Path of Exile 2: Gameplay Mechanics and Challenges Overview

Monster AI in the new game may challenge even skilled players, leading to frustration and unexpected difficulties.

### Anticipating Path of Exile 2: Challenges, Mechanics, and Player Experience
* 👾  The discussion begins with a humorous observation about a character's **intimidating yet goofy appearance**, highlighting the challenges surrounding **monster AI** in the game.
* ⚔️  The melee combat system is critiqued for relying heavily on **basic skills like cleave and double strike**, which are seen as **underwhelming for early-game gameplay**.
* 🛑  Players will no longer be able to **portal out of Boss Fights**, raising concerns about the **difficulty of bosses** that previously posed significant challenges, especially for players lacking certain **sustain mechanics**.
* 📉  There's speculation that some streamers might struggle to progress past act one due to the potentially **overtuned difficulty**, as bosses are described as "**strong**" and capable of **healing completely** upon player death.
* 🧬  Changes to stat nodes are also mentioned, indicating a shift from traditional nodes to prismatic ones, where players can choose between **strength and intelligence**, impacting gameplay dynamics **significantly**.
* 🛡️  Defensive systems are being revamped, with a new mechanic allowing players to **block attacks**, which introduces **strategic depth** compared to simply relying on **chance to avoid damage**.
* 📊  The conversation touches on the importance of movement mechanics, emphasizing the need for **effective movement skills** to navigate the game's challenging environments, especially against **monsters that track players**.
* ⏳  Finally, the speaker encourages players to approach the new campaign with an **open mind**, as the experience will likely **differ greatly from the previous version**, requiring **time to learn and adapt** to new mechanics and quests.

[Music] Bo, this is look at this next guy. It looks like he's trying to be intimidating. It looks goofy as [__], like shaking his tentacles. He's just shaken in some cases, other cases not. There's like a whole lot of challenges around monster AI. I love it for the melee bad part. It's just [__] cleave and double strike, which is like two most dog [__] early game melee skills there are. It's perfect. Like cleav Row's default attack is longer range than cleave in mud flat, so bad, which it's crazy how you can follow the uh, go down the rabbit hole with these things. Is we have just officially decided you are not portl out of Boss FES anymore. Um, there was also things like example um, you know, we were holy [__] if they actually um. I I've heard they already nerfed some of the bosses from what we from what we played against in March. The for the

console thing that happened in June, but we were allowed to portal out still back then. Didn't matter if you're a ranger and you had the good life, flass sustain nodes, but if you didn't have those, those bosses were tanky as [ __ ]. They were hard. They did so much damage, like not be able to portal, and they heal the full if you die. Like, I'm telling you, when this comes out in Early Access, if the tuning is anywhere close to what we had, there's going to be some streamers, I'm not going to name them, that literally can't get past act one. Like, they're going to be hard stuck. They're going to be hard stuck. I hope the tuning is [ __ ] just [ __ ] like just completely overtuned for this early access. I really hope so. It's crazy content, hard stuck the coast. Some of those bosses are, they're strong, man. They're powerful. Not talking about Quinn. Look, if Quinn is

hard stuck in act one. It's 'cause he's, it's content. It's content. I'm talking about people that are not going to be happy and laughing as they die. They're going to be [ __ ] mad. Oh, I can't wait. I can't wait. The M classes enough life um, you know, so they like okay, we need to find a way to Sol that problem. We don't life in the passive train any War. We've now made it so that the life you get from strength is way higher um, like you know then then we started like okay, we need to make the man higher from intelligence like it's just started just like rippled into this like massive giant Balan storm. One thing to remember about that assuming this hasn't changed um, stat nodes are no longer stat nodes. They are like Prismatic stat nodes where when you take it, you choose strength X or ENT. At least that's how it was for travel nodes uh back in March. It might have changed by now. It is but like

