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Increasing one shots or more ground explosions that overlap and can't be seen does not make the game harder. If there is no counterplay other than outgearing or deleting the entire screen then its not difficulty. Juicing your map raises the floor of what will one hit you because of harder effective hp checks. Not whether you will play better because its not a skill check. All my maps have 2-3 node add-ons and 400%+ minimum at this point. Even big white mobs can one hit me because of crit chance/damage/bonus elemental damage. This is not difficulty. This is just gambling with fun visuals. This is also an extremely poor argument against difficulty and bypasses the entire point of it by moving the goalpost. Because now that you know my maps aren't blue and i am putting tablets into every tower while i go strictly from tower to tower, you can happily move the goalpost to say "well you're not corrupting your maps then" or "you're leaving juiced nodes behind because they don't lead to a tower" or just "later on it gets more difficult". But you're not talking about difficulty. You're talking about getting chanced without a player input or outplay.

@@CapitolPeak The game is not for you. It's ok. The name of the company is Grinding Gear Games, not From Software.

It does feel like the game is balanced around the assumption that the players will trade. Which is fair imo. Most games these days are not built around solo or ironman because that's a lot harder to balance and also well players like to trade to get quicker bigger numbers :D

Damn. I knew I forgot about death screen information expansion/log on death tracker. When I was doing the list for information expansion like the skills page damage calc, i left a spot for that and just forgot :D Your thoughts on dodge is spot on. There are already games that have implemented this mechanic really well. Copy it or atleast take inspiration. Dodge should be reliable to use, consistently gives the same output and actually worth using in any other situation than animation cancel. I strictly use it now to cancel the slow end of my animation, not as a way to get away from danger or avoid hits or movement/repositioning tool. But thats what dodge should be... I'm still playing blind and haven't watched a build guide. One of the other players took a look at my skill gems/supports/passive tree and was like "no way you didn't watch a guide yet." Its just not that fucking complicated. Everything on my side of the tree says stun/aoe/slam/attack/fire. All my skills say stun/aoe/slam/attack. My support gems say stun/aoe/slam/fire. The game just sort of forces you to put 2 and 2 together. Despite the skill tree having 1500 nodes like you said, if i just search those words they are all on one side of the tree in a nice straight line. I heard everyone say how you have to watch a video or you can't even make skills work or even get out of campaign. And yet... In my last video, i think i said there was one fight that was actually pure gear/build check but its okay because its not part of the main questline. I was referring to forgemaster fight! Just a straight up dps check. Not a skillcheck and not even a tank check.

I think selling inventory space is fine, the game will be free to play and nobody forces anyone to pay 30$ to play it in early access either (and you do get the ingame points to spend for that money). It's not an insult to gamers, but you do have a point with the trade system being outdated. At the very least I would like the trade window to open and be interactable ingame. Player-to-player trading is something I don't mind, it allows you to haggle the price of items, not to mention that we do have the Currency Exchange Market ingame. If you want divine orbs for your exalteds, use that, it's exactly what you are asking for :D

I had to take a bit of time to think about it. I will say that all ingame transaction exists on a grade of 1-10 right. Lets just say 1 is cosmetics and has absolutely no gameplay change or advantage whereas 10 is straight up buying power/gear/unlocking content that F2P or even P2P can't access. I wouldn't go as far as to say the F2P stash limitation is an insult as it is now but it definitely is creeping up the ranks. During campaign it really did feel like they gave generous amount of bank space and it was plenty so I would've ranked mtx tabs are 1. But now i'm in endgame and items are stacking up. Not just consumables like maps, expedition/ritual/etc drops, but also spare gear, base items for future re-rolls and so on. Suddenly the starting tabs really do feel very limited and stack size being so small you start filling up even if you're not hoarding. Like you are strongly encourages to mtx limited. At this point, i'd rank it closer to a 3 than 1 on the scale. Games aren't pet projects or pro bono work. It has to be monetized in a way thats not intrusive to the player like content locks or abusive of the player like gacha/lootbox games or straight up gambling with some gameplay attached to it. I think PoE2 is okay. If they keep introducing items and making more items must-keep-on-hand situation without increasing starting/F2P stash limits or stack sizes then I would definitely agree with you.

