Path of Exile's overwhelming complexity isn't the real reason new players pass on it, director believes: 'I think that PoE 1's being such an old game is in itself the accessibility problem'

Talk to a Path of Exile player and they'll tell you they're still a new player after 3,000 hours. By all accounts, PoE is the most action RPG you can find. It has over a decade of systems layered on top of each other, a web of complexity that you'd probably only understand if you were there from the beginning.

Unsurprisingly, PoE is incredibly abrasive to new players. Most peace out when they open the skill tree and see a screen filled with more little icons than a Ubisoft map. According to its co-director, Jonathan Rogers, though, the complexity of PoE isn't the primary thing that keeps people from trying it—it's that it's old.

PoE co-creator and former Grinding Gear Games director Chris Wilson asked Rogers in a recent interview how he balances meeting the expectations PoE players have for a bigger and more complex sequel in PoE 2 while keeping it manageable for everyone else.

"I think that my opinion is probably a little bit different from a lot of people, which is that I think that PoE 1 being such an old game is in itself the accessibility problem that it has," Rogers said. He admits that PoE 1 is dense, bu...