I think a big reason behind PoE2 initial failure was PoE1. I personally was super excited for an old school, Infinity Engine throw back until I played it and realized, meh, it’s not that great. I dint have empirical data for it, but I suspect I’m not alone.
I used to love real time with pause, but I think it is hard to pull off right, and PoE didn’t do a good job in my estimation. PoE 1 and 2’s combat had 2 flavors:
1) mindless butcher your way through trash mobs
2) the tragically rare boss that requires you to obsessively pause and unpause to hyper-micromanage your characters. Still easy, but just now more tedious and somehow less fun.
3) absolute cheese metabuilds, trap nonsense
I think there could be a good game out of the serious, but I think that Obsidian really needs to revisit the combat system from the ground up if trr get Ray do a PoE3.
