Kind of strange to see all these big updates to PoE while PoE 2 gets perpetually delayed.
As a long term player of PoE, I don’t really see myself playing PoE2 long term. My expectation is it’ll be fun to play once or twice and a good game to onboard new players to the franchise, but it won’t have the same depth of complexity as the original.
Also, the whole “gameplay decisions matter” doesn’t vibe with me. Perhaps that’s a bit baffling, but what I want is that gearing decisions matter, and deciding what content to do matters, but regular gameplay mostly only matters when when you choose to do challenging content.
I think GGG realizes that a significant portion of their core player base isn’t completely sold on PoE2, and that’s why they’re developing both in parallel.
Additionally, and this is specific to the addition of a marketplace, they’ve always maintained that they didn’t want to add it because frictionless trades would be bad for the game’s economy. So I think they see this as more of a test whereas a lot of players see it as an outrite win.
I think one of the major reasons why they are having to do PoE 2 is because the game has garnered a reputation of being a spreadsheet simulator, which really hurts any new users from picking the game up. This is, of course, an almost imminent death to any game. There is also some truth in it, in how the game has bloated itself to where it is now, where any seasonal character has to click 50 buttons between running maps.
PoE2 lets them not have to invest time in their current set of issues and start fairly afresh. Even if half of their committed users don’t pick up 2, it is still bound to outperform 1, I feel.
Context: I’m a serial-dipper of PoE. The thing that puts me off the late-game/consistent game-loop of PoE is for sure the amount of management required between maps combined with the fact that none of the abilities feel as nice and impactful as those from the likes of D3 even. This means that running a map is walking and spamming 1-2 buttons and then when I get back spending 20x as long dealing with combing through the quantity of trash I picked up.
The spreadsheet and build/gear planning is something I typically enjoy, though with the scope of PoE I usually just follow guides. I’ve started to think that ARPGs just aren’t for me recently, because few really seek to tackle the issue of scaling numbers and difficulty leaning towards a dead-or-not binary style of play. Dropping your entire health in less than a second because of some specific circumstances does not make for a compelling level of difficulty/challenge.
Oh it absolutely is, and it’s totally understandable why they’re making PoE2. But I think there’s also a sizeable number of players whom that aspect (ye old spreadsheet simulator, that is) really appeals to, and what’s more is that they’re very devoted to the game. And while PoE2 might have a broader appeal, I’m not so convinced that it’ll be able to retain as many of those players.
Whenever developers say “Choices Matter” I just kind of filter it out because it’s never come true yet.
I mostly agree. I kinda felt decisions mattered in a game like Disco Elysium, but you’re still essentially on the same overall track; the only way, things could really matter is if the story lines completely diverge, and that almost never financially makes sense, since you’d essentially be making multiple games and selling it as one.
I don’t think that’s the distinction that GGG is trying to get at though. What they’re going for is making micro-decisions matter. You have to turn your brain on and use it for combat most of the time to stay alive, so you can’t just zone out and go on autopilot then pay attention for when you know you’re going to need it. They want to focus on a much more active play style where there are more telegraphed attacks and dodging all the time.
I enjoy those mechanics too, but I don’t want them all the time. I want a blend of hard and easy, if that makes sense. I want to be able to blast through some content and make my goal clearing it as efficiently as possible, not worrying about dying every second.
And maybe I’m concerned about nothing, and it won’t be that way, but I’d rather try it and be happily surprised than go in with high expectations and be disappointed.
Sounds an awful lot like a discontinued Diablo III feature on the surface - wonder if the modern gaming landscape will tolerate this now.
The “currencies” are all ingame. Because PoE has no actual currency like gold pieces or anything, players trade in consumable items like Chaos Orbs and Chromatic Orbs that augment items with random outcomes. The introduction of a market ingame helps facilitate trades that players were previously using external websites and forums to make.
Even the NPC shops trade for identification scrolls and have “recipes” where you put in ID scrolls to get teleportation scrolls and you can keep trading upwards.
Diablo III wishes it could be PoE.
That’s kinda half true. It’s certainly GGG’s intent, and there’s no official way to buy in game currency for real money, but you can absolutely buy it through third party websites. So effectively, you can still sell items for real money, you just risk getting banned.
But yeah, you’d be correct that the currency market doesn’t really help facilitate that. It was just already happening.
Trading in this game is hands down the single worst experience (aside from dota pub games) I’ve ever had. Ssf made me so happy because i literally never had to worry about trading. I want to trade. I like to trade. I didn’t like copy/pasting spam for 4 hours only to get 1 reply.
It’s nothing like that. You can already trade currencies between players. This just means that you can buy someone’s listed offer with one click instead of whispering 100 people hoping someone will respond and trade with you. Players have been asking for a feature like this for a long time and the announcement has been received extremely positively.
Plus, they’re only adding it to the next temporary league (which is like a season). They said the Q&A that the intention is to keep it afterwards but if it for some reason completely fucks up the economy they still have an out.
Currency in path of exile is a collection of items which can be use on gear and weapons, but also used with in game traders to barter goods. This currency enchange is an automated way to convert say, an item which reconfigures the linked slots on a piece of armor into one which rerolls the modifiers.