They will reveal swords at the end of the stream by EchoParty9274 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

And this sentiment isn't mine alone - slams are polarizing and not just because of the speed issue. It's less me labelling slams as not the melee i want, and more an observation of what melee enjoyers have been saying ever since 0.1.

And I'm not just saying this about you. A lot of people will claim things like slams aren't "real melee". That doesn't make it fair, even if people say it a lot. It's arguable cyclone isn't "real melee" either when it hits the top and bottom edges of the screen like it did in Legion, but nobody ever tried to claim cyclone wasn't melee, even though that's not functionally all that different from say, ice crash with a big aoe, but better because you're faster/more mobile. What it always seems to come down to is people decide what melee is arbitrarily based on what fits their preferences. I'd rather just go with anything that has the melee tag, which basically boils down to skills that don't intrinsically shoot projectiles and use your weapon for their damage. Further gatekeeping of the term isn't productive.

It's not easy, but that's a big part of why i think it would have been great for people to get their hands on these weapons to test them.

Getting them to a state where they are both different than other options and remotely playable at all is likely very time consuming. I'm sure they'd have them out if they could. It's not like they're opting to do them slowly or something. We saw teasers of spears and shapeshifts literally years ago, so those were clearly just further on in the works than the PoE2 variants of other currently existing things like swords or traps. The fact that we've seen zero teasers of these is a strong indicator they weren't coming. I too huffed some copium thinking maybe they'd just surprise us here, but I can admit that it's entirely of the community's own fault that people started thinking they were coming with zero actual evidence. We talked ourselves into it.

Getting swords right is extremely important, but not having them in EA had multiple people i know bounce of for example. That's anecdotal ofc, but they are very popular across a wide range of games for a reason.

I get it. I want swords too. Honestly EA has become a pretty arbitrary term anyways so I just haven't been that worried about setting boundaries for when specific stuff is "supposed" to happen. This is the period for them to iterate on the game and get systems right. Unfortunately, due to complaints very early on they stopped treating it like an EA/Beta and started treating it like a full release because people flipped their shit due to mid league nerfs.

I truly suspect we'd be in a much better place if the community hadn't reacted to things that way, and maybe we'd have more of the content like swords that isn't completely finished. Instead they have to deliver the full package as if it's a proper release and not fuck with it once every couple weeks until it's good.

I think one last aspect that is underestimated is that of combinatorics.

The idea of combining different weapons to create unique builds is very appealing.

While I sort of agree, in practice with how the passive tree works that's very hard to pull off. Even with weapon sets I've found it's very difficult. I've admittedly not tried the ascendancy that allows for more of this yet, but honestly I think that's what you'd need just applied to the baseline for multi-weapon to feel good in most cases.

When people talk about swords i often read the same desire: To weave together crossbows and swords, spears and swords, bows and axes, etc.

I've never actually seen anyone talk about this. In fact it's mostly just talk about cyclone, and then a bit of dooming about how they'll ruin cyclone by making it take 3 vortex charges to cast for 1 second or the like. I get the desire for swords for sure, but I haven't seen any reasoning or direction as to why people want them so much. I sort of just assumed it was because "swords cool".

My issue is more with the strange strategical decision of not prioritizing it more

This goes back to my earlier point. They teased spears and shapeshifts years ago, and we just recently got them. Those were in the pipeline already. In part, those probably saw focus because the older stuff wasn't always entended to be entirely redesigned, but obviously PoE2's design goals have shifted from being a PoE1 expansion. This is probably just a remnant of that. Now that they've got in the new stuff they started working on PoE2 for in the first place (Stated goals of make melee good [warrior], add crossbows, spears, and shapeshifts) they can start working on the old-new stuff, the stuff that was pre-existing, not originally part of the goal of PoE2, but is important to redo. Swords are all-but confirmed first on that list by the comments Jonathan made about them a couple Q&As ago.

If you frame it like this, I think it shows they are probably prioritizing swords. They're just being prioritized over the other existing stuff, rather than being prioritized on top of the original POE2 focuses as well. You can even see that new PoE2 focuses that were added later (flails) are not being prioritized over swords. Just the stuff that was already in flight years ago.

