Incline Path of Exile II - early access begins December 6th

[mediocrepoet]

I can imagine myself playing Path of Exile 2 for hundreds of hours just fine. It's engaging gameplay. It's these people who I think are fucking nuts.

I'd be incredibly disappointed if PoE2 is anything close to this. Please contain this retarded gameplay to PoE1, it's for millennials with brainrot who might aswell gamble instead.

You could just watch a screen saver and randomly click a disconnected mouse for the same experience. Well, the screen saver would probably look nicer.

 

[Reinhardt]

I can imagine myself playing Path of Exile 2 for hundreds of hours just fine. It's engaging gameplay. It's these people who I think are fucking nuts.

I'd be incredibly disappointed if PoE2 is anything close to this. Please contain this retarded gameplay to PoE1, it's for millennials with brainrot who might aswell gamble instead.

You could just watch a screen saver and randomly click a disconnected mouse for the same experience. Well, the screen saver would probably look nicer.

fake news. it won't work at all. you need sounds of level ups and phat loot drops too.

 

[somerandomdude]

The skills trees in PoE can be slightly simplified if you look at "builds" as wanting specific key nodes from the skill tree, and most of them do. Then it's about the routes you take to get to them. Basically, just grab the most useful stuff for your build along the way to those specific key nodes. Quests will probably award you some respec points in PoE2, and you'll probably have something like orbs of regret, and as long as you don't goof bigly, the cost shouldn't be too much to make adjustments on the fly. Dual spec does change things a bit, but the same should hold true as far as shooting for specific key nodes, such as branching off your main route to grab a key node for your 2nd spec, etc. Of course, it's impossible to know going into PoE2 the impact of build defining unique items, that's information you'll have to adjust for at a later date.

 

[tritosine2k]

I can imagine myself playing Path of Exile 2 for hundreds of hours just fine. It's engaging gameplay. It's these people who I think are fucking nuts.

I'd be incredibly disappointed if PoE2 is anything close to this. Please contain this retarded gameplay to PoE1, it's for millennials with brainrot who might aswell gamble instead.

GEE I REALLY wonder where's that brainrot coming from afterall THEY killed mana-stacking archmage archetype in the first place and they "reintroduced" it and they had YEARS to make sure it doesn't end up this way.

Oh no, anyway...

 

[somerandomdude]

GEE I REALLY wonder where's that brainrot coming from afterall THEY killed mana-stacking archmage archetype in the first place and they "reintroduced" it and they had YEARS to make sure it doesn't end up this way.

Oh no, anyway...

It's never been about balancing the game, just constantly moving the goal post, even if the goal post returns to a position it used to be at some point. Meta-shifting is a cope - they recognize (and they're not completely wrong in thinking this) that it's impossible to balance a game like PoE. There's far to many items and passives, and skills and various systems in place to ever balance it. It's not just PoE, but most live service games adopt a similar strategy, meta-shifting vs attempting to balance the game.

So, if anyone is wondering "will PoE2 be like this?", the answer is obviously yes. Even if it's not there initially, it will get there. Because people with far too much time on their hands are going to demand they be able to speed through areas blowing entire screens up with zero risk. These are the people buying MTX, and funding the illicit RMT market. Even if that hypothetical thing that would allow them to blow entire screens up while speeding through maps is this giga ultra rare unique item worth thousands of top orbs, to them this is fine because the ultimate end goal is always to find a way to completely trivialize the game, no amount of time investment, or monetary investment is a concern here. Some people wrongfully refer to the said gamers of this category as "hardcore gamers", but these players aren't challenge seekers, they're seeking the total opposite through an extensive gauntlet of time, money, and effort. Pre-2000s, gamers like this didn't exist, these aren't hardcore gamers, they're nu-whale gamers. Every free to play game is going to be designed for the nu-whale gamer.

 

[tritosine2k]

Well I saw my share of streamers retiring from PoE and it had nothing to do with whaling on GGG's part and everything to do with near complete incapability of handling archetypes even minion.

 

[frajaq]

I really need to see more PoE 2 skills of different archetypes... show me more sword or poison skills

 

[erohakase]

I really need to see more PoE 2 skills of different archetypes... show me more sword or poison skills

Yeah, I'd like to see some more of the full dex or dex/str melee. Claws seem completely deleted in the videos showing the list of skills to pick. Hoping we get some dagger and sword stuff soon.

 

[Necrensha]

The fact alone that you can dodge and there aren't 5923473 enemies on screen means that MAYBE this time melee won't be a complete afterthought. Surely.

 

[erohakase]

The fact alone that you can dodge and there aren't 5923473 enemies on screen means that MAYBE this time melee won't be a complete afterthought. Surely.

I don't think it will be any better than PoE1. The changes to attack while moving is such an insanely broken aspect for ranged that for melee to even be remotely viable the damage numbers have to be in the realm of 5x higher at the very least which I do not see happening.

 

[Reinhardt]

show me spear combat

 

[frajaq]

show me spear combat

Isn't there footage of Huntress already?

 

[Reinhardt]

no idea

 

[Cyberarmy]

show me spear combat

 

[Reinhardt]

meh

 

[ADL]

That huntress footage was prior to WASD and them adding more momentum to combat skills.

I really need to see more PoE 2 skills of different archetypes... show me more sword or poison skills

A lot of poison was shown in the ranger reveal and we've seen some greatsword cleaves in extended marauder sessions (both with WASD).