I do agree with the points you've made and they are things that can change in beta and will likely change in beta. That's what beta is for right. I highly doubt GGG had extensive closed alpha/beta testing because of how quickly the community was able to find problems they needed to patch. You don't need to be plugged into the community to put two and two together from the patch notes alone that they strongly over or under tuned without realizing it. And it is the point of beta to actually have huge number of testers to check all the variations and interactions you simply can't with a small team. 1 in a 10,000 problem might simply never get ran into with just your dev team testing but in open beta like this, there will be hundreds of examples. But i just don't think they can "have challenging mechanics to learn and master" at this point. Its weirdly too late to now, but also too early to start. If its not shown in Acts 1-3, and it doesn't exist in map bosses so far then I don't think that design *decision* exists. And I say that because if implementing that playstyle was the decision then we should've seen it already. But now if its implemented later on then it'll feel out of left field and the player will feel like they got ambushed after hundreds of hours of a different gameplay. I haven't reached Pinnacle boss, haven't even found a citadel yet but lets assume I get there and its strictly a mechanical fight. Easy to access for repeat attempts, and extremely mechanically challenging. It will feel like I loaded into a different game and just be too jarring. And also completely at odds with rest of the game until then. With "kill the boss or get locked here" during campaign, and later on in maps "kill this boss in one attempt or the node is lost" design has me thinking they will not make Pinnacle bosses easy to access for repeat attempts. So if the fight is mechanically challenging out of nowhere since the player isn't prepped in advance, with one life and long road for second attempt, then it will feel frustrating more than it will feel rewarding. Because you just ambushed your players.. Thats why I don't think mechanically challenging bosses you have to learn and master will exist before or on launch. If it does then it should have already been shown in order to ease the player in. Continuing with my OSRS/Jagex example. Its something GGG could introduce later. A different branch on the atlas tree maybe that's specifically for super boss fights and the player can specialize into it, just like the promo video promised. But I don't think that's coming in beta or even soon after full launch even though that was promised. Because that'll require a whole introduction/easing in of the players, new progression path, encouraging the player to think of gear vs skill balance which doesn't exist in maps, and then implementing mechanics that's more valuable to pull off than gear check. If they introduce that now, there will be too much of a backlash from the community that all their hard earned gear has effectively been made less worthy and they just got blindsided. And thanks for the compliment :)

@@CapitolPeak Agree with you, I think one of the major issues right now is the inability to re-attempt fights (1 life only), and the community agrees on that I'm sure, especially in regards to Pinnacle Bosses or the Trial Bosses. Actually, the campaign for a player that just started the game is quite challenging to overcome but also reasonably balanced overall (veteran or not), with or without good gear. Gear makes a fight or clearing significantly easier (die less, kill more quickly, as shown in the facetank compilation), but outside cheese strats or clearly more dps than necessary, the campaign monsters and bosses are quite well-balanced for the most part. It took a lot of deaths on many of the bosses before conquering the fights, sometimes I had to adjust my gem setups to fit a bossfight, but I somehow managed to overcome stuff eventually. I think the biggest f you's are bossfights that make drawnout fights harder by filling the arena with extra danger over time (Viper Natzuali makes the arena smaller, Jamanra adds environmental effects like tornados, electricity and such). That, and on-death effects :p I watched Raxx's feedback video after yours, and many points overlap with yours to some degree, but a lot of other points also got attention, as he laid out in a full feedback document, so if you are interested, maybe check out his video, but no pressure.

@@sagi3933 I'm still not watching PoE2 related content or browsing forums because I still want to play blind as possible. Thats why when I was asking people who were veterans of PoE1 and further into PoE2 than i am, i kept it simple and mostly asked yes or no so i can't deduce or traceback into information the game hasn't given me or I didn't put together without that person's input. As an example, I had a whole 7 minute segment about all the potentially different ways the game could be calculating damage(one pass or multiply at every interaction, etc) and made charts and so on but decided including that would guarantee someone will comment exactly how the damage calculation works so I took it out. But that's also why part of the video has no overlays or memes in it because i spent 3 hours on a section that ultimately didn't make it. If fights were quick to access, like boss fights in campaign having tele or boss nodes being fairly common then I am personally 100% down with 1 life. But if its taking this long to find a single citadel, and it locks up after 1 death like map nodes do, then i am not down with 1 life. 20-30 hours between attempts is too much. You're forced to watch a guide because there might be 1 shot mechanics you didn't know or found out last time and forgot because its **been 20-30 hours**.

