GGG Jonathan Rogers: "[ New Act(s) ] might be sooner than you think"

strange they would release acts one at a time honestly.

He also said that after the poe league they would come back and do several balance patches on poe2

Would be nice to have the acts as a ton of content comes from the acts - monsters, maps, bosses, etc. also being able to give feedback on them during EA would be nice (like how we got more checkpoints and shrunk the A3 maps)

I think all 3 will need to be released together.

Each act gives +2 passive points, if they add act 4 where do the other 4 pts come from. Which 2 acts become the cruel ones.

I was hoping since poe2 been out with 3 acts for more than 7 months, they might release all the rest together.

Bad move to prioritize acts imo, the endgame is incredibly lackluster and having different tilesets and voicelines to enjoy for an hour or two from level 50-68 won't change that whatsoever.

Poe1 really slowrolled the release of acts content and I've never heard complaints about it.

More importantly, they want to get all skills to a point where each can be a viable main skill in the endgame. Not sure if they already talked about this before, but I think this is would be a really impactful change.

Before you think means before 1.0, because that is when everyone expects them. I can guarantee you they ain’t coming in 0.3. They will package it in a 0.5 by itself where they have no new class to release.

I don't even care about the campaign because we've done it 100 times in poe1, so I'll do it 100 times again in poe2, but the endgame needs more work. Aimlessly going around trying to set up towers and fishing for citadel just sucks. Let us juice as much or little like in poe1 and just blast maps with different strategies

I dont think 1.0 with full story will be out before late 2026 at this point.

But it's ok. I'm still having fu. With PoE1.

its not "crawl" it's cruel.

Comes from back in the day when the acts in poe1 (3 acts, later 4 acts) were divided for levels in 3 difficulties whilst leveling.

Normal, cruel and merciless.

When people refer to the labyrinth in PoE or the trial of ascendancies in poe2, in terms of 2 points, 4 points, 6 points and 8 points. People say "normal lab" for the first 2 (around lvl32) , "cruel" lab for the 4th point, "merc" lab for the 6th point and "uber" lab for the last 8th points.

The reason why Jonathan, Mark or even Chris wilson if he was still around, would describe this second go of the 3acts as "cruel difficulty" in poe2, is because it fits.

It's round 2.

In terms of difficulty when the game is fully released with 8 (?) acts in poe2, the difficulty spikes will be act 1 to 2, act 3 to 5 and act 6 to 8. Normal, cruel, merciless and then after the campaign it's endgame.

Just like in poe1, in poe2 you are meant to reach the endgame (done with the campaign) at around lvl68 to lvl72.

Didn't they say recently that they want to drop the last half of the acts at once, because it would be extra work to appropriately scale things to run through twice, and something along the lines of "maybe you do acts 1-4, and then cruel act 1 and 2, and then you're in maps"?

Really? I thought like march .so sooner than that? That whould be a bit difficult.

I think they know that people are quite bored with doing the same 3 acts x2 for each character each time new league starts.

Highly likely? Because you stitched together something said off the cuff in January with something vague and off the cuff in July? This is not a logic puzzle, it's a man bewildered by the challenge making it up as he goes.

This would be amazing! I really enjoyed playing the campaign, and then when I got to the end and was prompted to play it again at a higher difficulty, I kind of lost interest.

Really enjoyed the game, so more content is great news!

If it’s one at a time we would pretty much have to get one each league. That would still be r year from now before full release.

Having the poe1 character be faster in literally the first zone tutorial than my poe2 char with like 90% of the speed nodes closest to me on the tree and 35% speed on boots is what is turning me off honestly.

I think there are currently 2 major bottleneck/roadblocks stopping them from releasing Act 4.

1. Kingsmarch is the Act 4 mission hub. This is also where Faustus is located and I'm like 90% sure they'll link the auction house to him or to Kingsmarch. So they are likely not going to release Act 4 without having the AH included.
2. Act 4 missions will be Karui themed and it's been heavily implied that the 3rd ascendancy trial will be based on Trial of the ancestors which would place it in act 4 as well.

Basically what I'm saying is there are several additional mechanics tied to act 4 that make it more work than simply boss design and map layout/art.

A lot of streamers have some weird copium about all the acts coming out at the same time but if they did that there would only be like 4-5 new maps per season instead of like batches of 30.

