Path of Exile

Is it worth playing the first game or go straight to PoE2?
 
Miller said:
Is it worth playing the first game or go straight to PoE2?
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They are different beasts entirely. Poe1 is a run through the map and instantly smash all the loot piniatas (enemies) and has extremely in depth mechanics / build customization.

Poe2 is going for a slower, more methodical positional/ dodge rolling type of gameplay. It's early access and they may very well completely fuck it up. It's also not free (yet) but I think it's 30 well spent.

I find poe2 quite refreshing because I've been playing the kill everything instantly and grab the loot game over and over since Diablo.
 
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I can now put into words an additional reason for my frustration with PoE2.

I made good on my word and went back to a DS1 playthrough, and as I made it to midgame I noticed how satisfying it was to kick the asses of low-level foes that messed me up early on. For one, this is a matter of zone design: I need to traverse old areas to get to new, high-level ones, so I'm constantly, inevitably encountering low-level foes whose teeth need kicking in.

But juxtaposition is not the only reason for satisfaction: it's also personal. It's not just that that type of foe I'm re-encountering used to be difficult, or that level of foe, it's a specific enemy, placed in a certain area, a thing with a unique identity that I get to revel in kicking the shit out of, that makes it so satisfying. So what if they give a pittance of Souls? It's not about the Souls, it's about sending a message.

Juxtapose this with PoE2: even if GGG implemented some makework walking sim through old zones as connectors between new ones, the enemies would still be in too great a quantity and too randomized to grant a particular, vengeful pleasure from destroying.

Why do I bring this up? Because PoE2, obviously, fervently, desperately wants to ape hodgepodge elements of Soulslike games no matter how poorly they combine with the ARPG baseline, and as I go back through DS1 and find myself enjoying it far more than PoE2 I don't just want to say "muh isometric not soulslike, GAME BAD," I want to actually dig into how PoE2 fails to grok what make "standard" Souls(like) games work for me, and why randomly borrowing certain Soulslike conventions without understanding all of their implications entails a subpar experience. In this case, there's no joy in scaling my power to barely meet new PoE2 challenges if the game isn't designed to give me some respite and organically let me 1. see how far I've come in comparison to what used be difficult and 2. let me build personal grudges against hand-placed low-level enemies that I'm later nudged to re-encounter and annihilate.
 
ovenmath said:
Poe2 is going for a slower, more methodical positional/ dodge rolling type of gameplay. It's early access and they may very well completely fuck it up. It's also not free (yet) but I think it's 30 well spent.
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The problem is the slow/methodical gameplay goes out the window as soon as you hit maps. The campaign itself was solid and I enjoyed it, but end game is just PoE1.5. PoE2 maps have just a bad of a "blow it up before it blows you up" problem as the first game to the point that running a build with some form of screenwide/offscreen clear is pretty much mandatory. The only difference is PoE2 neuters your damage and movement potential while the mobs are just as fast if not faster than their PoE1 counterparts. Mods on monsters in PoE2 are just as cancerous as the first with some of them being somehow even worse.

I'm up to tier 10s and it's been an absolute fucking slog. Only getting one death per map is honestly needlessly brutal and unfun. If you die, not only do you lose experience, but also any loot you didn't pick up and whatever league mechanic was on the map. Re-running maps with no content on them combined with the super cautious approach you have to constantly take to avoid getting killed by silly shit like environmental hazards that blend with the background isn't enjoyable. It's kind of impressive how badly GGG fumbled concepts they've already established in PoE1, like no Scouring orbs or crafting bench making "crafting" almost 100% a slot machine.

I can understand one death for ubers and pinnacle content, even though having to either drop a load of currency or spend 8 hours grinding for a single attempt is and always has been horseshit. It pretty much takes away any organic learning experience and forces people to watch YouTube videos beforehand like it's a raid guide so that they don't waste the effort of buying or grinding for entries just to get 1-shotted by something they might not even see or understand. In PoE2, it's arguably even worse because of how the Atlas is structured now.

