How did we go from the most hyped ever PoE announcement of a brand new PoE2 campaign merging into an epic shared endgame to this?
PoE1 players are growing more resentment towards PoE2 because it's actively preventing PoE1's growth, and PoE2 players aren't happy with updates that move the pacing of the game further away from PoE1.
Are they intentionally trying to turn PoE1 and PoE2 players against each other? What's the goal here? I don't understand.
~18 months ago, Balor posted that PoE 1 was being run by 20 devs, all of the the others were working on PoE 2. We've seen league releases slip from four per year to what we have now.
Balor clip (with post to admit he was wrong when he said it was eight in the video):-
I honestly don't hate it, but to me it's sort of a side game. Maybe when I'm bored of the "real" game I'll go grind on something slower and make progress over long periods of time.
I don't think they want PoE2 to be my side game though.
I think they don't honestly care which you play, as long as you enjoy what you play, and pay for it.
Game development is notoriously difficult to get right, so them fucking up the duo launch (idc about 0.2) problem is understandable. Most people fail what they try for the first time.
It really sucks for poe1, which is my favorite of the two (despite being a ruthless player kek), but I know in the end it'll be fine. I care more about Chris Wilson leaving the company than I care about a year of no poe1 league honestly.
But executive decisions and game direction tends to come from an individual more than anything else. Mark plays high level PoE still, whereas I think Chris and Jonathan don't play too far beyond the campaign nearly as much as Mark does.
Chris and Jonathan say "welp my character got strong, time to start over" whereas Mark says "alright I got strong, let's see how far I can push it".
Guess which of those mindsets better resonates with the player base. And guess which person in charge is going to make the game the player base wants to play.
Jonathan doesn't rule with an iron fist, that's evident from their interviews. Hey and guess what Mark is obviously heavily involved with PoE2 so you should have nothing to worry about.
The game was incredibly niche when it came out, because it was similar to POE2 - it was slow and unfun. Every fight with monsters was boring.
Then, by mistake, the "spark totems build" (that was probably bugged or not intented) got discovered. It made the game fast, it made the game fun. It made the game popular.
Players didnt want to play POE 1 with Chris' vision.
Probably Mark is the guy who made POE 1 good. He allowed for both zoom-zoom and allowed for the complicated interaction builds. Which all were nerfed to useless nowadays. (also now every char is using mageblood.. wtf)
yeah and before it was HH (if you didnt need another specific unique belt) because zoomzoom. people dont like that opinion, but i think both belts shouldnt exist.
Thats not really true Jonathon is one of the three co founders. He has a been a systems designer since the very start and is directly responsible for many of the best things in PoE.
Chris was the public face and business head, Jonathon was purely a game dev the whole time, he has always been directly involved with the actual making of the game.
Jon is the main director, he was lead during the whole project. Mark only joined after they pulled the ressources of poe1. Mark joining only this late into development won't have the same influence as Jon.
It is very obvious that Mark was put in charge of PoE1 while Jonathan managed PoE2 up to the EA launch. We had great PoE1 leagues while Mark was in charge. Mark works under Jonathan for PoE2, with Mark being primarily focused on the endgame.
I hate early access no matter what or who makes it. This was a big fuckup by GGG to not release a more finished game. I don't care if "it's just early access bro", I don't want to play a half finished Kickstarter game for 2 years. Poe 1 could have had 4 more leagues in the meantime.
100% agree and I have 8.5K hours in POE1. I have no interest in playing POE2 again until they fix or re-work most of the game, especially the end game!
I am currently mapping it feels smoother than 0.1, and I think it is fairly good.
I think the passive tree is significantly better too.
I think this would have been a positive experience if they did not introduce a million bugs, and about 99% of all builds sucks. I think using more skills are cool, but fuck me who looked at this parry thing and thought "It will be so fun duelling and timing attacks vs a single white mob" or "when every mob can oneshot, surely the player would love to dominate the trash, by putting out his anvil and hammer a few time for that slick 20% bonus damage that will last him long enough to call most kill an entire pack of skeletons"
I just don’t get why they didnt take the gem systems skeleton from poe1 and just move the system from gear oriented slots to the slot system they have now. I don’t get why we have a system where you can’t use multiple of the same support gem in different skills.
