@@dr.sbrule5817 It's very strange how most of the world isn't like this. It's like people have decided that they need to pretend, to put on a mask and use PR talk. I wish more people and companies were just REAL like this.
@@bfkgodEveryone has to have an opinion and when you don't know a ton of subject knowledge, you default to trying to make your opinions sound good rather than your rationale.
Man, GGG are quickly becoming one of my favorite studios. Just the sheer openness to talking about what wasnt working, what they're trying to do to fix it - design philosophies his really refreshing.
@@HArryvajonas They've talked about the challenges for a while and are even addressing certain difficulties which are nearly impossible to fix without a major redesign (the reason Path of Exile 2 exists). Certain parts of how their animations work and the way the people prefer to play PoE1 are all limitations to fixing melee. The solutions they are employing specifically circumvent those issues by completely redesigning the game from the ground up. Sometimes issues spawn because a lot of tiny little things add up. They talk about that directly in this video.
About sheer opennes: Ask them why don't they have technical support. Or why is their server infrastructure a literal trash and why are they silent about it when there are plenty of threads about it on the forums. if you get an answer, please put it here. I'll wait.
Ziggy seems like a natural at these. The line of questioning just felt so relaxed and flowed well. Like he was having a chat with friends. Would love to see more of this stuff.
definitely an interview where the one asking the questions is asking to listen to the answer rather than asking questions for the sake of wanting to ask a question.
As a melee lover this interview is awesome! Really nice discussion around what makes it hard to develop, I love the guys at GGG for not giving up on it and taking the easier road! Can't wait to see them cook even more!
@@SlitheringpeanutWhere is this specific brand of pessimism coming from? What did they personally do to hurt you? Because they seem to follow through on a lot of their promises from my perspective.
As a non melee lover…. I might want to try monk it’s no longer considered bad? I really wanted to do some hex mines occultist since I love the animations.. But my heart speeds up thinking about monk gameplay with friends
@hewas9738 this is more directed at the fact that, outside of skill gem usage, each weapon in melee was just a different shade of stat stick. With unique defaults to each weapon and dual weild potential changes greatly. While a sword would slash, a rapier would thrust and be better for single target, a claymore or great axe would be great for cleaving hordes while a hammer slamming the ground to ignore monster evasion and having a bit of distance from your character.
@@NousagiBrat And that is a much better thing than the type of weapon you're wielding not mattering at all like in PoE1. Playing with a sword vs and axe wasn't different at all apart from some skill arbitrarily demanding certain weapon types.
Man it is so refreshing to hear a dev team that very clearly understands the goal and vision they have for the game, how the player will experience that, and how to tweak what theyre doing to create the best player experience. Just the bit about how mobs have global cooldown skills in order to make blocking big attacks a worthwhile defense tactic shows their insight, a lesser team would simply adjust the dmg or defensive values to make having mobs with big attacks work, instead of thinking outside the box to preserve their philosophy without sacrificing player enjoyment
I am not a POE fanboy but man these guys really care about the direction of the genre and I have really high expectations of them now and I want them to succeed... Gamers do your part and reward them when they deliver. Passion for the direction of the game and for a game company to be open to discussion like GGG does is very rare these days... The hype is building up to be the same as Ashes of Creation and Cyberpunk or the Diablo 4 remember the hype? This is how it feels right now and hopefuly they WILL deliver.. I already started supporting them myself with some of the supporter packs that by the way WILL be transfered on POE2 for free..
@user-zu5mb1pz2b What's your problem? God forbid this guy spends some money on a game worth spending money on. Your analogy doesn't make sense anyways, those 2 situations aren't comparable. City workers get paid with tax money, so extra random "tips" don't make sense. PoE is free, so buying supporter packs as a way to support development is much more rational.
@user-zu5mb1pz2b bro POE is a free to play game if you forgot about that. a person can completely finish the game without paying anything if he really wants to or pay like 10 bucks...
@@edwardblanc657 POE is one of the only games that have this amazing monetization option like, play the game if you like it and go to end game pay some tabs and you are fine.. like i played Black Desert and Lost Ark and I was asking myself, why should i play if I can just buy my progress.. POE does microtransactions even better than Riot Games.
1h and shield + 2h for different skills is something I was contemplating and looking forward to trying in the game just recently, seeing it in footage here is great
Everything I see on PoE2 just gets me more and more hyped. Hearing these guys talk about it you know they really know their shit and care a whole lot about making a great successor to PoE. November cannot come fast enough.
I don’t even know what to play. I was sold on the mercenary bc it’s so different than the norm, now I seem to like monk, a class I would probably pick last in other games
What's so excellent about them being open about the challenges of balancing everything is that it gives the sense that even if things aren't totally balanced, they are giving it their best, and will figure it out with a patch down the road if need be. So far though it appears well conceived. Cant wait!
The more I learn about PoE2 and the more I hear these two talk, the more I am looking forward to playing the game! Because I like what I hear and see about PoE2 I just bought my first 60 $ supporter pack. Doing great work GGG and you too Ziggy.
Supportable basic attack is a wild change, but absolutely needed. Auto/Basic attacks are so often worthless in these types of games, and free support gem slots would make it amazing.
Honestly disagree. It throws off the game balance since built-in attacks and spells cost no mana. They even acknowledge this when they said people stopped using mana flasks. Seriously, why do this? Having a built-in skill for new players is nice but there’s no need to throw the whole game off because of it. Is it really that bad to make it so that support gems only work with skill gems?
@@billjohnson6863 this struck me too ,everything will have to be balanced around the 'default attack' to make it not completely useless or have everything revolve around it. that's a big downfall with many classes in d4 to me, you just spam attack to fill a bar to use your actual abilities. hard to say how it will turn out though, but it worries me a bit how naive and face-value focused the vocal majority of the community is. nothing new in gaming though, but still not helpful!