I've been back on PoE1 instead for the last few days actually enjoying myself. I used to laugh at the PoE1 doomers who treated PoE2 as some detrimental thing to the state of the game, but after having actually spent time with it, I'm starting to agree with them. I'd much rather have gotten a new league for PoE1 while GGG worked on PoE2 a bit longer to get it in a proper state.
 
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If PoE2 didn't have a roll button, would people still call it 'souls like'? I don't see it myself, but I'm a bolt mercenary witch hunter that stays at mid/long range. Only at t6 maps too.
 
Decided to abandon my gemling grenadier at lvl 80 and roll a sorc. Spark + fire wall destroys everything. Archmage is just as OP as it was in the recent Necropolis league (don't know how good it was in the latest league). I clear maps so much faster, I feel like I was baited with cool grenade stuff, at level 70 sorc I was as strong as a merc at level 80 - with like 1/10th the investment, too. And I'm not even specced into CI, MoM or EB yet.
As Croaking Spider above said, maps turn to PoE 1 v2.0, campaign is totally different. Things are also too fast, if you don't kill a pack in 0.5 second they're gonna swarm you and bodyblock you till you die. Chaos damage is mad. Not going CI is honestly trolling. Violatile plants is cancer. Detonade dead is cancer. Business as usual I guess.
Changes I'd welcome:
Delete violatile plants.
Nerf DD modifier on rare monsters. Or make it visible without the need to read what modifiers a rare monster has.
Limit the amount of all ground effects that drain your hp.
Make every map contain a boss; or, at the very least, only require the boss to be killed instead of boss + rare monsters.
Make rare monsters visible on the minimap on entry. Half of the time I spend in maps is backtracking.
 
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Mobster Monitor said:
If PoE2 didn't have a roll button, would people still call it 'souls like'? I don't see it myself, but I'm a bolt mercenary witch hunter that stays at mid/long range. Only at t6 maps too.
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I'd like to jump past the souls/notsouls dichotomy. It isn't even a Soulslike right now, but even without dodge roll, GGG still have incompetently borrowed enough elements seen in Soulslikes (zone reset on death; 1 life = 1 try at a boss; flask rebalance that brings them close to Estus; flashy boss movesets where the only conceivable manner of survival is avoidance; mandated "muh hardcore, be methodical, prepare to die, even common enemies rape you if they get a hit in" balance approach / difficulty curve; a fascination with brutalizing their players with bullshit that can only be divined through lookup or painful trial and error; shields converted to a manual block with a stamina system) that to me it seems like they're gormlessly lifting a suspicious amount of shit in common with the genre, even if individually these mechanics appear outside of Soulslikes, too.

And, when GGG slaps these lifted elements into an ARPG that is fundamentally different from Soulslikes and it makes the ARPG worse, it deserves comparison to games where those same mechanics are actually thoughtfully included.
 
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Getting to Tier 13 maps with ~20 divines to my name (I like to play the economy), it's fairly enjoyable after finding a high investment build I like, but the mapping system in general feels like it was rushed. I'm cautiously optimistic GGG can fix it all once they're back from the end of year vacations. Or well, fix most of it during EA. Maybe.

Miller said:
Is it worth playing the first game or go straight to PoE2?
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I would start with PoE 2, it is much more beginner friendly.

And then if you find yourself thinking "Man, I wish I could actually move faster and burst through the game" or wonder "Does those pliers around my balls ever come loose?" then that's when your give PoE 1 a try.
You'll have a much easier time then being familiar with a good half of the mechanics and won't be as overwhelmed.
 
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I'm having a lot of fun with the game. My only hard criticism is some bosses, like the act 2 giant and chaos trial tornado bird having bullshit one shots.
The giant has a knife attack, where he pushes it forward and kills you instantly and I can't figure out the move, when it triggers and where, and the tornado bird is just wack, I got deleted by some feather fan attach instantly with maxes resist and over 1k hp.
Beside this, I'm enjoying the game and actually looking forward to new content.
 
