Path of Exile 2’s ‘gacha’ crafting system has players begging for changes

With Path of Exile 2 out, millions have been having loads of fun. It has been crowned by many as the best ARPG ever made, though, as with any game these days, PoE 2 carries tons of flaws. One of them is the randomized crafting system, which players are saying desperately needs change.

As opposed to the first game, crafting in Path of Exile 2 is entirely random. You get crafting orbs, collectively called currency, which can augment your items and give them one or more random modifiers. On rare occasions you can get your hands on some Essence currency, granting a random modifier from a certain category—though even then, the augment is almost entirely random and, what’s worse, often completely opposite to what you wanted. This has led many, myself included, to label the system as a “gacha,” with players actively calling on the developer, Grinding Gear Games, to “make crafting meaningful” as opposed to feeling like a “one-pull slot machine.”

Players in a Dec. 18 Reddit thread expressed how something has to be done. One of them argued that “the lack of player agency in weapon crafting is lame,” and how the solution to an RNG-based crafting system is higher currency drop rates and more gold availability. The developers behind PoE 2 have already pumped those numbers up and increased the drop rates and quality of loot overall, with the currency drops themselves increased by up to 500 percent, though it still might not be enough.

Others don’t even consider it to be crafting: “It’s not even fair to call it a crafting system at all,” a user wrote in a reply to the thread. “It’s not crafting, it’s gambling or, as some already called it: identifying with extra steps.”

RNG loot is a core tenet of the ARPG genre. But too much RNG can and will ruin the fun, since players don’t want to continuously find loot and items that they can’t do anything with. This, paired with lackluster vendors that are slot machines themselves and don’t make disenchanting a worthwhile investment, leads to a negative feedback loop, and the developers certainly have to assess the faults of PoE 2‘s crafting system and make the effort to patch them up. And with the game being still in early access, this is highly likely to happen.