Path of Exile 2 developer Grinding Gear Games is addressing the mountain of player concerns that emerged with the changes in update 0.2.0. Between problems with the new Huntress class, Minions, area scope, and a general sentiment that the game is too slow, GGG has its work cut out. Luckily, a handful of problems have already been fixed. Now, the team outlines what it’s working on next.
Path of Exile 2 has had a chaotic few days. First, Grinding Gear Games dropped the new Dawn of the Hunt league, which is filled with a gargantuan amount of nerfs and changes. Then, PoE 2 soared back up the Steam charts as waves of players gave the new Huntress class and major endgame shakeup a try. It all came crashing down, however, as players rejected the action RPG’s new season in droves, and took to Valve’s storefront to voice their concerns.
Players aren’t happy with the avalanche of nerfs, and there is a general feeling that Path of Exile 2’s campaign and leveling process have slowed down significantly. This is something Grinding Gear Games is aware of, though, as it details what it’s already done – and what it plans to do – to rectify some of the unloved changes from 0.2.0.
“Many people are reporting that gameplay is feeling too slow,” Grinding Gear Games writes. “Sometimes this comes in the form of people saying that monster life is too high, or player damage is too low, or areas are taking too long.”
To start the changes, GGG says it will be buffing the effectiveness of Minions during the campaign and early maps. The team explains that during the 0.1.1 endgame Minions were getting out of control values and that it reduced those to readjust the experience. This had an unintended consequence, however, and made Minions less impactful during the campaign. That’s why Minion life and damage during the campaign are being improved, while the scaling nerfs during the high gem levels of the Path of Exile 2 endgame are sticking around.
You can also expect some more quality-of-life features, like a new system for bookmarking locations on your Atlas map. This means you can save locales with a name on the Atlas so you can easily find them later. PoE 2 is also getting Stash Tab Affinities for items like Socketables and Tables, which will let you assign a Stash Tab to those items so they can be autosorted into it.
If you think some areas are far too large, and contributing to the slow pace of the game, GGG is aware of that, too. “Normally when this is the case, the main reason is due to other concerns such as monster life or player damage being incorrect, or just a lack of entertaining content in the area,” GGG explains. “However, we are checking to see if there are any outliers that players are spending too long in to see if any changes to area size need to happen.” Some areas also have insufficient checkpoints, so the team is doing a pass to potentially add more in where needed.
Grinding Gear Games is also aware of some concerns around the new Path of Exile 2 class: The Huntress. Some players don’t want to engage with the parry mechanic, so GGG is adding a new skill on the second row of Spear abilities called Cull the Weak. Acting as The Huntresses’ version of Killing Palm on the Monk, it allows you to charge towards the monster, kill it, and then rewards you with a Frenzy charge.
GGG will also improve the general feeling of parrying, while buffing the speed of Spear throws for players who don’t want to enter melee range. This means you’ll get approximately a 25% buff to DPS from using only Lightning Spear, if that’s how you choose to play.
Interestingly, though, GGG makes no mention of one of the biggest Path of Exile 2 player complaints circulating right now: many think we’re playing the slowed-down version of PoE 2, while many of the monsters are ‘still playing PoE 1’ and rushing at us.
Thankfully, the team is listening to feedback and has all these changes planned, so I’m not exactly worried about where Path of Exile 2 will end up ahead of full launch sometime in the future.
Now that update 0.2.0 is here, make sure you check out all the latest Path of Exile 2 Twitch drops alongside a breakdown of all the Path of Exile 2 quests.
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