According to the interview with the game director, Jonathan Rogers, influences for Path of Exile 2 (POE 2) come from various sources:
Specifically, Rogers mentioned that while Path of Exile 1 (POE 1) was influenced by the announcement of Diablo 4, the core reason for developing PoE 2 was due to a decline in the player base of PoE 1.
Here’s a specific example from the interview:
"Last Epoch… they did all their trade stuff and it was kind of like at that point it’s like okay like we’ve reached a point now where an arpg can’t really have the trade system that we had before we have to do better right…"
In this instance, PoE 2 needed to improve the trade system to stay competitive with the newly introduced system in Last Epoch.
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