@@billjohnson6863 in poe 2 support gems don't do 50% more dmg. only about 10% more (about 30% more when conditions are meet ,and normal attack will have trouble meet those conditions). and a lot of support gems don't even add dmg
@@billjohnson6863 "Is it really that bad to have literally a core gameplay element be completely fucking useless?" Yes. Yes it is. They also acknowledged their plans for working on it, literally within a few sentences of the part you quoted. I'm not pretending it's going to be easy to balance, but if you don't give a good reason for melee characters to use their basic attacks, then they're just going to turn into short range casters. AGAIN. The whole issue with people not using mana flasks was because it was one of their first implementations of the system. It's not ready yet. Of course it's not going to be that bad on release.
@@genesises Yes, yes they will have to balance it like that. But this is a system they're adding onto an already existing combat system. The main issue games like D4 ran into, was that D4 was built from the ground up for the Generate and then Spend rotation. You didn't really get a choice if you wanted to use the basic attacks or not. The idea of this supported auto attack system is to give people a way to weave basic attacks into their playstyle in a way that doesn't feel like you're only doing it because you ran out of mana. Nobody is pretending it's going to be the sole fix of all the problems, or that there won't be hurdles to overcome, but OBJECTIVELY having an auto attack actually do ANYTHING is better than an auto attack only existing for the sake of having something you can do when you're out of mana. If it wasn't, they'd just fucking remove it altogether.
Interesting discussion about the default attack. I notice they mentioned the default attack is tied to the weapon, so in this case, they can make alternate default attacks for unique weapons to make them more interesting. As an example, a Unique Katana could have a default attack that makes your character cut through the enemy like a cool samurai quickdraw attack. I hope they realize they opened up something really good.
This is the most gameplay I've ever seen with the shield. Most videos I've seen of the warrior, they focused on the 2 handed Mace. I don't play melee often but from this discussion, I'd be up to play a sword-and-board style melee character. I kind of agree with Jonathan on push-back. It needs a little more umph when you block. Thanks for uploading this. Again really enjoy the Sword-and-board gameplay. In addition, it was nice to see you using the Sorceress' Ice Nova skill with your Monk. That would seem like a combo that shouldn't be missed. I know themonk has other ice attacks but Ice Nova looks like it fits better than Wave of Frost or other Monk ice skills. But that's the beauty of POE. You can use any skill as long as you have the stats for it.
Man I love the ACTUAL play-testing. They design their game, try to meta it out, then find a meta, then break the meta with game design to make int more engaging, uncover a new problem, repeat. I love GGG.
Another phenomenal interview. Jonathan's vision here is on point. Keep cooking. No hack/slack ARPG has this depth of thought on something like melee combat.
Lol that point at @8:30 about how they had to change flasks because spamming auto attack + 5 life flasks became most efficient is so funny. That sounds exactly like something people would do because it's optimal but have zero fun while doing so
I once tried to do a build where while waiting for Earthquake to proc it's shockwave, I would trigger another slam, usually Earthshatter. It was an interesting concept of rotating between these two skills. It was honestly one of the most fun I've had playing the game because it was a melee combo that actually somewhat made sense. Glad to see POE2 moving towards more combo-oriented gameplay rather than a one-button does it all.
I actually like that now we can't portal during boss fights, but please put a well outside the boss arena, I don't want new strange habits like portaling for flasks before fights
But this also means that once you are in a boss room, you can't escape, which would spell doom for any hardcore lovers. There should be a way to flee the fight with the cost being that the fight resets.
@@Xalantor I disagree - the idea of disconnecting in hc to avoid gameplay being normalized is only because it was enabled in Poe 1 design. What if that didn't exist in Poe 2? Then hc players wouldn't have those expectations of disconnecting, thus not being normalized.
From the gameplay footage shown, holding up your shield to block while looks kind of cool will be absolutely slow and clunky to play. Part of what makes Souls like games fun is being rewarded for blocking, dodging and parrying at the perfect moment. Right now it looks like they are missing that part and focusing on making it "look" the part. As an example for shield you could add Retalition skills that trigger on perfect blocks like sending out an aoe shockwave or something.
Great to hear that they are still not afraid to take risks and do fundamental changes in order to give us and themselves a better experience! Also, look how good the active blocking is... bro... ❤
It's really cool that they handcraft all those different play styles. I'm really interested what they do with the fast hitting dagger and claw styles and dual wielding characters.
That defense change sounds awesome. No more needing melee black and spell block it is just block sounds way better. Wonder if this means suppression is removed or it will also do both as well.
Listening to the GGG devs talk so openly and honestly about something they clearly care about deeply is such a joy… especially when compared to most other games.
welp now i know that im playing default attack monk on the release of the game. Thank you GGG hopefully they give unarmed some love then we really will be cooking with grease.
I think default attack will be one tool in a melee players arsenal that will be optimal in certain situations but not always. I wouldn't expect to base your whole playstyle around it. Although to play devils advocate I do like the look of playing sword and board blocking enemy attacks and default attacking them in their openings, and will likely start playing this way on either warrior or duelist. But I think the real nuance comes from learning how to effectively capitalize on stuns and freezes in melee with big attacks or combos.
man... this feels like a soulslike philosophy regarding bosses. Status build up and even looks like 'guard counters' are a part of it. I'm down for it!
soulslike games are a good experience because they are one and done singleplayer games, turning your seasonal arpg into a soulslike, well, we will see how that goes.
19:00 thats actually great, colors matter a lot when making split second decisions, also sound(Grubby from WC3 was commenting on this as WC3 Reforged has multiple sounds for the same units and they sound too similar, in classic WC3 every unit has an unique death sound and it helps identify what just happened)
I would LOVE to work for GGG. Even just going through and changing values and tedious tweaking. It would be great to listen in on the meetings and design discussions. Especially for this game. Listening to Jonathan speak design is very insightful
Ranged builds can clear mobs 2 screens away and not have to worry about on-death effects etc. Getting out of range of an aoe/ beam attack is also easier because you are already at range. Can be super squishy (have one or two layers of short time burst defense to survive one big hit before running away) while melee actually has to tank most stuff, if you put gear and skillpoints into defense you do less dps and have less mobility (and can still get 1-shot).. or your build choice is at least very limited because only the FOTM build has both high defense and offense Speaking of flasks: they are super great is you can kill the boss or a tough rare in 30s (maybe a minute), if the fight drags on and the boss has no minions (killing refills flasks) then it sucks. PoE 1 boss design/ balance is mostly ok but there are some outliers/ terrible rare mod combos. Bosses can range from facetank- no stages to 1-shot mechanics with invulnerability stages... personally I avoid maps with such bosses like plague. During campaign it's also a problem.. you can fly trough acts no problem, die on one boss 20 times and then do next 2 acts without single gear change and no deaths...