I never said it was GGG's intention or thats what they said they would do. I said GGG was in the best position to do so in recent times compared to any other game or company in the genre. I did say that GGG said they have focused more on difficulty and bosses and I haven't not see that supposed focus. Because Mark Roberts specifically said bosses will be difficult and have mechanics you need to learn or solve. That has not materialized in game. There might be 100 bosses in the game but there is like 3 bosses that play differently and 97 bosses that's just tank it and you pass or fail gear check. "Bosses that are utilizing souls like mechanics" which is also why dodge was implemented. Implying that there will be skill and timing checks the player needs to pass. There isn't. Also, they said it was *not* like PoE1. Which is exactly why its *not* an expansion or league to PoE1. That's their own words which is exact opposite of what you just said. From how the game was coded, how inefficiently it was coded, and also from concepts they want to try and how they have shifted the focus of the gameplay, namely speed, is why this is *too different* from PoE1 and why it deserved to be its own title. That's exactly what they said. That's why its *not* suppose to be like the first game. I do agree that this is PoE1 v2. If they were going to copy core mechanics and systems such as resistance, damage interactions, and endgame and so on then this *could have easily* been PoE1.

@@CapitolPeak Well, yes, but you have to understand that most things they have said are in the context of talking to their own community. It's because despite them explaining it and verbalizing it outright, there are vocal parts of the community that just wish poe2 to be more poe1. In comparison to poe1, poe2 is difficult, it does have more souls-like mechanics and the bosses do need to be learned. If you find this game's bosses easy, then you'd probably find poe1 boring. And that's fair, my point is that their goal wasn't to revolutionize the industry, so it's not exactly a fair criticism. They could have, sure, but for example, you also could have made a much more researched video that lasts for 2 hours, but you didn't because that would not be a good idea from your pov and that's completely fair. If someone criticized you for not doing a 2 hour video, all you need to reply is: "that's just not what I wanted to do" and it's completely fair and the criticism would be unfair. Unrealistic expectations of a game aren't fair. And I also don't think ggg was in the best position to revolutionize the genre. Their team is split into two while working on both games and they even had to cannibalize their poe mobile team to get this out. They don't have insanely high resources, they're in fact quite stretched as is and they also have issues getting more help because of how NZ's hiring laws hinder them (they've had issues with voice actors in the past because of this, for example). And this is also compounded by the fact that poe2 wasn't even meant to be its own thing at first, it *was* supposed to be a part of poe1. Ironically, the truth is that what we have gotten is the product of them going above and beyond to push what they considered a poe game to be.

