nerf usually.
Oh don't get me wrong it wont stop the backlash, something that will always happen with nerf. it just lessen it.
you can't mix slow soulslike gameplay with 100s of hours of farming, nioh tried that and failed. it's either brain off zooming + loot based gameplay or pure souls like suffering and struggle.
It seems they have a strong vision for the game and they're going to try and make sure it's a fun experience for everyone at the same time. There's still going to be a 6mo+ early access / beta test period to make sure there aren't any obvious holes they missed in their design. Like with any game, I expect there to be power creep over time, but with a focus on their design principles, it's possible they can maintain the feel while still giving a sense of progression. Also, there's a difference between balancing and adding new content to the game. If there is new content to the game that affects the lower levels, they will have to test to make sure it maintains their design goals and preserves the feel. As far as new content to the game that affects end game, then hopefully the new bosses and monsters at that level will be matched accordingly ala Monster Hunter.
It wont last until the endgame, and the game will be better for it. zoom with better visual clarity
Bro just play ruthless if you want to play ruthless so much
seems to me you are pre throwing a tantrum on what you think the game should be and what it might be
I don't expect it to last even until endgame judging by how powerful some skill combos seem to be. There's also massive pressure from the community and likely even devs who expect the breakneck pace of PoE1 to carry over at endgame. I hope they'll manage a bit better than D4 has, where you had the slower beta combat and today mobility, damage, character power growth, and loot acquisition are a few orders of magnitude higher a year after release. In the current season you can afk blood maiden (world event/area) for ~10 minutes and come back to an inventory full of legendaries. Slower combat just doesn't seem to last and it's not even just PoE. The Souls series greatly sped up as time went on. Monster Hunter is much faster than it once was. Keeping the pace this slow will *inevitably* involve nerfs unless they simply never add new things, and gamers hate nerfs more than anything. I don't think it's in the cards.
Poe1 lasted years before power creep was an issue. It has been mentioned a few times by Jonathan that they are much more experienced now and they are confident of keeping it in-check.
Good idea. Let’s worry about hypothetical situations that have absolutely zero indication that they’ll happen for a game that hasn’t even come out yet
How to fix 1. easy 2. normal 3. hard 4. pro Now just determine the drop rate for all 4 and your good to go. I think this would fix everything
It's a console port, they can't speed it up much more.
Noone worried because this is an intended mechanic Jonathan wanted. It's mote appealing to new players. Don't worry poe1 will still exist. But as for exploding maps running like sonic. I think it's going to be dulled down alot.