This is actually so crazy how they reinvented the whole game multiple times over and just take their time. When they know they have a good idea they are not afraid to just overhaul everything to make it fit. I sincerely hope they are going to push this genre forward. It may not end up being the game for everyone (and that is great!) but I really do hope it will become the game all other ARPGs look to for genre defining innovation.
maaaan my fav thing about d2 were the death animations of the monsters if they can make some epic death animations in poe2 the fights will feel so real!!! Also maybe hire some ex blizz employee to make some next gen cinematics for lore as its the only thing im missing in poe right now
that is a great decision about defenses as it relates to spells vs attacks. Like Mark said, it's incredibly hard to know the difference between spells and attacks. I like that there's still a distinction like attacks coming from the ground vs coming from in front. Lot of really smart decisions going on.
This is really cool to watch the development philospohy. Reminds me of the Diablo 2 assassin who had charge up attacks and finishers. She was fun to play melee. This season was my first in POE and I'm playing melee. Slam felt nice but the bleed stuff I'm doing now doesn't feel melee. Looking forward to POE2 love these development videos
Accuracy changes are 🔥. It always felt bad missing with Slams. "Area of Effects"'s always hitting and miss chance increasing with range, are awesome, dynamic and sensible changes to PoE's Accuracy system.
"No more portaling out of boss fights..." Thank the gods!!! From designers who are so thoughtful and deliberate in everything they do I've been shocked since it was first showed off that they were implementing such a deflating mechanic. I'm thrilled to see it removed before... it would have inevitably been removed anyway.
The more I see from PoE 2 I feel... -This game will be GGG's magnum opus -I will not have the bandwidth to learn it Hope many players enjoy it and I look forward to following its progress from afar!
I love the interviews, hyped for poe2 as much as anyone else. But the heavy focus on melee makes it so that every interview only talks about that. Would love to hear more about the javelins, crossbows, and skills associated with these weapons. About how they make sure the balancing for melee doesn't influence the balance of other archetypes' approaches to monster pack fights and bosses.
the thing is, melee=bad is like the D4=bad for PoE, so this is why the focus is so strong here. Everyone already expects ranged/spells/minions to be incredible
"But the heavy focus on melee makes it so that every interview only talks about that." Well, there is a reason for it and they even explained it in the interview. Melee combat faces a lot of different challenges than ranged combat, both when it comes to designing it and playing it. Ranged combat is just something very different and something that is "easier" to go about. Additionally, melee has been in a pretty bad state for years now in PoE, so making sure that the whole archetype of combat actually feels good in PoE 2 is hugely important.
I just found this video and I noticed gameplay with a one hand axe and a shield that shine when blocks. I'm fucking sold on PoE II, it's amazing they delivered that kind of melee weapons and they are working as intented
How do you know he's a gentle man? I've never understood people using that word in that context. He could be torturing puppies in his spare time for all you know.
great interview, really interesting. i would love to see successfully defended attacks bounce off a shield (when equipped) -- whereby the attack animation is interrupted and both player and enemy react to the impact slightly.
It's so nice to see developers actually deconstructing what makes action combat good and not just making different single animation attack/skills with different colors/particles. Chaining attacks togther (swinging from the right into swinging from the left) is so incredibly important to feel that so many fucking developers just can't wrap their head around for whatever reason. I love how often you bring up Elden Ring/Soulslikes also - they are the pinnacle for melee combat that should be heavily used as a reference I can't wait boys.
The final stage of melee attacks was always range attacks. When Saitama(One Punch Man) pulverizes a mountain with one punch. Or in animes when a samurai cuts a 100m tall monster into two parts with one cut. How about a Kii system(that would be my idea for good Melee combat) Kii is a martial art energy that strengthens attacks, protects the body from damage or strengthens one's weapon. In the game it would be a bar like mana that charges and the following mechanics would have melee abilities. *ki attack: Your attacks consume ki to cause stronger and more widespread damage Example: you run to the boss, use up all your kii energy at once with 3-4 strong attacks and run out again and wait until it is recharged. *ki defense: Charge your ki energy with attacks and surround your body with ki to take less damage. *ki weapon: Add ki to your weapon, allowing you to perform weaker ki attacks over a longer period of time. The Ki bar could, for example, increase with stats such as strength or movement speed =Ki regeneration. Weapons could have different Kii energies. With a bit of luck, a weapon with shadow energy or light energy will drop Schadow Ki regenerates more slowly, but the bar fills up with monster kills. light energy does more damage. You could sell Kii skins in the shop. I don't speak English very well, so there should be some spelling mistakes srry.
Some questions on my mind: 1. I have a few concerns with basic attacks that seem to appear on most games with basic attacks. The first is that it can make builds feel homogenous, like if you spend say 25% of your time basic attacking then that can easily turn into 25% identical gameplay between two builds that would otherwise be unique. The solution is to have the basic attack always be highly synergistic with each build so you don't just use the same one on all builds, and it needs to feel really different, but that can be extremely hard to do from a design, animation and balance perspective. A related issue is that it often straight up feels better to be able to spam the more powerful skills, maybe not as you're leveling but more towards late game farming scenarios where you have an expectation of being able to go fast and not stick around single mobs to do extended combos. I'm sure all of these issues can be solved, but I've yet to see a single action RPG that has pulled it off so It's hard to be optimistic. 2. With so many skill slots, how is build overlap addressed? For example if there are three good defensive skills but you only have enough skill slots for one, then builds would have to choose which is best for them, creating diversity. But if there are enough slots to have room for all three defensive skills then everyone might just run all of them. Hypothetically you could imagine if there were as many skill slots as there were skills in the game, and you'll see how more skill slots might lead to more combat diversity, but at the cost of build diversity. 3. I'm surprised accuracy is making a comeback. Most ARPGs nowadays seem to have moved away from it in favor of things like critical strikes, which can effectively be the same thing if the multiplier is high but psychologically it feels a lot better.
