Feedback after ~470 hours

(ChatGPT Translation)
Hello dear GGG team,

I’m Miro, 34 years old, and I’ve been gaming my whole life. I only discovered Path of Exile in 2022 and have spent 1888 hours in the first part so far. I have a “9 to 5” job, and I’d say I fit somewhere between “casual” and hardcore gamer. However, I’ve spent almost all my free time playing in the past few weeks, except for Christmas.

I’ve completed the campaign with 4 characters:

Bloodmage (89), Gemling Legionnaire (77?), Chayula Monk (80), Stormweaver (96.4). In that order. Playing the Bloodmage first was a bad decision; it was really hard to progress into the mid-game without a guide. I shouldn’t have done the first trial, or should’ve removed the points and walked around without Ascendancy. But that can’t be the intended design, right?
Once I reached the endgame, I saw a Cast on Freeze guide, but it was nerfed so hard that I ended up with no currency. Then I tried a few things, like increasing life costs for spells, etc., but nothing really worked. Next, I leveled the Gemling and Monk. Both campaign runs were fun and went by pretty quickly (with guide + gear). But I didn’t find any real progression and didn’t reconnect with the economy. The builds I wanted to play were too expensive, and I didn’t feel like starting a new build just to switch later. So, I went back to the Bloodmage. By this point, there was a Detonate Dead (DD) build that seemed promising. I had a lot of fun with that. Unfortunately, there were some issues with minions. The large minions just get STUCK EVERYWHERE if there’s another minion nearby, and through the Sacrifice aura, I can make them explode like corpses. This happens with other monsters too. They can actually cast DD on my minions. Is this intentional? I hope not. It killed me multiple times. They mostly stand right next to me. It would also be really cool if Sacrifice could be set specifically for minions, so my cleric wouldn’t die. I have an 80% chance not to consume a corpse, but I often ended up in a bad situation when my cleric was dead, and then I just run in circles. :D

A bit frustrated by the points mentioned above, I decided to try the absolute meta build: Archmage Stormweaver. Very few, if any, complaints. It’s a lot of fun and has an incredibly strong scaling. It was too easy; there are just too many ways to scale the damage. You stack everything on mana. Done, it works. I don’t need to say anything about Energy Shield, right? It’s really strong, or maybe the other defenses (armor, life, evasion, damage mitigation) are too weak, depending on perspective. I now have 8 ½ days of playtime on the Stormweaver, and the tooltip says 105k damage, with Dream Fragments and pretty decent gear. (I’m missing 2 skill levels on the weapon, but no one can afford that.) I understand that towards the end of a build and when optimizing, it can be slow, and that’s okay. But somehow, it didn’t seem to progress anymore. After spending 110 Divine Orbs on Dream Fragments, the next step was a weapon, chest, or amulet. The price was around 100, 80, or 150 Divine Orbs. Sure, it’s a meta build with almost perfect items, so I understand why they were priced that way. Then I farmed another 20 Divine Orbs, died twice at around 40% at level 96, and ended up back at around 19%. Lost 1 day. Frustrating, but okay. One time I was careless, and the other time, it felt a bit unfair. Still, I remained “sane.” Again, around 40%. Slowly, I was burning out. The last stretch to level 100 is incredibly slow. I don’t think anyone, including myself, will reach level 100 in a season as a normal player. That’s fine. The death penalties and lost experience are punishing. Please take another look at this system. Losing maps is one thing. (Please work on a buff that indicates when mobs will start attacking me if I don’t move and enter a new instance. In PoE1, there was a 60-second timer. That cost me a citadel; I didn’t know it expired.)

The long progress to the next level, combined with the high death penalty, made me sit at my PC last night and want to play something else. For me, the next step felt too far away, burned out, so to speak. The inflation didn’t help either. (Next time, I’ll play "SSF")

Now, here’s a list of positive impressions:

