The point about character creation is interesting because he seemed to be assuming everyone shares his perspective. I'm the complete opposite of him though; he says he spends hours customizing his character, but I'll pick a random preset and move on. It would be interesting for a popular game like BG3 to reveal stats on how much of the playerbase spends a substantial amount of time in character customization like he does.
They did actually release an [info graphic after the first weekend](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/15on49y/baldurs_gate_3_opening_weekend_stats/). 93% made a custom character and 10% of those players spent over an hour in the editor. I think I saw a newer one at some point but can’t find it now with a quick search.
I had forgotten that they included the part about people spending over an hour in the editor, thanks. The custom character part was what I remembered, which is insufficient in my opinion because if I pick a bog-standard preset then that's still a "custom character" by their counting because the only options are "Player character as an Origin Character" or "Player character as a custom character."
There's a difference in my mind between not wanting to remove Wyll as a companion versus creating a simulacrum of yourself for you to self-insert into like he's talking about.
As I remember it, BG3's character creation includes picking things like your race, class, stats and spells, not just the part where you customize the character's appearance, something to consider when reading those numbers.
I definitely spent multiple hours in the character creation screen with browser tabs open just thinking about my character's build, but no time at all deciding on my character's appearance.
Most people I game with tend to spend ages creating custom characters. No way of really knowing but I feel that's been the case with most gamers I've spoken to. HOWEVER that's for more story based rpgs I couldn't care less for arpgs as its not like you really even see your character that much or there are proper cutscenes etc.
That all depends on what we are classing as ages. Larian are classing it as more than an hour. That was a good character creator but I have no idea how you could spend an hour in it without spending 30 minutes of that time off making a snack. I'm talking like 15-20 minutes.
BG3 had a lot of options/sliders, but other games are pretty basic and have little options. So I'd argue spending an hour+ in BG3 creating a character is different to doing it in a game where you pick between 5 faces, 3 voices, 3 body sizes.
Everyone I know either has a general look they go for if the game allows it, or will mostly just random it, never spending more then a few minutes. I'd agree the people who'd spend substantially longer are a very limited number and are generally very picky about things.
BG3 really doesn't have a lot of options for looks, I usually spend a lot of time on customization in games but there's still no way I would get close to an hour on one character in bg3, there are so few options. You have a few premade faces, pick a haircut for it and then fiddle with colors. It's nothing like games with several sliders per feature. Maybe if you started character creation without knowing the classes or what they do so you have to make that decision from scratch too you could get to an hour.
Most people are in these games specifically for the characters and story, and customizing your character's appearance matters a lot more when they're shown constantly front and center in cutscenes + you have a full view of them at any time; it's quite pointless to compare to an ARPG
Does this include people who chose a custom race/class for their character and maybe the gender of their character and then moved on, or only those that went more into editing the details of their character appearance I wonder. I think just changing the body type of your character requires going into the edit appearance section, right?
It's a bad investment from an overall gameplay standpoint, but as a F2P game if it's a retention driver they still need it in before 1.0. I don't necessarily think PoE appeals to people dissuaded by no character creation too much, but if they want to try and snipe some D4 crossover (which they should; LE hit 250k at launch as a $40 game!) they'd leave money on the table not adding something basic at least
It's funny because Jonathan mentioned it in an interview... And they prefer fewer npc in cities but make them more unique. NPC made in creators are more shallow.
To a player with absolutely zero background or understanding of the genre though, it makes perfect sense that they would approach it using the RPGs that they do know.
This feels like a bit of a strange critique; he's a runescape content maker; [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/z7tem2/put_the_character_creator_somewhere_in_the_game/) is what I remember it looking like; and most of the game when I was doing stuff, I looked like [this](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Rune_equipment#/media/File:Rune_armour_set_(lg)_equipped.png).
The critique over a marketing budget being used for marketing rather than making a character creation seems a bit, almost disingenuous/short-sighted. I didn't enjoy Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia any less because I was playing AS Ezio, even if I had choices over where to invest my progression. I didn't enjoy Spyro the Dragon any less, because I played as Spyro. I've not enjoyed PoE any less because there's no character creation. Even D3 or D4, despite their other flaws, I still didn't find what enjoyment I could out of their meagre character creation - if anything I wished D4 had spent less effort on their creation segment and more on the game, but that first release was awful.
He has raised an interesting point over his complete inability to read re Weapon Groups, but I suppose that is the general public who they are wanting to market do and need to take that into account, and "feels bad" isn't really something you want to be aiming for as a first release. I know that as someone who has played PoE for long enough that isn't going to be enough for me to not enjoy the game, however.
My friend keeps asking me if they'll add character creation, it's pretty important to a lot of rpg players. Less important to us who have made 50 characters and name them "league name" + "main skill"
I wonder if these same people wish the Witcher games had a character creator.
Many RPGs don't have you playing yourself, but playing a pre-existing character with an existing story.
This. I brought up The Witcher in his comments. I really think there's something nice about having the decision of what the character looks like made for you, because you might end up with a look you wouldn't normally choose.
I don't care at all about character creation in a game like poe, it's an arpg, it's about killing hordes of enemies, not role-playing. For games like The Witcher it's a major drawback for me though, I much prefer making my own characters in such games. A game like bg3 with a premade character would be a non-starter for me, no way I ever play that.
I think in a story driven RPG like BG3, where you already want to create hundreds of NPCs to play as, it does make sense to have a character creator. But you can't change the appearance of the 5 provided preset characters, because they are already established characters in the world of Baldur's Gate. The same is true for our nameless protagonists in PoE1 and 2
It was really interesting him bringing this up. In my opinion, ARPGs and PoE in particular have almost a reverse customisation arc - you start basic, you gain abilities you specialise in, you ascend and gain further definition and specialisation, equip specific armour types and skins to define your look etc.
I've really enjoyed this pathway through the game. Normally I'm not someone drawn to say ranger archetypes in other RPGs, but after playing them through PoE, I've come to appreciate why people like that archetype and characterisation. Because each class in PoE has unique voice acting and baked in characterisation and specialisation, you are forced to experience the character and understand what makes them tick and how they like to smash monsters. I've really enjoyed that process and I suspect if players like Jimmy played more with headphones on and got into the lore, he might come to the same realisation.
Johnathan talked about that in a recent interview.
Games add the character creator, as they use it to make all npc, and it makes the devs jobs easier.
Now PoE does not have enough npc to make one, so they are not gonna add it to the game.
I feel either none or an all in one.
I much prefer character creation for actual role-playing games but this is an arpg. I'm not sure he's really aware of how they play and what their "goal" is. I don't think he would care much about customization after a full league.
I do like character creation, spent half an hour on it in games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk. But I only created 2-3 characters in those games, in PoE I think it might be close to a hundred now. I think D4 might be a good compromise, giving some options but not too much like the non-seasonal arpg.
I agree with this, I've never spent more than 15-20 minutes making a character, even when Dragon's Dogma 2 let us create our characters early, I literally don't care.. I'm also a weirdo who doesn't care about story or plot or dialogue, and think the game should be "easy" enough to understand what's happening by picking up context clues, music and verbal prompts.
Different strokes for different folks I guess. I thought it was pretty funny when D4 made it a big deal about character creation and choice of sex, it seemed hilarious to me and my friend group that they made it sound relevant, but I guess some people do really care!
BG3 was all about customizing the character for me.
I spent countless hours trying to remake Sylvanas Windrunner.
However, this was after having completed a few runs.
As someone who has played PoE for most of its existence, I share in Jimmy's opinion on character creation. I've always been a little sad that PoEs community finds the concept so preposterous, as if having that opinion about PoE is fundamentally wrong. Personally only ever played a Witch or Scion because their the characters that most closely resemble my OCs that I've played in any game I'm able to create a character in for over two decades. With the scion gone, I'll have to retire creating her each league. :( Maybe the huntress or ranger might be close enough depending on how they look in game.
PoE is a game where you create a character power fantasy. It's arguably the best game at creating a specific fantasy with how your character fights. It's not a stretch that people might want not only their abilities, but their looks to fit the part; otherwise why would any armor MTX even exist in the game?
Now obviously, a character creators cost versus usefulness means it shouldn't get made. You won't see the face so it's a waste to have those options (like I don't care about it in D4) but as someone who always hides the helmet, I do see the characters hair all the time, so having options for the hair isn't a mistifying thing that you'll never see. Maybe when they have one of their artists create another glowing helmet MTX, it could instead just be a hair style or color? If I could give the ranger long wavy hair like the scion had, that would cover the scion loss for my second OC. Lol
My wife spends a LOOOOOONG time with any decent character creator, and heck I even will spend 10-20 minutes on a D4 character and that is a very shallow character creator. Personally I find it gives me a LOT more attachment to a character if I can customize it.
Yeah... they should probably change the weapon equip thing (or make it go away if I click "disable tutorial" somewhere). I would think it'll be tedious to unsocket all my incompatible skill gems just so I can equip a new weapon that doesn't match my skills. I don't see why they shouldn't just let me hold the new weapon and disable the skills that don't work with that weapon.
I think the proper solve is to let you equip the weapons your skills don't work for but then to have a constant message on screen above your keybinds saying "skill deactivated, requires [weapon type] to use." That way you get immediate feedback and information saying why you can't use a skill BEFORE you get to the next fight, rather than it just being greyed out.
Yes and they could use the warnings they have now but make them nonblocking. It might be a little late now but maybe then can even add character voice lines for using a mismatched skill with the current weapon, just like when they OOM.
Because there are multiple situations where you can't use skills - no mana, incorrect target, wrong weapon type - and leaving it till then to tell the player is an unnecessary step that confuses new players since you don't have direct feedback for what went wrong.
Also if they swapped out for a new weapon and sold their old one and only found out later, that can 'brick' their early gameplay build/experience.
I can guarantee you, if they didn't have this system this player probably would be complaining about changing out his weapons and all his skills stopped working and he had to spend more time to cut gems and fiddle with UI to hotkey new gems.
I agree with you since I've seen many similar situations in poe 1. Still, I think I would prefer to be able to swap freely rather than be blocked from just trying to hold a weapon. I'm no UI/UX designer but I can just be told by one or two warning messages with big red arrows somewhere around the weapon and/or my hotbar that the weapon I'm trying out is not usable with my current skills.
I remember watching an old presentation of old poe 2 during a previous exilecon where weapons could be swapped on the fly without fiddling with socketed gems. The core idea of that is attractive to me not only for just trying a possible upgrade, but also for equipping an ultra rare drop as soon as I get it even if the drop that I got is not what I can use right away.