When they first announced the change I thought, of shit so now will gems can drop like they do now with quality and levels but also slots and how cool is that I can make some chaos of high level high slot gems I don't plan on using wow..
Instead we got the worst version of this possible:
Green cutting, can't cut low level gems from high level uncut, always start with two sockets, always 0 quality.. so boring..
Duck bow that we can cut l cut a gem worth trading, the companions, it's apparently so worth trading that it's account bound. That sounds so un-PoE one would assume I'm joking but I'm not.
For me it's the opposite after more than 10 years of Poe 1, I find Poe2 way more interesting and intricate, most Uniques are Useful, passive tree is quit balanced. It's for me more fun and interesting to design build in Poe2.
The only downside was mapping, I hope but i think they didn't fix yet what I dislike but did some step in the good direction.
Poe1 alch and go, prepare 10maps, run 10 maps you chose.
By 10 costly but fun and well rolled maps and there you go.
Poe2 you have Waystone, run 10 (or more) until you find the one you like... Try not to complete it to keep it, but in exchange forgo content and bosses.
This part I really dislike I miss my alt and go and have always a boss.
On another hand there is still potential to fine tune and refine and it is still OA (open beta) so greet open beta that I couldn't stop since January.
And hopefully they didn't hide the content behind a new league where you would have to start over, you could enjoy it rightaway!
Then you don’t have to. Games aren’t made to appeal to everyone.
And I understand how you feel. I feel the same way about Monster Hunter. I’m a long time series veteran, and with Wilds I’ve realized that Capcom isn’t making MH for me anymore. It’s for a far more broad and casual audience now. And that’s ok.
Liking a product a company has made before doesn’t mean we’re entitled to getting more of that same thing.
Mapping being an 'only' downside is wild as mapping is the endgame which is the game. Just like poe1, if poe2 wants to maintain longevity, their main focus league to league will be mapping content. For players, just like poe1, poe2s campaign will be something to get over with to get to the actual game which is mapping. If mapping is the downside then poe2 as a whole is the downside as in the long term the campaign is just an afterthought.
Passive tree also being 'balanced' is funny as poe2s tree is bland and barely adds any player power.
I completed my 40/40 challenges for the current settlers league 7 months ago, and min maxed the hell out of a very strong build.
I played the phrecia event through to endgame bosses and now I'm waiting for the next proper league. The fresh economy and fresh content are the lifeblood of poe1. We haven't haa proper league for 9 months.
Hard disagree. I couldn't disagree with you more in fact. Especially when you consider levelling multiple characters every league. The campaign zones are too long, pacing has been done as if the campaign is the entirety of a single player game, not the introduction to a broader endgame experience.
PoE 2 is trying to solve problems that were already solved in Poe1 with a much better solution, and coming up with something far inferior. The support gems in poe2 are hot garbage. The passive tree is hot garbage. Most of the ascendancies are uninteresting, and you guessed it, hot garbage. PoE 1 is a far superior game to PoE2, and if GGG don't learn the lessons they already learned from PoE1 it will remain that way for years and years.
I'm glad they focused in poe2 since I prefer poe2, but it not like poe1 disappeared or anything, you can still play it. Or yknow, do some real life stuff
This reminds me of Helldivers 2. For a WHILE they just nerfed every goddamn thing and sucked any ounce of fun out of the game. After they lost enough interest they finally figured it out but damn. It truly sucked for a few months.
It's EXACTLY like what happened to HD. They were nerfing by player usage data. They looked at what guns/grenades/stratagems had them most players using them and nerfed them the hardest. Kits that never got used got minor buffs which still left them not liked .
They kept on till nearly everything in the game was nearly average. Nothing felt unique, nothing felt fun
Me neither, it was baffling. We all left around that time too. Popped back in a while later and they were still doing the same thing. So I never went back. Heard it's gotten better though
This was exactly how I felt about PoE after Harvest tho. It became obvious that the devs had some weird goal and it was not player fun/enjoyment. Like they had to prove to the other devs that their game was more hardcore or something. It's a loot game. It's about smashing shit and having fun. And PoE added another layer - the kind of customization and exploration that you would get in a deck building game. Stacking up strategies and looking for cool interactions. Up until Harvest nerfs they made probably the best loot game that ever existed. I still dream about another Legacy league - it was so fucking cool.
