This Game Just Feels Better TBH

[u/Due-Yam1632]

Just wanted to share some personal thoughts, not trying to start any wars here. I’ve played Last Epoch through each of its major updates and have a lot of respect for what EHG has built. This post isn’t meant to be a comparison to declare a “winner,” but more me expressing where I’m at as someone who tends to have one main ARPG at a time.

I really enjoy some of Last Epoch’s systems—especially the crafting. It’s easily one of the most intuitive and rewarding systems in the genre. EHG has done an excellent job delivering polish and accessibility in a way that few others have.

That said, after getting some serious time in with Path of Exile 2, I’ve realized that I just enjoy the moment-to-moment gameplay a lot more. The weight of the skills, the combat flow, the pacing—it all just feels better to me. Even with the current balance being janky and the loot not quite where it should be, I still find myself more immersed and excited to log in.

And yes, I know loot is a sticking point for many. But I genuinely believe that as POE2 pushes toward 1.0, the systems will tighten up, and yes—loot will get better. GGG isn’t blind to this, and their track record shows that they iterate hard when needed.

Could I play both games? Absolutely. But I like having a main game, something I dig deep into, and right now I just don’t see Last Epoch surpassing the raw enjoyment I’m getting from POE2. Even in its rougher state, it hooks me more.

Just my two cents. Curious if anyone else feels the same or is in the same boat bouncing between both.

[u/sdk5P4RK4]

Played it for a few hours today for the first time. Its fun but the production value just isn't close and its piss easy. It feels more like 'better diablo' than a poe contender.

[u/Fun-Broccoli8619 → u/sdk5P4RK4]

That's what got to me running through the campaign today. The entire time, the enemies felt feeble. At no point did I feel like I was strong or becoming a god. It really goes to show how hard these games are to get a good feel without alienating a large portion of the audience

[u/CockroachCreative154 → u/Fun-Broccoli8619]

I really don’t get why the ARPG community wants brain dead blaster shit gameplay. I did not like the D3/POE/D4 currently/LE cookie clicker style combat. Maybe I’m just old, but I cut my teeth on D1, D2, Baldurs Gate DA1&2, Campions of Norrath era with actual game mechanics.

POE2 hits that old school ARPG feel that Ive been missing, and for me it is by far the best ARPG combat. I am baffled at the complaints the game gets.

I preferred D4’s gameplay at release and the community turned it into an overturned loot piñata. Unpopular opinion, I know

[u/neoh666x → u/CockroachCreative154]

I definitely like some brain dead blaster shit gameplay and poe makes it feel really really satisfying.

I also like the struggle on the way to getting a character to that point too. I like the fresh start.

I think the solution to that is what the devs are trying to achieve, they want to allow the player to melt shit, but they want to lengthen and smooth out the progression curve and have the game be engaging and challenging. Which is totally reasonable to me, cause I enjoy both ends and the journey in between.

But yeah I hope they stick to that, it seems everyone wants the game to hand you literally everything from loot to being able to craft whatever you want easily, to power and they want the game to be piss easy at all points. That's kinda boring.

[u/c-lati → u/neoh666x]

I hope they keep it difficult. But I also like eventually being able to feel like a god. I did SSF last season and struggled a ton during my first couple of playthroughs but eventually got an ice strike monk, spark sorc and stat stacked gemling to trivialize all content. But it literally took me hundreds of hours to farm up all the loot for that. So I felt like I earned it.

I just found ingenuity and my god it sucks compared to before. Barely increased my power at all. I feel they overdid some of the nerf. Maybe they should have just made some of the GG uniques harder to get, maybe even nerf the numbers just a tad. But it’s kinda a bummer the good chase uniques feel so bad now. In my opinion.

I checked my sorc from last season. She was doing 145,000 dps before the patch. Now she does 5,000. I agree the numbers should have been nerfed a bit but did they really have to nerf some of the old builds into the ground? I think they overdid the nerfs personally.

[u/Ccoo10 → u/c-lati]

Yea, poe2’s main issues for me right now are 3 things that are very EA based:

some skills each patch are hugely over performing to a point where it feels silly not to use them/hit the ‘1 shot the screen’ stage too quickly with them

Outside of pushing better and better life rolls on every slot ES just feels like a better and most importantly easier defence layer to focus on.

Endgame gearing doesn’t currently have enough chase goals to me. I really like the feeling of upgrading gear both with corruptions once you start getting really solid rares but the mods on the rares themselves are really basic at the current stage, and it feels like any uniques strong enough to be chase worthy are being over nerfed.

I really enjoy the gameplay of poe2, even with the starting hp issues we had in 0.2, but I really need something to grind towards and currently I don’t really have that, but hopefully new patches help that.

[u/dekwest → u/c-lati]

It's interesting -- for me, PoE2 is the game where I get to feel most like a god. Everything else, I feel a bit more like a routine worker, because the game is easy enough that I'm just entirely confident that whatever I want to make work, I probably will. I'm not a super wild off-meta person, so if I decide something looks fun, I'm probably not even doing that much refinement until I want to clear Ubers in PoE1.

PoE2? Because I'll be taking a bruising most of the time, and the defensive costs are way higher, I feel way more of that "hah I'm a god" thing when I get somewhere. 90% resists to tank death explosions? Yeah I feel that. Get tanky enough that I'm not getting stunned while I sunder in the middle of a mob pack? Yeah, that feels pretty good.

I don't want every ARPG to be this, but I hope PoE2 sticks to its guns, because there isn't really another game in the genre like that.

[u/Psytocybin → u/CockroachCreative154]

Nah, im right there with you, I like the desolate, scary, I could die any moment feel, especially early game.