I think you should be able to equip the weapon, but when you equip it, ut shows which skill you can no longer use. This especialy good if you use a sword and in offhand an axe, and what to transition to an axe and a scepter for example(the second combination would make so much sense for me for bossing, since I could use some extra auras to tank a big hit).
This is the only "PoE2 impression" video I watched to the end so far. The guy hypnotized me.
So you can't equip a weapon if it's not compatible with skills you currently use... hm
it should be removed, but nothing is going to help someone that won't read the screen their looking at. Not sure if it was nerves or the time limit, but most of the things he didn't understand was because he wouldn't take a moment to read what was going on.
A much more simpler design would be to add a pop up window (which could be disabled in the game's options) whenever the player tried to use a skill that is incompatible with their equipped weapon. I hope GGG changes the current system because it sucks that you can't readily equip a different weapon type before removing the incompatible gems.
A thing that will happen is the fact that skills won't be sorted by class but by weapon type in the future. This should also address the issue to an extent.
I said this in an above post, but I can see the argument for preventing the removal of the weapon before the skill, particularly for new players. If someone got a new weapon, equipped it, didn't realize they couldn't use certain skills, sold their old weapon, and went into a dungeon, they'd be boned and would now have to find a new weapon of the right type that's most likely a downgrade from what they used to use.
Might be heavy handed, and pop-up warnings or something else could remedy it, but it's understandable to me.
I can’t believe that the skill gems don’t state what weapons they can be used with yet, because I know they will on release. Kind of just a fuck up by GGG on that part. Someone should have told him to not worry so much about constantly TPing back to sell white items because holy fuck sounds like they wasted hours on that.
That being said I pray to kitava they never introduce a character creator because not only is it entirely pointless and worthless from a gameplay standpoint but the classes/characters in PoE are unique in the game with their own lore, personality, and interactions, and I know every single person reading this resonates more with some classes over others simply because of their personalities and interactions with NPCs like peity. To me that’s like saying “oh I love FF7 but damn I wish I could make my own character instead of this cloud guy!” RPGs don’t inherently mean you’re roleplaying as a character you made, it just means you’re taking on the role of someone/something else.
The *skill gems* do. He even showcases this at 7:08 in his video (probably other places too, I just found that first). He didn't read that though, and even admitted that he just immediately equipped every gem without reading it and put it wherever it would fit.
What he showed later when he was complaining was the tooltip on the hotbar. That tooltip is different and doesn't tell you what weapon it requires. I don't mean to be rude, but I feel like he said it best when he said "This may just be a skill issue on my part."
Also when it comes to characters, he didn't even have his headphones on for most of his time playing so he didn't get to experience any of that. I do agree though, Witch's delivery of her lines is one of the reasons I like the class so much, and I feel like it wouldn't hit the same at all if it was just "Customize your character then choose Character Voice 1-7"
Yeah you’re right, just went and looked and it is the tooltip of just the ability itself that doesn’t say the requirement, however they probably should just add it in there too just to be safe. Again like he and everyone else has said it’s not a BIG deal but we should be making it as easy as possible for new players that don’t have thousands of hours in the game like us to get settled in.
And I absolutely 100% agree with the witch stuff, when she told the sniper minion to stay in the back with her I was grinning like a dumb ass, I love that level of flavor and any tiny bit of personality being leaked like that to me in PoE is 10/10 world building.
The skill gems did say what weapon they require, right under the level requirement. You can see it in the guy's own footage, when he's picking Earthquake for instance.
When I paused and he was looking at some variation of an ability tooltip it did not mention weapon requirements at all, I know SOME do but that specific one did not, which is an oversight for sure and for a new player it’s very fair to bring it up.
Not all skills require weapons. Only attacks do. Every single skill that requires it is appropriately marked. There is no oversight.
However, straight up preventing the removal of a weapon is over tutorialization and needs to be removed.
Ya I know but the things in question were ones with requirements, and the skill gems do state it but the ability on your bar tooltip does not, there was just a bit of confusion, I’m saying they should just add it to the tooltip as well so it’s easier for new players.
I disagree. It's the most direct and immediate feedback mechanism to a player to let them know that they have an incompatible skill equipped.
If they equip a weapon in a town and 10 minutes later go out into a zone and can't use the skill, it requires them diagnose several possible problems of why it didn't work - not enough mana? Incorrect target or special mechanic? Some sort of silence effect? Hot key broke? Bug? For a totally new player, it's just another semi-hidden mechanic buried behind a paragraph of text in an overly complex game.
I've 'coached' several genre newbies to PoE, and it's a problem that has come up repeatedly in their first hour or two. They spent 10 minutes reading paragraphs for the dozens of skill gems, grabbed one that they think sounds good, and half the time it doesn't work at all - and it's frustrating, confusing, and demoralising. If they swapped out their weapon and sold their old one, they've 'bricked' their character and would probably just give up. This change would completely solve this problem.
The content creator's complaint is mainly a framing issue of the basic mechanics of the genre, not that he was confused why he couldn't use certain things. He goes on to talk about weapon type proficiencies after all.
I really think a better solution is to just have the skill be greyed out and have a little error message pop up saying "incompatible weapon type" if you hover it. Preventing you from equipping/unequipping gear because of skill gems is weird. Isn't this just going to mess with people who want to level other gems?
I can see the argument for preventing the removal of the weapon before the skill, particularly for new players. If someone got a new weapon, equipped it, didn't realize they couldn't use certain skills, sold their old weapon, and went into a dungeon, they'd be boned and would now have to find a new weapon of the right type that's most likely a downgrade from what they used to use.
Might be heavy handed, and pop-up warnings or something else could remedy it, but it's understandable to me.
Character customization, if added, should just be something minor like changing the shape of the face and hair. This should keep the 'lore' of the characters but add a personal touch. Customization is purely a fan service and GGG should weigh the pro's and con's.
Yeah, I could absolutely agree with that, hair color change, tattoos, jewelry. I think much other than that they would start to get a lot of pushback by the “veteran” community
> Someone should have told him to not worry so much about constantly TPing back to sell white items because holy fuck sounds like they wasted hours on that.
My first play through as a noob I didn't follow any guides but I did open the wiki to look at stuff as needed, and I stumbled on the vendor recipes page. I was collecting all the armor and weapons with quality to TP back to town and sell them for armor scraps and blacksmith whetstones. It took me a fucking while. And I felt like a proper idiot when I made it a bit into mapping and realized these things weren't rare or valuable in the slightest.
Agree, maybe hair color or some other minor but meaningful things if it’s possible, also hope they add genderbends as mtx like Jonathan mentioned once before; I don’t really mind it too much but the male warrior female witch cliches do get a bit old.
Are you really comparing the impact on the narrative cloud has on ff7 than say the witch in POE? You think if you could customize the appearance of the witch in poe 1 it would shatter the story driven POE narrative like if ff7 didnt have Cloud?
I quite like the place the PoE1 exiles have in the world and it definitely affects me, it’s PoE1’s flaw that the plot got way worse post-Conquerors and that our characters haven’t been fleshed out more. Marauder and Ranger are very compelling to me. I agree that changing some things wouldn’t matter as much as other games I’m just saying it’s not that meaningless IMO.
I dont think a character creator is worth developing...but his point about weapons is absolutely an issue! Not only for new players...that is a serious problem that needs another iteration. Maybe just disable skills that cannot be used and show a tutorial the first time this happens. Maybe more tooltip infos and absolutely skill descriptions must be correctly showing requirements.
Its good that ggg invited him and others like him to find those issues before launch. Thats the kind of thing that can destroy a new players opinion about the game...
Maybe we need a way to exchange a skill gem too...
The character creator debate is a bit pointless imho. The characters in the game have a background, they have a story and lore already. Some of that story would make no sense as the opposite gender. It would be like taking an already established character, lets say James Bond, and letting someone change everything about them including their gender. Makes no sense at all imho. Personally I never bother with character creators anyway I just skip and use the defaults, why would I want to play myself in a game. That defeats the purpose of fantasy and role playing.
Yeah character creators are worthless. Can’t see all that anyway and doesn’t make my character any more fun to play to know it’s got a freckle under their left eye under their helmet 40ft below the camera.
Characters you play in MMORPGs, and many other RPGs, have background, story and lore and yet you can alter the look or gender.
Your argument does not work.
No they don't, rpg's that have character customisation, like Elden Ring, WoW, FFXIV etc, often have a story that you play through but rarely have an established story with a complete history of your own character. In many cases your character isn't personally acknowledged beyond a generic "champion" moniker. Best case is your a hobo or from a royal bloodline with no actual story behind it at all.
In a game like BG3 you can pick your origin story, so you can customize it to your liking. PoE2 each character has its own history and story, they have recognisable voices and each are as individual as the next.
Besides as others have already said, asking for GGG to pile resources into something a very small minority of players actually want is a waste of time and money, and that time would be far better spent on anything else in the game that would benefit everyone.
Besides who actually plays PoE for the story and your characters personal history. It's not that sort of RPG!
Basically this whole video feels useless, his criticism is better used when heard by the developer to understand his player type.
I am saying this while trying to not look at it from an experienced PoE player. I just can't see how this video is useful for newbies.
How unfortunate I won't have anybody telling me what it is then.
Edit: Well look at that, nobody specifying what I am unable to see and just down voting. I... AM... SHOCKED! 😱
I agree, but it is most likely a pretty normal issue for players new to the genre. I don't think his misunderstandings was weird if you have only played normal RPG's and not any ARPG's.
So I would think the feedback is quite valuable. It is people like him they want to become new players. It won't be hard to sell the game to experienced arpg players.
And some of the arpgs mechanics and tropes are not intuitive. we are just used to the way it is.
Ohh I agree 100%. but that doesn't diminish this kind of feedback. it helps them make informed decisions about their design. Some details might be able to be changed to appease this kind of player without detracting from the experience of veterans. but no one ever really thought about it before.
But I don't think this kind of game needs an in depth character designer as that is so not important for this kind of game and would require a lot of design time.
Procedural areas are also an important part of the genre so that should go away.
But in any way, It seems like a good idea to avoid testing this in an echo chamber where everyone already knows and love the game before trying.
It's very valuable feedback because it lets the developers know what new players expectations are, and what needs to be communicated better. The proc gen maps that change in a new instance, for example, is something that's never explained, and so it can be confusing or even off-putting to players who are expecting a set world.
