Thoughts from a first time ARPG player

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

Vendors need to be in the tutorial. Two 'obvious' points need to be raised, so trigger it when the player reaches Lv 3:
* Vendors reset their inventory. In my years of PoE 1 experience, I never learnt this as you never had to look at vendors. Loot was everywhere and that's before a new league's mechanics gave even more loot to encourage you to engage.
* You can equip "off-class" weapons early on. Later they need stat investment to gradually limit what you can do but at Lv 2 you can try out anything like picking up a crossbow on a "melee" class.

Once new players get prodded to buy an "off-class" weapon, they then need a tutorial on looking at "neighbour-class" skills. The player cuts their first skill gem and is shown a narrow set of recommendations. This is fine at that point in the game. There needs to be another tutorial when they cut their 3rd skill gem or maybe their first Lv 3 skill gem. Something relevant to whatever build the player is trying out, e.g.
* "You're a warrior, so you want armour break. Did you know there's a crossbow skill to keep that debuff up when you're further away?"
* "You're a monk, we see you're going for an ice build. Did you know the sorceress has Frost Bomb to help your damage output?"
* "You're a witch, we see you're trying out zombies which want power charges. Did you know there's a monk skill to instantly kill low HP enemies to earn power charges?"

That's a great idea.

I usually used staves, but at the beginning I also had one of the witch weapons for a bit (forgot the name), so I got myself 'contagion' or something and played around with it a bit. I'm not sure if there are viable cross-class builds, but it's definitely good to know that it is possible to do.

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

There's some nuance to the term "skill variety". Other games give you entirely different skills to achieve a sense of progress. In PoE, a "starting skill" can be edited with support gems from later on to become something quite different while still having the same name. To give an example, take a PoE 1 skill: burning arrow. One fire arrow that can set one target on fire. Simple earlygame skill. By midgame you could make it do stuff like this:
* Fire lots of fire arrows in a fan
* The fire arrows bounce off their first target to hit more targets
* Targets ignited spread that fire DoT to nearby targets
* A turret is shooting the arrows instead of you

The UI needs to make this clearer. The current "recommended 3 support gems at Lv 1" for each skill is fine for the starting player. A Lv 6 player needs to have a "show me everything I could slot in as this skill's support". All gems shows everything including the irrelevant (and doesn't show what you've already got equipped). The 3 recommendations don't show enough. There needs to be a middle ground.

Supplement to my point earlier on how "off-class" skills need to be "recommended" too and you get a dizzying variety of skills. I'm constantly fighting the finite number of skill gems I can have equipped. That's good, makes me carefully consider what's actually important.

That is also a great point. Though, yes, usually when I socketed a support gem into a skill I never removed it. So there is some variety, but I think there are still clearly better and worse ones for a given skill so they might need to be balanced more. Or maybe I just can't see certain things being viable while they are.

I realized early that there was an 'all gems' button, but I falsely assumed that those were just gems for all classes in one UI element. I didn't find the checkbox for 'show other than recommended' or whatever it is called in Act 2, which helped my flame wall skill tremendously because I disliked fortress compared to spell cascade which was great to move around enemies. If I had found that sooner, I would have had an even easier time and would have been less frustrated that I 'wasted' a gem when they barely dropped.

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

This is a huge datapoint that is going under the radar to a lot of discussions. You have packrats who want to pick up everything. You have PoE 1 endgame grinders who have been conditioned to leave hundreds (yes, 100s) of rares on the ground with loot filters so they don't even look at them.

The tutorial should gently encourage players to carefully consider what's a meaningful balance. In addition to prodding them to buy an off-class weapon, there should be a prod to get them to try using an orb of transmute, then augment, then regal. Give the player some inconsequential white base (like a belt) as part of the tutorial, give them the orbs and don't let them walk away with those tutorial orbs.

I am definitely one of those pack rats.The tutorial idea is really great. Maybe even let these orbs give everyone the exact same buffs so there's no 'lucky advantage' even though it will probably be replaced really quick.

