Save the campaign. Save the game.

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Vyend#2601 wrote:

"

600lbpanther#3839 wrote:

5) The campaign is narratively identical every single time — same choices, same factions, same outcomes, zero consequence to anything you decide.

"

600lbpanther#3839 wrote:

6) A campaign that genuinely feels different on a second or third character creates real replay value — not just build diversity but narrative diversity, mechanical diversity, and a completely different lens on the world.

This is one of the biggest missed opportunities with poe 2 imo..

The next-gen ARPG didn't make much of an effort to this specific aspect, like, a linear campaign in a game that was made to be played multiple times? I know it's impossible to be a completely new experience every single time, but they could have taken inspiration from other games/stories though

Basically, imagine Clearfell being in act 6 instead of being in act 1, and maybe act 3 is the starting zone for the next league or something

Obviously for this to work each act has to be imagined as the starting zone and the "first experience". The story would need to be written with this in mind from the beginning too. Each act would need to be concise and have multiple possible endings, and lead you to the next act till you reach the end.

Definitely not an easy thing to do though, but it's not impossible

Also, i'd love to see more variety to each zone too, like Red Vale at night, or rain in Arastas for example. It doesn't need dynamic weather, just variations in lightning/weather to keep things fresh. To some degree the game already has this iirc, but only for very specific zones

Not a fan of campaign skip though, in the sense of having access to a level boost or something like that.

Exactly!!! The truly Next-gen ARPG *will* include these aspects AS WELL as the Dynamic weather suggestion you have which I think is awesome.

Beyond the fact it would "freshen" up each area (sometimes sunny, sometimes stormy, sometimes a blizzard, sometimes light snow, etc.) dynamic weather could affect terrain/spells/etc.

Dynamic Flooding ("The Prison"): Some times a lot of flooding, some times a little. Cold spell users can partially freeze stuff, etc.

Thunderstorms could offer a boon to the Druid who uses thunderstorms + Plants (don't have to cast thunderstorms during that area/time period).

Desert "dry" areas could offer boons to chaos spells, Cold builds gain bonus damage and reduced mana cost due to them being in their "element" (same with fire builds in lava / hot areas)...ideas like that. No negatives!! Maybe negatives in Hardcore modes or different leagues to add complexity (difficulty).

THAT would be "Next-gen ARPG" stuff. This dynamic weather (even it's most basic form of weather changing) is such a great idea it deserves its own post.

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600lbpanther#3839 wrote:

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arandan#3174 wrote:

attaching permanent end game rewards to the campaign renders any option of a skip meaningless.
You've solved nothing, and managed to contradict your entire 'point' in the process.

If the 'silent majority' doesn't reach maps, and the campaign is their endgame, why would they care about atlas bonuses? They wouldn't.
Most left the game to let it cook and will be back once the full story is available for them to consume.

"Save the campaign. Save the game" isn't just a title — it's the thesis.

1) The endgame is not the main problem. Getting players to care enough to reach it is (i.e. - 300,000 people "silent quitting")

2) On the skip contradiction: You are projecting your intent onto everyone else (i.e. - "False Consensus Effect) which is assumingg that because you wouldn't skip if endgame rewards were attached, nobody would. That's not an argument, that's projection.

Different players have different motivations. Some will engage fully with the faction system to maximize their Atlas build. Some will skip anyway and accept the trade-off. Some will read about the faction rewards, decide the campaign is worth experiencing, and make it further than they ever have before.

The system isn't designed for one player archetype. It's designed to give every player a meaningful choice — and let the data decide which path they take. That's the opposite of forcing anyone to do anything.

No, it is not projection. Give your LLM a few more prompts to learn what an argument stands for, you absolute dimwit.
Learn to think for yourself, or your life is going to be very difficult.

"

600lbpanther#3839 wrote:

Exactly!!! The truly Next-gen ARPG *will* include these aspects AS WELL as the Dynamic weather suggestion you have which I think is awesome.

Beyond the fact it would "freshen" up each area (sometimes sunny, sometimes stormy, sometimes a blizzard, sometimes light snow, etc.) dynamic weather could affect terrain/spells/etc.

Dynamic Flooding ("The Prison"): Some times a lot of flooding, some times a little. Cold spell users can partially freeze stuff, etc.

Thunderstorms could offer a boon to the Druid who uses thunderstorms + Plants (don't have to cast thunderstorms during that area/time period).

Desert "dry" areas could offer boons to chaos spells, Cold builds gain bonus damage and reduced mana cost due to them being in their "element" (same with fire builds in lava / hot areas)...ideas like that. No negatives!! Maybe negatives in Hardcore modes or different leagues to add complexity (difficulty).

THAT would be "Next-gen ARPG" stuff. This dynamic weather (even it's most basic form of weather changing) is such a great idea it deserves its own post.