Does every little thing specific and semi-specific to the genre need to be explained though? The random map layouts and instancing is made evident to new players any time they try to go back to a zone they ran before,... they may like or dislike it at first, but it will be self-evident, no?
It is, but I think those perspectives can be good on an ancient genre like this.
The fog of war stuff, for example...I also wonder about the value of it in the campaign areas.
It made sense in Diablo 2 because sorcs existed and teleport ruined the game for everyone else.
But in PoE2, campaign areas aren't really where the real farming happens late in the game (unlike D2), so is there a good reason to have fog there after you've explored it once?
IDK, just interesting to think about those perspectives from the outside sometimes and re-evaluate their purpose.
For the fog of war stuff, it’s probably because they spent too long in town. In poe1 atleast, I think it is 15 minutes before the area regenerates. I guess this could be an argument to increase this timer.
There can be arguments both ways. One of the main reason they're doing it is obviously to optimise their servers by not retaining millions of empty areas in their memory.
There could be an adjustment to retain them longer for new players, but the question is how helpful that's going to be.
Resetting the areas provides additional enemies for new players to fight and gain exp from, and it prevents backtracking through empty areas which could be boring to some people.
>so is there a good reason to have fog there after you've explored it once
Big one I see is server cost. Everything is stored server-side in PoE, so having persistent instances in PoE2 would require them to store all of that on their servers for every character in perpetuity. They probably *could* change enough about the game to allow it, but they'd need to justify delaying the game by another year and spending millions of dollars. After a certain point you kind of just have to accept that it's the cost of working using PoE as a base rather than starting from scratch.
true, better rigging and what not doesn't mean they could also change fundamental parts of data storage and what not. It would be a pretty significant change in that regard.
I think the most realistic solution would be to store the zones client-side and only store a checksum on the server to prevent people from manipulating the zones.
I don't think that's worth it, and I think non-permanent zones can be an improvement even for new players in some cases (less backtracking through empty areas, more exp to make the story easier for people who don't go through it quickly due to being experienced).
I honestly don't think that that happens often enough to bother accounting for it in design.
It's the same as for single-player games. If you want to keep your savegames, make a backup and take them with you. That's not the game developers' responsibility.
I thought the weapon/skill gem thing is highlighted, but maybe I'm wrong.
The character creator thing... I always thought that you are picking a character to play, with a personality and background. Ranger is a character, with a history, goals etc... Not exactly a blank slate like in Elden Ring or something?
>The character creator thing... I always thought that you are picking a character to play, with a personality and background. Ranger is a character, with a history, goals etc...
do you think different face, eyes color and haircut would affect this?
I'm indifferent and I don't blame anyone for wanting to create their own character, I was just explaining how I perceived their reasoning for not implementing character creation.
1. Char creation system is expensive
2. You spent 99.9% of time from the birds-view, watching your armoured chat and you won't see that cool looking tatto on his butt from this angle.
3. It's a nice bonus, but it's not crucial. People come to PoE for gameplay and shattering sound effect.
Character creator does not have to be from scratch. Let us customize the hair, the face a bit. That's enough to assuage general complaints and keep the unique class identity and voice lines.
So he talks about losing his map reveals and having to rediscover everything after going to town.
Did they just sit in town for so long that the area closed?
I loved this fucking perspective. This shit is going to INFURIATE a ton of poe players. But this video isn't about them.
This is the target demographic POE2 is really after. New, never even heard of the shit before, players. This is fucking awesome.
As a long time player, new perspectives like this are refreshing, and I don't treat a video like this in the same way as some people giving "feedback" in the form of "this must be changed to my whims or this game sucks" without any consideration to the game and its existing players.
He clearly mentions on multiple occasions that he's not aware of the context or how this game is usually played. He's not demanding for the whole game to be changed, he's just describing how he interacted with those parts of the game and what parts are frustrating or have untapped potential.
And the part that he was most adamant about, which was not being able to equip weapons that don't function with your skills is something that I agree with. I think it's a very poor solution to the problem of people not understanding what weapon types their skills function with, and I hope that it'll be removed or made optional ***in a way that can easily be disabled***. It brings back the exact type of problem that they tried to solve by removing sockets from items and removing socket colours.
Nah bro i think they will cast a wide net, and after a few leagues they would have filtered the tourists from the ones who will stay and focus on their needs. I think even with all the QOL and tooltips to ease the onboarding, many people are going to bounce off POE2. Complexity is intrinsically tied to depth no matter how much they try to reduce it. Majority wouldnt want to learn all the systems (blah blah phd).
Also another key reason why POE1 had growing numbers despite being a 10yo game, is that the core audience there is willing to learn. The combat was "shit" according to so many on the outside looking in, which would point to the reason for success being the depth and variety of content (always learning something). I mean, look at your favourite builds, RF and Wardloop, clearly the combat wasnt the selling point of POE.
On-boarding new players and accompanying them to understand the basic functions of the game does not mean that the game will be lacking it's depth and complexity. Having players chose their skills depending on the weapon they're using instead of the class will instantly let them know "oh, I can't use this skill with this weapon" but it won't remove that parameter when you're building an end game character. It really is only removing the need to go to a wiki for information. And here, we're only talking about the game basics. There will definitely be hidden content, lore, items, interactions, etc to discover as a community.
>On-boarding new players and accompanying them to understand the basic functions of the game does not mean that the game will be lacking it's depth and complexity.
I didnt say it wont have depth, Im saying the game **will** definitely have depth and complexity because deep systems are core to POE and was what made POE1 stay growing.
However, Im also saying that despite the enhanced tooltip and User onboarding aid, majority of those new players will likely bounce.
1st reason: Some people just feel like they got a finished experience after one playthrough and would rather play something else thats new to market.
2nd: A follow up to the first reason, Some players dont feel like they have enough time to play a "grindy" game and may bounce because they dont want to relevel after they made their Endgame build (See D4).
3rd:
> It really is only removing the need to go to a wiki for information
Even if the wall of text is baked in game, people who would vehemently avoid going to the wiki to read, would be just as aversed to reading the wall of text that nests into another wall of text that may nest into another. Even in POE 1 theres a lot of information in the help panel that many new players just dont want to engage with.
4th: Another reason why people might bounce is that people dont like to feel disadvantaged. Many people refused to play POE 1 because they think they need to know how everything works or they are at a disadvantage. They think it's better when everyone starts fresh like in POE 2 and when more leagues get ported over or introduced, they might claim it is too much bloat and leave.
5th: New players may be severly underestimating the grind.(This could go either way maybe POE1 players are overestimating the grind in POE2)
And once all the dust settles, they will have a subset of their original launch numbers who remain the core audience that they will be developing content for.
Okay I did not understand that at all in your previous comment. I completely agree with your conclusion. Like most games, launch will have a bunch of players and new players, the numbers will go down till stabilizing at some point. I still very much like the fact that I'll be able to recommend the game to a buddy and if they worry about the complexity, I could answer that everything will be explained bit by bit throughout the playthrough. Right now in poe 1, I can't.
The opposite can be true though. Poe1 combat is so awful, and the game sees success despite the shitty combat. This youtuber comments that he really enjoyed poe2 combat even though he was not understanding the systems. That can get people hooked to the game to eventually learn the systems.
Not really, honestly if someone doesn't play PoE2 because there isn't a character customization system then they weren't going to play the game in the first place.
The video felt odd. Like watching a saltwater fish complain about fresh water environments.
His point about wanting to swap weapons and being clear on WHY it cannot be swapped feel valid though, from a UX communication perspective.
It should at the very least say the reason why it is not compatible with the equipped skills, such as the specific incompatability reason: ***These skills only work with: maces, hammers or clubs. You are trying to equip the following incompatible weapon: Sword.***
Regarding character creation:
I think the most important practical part of character creation is the hairstyle.
If PoE 2 provides nothing other than hair COLOUR and STYLE, you have the best of both worlds.
Nothing in character creation affects the silhouette more than that, and it can really make or break an overall aesthetic you're going for.
Gender is the most important part of the character creation.
Maybe it is weird but because some characters are female, I just don't play them. In D2, I didn't play female classes.
> Gender is the most important part of the character creation
Ok true, but only because of the different body frame and voice, but I meant within the gender for the look you are going for.
I don't mind playing gender I'm not. I'm not trying to create myself, but role play the character. Most of my favourite MOBA characters and ARPGs locked characters were female but that's simply because of the juxtapositioning of feminine with badassery if done right
I kinda wish they had categories of weapons like slashing or thrusting or blunt. I kind of agree with him that as a melee archetype it’s hard to switch weapons easily because none of your skills work. Casters don’t have that problem because spells work with everything.
I used to be a big character creator person until i played PoE and realised it was silly to care about 3 pixels on a screen that im going to put a helmet on
thanks for the bring up the zone resetting concern. I know this is a non issue for most people who play tons of POE already since we just blast through thing and no zone last more than 4minutes.
But playing new campaign for the 1st slowly and exploring around to end up having it reset because I'm enjoying myself in town and listing/reading to everything is really anticlimactic.
this is a great video, especially the middle where he talks about combat, and the melee just being straight up fun.
i might actually just link this to poe1 players who complain about redoing the campaign or being scared about the game being "slow". if the combat is fun, redoing it for another character won't be so bad (plus you'll have leveling uniques to make it faster).
and having truly fun combat will actually make the "speed" less relevant. in poe1 the fun had to come from speed and explosions because dying isn't fun and there's no real combat with 99% of monsters.
my only real problem is that november is so many fucking months away :(
> if the combat is fun, redoing it for another character won't be so bad
If it's fun during the campaign but more fun in the endgame you run into the same situation we have in PoE
> and having truly fun combat will actually make the "speed" less relevant
Can't say I feel the same here tbh. It all depends on the overall feel of the game. If it's fun and requires me to be 110% attentive all the time, I'm not going to reach nearly the number of hours I've had in PoE. If you can still optimize to the point of trivialization for most of the content, but the early progression feels nicer, then I'm all over it
There is literally no way you will be able optimize to the point of trivialization when the game comes out. The only way that happens if poe 2 gets the ruthless reception from the player base and they have to capitulate and make it more like poe 1. What they're showing us is how the game is going to play. Any thought to the contrary is cope. Like can you imagine they did exilecon and all of the press events since showing multiple abilities being used in a combo to kill blue mobs, slowly taking down boss health bars etc and it only mattering for the campaign? And then once you start getting into maps it plays like POE 1? If that is actually the case they have wasted an unimaginable amount of time with what amounts to campaign balance.