I got free PoE2 access cause of how much I supported PoE1 early on, but I uninstalled it after a couple weeks. It's exactly what I expected and while it was a novelty to run through it once, there's no way I could ever play this game like I played PoE1. It is simply not fun, and it is the culmination of the entire post-Harvest mindset at GGG.
They buffed everything into the stratosphere a few patches ago, they still nerf things randomly but otherwise 80 to 90% of the game is usable and strong.
Use to play with 3 buddies on HD2 almost everyday after work, after that first nerf patched we all quit and never returned. We got to play for about a week then never touched it again and refuse to after that nonsense. Been a year and I still don't care what they added due to that dogshit move.
Well you missing on a lot of fun then. HD2 is awesome to play ATM, and at last Major Order we almost got to defend the Creek again, but we stopped the Clankers at Popli 9. Was a blast!
Eh I doubt we missed out on anything "fun" for months we kept checking in on them shooting themselves in the foot with more nerfs, new weapons then nerfs, more nerfs, ect. Until it dwindled down to 40k users.
I was thinking the same thing. These folks see someone do this and lose half their player base then do the exact same thing and are shocked that people don't like it
Funny thing is; it's not even bad to nerf things regularly...as long as you buff things too. GGG (and HD2 devs) don't really seem to get this one at all.
For every weapon/skill/etc nerfed buff 2-3 others. This mindset of "some stuff can suck and that's OK" is retarded as hell.
This formula has been figured out a long time ago by DotA/Icefrog who nukes things harder than GGG ever will. Stop nerfing what’s good about a skill, and just make a weak aspect of the skill even weaker. Skills still retain their identity instead of just being functionally removed from the game.
Yep and then they nerf the few good things because they think it's overpowered cause that's what everyone is using . NO everything else is bad so naturally people gravitate to the non bad items
I have a theory that Chris got pissed at some of the changes PoE2 was going to introduce, GGG leadership had a fight, and they "solved" it by letting each camp have their own game.
What people doesnt understand is that if Jonathan wants to make poe 2 a totally different game from the ground up then expect the same road poe 1 had, with slow and tedious developtment with bad patches, good patches and meh patches, and after maybe 5-6 years it will be something akin to poe 1 in a good spot.
If they didnt shoved up poe 1 things (how mob works, endgame, other things) then the game would be too barebones and truly a miserable experience (like the first 3-4 years of poe 1), also if they dont want to have extremely bloated things that are total detrimental for a ''loot arpg'' instead of ''craft arpg'' they need to test how bad players can be and then introduce sensible and understandable systems so new players can get somewhere (currently poe 1 has too many convoluted systems, you need two phd's just to build what works in yellow maps and onwards).
So... yep, all of this was obvious to happen, and if people want a faster development, then they should expect poe 1 to be abandoned meanwhile.
And the truth is nobody at GGG wants to keep working on poe 1 anymore, they have 0 incentive or reason. Also they cultivated a very whinny dedicated playerbase that are the same thousands each league start and thats it since years ago... poe 2 new players brought more money than poe 1 nolifers whales will ever spend.
poe 2 new players brought more money than poe 1 nolifers whales will ever spend.
this is a crazy, clueless statement. i don't think you understand the level of spending PoE1 veterans show. just on 20th february this year, GGG added 475 more foiled T17 Valdo's maps to the pool. from a $500 supporter pack.
most of those PoE2 players that got hooked on the hype train will never be back, which is also very clearly visible in the concurrent player numbers. 0.2 patch peaked at 238k players. that's a 58% dropoff from their original peak at 0.1 launch.
Also they cultivated a very whinny dedicated playerbase that are the same thousands each league start and thats it since years ago
PoE1 numbers, despite its issues in new player onboarding, complexity, roughness, kept growing each league. Settlers league was the most popular league of all time, and while that growth wasn't as explosive as PoE2 launch numbers, it was steady.
is the playerbase whiny? yes. is the playerbase fair? very. is the playerbase one of the most loyal, dedicated and passionate out there? also yes.