The tech they have for those melees are so good, visceral looks truly like an advancement in the genre. It takes a lot of guts to actually MAKE the combat intentional and real with models actually connecting. I love that. It always felt artificial to me how ARPGs just made melee .. 'not real', just a number generator with artificial animation taped over it. That's cool.
Exactly what I came here to say. That and when you're not blocking and you get it, your character goes into a semi-crouched slide animation while moving and interrupts the attack for that very brief moment. It'd feel better and gives incentive not to stand and just keep getting wacked without blocking or moving. That's not brutal, it just makes 100% sense and would feel great.
Ggg is a great company. Its clear they care. Im surprised they didnt respect and crib diablo's solution to the default attack issue, which is to make it lower damage but (in most cases) return mana.
Wait so if they removed portals from boss fights, and if they are still doing the whole "login back in the fight" if you logout, does that mean you'll have to kill the boss or die once you enter the boss fight? That will be amazing, can't wait for the high stakes in hardcore!
most likely you just pop up outside the boss entrance and have to re-do it from the top. maybe they've come up with something smart but making it not annoying for the player will be hard otherwise.
This game is so much going into the direction I wanted that I feel I am almost working at its development. Sadly GGG do not hire for hoem office overseas... I would love to be a developer of such an amazing game, proabalby even more than playing it.
I think accuracy mechanic has to go, at least for melee. It makes no sense. If they're so concerned about being immersive... Make melee characters whiff attacks with reduced damage as glancing blows instead
I don't understand how it makes no sense, and then you say they are so concerned about immersion, if it's for immersion, then it's because it makes sense...
I'm just gonna put this here: We'll see if they ACTUALLY fix it... There's ZERO proof right of how any exists post-campaign right now so I'm not convinced.
When theres not enough mana for a skill, it could still be cast with less or no support skill effects. That way the player could be notified even if not monitoring the mana pool.
I really like PoE 1... but I can not hear enough about how PoE 2 is going to be different. I love the slower more methodical pace, more emphasis on mana cost and management, skill opportunity openings, active block, etc. The absolute last thing I want is for endgame in PoE 2 to feel like it does in PoE 1. I don't want to kill more monsters than I can count in 1 minute of gameplay, I want each kill to feel impactful.
I wonder why evasion is a thing to begin with. I think when you hit something it should be hit and the act of evading could be physically getting out of the way and dexterity theme could be improving the means of doing this.
Part 2 is now up talking about Campaign, Exploration, Skills & Progression! th-cam.com/video/8GGhW8WGgig/w-d-xo.html
I love how talks with GGG don't feel like marketing.
It would feel that way if they weren't so open to discuss their thoughts and rationale. Love their openness and the insight it gives
@@dr.sbrule5817 It's very strange how most of the world isn't like this. It's like people have decided that they need to pretend, to put on a mask and use PR talk. I wish more people and companies were just REAL like this.
Mark and Jonathan are game designers talking about game design.
@@bfkgodEveryone has to have an opinion and when you don't know a ton of subject knowledge, you default to trying to make your opinions sound good rather than your rationale.
@@VileImpin i would say gamer talking about game becaud the chnace we have is our dev love and PLAY the damne game
Man, GGG are quickly becoming one of my favorite studios.
Just the sheer openness to talking about what wasnt working, what they're trying to do to fix it - design philosophies his really refreshing.
It only took them a decade to address melee.
@@HArryvajonas They've talked about the challenges for a while and are even addressing certain difficulties which are nearly impossible to fix without a major redesign (the reason Path of Exile 2 exists). Certain parts of how their animations work and the way the people prefer to play PoE1 are all limitations to fixing melee. The solutions they are employing specifically circumvent those issues by completely redesigning the game from the ground up. Sometimes issues spawn because a lot of tiny little things add up. They talk about that directly in this video.
@@HArryvajonasdid u not listen to what theu said kiddo ?
About sheer opennes:
Ask them why don't they have technical support. Or why is their server infrastructure a literal trash and why are they silent about it when there are plenty of threads about it on the forums. if you get an answer, please put it here. I'll wait.
They're really unique. Wish we had more studios like it
Ziggy seems like a natural at these. The line of questioning just felt so relaxed and flowed well. Like he was having a chat with friends. Would love to see more of this stuff.
years of experience.
so happy ziggy's doing these interviews, always a bunch of good questions asked and barely any interruptions to their answers
Yea the Josh interview and the talkitve tri interview were absolute dog water.
But not the question we all want to hear.
@@joshuahensley9395 yeah josh interview was trash, always interrupting jon, love ziggyd
definitely an interview where the one asking the questions is asking to listen to the answer rather than asking questions for the sake of wanting to ask a question.
As a melee lover this interview is awesome!
Really nice discussion around what makes it hard to develop, I love the guys at GGG for not giving up on it and taking the easier road!
Can't wait to see them cook even more!
They talk a good game, they rarely follow through.
@@SlitheringpeanutWhere is this specific brand of pessimism coming from? What did they personally do to hurt you? Because they seem to follow through on a lot of their promises from my perspective.
As a non melee lover…. I might want to try monk it’s no longer considered bad? I really wanted to do some hex mines occultist since I love the animations..
But my heart speeds up thinking about monk gameplay with friends
@@khrishppoe1 has been amazing experience for me
support-able default attack means Weapon Type identity!!! yes!!, i love it
very cool indeed
Well there is already weapon type identity in the fact that you literally cannot use skills without the specific weapon for it.