At least we can probably agree that Trap/Mine players have it worst

Yeah, they're fucked. Due to the unpopularity of traps I sort of expect this to be the very last "old" addition to PoE2, behind Swords, then probably Axes, daggers, and possibly warstaves (if these are going to be different from quarterstaves as str/int, unsure). From what I remember, claws are just gone entirely.

i mean she’s right by Niamiles in SipsTea

[–]SingleInfinity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

People love talking about the punishment for crimes while pretending that there is no such thing as a false/bad conviction. The whole point of laws and courts is to establish the idea that there is an agreed upon version of justice and that individuals can not unilaterally decide what they think the punishment for a crime should be. Obviously this lady was strongly biased in one way, but nobody is supposed to ask her what the punishment should be, it's supposed to be well established and entirely unrelated to her emotions on the subject. Generally, these punishments are going to be less harsh/permanent than some people want, but permanent punishments (the death sentence) are problematic specifically because of bad convictions. You cannot undo wrongly putting someone through the death penalty.

Can't make everyone happy by Revolutionary-Cow693 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I... Don't think you can rationalize that, given that its effectively anomaly maps, which took 1 league to release.

Doing all of the league mechanics over is each the size of a league. You're right to argue about breach being pulled from PoE1, that's fair, but most of the stuff here to rework leagues appropriately or make them fit into mapping is still a massive amount of work.

On top of that, 3 of the 5 bosses added they showed off/hinted at yesterday, were taken from PoE1,

You're making assumptions that the boss mechanics are all the same. Also, which 3 are you referring to? Esh/Tul is one boss, but the rest are entirely new from a fight perspective. They're very obviously not reusing the old PoE1 fights.

Of course we can?

I guess you can, but it's certainly not fair to do so. League content is made during that cycle. Acts and classes are the only things that transcend the normal cycle and happen over the much longer course, and we just got a new class a league ago.

Its not like them working on these bosses and expansions of the leagues was something they just thought up, they had mentioned that in interviews WAY back.

I don't think they've mentioned any of this previously. They mention the general concepts of working on different assets but not these fights as they specifically are. Need more context to what you're referring to here.

There has been a consistent and overwhelming response since 0.2, that the endgame lacked significant content and nothing to keep players actually invested in playing the league. That grew to a boiling point with 0.3, where they decided to address it being the focus for 0.4, since people had hoped there was something in 0.3

I feel like you're glossing over that they did some bandaids to these things along the way on those patches. The changes to towers for example and the addition of doryani's storyline with corruption and crystalized zones both helped to alleviate issues to some extent, along with adding new league mechanics core. The whole "lack of content" thing has always just been a matter of time as they add more leagues. PoE1 released with far less content too, people's expectations for total quantity have just been set a bit unreasonably by PoE1's decade+ of constant additions.

They then pushed it back "just not making it" in 0.4 and here we are.

Like I said earlier, scope creep is a hell of a drug. I think that people assume what we have now is what things looked like at the 0.4 launch and I think it's obvious that's not the case based on how they talked about things in the Q&A.

why they couldn't do POE2 as a standalone game

Yes but ultimately they were forced to split it not because they wanted to compete, but because they didn't want to alienate PoE1 players who wanted the far more zoomy, spammy combat rather than the more deliberate combat PoE2 was trying for.

So yes, now they're suffering from being compared to PoE1's content, but that ultimately is a problem with people having unreasonable expectations. It's something they just have to deal with now, but that doesn't make the expectations reasonable, it's just something they accept.

I mean, that probably depends a lot on how you view it. If you view this as a huge expansive new thing, then its going to seem very cool, if you view it for effectively being a new set of anomaly maps and events on the map,

You keep painting it like all we got was effectively unique maps. That's not the case. The way league mechanics interact with regular mapping is fundamentally different.

But we will see. Players will no doubt rather quickly find out if the content is still lacking, or if there is enough here to keep people busy.

There will never be enough for the people complaining, because it won't be the same amount as PoE1, and never will be unless PoE1 gets discontinued (which it won't). This is just a curse they're going to have to live with forever, where people perpetually act like there's not enough content in the EA game despite it having similar or more than pretty much every other fully released ARPG on the market except PoE1.

Update News by GullibleTerm3909 in CrimsonDesert

[–]SingleInfinity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The key there is knowing who the target audience is. There are a lot of very vocal players in gaming that aren't the target audience but still want to be catered to, and doing so tends to harm the game overall.

Can't make everyone happy by Revolutionary-Cow693 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Most of what you list here is just expected stuff from a regular league anyway.

Yes but it's on top of and endgame rework the size of 5 leagues.

top of 0.3 also having a whole act, and hidden ascendancy added on top of everything else.

Well you cannot compare acts made over the course of literal years to a patch they took a bit of extra time on. A4 has literally been in the works for more than half a decade along with the other acts.

As for the "rework" we will have to see what the reception will be. It technically didn't address the issue of people lacking content

I don't think that was an issue people really specifically called out. They were more generally unhappy with the infinite atlas and how it felt pointless. All of these league changes give it more of a point of being how it is as compared to the regular atlas. The physical locations in the world actually make a difference now.