I'm in there for random Chinese I recognize like POE2 as POE er (POE San when?) or Xiexie Bubu

I wouldn't be surprised to see all class and all act next patch

I think we're getting them in 0.3, so since they said sooner than I think, that makes it somewhere within 0.29.
Acts 4-6 releasing next week confirmed!

It sucks and is why I had quit. I wasn’t doing the same thing over twice , the first time was bad enough

Great post, thank you for sharing this!

Kind of surprised to hear that. Ever since they moved the goalposts on what would be in 1.0 and saying that the game might launch without all the classes and all that, I figured holding the campaign back and dropping it for the release would be the thing that could serve as some kind of event and demarcation that it's go-time now.

Jonathon said there was 30-60% chance that 1.0.0 could release this year. Will that happen? No clue, my answer is NOPE.

But for Jonathon to be that confident tells me that there must be a huge stretch of work that's already been done. He's already said that they pretty much have the bosses all done in the campaign, they just need to put them in and fill out the rest. So does that mean we should expect the other acts soon?

Maybe in 0.3.0? Or will they wait for one more major patch before doing it and releasing say another class or two this time?

The other thing is that the weakness in PoE2 right now is end game, so maybe they have another system in place for that.

Also for the love of god if they do more end game systems can they please be new unique systems? And not just Poe1 end game systems ported over? I would love some unique stuff instead of just already "been there done that" stuff.

I think putting them out 1 at a time is a bad idea. Just put em out when they’re all done and polished.

Basic takeaways: Next mechanic is Abyss or Legion but it will behave differently (could be Settlers as well); probably Act 4 and no new class; lots of buffs for underused skills (which I guess means every skill that isn't Herald of Thunder and LS), don't think better trading is this league but who knows.

My expectations are in 2 years from release. I would hope they do better than that.

Tbh when they released it was hoping we would get all acts in normal than maps for endgame. Then they could release each cruel act 1 at a time. While still giving players ease of access into endgame without this weird half point break off x2. Anyone else thinks this would work as a valid solution?

I never made it past act two. Give me my melee weapons or give me death.

I have no idea how campaign would work if they released one act at a time, would we just play the first 2 acts again in cruel once we finish act 4? Would we just go straight to endgame after act 4? Anyone have any ideas?

I can't wait to uncover new interesting lore before going back again to the shitty endgame

My copium is that we are getting all 3 at once.

Just release the acts one by one. Let the community vote on which subset of acts should be included in the updated cruel mode. It’s early access so what’s the point in overthinking it.

"Sooner than you think" serves as an amazing phrase to promise alot but also nothing at the same time. It did its job in hyping up the community for 0.3, but if new acts aren't ready, they will just not release them.

They have said before that content will be released if they are ready by the 4 mth cycles, rather than delaying the release to have the content ready.

Once you play through it 2x to get to endgame, you shouldn’t have to do it every character that same season. It makes me not even want to start another character.

A4 in 2027? Pog!

I want druid.

Didn’t they plan on full release in 2025(which of course is highly unrealistic)? What is this “sooner than you think” nonsense?

Its 50/50 if we get act 4 or druid in 0.3 but by 0.4 we’ll probably have both

I won't be playing the new season if there are no new acts or a skip campaign of sorts. I can't put up again with going through the same 3 acts twice.

Its already half a year later than I thought.

My biggest issue is that they said once they add act 4, players will do cruel acts 2 and 3... so we still have to replay the awful 3rd act until all 6 acts are out. Why cant they just make the cruel acts random or allow you to choose so people dont have to replay the acts they dont find fun.

I know a lot of people are hoping for druid and new league mechanics and to be honest, they could release acts 4-6 and balance pass.... maybe a change to how towers work (or just removing them and adding scarab) and I'd be happy as can be. Probably run 5 toons to maps.

I’m itching to play too, but I don’t really want to jump on my huntress or smith of kivita.

Doctor, Need a reset and a new class to try out stat.

Wow, more acts sooner than you think as compared to?? The game has had 0 new acts since it was released, this doesn't sound that promising lol

But when do I think Johnathan? When do I think?

New acts seem fine to me, but revising the endgame would imo be a lot better considering playing through the campaign is only like 5-6 hours of play time and mapping is the majority of our time spent playing each season.

give double XP, remove cruel, keep your acts where they are and give us good engame