Path of Exile 2 developer Grinding Gear Games has acknowledged feedback to its Dawn of the Hunt update from players frustrated with the game’s slow pace.
The update, 0.2.0, arrived last week with a wealth of new content and a new playable character class, the Huntress. Simultaneously, the developer nerfed plenty of abilities and made other changes to tweak the endgame, many of which have unintentionally impacted the main campaign.
Now Grinding Gear Games has released a post detailing new and forthcoming changes to appease fans, as development continues in early access.
“Many people are reporting that gameplay is feeling too slow,” the developer acknowledged. “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. In this post we will talk about some of the things we have already done, and more of the changes we are planning on making.”
Having nerfed minion damage and life, these will now be increased to a level similar to before the update, while retaining the new scaling for the endgame.
Monster health has also already been dropped by 25 percent to alleviate clearspeed concerns.
The developer is also looking into the size of environments, with players criticising their large size. “Many players are reporting that areas feel like they are too large,” wrote the developer. “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. 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.”
Additionally, the developer is making changes to its new Huntress class, following concerns the power of the class is locked behind the parry mechanic. As such, a new skill will be added to provide Frenzy charges without needing to parry, though this will be carefully balanced to still reward those using the mechanic.
Further, the feel of the parry itself will be improved and spear throws will be buffed to incentivise players alternate more between ranged and melee playstyles.
Server side crashes have been approximately six times higher in this update, but the developer noted these are “significantly easier for us to debug” so should be fixed imminently.
Lastly, quality of life features are on the way such as bookmarking locations on the map, and adding stash tab affinities for more item types.
It’s hoped these changes will address concerns from players, with the game’s subreddit full of memes and frustration. Perhaps the game’s most famous player, Elon Musk, however, attempted to play from his private jet and died to the tutorial boss.
Still, Grinding Gear Games is attempting to give Path of Exile 2 more demanding combat in comparison to its biggest competition, Diablo 4. Indeed, Eurogamer’s Bertie described “Souslike thrills” in his Path of Exile 2 early access review.
As for the full release of the game, there’s a 65 percent chance it will be released this year, according to game director Jonathan Rogers.