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

One point that hasn't been covered in this opening post is respec costs. The current gold costs for respec are tuned to PoE 1 when players could just use orb of regret to respec once the gold cost got prohibitive. That currency doesn't exist in PoE 2. We're getting a fresh set of "woah, THIS is the skill tree?!" clips from first-time players streaming. I'm seeing decision paralysis. I'm seeing new players horde their gold instead of upgrading their gear because they're afraid when they'll need to respec.

Now, I'm not advocating completely free respecs. That'd unlock degenerate behaviour in the endgame. I'm thinking something like this to supplement the current gold-per-node system:
* Offer a full, free respec at certain points of the campaign. Do it like PoE 1 does in Standard whenever a new league starts: a "take it or leave it" deal that can't be postponed indefinitely.
* Offer a full, costly respec after doing some grind in the endgame. Something that's less time to grind out than earning the gold manually or starting a new character from scratch. Something that's still a significant decision to do. The skill points get reset entirely on the spot when the grind is done. Telegraph this clearly to players. That or make a "bulk buy" deal when respec'ing: "all your skills for the cost of 30 nodes".

I didn't talk about the respecs in my initial post since I had so much money and barely respecced. The only I think two times was me taking dex and str instead of int in a node because I wanted to wear a different item I dropped early on. And I removed those somewhere in Act 3 when I remembered that I did that for like 4k gold or something, which wasn't too bad when running around with 200k+.

Though I get how the price can be a lot when you maybe want to try a completely new build and used your gold to buy items or whatever.

The skill tree looks daunting the first time but it's pretty easy to get into in my opinion. It's a lot to read and remember, but the search helps a lot. And there's probably tons of viable combination, which is really exciting.

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

Now there's an interesting data point. There's nothing in the tutorial about how to read the gear. How does a new player interpret the numbers shown on an item? We could all benefit from your experience being elaborated.

Hmm, the tutorial shouldn't explain every last detail about items. It does however, need to say something about why gear found in later acts are better. The base stats and the better affixes that can roll on them. This is especially important for attack-based characters who rely on their weapon to deal damage.

I don't think it should give every detail about items either. That would simply be overwhelming. It would be nice to know what an item could get in terms of affixes, but that list might be overwhelming as well (not sure about that). I mostly looked out for things I struggled with or deemed generally useful as someone who plays a lot of games.

So for example the % spell damage, life regen, max life, int, rarity found increase etc. I ranked them by importance as per feeling or what was going on in the game and decided based on that. I didn't really look for resistances at all and basically ignored any mention because they didn't seem useful to me as I never struggled too much against a particular element.

Fair take OP!

Oh, two more things I feel are sorely missing from the tutorial:
* there are players who don't realise how big the payoff skills are. The video introduction to skills needs to quantify "when set up properly, this payoff does the damage of about 10 basic attacks, more at higher levels".
* there may be players who never realise the meaning of loot colours, or that you need to identify them. If they don't know what a "rare item" is, they won't pick it up to disenchant or sell or even identify. Or that the sale price changes if you identify an item.

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Asphyx#3269 wrote:

I usually used staves, but at the beginning I also had one of the witch weapons for a bit (forgot the name), so I got myself 'contagion' or something and played around with it a bit. I'm not sure if there are viable cross-class builds, but it's definitely good to know that it is possible to do.

My Monk in Act 3 is juggling about 15 viable skills and squeezing them into the limited 9 I can equip at any one time:

When I'm smacking enemies with a cold melee skill, I really want Frost Bomb and Hypothermia from Sorceress to get better DPS. I also want to be applying Freezing Mark from Monk recommends and as that's too many button presses, I slot Hypothermia and Freeezing Mark into Hand of Chayula so I teleport-slap one enemy with N curses at once.