- Act 1/2 and 3 are great. They tell an exciting story (I’m not usually that interested in stories, but it’s conveyed well here alongside the gameplay), and the areas are artistically well done. I could enjoy every playthrough and always discover something new or find a faster route.
The boss fights in general are well designed, diverse, and appropriately challenging.
- Interactions with skills and talents are easy to understand, and the game does a good job guiding players into the experience. Perhaps it was easier for me; I also got this feedback from friends who are playing the game for the first time.
- The combat system in the campaign feels great.
- Grenade, staff, elemental, and witch skills (DD) were all fun for me, both in the campaign and during "mapping."
- Thanks for highlighting Citadels in the fog!
- The "Art Book" from the Supporter Pack is fantastic; it was made with a lot of love. <3
- Endgame becomes faster as you get stronger. That’s a great experience for character progression.
- Tablets are a great invention.
- The tier levels of rare items are self-explanatory and resolve many issues with dropped items. Good system! Keep expanding it; maybe add a tier level that’s even rarer, like Tier 5*, with a star next to it, which could reduce undesirable mods by 25% or guarantee a desired mod (e.g., bow skills shooting an additional arrow). These could drop while leveling too. (Mods are item-level restricted, and I can’t think of anything that would conflict with this). That would be really nice. I already think it’s good now. :)
- The communication from GGG is exemplary. I have complete trust in the company. Hats off. I would never take the time to write such a post if I thought I would be met with silence.
- Vaal Orbs have become much more interesting. Great idea!
- The "currency exchange" is a real convenience tool.
- The ability to change talents with gold is awesome. I hope gold finds more uses, besides just buying random amulets.
- The damage display on bosses is good and gives an idea of how much damage you're doing in the game. I like that. We like numbers.
- Will is intuitive and, in my opinion, has a lot of potential. You could also use Will as "Ward," like the Monk (just please let it only count as damage taken. Maybe in combination with a unique item?). How about converting Will into life, armor, or something else? Convert X amount of damage taken into X of reserved Will? That would be awesome. But maybe it would be too strong. Just throwing ideas out there. ;)
- Monk design is absolutely great.
- I like that I still need to play attentively in the endgame. (I once fell asleep while “mapping” in PoE1, Cyclone Ice Storm) :D

Neutral:
- My time as a player feels appreciated, but it seems to drop off after level 92. (It’s okay that it takes longer; everyone sees it differently, so neutral). Experience penalty/experience gain/required experience for level 100 and season length don’t feel well balanced to me. Especially if you still want to play PoE1. ;)
- Act 4/5 and 6 are quick to finish. Expected. Neutral.
- The inability to change Ascendancy in the EA doesn’t feel great. I’d love to try a lot more things. I would have liked to turn my Bloodmage into an Infernalist, as I really didn’t know where to go with her anymore. I think this could be a good goal for the 1.0 version of the game. By then, we will know more about the game and know what we want to play at the end. Shouldn’t we try as much as we can right now?
- Movement speed is absolutely essential. It usually is in many games. You need to play less predictively and can react faster. We all know how powerful that is. That will never change, and that’s okay. What bothers me about it is: Maps are huge. Monsters are extremely fast. No matter what the final design ends up looking like. Movement speed as an inherent value on boots or smaller maps/higher monster density. Travel time will never feel good in an ARPG. Unfortunately, I don’t have a great solution for this. Boots without movement speed are useless in most cases. In PoE1, you could easily solve this problem with an enchantment. That’s not possible here.
- I had some issues with my graphics card (Nvidia 3070). I managed to solve them with a YouTube tutorial. Something with the poe1.exe. It’s working again.
- Why can Will only be on three rare item types? Definitely a balance decision. More freedom with items would be nice. But it’s fine as is.
- Trade. I’m unsure how I feel about it. I like the player interaction as it is. You walk up to someone, chat briefly, and say goodbye. A nice social aspect. But often no one replies. :D Maybe it would be nice to have a system where you need to play like gold to use an auction house, with the option to message the player? Only list when they are online? I think there’s no right or wrong here. Just a path to follow. I’m fine with it or already used to it. Unsure.
- Increased rarity of found items. "Rarity". I don’t have strong feelings about “rarity,” but I can say this: I only play “maps” that have "rarity." I have 16% on my gear. I can’t make "rarity" on boss encounters. (I haven’t dropped HoH or Ingenuity). I’ve switched to selling invitations.