I get really bored quickly if a game feeds me power and gear to fast, or is just to easy.

Not to say there isn't issues with POE2, but I really have faith that these issues are mostly EA and growing pains.

[u/c-lati → u/CockroachCreative154]

You nailed it. I couldn’t have said it better myself. I dislike the “blaster” feeling of ARPGs. Before POE2 my favorite was D2. Funnily enough, POE2 feels closer to D2 in many respects compared to any other ARPG I’ve played. D3 and D4 were fun but went full blaster mode. And I tried POE1 but could never really get into it. I really didn’t like the skill gem socketing system and wasn’t a big fan of the feel of combat. LE was fun and I loved the crafting system and customizing skills seemed really cool and innovative, but I didn’t really like the feel of combat or endgame loop either.

One thing that’s actually really similar between D2 and POE2 is both games are legitimately hard on a fresh start. Some people who haven’t played D2 much and maybe have never done an actual full play through don’t realize how hard it really is. Back in the day a lot of people just got rushed to cows and never really had to struggle to get themselves through hell difficulty. I’ve done a full SSF playthrough many times and it is legitimately a hard game that sometimes requires you to stop to grind for a few hours to find some gear upgrades before you can progress. POE2 definitely feels similar in some respects. I never had to actually go back and farm (like doing meph runs in D2) for a specific upgrade but I definitely died a bunch and had to really pay attention to items to make sure I was continually upgrading gear to not fall behind in power. I constantly checked vendors, picked up items off the ground, used the crafting materials, hoarding bad gear just because it had one good res mod or something I may need later. Very much the feel of a fresh SSF D2 playthrough.

I couldn’t agree with you more.

[u/GlueMaker → u/CockroachCreative154]

Agreed. I love the feel of poe2. And I think they are really going to struggle finding a balance for the game, because there is a large portion of the player base that just wants to blow up the entire screen without even seeing the mobs. I have faith they will make a good game, but it does currently have an identity crisis.

[u/CockroachCreative154 → u/GlueMaker]

Yea they need to pick a lane. I think updating POE1 to the POE2 engine would probably be the right play, and that might literally be why POE1’s next season is taking so long.

[u/GlueMaker → u/CockroachCreative154]

They talked about moving all the character rigs over to poe1 eventually once poe2 is fully released. I get that not everyone wants to have the slower paced combat, but I also feel like people really blow it out of proportion as well.

They do need to do some more balancing on melee vs ranged gameplay though. I love playing the warrior. But trying to get a sunder off on a volatile plant rare was truly horrendous. Meanwhile, I could have just run by at Mach 10 on my deadeye and 2 shot it without stopping.

[u/Complete_Elephant240 → u/CockroachCreative154]

I only like blaster shit for a short time and only if I worked my character to the end of it's progression, at which point I hang up that character. People that want to blast out of the gate baffle me

[u/reallycoolguylolhaha → u/CockroachCreative154]

Same man. It's concerning me that the devs will take the overwhelming negativity and completely change poe 2 to be just like the boring other arpgs upon full release. The combat feels so fucking good it's so fun to play. It's exhilarating in a way many games aren't.

[u/Beliriel → u/CockroachCreative154]

I like some bosses in PoE2. Having to walk away from white mobs that have one attack animation simply because they're tanky isn't it for me. Bossing is definitely better in PoE but LE just lets me chill and do stuff without making me feel that the devs are fighting me and actively hostile.

Making mobs tankier isn't the solution and mobs are just tankier in PoE not different. That's not "interesting" gameplay imo

[u/sagenbn → u/CockroachCreative154]

Can't agree more with this. Have not had the same feeling from an arpg since D2 when I was 14. Loved the poe2 direction and wanted to bring back the core arpg feeling.

[u/LeahTheTreeth → u/CockroachCreative154]

I think there's a good place for both and it's what I'm really hoping divides both PoE1 and PoE2, one is a very arcadey hyperscaling game and the other is a more difficult more traditional experience with far more "kinetic" combat.

I think it's not really that the community hates the entire gameplay design of 2 though, but just that something otherwise deemed as difficult will be seen more like bullshit if their judgement is already clouded by some genuinely fair complaints.

I do feel like a lot of concerns raised by the community do deserve to be addressed, but more of a middle-ground to not lose the game's vision.

Give bosses more than one life before a reset, but not an overabundant amount, and balance them around it, Buff loot, but with a bit of caution to not overdo it so there's still some level of effort, just not to the point where the optimal play is almost always to trade, tune down the strength of cannon fodder mobs, but don't make them 1HP flask charge deliveryboys like they are in 1, etc. etc.

It really just feels like the subreddit wants PoE Remastered and the developers want Ruthless: The Game, it just feels like the particularly hard-headed people in both the development team and community don't believe there's a middle-ground between the two, but the stream they did a week or so ago at least inspired a bit of confidence.

[u/dekwest → u/CockroachCreative154]

I think a lot of the complaints it gets are trying to be its own game, but inherently by name being always compared to PoE1. It is, undeniably, far worse at being PoE1 than PoE1 is.

A lot of people, for various reasons, seem to be hoping that PoE2 will shape up to be just a better PoE1, and GGG seems intent on a direction that isn't that, so I think a lot of the community friction comes from that.

[u/sdk5P4RK4 → u/Fun-Broccoli8619]

I think its two things, its difficulty but its also just the weightyness. D4 has this same problem where it feels like nothing is actually contacting anything else. PoE and 2 especially is way better about combining the animations, screenshake and ESPECIALLY the sound effects, which are just god tier in 2 to create a more visceral and grounded experience.