When I'm facing a horde that needs to be slowed down, I have a Monk skill called Wave of Frost to AoE freeze while hopping back. I can then deal massive damage with another Monk skill (Glacial Cascade) to consume the Freeze status. Ah but wait, that skill requires me to be at the perfect range. Cold Snap from Sorceresss gives me a similar payoff but from other distances. And Frost Wall can freeze AND block enemy projectiles, which are the bane of me? How am I meant to face a platoon of ranged mobs gunning me down if I don't put something in the way while I approach? A Monk that didn't want to go deep into Int could instead pick up a shield and take Shield Charge to approach a LOT faster while blocking projectiles.

That's just the cold side of Monk. Lightning Warp gets silly in the hands of a Monk who can convert Shock status into power charges then consume those charges to put down big AoE nukes. Ah but what if there's no enemies to nuke? A Monk could pick up the Witch skill to make zombies out of those power charges before they expire. Voltaic Mark doesn't even show up for Monk recommends when Monk really wants to get as many Shocks as possible.

Looking elsewhere, Witch gets a recommended skill that creates a totem. It spews more projectiles the more chaos DoTs are on a target. The Ranger happens to be all about applying poison, which is a chaos DoT. Or the Warrior that really wants to build up stagger for a big payoff when it's the Monk that has a long-range "melee" skill to fill that stagger fast. Heck, I don't know how Warrior is meant to keep their "armour break" status up if they're not using a crossbow to keep refreshing its duration (which has drastic DPS implications).

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Asphyx#3269 wrote:

That is also a great point. Though, yes, usually when I socketed a support gem into a skill I never removed it. So there is some variety, but I think there are still clearly better and worse ones for a given skill so they might need to be balanced more. Or maybe I just can't see certain things being viable while they are.

I'm jealous you aren't burdened with swapping support gems around. In PoE 1 you were allowed duplicate support gems. Not in PoE 2, I have to think carefully which skill deserves a tempo support, which skill will be for proc'ing more status ailments, etc. That's before I've come across any really game-changing support gems that completely change what a skill feels like.

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Asphyx#3269 wrote:

Though I get how the price can be a lot when you maybe want to try a completely new build and used your gold to buy items or whatever.

Don't forget you're a diligent scavenger. Think of the adrenaline addicts who don't pick up most loot and disenchant rares. They'll never earn the gold in the first place. I would not be surprised if there's a player that doesn't even realise how much gold you can get from selling to vendors.

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Asphyx#3269 wrote:

The skill tree looks daunting the first time but it's pretty easy to get into in my opinion. It's a lot to read and remember, but the search helps a lot. And there's probably tons of viable combination, which is really exciting.

Diligence pays off. There are players who don't like reading and want to learn by making choices based on gut feel. Right now the respec costs disadvantage those who learn by doing instead of by reading.

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Asphyx#3269 wrote:

It would be nice to know what an item could get in terms of affixes, but that list might be overwhelming as well (not sure about that). I mostly looked out for things I struggled with or deemed generally useful as someone who plays a lot of games.

So for example the % spell damage, life regen, max life, int, rarity found increase etc. I ranked them by importance as per feeling or what was going on in the game and decided based on that. I didn't really look for resistances at all and basically ignored any mention because they didn't seem useful to me as I never struggled too much against a particular element.

There will certainly be community websites showing up that list all that detail. PoE 1 tacitly let the community handle that side of education. PoE 2 needs to decide how much to "off-shore" to the community.

In PoE 1, from halfway through the campaign the resists started to matter a lot. By endgame you were expected to have 75% resist in fire/cold/ele. Then you had some builds that really wanted the help of equipment to raise str/dex/int to free up many points on the skill tree. Never mind wanting max life on every piece of gear.

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

When I'm smacking enemies with a cold melee skill, I really want Frost Bomb and Hypothermia from Sorceress to get better DPS. I also want to be applying Freezing Mark from Monk recommends and as that's too many button presses, I slot Hypothermia and Freeezing Mark into Hand of Chayula so I teleport-slap one enemy with N curses at once.