Never thought about dynamic weather affecting skills like that, but it sounds like a fun idea
But something like this needs to be executed with care, when you incentivize one thing, you end up disincentivizing other things in the process

In theory, monsters residing in areas with lava are resistant to heat, gaining bonus damage to fire spells against them wouldn't make much "sense"

Let's imagine that you can pick the biome/weather you want to play every single time, if your build is based on fire spells what would be the most optimal zones for you? Places with lava, or monsters/areas weak to fire like forests? If you always gain a bonus to fire spells while playing in these conditions, would elemental penetration still be necessary? Because in theory you can just avoid biomes/elements that are not beneficial to you.

Or if you depend on thunderstorms to cast more lightning spells, you wouldn't want the weather to become sunny all of the sudden

I think something like this could work, but it needs to eliminate variables that make the experience too inconsistent, even if there's no negatives players will still choose the path of least resistance

"

TempestMind#6309 wrote:

This thread is about Poe 2, but I'll say the devs have been implementing mechanics to make Poe 1 campaign and progression easier over the last few patches and I absolutely hate it. What was once a rewarding journey is starting to feel dull given the lack of friction and difficulty.

Adding new difficulty options to the campaign would be good option. I know that balancing this would be a nightmare but hell, that is why EA should be for.

I will repeat myself yet again. POE2 is a seasonal game. Making campaign too much DIFFICULT is no go. People come back to start fresh and feeling of misery for the next 10-15 hours during a league start, is not in a priority list. Endgame is much bigger than the campaign, even in the current state. Endgame is an area of the game that will receive more and more updates thru upcoming years, while the campaign will stay the same and only will serve as a tutorial (In the current form the tutorial that teaches you nothing but pray on RNG. Being a walking simulator and source of the constant frustrations)

This is why campaign vs endgame enjoyers debate will never end unless GGG made a real decision. They already done the first step in 0.2 so the initial vision is long gone.

"

TempestMind#6309 wrote:

All that to say, removing campaign would just be one step closer to Poe becoming D4.

D4 didn't remove it's campaign, they just provided a CHOICE to play or skip it.
And yet D4 is D4. A diffirent game, with a diffirent playerbase. Yet you people for some reason thinking that adding campaign skip made Blizzard shot themselves in a foot, but here we are. The game is still popular enough to keep the engine running, still receiving an updates and ready to launch the next expansion pack later this April that will bring a new piece of lore on top of new content.
While some POE2 players, constantly poking Diablo 4 and keep gatekeeping things, acting like a witnesses of the HOLY VISION. Repeating the same mantra over and over again that making campaign optional would permanently kill the game (which is not true) so rest of the playerbase should keep supporting the VISION while sacrificing their own enjoyment of the game.

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default_mp3#9394 wrote:

I will repeat myself yet again. POE2 is a seasonal game. Making campaign too much DIFFICULT is no go. People come back to start fresh and feeling of misery for the next 10-15 hours during a league start, is not in a priority list.

Making campaign too easy is a no go too. It already got nerfed so much boss fights are trivialized and 0.4 mechanic made progression even easier. Seriously like in another thread some guy claimed campaign is too difficult after 1k hrs playtime.

Are we even playing the same game? Poe2 campaign is easily best campaign experience we have in arpg genre which was already gutted by nerfs and people still want to trivialize it even more.

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default_mp3#9394 wrote:

D4 didn't remove it's campaign, they just provided a CHOICE to play or skip it.
And yet D4 is D4. A diffirent game, with a diffirent playerbase. Yet you people for some reason thinking that adding campaign skip made Blizzard shot themselves in a foot, but here we are. The game is still popular enough to keep the engine running, still receiving an updates and ready to launch the next expansion pack later this April that will bring a new piece of lore on top of new content.
While some POE2 players, constantly poking Diablo 4 and keep gatekeeping things, acting like a witnesses of the HOLY VISION. Repeating the same mantra over and over again that making campaign optional would permanently kill the game (which is not true) so rest of the playerbase should keep supporting the VISION while sacrificing their own enjoyment of the game.

Have You even played d4 campaign? As a matter of fact i played it this week. I knew it will be a waste of money but discount on ps store was too good to skip. And boy, let me tell you - while i defend poe2 campaign i would never repeat d4 campaign.

1 - pacing is broken for so many reasons i don`t even know where to start. Campaign is overloaded with too many unnecessary dialogues and cutscenes. There are situations where you finish cutscene just to be forced to start dialogue "what`s next" starting another cutscene. They tried to make it too story focused it broke arpg pacing completely. By the end i was seriously annoyed about that. Open world formula works against pacing too(or its implementation). While horsing you are sometimes forced to get off horse just to climb/crawl and hop on horse again while you just want to kill more monsters.

2 - balance is completely broken. I bought standard edition but afaik expansion makes it even worse. Difficulty levels are not helping. You either choose cakewalk levels or impossible to play levels. There is no middleground which takes all the enjoyment out of it.

