This last interview gives weight to my suspicion that PoE2 is going to underdeliver on many fronts, because they pivoted the project into a standalone way too late and are now behind the schedule on fundamental systems like Story Delivery. The way Jon talked about it, when Preach asked him yesterday, sounded like they don't have a good answer for this yet and the beta is in 6 months already. In a post BG3 world you just can't do the PoE1 style monologuing anymore, but if you try doing what BG3 or d4 does with their ingame cutscenes, you run into the problem of no character customization. Which they expressly rejected because each class is supposed to be distinct and solidified.
Speaking of classes. I feel like right now in PoE1 all 7 classes are very distinct, but I feel like it's going to suck in PoE2 with 12, 6 being basically only variations on a theme. It's going to muddy the RP aspect without truly satisfying anybody, because you need proper custom char creation for that.
Their solution to the "all endgame items are crafted instead of picked up from the floor" problem doesn't convince me either. I can see it going wrong in so many ways. Your inventory gets filled way too quickly with all the armours and 2-handers and you have to make constant trips to town, but you still end up with garbage. You are constantly picking up bases and trying to craft on them mid map, slowing the gameplay to a crawl. There aren't enough bases dropping and progress becomes so unreasonably slow that you just give up and buy the upgrade from another player anyway, just like you're doing it already in PoE1. What players really want is to just drop an identified upgrade on the floor, or a great 5-6 mod item, or a +2 spells wand or something, not having to constantly loot unidentified gear in hopes of hitting some astronomical jackpot. Their philosophy on the ID Scroll prevents them from doing that.
Obviously, none of the above are an issue to new players, for whom PoE2 really is. They are all going to be very happy with PoE2, but not because GGG solved all the problems and made a truly great game, but because there isn't really any competition out there.
