JUST when I thought I was starting to like this game.

I haven't really gamed HARD in ages. But the past week I finally started indulging in this game. Silly me.

I try this warrior build that just gets nothing but fire resists and max resists and all I have to do is max my armor on my shield. That's literally the etnire build. Like 3 stats!

And I'm having a total blast! I was able to gear so simply even on solo self found and I actually find the game to be almost too easy. And my luck with items isn't terribly great, but the skill tree is just INCREDIBLE.

JUST when I think I'm figuring everything out, boom I get some shitty unique item that's level 12 requirment that opens up an entire door.

After just experimenting with alternative means of healing to suppliment my lifesteal, I'm starting to realize that I can REALLY pump my regen, and if I pump my regen, I don't need physical lifesteal, which means I can make the jump to pure fire damage. Which means we don't need crit or any of that stuff.

And now my mind is wandering even further.

Wait a moment, I can TOTALLY make the ultra mega tanky fire sorc dude with a massive shield, and I can try to crank up a massive health/ energy shield hybrid and let go of all those shield abilities and spec PRIMARILY into sorceress.

Heck, I might even try a wand/ shield hybrid!

I was just thinking about that skill that increases your armor by like 25% per quarter second... IMAGINE HOW CRAZY HIGH YOUR ARMOR WOULD GET CASTING ICE COMET with reduced cast speed mods.

I'm thinking i'll get that stance that gives up rolling for immunity to mini stuns and just indulge in whatever singular spell I can find that just utterly nukes everything with a long cast time for ultra big unload + big defense.

Because I'm that one Warrior (Titan I think?) I I'm already at 90% capped fire resist with a shield I got with + 2 max fire and some talents, now I just gotta max out energy shield, life, and fire/ elemental / armor. No crit, just massive burning everywhere, witch some ice mixed it to just take my survivability into insane territory.

I don't like this game, I FUCKING LOVE THIS GAME.

And with just a bit of tuning, and a bit of randomization maybe unique skill gems and support gems, maybe some randomized prefixes and suffixes for unique items to spice things up. And toning down the one shotting of enemies in late game... this is going to be like the best friggin' ARPG of all damned time.

I don't get the hate, well I kinda get it.

People are entitled, people from POE 1 have ruined the dialogue surrounding this game and they want their fast and easy rise to power.

But I gotta say, the game isn't THAT hard. You just gotta change your focus a bit, the current patch made it SO MUCH EASIER!

I'm old and my reflexes are shot playing on solo self found and I'm just plowing through.

I do feel as though I'm kinda starting to hit a wall, but my gear is garbage and I just started getting tier 12 maps, and to be honest, I don't even have an urge to push forward.

I'm too damned excited to try a new build with the fire/ ice/ shield /armor/ energy shield / regen.

Like there are 50 other things I feel I need to add to that, RAGE! Did you know with minimal speccing you can get rage to massively boost your armor? Then there are a few other nodes littered around that can boost it in all sorts of other ways, and then with the talents you can use your armor against chaos damage while easily maxing 90% resists.

I'm having a damned blast.

I don't know what game you guys are playing, or why everyone is so sour. I will admit that they could do a tiny bit to gate some of this content (especially suppport gems but I have a feeling this is a placeholder setup to some degree with placeholder content for early access)

Anyway, I'm just starting to ramble. I've bitched and moaned myself that the game is too complex and it's not fun and it's too muddy.

I was wrong. After finally sitting and and playing this game enough to give it a more nuanced opinion, I can without a doubt say that the game design in this game is like the best I've ever seen in a game.

And it's not even fooking close.

Anyhow, just wanted to shout out to GGG that not everyone is on the hater/ burnout bandwagon and taking every opportunity to look a gift horse in the mouth.

This game has been an absolute blast, and once it's polished a little bit, and the servers are stable, and you guys give a little love to helping people to figure it out. I really do think the tide will turn big time, and people will fall over themselves to praise this game.

The hard part is out of the way, you guys have the most incredible core systems and balance and interesting mix of twitch and point and click play, with so many interweaving mechanics that allow you to tailor the experience however you choose without the game falling apart.

It is truly remarkable, and the more I play, the more unique items I find, the more mechanics I look into and talents I look over the more special this game shows itself to be.

Alright, prbobably went a little overboard with the praise, but just trying to balance out some of the naysaying from people who are trying to play this game the wrong way.

Once I let go of the fear of missing out, once I let go of that notion that I need to plow into the and game and have perfect gear, and just played solo self found and tried to just enjoy the ride. I REALLY friggin' did.

WAAAAAAAyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy more than I expected to.

