Oh yes, my friends, we’re gonna be shapeshifting. Here’s a quick (and almost certainly incomplete) list of new features for Path of Exile 2.
- Six new character classes, along with the six from PoE 1 for 12 total (Sorceress, Monk, Huntress, Mercenary, Warrior, Druid)
- New ascendancies, with three for each class
- A revamped skill gem system where the links are in the gems themselves, not tied to equipment
- Tons of new skills, including shapeshifting (bear, wolf, cat) and giant comets
- Meta gems, which are gems that can have other gems socketed into them (think things like cast on crit or spell totem)
- New weapon types, like spear and crossbow that have their own skills
- A six act story campaign set 20 years after the death of Kitava
- A new map-based endgame
- A dodge roll for everyone that doesn’t require a gem link, with the ability to dodge-cancel abilities
- Changes to crafting and the economy, including changes to the way chaos orbs work and the introduction of gold as a currency
- Over 100 new bosses to battle, each with unique mechanics
Trading will never be addressed in the way the community wants because what they want is not good game design.
Most players want some form of Auction House to automate trade completely, but that in conjunction with completely free trade like what exists in PoE completely undermines the actual gameplay of an ARPG.
Trade is highly highly efficient, and ARPG game developers are usually quite afraid of trade. PoE is one of the few games that has completely open and unrestricted trade.
The restriction in PoE comes from the idea of trade “friction” where it takes additional time and makes it inconvenient.
But this huge risk of trading is exactly the reason why Blizzard removed trade entirely from D3 and D4 has limited trade too, and even brand new ARPGs like Last Epoch also have restricted trade.
Trade has a huge risk of undermining the entire game and removing the reason to play it.
Many ARPG developers feel trade removes from the game, while Chris Wilson and GGG feel that trade adds value to items because they can be tradable, but once you add that AH it makes trade too powerful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XE3MAFGDzWw&t=29460s
I understand this argument, but I fundamentally disagree with its core premise in PoE. I hate to break it to you, but an auction house already exists in PoE, and guess what? It didn’t completely break the game.
Since we already know this is the case then maybe they should just streamline the process to kind of mimic the existing external architecture that people are already using. Additionally you could just make trade and no-trade servers so people who want a solo or more hardcore experience still have that opportunity.
There are ways around the issue that don’t just boil down to “auction house no fun because GGG or Blizzard say so UnGaBuNgA”…
I think GGG picked the worst possible solution. They are correct: trading ruins the item progression experience. So what do they do? They keep trade, make the experience of acquiring items yourself torture to keep the trade economy functioning and to push you into trading, then they make the experience of trading miserable as a bandaid to the problems caused by trade. In the process nobody gets to be happy with the solution. If you like SSF, PoE is not the game for you. If you like trading have fun putting up with whispering 50 people to find an item and then dropping whatever you were doing once you find someone who responds.
It’s the most backwards, anti-fun design I’ve ever seen, (that isn’t a monetization scheme) and it doesn’t even accomplish what they claim to be their goal.