What kind of time commitment does PoE require?

[Quadsword]

I'm about to pull the trigger on early access because the game looks so good and I haven't played a genuinely new game in months, but I've known people who played PoE. They played it exclusively and didn't play anything else, and I don't know if this is confirmed, but I heard that the average session length in PoE1 was over 6 hours. I'm not interested in a live service game that requires me to treat it like a second job.

(Also, I see that the game is confirmed to have controller support on day one, which gets two thumbs up from me. Some will consider this heresy, but I prefer playing ARPGs with a controller. Click to move just doesn't feel natural for me)

[ScottEvil]

all you'r life

[MeatBag]

You will enjoy regardless if you play 10 hours a week, or a day.

Main loop in PoE are leagues(seasons) where everyone start fresh, each usually lasting 3-4 months, while most players leave leagues after 1-1.5 months, mostly because they beat everything they wanted, maxed out their characters. Playing less in this case is good thing, you will play each league for longer because you will enjoy progression for longer.

Another good thing for people that not play much is economy. Economy is entirely player driven, first days of league noone has anything, any somewhat good items are expensive. If you not play much, you will catch up later when market will have a lot of stuff and it will be affortable for people that play for a bit.

[Koop]

I play poe 1 pretty casually. I figure out what style I want to play, and then play through the game and do maps/bosses until Im satisfied. If you want, the game can be a fulltime job, but you can also just play the thing like normal. I usually get a little addicted and play every day/every other day for a few hours and then im done months in advance of the league ending.

[gryphonv]

Really as much as you want to put in. The thing with POE you dont need to do everything.

POE itself is incredibly bloated, from over 10 years of updates. Most players will skip some because its just too much.

POE2 is starting from the ground up so it will take much less investment overall IMO.

[gachi is manly]

There's no hard time commitment like, say, Rust or some MMO's.

You can play for an hour a day or 12 and still make progress.

Just be aware it is a very long game, though. If your goal is to beat the hardest content in the game, it could take over a year of playing if you're super casual about it.

And yea, controller support is nice. Especially since it's well supported now in PoE2 with the switch to WASD movement on PC. I'm definitely going to give WASD movement a whirl since I've heard great things about it from people who have played already.

[BadToast]

Depends on your goals.

PoE doesn't have dailies, it doesn't have raids or dungeon lockouts. You play as much or as little as you want to.
It's not a competition unless you want to participate in gauntlet events.

There's usually a big focus on playing a ton at league launch because the economy is fresh, but unless you have the knowledge to capitalize on that, it usually isn't worth it for new players.
Items sell for more and you can make currency quickly, but items you need are also more expensive, so there's a bit of a balance to it. If you start later, then your entry level gear is going to be significantly cheaper, but the high-end gear will be more expensive.

If your goal is just completing the 36 or 38/40 challenges and earning all the free MTX, then it's not too bad.

The great thing about PoE is that you can go really hard and grind a lot when a new league launches, finish your goals and then take a 2 month break until the next league launch.

Personally, I play PoE exclusively for the first 4 weeks of a league, earn all the MTX, and then quit and come back 2-3 months later for the next league launch.

[Joker]

It's not like an MMO where you can't do endgame content without the right gear/build
You can treat it as a single player game and play at your own pace

[Syzygy]

Your friends are just addicts, it's not like an mmo where you have these giant miserable raids you have to commit your entire evening to or you lose out. It ain't like that.

[r4diance]

the shorter the sesh the less you get, its not linear in my experience, so if you play 4 hours instead of 2 you will farm and make progress much more than double, because you get into the flow, unless you preplan what exactly you going to do in the short sesh as soon as you log in.