My Thoughts on PoE2 from a non-PoE1 player

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Nautik4#9464 schrieb:

Hey all,


Coming from D3/D4 on console, I’ve got to say, somehow, Blizzard nailed it,

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Nautik4#9464 schrieb:

Hey all,

So first and foremost a little about me:

- CAL/ESL/TWL/WGTour/PGTour/ICCup
- Diamond to Masters in various RTS, FPS
- 2800 WoW WotLK / Platinum early GW2 / crafter in BDO ;)
- D1-D4, pushed hc gr’s im D3, currently para 284 D4

I’ve played just a touch of PoE1 HC, now playing PoE2 SC standard league. Okay, here we go!

1. So I love the game so far, but friends probably won’t play.
Not because of the difficulty per se, which I love - at first I cringed
at the Souls-esque dodging (not a fan of the genre, singleplayer
meme boss mechanics put me to sleep), but it ended up being a nice
feature. Anyways, I’m casual-ish nowadays (nearly 40), and most of
my D4 friends are, too, with similar histories. So why won’t they play?

Well, your integrations and newcomer stuff are hot garbage. I come
from PristonTale as my second online game, no stranger to Googling stuff
for Korean games etc., but nobody circa 2025 is looking up an owner’s
manual for twenty hours just to play a #^]% game. I get it, you PoE1 lads are
all about this, even think this makes you 1337, but I beg to differ. A good game
(hint: every tournament-worthy game you can name), has a low barrier of entry
and a high skill ceiling! This is mostly why LoL smokes DotA2 in playerbase, why
most good Indie-esque games never pop off, etc. So, the game is great, but still
kind of needs a %{! owners manual like PoE1 did, just to try the game, and it’s a
huge red flag. This wouldn’t be so bad if you did a better job of introducing systems.

2. Speaking of systems, the hell is this trade website? Are you fin kidding me?
Look, I had to find my old PoE1 account, maneuver in another game’s website (PoE1),
and struggle to link accounts that I had to alternate to not get a user error in game.
No tutorial, no mention of any of this in game, etc. Yeah, I figured it all out, and so
did everyone here - but how many players just say F it and throw in the towel before
even seeing how good the game is?

I get that this trade site is a player-made thing that GGG adopted it, and again, many
of you like it, but it’s fkn archaic. It’s essentially a forum? I’m on Xbox, do you know how
goofy and circa 2005 this thing is? Sorry if im offending, but good lord just create an AH.
I suppose this is a step up from just sitting in trade on D4 waiting for someone to post in
chat, but the way it’s setup is pretty ghetto.

3. Console integration is awful and the controller-AI is questionable.

Coming from D3/D4 on console, I’ve got to say, somehow, Blizzard nailed it, but on
PoE2 I’m constantly getting killed because I can’t intelligently target mobs, from setting
frost resist reductions on a sole mob out of a pack, to failing to smartly filter which mob
is actually the threat. This issue carries over to my Witch’s minions, who seem to do dumb
stuff all the time. In contrast, while I wouldn’t say the pathing and targeting of my attacks
on console is perfect in D4, but it’s been a noticeable issue in PoE2. Half the time when I’m
facing a mob to coldsnap the frozen target, it’ll actually cast on a non frozen target not far
from it, which reduces me to spamming frostbolt or I’m dead. This is compounded if a rare
or boss has minions, and has been a problem on every engagement.


That’s mostly it for now. Look, still love the game & am putting D4 on the back burner
to play a darker, grittier, more challenging ARPG with lots of depth, however there’s some
glaring issues that I find as a more casual (console) and older player now, and things I’ve
been accustomed to from AAA titles and some great publishers (Riot, Blizzard, Valve).
This game reminds me of the Steam platform; God the games can be great, but holy fk
is that system from the early 2000s compared to things like RiotID or Battle.net.
Lol, and there’s not even a mobile version of this website?