@hewas9738 this is more directed at the fact that, outside of skill gem usage, each weapon in melee was just a different shade of stat stick. With unique defaults to each weapon and dual weild potential changes greatly. While a sword would slash, a rapier would thrust and be better for single target, a claymore or great axe would be great for cleaving hordes while a hammer slamming the ground to ignore monster evasion and having a bit of distance from your character.
@@Flourikum POE has been great at making diverse builds. That will just pigeonhole builds into certain weapons.
@@NousagiBrat And that is a much better thing than the type of weapon you're wielding not mattering at all like in PoE1. Playing with a sword vs and axe wasn't different at all apart from some skill arbitrarily demanding certain weapon types.
Man it is so refreshing to hear a dev team that very clearly understands the goal and vision they have for the game, how the player will experience that, and how to tweak what theyre doing to create the best player experience. Just the bit about how mobs have global cooldown skills in order to make blocking big attacks a worthwhile defense tactic shows their insight, a lesser team would simply adjust the dmg or defensive values to make having mobs with big attacks work, instead of thinking outside the box to preserve their philosophy without sacrificing player enjoyment
I am not a POE fanboy but man these guys really care about the direction of the genre and I have really high expectations of them now and I want them to succeed... Gamers do your part and reward them when they deliver. Passion for the direction of the game and for a game company to be open to discussion like GGG does is very rare these days... The hype is building up to be the same as Ashes of Creation and Cyberpunk or the Diablo 4 remember the hype? This is how it feels right now and hopefuly they WILL deliver.. I already started supporting them myself with some of the supporter packs that by the way WILL be transfered on POE2 for free..
@user-zu5mb1pz2b What's your problem? God forbid this guy spends some money on a game worth spending money on. Your analogy doesn't make sense anyways, those 2 situations aren't comparable. City workers get paid with tax money, so extra random "tips" don't make sense. PoE is free, so buying supporter packs as a way to support development is much more rational.
you guys sound like broads fawning over movie stars lmao
Yeah, the OPs comment is kinda too gushy gushy fan girl for me too. Probably the kind that freaks out at Taylor Swift concerts. @user-zu5mb1pz2b
@user-zu5mb1pz2b bro POE is a free to play game if you forgot about that. a person can completely finish the game without paying anything if he really wants to or pay like 10 bucks...
@@edwardblanc657 POE is one of the only games that have this amazing monetization option like, play the game if you like it and go to end game pay some tabs and you are fine.. like i played Black Desert and Lost Ark and I was asking myself, why should i play if I can just buy my progress.. POE does microtransactions even better than Riot Games.
Praying for the melee success in PoE2!
1h and shield + 2h for different skills is something I was contemplating and looking forward to trying in the game just recently, seeing it in footage here is great
The interviewer is good at his job. This also doesn’t feel staged like other bigger studios; it’s just a bunch of guys talking about game design.
Everything I see on PoE2 just gets me more and more hyped. Hearing these guys talk about it you know they really know their shit and care a whole lot about making a great successor to PoE. November cannot come fast enough.
I don’t even know what to play. I was sold on the mercenary bc it’s so different than the norm, now I seem to like monk, a class I would probably pick last in other games
So happy with the change of no portals in boss fights! Love the confidence of these design choices.
Now get rid of logout macro completely
They already did. @@Thekalllllllll
@@Antiquated-Ether wtf? why? trade casuals always ruining everything for us HC players because they know we are way better than they will ever be
@@xXxpowerbagxXxYou're complaining about not being able to cheat death as a HC player. That's as weenie hut jr as it gets.
@@xXxpowerbagxXx Git Gud
What's so excellent about them being open about the challenges of balancing everything is that it gives the sense that even if things aren't totally balanced, they are giving it their best, and will figure it out with a patch down the road if need be. So far though it appears well conceived. Cant wait!
The more I learn about PoE2 and the more I hear these two talk, the more I am looking forward to playing the game! Because I like what I hear and see about PoE2 I just bought my first 60 $ supporter pack. Doing great work GGG and you too Ziggy.
Supportable basic attack is a wild change, but absolutely needed. Auto/Basic attacks are so often worthless in these types of games, and free support gem slots would make it amazing.
Honestly disagree. It throws off the game balance since built-in attacks and spells cost no mana. They even acknowledge this when they said people stopped using mana flasks.
Seriously, why do this? Having a built-in skill for new players is nice but there’s no need to throw the whole game off because of it. Is it really that bad to make it so that support gems only work with skill gems?
@@billjohnson6863 this struck me too ,everything will have to be balanced around the 'default attack' to make it not completely useless or have everything revolve around it. that's a big downfall with many classes in d4 to me, you just spam attack to fill a bar to use your actual abilities.
hard to say how it will turn out though, but it worries me a bit how naive and face-value focused the vocal majority of the community is. nothing new in gaming though, but still not helpful!
@@billjohnson6863 in poe 2 support gems don't do 50% more dmg. only about 10% more (about 30% more when conditions are meet ,and normal attack will have trouble meet those conditions). and a lot of support gems don't even add dmg
@@billjohnson6863 "Is it really that bad to have literally a core gameplay element be completely fucking useless?" Yes. Yes it is.
They also acknowledged their plans for working on it, literally within a few sentences of the part you quoted. I'm not pretending it's going to be easy to balance, but if you don't give a good reason for melee characters to use their basic attacks, then they're just going to turn into short range casters. AGAIN.
The whole issue with people not using mana flasks was because it was one of their first implementations of the system. It's not ready yet. Of course it's not going to be that bad on release.
@@genesises Yes, yes they will have to balance it like that. But this is a system they're adding onto an already existing combat system. The main issue games like D4 ran into, was that D4 was built from the ground up for the Generate and then Spend rotation. You didn't really get a choice if you wanted to use the basic attacks or not.
The idea of this supported auto attack system is to give people a way to weave basic attacks into their playstyle in a way that doesn't feel like you're only doing it because you ran out of mana.
Nobody is pretending it's going to be the sole fix of all the problems, or that there won't be hurdles to overcome, but OBJECTIVELY having an auto attack actually do ANYTHING is better than an auto attack only existing for the sake of having something you can do when you're out of mana. If it wasn't, they'd just fucking remove it altogether.
