Jonathan Rogers, Game Director of Path of Exile 2, has revealed to us in an interview that Grinding Gear Games is not planning an open beta for Path of Exile 2. But that’s nothing to worry about.
Here’s the deal: The year 2023 has revealed a lot of new things about Path of Exile 2. After ExileCon and Gamescom, we had the opportunity to interview Jonathan Rogers, Game Director of Path of Exile 2 and learn a little more about the sequel to arguably the biggest Diablo competitor.
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Path of Exile 2: Who Can Participate In The Closed-Beta?
First things first: According to Jonathan Rogers, there is no open beta planned for Path of Exile 2. There is only supposed to be a (huge) closed beta.
“We haven’t announced the details of how people will get into the closed beta, but we expect that everyone who wants access will be able to get it. Players can look at how we ran our three past closed betas for expectations on how we’re likely to run this one. As Path of Exile 2 is free and the closed beta will be quite large, we aren’t planning an open beta.”
But what does that mean exactly? If you look at the past of Path of Exile 1, it is likely that you can participate in the beta of Path of Exile 2 via a supporter pack, for example. By the way, the entire game will be playable in the beta and not just the first act or only a certain part, as it was the case with Diablo 4. For Jonathan Rogers, it makes no sense to conduct a beta test phase if you can’t gain feedback for the entire game.
What Does The Endgame of Path of Exile 2 Look Like?
We spoke with Jonathan about the endgame of Path of Exile 2 and how it will excite both fans of the first part and new players.
“We expect some players will play just the PoE 2 releases, some might play just the PoE 1 releases, and many will play whichever of the two they have time for. Our release cycle is already forgiving for players who want to skip leagues or play only the first month or so of each one, so the same will be true when both games have their own cycles.
Mapping, bossing and crafting are all big components of Path of Exile 2, and we have put a lot of effort into improving these areas in the sequel. Path of Exile is a game that appeals to many types of players, and in general, we want Path of Exile 2 to feel like a sequel for all of those players, regardless of how they like to play it.”
It is not yet known what the end game of Path of Exile 2 will look like and what content will be taken over from the first part. The only thing that has been confirmed so far is that the end game in the sequel will also be based on maps. In terms of general gameplay, Path of Exile 2 will carry over many features from the first part, such as the overlay map and the world map, but they will be polished up a bit.
New Quest Rewards And Automation Options
Path of Exile 2 will feature more bosses and campaign rewards than Path of Exile 1. For defeating over 100 bosses or completing side quests, you will receive various items that grant you permanent buffs.
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“The quest items that provide permanent stat boosts are a reward for completing side quests or bosses throughout the campaign. Most of these stats are useful for your build, so you will probably want to complete them at some stage for your character. It’s up to the individual player whether they want to take the time to do this during their campaign playthrough or come back to do it later. Whether bosses are in predictable locations or not depends on the area in question. Most optional bosses should be in quite unpredictable locations within an area.”
To face the bosses, players in Path of Exile 2 will get a new resource called “Spirit”. With it, you can link spells together and make them trigger automatically. At Gamescom, for example, the Druid gameplay combined the Gems “Cast While Channeling” and “Lightning Storm” with the Volcano ability. “Cast While Channeling” causes a Lightning Storm to be automatically cast while the volcano is active because it is a channeling ability. There will be a variety of such automations in Path of Exile 2.
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“In PoE 2, we’ve tried to make it so that automation features are gated by the new resource, Spirit. This means that we can be more liberal with what kinds of automation features we support while also making sure that it doesn’t get out of control. Due to that, we’re able to support many different trigger metagems which allow for you to automate practically anything that you can imagine might be possible to automate.”
Currently, over 100 Grinding Gear Games employees are working on Path of Exile 2, with the closed beta launching on June 07, 2024.
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