GGG which lane are you on: Mindless Blasting or "Visceral" combat
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I'm making this thread because the recent build of the week video (Lich Last Lament) reminded of 2 things that had crossed my mind earlier regarding Poe 2.
1. About 2 weeks ago, when the league launched, my brother who doesn't play Poe asked me about Poe 2. He said "Is the combat still similar to the first one where you just mindlessly run around and fill the screen with fireworks?" 2. After the free weekend I saw a chatter in a stream say: "I didn't get to maps but I was so drawn in by the flow of combat and decided to keep watching after it ended. But every stream I click on is just people running around blasting everything. What happened to the combat that was present in the campaign?" Those 2 moments reminded of how at every press conference/interview GGG keeps saying "Visceral/meaningful combat", but what we end up actually playing is Poe 1 mindless blasting. The problem is they are designing their support gems, bosses, combo philosophy, and passive tree around slower, tactical combat, but then they copy pasta poe 1 monsters into the game. No one praises poe 1 for it's "combat" cause it's vampire survivors. You run around as fast as possible with aoe spewing out of ur character, and you pick up the shiny things that ur loot filter highlights. Even poe 1 enjoyers will tell you it's "combat" is non-existent. The reason why I brought up the build of the week video After watching the build of the week last night I noticed something. It was exactly like every poe 1 build I see. - Scale Aoe - Scale movement speed - Scale attack/cast speed. Build of the week in early poe 1 days was very interesting. You actually saw different builds that were aiming for different playstyles. Over time each build of the week video felt like a parody. "I wonder what this build will be this time. Oh look another build scaling aoe, movement, attack/cast speed". The audience will skew the direction of the game When GGG did try to show a slower build, for botw, that wasn't the usual suspect (aoe, movement, attack/cast speed) in Poe 1, people would comment with "Build of the weak". The botw videos got less and less views cause it didn't matter what interactions the builds were showing. The poe 1 audience GGG had catered too wanted "Zoom zoom", and anything that wasn't mindless blasting got little attention with the usual "build of the weak" comments. GGG over the years tried to lessen player power/speed, but the Zoom Zoom crowd wants more power and more speed. The audience you attract with a game will determine the direction of it. - Zoom zoom crowd - Slower visceral combat crowd --ZOOM ZOOM--- Every build fits the same criteria. Scale movement, scale aoe, scale attack/cast speed. Attack skills with fixed attack times like rolling slam, escape shot, etc are dead on arrival. Spells with fixed cast times like Comet will never be manually cast and only relegated to Cast on x spirit gems. Support gems that aren't generic "more dmg", "more cast/attack speed" are also dead on arrival. Rakiata's flow and Atalui's bloodletting which simply state "here's more dmg" are what they want. More is always better. More dmg, More speed, More Aoe. Nothing fancy. Just a straight up numbers game. There are certain problems that arise from this kind of game design as poe 1 has shown us. Zoom Zoom Problem How do you kill players moving at the speed of light with aoe filling 2 screens and killing everything in 1 click? Simple. You make monsters more scary when they are dead than when they are alive. You let monster dmg scale so high so that if the player does get hit in the screen of fireworks they can die instantly. You add monster abilities so stupid cause they might only get to live for 0.0002 of a second so if they get close to the player it needs to be impactful All monsters are exactly the same. Zerg the player as fast as possible and release something on death. You think the Abyss monsters teleporting to you with shroud walker and bubonic plague/degen aura that kills you in 2 seconds are bad? Wait till you see the monsters/mechanics coming down the line. They will make monsters that release goo on the ground to slow you. They'll introduce random slows appearing under ur character to slow you. Even more degens that kill you in 2 seconds or less. More monsters exploding on death. Bosses with have multiple invul phases just to add more time to the fight cause everything, including uber bosses, dies in the blink of an eye. That sounds awfully familiar to Poe 1. That's cause that is the only path a zoom zoom game will lead to. "Combat" is an afterthought. You spend more time PoBing ur character than you do actually playing it. Turn ur brain off and click ur aoe. --SLOWER VISCERAL-- Every build plays differently. Situational support gems can and will be used. It's not just about scaling attack/cast speed, movement, and aoe. Knowing what to use, and when to use it is important. Knowing what abilities monsters have and how to approach them matters. Rather than approaching every encounter the same way: "Run as fast as possible and click ur aoe. You don't know nor care what ur killing. You're only waiting for the sound ques of ur loot filter" Visceral