"We removed the distinction between spells and attacks."
Woah, I had to double-take at that.
Interesting discussion about the default attack. I notice they mentioned the default attack is tied to the weapon, so in this case, they can make alternate default attacks for unique weapons to make them more interesting. As an example, a Unique Katana could have a default attack that makes your character cut through the enemy like a cool samurai quickdraw attack. I hope they realize they opened up something really good.
I think different weapon types already have different default attacks
@@Sindamsc They do but his point is unique weapons can override those defaults for fun things.
This is the most gameplay I've ever seen with the shield. Most videos I've seen of the warrior, they focused on the 2 handed Mace. I don't play melee often but from this discussion, I'd be up to play a sword-and-board style melee character.
I kind of agree with Jonathan on push-back. It needs a little more umph when you block.
Thanks for uploading this. Again really enjoy the Sword-and-board gameplay.
In addition, it was nice to see you using the Sorceress' Ice Nova skill with your Monk. That would seem like a combo that shouldn't be missed. I know themonk has other ice attacks but Ice Nova looks like it fits better than Wave of Frost or other Monk ice skills. But that's the beauty of POE. You can use any skill as long as you have the stats for it.
Man I love the ACTUAL play-testing. They design their game, try to meta it out, then find a meta, then break the meta with game design to make int more engaging, uncover a new problem, repeat. I love GGG.
Another phenomenal interview. Jonathan's vision here is on point. Keep cooking. No hack/slack ARPG has this depth of thought on something like melee combat.
the word comes in my mind looking at this is SATISFACTION, the gameplay just looks so satisfiying!
Lol that point at @8:30 about how they had to change flasks because spamming auto attack + 5 life flasks became most efficient is so funny. That sounds exactly like something people would do because it's optimal but have zero fun while doing so
I once tried to do a build where while waiting for Earthquake to proc it's shockwave, I would trigger another slam, usually Earthshatter. It was an interesting concept of rotating between these two skills. It was honestly one of the most fun I've had playing the game because it was a melee combo that actually somewhat made sense.
Glad to see POE2 moving towards more combo-oriented gameplay rather than a one-button does it all.
Man, this is a fantastic video. I love the design breakdown, and really emphasises how difficult game design as a skill can be.
I actually like that now we can't portal during boss fights, but please put a well outside the boss arena, I don't want new strange habits like portaling for flasks before fights
Every boss has a checkpoint pole near them which refills your flask if i remember correctly.
But this also means that once you are in a boss room, you can't escape, which would spell doom for any hardcore lovers. There should be a way to flee the fight with the cost being that the fight resets.
@@Xalantor I'm 80% sure you can just log out and reset the instance.
Yea, you can just log out and boss is getting resetted.
@@Xalantor I disagree - the idea of disconnecting in hc to avoid gameplay being normalized is only because it was enabled in Poe 1 design. What if that didn't exist in Poe 2? Then hc players wouldn't have those expectations of disconnecting, thus not being normalized.
From the gameplay footage shown, holding up your shield to block while looks kind of cool will be absolutely slow and clunky to play. Part of what makes Souls like games fun is being rewarded for blocking, dodging and parrying at the perfect moment. Right now it looks like they are missing that part and focusing on making it "look" the part. As an example for shield you could add Retalition skills that trigger on perfect blocks like sending out an aoe shockwave or something.
Great to hear that they are still not afraid to take risks and do fundamental changes in order to give us and themselves a better experience! Also, look how good the active blocking is... bro... ❤
I like the shield on the back finally, ive been wanting to make a character with that style for so long now
It's really cool that they handcraft all those different play styles. I'm really interested what they do with the fast hitting dagger and claw styles and dual wielding characters.
thanks foe doing this interview dude, great video
Jonathan is working so hard to say "melee" correctly. Good on him!
That defense change sounds awesome. No more needing melee black and spell block it is just block sounds way better. Wonder if this means suppression is removed or it will also do both as well.
Last demo, they had both attack and spell suppression. Everything is still subject to change of course.
Listening to the GGG devs talk so openly and honestly about something they clearly care about deeply is such a joy… especially when compared to most other games.
welp now i know that im playing default attack monk on the release of the game. Thank you GGG hopefully they give unarmed some love then we really will be cooking with grease.
I think default attack will be one tool in a melee players arsenal that will be optimal in certain situations but not always. I wouldn't expect to base your whole playstyle around it. Although to play devils advocate I do like the look of playing sword and board blocking enemy attacks and default attacking them in their openings, and will likely start playing this way on either warrior or duelist. But I think the real nuance comes from learning how to effectively capitalize on stuns and freezes in melee with big attacks or combos.
man... this feels like a soulslike philosophy regarding bosses. Status build up and even looks like 'guard counters' are a part of it. I'm down for it!
I really hope they add ripostes, or at least skills that can only be used on a staggered enemy. That would be sick
im on my knees for parrying with the duelist
soulslike games are a good experience because they are one and done singleplayer games, turning your seasonal arpg into a soulslike, well, we will see how that goes.
Im the exact opposite, this is so far from what i want from PoE. This could genuinely ruin the feel of the game for so many players
I dislike souls games, but I like what I'm seeing here
19:00 thats actually great, colors matter a lot when making split second decisions, also sound(Grubby from WC3 was commenting on this as WC3 Reforged has multiple sounds for the same units and they sound too similar, in classic WC3 every unit has an unique death sound and it helps identify what just happened)
4:38 this is something i always wanted to do charge my melee attack and bonk boss with mace or long sword 👍
I would LOVE to work for GGG. Even just going through and changing values and tedious tweaking. It would be great to listen in on the meetings and design discussions. Especially for this game. Listening to Jonathan speak design is very insightful
Ranged builds can clear mobs 2 screens away and not have to worry about on-death effects etc. Getting out of range of an aoe/ beam attack is also easier because you are already at range. Can be super squishy (have one or two layers of short time burst defense to survive one big hit before running away) while melee actually has to tank most stuff, if you put gear and skillpoints into defense you do less dps and have less mobility (and can still get 1-shot).. or your build choice is at least very limited because only the FOTM build has both high defense and offense
Speaking of flasks: they are super great is you can kill the boss or a tough rare in 30s (maybe a minute), if the fight drags on and the boss has no minions (killing refills flasks) then it sucks.
