Path of Exile 2 fans are beseeching devs to keep the game’s difficulty intact following some division among players.
Path of Exile 2 has exploded into its early access period with a strong showing. Quickly becoming one of Steam’s most concurrently played games ever, things look good for the ARPG.
It’s by no means a perfect game of course and developer Grinding Gear Games is already making some quick fixes to progression-blocking bugs. Aside from technical issues, certain portions of the player base have made complaints regarding the game’s punishing difficulty.
As the conversation around Path of Exile 2’s level of challenge takes center stage, players are begging the team at Grinding Gear Games to hold firm. One Reddit user took to the Path of Exile 2 Subreddit to extol the virtues of the game’s difficulty and many players want it left alone.
Path of Exile 2’s challenge is one of its biggest selling points
Despite being an isometric game focused on skill rotation, Path of Exile 2 encourages a thoughtful and patient approach to every encounter and emphasizes the learning of patterns to overcome challenges.
Players expecting the steamrolling power fantasy of genre contemporaries like Diablo 4 might consider this a bit of a shock but it has certainly rubbed some players the right way. “Literally just left a Steam review praising the difficulty,” one user announced. “I loved not fu**ing one-shotting the first boss.”
Ordinarily, the real challenge in ARPGs like Path of Exile 2 comes much later but players seem to be on board for this new take. “Nothing turns me off of a game harder than killing a “boss” in three or four hits. So glad this game feels like an actual game from hour one instead of 100,” a user explained.
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“I like the current challenge level. I feel like it encourages exploration of the maps and searching for better gear mid-campaign, which is usually something that’s missing until the endgame content,” another added.
While there are a number of players who want Grinding Gear Games to leave Path of Exile 2 as it is in terms of challenge, there are some who have suggested improvements to keep both camps happy.
Why does Path of Exile 2 feel so hard?
For a significant number of players, the challenge of Path of Exile 2 lies not in the difficulty of the enemy encounters based on damage output and health pools. It’s more a case of how unrewarding overcoming those challenges can feel.
“The bosses are difficult and when you finally kill them they drop a couple of blue items not even for your class,” one player complained.
“I agree with some of the other comments about rewards, I’ve struggled through some tough boss/mini-boss encounters with little to no reward for toughing it out and beating something that I’m clearly under-leveled for,” another added.
Complaints about the level of tedium involved in adjusting your character’s gear to progress are the primary reason many players give for not wanting to engage with Path of Exile 2’s level of challenge. Players are hopeful that devs will focus on improvements to the game’s loot, crafting, and skills to balance the game, rather than adjusting the difficulty of enemies and bosses.