Gambling mechanics and good vs bad game-design choices

Hello,

the more I play and watch videos of Path of Exile 2, the more the question begs to be asked:

"Is Path of Exile 2 a one-armed bandit in disguise?"

I've recently brought myself into this conversation about game design and recent choices made for the game by developers through my other thread,
"Streamer Lobbyism":

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3752791

In there I have made the critique, that it seems to me there is some kind of lobbyism going on around the game involving streamers which opt to use pressure on the devs by making it seem like the game will not be bought and played anymore if the devs don't listen to the requests of the streamers and their "communities". The results of these changes make PoE 2, at least in my opinion, become less like an actual game and more like the infamous one-armed bandit found in those places people lose their souls in and gamble for money. Which is kind of exactly what PoE 2 is, isn't it? You spend money, but mostly time, in order to gamble for... wait, is this correct? Yes, apparently you don't gamble for money, but something called "items", which have no real-life value.

I have heard streamers openly say: "What are we doing with our lives?"

And I am starting to get the same feeling playing this game. The foundation is great. There are mechanics in PoE 2 that make it seem like it is a real game. Everything in the presentation of this game screams ambition. But when you play it for long enough, you realize that the ambition is not that far reaching as it is suggested to you in the beginning. That to me, seems like a trick. Up until and including the Geonor fight the game seems really good and like what players probably had hoped for a good game to be like. The presentation is awesome, the mechanics seem to be fitting for a playstyle that is a mix of Path of Exile and Dark Souls. But look at people playing endgame content and words like "farming" get used more and more freqeuently. And just look at the videos. It's not a game anymore at that point. It's really just "farming". And "farming", I'm not an expert, but it seems to me is a word that would be used in the gambling area. If I go into a casino and sit in front of those one-armed bandits, I'm "farming" them for money.

Now you could ask the question: "But where does PoE 2 go wrong?"

To answer that question would take a lot of time and detail.

I have tried to see Path of Exile 2 as a game that tries to focus on combat, adapting your builds to the situation, preparing for combat by upgrading your items and skills, but everything strongly suggests I'm wrong in that vision and have been tricked by the game's presentation.

The devs have recently lowered mob health, because streamers and their communities complained that the game felt too "grindy" and the changes created the exact opposite effect of what they wanted to achieve, making the game feel more "grindy", because now you just run around maps, killing everything on the run while collecting loot. The focus on loot just became stronger, because of the changes, which makes the game feel more "grindy", although the changes claimed to want to change exactly that.

This is the main issue I see with the feedback around this game right now. It claims to want to combat certain issues which sound bad and the feedback is phrased in a way that makes the issues sound really, really bad. Then solutions to those issues are presented, which sound logical. But in the end it just seems to serve the purpose of making the focus of this game more on gambling and loot than on actual gameplay. Which seems to make my claims about streamers becoming lobbyists even more true than they were before.

Now, what does make a great game that PoE 2 lacks at the moment or tries to let go of with the most recent changes? I also by the way think that ascendancy respeccing is going the wrong direction. I liked the way PoE 1 handled this by making it hard to respecc, albeit possible, and thus making you think real hard about how to specc your character and put a lot of decisionmaking into it. For me that's the whole appeal to PoE 1 to me. I made bad characters and had to create new ones, sure. Some people call that frustrating, I call that learning the mechanics by playing the game, which is something that great games offer, whether you like it or not.

But back to the question: what makes a great game? Well, think about the most basic games humanity has played for generations. There is for example soccer. Soccer demands of you to get better and to overcome challenges through developing skills. It needs you to be competitive and losing is part of the game, just as dying should be in PoE 2. I have heard streamers getting annoyed when they die, making it seem as if it was somehow a flaw in game-design, which it is certainly not. It makes the game better than it otherwise would be. Soccer demands of you to invest a lot of time into it to become good at it, as every great game does. PoE 2 does that, too, to an extent. But it seems the toxic feedback community that has become very vocal around this game wants this to change. They want the game to be easier, less "grindy", which is actually them saying, they want it to be less challenging and they don't want to have to become better at the game. They want the game to be like the one-armed bandit: you don't have to have skill or become better at the game. You don't have to learn the mechanics and invest time looking for secrets in the game to help you out. They don't want the game to get the best of them or stop them from progressing when they didn't put in the effort necessary. They want to sit in front of the computer, shut off their brains and click a button and let the random numbers generator do it's thing. Sometimes you get good items, sometimes you don't. Better complain a little bit more about GGG to make the droprate increase so you feel that your time was well spent.

GGG imo has to make a decision now. Should the game be about gambling, turning it's players into mindless victimized zombies or should the game challenge you to become better and hone your skills, learn the mechanics to understand the game and put the item system back into it's place: another mechanic you need to understand in order to progress and nothing more.



What do you think about this?



In kind regards