To veteran poe1 players: Why does poe2 exist?

Been here since 2013:

D1: you equip a sword and attack. Everything immediately feels snappy, sounds & looks good.
D2: you add pluggy + "fake frames" to run it at a 1000fps on an highend OLED -> chef kiss.

POE1: the first couple of hours you play something else because the thing that you actually want to play has 800ms input lag without gear/levels + w/e that muffled sound is supposed to be.

POE2: club swings a bit slow but it's okay-ish.

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So that's a good start for POE2. But the way I see it they got some bigger issues to solve

In D1 & D2 I go and explore a world because it's random -> POE never had that while POE 2 tries that HOMM-style atlas.

In D1 & D2 I fight monsters -> POE replaced that with modifiers because their monsters are like those vaal vacuum cleaners. POE 2 has some potential in that regard (i.e. bosses, drowning witches, shroom guys melting your minions, etc.)


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But here's something good about POE1 that I'm still missing in POE2:

- First time I opened the tree "I can be anything!"
- First time I found support gems "I can build my own skills!"

Those are great questions, thank you for asking. I've been playing PoE1 since its closed beta. I hope I can share some of my thoughts.

1) Kind of premature but, do you enjoy poe2 as much as poe1 ?
Yep! I actually prefer PoE2 over PoE1, now!

2) What does poe2 genuinely add on top of poe 1 or do it differently and better? Do you think there are substantial changes/shifts apart from graphics ?
You might laugh, but I really like the infinite atlas map. It felt really fresh to me. I liked the towers, but I didn't juice / triple tower. I just liked the sense of geography it gave.

I like the 3 tier crafting materials. I like the Huntress a lot, and I especially love the Rhoa mount. Finally, the WASD controls are amazing! I mean, there are a lot of ARPGs with WASD now, but PoE2 is still the best at it, because you can cast/shoot while moving, which is rare in other games.

Most of all, I love the quality of life in PoE2. Some of it is backported into PoE1 now, but the pressing escape to pause the game is awesome! I think as you get older and have more responsibilities, you can't focus so hard on games, anymore. If my partner calls me, I just pause and go help her. I couldn't do that in PoE1, before.

3) If I recall correctly, devs original idea was to develop the game as an expansion of poe1 but later this turned into a standalone project. If so, what do you think the reasons were?
Yeah, that's a good question. I think there are a few reasons, and some of them succeeded quite well.

One of the reasons was of course so they can try a different game philosophy. While PoE1 became very zoomy, I think they really wanted PoE1 to be slower and more purposeful. I think that didn't really pan out, but the intention was there.

Secondly, I think PoE1 was under A LOT of technical debt. They talked a lot about how when their studio was quite small and new, they custom made all the classes, and they had to animate all the skills for each of the classes. It had something to do with rigging. In PoE2, the rigging is universal, so it's much easier to add new skills and stuff. Also, PoE1 had some crazy mechanics under the hood around rarity, monsters, stats, etc. Thing like monster mods and life leech just stopped being fixable. I think PoE2 gave GGG a chance to start anew, and I think that was really worth it!

I hope that helps! Cheers! :)

The idea was to make an ARPG without the foundation flaws PoE 1 had then stacked on top of for years. Instead they just seem to be repeating the same mistakes while making new ones.

I don't think I'll ever go back to PoE1. For me the game is just too far gone. I mean this from a mechanics perspective. I've played since 2013 patchwork designs for a while.

Even thought they likely won't do it, PoE2 still has a chance to re-balance designs in the game. Something they tried a few times in PoE1 and got spam down voted on steam for doing. Something tells me they won't be able to escape the zooomer power fantasy mongrels in PoE2 either.

EDIT: For the record though. I'm not sure PoE1 ever got better than Shaper/Elder days. Some leagues like Heist stick out for the sheer amount of RPG content but since they started PoE2 we've not had that much effort put into a league since.

Finally a true OG player who understands PoE 2 better instead of blindly hating on it.

Many poe1 players mocking atlas map currently and afraid that they are getting it on poe1 with mirage update. Atlas map as a base is amazing and has insane amount of potantial to be good and interesting. What we see right now is barebones, therefore it does not add too much however when they work on it more and more in the future, it will be very fun and very interesting.

PoE 1 has crazy amount of content and with the right touch atlas map can be insane on poe1 right now, but these playerbase doesn't deserve that, let them play the same thing over and over again as long as they are happy who cares. Give them a league mechanic and ship it, that's what they want.

normie cashgrab.