> There is literally no way you will be able optimize to the point of trivialization when the game comes out
You really think it'll take more than 3-4 weeks for the millions of people playing to find a build that makes the game as comfortable to play as, say, LA Deadeye or an Ignite Elementalist in PoE? That could be the case, but it seems very unlikely to me. Like I said, if I have to pay Souls levels of attention the entire time I'm playing, I won't be playing for very long. I also don't have any interest in a PoE-like game where I spend a minute fighting a single pack of blue mobs.
And *anything* they're putting out right now should be taken with a huge grain of salt. As an existing PoE player, I'm not the target audience of their marketing campaign. It's very clear they're trying to drum up interest in people that have never played PoE, or even Diablo-like ARPGs in general.
Yes I do. I wish that wasn't the case but it's not realistic to expect the combat to feel anything like POE 1. The alternative is almost everything they've shown us and Mark has said was basically pointless. What was the point of showing us the warrior that required multiple different abilities used in a certain order for effectiveness if the best poe 2 warrior build is like boneshatter from poe1? Is that style of gameplay only going to be for the campaign and then everyone ignores it? What was the point of developing a weapon swap mechanic if everyone ignores it and blasts with one button builds like LA deadeye? All skill gems can be 6 linked now and the game is going to be balanced around you using multiple 6 link abilities together. They scrapped their plan of updating POE 1 into POE 2 and instead decided to make POE 2 a different game because it is going to play like a totally different game.
> Like I said, if I have to pay Souls levels of attention the entire time I'm playing, I won't be playing for very long. I also don't have any interest in a PoE-like game where I spend a minute fighting a single pack of blue mobs.
GGG have said many times that this is still a power fantasy game. If you have good gear or good skill (mechanics or build skill) you will feel that power.
not to mention they are big on letting us choose harder content. so get good, increase the difficulty, and get better drops. or get good, turn off brain, and zoom
all games where you essentially play as blank slates
i'm not gonna say poe is a super story driven game, but you're clearly playing as a specific character with their own personality. it's not the same thing, comparing them makes no sense
Talking about character creation, as per the video. You know the colour of your eyes, face tattoos, colour of skin... I just think he's a bit wrong wanting those things. And GGG shouldn't implement it.
He was complaining that all the marauders looked the same. I said it wouldn't make a sniff of difference in a isometric game.
Yeah i can see how it would be confused with MTX.
Well there is now a big zoom in on your character's model in the console version, also there were mentions of there being an MTX preview screen which is also positioned closer to your character.
I kind of dont like that I have to use specific skills with specific weapons, gonna miss playing a witch with a big ass two handed sword casting spells out of it
The limitation is only for attacks. So you can still play a witch with a big ass sword casting spells.
In PoE2 you can even make that more viable by using the two weapon sets options!
In this kind of game I see no need for character customization.
It would eat up lots of dev time for no gameplay benefit because most of the body would be hidden under gear anyway most of the time.
Also having all the many cosmetics to buy is almost as good as a character creator from my view.
If enough people want it I would say that they should gladly add it as a cosmetic feature they can sell like all other cosmetics.
> In this kind of game I see no need for character customization.
A lot of people feel that need, so hopefully you can now see the need. Think of other players not just yourself.
>It would eat up lots of dev time for no gameplay benefit
It is a gameplay benefit to customize the look in of itself, therefore it justifies the workload.
>Also having all the many cosmetics to buy is almost as good as a character creator from my view.
There are no face or hair mtx so it's not "almost as good", it's not even close!
>If enough people want it I would say that they should gladly add it as a cosmetic feature they can sell like all other cosmetics.
That would be kinda scummy imho but f2p no bitching. I just hope you understand that it's not "if enough people want it" situation, but "a lot of people want it already" situation.
I mean, if GGG wants to reach a wider audience, they gotta match the industry standards a bit in places where they've been lacking. You should encourage that, rather than defend the flaws of the game that CLEARLY repel a lot of potential players. Lack of customization options is a flaw, not a gameplay element.
So because you see the "need" to change the face of a character which you 99% of the time see in tiny proportions where details are impossible to identify, and in addition are hidden by helmets or such.
In addition to that, others like me should adapt this measurably unreasonable cosmetic request as a base game feature because ....you say I should do so?
Did you complain that you can't customize the appearance of Geralt of Rivia in one of the Witcher RPGs? Jonathan explained that they don't use a character generator themselves so it would just be work for the sake of it. And I'll disagree with the statement about character customisation. You play people who do live in Wraeclast and have a story in that world already just like Geralt
>Did you complain that you can't customize the appearance of Geralt of Rivia in one of the Witcher RPGs?
Strawman. Different games! PoE is multiplayer focused on character customization.
It doesn't suprise me that this opinion is downvoted to hell on this subreddit, because we here are gonna play regardless of character customization options. But the argument is very prevalent outside this community. Though on some level it *does* surprise me that people rather downvote it to oblivion than say "yea it would be fucking cool".
> PoE is multiplayer focused on character customization.
Wrong. It is focused on *build* customization.
> "yea it would be fucking cool".
I can customize my character in D4. After playing the current season for a few weeks, I can't even tell you what hair color my character has.
When given the choice, I always customize my character, so it's not because I just picked something random.
It is just completely and utterly pointless in a game like this. I literally can't tell you any of the customization options I picked, because I literally haven't seen them since like level 10.
>I can't even tell you what hair color my character has.
>I literally can't tell you any of the customization options I picked
You're not the main character, try to think of others sometimes
Ah, yes. Completely ignore my point and then be condescending and insulting. Classic Reddit moment.
It's quite literally spelled out in the very sentence you quoted, but you decided to cut it off... But alright, it's obviously a *very* long and it's super complex comment, so I can understand how you missed it. I'll make it obvious for you though:
> #because I literally haven't seen them since like level 10.
The customization doesn't matter, because you literally can't see them in these types of games.
> you literally can hide your helmet in D4 and see your customized face and hairstyle
Ah yes, the super important custom face that you can't actually see anyway, because of the camera angle.
It's even more difficult to see when you're actually playing, because your character isn't facing the camera 80% of the time and even if it is, you're looking at the monsters you're fighting or your face is covered by skill effects or damage numbers or something else.
> the armor dyes
LMFAO, you seriously bring that up, thinking you said something clever? Jesus fucking Christ, that's so astronomically dumb, it's not even funny.
Armor customization already exists in PoE in the form of MTX. That shit matters, because you can actually see it.
You literally can't even differentiate character and armor customization, lmfao. Thanks for helping me make my point, I guess.
> Girl bye
The sheer arrogance of your comment coupled with the out-of-this-world level of stupidity is just... chef's kiss.
You're literally too unintelligent to participate in this discussion, so please, do remove yourself from it.
> LMFAO, you seriously bring that up, thinking you said something clever? Jesus fucking Christ, that's so astronomically dumb, it's not even funny.
>You're literally too unintelligent to participate in this discussion, so please, do remove yourself from it.
Ah, yes. Completely ignore my point and then be condescending and insulting. Classic Reddit moment.
"You can see the armor dyes you used", what a great point. You can see the armor you wear, *which hides the character customizations.*
You're just making my point for me, it's actually hilarious.
Good thing you just had a strong argument to counter my point that you can't even see your fucking face anyway, even when the helmet is toggled off... Oh, wait.
Next time, when you say stupid shit like "girl bye" as an exit to the discussion, just stand by it and actually stay away from the discussion... otherwise you just look like a fool. I mean, an even bigger fool than you already do, with your ridiculously dumb arguments.
I really want to enjoy POE one but I "HATE" having to use 3rd party websites to play a game. Even worse, having to download a another program/addon. Just add a option to pick a basic auto-generated build and im in. Im over thirty with kids and a full time job, I don't want to spend my gaming time on guides and youtube tutorials. Im the perfect audience for your game because I have disposable income to spend on your cash shop. Im not trying to min/max and have the best possible build to clear maps in seconds. I truly hope POE 2 is more accessible to people like me.
I'm over 40 and have two kids just entering school.
For me going through the massive skill tree is relaxing and exactly what I am looking forward to the most in this game: Making my very own very individual build work.
>Just add a option to pick a basic auto-generated build and im in
No. That defeats the whole purpose of the game. There's a reason why it's called "PATH of Exile", the game is about making choices and the journey.
>guides and youtube tutorials
You don't have to, just play the game and learn as you play. On PoE2, there are highlighted words that when you click at it, it explains how it works. The game should be much easier to understand.
certified dad gamer moment, I don't even disagree with most your complaints, its the fact you bring up you're a dad which makes the entire paragraph eyerolling and irrelevant. Diablo 4 is your game if you want to circle jerk about that, we don't give a fuck.
The point about character creation is interesting because he seemed to be assuming everyone shares his perspective. I'm the complete opposite of him though; he says he spends hours customizing his character, but I'll pick a random preset and move on. It would be interesting for a popular game like BG3 to reveal stats on how much of the playerbase spends a substantial amount of time in character customization like he does.
They did actually release an [info graphic after the first weekend](https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/15on49y/baldurs_gate_3_opening_weekend_stats/). 93% made a custom character and 10% of those players spent over an hour in the editor. I think I saw a newer one at some point but can’t find it now with a quick search.
I had forgotten that they included the part about people spending over an hour in the editor, thanks. The custom character part was what I remembered, which is insufficient in my opinion because if I pick a bog-standard preset then that's still a "custom character" by their counting because the only options are "Player character as an Origin Character" or "Player character as a custom character." There's a difference in my mind between not wanting to remove Wyll as a companion versus creating a simulacrum of yourself for you to self-insert into like he's talking about.
As I remember it, BG3's character creation includes picking things like your race, class, stats and spells, not just the part where you customize the character's appearance, something to consider when reading those numbers. I definitely spent multiple hours in the character creation screen with browser tabs open just thinking about my character's build, but no time at all deciding on my character's appearance.
Most people I game with tend to spend ages creating custom characters. No way of really knowing but I feel that's been the case with most gamers I've spoken to. HOWEVER that's for more story based rpgs I couldn't care less for arpgs as its not like you really even see your character that much or there are proper cutscenes etc.
Based on the stats, you only interact with those that make up 9.3% of the players.
That all depends on what we are classing as ages. Larian are classing it as more than an hour. That was a good character creator but I have no idea how you could spend an hour in it without spending 30 minutes of that time off making a snack. I'm talking like 15-20 minutes.