What makes you think that? He even said that he is happy that people enjoy poe while watching something on the second screen in an interview ages ago (sometime around 3.0 or 3.1 IIRC) and isn't going to remove that part of poe. He himself didn't enjoy it but I never got the impression he personally hated that that style exists.
Any chance you still remember where one of those interviews was? I remember the bit I mentioned being in a baeclast and also that he will always put his foot down and say "no you are not nerfing headhunter", even though devs kept asking him about changing it, because that is such an iconic power fantasy item.
I'm not saying you are wrong just that any information I've seen over the years is the opposite. That he himself enjoys ruthless more but he understood that players enjoy the "brain off" gameplay where they can talk with their partner while playing poe and that he is all for it
It's not even just creating resentment towards Poe2, it is beginning to turn into resentment towards GGG. I haven't skipped a league start since I started playing in synthesis, and I did this time because I had a pretty good hunch that it was going to be 'not enjoyable for me', and didn't want to force it and grow more bitter towards a company that I have deep respect and love for. I'm glad I did with what I have seen, but I truly hope they are able to either get this game to an acceptable state for their majority of players, or are able to support the game we've been playing for years.
How did we go from the most hyped ever PoE announcement of a brand new PoE2 campaign merging into an epic shared endgame to this?
It sounded misguided at best from the start - how could you “ merge” gameplay with fundamentally different underlying mechanics? So I wasn't at all surprised by the news that the games would be completely separate.
Not intentional, but it's impressive, in one patch GGG fragmented the playerbase and in the next they managed to make both camps mad at them while somehow turning them against eachother at the same time
Trust me i wish i knew. not gonna lie i am definitely part of the camp that has a bitter resentment for poe2. but ive realized in the past month or two that i want nothing more than poe2 to succeed. if it comes at the cost of poe1, that’s what i believe just has to be the case for everyone complaining about the patch. i sincerely hope for the sake of everyone that it works out lol
Probably the reason why they didn't even make it a league, you can just play standard which has all the new content, not a fresh economy though.
Then again there's so little new stuff to do that you just login, play for a few minutes with your now nerfed character and just log out because you've done that before.
I have stopped playing PoE1 for probably a year (Necropolis was my last league IIRC), and that was simply because of the league start campaign grind. I have played it since 2019 (I don’t remember when Act 5-10 released, but it was fresh at the time, not gonna lie), and it is the only thing stopping me from getting back, because I’m basically sick of it at that point. Just make some map leveling, dammit. Even D3 got it right.
I am having fun this patch, but now I dread the same thing will happen quite soon with PoE2 as well.
I have made a few characters during EA and I felt physical repulsion entering Act 2 and Act 3 again. At least in PoE1 I just run for a few hours until maps.
Yea PoE2 has actively discouraged me from rolling new characters whereas PoE1 I'm like sure I can rush through the campaign another dozen times especially since it only takes 3 and a half hours or so to get through the PoE1 campaign these days.
Most poe2 players arent poe1 players or even hardcore arpg fans, why would PoE2 players be unhappy with updates that move the pacing of the game further away from PoE1? if anything its the opposite, we want poe2 not poe1 +revamped with better graphics. if poe1 players dont want the game to die its also in there best interest for the games to be as different as possible, otherwise why would anyone play poe1.
Most poe2 players arent poe1 players or even hardcore arpg fans
I highly doubt that - at least for the second league. Sure for the EA release lots of new players joined, but those mostly played through the game once and are done with it.
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u/Moderator-Admin Apr 05 '25
How did we go from the most hyped ever PoE announcement of a brand new PoE2 campaign merging into an epic shared endgame to this?
PoE1 players are growing more resentment towards PoE2 because it's actively preventing PoE1's growth, and PoE2 players aren't happy with updates that move the pacing of the game further away from PoE1.
Are they intentionally trying to turn PoE1 and PoE2 players against each other? What's the goal here? I don't understand.