combat Problem This requires the team making the game to be creative in their design choices. Gems and nodes on tree simply being "here's more dmg" or "here's more attack/speed" won't cut it. You also need to design monsters with abilities that can interact with other monsters. This creates a lot of new combat dynamics rather than the samey samey feel of every map. The game becomes more mechanical. Arpgs on the market right now are anything but mechanical. So people coming in expecting the game to be more of the same "mindless blasting" they're used to will voice their opinions the loudest. WHAT GGG HAS DONE SO FAR They've made the passive tree and a bunch of support gems with the idea of a visceral/meaning combat in mind. EVERY INTERVIEW OR PRESS CONFERENCE you see it's always the same talking points: - Visual Clarity - Meaningful combat As well all know the combat in poe 2 is only visually clear and meaningful in the early acts. Once you get towards the end and enter maps it's no different from the bulk of arpgs on the market. Click 1 button to wipe screen while moving as fast as possible. It feels like 2 different teams designing the game. One designing on thematics and slower gameplay, the other just copy pasting poe 1 expecting different results. Warrior and Chronomancer are 2 of my favorite ascendancies. You see so many complaints about warrior cause the warrior is designed from a thematics perspective in a game that cares not for thematics. Heavy slow hard weighty hits in a game with monsters that only zerg. Why pick Chronomancer when generic "more dmg/more speed" ascendencies like Blood mage/Deadeye exist? GGG added more movement speed to the skill tree. As you can see in the BOTW they just run around clicking 1 button like in poe 1. GGG doesn't seem to realize that movement speed is the best defense in the game. If monsters can't reach you, you take no dmg. To counter his movement speed they added, rather than removing it, they'll release monsters and ground effects that slow you randomly out of nowhere. You think chilled ground is bad? Wait till you see the other slows coming to counter the 200ms they put on the tree. As is tradition like they do in poe 1. Introduce a problem and never take it away. Then release a solution to counter the problem they introduced - Introduce stupid amounts of screen clear and power for the player. Counter this by making monsters more scary when they're dead than alive. The ones that are alive have stupid amounts of degen near them just incase they got close to you somehow - Give player stupid amounts of speed. Counter by adding random slows from ground effects, and making monster on death effects have huge aoes. - Give players suppression as a supplement to help evasion. Then increase monster ele dmg cause almost everyone is stacking suppression, thus making it mandatory for EVERYONE instead of as a supplement to evasion - Give players stupid amounts of recovery. Give monsters so much burst dmg to counter the stupid amount of recovery they gave players in the first place. Introduce something that ends up being a problem. Then introduce a solution to the problem they created rather than backtracking and taking away the problem they introduced in the first place. People going "MORE movespeed on the tree is good. IT'S FUN", don't understand what's coming to counter the more movespeed you just got. The counter won't be slow or methodical either. FINAL THOUGHTS I am not making this thread to tell GGG what direction to take the game, but rather to tell them that you cannot please both crowds. The direction you go with combat affects how you design the skill tree, support gems, monster abilities, boss fights, etc. The direction you go with combat also affects what crowd you accumulate. The type of audience you get will either support or fight you at every step of the way if you decide to try something different. For instance, you cannot slow things down in poe 1 cause the audience only wants 1 speed. They don't mechanical fights or situational gems/buff eithers. Trying to straddle the fence and claim "visual clarity/visceral combat" in interviews/press conferences, and then doing the opposite isn't helping. Making support gems and a passive tree for slower combat, then copy pasting poe 1 monsters isn't helping either. GGG needs to make up their minds and pick a lane. Are we mindlessly blasting or are we slow and mechanical? These groups want completely different games, and it would be nice to know what direction ur going in so people can have an idea of what to expect and if the game is for the them or not. Zuletzt angestoßen am 22.09.2025, 08:15:55
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Honestly, that shroud walker on abyssal monsters needs to be changed to just be like normal mobs shroud walker. Just had one in act 3, eat through almost 1700 ehp with 31% chaos res in 2 seconds flat. I could not even hit esc/respawn before it merced me. BUT I would need 5-10 seconds of combat to kill it with my PRIMARY skills (Yes, i was playing an off meta build, tempest flurry monk. TF is a fun skill, or would be if the game was balanced right). Math does not math on the damage numbers they gave these affixes. Especially when the affixes are ALREADY annoying ones like shroud walker.