Negative:
- The "Recombinator" is useless. I kept every Breach ring and any item useful to me and threw them in. One or two items were half-decent, but as soon as I threw exalted spheres on them, they were useless. The only good use is for relics (they only have 2 mods). Okay, maybe it’s not totally useless, but I can’t imagine this is the intended design. This will fade into obscurity. Maybe it’s useful in SSF, where you use every chance.
- This brings me to the next point, which makes the first one feel bad. Crafting. Crafting is nonexistent. I love crafting. Yes, it’s also a random chance to craft a good item in PoE1, but the excitement factor is enormous. Here, it’s only interesting for 1% of players. For a regular player, crafting doesn’t exist, and that’s really disappointing. I hope this changes. I also know few people who interact with essences. I think I used one while leveling. Otherwise, I sold them.
- "Charms" are boring. This is probably because the change happened on short notice. I hope we can discover unique charms and interact with them more. Right now, it’s just equip and forget. Also, "Golden Charms" should be able to affect the dropped items of the monster that triggers them.
- "Unique" design. Recently, unique items were adjusted. Not every item can be a “Hand of Wisdom and Action.” Extra Thorn Damage is quite disappointing. I completely understand that there need to be different tier levels and that there will be more bad ones than good ones. But I wish for more interesting, refreshing designs. Right now, we can keep most “Uniques” as dust collectors in our stash. Not every unique needs to be super strong, but from a "Unique," I expect a gameplay-changing property. There are too few of these in my opinion, or they’re simply not strong enough compared to top items. That’s okay; that’s what top items are for. If the gap is too large, nobody will use them in the endgame.
- Can we agree to remove Thorn Damage? With the current state of life and armor, that can’t be good, right? In how many scenarios is it a nuisance mod that makes the item useless, and in how many is it actually useful? If it only exists to use our Chaos Orbs, should it even be in the game?
- "Charm" slots. Please don’t make them a property. Ridiculously rare. Maybe it could be a random roll on belts. For example, starting at item level 82, the Charm Slot could roll between 1-3 as an inherent value. Especially with unique belts + "Pathfinder" + any charm interactions, I think this could become a bottleneck for many builds.

Wishes:
- Please give us Heist. <3
- Endgame damage scaling. Currently, there are two effective methods:
1. Attribute "stacking"
2. Mana (Archmage)
2.1. Gem level (2 and 2.1 are somehow connected) It’s fine to have it this way. Maybe there are still some unknown methods, or planned possibilities. I’d love to see more options.
- Please give us "Divination Cards."
- Mana on chest armor. Not sure if there’s anything wrong with this.

A lot to read. I think I’ve written everything I wanted to say. I should’ve written a script.

Thank you for reading and for the game. I really enjoyed the first iteration. I’ll be back.

Kind regards,
Miro

Original Post: https://de.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3710600

Addendum:

It would be cool if the cosmetic items were more suited to the classes. For example, I think the energy shield armor looks really nice. I find it better looking than any MTX armor. c:

Great review! It really summarizes a lot of the point I too have with the game. I think you have pinpointed the great aspects really well. The game feels really amazing to play as a whole. I'd like to give a bit of complementary feedback to your post:

Positive:

- The bosses designs are incredible.

- The classes are soooo cool. Obviously there is a need for balancing, but I'm really liking the direction with this.


Neutral

- Some mobs have baked-in abilities that have 100% hit rate to push you around. Its just... meh... especially for melee characters, feeling like you're being pushed around all the time. Some bosses also do that.

- Some Maps are wayyyy too big. Most maps have wayyy more terrain such as ramps, pillars, weirdly shaped trees in which you or ennemies can get stuck. I know they are working on that though.

- The endgame mechanics are not balanced currently. This is very fixable.


Negative

- Rarity on gear/rarity that affects the tier of currency. It's like they didn't learn from POE1! There's a reason its not there anymore in POE1!

- The Town Well is useless. Like, completely useless, except for that 1 time you change flasks and realize "oh, stupid of me, I should use that town well that I never ever use". There is no Well in POE1 and nobody complained about it.

- The Endgame Atlas is pointless. You're not going anywhere, you're just expanding an infinite network of the same repetitive stuff. I have done about 500 maps and my Atlas is so big I can't even find any specific node I wanted to do later.

- The 1-portal death mechanic is unacceptable in its state. Its just too punishing. For example, if you die in a citadel oncle, you lose: 10% exp, the potential rewards from the boss, the ability to lear the boss moves, the map node (+ having to circle around the node if there are more interesting maps further) and the map buffs. Like come on! You don't have to reinvent the wheel. The 6 portals in POE1 were great. It allowed you to compensate for a small mistake, learn about bullshit mechanics, learn about boss moves. The 10% exp penalty is also fine as a whole if the scaling is right.

- The Trial of Chaos and Trial of the Sekhemas are not good ascendancy mechanics for 2 reasons: They are gated against RNG debuffs that might break your build altogether, and they take way too much time to complete (or realize you're going to die). I love that they are trying new things though, the ascendancy in POE 1 weren't that exciting (but as it stands, I'd rather fight Izaro than the Trialmaster or Zarokh).