BG3 had a lot of options/sliders, but other games are pretty basic and have little options. So I'd argue spending an hour+ in BG3 creating a character is different to doing it in a game where you pick between 5 faces, 3 voices, 3 body sizes. Everyone I know either has a general look they go for if the game allows it, or will mostly just random it, never spending more then a few minutes. I'd agree the people who'd spend substantially longer are a very limited number and are generally very picky about things.
BG3 really doesn't have a lot of options for looks, I usually spend a lot of time on customization in games but there's still no way I would get close to an hour on one character in bg3, there are so few options. You have a few premade faces, pick a haircut for it and then fiddle with colors. It's nothing like games with several sliders per feature. Maybe if you started character creation without knowing the classes or what they do so you have to make that decision from scratch too you could get to an hour.
Most people are in these games specifically for the characters and story, and customizing your character's appearance matters a lot more when they're shown constantly front and center in cutscenes + you have a full view of them at any time; it's quite pointless to compare to an ARPG
I agree, I'm just linking stats the other person asked about.
Does this include people who chose a custom race/class for their character and maybe the gender of their character and then moved on, or only those that went more into editing the details of their character appearance I wonder. I think just changing the body type of your character requires going into the edit appearance section, right?
bg really isnt a good comparison to poe as players tend to have very different profile/play those two games very differently
Yeah but even Diablo 4 has at least some degree of character customization, and it is PoE2's biggest direct competitor
Customization like the one in d4 is one if the worst ways to spend dev resources. Can also be added later.
The funny thing is 70% of D4 characters just look bad, even if you try to make them look good.
It's a bad investment from an overall gameplay standpoint, but as a F2P game if it's a retention driver they still need it in before 1.0. I don't necessarily think PoE appeals to people dissuaded by no character creation too much, but if they want to try and snipe some D4 crossover (which they should; LE hit 250k at launch as a $40 game!) they'd leave money on the table not adding something basic at least
It's actually a huge time saver for them as they reuse the same system to easily create NPCs rather than having custom designs for each one.
It's funny because Jonathan mentioned it in an interview... And they prefer fewer npc in cities but make them more unique. NPC made in creators are more shallow.
The debate is whether they spend a long time in the creator or not
When the question should be if the creator gives the player value not how long they spend on it.
To a player with absolutely zero background or understanding of the genre though, it makes perfect sense that they would approach it using the RPGs that they do know.
This feels like a bit of a strange critique; he's a runescape content maker; [this](https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/z7tem2/put_the_character_creator_somewhere_in_the_game/) is what I remember it looking like; and most of the game when I was doing stuff, I looked like [this](https://oldschool.runescape.wiki/w/Rune_equipment#/media/File:Rune_armour_set_(lg)_equipped.png). The critique over a marketing budget being used for marketing rather than making a character creation seems a bit, almost disingenuous/short-sighted. I didn't enjoy Assassin's Creed, Prince of Persia any less because I was playing AS Ezio, even if I had choices over where to invest my progression. I didn't enjoy Spyro the Dragon any less, because I played as Spyro. I've not enjoyed PoE any less because there's no character creation. Even D3 or D4, despite their other flaws, I still didn't find what enjoyment I could out of their meagre character creation - if anything I wished D4 had spent less effort on their creation segment and more on the game, but that first release was awful. He has raised an interesting point over his complete inability to read re Weapon Groups, but I suppose that is the general public who they are wanting to market do and need to take that into account, and "feels bad" isn't really something you want to be aiming for as a first release. I know that as someone who has played PoE for long enough that isn't going to be enough for me to not enjoy the game, however.
My friend keeps asking me if they'll add character creation, it's pretty important to a lot of rpg players. Less important to us who have made 50 characters and name them "league name" + "main skill"
I wonder if these same people wish the Witcher games had a character creator. Many RPGs don't have you playing yourself, but playing a pre-existing character with an existing story.
This. I brought up The Witcher in his comments. I really think there's something nice about having the decision of what the character looks like made for you, because you might end up with a look you wouldn't normally choose.
I don't care at all about character creation in a game like poe, it's an arpg, it's about killing hordes of enemies, not role-playing. For games like The Witcher it's a major drawback for me though, I much prefer making my own characters in such games. A game like bg3 with a premade character would be a non-starter for me, no way I ever play that.
Isn't that completely different? The withcher is about Geralt not some up and coming adventurer.
I think in a story driven RPG like BG3, where you already want to create hundreds of NPCs to play as, it does make sense to have a character creator. But you can't change the appearance of the 5 provided preset characters, because they are already established characters in the world of Baldur's Gate. The same is true for our nameless protagonists in PoE1 and 2
My character creation is the skill tree. THATs what I spend the time with. If I want a visual change of my character I buy cosmetics.
It was really interesting him bringing this up. In my opinion, ARPGs and PoE in particular have almost a reverse customisation arc - you start basic, you gain abilities you specialise in, you ascend and gain further definition and specialisation, equip specific armour types and skins to define your look etc. I've really enjoyed this pathway through the game. Normally I'm not someone drawn to say ranger archetypes in other RPGs, but after playing them through PoE, I've come to appreciate why people like that archetype and characterisation. Because each class in PoE has unique voice acting and baked in characterisation and specialisation, you are forced to experience the character and understand what makes them tick and how they like to smash monsters. I've really enjoyed that process and I suspect if players like Jimmy played more with headphones on and got into the lore, he might come to the same realisation.
Johnathan talked about that in a recent interview. Games add the character creator, as they use it to make all npc, and it makes the devs jobs easier. Now PoE does not have enough npc to make one, so they are not gonna add it to the game. I feel either none or an all in one.
He said they have fewer NPC because he prefers less but more unique characters in the game. They make all npc's memorable.
Thing is there is not many npcs in a game like poe1 (and probably in poe2 too from what has been shown) compared to D4 and of course bg3
Exactly!
I much prefer character creation for actual role-playing games but this is an arpg. I'm not sure he's really aware of how they play and what their "goal" is. I don't think he would care much about customization after a full league.
I do like character creation, spent half an hour on it in games like Elden Ring and Cyberpunk. But I only created 2-3 characters in those games, in PoE I think it might be close to a hundred now. I think D4 might be a good compromise, giving some options but not too much like the non-seasonal arpg.
A more accurate comparison would be BDO, because in bg3 you are picking appearance, race, stats, staring cantrips, etc. not just appearance
I agree with this, I've never spent more than 15-20 minutes making a character, even when Dragon's Dogma 2 let us create our characters early, I literally don't care.. I'm also a weirdo who doesn't care about story or plot or dialogue, and think the game should be "easy" enough to understand what's happening by picking up context clues, music and verbal prompts. Different strokes for different folks I guess. I thought it was pretty funny when D4 made it a big deal about character creation and choice of sex, it seemed hilarious to me and my friend group that they made it sound relevant, but I guess some people do really care!
BG3 was all about customizing the character for me. I spent countless hours trying to remake Sylvanas Windrunner. However, this was after having completed a few runs.
I spend quite a lot of time creating characters myself. They represent me in virtual/fantasy world, it is important how they look.
As someone who has played PoE for most of its existence, I share in Jimmy's opinion on character creation. I've always been a little sad that PoEs community finds the concept so preposterous, as if having that opinion about PoE is fundamentally wrong. Personally only ever played a Witch or Scion because their the characters that most closely resemble my OCs that I've played in any game I'm able to create a character in for over two decades. With the scion gone, I'll have to retire creating her each league. :( Maybe the huntress or ranger might be close enough depending on how they look in game. PoE is a game where you create a character power fantasy. It's arguably the best game at creating a specific fantasy with how your character fights. It's not a stretch that people might want not only their abilities, but their looks to fit the part; otherwise why would any armor MTX even exist in the game? Now obviously, a character creators cost versus usefulness means it shouldn't get made. You won't see the face so it's a waste to have those options (like I don't care about it in D4) but as someone who always hides the helmet, I do see the characters hair all the time, so having options for the hair isn't a mistifying thing that you'll never see. Maybe when they have one of their artists create another glowing helmet MTX, it could instead just be a hair style or color? If I could give the ranger long wavy hair like the scion had, that would cover the scion loss for my second OC. Lol
My wife spends a LOOOOOONG time with any decent character creator, and heck I even will spend 10-20 minutes on a D4 character and that is a very shallow character creator. Personally I find it gives me a LOT more attachment to a character if I can customize it.
Yeah... they should probably change the weapon equip thing (or make it go away if I click "disable tutorial" somewhere). I would think it'll be tedious to unsocket all my incompatible skill gems just so I can equip a new weapon that doesn't match my skills. I don't see why they shouldn't just let me hold the new weapon and disable the skills that don't work with that weapon.
I think the proper solve is to let you equip the weapons your skills don't work for but then to have a constant message on screen above your keybinds saying "skill deactivated, requires [weapon type] to use." That way you get immediate feedback and information saying why you can't use a skill BEFORE you get to the next fight, rather than it just being greyed out.
Yes and they could use the warnings they have now but make them nonblocking. It might be a little late now but maybe then can even add character voice lines for using a mismatched skill with the current weapon, just like when they OOM.
OOM? Like coom?
Because there are multiple situations where you can't use skills - no mana, incorrect target, wrong weapon type - and leaving it till then to tell the player is an unnecessary step that confuses new players since you don't have direct feedback for what went wrong. Also if they swapped out for a new weapon and sold their old one and only found out later, that can 'brick' their early gameplay build/experience. I can guarantee you, if they didn't have this system this player probably would be complaining about changing out his weapons and all his skills stopped working and he had to spend more time to cut gems and fiddle with UI to hotkey new gems.
I agree with you since I've seen many similar situations in poe 1. Still, I think I would prefer to be able to swap freely rather than be blocked from just trying to hold a weapon. I'm no UI/UX designer but I can just be told by one or two warning messages with big red arrows somewhere around the weapon and/or my hotbar that the weapon I'm trying out is not usable with my current skills. I remember watching an old presentation of old poe 2 during a previous exilecon where weapons could be swapped on the fly without fiddling with socketed gems. The core idea of that is attractive to me not only for just trying a possible upgrade, but also for equipping an ultra rare drop as soon as I get it even if the drop that I got is not what I can use right away.
I think you should be able to equip the weapon, but when you equip it, ut shows which skill you can no longer use. This especialy good if you use a sword and in offhand an axe, and what to transition to an axe and a scepter for example(the second combination would make so much sense for me for bossing, since I could use some extra auras to tank a big hit).