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I got past Viper, and I'm still of the opinion that it's a completely garbage fight and it completely kills my desire to play the game because I know for fact more bosses will be coming like it, if not now then later with league stuff. Her bullshit invulnerability phase attack legit starts proccing every other attack when she gets down to 20% HP.
 
DefinitelyNotMe said:
im starting to think that poe2 doesnt like melee builds
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Honestly it was the same way in PoE1 up until the latest league where they gave pretty much every melee skill a buff in some way. PoE2's melee suffers because your melee choices for the moment are mace, which is meh, or quarterstaff, which is more of a monk-tailored weapon. Once swords, daggers, and spears get put in along with their skills, it'll open builds up a lot more. I'm looking forward to cleaves and bleeds.

Burning Bridge said:
I got past Viper, and I'm still of the opinion that it's a completely garbage fight and it completely kills my desire to play the game because I know for fact more bosses will be coming like it, if not now then later with league stuff. Her bullshit invulnerability phase attack legit starts proccing every other attack when she gets down to 20% HP.
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Mechanically it's a pain in the ass fight, but I loved the aesthetic of it. The shield wall forming the arena was cool and I actually didn't mind the spear bursts, but it's a pain when you add in all the shit the boss herself does. The few times I've gotten her as a boss on a map have been coin flips on whether I survive or not.

I honestly feel like the more "minor" bosses are harder to deal with than major act bosses or ones with unique mechanics. Doryani is probably the most well put together boss mechanically in act 3 and one of my favorite fights. When he kills you, it doesn't feel as cheap or out of nowhere like the smaller bosses that come before in the same act.
 
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Croaking Spider said:
Once swords, daggers, and spears get put in along with their skills, it'll open builds up a lot more. I'm looking forward to cleaves and bleeds.
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Oh
I was under impression that there will be only maces in the game from warrior description
On the other topic i decide to browse the store that they have since EA gave me some currency
Why every armor is so fucking ugly, its like they idea for a good design is just add as much glowing shit as possible.
Is it because chinks love glowing over-designed shit? ill blame it on them
 
Just bought PoE2 today and haven't progressed much yet, after like 2 hours of gameplay. So far I have no complaints, picked the merc cuz the possibilities of making a damage dealer with chain reaction.
 
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Only thing really putting me off is the idea of having to follow someone else's build down to the letter just to have a chance in end game. It killed my enthusiasm for the first game when I realised just how heavy a cost I was looking at to make my Witch Atlas-viable, as I'd had a ton of fun throwing tiny flaming skulls at everything before then.

Is experimentation easier this time around? I get that throwing any old trash into the mix shouldn't be getting me guaranteed success at every level of content, but it felt so...sterile having to copy others.
 
Pumpkin Girl IRL said:
Only thing really putting me off is the idea of having to follow someone else's build down to the letter just to have a chance in end game. It killed my enthusiasm for the first game when I realised just how heavy a cost I was looking at to make my Witch Atlas-viable, as I'd had a ton of fun throwing tiny flaming skulls at everything before then.

Is experimentation easier this time around? I get that throwing any old trash into the mix shouldn't be getting me guaranteed success at every level of content, but it felt so...sterile having to copy others.
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Well that's the idea of it vs 1 - supposed to be skill based instead of knowledge based. The result seems to be it's just more luck based instead though, But I'm not at end game yet so can't say for certain.
 
Pumpkin Girl IRL said:
Only thing really putting me off is the idea of having to follow someone else's build down to the letter just to have a chance in end game. It killed my enthusiasm for the first game when I realised just how heavy a cost I was looking at to make my Witch Atlas-viable, as I'd had a ton of fun throwing tiny flaming skulls at everything before then.

Is experimentation easier this time around? I get that throwing any old trash into the mix shouldn't be getting me guaranteed success at every level of content, but it felt so...sterile having to copy others.
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i dont know i just made a warrior and focused on 2 things fire damage and 2 handed weapons
so far its going good but obviously i didnt reached the endgame yet
you do kind of have to just sit for 10 min and look through the skill node map to figure out at least in what dirrection you want top head in
 
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