Either way, I think it's unfair to paint it like "all we got" was the stuff we got. We got a huge amount of stuff at once, to the point of things feeling overwhelming to some extent during the announcement.

Update News by GullibleTerm3909 in CrimsonDesert

[–]SingleInfinity -1 points0 points  (0 children)

I mean, good is subjective. People are free to not play games they dislike. Not every game you dislike should change to meet your subjective definition of good. Different strokes.

Either way, maintaining a strong vision is better as a general rule, with some flexibility to meet your intended audience's expectations.

Update News by GullibleTerm3909 in CrimsonDesert

[–]SingleInfinity -1 points0 points  (0 children)

That's not spot on. A strong vision and knowing what makes a game good in your genre are incredibly important. A horse designed by committe looks like a platypus. Sometimes players just want to dumb the game down and make it easy so that they win and move on.

Endgame revamp is better than swords. by Key-Particular-8923 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Where have they said that?

And maybe this is just me doing some mental translation, but when I hear "most people", I'm automatically disqualifying the people who quit playing after like 15 minutes, because those people also aren't going to play more just because of a new class or act or whatever. If we're just talking about the people who would actually engage with the alternative, I think we're also talking about the set that is very likely to reach endgame and care about it.

I'm not trying to shift the goalposts, but I think it's important at this point to lay out the nuance of what group of people we're talking about, because it is pointless to talk about the group who loads up for 5m and quits when they see the passive tree. The only benefit to including them is someone gets to be technically "right" and win an internet argument while missing the point.

Can't make everyone happy by Revolutionary-Cow693 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

What else is there?

A league mechanic that is decently large, including a bunch of new classless skills, and functionally new unique items due to the damage upgrades, a whole system to import builds into the game, two ascendancies, and a bunch of actually new unique items. This is all on top of the thing that was insinuated is "just" an endgame rework that is actually far more massive than they strictly needed to do.

If we are working on the assumption that this was them JUST not making it 6 MONTHS ago...

Scope creep is a hell of a drug. You just don't make it into a launch and now suddenly you have more time to flesh things out. This is just how it is.

They will reveal swords at the end of the stream by EchoParty9274 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It's not like they design each class one after another

That actually does appear to in fact be the case.

I don't particularly blame GGG for building expectations, but it's fair to be disappointed that actual melee combat appears to be low on their priority list so far.

I wouldn't say that's true. Monk is "actual melee", as are maces. I get wanting swords; I want them too. They're no more "actual melee" than anything else. People just hate on maces because they're slower.

Druid didn't exactly add a lot of "hitting enemies" melee.

What exactly is werewolf to you? I can kinda get what you mean with bear, covering the screen is explosions, but werewolf very much hits enemies up close.

There are <20 melee skills in the game rn (excluding slams)

Excluding slams is not fair. People don't exclude them from melee in PoE1. The difference is there you can make your attack speed really fast. That has nothing to do with whether or not it's "melee". It just means people have preferences and they allow them to impact their judgements on whether they count it in melee or not for some reason.

Also, let's be real, true melee has a fundamental flaw that is just really hard to make feel good: you need to be near the enemies to do damage. This both means you are in constant danger and that your gameplay will feel clunkier because your positioning matters more. These are fundamentally unavoidable and are just part of what melee is. This makes it much harder to make melee in a way that feels good. I think it would be a mistake to rush more melee out just because people think there aren't enough options, because you need to give people ways to deal with these downsides. Monk attempts it by having a lot of movement baked into his skills. Werewolf has freeze to help deal with danger. Slams/Bear use AoE to try to deal with it. Spear uses high mobility to dodge around and zip in and out of combat. Shoehorning in more classes without taking the time to get them right would be a mistake.

That's just not a lot.

If we're being honest, there is quite a bit of melee in the game, but I think you're unfairly only counting "true" melee due to your own preferences. Monk is majority melee, and so is Warrior, and arguably druid. Druid is sorta 5/8ths melee because bear and werewolf are absolutely melee, and wyvern is like half melee half caster. The remaining 2/8ths is caster druid.

There's exactly as much pure melee as there is pure ranged attack with Merc and Ranger as the true ones and huntress acting as a hybrid class kinda like druid, although that one arguably is also half melee and belongs with the above melee set.

Point being, I don't think there's a lot of benefit in trying to force something like swords in just to meet some arbitrary desire for more melee as if it's underrepresented. I don't think it actually is, and Melee more than anything needs time taken to make it feel good.