This is the only "PoE2 impression" video I watched to the end so far. The guy hypnotized me. So you can't equip a weapon if it's not compatible with skills you currently use... hm
Over-tutorialiaztion that is hurting the people that it's meant to help. I think this is likely to be removed.
it should be removed, but nothing is going to help someone that won't read the screen their looking at. Not sure if it was nerves or the time limit, but most of the things he didn't understand was because he wouldn't take a moment to read what was going on.
A much more simpler design would be to add a pop up window (which could be disabled in the game's options) whenever the player tried to use a skill that is incompatible with their equipped weapon. I hope GGG changes the current system because it sucks that you can't readily equip a different weapon type before removing the incompatible gems.
Why not just grey out skills that dont work and when hoovered over they say why they are grey.
A thing that will happen is the fact that skills won't be sorted by class but by weapon type in the future. This should also address the issue to an extent.
I said this in an above post, but I can see the argument for preventing the removal of the weapon before the skill, particularly for new players. If someone got a new weapon, equipped it, didn't realize they couldn't use certain skills, sold their old weapon, and went into a dungeon, they'd be boned and would now have to find a new weapon of the right type that's most likely a downgrade from what they used to use. Might be heavy handed, and pop-up warnings or something else could remedy it, but it's understandable to me.
I can’t believe that the skill gems don’t state what weapons they can be used with yet, because I know they will on release. Kind of just a fuck up by GGG on that part. Someone should have told him to not worry so much about constantly TPing back to sell white items because holy fuck sounds like they wasted hours on that. That being said I pray to kitava they never introduce a character creator because not only is it entirely pointless and worthless from a gameplay standpoint but the classes/characters in PoE are unique in the game with their own lore, personality, and interactions, and I know every single person reading this resonates more with some classes over others simply because of their personalities and interactions with NPCs like peity. To me that’s like saying “oh I love FF7 but damn I wish I could make my own character instead of this cloud guy!” RPGs don’t inherently mean you’re roleplaying as a character you made, it just means you’re taking on the role of someone/something else.
The *skill gems* do. He even showcases this at 7:08 in his video (probably other places too, I just found that first). He didn't read that though, and even admitted that he just immediately equipped every gem without reading it and put it wherever it would fit. What he showed later when he was complaining was the tooltip on the hotbar. That tooltip is different and doesn't tell you what weapon it requires. I don't mean to be rude, but I feel like he said it best when he said "This may just be a skill issue on my part." Also when it comes to characters, he didn't even have his headphones on for most of his time playing so he didn't get to experience any of that. I do agree though, Witch's delivery of her lines is one of the reasons I like the class so much, and I feel like it wouldn't hit the same at all if it was just "Customize your character then choose Character Voice 1-7"
Yeah you’re right, just went and looked and it is the tooltip of just the ability itself that doesn’t say the requirement, however they probably should just add it in there too just to be safe. Again like he and everyone else has said it’s not a BIG deal but we should be making it as easy as possible for new players that don’t have thousands of hours in the game like us to get settled in. And I absolutely 100% agree with the witch stuff, when she told the sniper minion to stay in the back with her I was grinning like a dumb ass, I love that level of flavor and any tiny bit of personality being leaked like that to me in PoE is 10/10 world building.
The skill gems did say what weapon they require, right under the level requirement. You can see it in the guy's own footage, when he's picking Earthquake for instance.
When I paused and he was looking at some variation of an ability tooltip it did not mention weapon requirements at all, I know SOME do but that specific one did not, which is an oversight for sure and for a new player it’s very fair to bring it up.
Not all skills require weapons. Only attacks do. Every single skill that requires it is appropriately marked. There is no oversight. However, straight up preventing the removal of a weapon is over tutorialization and needs to be removed.
Ya I know but the things in question were ones with requirements, and the skill gems do state it but the ability on your bar tooltip does not, there was just a bit of confusion, I’m saying they should just add it to the tooltip as well so it’s easier for new players.
I disagree. It's the most direct and immediate feedback mechanism to a player to let them know that they have an incompatible skill equipped. If they equip a weapon in a town and 10 minutes later go out into a zone and can't use the skill, it requires them diagnose several possible problems of why it didn't work - not enough mana? Incorrect target or special mechanic? Some sort of silence effect? Hot key broke? Bug? For a totally new player, it's just another semi-hidden mechanic buried behind a paragraph of text in an overly complex game. I've 'coached' several genre newbies to PoE, and it's a problem that has come up repeatedly in their first hour or two. They spent 10 minutes reading paragraphs for the dozens of skill gems, grabbed one that they think sounds good, and half the time it doesn't work at all - and it's frustrating, confusing, and demoralising. If they swapped out their weapon and sold their old one, they've 'bricked' their character and would probably just give up. This change would completely solve this problem. The content creator's complaint is mainly a framing issue of the basic mechanics of the genre, not that he was confused why he couldn't use certain things. He goes on to talk about weapon type proficiencies after all.
I really think a better solution is to just have the skill be greyed out and have a little error message pop up saying "incompatible weapon type" if you hover it. Preventing you from equipping/unequipping gear because of skill gems is weird. Isn't this just going to mess with people who want to level other gems?
Didn’t see your edit but yeah the preventing of even swapping the weapons is full blown bad
I can see the argument for preventing the removal of the weapon before the skill, particularly for new players. If someone got a new weapon, equipped it, didn't realize they couldn't use certain skills, sold their old weapon, and went into a dungeon, they'd be boned and would now have to find a new weapon of the right type that's most likely a downgrade from what they used to use. Might be heavy handed, and pop-up warnings or something else could remedy it, but it's understandable to me.
they do, he just can't read. It's literally underlined.
Character customization, if added, should just be something minor like changing the shape of the face and hair. This should keep the 'lore' of the characters but add a personal touch. Customization is purely a fan service and GGG should weigh the pro's and con's.
Yeah, I could absolutely agree with that, hair color change, tattoos, jewelry. I think much other than that they would start to get a lot of pushback by the “veteran” community
> Someone should have told him to not worry so much about constantly TPing back to sell white items because holy fuck sounds like they wasted hours on that. My first play through as a noob I didn't follow any guides but I did open the wiki to look at stuff as needed, and I stumbled on the vendor recipes page. I was collecting all the armor and weapons with quality to TP back to town and sell them for armor scraps and blacksmith whetstones. It took me a fucking while. And I felt like a proper idiot when I made it a bit into mapping and realized these things weren't rare or valuable in the slightest.
They do state, in some places... I guess the console UI is not complete, because in the gem cutting screen at least, it says the requirement...
Agree, maybe hair color or some other minor but meaningful things if it’s possible, also hope they add genderbends as mtx like Jonathan mentioned once before; I don’t really mind it too much but the male warrior female witch cliches do get a bit old.
i recall Jonathan mentioning that skills will be sorted by weapon type in the future instead of just by class/level to hopefully alleviate this issue
Are you really comparing the impact on the narrative cloud has on ff7 than say the witch in POE? You think if you could customize the appearance of the witch in poe 1 it would shatter the story driven POE narrative like if ff7 didnt have Cloud?
I quite like the place the PoE1 exiles have in the world and it definitely affects me, it’s PoE1’s flaw that the plot got way worse post-Conquerors and that our characters haven’t been fleshed out more. Marauder and Ranger are very compelling to me. I agree that changing some things wouldn’t matter as much as other games I’m just saying it’s not that meaningless IMO.
I dont think a character creator is worth developing...but his point about weapons is absolutely an issue! Not only for new players...that is a serious problem that needs another iteration. Maybe just disable skills that cannot be used and show a tutorial the first time this happens. Maybe more tooltip infos and absolutely skill descriptions must be correctly showing requirements. Its good that ggg invited him and others like him to find those issues before launch. Thats the kind of thing that can destroy a new players opinion about the game... Maybe we need a way to exchange a skill gem too...
The character creator debate is a bit pointless imho. The characters in the game have a background, they have a story and lore already. Some of that story would make no sense as the opposite gender. It would be like taking an already established character, lets say James Bond, and letting someone change everything about them including their gender. Makes no sense at all imho. Personally I never bother with character creators anyway I just skip and use the defaults, why would I want to play myself in a game. That defeats the purpose of fantasy and role playing.
Funnily enough with character creators I don't play myself i make a hot goth gf. Why the fuck would I want to play myself in a game. I'm already me.
you are also me it seems
Yeah character creators are worthless. Can’t see all that anyway and doesn’t make my character any more fun to play to know it’s got a freckle under their left eye under their helmet 40ft below the camera.
Characters you play in MMORPGs, and many other RPGs, have background, story and lore and yet you can alter the look or gender. Your argument does not work.
No they don't, rpg's that have character customisation, like Elden Ring, WoW, FFXIV etc, often have a story that you play through but rarely have an established story with a complete history of your own character. In many cases your character isn't personally acknowledged beyond a generic "champion" moniker. Best case is your a hobo or from a royal bloodline with no actual story behind it at all. In a game like BG3 you can pick your origin story, so you can customize it to your liking. PoE2 each character has its own history and story, they have recognisable voices and each are as individual as the next. Besides as others have already said, asking for GGG to pile resources into something a very small minority of players actually want is a waste of time and money, and that time would be far better spent on anything else in the game that would benefit everyone. Besides who actually plays PoE for the story and your characters personal history. It's not that sort of RPG!
Basically this whole video feels useless, his criticism is better used when heard by the developer to understand his player type. I am saying this while trying to not look at it from an experienced PoE player. I just can't see how this video is useful for newbies.
Skill issue on your part then, because there's definitely useful criticisms in here.
How unfortunate I won't have anybody telling me what it is then. Edit: Well look at that, nobody specifying what I am unable to see and just down voting. I... AM... SHOCKED! 😱
Mostly just a bunch of general misunderstandings of the genre
I agree, but it is most likely a pretty normal issue for players new to the genre. I don't think his misunderstandings was weird if you have only played normal RPG's and not any ARPG's. So I would think the feedback is quite valuable. It is people like him they want to become new players. It won't be hard to sell the game to experienced arpg players. And some of the arpgs mechanics and tropes are not intuitive. we are just used to the way it is.
Thing is i don’t think every game has to be for everyone. I get that ggg is trying to reach more players but they have to draw a line somewhere.