So my advice to anyone out there playing, disgrunteled they're not wisking through the content as fast as they did in POE 1. Try to just let go of all that. Let go of the fact that there are streamers plowing htrough end game with their eyes closed on easy mode right clicking end bosses in half a second.

That's not where this game shines.

Find a build online, or start from scratch, and just start experimenting. Play solo self found, I HIGHLY recommend shield warrior with fire resist ascendency.

If new players had a bit more help finding builds like this I think the game might start resonating with more players.

What turned me off at first was the hell of trying to find all the resists on top of crit and hit chance, and the entire shmorgusborg of all the stats you need to make a cookie cutter build in an ARPG.

Only after starting my second character and kinda learing the ropes did I research other classes and find something that was really fun with low gear checks for advancement. This wasn't something a newbie would stumble on, and that is my #1 issue with the game right now. But I get it's early access so whatever!

Ok that's my giant love bomb, I just just to put that out there, Imma go back to farming gold because I'm broke as sh*t and I just f*cked my entire talent tree trying to spec into something else for the 50th time and I'm in tiers of maps way to high for me and it's a really weird spot to be right now and I love it.




EDIT:
I forgot a few key stories! So after everyone complaining about 40% runspeed boots, I got it in my head that I was entitled to them. Why havne't I found my 40% run speed boots yet!? I must have dumped 500k gold into shops and gambling trying to get them. That's where ALL my money went, boots and respeccs.

Best I ever got was 25% run speed, but the boots were REALLY good, they had magic find and fire resist and my corrupt cave it 2 slots so I could get EVEN MORE fire resist which gives 1 max resist for every 40 uncapped, so this was s uper key. And randomly as I was taking 100k to dump on gambling for boots it hit me... Do I even want those boots? I need to survive! What are the odds I get 40% run speed AND survivability that's even HALF as good as these boots.

And it dawned on me, crushing through content super fast just wasn't what I was craving, and I had been brainwashed by this community that I wasn't consuming hte game fast enough to be having any fun. And then it really hit me, DAMN! THE POE 1 community has REALLY sucked a lot of fun out of this game for EVERYONE.

Ok, and for the trial of the sekema. I was doing my first run in the cruel? difficulty mode, and it was going pretty well, I was just about to make a post, WHY IS EVERYONE WHINING THAT WAS EASY! You just gotta strategize and use a shield. Don't get hit, the worst thing you can be is too timid the best defense is a strong offense, but also use that shield, and roll under traps.

And then Igot worked by the first boss and the second bosses I thought were gonna stomp me but they were even easier!

But then I got some big open room I'd never been in before and I had to search crystals and one of the big bosses blocked a stairway and I just got stuck in it for like 15 seconds trying to roll every which way and I lost, it wasn't even honor related! Just ran out of damn time cuz of those stupid 25% run speed boots!

So then I thought, UGH! Maybe they were right, maybe this is hell! And then I was preparring to farm more items for honor resist since everyone whines about it so much, and after getting some more, I try to make another run and low and behold! My items are still there. As much as everyone bitches and moans I thought FOR SURE that those items were going to dissapere.

Then I did another run, got a 50% bonus move speed permanent boon and just frggin' crushed the damned thing.

I dunno. I don't get it. I think people here just think you're supposed to be angry and upset to fit it.

I even found the gameplay and little games to be really charming and fun.

Maybe if they made the first few runs you do shorter and easier, so you can get the hang of it first and get a few rewards so you can get this sense of "Oh yeah that time trial thing with the great rewards I did a couple times, I CAN DO THAT!" Rather than just hitting a brick wall out of nowhwere.

But agian, early access, so we gotta take it all with a grain of salt.

I'm going to be honest here, but the relationship here between GGG and many of you guys is really toxic. Many of you act like spoiled children kicking and screaming and sometimes people get so worked up they don't even know what they're whining about any more. They just want the thing, they want what they want, and they aren't willing to just toughen up for the sligthest bit of time to see that it's early access and things are going to be fine.

It's actually borderline abusive, and it's gone WAY beyond productive criticism.

It's actually mind blowing to me how GGG can deliver you guys such an amazing game, give you so much good will, and be so open, and this is hope you behave, by doing everything in your power to try to destroy this great game.

F*cking shameful.

Grow up.

YES! Loved reading about your experience. Let me add my two cents, to help tip the scales ever so slightly with some more positive feedback.

I played a lot of OG Diablo 2 back in the day. I'm closing in on my forties now, and I essentially haven't gamed at all the last ten plus years. Then last year I started playing Diablo 4. Got into it hard, but tired after a while. Comments in chat mentioned something called PoE2 soon going into early access and out of boredom with D4 I installed PoE1. I didn't really dig it and so back to Diablo it was. PoE2 looked really promising though, so I decided I would give it a try once EA was over and done with. Well, in february curiosity got the best of me and I installed PoE2 EA. I haven't looked back since.