 

[Damned Registrations]

The fact alone that you can dodge and there aren't 5923473 enemies on screen means that MAYBE this time melee won't be a complete afterthought. Surely.

I don't think it will be any better than PoE1. The changes to attack while moving is such an insanely broken aspect for ranged that for melee to even be remotely viable the damage numbers have to be in the realm of 5x higher at the very least which I do not see happening.

I feel like players and devs alike have a terrible understanding of why range dominates so hard over melee. It's not just a matter of survival (and if it were, dodging is probably more helpful at range than in melee) but of having a large window of time to freely attack. Having to stop standing in the fire (and melee range of a boss is almost always a source of 'fire') isn't the only problem there; so is having to chase after a boss that moves around, or a group of monsters scattered across an entire screen, or on the other side of chest high walls or floor pits. If something makes you spend 3 seconds moving to avoid dying, it costs the ranged player 3 seconds (though apparently now they can attack while moving? LOL) while it costs the melee player 6 seconds because they need to do a round trip. Assuming returning to melee is even an option, which it often isn't.

Making melee competitive would require some real game changing powers, things like multiple second invincibility powers to let you attack while standing in a death zone, or giving melee an equivalent of Unleash or Essence Drain, so they can pack 6 seconds of attacks into the one hit they make every 5 seconds. Stuff like ignite, bleed and poison should lean into that, but they give all those toys to the ranged players too and make them stack with themselves so more time spent attacking is still relevant. Actually viable travel attacks would be another way to go- if they were balanced against something other than a training dummy you hit with it as fast as possible. Or some magnet/vacuum effects instead of fucking knockback crippling your own melee attacks.

Edit: Forgot to mention, to make any of that work to begin with, you'd need to make a fundamental split between melee and range, since letting someone doing giant ranged AoE attacks have the same tools as the face stabbing guy will be obviously imbalanced. Letting any melee skill hit further out than about 3 meters was a huge mistake.

 

[Jaedar]

. It's not just a matter of survival (and if it were, dodging is probably more helpful at range than in melee)

Eh, dodging in melee is often faster since there are a lot of cone type attacks where dodging to the bosses back is the fastest way to dodge. Of course, ranged characters can stand in melee range when it is profitable to do so.

so they can pack 6 seconds of attacks into the one hit they make every 5 seconds.

Like attacks exerted from warcries?

 

[abija]

Like attacks exerted from warcries?

Yeah except those got balanced as if you already have 100% uptime and getting that dmg on top.

 

[Damned Registrations]

Eh, dodging in melee is often faster since there are a lot of cone type attacks where dodging to the bosses back is the fastest way to dodge.

True, but any projectile attack that takes time to move from the boss to the player is much easier to dodge at range, and if it's some kind of bullet hell shotgun, more gaps to dodge towards. You can definitely design enemies to punish staying at a distance though, and doing more of that would certainly help. Prox shields are great in that regard.

Like attacks exerted from warcries?

Yep. Aside from the fact that they were totally overshadowed by all the screenwide AoE shit, real melee bonks were probably in their best state when the exerts came out before they got nerfed into the ground. People were actually managing to make stuff like heavy strike not look like a total joke, actually useful for killing bosses. Would be nice if there were something equivalent for stuff like double slash or viper strike, like tuning phase walk up to useful damage numbers, or turning multistrike into a melee version of unleash so you could dance around and then turn into a cuisinart every once in a while.

Edit: Another idea: Make a reverse momentum mechanic, where the longer you go without hitting or killing an enemy the more it builds up. Theme it around frustration or stealth or something. Would be good to help the bottom end of the player base too, if you tweaked the numbers right. Would certainly lower blood pressure while being forced to watch some retarded cutscene of rocks falling apart or a door opening they like to shove into every league mechanic.

 

[lukaszek]

having to chase after a boss that moves around

i rage quited during one of my ruthless runs when I had to chase necromancers in prison. They move constantly while their peers keep summoning

 

[tritosine2k]

having to chase after a boss that moves around

i rage quited during one of my ruthless runs when I had to chase necromancers in prison. They move constantly while their peers keep summoning

Probably non sequitur
that shit looks worse on normal now than ~95% delirium streamer event back then.
Imagine having such soulslopified brain to think this shit will fly in mainstream.

 

[Damned Registrations]

having to chase after a boss that moves around

i rage quited during one of my ruthless runs when I had to chase necromancers in prison. They move constantly while their peers keep summoning

The one that always drives me up the wall is that one early unique map boss with the shield that runs away from you. First encountered it with a whispering ice mines build. That... that was suffering.

 

[Necrensha]

They ought to make melee faster and remove movespeed penalties AND attack speed penalties too. Why the fuck is ranger allowed to shoot 500 projectiles in every direction in the time it takes to cast one slam? And all those stupid enemies that kite you around like the snakes, the necromancers, etc, remove them or make them stand around while casting.
One the same note: enemies that dash 2 screens past you and then force you to backtrack to go after them like the skeletons and the rhoas are also pointless, annoying design that I hope they don't repeat...

 

[lukaszek]

One the same note: enemies that dash 2 screens past you and then force you to backtrack to go after them like the skeletons and the rhoas are also pointless, annoying design that I hope they don't repeat...

nah, have them run further and make necromancer pool clearing mandatory