I never said it was GGG's intention or thats what they said they would do. I said GGG was in the best position to do so in recent times compared to any other game or company in the genre. You did read this sentence right? And the parts of the video where I said they had a chance and didn't take it? Specifically saying from design choice and implementation they clearly did not intend to take it? Because it feels like you're arguing about something else you read somewhere else, but just here to me. There is a compilation of me facetanking bosses at gear and character level as blind self find player. Bosses do not need to be learned. Resistance and importance of effective HP needs to be learned. Those are not the same things. So what they *exactly* said on camera doesn't matter, what they *exactly* said in interviews and pre-release doesn't matter. And they were talking to their own community instead of a greater audience they might've reached. If I opened with "hey guys, this is the most detailed video you will see in this niche and I have gone out of my way to really change the landscape to a point where this can't just be considered any old video or like any videos i've made before. Its so different and so new that even other youtube videos cannot compare." Then you watched my video and it wasn't any of those things then yes, you do have a fair criticism. Expectation, setup, and payoff has to match. The initiator sets the expectation. If that's how I intro'd then that would be the expectation. You like the company. I get it. That's where your entire defense comes from. I like them too. Their promo was great and the game is good and patches are coming out quick. I am liking PoE2 and don't want to stop to go play other games. But your second paragraph is straight up arguing in bad faith or you are misinformed. I could go into 15 pages of write up to explain all the other companies and the much greater problems they were facing and still are and put it into context of why GGG is in comparison so less restricted than they are so they had a better chance at a big shot. How Tencent has ran other companies fairly hands off and their agreement with GGG is likely similar unless GGG allowed themselves to get absolutely hosed, and how GGG's monitezation along with its strong support base from PoE1 allows them a better risk assumption than say Blizzard with D2 into D3 and so on. But this comment is already too long. By your examples of the "struggles GGG had" no company would ever be able to make anything. I will breakdown just the first point because what your list of struggle started off with actually is just a standard and good business practice. "Their team is split into two while working on both games and they even had to cannibalize their poe mobile team to get this out." There is a permanent tug of war between teams, resources and having enough people but not having too many people. Team from a project of lesser importance getting pulled to work on a team that's on a deadline or higher priority is not example of a company struggling. That's normal management. Splitting your team up because certain projects take longer to bake on the whiteboard, such as game systems, design philosophy, and so on which doesn't need everyone's input, is perfectly normal. Then when the actual labor starts picking up such as coding the game, creating assets, designing art, testing working builds and so on, you start pulling in more people. You can't just fire people or refuse to hire good talent while your main project is in its lower projected manpower in planning and creation stage. So you send them to a different team to keep them productive and gainfully employed. And on the same, you might start hiring in advance for your main project but the main project isn't ready to be worked on at that scale so you put them into the lower project so the new people can get sorted into teams, start getting used to the work/pace/systems in place and primed to be pulled. If you are required to project funding in advance or you just keep a good book then you will sometimes hire weeks if not months in advance. But its still the same company, same pool of resource, and same end goal. GGG having to move staff from PoE mobile team to PoE2 team to keep the project on the deadline within given leeways is not an example of a company struggling. That's normal. If anything, that's stressful but good management. Its not an example of a company thats struggling. The other 3 points you made in the same paragraph is even worse. I could go on but I digress. Stating that someone could've taken bigger chance isn't criticism. I don't find inherent flaw with a company wanting to go after safer money than take a bigger risk. I do not disapprove of banking on your name recognition you worked hard to earn previously. Last Epoch couldn't do that so Eleventh Hour had to take some big steps. GGG could do that so they didn't. That's not criticism, thats observation. Criticism is initiator setting up expectation then failing to deliver which causes disapproval or faults in their work. I am criticizing the fact that they stated the game will be hard and the bosses will be mechanically challenging but that's not what was delivered. This is a criticism. In the video, Point 1 is feedback. Point 2 is criticism. Point 3 is observation. Thank you for the comments. Edit: rereading the entire chain with my response. It came out much harsher than I was intending it to be. Again, thank you for the comments.

I know. That's why I separated the items into what can be patched, what's expected to be patched in beta, and what can't or probably won't be because they are development or alpha stage items.

I should've clarified that I'm not saying they should make group bosses. The genre isn't suitable for group play I don't think. Not without drastic change to the playstyle. What I meant is having bosses closer to Guardians in Lost Ark if you're familiar. th-cam.com/video/iLlcJ98Whe0/w-d-xo.html Occasionally, instead of running a 10 minute map, you can take on challenging 10 minute boss fight.

Is there? I spent like 30 minutes testing rolling/getting hit with mobs and also aoe attacks and there didn't seem to be. I even watched it back on .25x speed. My testing could've been poor.

The thing I noticed was that you can roll underneath certain attacks, but your hitbox is always present and can still be hit by aoe and low-positioned attacks.

There even is a keystone passive that disables i-frames and exchanges it for damage reduction during the entire roll. it was somewhere near the bottom part of the passive tree afaik.

@@krykry606 Yeah, you're right. Bulwark. I just keep reading and re-reading the nodes on my side so never saw this one. I don't know why i couldn't replicate the s :( Just started running maps today and still playing blind. So i'm probably missing some obvious things unfortunately.

@@CapitolPeak no i frame for area of effect

I rolled a warrior and just got into Act 3. So far its been a good fun imo.

@CapitolPeak i played a ranger for a couple years in poe1 so i rolled one in poe2 and being to move while shooting is so amazing

@@garyhall9729 WASD provides so much more comfort and freedom right!?

No need to wait. It's a great game as is. Yes a few things need adjusted, but trust me it's a blast with a great challenge.

It does feel like some of the damage is bit undertuned or some healthbars are overtuned. In Act 2, there was quite a few times when im just facetanking and smacking the same mob like 15 times because it has gajillion health and won't die but also can't hurt me anyways.