When the trailer of Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt set a record for views on Twitch, no one expected that the carnival would turn into the worst trust crisis in the history of Grinding Gear Games a few weeks later.
Patch 0.2.0 of POE 2 launched on April 4 brought us Dawn of the Hunt league. But what no one expected was that its radical balance adjustment caused a collective riot among players - POE 2’s reviews on Steam plummeted from very good to mixed within 24 hours, and the number of readings on Reddit related topics surged. This tsunami of public opinion caused by numerical collapse is forcing this hardcore studio to give a response that satisfies players.
The cause of the incident is that GGG made subversive changes to the basic mechanism in the latest Dawn of the Hunt League.
The collapse of the level suppression system: After update, the damage bonus of high-level characters to low-level monsters was reduced, resulting in DPS of a level 99 Huntress on Tier 1 map. After the update, the damage bonus of high-level characters to low-level monsters was reduced from 2.5% per level to zero, resulting in DPS of a level 99 Huntress on Tier 1 map not much different from that of a level 20.
Monster strength is out of control: After 0.2.0 update, the strength of monsters has been greatly improved. Ordinary monsters have higher health points, while elite monsters have both increased damage and defense.
Such a strong reaction was beyond everyone’s expectations, especially against GGG’s original intention. The original intention of this update was to make the campaign more organized and challenging, but the result was multiple progression issues, which led to a significant decline in the player’s gaming experience.
Faced with this situation, GGG quickly gave a response. First of all, the developer admitted that some changes in Dawn of the Hunt did not work as expected, and apologized for this. What’s more, they also announced that they will be making several fixes and optimizations to further balance the game’s difficulty. The statement also outlined their future plans, revealing some upcoming features that will improve the gaming experience, etc. Hopefully, it will calm the players’ anger. I think, if GGG can give some Path Of Exile 2 Chaos Orb as compensation, maybe it can have some effect.
However, even this statement did not achieve the desired effect. Many people believe that the official fix is not enough to balance the game’s difficulty. In addition, many people are dissatisfied with the lack of a specific time for the promised fix.
In this regard, we hope that GGG will announce the exact date of the fix as soon as possible, and find the balance point of the game’s difficulty as soon as possible, so that players can enjoy the fun of the game as soon as possible.