There's SO MUCH potential here. I mean, it's already an exceptional game, with a lot of fun complexity to explore with interactions between the passive skill tree, ascendancies, skill gems, gear, and especially unique items. But the base content is only halfway there, which it seems many are forgetting. I am so excited to see how the game will grow with each added class, ascendancy, skill and support gem and all the fun build variations it will bring to the game.

Because that's why I'm falling in love with this game over and over: there's so many different ways you can BUILD a character. I creep around these forums an unhealthy amount and I see so much needless negativity and while I can understand that it is likely born out of frustrations with the game not too dissimilar from my own (the continuous server disconnects top the list), I have a hard time understanding why some people feel so entitled to spew so much hate on something, instead of giving actual workable feedback. Is it really that difficult to say "This isn't working the way I would like, is there a way to change it so that it works this way instead?", instead of "Fix loot", "Worthless uniques", "This pace is tedious, let me go zoom-zoom", "This is ruthless mode from PoE1 and everyone hated that", "Crafting sucks"...?

I never had a problem with the screen not being showered with rare loot with every other rare mob you kill and I while I will admit that loot drops feel a bit better now, I would NOT want to see drops get buffed any more. Sure, this is an Action RPG but that also inherently means it's a Role-Playing Game. Just like Chris Wilson mentioned in his recent interview with Daniel Brevik, I too want to feel immersed in the world I'm playing in and PoE2 manages to achieve that with stunning visuals, beautiful audio and an extraordinary art style. Drowning in loot honestly takes away from the experience for me. I want to feel thrilled when a new unique drops, or when I finally see a yellow whatever-I'm-currently-looking-for drop and I get to identify it, hoping the RNG-gods are kind, and that won't be the case if every other minute I get a new large batch of loot. What will happen instead is I won't even bother picking it up to check if it's any good.

There are other games out there if you just want to go zoom-zoom, blasting everything and get showered with loot. I'm so excited about this game because it slows the pace down a bit, and you have an ebb and flow of more intense areas in the campaign. The gameplay preview videos that were initially released, where Jonathan is utilising a full set of different skills and combos are SO COOL. And so it makes me very sad when I see how the most vocal players seemingly want to push the game towards a faster paced thing and how the meta is turning everything into one-button-builds. Imagine you're watching John Wick, but instead of dynamic and exciting action sequences, and situations where the odds are stacked against him big time, he's just running around without a care in the world taking down every single adversary with the same roundhouse kick, over and over and over. Would you want to watch that movie? Other than for the obvious meme quality of it, that is? Didn't think so. So why does it seem many want to play a game like that? Maybe I've understood the negative feedback all wrong. Hopefully it only seems that way and the reality is different, with many players ignoring the meta and just having fun exploring different alternative home-brewed builds. Anyway, I digress.

There are plenty of great unique items in the game and there's plenty build variety already. In fact, every time I see a new unique item drop I don't disqualify it as useless, even if the stats look underwhelming at first sight, but instead get to thinking "What build could make this thing work?". Someone has designed this with something in mind and now I get to figure out how to use it in a cool way. Now, I'm not saying all design is good design and some of it just isn't your taste either way, but I'm just proposing giving things some thought before dismissing everything that doesn't say "Will make you an instant uber-slayer". I love putting together non-meta builds capable of running T15-16 maps equipped with "worthless" uniques, partly out of spite to prove the naysayers wrong, but mostly because these items tickled something in my brain and I also friggin' love how they all LOOK UNIQUE:

- A melee necromancer Smith of Kitava Leap Slamming his way to glory, leading a trail of undead minions whose singular purpose is to pump up his offense a great deal thanks to The Dark Defiler sceptre. The Embitter support gem converts all that extra chaos damage into cold and boom goes the mobs. Add some Armour breaker and Perfect strike to handle bosses and a bit of Sunder to mix things up a little with mobs and you've got a super fun build to play. The minions act as a meat shield too, which makes for a bit of a different melee experience which is cool.

- A melee tri-element spear- and shield-wielding aura Tactician using the uniques Window to Paradise, Radiant Grief, and Wake of Destruction together with Polcirkeln to employ a devastating main combo of Shattering Palm, Elemental Sundering and Raise Shield. Zooming right into the middle of a mob and increasing freeze build-up with Shattering Palm, igniting everyone with Radiant Grief and shocking some monsters thanks to the shocked ground Wake of Destruction leaves behind. Cue Elemental Sundering to consume those ailments and then Raise Shield to apply tri-elemental exposure right before the explosions pop off to trigger tri-heralds. Throw a Rapid Strike in there to deal with tougher mobs and bosses and it's a party.

