Why are our expectations so high, and why are players angry today?

While I find some messages a bit too harsh or aggressive, I’m still one of the players currently frustrated with the state of the game. I want to share a few points of context that I believe are important and help explain the level of expectations I personally have for the game.

POE1 was on a fast track toward greatness. The last patches brought a ton of quality-of-life improvements while maintaining strong build diversity and increasingly deep crafting mechanics. Alternate gems, the three Atlas trees, the easier respec system, Alva trade—these were all great additions that hinted at an incredible future for the game. But the pause has been… a bit too long.

We showed up in full force and gave massive support at the launch of POE2 0.1—with over 500,000 players on Steam alone, insane streaming numbers, and YouTube videos all over the place. The kind of hype and numbers this game achieved are beyond what 95% of studios could even dream of for their titles.

But 0.1 lasted 21 weeks, which in the world of modern ARPGs feels like a small eternity. That long of a wait only raised expectations for 0.2 even higher—players figured something that took so long to cook had to be amazing. But the end result was far from perfect.

Those 21 weeks of 0.1 were also a time for players and content creators to give tons of constructive feedback. Many topics were raised, but the most common expectations could be summed up as:

A more stable game and server experience than 0.1—because if you can’t even play properly, it’s hard to enjoy anything else.

A smoother and shorter campaign (not asking for a speedrun here), with more regular and linear character progression, and less bloated acts.

Truly new endgame content (not dozens of new encounters—just one or two well-designed things to do would be great).

A healthy build diversity and balance (adjust the strong builds from 0.1 without deleting them, lift up the weak ones, and avoid adding anything completely broken).

Loot and crafting systems that allow every player to get at least a few high-tier items during the league.

A slight increase in game speed for all classes/ascendancies—not zoom-zoom POE1 levels, just a better sense of flow and speed to match enemy pacing.

From my perspective, if I had to rate each of these points out of 10, I’d give all of them a mediocre score… And the “quick fixes” patched between April 7th and 20th—while positive—mostly gave me the impression that nothing was truly ready after 21 weeks of 0.1, and that the devs are just plugging holes wherever the ship is leaking.

Personally, I’m still going to support the game and I’m excited for what’s next—but I think it’s fair to say that this league has been disappointing given the expectations, and I really hope we see a meaningful shift in direction moving forward.

Peace

I like the game. But some valid points made here.

It's hard to take PoE 2's endgame seriously when there were so many things to do in PoE 1. And the harshness of the campaign kills any desire to work on new characters and builds.

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Johny_Snow#4778 a écrit :

It's hard to take PoE 2's endgame seriously when there were so many things to do in PoE 1. And the harshness of the campaign kills any desire to work on new characters and builds.

To me it kicked in much later in the endgame of 0.2: I could do non-juiced T15-16 maps with level 80 and 50-60 EX builds. Juicing them up also with Delirium and going T17-18 was too hard yet. So I farmed. Eventually my 2 characters were both LV 90 and had 25 div+ builds. The result was the EXACT SAME. T15-16: Chill through (I cant say zoom because its just not possible in this game for whatever reason, as if walking slowly one shotting content is so much more meaningful than going fast and one shotting...). T17-T18 Delirium 6 mod maps: I can still die. Easily. To a lot of things. The last 60-70h+ of farming didnt seem to make the slightest difference in character progression. Yes my characters sheet numbers more than doubled - and yet it still doesnt feel like I got any stronger what so ever. And at that point I would have needed 10div+ single gear pieces to make any progress - and that progress would have then been very small...it just doesnt feel like the farming actually goes anywhere. If everything, including farming always remains a challenge, then whats the point of farming when you dont actually get stronger?

Additionally the nerfing of all pinnacle boss chase items and jewel slots on the tree gave me the last push to stop playing. It just doesnt feel like it leads anywhere after LV 90 and that was significantly different and better during 0.1. From the 220h of 0.1 I played, more than half of it was past that mark because it had so many things to do and so many items to chase and so many builds to make. Good times.

i cant imagine to spend another 20+ hours on this shitty compain

Because for many gamers TM video games are their only source of self worth.

That's why you see such extreme levels of metaslavery where people will abuse the most busted builds to clear and beat bosses so they can feel like they achieved something in life.

Its sadly happens in every single online video game

Expectation are so high because this is a company that made Path of Exile 1, a masterpiece of a game that got so many things right for an ARPG. People are disappointed because this same company worked 7 years on a game where amnesia seems to hit on the regular, unlearning what they've learned from their masterpiece.

I had very low expectation about 0.2 because all I wanted was a modern trading system and new acts and I was well aware I wasn't going to get any of it.

But I didn't expected them to release such a mess of totally untested changes and not working feature. It was really really impressive. Not checking the new ascendancy wasn't avaliable in the patch build really put into question if there is any pre-patch release test at all.

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IKerensky#7242 a écrit :

I had very low expectation about 0.2 because all I wanted was a modern trading system and new acts and I was well aware I wasn't going to get any of it.

But I didn't expected them to release such a mess of totally untested changes and not working feature. It was really really impressive. Not checking the new ascendancy wasn't avaliable in the patch build really put into question if there is any pre-patch release test at all.

If it's not clear, "totally untested changes" are what happens in an Early Access. We are the dumb people paying money to work as their beta-testers. Once upon a time companies had to hire people for the job, now they get paid to get the job done.

My expectations for PoE2 are super low.

Anything that isn't complete shit is infinitely surprising to me.

Which allows me to actually enjoy the game.