PoE 1 boss design/ balance is mostly ok but there are some outliers/ terrible rare mod combos. Bosses can range from facetank- no stages to 1-shot mechanics with invulnerability stages... personally I avoid maps with such bosses like plague. During campaign it's also a problem.. you can fly trough acts no problem, die on one boss 20 times and then do next 2 acts without single gear change and no deaths...
This is actually so crazy how they reinvented the whole game multiple times over and just take their time. When they know they have a good idea they are not afraid to just overhaul everything to make it fit. I sincerely hope they are going to push this genre forward. It may not end up being the game for everyone (and that is great!) but I really do hope it will become the game all other ARPGs look to for genre defining innovation.
maaaan my fav thing about d2 were the death animations of the monsters if they can make some epic death animations in poe2 the fights will feel so real!!!
Also maybe hire some ex blizz employee to make some next gen cinematics for lore as its the only thing im missing in poe right now
I love these developer deep dives and even moreso when ZiggyD is the interviewer
What I love about POE 2 is that it scratches the itch I was looking for back when I played Baldur's Gate Dark Alliance 1 and 2.
D2 has this little bit animation on block and dodge, good thing to see it in here
that is a great decision about defenses as it relates to spells vs attacks. Like Mark said, it's incredibly hard to know the difference between spells and attacks. I like that there's still a distinction like attacks coming from the ground vs coming from in front. Lot of really smart decisions going on.
This is really cool to watch the development philospohy. Reminds me of the Diablo 2 assassin who had charge up attacks and finishers. She was fun to play melee. This season was my first in POE and I'm playing melee. Slam felt nice but the bleed stuff I'm doing now doesn't feel melee. Looking forward to POE2 love these development videos
Well done Ziggy. Love this insight.
Accuracy changes are 🔥. It always felt bad missing with Slams. "Area of Effects"'s always hitting and miss chance increasing with range, are awesome, dynamic and sensible changes to PoE's Accuracy system.
"No more portaling out of boss fights..."
Thank the gods!!! From designers who are so thoughtful and deliberate in everything they do I've been shocked since it was first showed off that they were implementing such a deflating mechanic.
I'm thrilled to see it removed before... it would have inevitably been removed anyway.
Can't wait to find my favourite weapon and be able to make it viable. GGG are really winning me over with their openess and passion.
What a great interview.
The more I see from PoE 2 I feel...
-This game will be GGG's magnum opus
-I will not have the bandwidth to learn it
Hope many players enjoy it and I look forward to following its progress from afar!
I love the interviews, hyped for poe2 as much as anyone else. But the heavy focus on melee makes it so that every interview only talks about that. Would love to hear more about the javelins, crossbows, and skills associated with these weapons. About how they make sure the balancing for melee doesn't influence the balance of other archetypes' approaches to monster pack fights and bosses.
the thing is, melee=bad is like the D4=bad for PoE, so this is why the focus is so strong here. Everyone already expects ranged/spells/minions to be incredible
I bet they're still figuring that out themselves.
"But the heavy focus on melee makes it so that every interview only talks about that."
Well, there is a reason for it and they even explained it in the interview. Melee combat faces a lot of different challenges than ranged combat, both when it comes to designing it and playing it. Ranged combat is just something very different and something that is "easier" to go about.
Additionally, melee has been in a pretty bad state for years now in PoE, so making sure that the whole archetype of combat actually feels good in PoE 2 is hugely important.
Ohhh man the melee in PoE2 looks so juicy. I can't wait to get my hands on it
I love how the developer has that’s youthful vigor and passion for the game!
I love this team, The Art in game is so Fantasy.
total transparency, love it!
I really liked playing the Melee classes in lost ark, i bounced off being stuck waiting for updates for a very long time but the melee felt amazing.
Looks like they are wonderful people to work with on the project.
Great interview!
I just found this video and I noticed gameplay with a one hand axe and a shield that shine when blocks.
I'm fucking sold on PoE II, it's amazing they delivered that kind of melee weapons and they are working as intented
Thanks Ziggy, you're soo well spoken
shout out to Ziggy for being such a smart, gentle and well spoken man
How do you know he's a gentle man? I've never understood people using that word in that context. He could be torturing puppies in his spare time for all you know.
@@SlCKNESS_ It's in context of how he's behaving in regards to the interview, not a judgement call on his entire personality.
great interview, really interesting. i would love to see successfully defended attacks bounce off a shield (when equipped) -- whereby the attack animation is interrupted and both player and enemy react to the impact slightly.
Listening in from the hospital, bet it is an amazing interview!!
Good luck Tri! Is it your first ankle biter?
Please leave the community
@@joshuahensley9395stop being toxic and gtfo
of our community
@@joshuahensley9395 lol I bet your're a miserable person to be around
@@joshuahensley9395 do that yourself
Awesome interview as always. STOOKED for poe2
Great video can't wait to see the rest
It's so nice to see developers actually deconstructing what makes action combat good and not just making different single animation attack/skills with different colors/particles. Chaining attacks togther (swinging from the right into swinging from the left) is so incredibly important to feel that so many fucking developers just can't wrap their head around for whatever reason.
I love how often you bring up Elden Ring/Soulslikes also - they are the pinnacle for melee combat that should be heavily used as a reference
I can't wait boys.
If you happen to be there another time can you do a 5 mins interview with Chris to learn how his doing with his new take on the job? It'd be great 😁
The final stage of melee attacks was always range attacks.
When Saitama(One Punch Man) pulverizes a mountain with one punch.
Or in animes when a samurai cuts a 100m tall monster into two parts with one cut.
