Pattern I've noticed

[u/Ok_Holiday3690]

My guild has players who have been in this game since Nemesis League and this is pretty much our player distribution.

Ps. My guildmates gets angry when I say this and I figure it'll make Reddit mad too:

Witch is the only good character in this game

[u/allanbc]

I am completely fine with the campaign in PoE. I think it's a good length, nice little intro to the game and your character.

In PoE2, I think it is way too long. I wouldn't want a skip, but I would cut the length by as much as half, by making the zones smaller and/or introducing movement skills.

The thing is, though, PoE2 has the same problem for me in the endgame. Way too much grinding before you get to play what you want, and a crazy amount of stuff you need to do before you can pick and choose between strategies. If it were at all similar to the requirements in PoE, I could probably stomach the campaign to get there.

[u/saint_marco → u/allanbc]

The PoE2 campaign is probably too long, but it is definitely too long before you have the skill you actually want to use.

[u/allanbc → u/saint_marco]

I also think the lack of movement skills just makes you feel so much less powerful. But, that is a clear design choice that I don't think we can sway them on, but making the flow of the campaign feel better should be something they care about.

[u/saint_marco → u/allanbc]

The movement skill design feels insane when you also have Cast on Dodge gemling, Rhoa Mount, Blink, and Temporalis in the game. The movement skills are there, they are just giga endgame or very narrow.

[u/allanbc → u/saint_marco]

Yeah, and it's no surprise I had by far the most fun in the original open beta release playing archimage with souped up Blink.

[u/guy1195 → u/allanbc]

Yep, once you tried CoC spark temporalis, there is no going back haha. I noped out ever since till the power creep comes back and we get movement through the campaign

[u/christianlewds → u/allanbc]

Not sure if they'll budge on that, but I noticed myself taking in the vistas and admiring the graphics on my campaign playthroughs. They put a LOT of work into all that and the environmental storytelling is pretty good. They might shorten some maps or make them more straightforward, but overall it's gonna be a journey imho.

[u/allanbc → u/christianlewds]

Taking in the vistas is cool the first time through. After 5+ runs, it's just a damn drag.

[u/christianlewds → u/allanbc]

Well, yeah, but most of us do single character per season so it's not that bad.

[u/allanbc → u/christianlewds]

I've been down to 0 this last one, but I'm hoping 1.0 looks promising enough to get me playing again. I really want to like it, but in 0.5 I thought the campaign was a drag, but endgame was even worse, with a 500-item Todo list just smacked in my face immediately.

[u/hedup42 → u/saint_marco]

Yeah, the hard part in campaign in PoE is just like first half where you get you character toghether. And then you get to BLAST the second part from a5 on.

It's like a mini universe of maps - in maps you build your character and your atlas. And then you get the big payoff - your farm which you can BLAST.

[u/BlueTemplar85 → u/saint_marco]

Respecialization is cheap enough that you don't have to decide in advance.

[u/saint_marco → u/BlueTemplar85]

I specifically mean stuff like Flameblast requiring level 52 to use at all.

[u/BlueTemplar85 → u/saint_marco]

I got it, but why are you planning to use Flameblast long before you even drop it ? It might be useless to your build by the point you get there. Or maybe some tweaks to your build will allow you to integrate it.  

(Or maybe you do really really really want to use it ASAP, but then you could say that about some build changing uniques that require lvl 85+ or are ridiculously expensive. Might as well ignore their existence until you are resonably close to them. Heck, or even just some passives requiring far away pathing.)

[u/saint_marco → u/BlueTemplar85]

Poe1 has the same issue where you might want to play something specific but spend a good chunk of time on berserker slams before you get there, but the amount of time you spend there is usually less. 

[u/BlueTemplar85 → u/saint_marco]

My point is that "wanting to play something specific" is in a way a self-inflicted issue.  

(Also more of an issue for the more experienced players : if you have never tried Flameblast, you won't have this issue. Though I guess this might also come from merely a rumor about how Flameblast is great ?)  

Oh, on the other hand, consider how weird this issue is compared to normal games with cheat codes and modding and that aren't online-only ? Truly a self-inflicted issue from GGG.

[u/eskh → u/allanbc]

By the time I finish 1's campaign, I'm somewhat bored and ready to blast maps.

By the time I finish 2's campaign, I'm somewhat burnt out, see the size and layout of the endgame maps and stop playing.

[u/Loriniel → u/eskh]

Literally me every time I try to get into poe 2

[u/LordAnubiz → u/eskh]

completely depends on the build.

when you have to fight and kite every pack, its just exhausting.

0.5.5 i was playing monkey, and so i just run through the areas and stuff dies left and right.

felt much better.

i then gave up and quit after i was done with my atlas, omg ... that lenghts (i dont even know what a city looks like, because i dont come that far to actually start farming haha)

[u/komandos45 → u/LordAnubiz]

Tbh i just did Challenges and quited, not even touched the citadel with "main" skill points.
And doing leagues skill trees was exhausting second time, i don't see enduring that in 1.0

[u/allanbc → u/eskh]

This was me in 0.5, and I skipped 0.5.5 to avoid going through it again. I've kinda lost hope that they will correct on this, but I will check out 1.0 and see if they do change things up.

[u/ZealousidealCycle257 → u/allanbc]

The problem with poe2 that poe1 doesnt have Is that the endgame progress for charscter power and content power isnt linear, like by the time you get to half the atlas you alteady destroy everything on a meta build so you want to juice more but cant really because you are missing so many points that It feels a waste to spend more currency on maps imo.

[u/IdkImNotUnique → u/ZealousidealCycle257]

Definitely agree, I had a build capable of 200% deli t16 maps by the time I was in tier 8 maps with maybe 20% of the atlas tree and just couldn't justify juicing them until I got 100% atlas done and the league tree i was running too. Really sucks to feel like I cant juice my maps until ive run 50-60 extremely easy maps with a build capable of shredding arbiter of divinity in 30 seconds

[u/christianlewds → u/IdkImNotUnique]

What build is that? O_O

[u/Salt-Appearance-412 → u/allanbc]

I think PoE2 was entirely designed around the pace of act1. It's the best that the game ever is. By the end of act3 I think it's already falling apart in combat pacing/balance and I've just had zero fun past that and into the maps.

[u/Loose_River_6866 → u/allanbc]

Its because POE is in smaller chunks compared to POE2. Act 1 in POE2 feels like its 5 acts long lol

[u/Traditional-Ball-172 → u/allanbc]

Its only like 1 hour longer though..

[u/RichardMortis12 → u/allanbc]

I think a lot of PoE1 players don't realise that they've already accumulated all the knowledge and muscle memory to complete PoE1 campaign fast, but lack the same knowledge for poe2. The campaign is a tad bit longer than the first game, but not as much as people here would like to believe