- Currently leveling a cold and lightning sorcerer Invoker focused on power charge utilisation to generate more and harder hitting critical strikes thanks to Redflare Conduit, Atziri's Acuity and Disdain together with Powertread and the Potential support gem.

I will end this little love letter with a question with regards to the continuous server disconnects: is it impossible to create a SSF offline version/league of/for the game? I don't really care for trading, and especially not if it means I can play a stable version of the game and not have to worry about server rollbacks.

Keep up the fantastic work GGG and please stick to your vision. It's possible to make an awesome and fun slower paced combo-skill isometric ARPG, you're just facing so much push back, hate and trolling because that's not been the norm and you have a few kinks to iron out before everything falls perfectly into place. It's not a game for everyone and that's okay because PoE1 and many other ARPGs still exist. I already love your game (650 hours and counting) and I am looking forward to seeing it fully realised with what might very well become the gold standard for isometric ARPGs for many years to come with 1.0.

Thanks for the optimistic reply!
I'm busy getting my arse handed to me after dumping all my money into a TERRIBLE BUILD!

ROFL, WHAT WAS I THINKING! That skill doesn't work with spells, it only works with attacks, and spells are so gimped out of the gate you DOOMED if you try getting a shield / spell build going from the warrior tech tree side XD

I'll respond to this thread proper tomorrow now that I'm "feeling the burn" a bit again.

Damn, maybe I just got lucky with that build, but I certainly just learned the hard way not to try adjusting your build when it's working and you don't have 100k saved in the bank in case you goofed.

EDIT: My perspective has shifted pretty dramatically in the past 30 minutes. Gonna sleep on it and make a reply tomorrow.

"

SvartKattAlexander#5489 schrieb:

"It's possible to make an awesome and fun slower paced combo-skill isometric ARPG, you're just facing so much push back, hate and trolling because that's not been the norm and you have a few kinks to iron out before everything falls perfectly into place."

Completely agree, I just experienced that the past several days and now just a few moments later it kinda feels like that perfect order and fun balance falling apart as I don't remember what my build was, my items are scattered, all my skills are missing their proper corresponding support gems.

So anyway, not sure if this is a waste of time posting a critical feedback deep in a thread such as this, but here goes.

"CE'ST NAS PAS UN PIPE", is a famous painting. It's a painting of a pipe, but that's all it is, a painting. We see the image, we know what it's supposed to represent, but at the end of the day it's just dried paint on a canvas, that you can't actually smoke out of.

So we all know there are no guns in this game, there are no swords, or shields, or axes or maces.

The only thing that separates all this stuff are some strings, a bit of art, a pallet swap, and some edge case functionality that says "Fire does DOT damage, and Lightning enhances all incoming damage."

In fact the sameness is right down to the skill's digital DNA. We've all read the stuff on magnitudes and the somewhat confusing formulas behind them.

Let's invent a fake skill, let's call it "quijibo strike". Quijibo strike can only be executed when you equip the wet noodle weapon, and what it does is it inflicts the target with beffudlement. But what does beffudlement do? Well easy! The same thing as everything else. It does extended quinchent affect for 7 times the nearby mobs strength value divided by how far you are from town. But mind you, some enemies are immune to quigibo strike, so you may want to skill in your new skill tree other areas of the game where quijibo strike is more effective, some would go so far as to say as overpowered in some cases.

I've probably droned on way too long already, the point of this forum isn't to tell GGG why some of the systems aren't always fun all the time, though they have the potential to be as I have just experienced first hand.

That's the BAD, there is this massive sort of tumor of game logic, that is all some ubiquitous system that adds 30% extra damage, it has a duration that's annoyingly short, half the enemies in the game are immune to it unless you invest into it further, and it costs lots of mana, has a long delay before proccing, and has a long cast animation.

And they are all largely the same, they are all the same tiny, simple puzzle, but they all interconnect with one another to join this massive framework of endless 30% bonuses and detriments on and on and on.

Enough droning on. Imma just make this suggestion section short and sweet.

Go through with a scalpel and gut ALL of this crazy, samey intermixed bonus systems that though they create a somewhat interesting puzzle, at the end of the day they create nothing more than an overly complex finite state machines that demands adherence to builds for 99% of players who don't have the time to sit down and pour over this stuff.

There are SO MANY cool and inventive systems that are being held back by this darned talent tree.