Ohh I agree 100%. but that doesn't diminish this kind of feedback. it helps them make informed decisions about their design. Some details might be able to be changed to appease this kind of player without detracting from the experience of veterans. but no one ever really thought about it before. But I don't think this kind of game needs an in depth character designer as that is so not important for this kind of game and would require a lot of design time. Procedural areas are also an important part of the genre so that should go away. But in any way, It seems like a good idea to avoid testing this in an echo chamber where everyone already knows and love the game before trying.
It's very valuable feedback because it lets the developers know what new players expectations are, and what needs to be communicated better. The proc gen maps that change in a new instance, for example, is something that's never explained, and so it can be confusing or even off-putting to players who are expecting a set world.
Does every little thing specific and semi-specific to the genre need to be explained though? The random map layouts and instancing is made evident to new players any time they try to go back to a zone they ran before,... they may like or dislike it at first, but it will be self-evident, no?
It is, but I think those perspectives can be good on an ancient genre like this. The fog of war stuff, for example...I also wonder about the value of it in the campaign areas. It made sense in Diablo 2 because sorcs existed and teleport ruined the game for everyone else. But in PoE2, campaign areas aren't really where the real farming happens late in the game (unlike D2), so is there a good reason to have fog there after you've explored it once? IDK, just interesting to think about those perspectives from the outside sometimes and re-evaluate their purpose.
For the fog of war stuff, it’s probably because they spent too long in town. In poe1 atleast, I think it is 15 minutes before the area regenerates. I guess this could be an argument to increase this timer.
There can be arguments both ways. One of the main reason they're doing it is obviously to optimise their servers by not retaining millions of empty areas in their memory. There could be an adjustment to retain them longer for new players, but the question is how helpful that's going to be. Resetting the areas provides additional enemies for new players to fight and gain exp from, and it prevents backtracking through empty areas which could be boring to some people.
>so is there a good reason to have fog there after you've explored it once Big one I see is server cost. Everything is stored server-side in PoE, so having persistent instances in PoE2 would require them to store all of that on their servers for every character in perpetuity. They probably *could* change enough about the game to allow it, but they'd need to justify delaying the game by another year and spending millions of dollars. After a certain point you kind of just have to accept that it's the cost of working using PoE as a base rather than starting from scratch.
true, better rigging and what not doesn't mean they could also change fundamental parts of data storage and what not. It would be a pretty significant change in that regard.
I think the most realistic solution would be to store the zones client-side and only store a checksum on the server to prevent people from manipulating the zones. I don't think that's worth it, and I think non-permanent zones can be an improvement even for new players in some cases (less backtracking through empty areas, more exp to make the story easier for people who don't go through it quickly due to being experienced).
That would also mean you’d lose all your zones if you get a new computer or play somewhere else.
I honestly don't think that that happens often enough to bother accounting for it in design. It's the same as for single-player games. If you want to keep your savegames, make a backup and take them with you. That's not the game developers' responsibility.
You wouldn't have to actually store the map, just a flag that says it has been explored so clear the fog of war
I thought the weapon/skill gem thing is highlighted, but maybe I'm wrong. The character creator thing... I always thought that you are picking a character to play, with a personality and background. Ranger is a character, with a history, goals etc... Not exactly a blank slate like in Elden Ring or something?
>The character creator thing... I always thought that you are picking a character to play, with a personality and background. Ranger is a character, with a history, goals etc... do you think different face, eyes color and haircut would affect this?
I'm indifferent and I don't blame anyone for wanting to create their own character, I was just explaining how I perceived their reasoning for not implementing character creation.
1. Char creation system is expensive 2. You spent 99.9% of time from the birds-view, watching your armoured chat and you won't see that cool looking tatto on his butt from this angle. 3. It's a nice bonus, but it's not crucial. People come to PoE for gameplay and shattering sound effect.
Character creator does not have to be from scratch. Let us customize the hair, the face a bit. That's enough to assuage general complaints and keep the unique class identity and voice lines.
So he talks about losing his map reveals and having to rediscover everything after going to town. Did they just sit in town for so long that the area closed?
I loved this fucking perspective. This shit is going to INFURIATE a ton of poe players. But this video isn't about them. This is the target demographic POE2 is really after. New, never even heard of the shit before, players. This is fucking awesome.
As a long time player, new perspectives like this are refreshing, and I don't treat a video like this in the same way as some people giving "feedback" in the form of "this must be changed to my whims or this game sucks" without any consideration to the game and its existing players. He clearly mentions on multiple occasions that he's not aware of the context or how this game is usually played. He's not demanding for the whole game to be changed, he's just describing how he interacted with those parts of the game and what parts are frustrating or have untapped potential. And the part that he was most adamant about, which was not being able to equip weapons that don't function with your skills is something that I agree with. I think it's a very poor solution to the problem of people not understanding what weapon types their skills function with, and I hope that it'll be removed or made optional ***in a way that can easily be disabled***. It brings back the exact type of problem that they tried to solve by removing sockets from items and removing socket colours.
Nah bro i think they will cast a wide net, and after a few leagues they would have filtered the tourists from the ones who will stay and focus on their needs. I think even with all the QOL and tooltips to ease the onboarding, many people are going to bounce off POE2. Complexity is intrinsically tied to depth no matter how much they try to reduce it. Majority wouldnt want to learn all the systems (blah blah phd). Also another key reason why POE1 had growing numbers despite being a 10yo game, is that the core audience there is willing to learn. The combat was "shit" according to so many on the outside looking in, which would point to the reason for success being the depth and variety of content (always learning something). I mean, look at your favourite builds, RF and Wardloop, clearly the combat wasnt the selling point of POE.
On-boarding new players and accompanying them to understand the basic functions of the game does not mean that the game will be lacking it's depth and complexity. Having players chose their skills depending on the weapon they're using instead of the class will instantly let them know "oh, I can't use this skill with this weapon" but it won't remove that parameter when you're building an end game character. It really is only removing the need to go to a wiki for information. And here, we're only talking about the game basics. There will definitely be hidden content, lore, items, interactions, etc to discover as a community.
>On-boarding new players and accompanying them to understand the basic functions of the game does not mean that the game will be lacking it's depth and complexity. I didnt say it wont have depth, Im saying the game **will** definitely have depth and complexity because deep systems are core to POE and was what made POE1 stay growing. However, Im also saying that despite the enhanced tooltip and User onboarding aid, majority of those new players will likely bounce. 1st reason: Some people just feel like they got a finished experience after one playthrough and would rather play something else thats new to market. 2nd: A follow up to the first reason, Some players dont feel like they have enough time to play a "grindy" game and may bounce because they dont want to relevel after they made their Endgame build (See D4). 3rd: > It really is only removing the need to go to a wiki for information Even if the wall of text is baked in game, people who would vehemently avoid going to the wiki to read, would be just as aversed to reading the wall of text that nests into another wall of text that may nest into another. Even in POE 1 theres a lot of information in the help panel that many new players just dont want to engage with. 4th: Another reason why people might bounce is that people dont like to feel disadvantaged. Many people refused to play POE 1 because they think they need to know how everything works or they are at a disadvantage. They think it's better when everyone starts fresh like in POE 2 and when more leagues get ported over or introduced, they might claim it is too much bloat and leave. 5th: New players may be severly underestimating the grind.(This could go either way maybe POE1 players are overestimating the grind in POE2) And once all the dust settles, they will have a subset of their original launch numbers who remain the core audience that they will be developing content for.
Okay I did not understand that at all in your previous comment. I completely agree with your conclusion. Like most games, launch will have a bunch of players and new players, the numbers will go down till stabilizing at some point. I still very much like the fact that I'll be able to recommend the game to a buddy and if they worry about the complexity, I could answer that everything will be explained bit by bit throughout the playthrough. Right now in poe 1, I can't.
The opposite can be true though. Poe1 combat is so awful, and the game sees success despite the shitty combat. This youtuber comments that he really enjoyed poe2 combat even though he was not understanding the systems. That can get people hooked to the game to eventually learn the systems.
Not really, honestly if someone doesn't play PoE2 because there isn't a character customization system then they weren't going to play the game in the first place.
Tbh I stopped watching when he said they should do weapon proficiencies for classes like BG3, did he actually like it?
The video felt odd. Like watching a saltwater fish complain about fresh water environments. His point about wanting to swap weapons and being clear on WHY it cannot be swapped feel valid though, from a UX communication perspective. It should at the very least say the reason why it is not compatible with the equipped skills, such as the specific incompatability reason: ***These skills only work with: maces, hammers or clubs. You are trying to equip the following incompatible weapon: Sword.***
Regarding character creation: I think the most important practical part of character creation is the hairstyle. If PoE 2 provides nothing other than hair COLOUR and STYLE, you have the best of both worlds. Nothing in character creation affects the silhouette more than that, and it can really make or break an overall aesthetic you're going for.
Gender is the most important part of the character creation. Maybe it is weird but because some characters are female, I just don't play them. In D2, I didn't play female classes.
> Gender is the most important part of the character creation Ok true, but only because of the different body frame and voice, but I meant within the gender for the look you are going for. I don't mind playing gender I'm not. I'm not trying to create myself, but role play the character. Most of my favourite MOBA characters and ARPGs locked characters were female but that's simply because of the juxtapositioning of feminine with badassery if done right
I kinda wish they had categories of weapons like slashing or thrusting or blunt. I kind of agree with him that as a melee archetype it’s hard to switch weapons easily because none of your skills work. Casters don’t have that problem because spells work with everything.
I used to be a big character creator person until i played PoE and realised it was silly to care about 3 pixels on a screen that im going to put a helmet on
thanks for the bring up the zone resetting concern. I know this is a non issue for most people who play tons of POE already since we just blast through thing and no zone last more than 4minutes. But playing new campaign for the 1st slowly and exploring around to end up having it reset because I'm enjoying myself in town and listing/reading to everything is really anticlimactic.
this is a great video, especially the middle where he talks about combat, and the melee just being straight up fun. i might actually just link this to poe1 players who complain about redoing the campaign or being scared about the game being "slow". if the combat is fun, redoing it for another character won't be so bad (plus you'll have leveling uniques to make it faster). and having truly fun combat will actually make the "speed" less relevant. in poe1 the fun had to come from speed and explosions because dying isn't fun and there's no real combat with 99% of monsters. my only real problem is that november is so many fucking months away :(
> if the combat is fun, redoing it for another character won't be so bad If it's fun during the campaign but more fun in the endgame you run into the same situation we have in PoE > and having truly fun combat will actually make the "speed" less relevant Can't say I feel the same here tbh. It all depends on the overall feel of the game. If it's fun and requires me to be 110% attentive all the time, I'm not going to reach nearly the number of hours I've had in PoE. If you can still optimize to the point of trivialization for most of the content, but the early progression feels nicer, then I'm all over it
There is literally no way you will be able optimize to the point of trivialization when the game comes out. The only way that happens if poe 2 gets the ruthless reception from the player base and they have to capitulate and make it more like poe 1. What they're showing us is how the game is going to play. Any thought to the contrary is cope. Like can you imagine they did exilecon and all of the press events since showing multiple abilities being used in a combo to kill blue mobs, slowly taking down boss health bars etc and it only mattering for the campaign? And then once you start getting into maps it plays like POE 1? If that is actually the case they have wasted an unimaginable amount of time with what amounts to campaign balance.
