The game has identity issues.

This game is being pulled in two different directions, and although it's gotten better the last few patches, it still lingers.

On one side you claim you want more methodical combat, combo skills and advanced boss mechanics.

On the other, you do your best to incentivice fast killing of mobs, and make it so that every boss is a dps test/gear check, more than anything else.

The slower gameplay work to a degree in the the first few areas of the game. In fact act 1 is pretty much there.

Then, the more you progress, the worse it gets. More monsters, more trash, more, more, more. Then you reach maps, and it's assumed that a map should take as close to two minutes to complete as possible.

The trials claim you should test skill, but it's just another gear check. Honor resistance and dps for sekhema, and just dps for chaos trials.

I really think you are going in the right direction with the lesser mob density of the latest patch, but that you need to lean even more into it.
Give the mobs a moveset, and keep them in packs of maximum 5. Increase experience appropriately.

Alternately, you need to go full poe1 with not only the possibility, but the assumption that all builds should clean three screens of mobs in one go.

This middle ground identity crisis currently going on does not make anyone happy.

+1

Yeah, the campaign and endgame are two different games.


And the endgame kind of sucks.

I just don't buy that POE 2 "combos" (rotations) would be more fun if gameplay were slower.
Good slow action games generally have reactive or timing-based combat, with mostly contextual abilities.
POE 2 ability packages are far on the opposite end from that, mostly about using hyper-synergistic (not contextual) abilities in a specific sequence to maximize damage. Buff yourself, debuff the enemy, then use your attack skills in the order you're supposed to.

If you make combat slower all that happens is this gets really repetitive.
You don't feel this in Act 1 so much because at that point you have a limited skill selection without these full synergistic packages.
But if you want to simulate a slower version of POE 2 gameplay just sacrifice all DPS for defense in the late-game. It makes for gameplay that is engaging for approximately 5 minutes before descending into utter tedium and monotony.

If anything it's POE 2's speed that is saving it from its questionable skill design.

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iobdoi#2851 schrieb:

I just don't buy that POE 2 "combos" (rotations) would be more fun if gameplay were slower.
Good slow action games generally have reactive or timing-based combat, with mostly contextual abilities.
POE 2 ability packages are far on the opposite end from that, mostly about using hyper-synergistic (not contextual) abilities in a specific sequence to maximize damage. Buff yourself, debuff the enemy, then use your attack skills in the order you're supposed to.

If you make combat slower all that happens is this gets really repetitive.
You don't feel this in Act 1 so much because at that point you have a limited skill selection without these full synergistic packages.

If anything it's the speed of gameplay that is saving POE 2 from its questionable skill design.

I am for making it slower.

So they can know that they are wrong.

Tbh I wonder if just making normal "classes" would be a better alternative to what they wanna do by this point.They clearly want the progression to be on-rails,but they also wanna make it "FREEDOM OF CHOICE" despite each base class having multiple different versions of the tree explicitly tailored to what they wanna make them do.

They can't have it both ways.Either each class is allowed to build what they want,or they just scrap the illusion of choice altogether and make each one specific.

"

iobdoi#2851 schrieb:

I just don't buy that POE 2 "combos" (rotations) would be more fun if gameplay were slower.
Good slow action games generally have reactive or timing-based combat, with mostly contextual abilities.
POE 2 ability packages are far on the opposite end from that, mostly about using hyper-synergistic (not contextual) abilities in a specific sequence to maximize damage. Buff yourself, debuff the enemy, then use your attack skills in the order you're supposed to.

If you make combat slower all that happens is this gets really repetitive.
You don't feel this in Act 1 so much because at that point you have a limited skill selection without these full synergistic packages.
But if you want to simulate a slower version of POE 2 gameplay just sacrifice all DPS for defense in the late-game. It makes for gameplay that is engaging for approximately 5 minutes before descending into utter tedium and monotony.

If anything it's POE 2's speed that is saving it from its questionable skill design.

I think there are a lot of different things being putted together when the community talks about combo gameplay and the pace of the game

Take the mercenary gameplay walkthrough video from 2023 for example, i think that was the vision they wanted to achieve at first, it had context in mind for when to use abilities, like timing the grenades against larger packs, using that ability that creates a wall of ice to separate enemies, armour piercing shot for armoured single targets, etc

Personally when i talk about poe 2 needing to be slower i'm talking about the speed of monsters and pack sizes, poe 2 doesn't offer me the ability to play like in that video, you have to clear packs extremely fast to not get swarmed by monsters and die

The rotation of skills was not linear in that video (debuff enemy, buff yourself, attack) it was very contextual

I think that poe 2 now is too unpredictable to achieve that vision of combat, like, if you run a map with a lot of monsters that uses projectiles skills or move too fast that style of gameplay will not work

The league mechanics we have also incentivizes players to do everything fast, which goes against any attempt of methodical combat too

GGG should make a video of opening a T15 breach and explaining the methodical combat design.

I'm fine either way this game goes honestly, but it would be nice after a year of EA to have some clue what exactly their design goals are.

I'd agree on that there's a bit of an identity issue.

To me, it certainly seems like there are opposite design decisions. Like the skill showcase videos focus on combo setups and slow-paced gameplay, and this design is also seen during the early campaign. But in the end game, rewards and the monster quantities are such that you are heavily incentivized to play single-click screen clear builds.

And to be honest, if you played this game like GGG's trailers, skill showcase clips, and design vision would encourage you to, you'd spend an unreasonably long time even on the campaign. Starting in A3, some of the campaign areas are massive and you are killing hundreds if not a thousand monsters before you are through the area. It'd take you over half an hour to finish a single area if you kept doing the cool combo setups and if any magic and rare monster you met took a while to kill. It's just not reasonable, given that there's 80 or so areas before you are through the campaign. Maybe that would be fun once or twice, but we're expected to play the campaign dozens of times. And well actually even on 1st time I was bored half way into the The Matlan Waterways despite having a reasonably high damage on my build.

It also appears deliberate that some skills are easy to use and scale massively and are safe. It's just so consistently so. Ranged attacks and spells are just better on every possible metric and may simply have more base DPS off the bat. Like Storm Wave; good range, good AoE. Its base DPS is 20% higher than Tempest Flurry's, which is tricky to use due to forcing you to move and can be rippy. In theory Tempest Flurry could be used to trigger Tempest Bell, but if that is your main idea, you just use Ice Strike which has more range and more damage, which is bizarre.

But yeah. It's hard to say. Cuz, obviously players also want to be able to go fast in end game and want to have a lot of explosions and stuff on the screen.