In a way, the talent tree represents Path of Exile I still having its hands on the game, and it's constricting all these amazing new systems and mechanics.

In trying to make everything custom, you guys have made everything the same.

What does leap strike do? Well whatever you want! Heck you can even make it a defensive skill that heals you if you want! But it has taken arduous and painstaking balancing to make sure each of these custom setups don't get out of hand.

I hate that I'm naysaying this system because it truly is a marvel. After just playing the warrior for the past week and just having a blast all these neat mechanics.

But I'm not tied to this system, I don't have the sunk cost of that entire tree and all the builds that will spring from it. And I can't help but think after just experiencing first hand how fragile it is, that the talent tree is at the very heart of this game being in limbo trying to find the core progression loop.

It's to the point that you can't even write a post exlaining why it doesn't work, because theoreticallyl it COULD work. You guys have created all the tools for progressoin and randomness at so many points along the way that it's impossible to even talk about the merits and the detriments of this insanely large talent tree.

But at the end of the day, it is only the illusion of depth, it is only the illusion of choice. And all these fun new mechanics of charge attacks and dashes, and rolls, they get crushed by the weight of all these 30% this, 30 % that.

All these years, we have fire restist, we have lightning resist, we have frost resist.

Ice slows, typically does a bit less damage and one is red and the other is purple. That's about it! And we can dress up all these systems with meandering conditions and durations and so forth, but when there is no theme, when one attack doesn't tend to have any sort of defining style in play, the whole thing kinda turn to mush.

Just gut the talent tree. Come up with defining aspects of fire, ice, and lightning that DEFINE THEM. Lighning maybe stuns and enhances other skills damage outputs, a great compliment if you want quick sudden enhnacement to damage.

Don't go overboard with tons and tons of % change this, percentage change that.

Anyway, i would say, just take that damned talent tree out. Give the other systems room to breathe.

I can only imagine how amazing this game would be if you guys unloaded those talent functionality and put them as random mods on the skill gems. Maybe tie quality to use, so the longer you use the gem, it starts to lose its luster, but you can use rare stuff to fix them and make them eternal, otherwise they break and this would encourage players to mix and match. Just spitballing ideas here.

Anywho. I don't drone on too much, it's easy to come up with idea, it's easy to naysay and pick things apart in hindsight. I have nothing but respect for the work that's been done thus far, and I can't help but marvel at the psat week thinking how great that feeling of having my brain frozen thinking of all the possibilities to eek out just a TINY bit more damag,e or get a build together I was a BIT more comfortable/ happy with how it played.

But the key problem is, we don't feel like we're making a build, we're not really making a play style, we're just finding ourselves locked into these puzzles where we need to figure out how to do enough damage and survive and at some point it doesn't really feel like we're deciding if we want to be tanky or if we want to zip around or if we want to do longn DOT spells and slwo enemies, or define our playstyle much at all really.

It's a delicate balance, you let things get too far out of whack and the game loses its challenge and it all falls apart.

Anyway, shitty post doing a bate and switch, but this really did kinda happen in real time.

I was just so overjoyed with how good I was beggining to see this game, only to in an instant realize how fragile that gaming moment was, and I just don't know how you guys can salvage the skill tree. It's too big, it's too hard to balance, it's too ingrained in the heart of how every single aspect of this game works, and because of that it's going to be this endless tweaking and tuning to make everything all the same.

Because at the end of the day ice is just blue, and fire is red, and lightning is purple. And if they can all do dot, if they can all do instant damage, and they can all crit and all that jazz... you're kinda just building this massive complex system that doesn't go anywhere, doesn't have any form, doesn't have any true link to the gameplay.

However you want to do it, you guys gotta stop overlaying these same arbitrary number systems and get down to more gameplay type stuffs. Cooldowns, short periods of speed boost, short perdiods of increased tankiness, THINGS LIKE THIS! THings that impact the play, give a unique flavor to playing these classes. Nothing too specific, broad strokes in the skill tree, let the unique items and rare prefixes and affixes do the job of spicing up play that you're trying to pull off in the talent tree.

The item system, the crafting system and all these cool gameplay mechanics have so much room to grow and fiind their own identity if they can be released from this false promise of that darned, bloated talent tree.

Ok, sorry for hte longer blather, hope there were some nuggets of useful feedback amidst all that pretentiousness.

I love this game, I love going out and trying the slightly tooled up loadouts and trying to find that perfect build that barely gives you the edge to push forward and the experimentation and the perfect mix of grind and randomness and crafting. And I hate to say it, but I love the skill tree too, but something in my gut tells me that it's this big bloated machine that's kind of like the cancer metastasizing across the entire game with all these samey 30% mechanics that are just making everything ultimately all the same.