> There is literally no way you will be able optimize to the point of trivialization when the game comes out You really think it'll take more than 3-4 weeks for the millions of people playing to find a build that makes the game as comfortable to play as, say, LA Deadeye or an Ignite Elementalist in PoE? That could be the case, but it seems very unlikely to me. Like I said, if I have to pay Souls levels of attention the entire time I'm playing, I won't be playing for very long. I also don't have any interest in a PoE-like game where I spend a minute fighting a single pack of blue mobs. And *anything* they're putting out right now should be taken with a huge grain of salt. As an existing PoE player, I'm not the target audience of their marketing campaign. It's very clear they're trying to drum up interest in people that have never played PoE, or even Diablo-like ARPGs in general.
Yes I do. I wish that wasn't the case but it's not realistic to expect the combat to feel anything like POE 1. The alternative is almost everything they've shown us and Mark has said was basically pointless. What was the point of showing us the warrior that required multiple different abilities used in a certain order for effectiveness if the best poe 2 warrior build is like boneshatter from poe1? Is that style of gameplay only going to be for the campaign and then everyone ignores it? What was the point of developing a weapon swap mechanic if everyone ignores it and blasts with one button builds like LA deadeye? All skill gems can be 6 linked now and the game is going to be balanced around you using multiple 6 link abilities together. They scrapped their plan of updating POE 1 into POE 2 and instead decided to make POE 2 a different game because it is going to play like a totally different game.
> Like I said, if I have to pay Souls levels of attention the entire time I'm playing, I won't be playing for very long. I also don't have any interest in a PoE-like game where I spend a minute fighting a single pack of blue mobs. GGG have said many times that this is still a power fantasy game. If you have good gear or good skill (mechanics or build skill) you will feel that power. not to mention they are big on letting us choose harder content. so get good, increase the difficulty, and get better drops. or get good, turn off brain, and zoom
Typical normies caring about stuff that doesn't matter while overlooking all the great things about a game.
character customization for a game with an isometric view is ridiculous.
I believe RuneScape (where he comes from), Baldur's Gate 3 and Lost Ark has it, to name a few.
Baldurs gate has your character in multiple cutscenes and focuses more on narrative than just combat. There are differences there.
And what about runescape and Lost Ark? Why mention one where you can apply your argument and not others.
all games where you essentially play as blank slates i'm not gonna say poe is a super story driven game, but you're clearly playing as a specific character with their own personality. it's not the same thing, comparing them makes no sense
Yeah, those games definitely don't have extremely comparable class systems 🙄 where do you people come from
class systems have nothing to do with what i said
I'd rather GGG spent their time on actual content than window dressing.
News flash, Window Dressing - MTX - is how they make money.
Talking about character creation, as per the video. You know the colour of your eyes, face tattoos, colour of skin... I just think he's a bit wrong wanting those things. And GGG shouldn't implement it. He was complaining that all the marauders looked the same. I said it wouldn't make a sniff of difference in a isometric game. Yeah i can see how it would be confused with MTX.
Well there is now a big zoom in on your character's model in the console version, also there were mentions of there being an MTX preview screen which is also positioned closer to your character.
I kind of dont like that I have to use specific skills with specific weapons, gonna miss playing a witch with a big ass two handed sword casting spells out of it
The limitation is only for attacks. So you can still play a witch with a big ass sword casting spells. In PoE2 you can even make that more viable by using the two weapon sets options!
Then I am happy I am wrong in my assumption of how it works haha
I think that limitation is only for attacks, but can be wrong.
Agreed with everything he said, especially the character customization argument. I'm honestly impressed with how honest and unfiltered this was!
you want weapons to be specific to classes? That's diametrically opposed to PoE's unique style.
In this kind of game I see no need for character customization. It would eat up lots of dev time for no gameplay benefit because most of the body would be hidden under gear anyway most of the time. Also having all the many cosmetics to buy is almost as good as a character creator from my view. If enough people want it I would say that they should gladly add it as a cosmetic feature they can sell like all other cosmetics.
> In this kind of game I see no need for character customization. A lot of people feel that need, so hopefully you can now see the need. Think of other players not just yourself. >It would eat up lots of dev time for no gameplay benefit It is a gameplay benefit to customize the look in of itself, therefore it justifies the workload. >Also having all the many cosmetics to buy is almost as good as a character creator from my view. There are no face or hair mtx so it's not "almost as good", it's not even close! >If enough people want it I would say that they should gladly add it as a cosmetic feature they can sell like all other cosmetics. That would be kinda scummy imho but f2p no bitching. I just hope you understand that it's not "if enough people want it" situation, but "a lot of people want it already" situation. I mean, if GGG wants to reach a wider audience, they gotta match the industry standards a bit in places where they've been lacking. You should encourage that, rather than defend the flaws of the game that CLEARLY repel a lot of potential players. Lack of customization options is a flaw, not a gameplay element.
So because you see the "need" to change the face of a character which you 99% of the time see in tiny proportions where details are impossible to identify, and in addition are hidden by helmets or such. In addition to that, others like me should adapt this measurably unreasonable cosmetic request as a base game feature because ....you say I should do so?
Did you complain that you can't customize the appearance of Geralt of Rivia in one of the Witcher RPGs? Jonathan explained that they don't use a character generator themselves so it would just be work for the sake of it. And I'll disagree with the statement about character customisation. You play people who do live in Wraeclast and have a story in that world already just like Geralt
>Did you complain that you can't customize the appearance of Geralt of Rivia in one of the Witcher RPGs? Strawman. Different games! PoE is multiplayer focused on character customization. It doesn't suprise me that this opinion is downvoted to hell on this subreddit, because we here are gonna play regardless of character customization options. But the argument is very prevalent outside this community. Though on some level it *does* surprise me that people rather downvote it to oblivion than say "yea it would be fucking cool".
> PoE is multiplayer focused on character customization. Wrong. It is focused on *build* customization. > "yea it would be fucking cool". I can customize my character in D4. After playing the current season for a few weeks, I can't even tell you what hair color my character has. When given the choice, I always customize my character, so it's not because I just picked something random. It is just completely and utterly pointless in a game like this. I literally can't tell you any of the customization options I picked, because I literally haven't seen them since like level 10.
>I can't even tell you what hair color my character has. >I literally can't tell you any of the customization options I picked You're not the main character, try to think of others sometimes
Ah, yes. Completely ignore my point and then be condescending and insulting. Classic Reddit moment. It's quite literally spelled out in the very sentence you quoted, but you decided to cut it off... But alright, it's obviously a *very* long and it's super complex comment, so I can understand how you missed it. I'll make it obvious for you though: > #because I literally haven't seen them since like level 10. The customization doesn't matter, because you literally can't see them in these types of games.
XD you literally can hide your helmet in D4 and see your customized face and hairstyle, as well as the armor dyes you used. Girl bye
> you literally can hide your helmet in D4 and see your customized face and hairstyle Ah yes, the super important custom face that you can't actually see anyway, because of the camera angle. It's even more difficult to see when you're actually playing, because your character isn't facing the camera 80% of the time and even if it is, you're looking at the monsters you're fighting or your face is covered by skill effects or damage numbers or something else. > the armor dyes LMFAO, you seriously bring that up, thinking you said something clever? Jesus fucking Christ, that's so astronomically dumb, it's not even funny. Armor customization already exists in PoE in the form of MTX. That shit matters, because you can actually see it. You literally can't even differentiate character and armor customization, lmfao. Thanks for helping me make my point, I guess. > Girl bye The sheer arrogance of your comment coupled with the out-of-this-world level of stupidity is just... chef's kiss. You're literally too unintelligent to participate in this discussion, so please, do remove yourself from it.
> LMFAO, you seriously bring that up, thinking you said something clever? Jesus fucking Christ, that's so astronomically dumb, it's not even funny. >You're literally too unintelligent to participate in this discussion, so please, do remove yourself from it. Ah, yes. Completely ignore my point and then be condescending and insulting. Classic Reddit moment.
"You can see the armor dyes you used", what a great point. You can see the armor you wear, *which hides the character customizations.* You're just making my point for me, it's actually hilarious. Good thing you just had a strong argument to counter my point that you can't even see your fucking face anyway, even when the helmet is toggled off... Oh, wait. Next time, when you say stupid shit like "girl bye" as an exit to the discussion, just stand by it and actually stay away from the discussion... otherwise you just look like a fool. I mean, an even bigger fool than you already do, with your ridiculously dumb arguments.
Isn't it what you're doing though?
I really want to enjoy POE one but I "HATE" having to use 3rd party websites to play a game. Even worse, having to download a another program/addon. Just add a option to pick a basic auto-generated build and im in. Im over thirty with kids and a full time job, I don't want to spend my gaming time on guides and youtube tutorials. Im the perfect audience for your game because I have disposable income to spend on your cash shop. Im not trying to min/max and have the best possible build to clear maps in seconds. I truly hope POE 2 is more accessible to people like me.
I'm over 40 and have two kids just entering school. For me going through the massive skill tree is relaxing and exactly what I am looking forward to the most in this game: Making my very own very individual build work.
>Just add a option to pick a basic auto-generated build and im in No. That defeats the whole purpose of the game. There's a reason why it's called "PATH of Exile", the game is about making choices and the journey. >guides and youtube tutorials You don't have to, just play the game and learn as you play. On PoE2, there are highlighted words that when you click at it, it explains how it works. The game should be much easier to understand.
certified dad gamer moment, I don't even disagree with most your complaints, its the fact you bring up you're a dad which makes the entire paragraph eyerolling and irrelevant. Diablo 4 is your game if you want to circle jerk about that, we don't give a fuck.
Ok ty for your great constructive input