3 - There is zero epicness in the campaign. Bossfights are dull, they even lack music. Comparing this to Geonor fight make d4 campaign simply funny experience.

Bonus - story is subjective topic. While d4 campaign had its moments it was definitely wasted potential by infantile netflix-like approach. But i don`t want to talk about that. Poe2 gives you easy way to skip all the story if you don`t care about that. You can zoom through zones, quest without caring at all about story. That`s not the case about d4. Amount of dialogues and cutscenes is too big and skipping them not that quick/simple as in poe2.

So if i was blizzard and knew how dogshit experience is their campaign i would allow optional skip too. Poe2 campaign is 10/10 experience in comparison and i don`t mind playing it two three times a season because it`s fun and polished.

"

SalamiHaze#9389 wrote:

Making campaign too easy is a no go too. It already got nerfed so much boss fights are trivialized and 0.4 mechanic made progression even easier.

I am not advocating to lower the difficulty even more. But here we are again.

"

POE2 is a seasonal game. People come back to start fresh and feeling of misery for the next 10-15 hours during a league start, is not in a priority list.

I will repeat this until people finally get understand. But it doesn't mean that seasonal game should not have a good campaign experience. Yet I see this:

"

SalamiHaze#9389 wrote:

Poe2 campaign is 10/10 experience in comparison and i don`t mind playing it two three times a season because it`s fun and polished.

And yet nothing really FUN in the current campaign. Act 1 is decent. The middle of Act 2 till end of Act 3 is a complete boredom slog. Only the Act 4 looks like something really good here yet you need to survive first 3 acts. Unfinished, empty, boring walking simulator. But that is my gripe.
At the end of the day it doesn't matter what I feel right now. But the message is clear as day. We only 1.5 (almost) year in the game and those who playing constantly already got tired of it doing several 9-15 hour runs every time to just start a new build. The current campaign is TOO DAMN LONG for a SEASONAL GAME and we don't even have Act 5 and 6 yet which I suspect, gonna be twice longer than the current interludes. That is genuinely not helping the player retention at all or the onboarding for new players.

"

Vyend#2601 wrote:

Never thought about dynamic weather affecting skills like that, but it sounds like a fun idea
But something like this needs to be executed with care, when you incentivize one thing, you end up disincentivizing other things in the process

In theory, monsters residing in areas with lava are resistant to heat, gaining bonus damage to fire spells against them wouldn't make much "sense"

Let's imagine that you can pick the biome/weather you want to play every single time, if your build is based on fire spells what would be the most optimal zones for you? Places with lava, or monsters/areas weak to fire like forests? If you always gain a bonus to fire spells while playing in these conditions, would elemental penetration still be necessary? Because in theory you can just avoid biomes/elements that are not beneficial to you.

Or if you depend on thunderstorms to cast more lightning spells, you wouldn't want the weather to become sunny all of the sudden

I think something like this could work, but it needs to eliminate variables that make the experience too inconsistent, even if there's no negatives players will still choose the path of least resistance

100% agree with your observation regarding the potential of incentives in certain areas being de motivators / disincentives in others. A lot easier to come up with a spectacular idea and then throw it over the fence to GGG to implement.

I was spitballing up above when it came to possible effects and the lore conversation you bring up makes perfect sense (now, taking it to another level: does it even make sense for fire spells to work in lava areas at all?...although you're right...it makes much better sense for bonuses to work in cold or forest areas than fire).

The bottom line: Dynamic environment is both potentially a monster to implement and could have a dramatic affect on differentiating it from current/past ARPGs and dare I say...be one of the defining attributes that make it the "Next Gen ARPG" of the moment.

I'm working on a post (cue the collective groan of the forum LOL) to encompass the three (3) areas I believe would help to bring our beloved Path to the next level. A lot of people are very mechanically inclined when it comes to balancing spells, having a deep understanding of the skill tree, etc. and I admire them for that (it's just doesn't come naturally to me). However, the "contribution" I would like to offer would be:

1) Dynamic Storyline — faction choices that shape your Atlas identity before you touch a Waystone (this thread).

2) Dynamic Atmosphere — Red Vale at night, rain in Arastas, variable flood levels — visual variety at minimal development cost.

3) Dynamic Environment — weather that rewards builds and creates genuinely different zone experiences on every character.

Dynamic Atmosphere *seems* to be the easiest to implement out of the 3 but what do I know...Anyway, more to come! New post coming so please pick it apart (as well as everyone else).

Just add skip option for alt chars after your first char reachs endgame.

Your alt char will miss everything provided from campaing and have to go get them , thats it.

this is a must in my opinion.

All other 'improving' campaing experience in this or that way is also an issue. i dont strugle at campaing becosue i have +400 hours but new players are