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I never played poe1 before I started playing poe2, but I did try it and got to the endgame to see how things were
I feel the same as your friend, honestly This made me realize where a bunch of the bs is coming from. On death effects are probably the best example, it's a lazy mechanic from poe1 to patch powercreep that just produces cheap, annoying deaths It’s been here since day one of poe2. GGG never really thought "do we actually need this?", they just ported over the nonsense from poe1 like on death effects, off screen one shots instead of actually balancing the game in a world where they don't need to exist. "Meaningful combat" has never really been a thing, it's just that now it's even less Breach for example. That’s literally a system that rewards speed, clear speed and aoe. The very definition of a zoom zoom mechanic, and it’s the core of endgame in poe2. Totally contradicts any talk about tactical, meaningful fights You can draw the same conclusion across most systems right now, except maybe campaign bosses and sometimes the campaign itself depending on build. Everything else screams at you "go fast", there are no exceptions Pretty sad. I'm not sure this can be fixed or will be fixed |
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" It's not going anywhere as long as players move and attack/cast as fast as they do. I've been around here long enough to see how this ends. Poe 1, once upon a time, didn't have monsters with degens or monsters that could teleport on you. It was slow and methodical. As it got faster and Zoomier they started introducing the on death effects and monsters with stupid degen aura/puddles on death. GGG hasn't realized that their poe 1 design will not yield anything but vampire survivors gameplay. |
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" Yep. On death is a lazy way to "balance" the power creep they introduced. They'll tell you it's for area denial, which is false. If you're kiting monsters and dodging their abilities that's area denial. So why do monsters need to do massive aoe skills on death as well? For even more area denial? Nope, it's cause that's one way you can catch someone who's moving really fast and clearing screens ahead. When you kill monsters infront of you, you proc their on death effect. By the time you move forward to keep advancing their aoe hits you. It's a "You're moving too fast, but will tiy see all this ground stuff inbetween the fireworks show" check. " Yep. They didn't think "Do we actually really need this if the game is slow?". They are just porting combat over from poe 1 and expecting different results. Breach/Deli, and now abyss, being kill everything as fast as possible or be surrounded and die. Sounds like every poe 1 league made in the past 12yrs. " Yep. I find the early campaign to be the most fun imo. After that it's just feels like a poe 1 reskin. |
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The slow combat makes this game what it is but sadly poe 1 players wanna make it poe 1 with oneshotting bosses, screen clearing and running around with 100% increased movement speed, and ggg listents to the feedback. I didn't even went back to play 0.3 after seeing the new crossbow lich build that they put up.
The game should be about slower combat setting up combos on enemies but as long as they take stuff from 1 without reworking it it won't happen in endgame.They should make endgame content about packs going there killing a pack setting up a combo to do so not about mindless screen clearing when the enemies are everywhere (breach abyss) Also there should be no skill/build that let's you clear tier 3-4 pinnalce bosses with oneshot without having a nearly perfect gear. You should just not be able to come out of capaign and clear all content without good gear. Bossfights should take 1-2 min on hight tiers doesn't matter the build. If they keep this up they are gonna lose poe 2-s uniqueness and make another poe 1 which only poe 1 players will play. |
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The Combat of the Campaign wont attract people for long i think. The majority of people want to feel powerful and Blast enemies away.
A whole genre got created because of this concept. Ask Vampire Survivor. Vampire survivor is tbh. very similar to POE Endgame. Blasting enemies away. Zuletzt bearbeitet von Alzucard#2422 um 17.09.2025, 12:20:07
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" That's why they should try to innovate and try something new. There is no fun in mindlessly blasting through everything, that is not gameplay. Vampire survivor works because it is a rogulike. |
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" That's why they should try to innovate and try something new. There is no fun in mindlessly blasting through everything, that is not gameplay. Vampire survivor works because it is a rogulike. |
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