"

So my advice to anyone out there playing, disgrunteled they're not wisking through the content as fast as they did in POE 1. Try to just let go of all that. Let go of the fact that there are streamers plowing htrough end game with their eyes closed on easy mode right clicking end bosses in half a second.

not sure why so many people think the disgruntled are poe 1 vets or easily influenced by streamers.

i dont need to be either to know the servers are crap.

the loot is crap.

crafting is crap.

visibility is crap.

skill balance is crap.

build diversity is crap.

now having said that, glad your enjoying yourself.

"

not sure why so many people think the disgruntled are poe 1 vets or easily influenced by streamers.

i dont need to be either to know the servers are crap.

the loot is crap.

crafting is crap.

visibility is crap.

skill balance is crap.

build diversity is crap.

now having said that, glad your enjoying yourself.

Hey, performance is crap too.

"

crazyfingers619#3901 schrieb:

you guys gotta stop overlaying these same arbitrary number systems and get down to more gameplay type stuffs. Cooldowns, short periods of speed boost, short perdiods of increased tankiness, THINGS LIKE THIS!

Out of it all I really like this part the most.

The pigeonholes you are running into are not due to the tree imo, but rather due to the restrictions of skill/support/weapon you can use them with. Starting few years ago they started restricting skills in both games, and I think they trying to balance this game around streamers and their OP builds, which sucks. They brought bunch of gems and skills but they gated their use to the point that you can't use them beyond their intended combo config. this is equivalent to those quest markers in newer games. its both convenient for devs and players, because devs don't need to balance the whole game, they can just point you to the place they want you to be. It kills a lot of discovery imo, cuz once those hard checks would be removed you could invent your own build from ground up. its kinda like lego vs jigsaw puzzle.

long ramble but cool thread none-the less. lets hope this suggestion i quoted will be seen because we could really use some of that here.

"

AintCare#6513 schrieb:

The pigeonholes you are running into are not due to the tree imo, but rather due to the restrictions of skill/support/weapon you can use them with. Starting few years ago they started restricting skills in both games, and I think they trying to balance this game around streamers and their OP builds, which sucks. They brought bunch of gems and skills but they gated their use to the point that you can't use them beyond their intended combo config. this is equivalent to those quest markers in newer games. its both convenient for devs and players, because devs don't need to balance the whole game, they can just point you to the place they want you to be. It kills a lot of discovery imo, cuz once those hard checks would be removed you could invent your own build from ground up. its kinda like lego vs jigsaw puzzle.

long ramble but cool thread none-the less. lets hope this suggestion i quoted will be seen because we could really use some of that here.

Thanks for this reply. Yeah, I could REALLY feel this during my play and is absolutely the reason I am now taking a little break. The game is supremely restrictive in what gear you can use, what support gems work with other gems and extremely punishing if you attempt to try something different.

POE 2 is a tinkerer's paradise where you have this complex puzzle to augment bit by bit, but it's so restrictive that if you make too much of a change, the whole thing falls apart, and you are no longer competitive, this outcasts the vast majority of players from trying the game.

I'm going to post a few more suggestions here for getting the game on track.

Remove the bulk of secondary systems from the game as they exist now where anyone can access them. Curses, Daze, Bleed, etc.

These are huge scaling points ruining the game. At the low end they ostracize players trying to make them worthwhile and usable, how do you even get them to proc? At the high end they are too powerful and making players too strong.

These should be restricted to unique items. On the subject of unique items, they are too rigid and powerful. What if unique items had just one stat and the rest was randomized, and these could not be crafted so what you get is what you get, MAKE THEM NO DROP! Trade has killed the balance of this game in so many ways and is a huge component of the streamer/ expectation of the players that has ruined the enjoyment of POE 2 at large.

Point is all these multitudes of mechanics that give 30% this and 30% that are ruining the game, because at the high end they give too much power, and balanced around that players are forced into cookie cutter builds.

By offloading the modifiers to random items, you remove the cookie cutter nature of it all, while encouraging fun discovery and throwing players curveballs that make their progress more fun and centered around killing enemies, not agonizing over a large skill treee.

When players are given interesting options in their items the game is more fun and rewarding. When you have a build in mind and you're playing towards that you either go to trade and the game just evaporates and you're playing a paint by numbers game until the point you're overpowered as heck and the game is no fun.

This is impossible to balance as well since you're designing for players who are no incridibly underpowered because they don't know how to make a proper build, and players who know how to make the perfect build and have access to all these powerful overlaying modifiers.

So ultimately, what needs to happen to make it possible to balance the game is to reduce both the power of these abilities and the sheer number that players have access to.

