This is the weirdly unlearnable realization that’s going to hit third party app reddit users in 6 or so weeks. Because Reddit will just truck along unchanged.
I haven’t played a Blizzard game or touched anything even close to related to Battle Net in years. I did my part. In 30 years Blizzard will still be there, and I’ll have had no impact, but that won’t make me regret a thing. It was just some video games that I’ll have missed out on. I’m already missing out on video games as is, every single person is, and time will only increase the amount. Blizzard isn’t and will never be worth being “the ones” at the top of that mindspace.
For anyone who’s wondering, I saw within the first few hours there were comments mentioning the weird installer and malware fuckery. The account was VitaminX which I think has since been deleted EDIT THE ACCOUNT HAS NOT BEEN DELETED. Screenshots xposted from a different forum VitaminX user card
I think in general people do. The concern is that the devs will be splitting their focus and their team between two games, and it potentially splits the playerbase and the economy.
There are some concerns that this means PoE1's issues won't be addressed as well. PoE2 was made to solve many of the problems that PoE1 has, and they continued to develop the game beyond that scope to the point it became it's own product and changed too much of PoE, and because PoE2 is such a significantly different game, it risks alienating their existing playerbase, so they are now preserving PoE1's gameplay, while making the changes they wanted to make for PoE2 which should attract more players.
But that now means that those solutions that were developed to fix PoE1's problems are now only in PoE2 and tied to an overall total rework of the game built around those solutions and how they change the game. Things like how the skill gem system works to be more simple, mana reservation no longer existing, etc.
Ultimately it's no different than having WoW and WoW classic. Just hopefully they'll have a large enough playerbase between both games to justify maintaining both. Their idea of staggering releases does mean that many players will likely swap between the two though and play both.
They did answer in a Q&A later on at Exilecon that the games run the same engine and things can be ported between the games, if there is content that's popular in PoE2 they may release it in PoE1 and vice-versa. The only real thing that cannot be ported is the character animations.
This does also mean that since purchases are shared, MTX have to be made multiple times for the 7 PoE1 character models and for the 12 PoE2 character models.
tl;dr If you like the existing PoE1 gameplay, PoE1 will continue to exist largely as it is now. If you like PoE2 more, then you will have that. And if you like both you can continue to play both and there will be more overall content to play between the two with the staggered releases.
While that sounds bad for POE 1, the QoL changes and fixes for PoE2 sound like what I always wanted for PoE1. I want to like PoE 1, but many of the systems were too complicated for me to want to deal with, and since I was a casual, occaisional player, a lot of stuff would change by the time I would come back, and I wouldn't even know where to start anymore.
If they've reduced complexity and made things more intuitive, I might give PoE2 a shot when it releases. That said, if it's possible, they should backport as much of that stuff as they can to PoE1. There are still a lot of people who want to play it and probably would play it in the future, even with the launch of its sequel.
I heard a streamer describe it as while PoE2 looks harder combat-wise, there is a lot less hidden mandatory knowledge and building so it's more approachable.
PoE2 has more punishing mechanics, combat is more active and you need to dodge enemy attacks, and bosses reset HP if you die. But you don't have the same checklist of things you need to be viable, and there's less focus on knowing the mathed out optimal setups since support gems are now focused on changing skill behavior rather than providing multiplicative damage boosts.
Played this ages ago, when it was a small but well made VR-exclusive prototype with one train and a very small track through a basic landscape. Cool to see how it developed since then, definitely giving this another go at some point.
Well, has the fully Youtube Poop-compliant animations, I suppose. The actual ‘game’ part of the games, if they weren’t so absurdly sluggish to respond to inputs and take such a very long time to load each new screen, would have been indistinguishable from any other completely uninspired, middle of the road platformer of the early 90s. From the gameplay segments of that video, that looks like all they’re aspiring to here, as well.
I think that’s a respectable enough goal, though. Those games are clearly awful to play or actually experience in any way directly, but something about the weird and off-putting animations and voice acting has really resonated with people. I think with a team that has the skill and interest to put together something they’re actually invested in (and polish those platforming controls for the love of god) you could get something truly special.
Sure, it’s probably never going to achieve wide appeal, but I don’t think that’s the intent. This is the kind of stuff I want to see coming out of the indie scene, cult classics born of weird passions.
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Aktywne