How about a Kii system(that would be my idea for good Melee combat)
Kii is a martial art energy that strengthens attacks, protects the body from damage or strengthens one's weapon.
In the game it would be a bar like mana that charges and the following mechanics would have melee abilities.
*ki attack:
Your attacks consume ki to cause stronger and more widespread damage Example: you run to the boss, use up all your kii energy at once with 3-4 strong attacks and run out again and wait until it is recharged.
*ki defense:
Charge your ki energy with attacks and surround your body with ki to take less damage.
*ki weapon:
Add ki to your weapon, allowing you to perform weaker ki attacks over a longer period of time.
The Ki bar could, for example, increase with stats such as strength or movement speed =Ki regeneration.
Weapons could have different Kii energies.
With a bit of luck, a weapon with shadow energy or light energy will drop
Schadow Ki regenerates more slowly, but the bar fills up with monster kills.
light energy does more damage.
You could sell Kii skins in the shop.
I don't speak English very well, so there should be some spelling mistakes srry.
So excited for the new game, sounds amazing.
Some questions on my mind:
1. I have a few concerns with basic attacks that seem to appear on most games with basic attacks. The first is that it can make builds feel homogenous, like if you spend say 25% of your time basic attacking then that can easily turn into 25% identical gameplay between two builds that would otherwise be unique. The solution is to have the basic attack always be highly synergistic with each build so you don't just use the same one on all builds, and it needs to feel really different, but that can be extremely hard to do from a design, animation and balance perspective. A related issue is that it often straight up feels better to be able to spam the more powerful skills, maybe not as you're leveling but more towards late game farming scenarios where you have an expectation of being able to go fast and not stick around single mobs to do extended combos. I'm sure all of these issues can be solved, but I've yet to see a single action RPG that has pulled it off so It's hard to be optimistic.
2. With so many skill slots, how is build overlap addressed? For example if there are three good defensive skills but you only have enough skill slots for one, then builds would have to choose which is best for them, creating diversity. But if there are enough slots to have room for all three defensive skills then everyone might just run all of them. Hypothetically you could imagine if there were as many skill slots as there were skills in the game, and you'll see how more skill slots might lead to more combat diversity, but at the cost of build diversity.
3. I'm surprised accuracy is making a comeback. Most ARPGs nowadays seem to have moved away from it in favor of things like critical strikes, which can effectively be the same thing if the multiplier is high but psychologically it feels a lot better.
The tech they have for those melees are so good, visceral looks truly like an advancement in the genre. It takes a lot of guts to actually MAKE the combat intentional and real with models actually connecting. I love that. It always felt artificial to me how ARPGs just made melee .. 'not real', just a number generator with artificial animation taped over it. That's cool.
Man a little animation to show resistance being made with the feet while being pushed would be so cool
Could even just be an effect like kicking up dirt or dust or whatever.
@@colbyboucher6391 yes maybe that's enough. It looks really unnatural the way it is in an otherwise seemingly perfect game
Exactly what I came here to say. That and when you're not blocking and you get it, your character goes into a semi-crouched slide animation while moving and interrupts the attack for that very brief moment. It'd feel better and gives incentive not to stand and just keep getting wacked without blocking or moving. That's not brutal, it just makes 100% sense and would feel great.
The active block looks really good. I hope it feels as visceral as it looks
GGG is definitely setting the standard for top tier game development. Other companies should take notes.
Finally someone is making the arpg of my dreams... Cant wait :)
I really like these guys. I think they're about to release a really amazing game.
Ggg is a great company. Its clear they care. Im surprised they didnt respect and crib diablo's solution to the default attack issue, which is to make it lower damage but (in most cases) return mana.
those shield/hammer animations look really sick!
can’t wait to try my hand at melee sorceress. just love trying to build out elemental spellswords.
I hate looking anything about PoE2 because I want to play it NOW
Wait so if they removed portals from boss fights, and if they are still doing the whole "login back in the fight" if you logout, does that mean you'll have to kill the boss or die once you enter the boss fight? That will be amazing, can't wait for the high stakes in hardcore!
most likely you just pop up outside the boss entrance and have to re-do it from the top. maybe they've come up with something smart but making it not annoying for the player will be hard otherwise.
You log back in at the exact spot you logged out, no cheating allowed anymore lol
@@TheOriginalDuckley hopefully this doesnt mean dc = death every time
I just started playing PoE and I’m hooked, it’s so much fun
This game is so much going into the direction I wanted that I feel I am almost working at its development. Sadly GGG do not hire for hoem office overseas... I would love to be a developer of such an amazing game, proabalby even more than playing it.
I think accuracy mechanic has to go, at least for melee. It makes no sense.
If they're so concerned about being immersive... Make melee characters whiff attacks with reduced damage as glancing blows instead
Makes people take that node chaotic inoculation 1 life. And those cant do critical strikes modes, i like it.
I don't understand how it makes no sense, and then you say they are so concerned about immersion, if it's for immersion, then it's because it makes sense...
I'm just gonna put this here:
We'll see if they ACTUALLY fix it...
There's ZERO proof right of how any exists post-campaign right now so I'm not convinced.
Great video Ziggy
Nice set as usual!
That lightning attack is gorgeous
Great vid Ziggy
Moving while cover using shied is a good adition ❤
fantastic video
When theres not enough mana for a skill, it could still be cast with less or no support skill effects. That way the player could be notified even if not monitoring the mana pool.
I really like PoE 1... but I can not hear enough about how PoE 2 is going to be different. I love the slower more methodical pace, more emphasis on mana cost and management, skill opportunity openings, active block, etc. The absolute last thing I want is for endgame in PoE 2 to feel like it does in PoE 1. I don't want to kill more monsters than I can count in 1 minute of gameplay, I want each kill to feel impactful.
I've learned so much about game design from these ggg clips compared to paid course/education lol
I wonder why evasion is a thing to begin with. I think when you hit something it should be hit and the act of evading could be physically getting out of the way and dexterity theme could be improving the means of doing this.
Are there any satisfying clang sounds when metal shields are hit, or a good heavy thok for wooden shields?