You guys are focusing too much on cast speeds and duration out of the gate, and these abilities aren't fun to use. STOP THIS! Make them fun and usable but reduce their potency a bit, instead of 20% make it 10% out of the gate but let it last for 20 seconds, that's nice! From here maybe allow the player to get a skill that reduces the duration but increases it's potency. THIS gives you interesting areas to invite the player to invest their skills further. You could lendt his design to ignite and bleed and such.

"Shock cuases enemies to take increased damage from melee hits", or ice, or fire. You guys need to curtail the blanked bonuses and utlitiy of these elmeents a bit and make specializations give those things, this way players have a place to spend talent points without things snowballing outside of control, while making builds that make them feel "custom"

Most importantly, IMO you guys need to make look NO DROP! And offload some of these really cool mechanics to loot.

When players know the power before them, when they know they can just get specific items on the auction house, THIS is where ALL of the most major problems for the game stem from!

So now you guys are balancing perfect builds optimized by throngs of players, they are hyper optimized using all the components of the game alll stacking on one another to producing ABSURD damage.

OFFLOAD THOSE MECHANICS TO ITEMS AND SKILL GEMS!

This makes it so that players can't have access to them without giving up power in other areas, and by making them rare mods on items and uniques, it also means they are more likely to be using lesser gear to achieve these results assuming the items are self found.

So to reiterate, shrink the power of the talent tree, make abilities less gimped in a multitude of ways, but limit their availability, give customizeable utility of skills that create builds by unlocking key use cases, not in infinite scaling power.

All of these things combined make the game WAY more fun, because the player is finding the cool utility they used to just assume they were getting on the talent tree, and they are now considering builds and discovering how to play the game as they find items with truly exciting item mods.

How absolutely cool would it be if you found gloves that just said "50% chance to cause bleed on hit". How much more fun would that be than the current slew of choices we have in this talent tree?

Simple to the point, makes items fun and interesting.

So we would need rare and unique prefixes and affixes, and these super potent ones would have to be unique to item types to prevent too much overlap.

This also makes it possible to gate powerful combinations like being able to get too much overlapping mechanics at once.

Really imagine this. Imagine finding loot with wild and more inventive modifiers and them being very rare and powerful. Imagine having to choose between +3 levels to skills and 20% bleed chance on hit. And bleed simply did 1% health per second with no crazy secondary complexity to try to understand. And your talent tree allowed you to enhance this bleed damage or to enhance the lifetap you get from bleeding enemies.

We need more interplay between our item setups, ability uses, and skill trees.

Currently too much of our build, too much of our power is derived by the talent tree, and this removes the exploration and the interest that unique and item mods could have on items!

So the best thing about all these changes is they would not require huge retoolings of core sysems to accomplish. But it would take intense design.

IMO, the talent tree as it stands is too powerful, too bloated with a singular flawed design philosophy that ends up making the game overly complex, with too much scaling power, and too many cookie cutter builds that are too strong, and too many builds that are too weak.

Here's a thought, eveyrone is crying for the ability to move faster... let them do this in the talent tree! But make it expensive, make them have to give up survivability and offesnive ability to kite enemies and run past content.

In the end, power is too predictable right now, and it is derived from too many sources, and it's not even that fun to get! When I play POE 2 right now I don't feel like I'm playing an action game trying for that next piece of loot with the next really cool mod on it, instead I feel like I'm playing spreadsheet simulator where I have a predetermined power level and all I'm doing is figuring out the puzzle to that build as it exists in a specific talent tree setup.

You guys gotta set that abilities and mods free from the talent tree. And in doing so jazz up the items, the mods, the support gems.

Gut the overly complex magnitude system, make shock ignite, bleed etc. all have simple and fun, but SCALEABLE mechanics, that make sense and are balanced but don't scale so heavy with working builds so that balance doesn't get out of hand.

Find the right mix of power from talent tree and items. Talent trees should be for fun actiony stuff, and build defining mechanics. Try more pluss/ negative type stuff. Enhanced regen while standing still, but less when moving, THAT would be really cool, and doesn't create purely positive mechanics that just get out of hand and can crush any and all content in the game.

Sprinkle +1% run speed nodes, +1% lifetap. Powerful things in smaller chunks, disperse the power across many nodes and drop the total potency of the talent tree to about 20% of what it is now.

This will make the game WAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY easier to balance.

Now put that power on the items and the random mods, make it takes a long time to get them. Maybe make a new crafting item that enhances these mods in power and it takes LOTS of farming ot push it to their limits.

