In Hack’n’Slay Path of Exile 2, players should be able to build builds so powerful that everyone feels like they’re destroying the game.
Path of Exile is about looting, leveling and of course cutting up enemies in the best hack’n’slay style. To make it feel satisfying, the right balance is important. In an interview with GamesRadar, Managing Director Chris Wilson and Game Director Jonathan Rogers of Grinding Gear spoke about how they are handling character progression in the sequel, Path of Exile 2.
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Developers want balance, but only to a certain extent
Path of Exile 2 is intended to give you tough challenges and make you bite the dust even more often than its predecessor. Because the ARPG should be really challenging right from the start. At the same time, players should also be able to live out their power fantasies.
This is possible thanks to the revised skill system: Each skill can be strengthened, changed or even automated with 6 additional skills. This creates powerful – sometimes even overwhelming – combinations.
This aspect was particularly important to the makers of Path of Exile 2. Rogers said in an interview with GamesRadar that a lot had been learned from a decade of Power Creep in its predecessor. They want to give the gameplay and systems a minimum of balance, but at the same time everyone should feel as if they are somehow “breaking” the game.
We want that ridiculousness and the feeling of completely destroying this thing without actually pushing everything to the point where it no longer works. The balance is difficult, but we now have a lot of experience with it. So we’ll be able to sort that out when the time comes.
With this approach of Path of Exile 2, of letting the player live out his fantasies of omnipotence, but at the same time confronting him with overpowering opponents, the ARPG for release in 2024 could exactly meet the needs of some gamers who didn’t quite get their money’s worth with Diablo 4 arrived.
If you still have some time until the release of Path of Exile 2 and have just had enough of Diablo 4, you might be able to stay afloat with Last Epoch in the meantime. The time travel ARPG has just received some new features:
Action RPG on Steam is considered a really good alternative to Diablo 4, gets the German language and a new class