you need to have the way St. carment worked on support gems. For example, was the first support gem you put in. I don't actually know if it scaled them all up, but what it felt like was the first support te you put in would require like 13 decks, and the second would require like 25 decks, and the third would be like 50 decks. What I don't know is if like, are the first and the second Support also scaling up in decks as you add and just make it a four link, or does the order of support gems actually matter. I don't remember if it mattered like you want strength because Bas life is better than like whatever Dex are in provid. You're kind of just picking based on your uh statments of your sports. Was add in the each support together. I think I hope that's accurate, and I think that' feel the best cuz it would be weird if the order mattered and you had to like put your in support gy first cuz you're dumb. Just just full adding makes the

most sense. I think speaking of visibility, I need a setting to turn this life bar the [__] off. I never want to see that ever in any scenario. Get it off my screen. What more is like it's in the spot where it has to be like nowhere else. Makes sense, but like it's just clutter. It just the information is not important in most cases. Maybe in po it'll be a little more important, but like whether or not this lightning R icon is like you know red or green or whatever color it is when it goes negative. Like it's not going to impact any choice that I make usually, so I don't need to see it always. If I want to see it, I can like hover over the boss and then get the life bar and then I can know. But I uh, I hope I can turn this off both in po one right now and then also in po two. So like if you were underneath the boss for example in Mele of the boss.

right here with this giant Boss Bar and then also with the hover bar. You'd be in melee of the boss and be having his visuals blocked by like just screen elements. So yeah, melee has certainly all the damage advantage. Then just, are you good enough to maintain the uptime, um, or have you spe defensively enough that you can, you know, it's manual but it's stronger. It's like instead of just chance to not take damage, it's like you press a button. I think you move a little slower and you hold your shield in front of you. And I think most attacks don't work when you're blocking. It's like an alternative stance and you just like fully block anything in that moment. But there's like a cap on how much damage you can block. But it sounds like it could be really good. It's like, like, you know, choosing to not take damage when you are responding to something that is happening on your screen. It's like, you know, a little more, uh, little more interesting than just

like put my guard skill on cast shaken on every character always because it's just objectively the best. Just watching a wd character move around like it bothers me. Is that just me? It's like it makes the game look so different when they're only moving in like the eight directions compared to like mouse movement. Like it looks wrong, right? It looks so weird. I'm sure when you're playing it, it feels fine, but just watching, it's like the way the character is moving. It feels like so rigid because of how the directional system works when you can only move in eight directions compared to like mouse where it's like a very smooth. I didn't play wac at all. No, I was going to test it out, but because we couldn't modify keybinds, I didn't want to do it without being able to control what the keybinds change to. And mouse movement felt great on Ranger. Ranger does feel really good, yo.

it if if you watch the uh the the March thing that we did like half people there were playing Ranger. He like Ranger can shoot while moving. That's just that's just how the game works now. Like when you shoot lightning AR, you just move at half speed while you're shooting it, but you're just you can do it while moving, which feels [ __ ] insane. I saw that I was instantly like okay I'm playing ranged and it did feel really good but also like moner moners are different. Basically every single Monster tracks you in that game. So like in in po one if you're straing around a boss that's kind of how you beat almost everything. It's the bosses don't track you except for Hill rck. So if if you just do a tiny movement you're always good in po2 they track you. So like you can move while shooting but moving isn't as op like they'll track you and then you have to like roll or use something else. I really

hope we have good move skills in this game. That's the one thing that I think I'm going to be the most sad about if you don't have as good move skills. I love me some move skills, yo. Things that once wasn't in the... Oh my God, I just real remember even when the boss frame isn't there. The hover over frame is like so much bigger and like more in your face. It's not at the top, it's like in the same like lower position, like so close to your character. The life change and like but is changing there. A lot of things like that, like all these defensive systems have to change as well. There's actually um quite large defensive changes um even just generally across B. Like all of these defensive... If you needed to see what any of the range monsters were doing, it was important to know if these arrows were like Enchanted or to [ __ ] explode. Like good luck. This giant [ __ ] life bar is like I want a smaller life bar up here and name.