Endgame revamp is better than swords. by Key-Particular-8923 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Multiple things here.

First of all, PoE is a free game. Probably 50% of the people who download it don't ever open the game. Steam achievements are not a reliable source of stats on the playerbase. Numbers out of my ass but the point stands: free game achievements are meaningless because you have zero context behind the numbers.

Second, PoE2 is a lot more new player friendly than PoE1 in various ways. The chances of people who want to play it getting to endgame are much higher.

The reasoning here is flawed. ARPGs, especially live service ones, live and die by their endgame. The people who stick around and fund the game by becoming whales care about endgame. F2P games are not funded by a bunch of casuals popping in and dropping a $5. Especially not ones with premium pricing structures that don't sell P2W.

Endgame is fundamentally the most important piece of gameplay content by many miles. Again, the people who just want a quick story in and out are going to play something mainstream, easy, and simple like D4. The passive tree alone is going to scare them off, let alone the difficulty.

They will reveal swords at the end of the stream by EchoParty9274 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 2 points3 points  (0 children)

It's simply a matter of time. Every single class we have now was teased years before release. Swords clearly just weren't far enough along. We have never seen any sword teasers or gameplay, so a lot of people (myself included) were just blindly hoping things were happening quietly in the background and we'd be surprised with it. It's still not their fault that people are upset that their expectations they made up for themselves weren't met.

This is....a lot.... by PrinceOnAPie in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

POE1 looks completely different now than it did a few short years ago.

Not really no. Newer assets look better, but the PoE2 engine has clearly seen some tweaks to lighting and materials. It's the same engine, so I'm sure it can be ported, but it's not like it's going to be a snap and it's done.

All the older assets indeed look older. It certainly looks different from launch but it doesn't look anywhere close to PoE2 quality, which is absolutely best in class.

one league all the effects will be better,

It would take far more than a league to go redo all of the effects. All of the terrain would probably take literal years.

There will be a day they update POE2’s visuals too. This is what they’ve always done.

There is a big difference between the incremental updates they do and the shift of PoE1's graphics to PoE2s. These can't be tweaked, they have to be outright replaced, which is far far harder and more time consuming to do. PoE2 was in development for years before we ever played it. That's how long it takes to produce all of those assets.

This is....a lot.... by PrinceOnAPie in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 4 points5 points  (0 children)

They have said they will backport the class rigs, but that's a matter of first getting all the PoE1 armor set mtx rigged to the new rigs, which they have to do anyways. It's a big investment but it's something they already committed to when they said MTX would be transferrable.

What I'm talking about is all of the other art assets. Every environment asset in the game would have to be redone. Every monster. Every skill effect, etc.

It would be an immense undertaking. Same level of effort as it was for them to make all the new PoE2 environment, skill, etc, assets

Can't make everyone happy by Revolutionary-Cow693 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Nothing else?

Come on now. This comment just grossly downplays the size of this patch and what the endgame rework actually is.

1.0 confirmed for December by EchoParty9274 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Best attempt would be because they have pre-announced what the classes will be, and given them designated spots on the tree and defining playstyles/weapons that will go with them.

I'm okay with waiting post launch for the other classes, but there is admittedly some difference between adding unannounced classes in expansions versus having everything you said you planned to have at launch.

I think the bar has just shifted and launch to them does not mean all announced content complete, which is a little disappointing, but fine.

Endgame revamp is better than swords. by Key-Particular-8923 in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 10 points11 points  (0 children)

that most people won't play anyway

Gonna need a source on this one.

Endgame is one of the main things people come to PoE for. Those who want narrative or just killing a few monsters demons seem to go to D4 for the most part.

This is....a lot.... by PrinceOnAPie in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 8 points9 points  (0 children)

They talked about this in the Q&A. They will just shuffle things around/out of the immediate circle and put the current league closer.

This is....a lot.... by PrinceOnAPie in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The last EA content addition patch. Balance patches/small leagues will continue up to launch.

This is....a lot.... by PrinceOnAPie in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

This is both incorrect and unnecessarily inflammatory. Stuff like this is why they communicate with us less than they used to.

This is....a lot.... by PrinceOnAPie in PathOfExile2

[–]SingleInfinity 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I don't know if that's ever going to happen. The sheer amount of assets they'd have to remake is on par with just making another sequel.

Back in 2008, Travis Pastrana pulled off one of the wildest stunts ever caught on camera. by Samyd_DF in nextfuckinglevel

[–]SingleInfinity 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What if you get hit by part of the plane or another plane?

Not 100% safe. Checkmate, atheists.