Currently you can craft things to their max potency with little effort, make it cost 2x as many armor scraps to go from 5 quality to 10, and 4x to 15, and 8x to 20. Make scraps no drop so players have to play the game.

Now players are actually having to take thyeir time, they are finding cool things and they are engaging and killing and farming and improving htemselves while learning the core mechanics of the game in a thrilling manner!

Ok last suggestion, and it's not to GGG, it's to the community.

Do you guys want this game to get better? It doesn't seem like it, you have done everything in your power to whine and complain and act in the most vile and disgusting ways while showing no gratefulness to GGG whatsoever.

POE 2 is an incredble project from so many perspectives. While things are a bit off balance and there are bugs, it is early access and they are adressing all this.

There is no more thankless job in this world than being a gamedev trying to fix a broken system.

It takes absolutely nothing from you guys to be a bit less toxic. The WORST PART of POE II is its community at the moment. If we were a bit more patient and grateful and optimistic, this game would be many times more fun than it is now, it's the community ruining the fun more than anything!

Games are made by people, and when people are burned out, and they're not feeling appreciated and they're pissed, they're not doing their best work.

It takes NOTHING from us to grew the heck up and be a bit more appreciative, and that's all it would take to create a better dialogue and a better game from our end.

So before you make your next entitled, whiney, and toxic post, think about that. GGG has a boulder on their back, and we have the supremly easy job of just not being so ungrateful.

To be fair, there are issues, big issues, but there is also incredible promise, and the core of this game is just so damned good.

POE 2 deserves better from us.

ah yes... i remember my first week........ see u ina month or so.

"

AintCare#6513 schrieb:

"

crazyfingers619#3901 schrieb:

you guys gotta stop overlaying these same arbitrary number systems and get down to more gameplay type stuffs. Cooldowns, short periods of speed boost, short perdiods of increased tankiness, THINGS LIKE THIS!

Out of it all I really like this part the most.

The pigeonholes you are running into are not due to the tree imo, but rather due to the restrictions of skill/support/weapon you can use them with. Starting few years ago they started restricting skills in both games, and I think they trying to balance this game around streamers and their OP builds, which sucks. They brought bunch of gems and skills but they gated their use to the point that you can't use them beyond their intended combo config. this is equivalent to those quest markers in newer games. its both convenient for devs and players, because devs don't need to balance the whole game, they can just point you to the place they want you to be. It kills a lot of discovery imo, cuz once those hard checks would be removed you could invent your own build from ground up. its kinda like lego vs jigsaw puzzle.

long ramble but cool thread none-the less. lets hope this suggestion i quoted will be seen because we could really use some of that here.

This is a great point! It does seem that they are balancing the game around the streamer one shot builds, and while in a way that's sad, I do see why they think they sort of have to do it because otherwise everyone and their mother will feel like they're missing out if they're not playing those builds. Personally, I don't agree with that type of reasoning, but I'm guessing the data just proves me wrong and for the majority of players this is true.

Anyway, back to the point. I completely agree with how restricting gems and skills the way it currently is implemented kills discovery. I was quite sad to hear Jonathan shoot down the suggestion of opening up skill gems to be used with more than a singular weapon type.

I mean, sure, for some types of attacks/spells maybe it doesn't make sense to open them up to other weapon types. Take slams for example. Perhaps makes the most sense to have them be associated with maces. BUT... What if you could do, say a leap slam or rolling slam equipped with a spear and when you hit the ground, instead of stun build-up you have spears shooting out of the ground in a circle around you, like a mini spearfield, applying incision to monsters?

Rake would be totally possible/feasible to do with any martial weapon. Just change what happens with it, e.g. stun build up and knockback with blunt weapons, bleed with sharp weapons.

Thunderous leap would be cool to be able to do with any weapon type.

WHAT IF you could combine different skill gems? Use a skill gem as a support gem in a different skill gem, the way you put one in a meta trigger skill gem but it's an active skill? Let's say you put ice nova into spearfield and BAM! now you've got a spearfield with icicles shooting out in front of you instead.

Let's say you combined firestorm with your basic spear throw: one spear goes up in the sky and splits into a number of burning spears that rain down.

Combine bone cage with rain of arrows and now it's raining pinning bone arrows/shards from the skies instead.

The sky's the limit for how this could be implemented.

I've got to stop it with the suggestions now because not only am I getting all excited about something I will never see in the game but I'm also realising how restrictive the build systems really are in their current state. It's a huge step forward compared to something like Diablo 2, obviously, but I can't help but feel there's some wasted potential for more fun and creativity here.

It's the creative possibilities that make me come back to this game day after day for nearly five months straight now, and it would be so amazing if the devs opened up for even more of them.