plates. I don't think we had name plates in LA, and the demo version we were on didn't have access to the UI stuff, so we couldn't like check to turn it on. I think Frost blink, if winter last with the cast time, like the AL version, and a cooldown is like the absolute best Caster move skill they might give, but I don't even think that's going to exist. My expectation is that most move skills, like leap slam, is super slow, like it's meant to do damage now. I think most move skills are going to either be super slow, or they're going to be fast, but they require a Target, so it's like you're leaping to something, which does feel really good and can be fun to use, but if you're ever backtracking, you're just sitting there like, I'm so [ __ ] slow with my no quick sore flask, no Monsters to jump to, just walking. EV evasion works. There's no distinction anymore between ATT on a monster, so therefore evasion works.

against them. Um, instead, what we have is um, things like evasion. Uh, if you have an attack from the ground or the sky, um, then evasion can't evade that. So, like, if it's a SL, but that is going to make evasion so bad. I think we'll see, we'll see, like, for Boss abilities, totally fine, right? Totally fine, not a problem at all. If [__] Hill ground slams you, you shouldn't be able to evade it. You, like, it's a slow wind-up, it should hit you. But the fact that that, like, non-evadable damage that exists feels like it's going to create the exact same problem of the whole, like, spells versus attacks where it's like, this monster doesn't actually shoot an arrow with you, it calls down a [__] arrow from the sky. So, now it can't be evaded or like something weird like that. It's like a very similar distinction in just like fully disabling like one mechanic that's like not very clear to see from an incoming point of

view if they apply it kind of liberally to smaller abilities. We'll see if it's like a vow slam kind of thing. Like obviously, it's fine 30 campaign of maps. Yeah, like the current mindset you have because you've played this game for so long in the first version of the game campaign is man [ __ ] this. I don't care. I just want a map because it doesn't matter. Um, don't carry that mindset over to a brand new game. Like you have no clue, like anything about this campaign. And it's going to be like a, you know, discovering new things mindset, not a, you know, [ __ ] this skipe everything, give me sec. Even though it is going to take a long time, but it like, it's probably going to take like 10 plus hours, maybe, maybe like 15, maybe more, who knows, for the very first playthrough. And then you figure out what quests actually matter, and then you, you know, plan out the routes, and then you get faster, make a better build, and then

suddenly, it's like 5 hours. You want to keep watching that. That is Z talking to Mark and Jonathan about PO2. I'm going to watch the rest of it probably in a bit.

PoE 2 Dev Talk! (@ZiggyDGaming Interview)

The speaker discusses the goofy and intimidating appearance of a monster AI, highlighting its melee skills and the challenges it presents.

They mention the decision to remove the option to portal out of boss fights and the difficulty of the bosses, predicting that some players will struggle to progress in the game.

The speaker also talks about the adjustments made to life and mana gain from stats, as well as the introduction of prismatic stat nodes for character progression.

Support Gems and UI Preferences in Gameplay

The first support gem placed requires more decks than the subsequent ones, but it's unclear if the order of placement matters.

The player prefers to turn off the life bar for bosses, finding it cluttered and unnecessary.

They also discuss the benefits of a defensive stance for blocking damage, offering a manual but stronger way to avoid attacks.

Observations on Character Movement and Game Mechanics

The speaker finds the rigid eight-direction movement of certain characters in the game bothersome compared to smooth mouse movement.

They appreciate the Ranger's ability to shoot while moving, making it a popular choice among players.

The speaker expresses concern about the tracking mechanics of monsters in the game and hopes for good movement skills to be available.

Gameplay Mechanics and Evasion in the Demo Version

The demo version lacks name plates and UI access, making it difficult to check settings.

Move skills are expected to be either super slow or fast with a target, causing frustration during backtracking.

Evasion mechanics have changed, with no distinction between monster attacks, making it less effective and potentially creating confusion in gameplay.

The speaker emphasizes the importance of adopting a new mindset for the campaign in the upcoming game, rather than carrying over frustrations from the previous version.

They anticipate the first playthrough will take a long time, possibly 10-15 hours or more, as players discover important quests and plan their routes.

Over time, with better builds and strategies, the playthrough duration is expected to decrease significantly.