When I'm facing a horde that needs to be slowed down, I have a Monk skill called Wave of Frost to AoE freeze while hopping back. I can then deal massive damage with another Monk skill (Glacial Cascade) to consume the Freeze status. Ah but wait, that skill requires me to be at the perfect range. Cold Snap from Sorceresss gives me a similar payoff but from other distances. And Frost Wall can freeze AND block enemy projectiles, which are the bane of me? How am I meant to face a platoon of ranged mobs gunning me down if I don't put something in the way while I approach? A Monk that didn't want to go deep into Int could instead pick up a shield and take Shield Charge to approach a LOT faster while blocking projectiles.

That's just the cold side of Monk. Lightning Warp gets silly in the hands of a Monk who can convert Shock status into power charges then consume those charges to put down big AoE nukes. Ah but what if there's no enemies to nuke? A Monk could pick up the Witch skill to make zombies out of those power charges before they expire. Voltaic Mark doesn't even show up for Monk recommends when Monk really wants to get as many Shocks as possible.

Looking elsewhere, Witch gets a recommended skill that creates a totem. It spews more projectiles the more chaos DoTs are on a target. The Ranger happens to be all about applying poison, which is a chaos DoT. Or the Warrior that really wants to build up stagger for a big payoff when it's the Monk that has a long-range "melee" skill to fill that stagger fast. Heck, I don't know how Warrior is meant to keep their "armour break" status up if they're not using a crossbow to keep refreshing its duration (which has drastic DPS implications).

Things like that are clearly combinations I am lacking awareness of. My build is certainly not the best, but it works good for bosses and clearing. I'm sure it's possible to juggle 2 skill sets, 1 to be good for clearing and another for bosses, but that's too much work for me as long as I'm not struggling with content.

But I'm looking forward to see what people come up with during Early Access and release. I suppose there will be a lot of balance changes coming before it fully releases (like the one that dropped today and nerfed some ice trigger skill silliness from sorc, which seemed really fun)

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

I'm jealous you aren't burdened with swapping support gems around. In PoE 1 you were allowed duplicate support gems. Not in PoE 2, I have to think carefully which skill deserves a tempo support, which skill will be for proc'ing more status ailments, etc. That's before I've come across any really game-changing support gems that completely change what a skill feels like.

I did not run into that yet, fortunately. Usually it's pretty clear to me what could be cool and would work well with my build, but I'm probably missing a lot of great combos due to my inexperience. My build for bosses was basically freezing them with frost wall, nova and bomb and then setting up flame wall, orb and storm and just spam spark until it's dead. Frost usually had them still long enough for me to put all the buffs down and blast like half of my mana before they started moving again. And since I positioned myself somewhat farther away I could usually empty a mana bar with pot chugging until they got close.

Frost wall has a gem that reduced their life which means it pops faster, meaning the frost procs better etc. Same for bomb. It's stationary and slow, so I speeded up the ticking and increased the aoe. I always used nova at the end or as a panic button when enemies got to close so I used a gem that added 2 charges on it.

Sadly, I didn't realize I could unlock new support gem slots for my skills until I already finished act 3, as I thought they'd unlock with level or something. So I basically once again limited my build due to not knowing how the game works properly.

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Schverika#2698 wrote:

There will certainly be community websites showing up that list all that detail. PoE 1 tacitly let the community handle that side of education. PoE 2 needs to decide how much to "off-shore" to the community.

That's the thing: It's an additional barrier of entry if it's not somewhere in the game, which means you'd lose players who don't like to look up stuff. Usually, and I am only speaking of my single player experiences, when I have to look something up outside the game to understand it, it's badly designed or explained.

With this I am not speaking about build guides or other 'advanced' content, of course, but the basics should be in the game. Right now all I can do is press alt on a weapon and see the min-max rolls of my current affixes. This is a good start, but it would be nice to have an UI to also see what's available for each item.