Been excited about Path of Exile 2 for months now, its set to release tommorow and I am stoked. Got all my classwork done early so I can binge it more.
But honestly im a bit nervous that I wont enjoy it as much as I hope. Grinding Gear Games is the developer of the game and in my opinion they have an artistic vision for their game. In my opinion they have a tendancy to push their vision on the players with the expectation that the players will adjust even if they hate it.
They have seemingly been pushing the idea that players should slow down and that combat should be more 'engaging'. In my opinion those are noble goals. But in reality Path of Exile 1 had an incentive to be played fast, not slow. Defeating enemies quicker meant more loot. And the community has a large focus on speed. Movement speed, map clearing speed, races at the start of each season.
The companies desire to make combat more engaging usually comes off as a slog for me. And each time they try to make enemies more engaging they often make the enemies tougher and hit harder so you have to slow down and be more wary. But the players then have the goal of increasing their damage and survivability so they can ignore them again.
The players who dont manage to find new ways to compensate get left behind and one shot by mobs designed now to kill and pose threats to the top players.
In Path of Exile 2 they seem to be talking about having made bosses and combat harder again. And limited the ability to heal with the intent on making players fight bosses on the edge of their seats.
This is combines with many new class ascendancies that seem to be pushing players to pay more attention to resources around them in combat while dodging enemy strikes.
In diablo and Path of Exile 1, the screen was often a mess of hundreds of monsters with their own telegraphed attacks and flashy effects, tracking it all was near impossible. The best solution has always been to just kill it all as quickly as possible instead of trying to make sense of it. And when a player died they often have no clue what in the world killed them. Even when recorded and playing it back its often near immpossible to tell.
I am deeply worried I wont be able to keep up with their vision. But despite all of these worries I am looking foward to trying it. Im not a great player. But I enjoy the game and measure my ability versus myself more than the community.