Path of Exile 2 developers address its most disastrous update

Path of Exile 2 Daybreak of the Hunt — its first main replace because it launched in early entry final yr — has been a catastrophe. When gamers logged in final Friday to attempt it out, they instantly realized the sport had grow to be nearly comically tough. Killing weak monsters within the opening hours of the marketing campaign took ages, and the brand new Huntress class felt limp. Reddit exploded with posts titled issues like “This game feels like a massive waste of time” and “Game feels miserable”. Standard streamers rage-quit the game.

In response, developer Grinding Gear Video games issued a number of small patches to present gamers a combating probability. Monsters misplaced a few of their life, and a few underperforming abilities, like skeletal minions, had been beefed up. However many gamers nonetheless don’t assume it’s sufficient to repair the sensation that the sport is unrewarding.

Grinding Gear Video games put up a post addressing the broader issues with patch and what it plans on altering within the coming weeks, most notably the sluggish pacing of its marketing campaign, which you’re required to replay each time a brand new season drops. Whereas a few of the adjustments have already gone by means of, gamers are nonetheless struggling to seek out the endurance to play the sport lengthy sufficient to achieve its endgame dungeons.

“I can completely inform you that our objective right here was to nerf the issues that had been trivializing the endgame earlier than you’ve even managed to get your gadgets and stuff like that,” sport director Jonathan Rogers stated in an interview with streamer Zizaran on Tuesday.

“There have been some blatant fuck-ups, talking bluntly,” sport director Mark Roberts added, particularly calling out the underpowered abilities that had been rapidly hotfixed. “We’re firing from the hip loads right here and stuff like that we’re like, ‘Let’s simply get it in there, let’s attempt it out, and see how individuals assume and if it’s unhealthy we’ll simply undo it.‘”

“I believe a working theme with PoE 2 normally is that the goal to hit is smaller [compared to PoE 1] as a result of if we would like the fight to be extra partaking then meaning there’s a smaller goal; it places extra stress on the stability to be proper,” Rogers stated.

Rogers defined how he feels PoE 1 rewards gamers who’ve spent hundreds of hours mastering its techniques and that PoE 2 was designed to keep away from that drawback — it’s simply actually laborious to get proper. On the identical time, the sport is supposed to have the sort of deliberate, dodge-roll-heavy fight you’d count on from a Soulslike. It’s presupposed to be laborious.

Each builders say the group is trying into a variety of issues to alleviate, however they need to watch out about pushing it too far into the opposite route the place gamers begin flying by means of dungeons in only a few hours.

“If we get to the purpose the place participant by no means has to face a single problem ever then I don’t assume that’s going to be a sport that will likely be finally enjoyable in the long run,” he stated.