Good core concept, but ultimately a frustrating game
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Intro
I want to start by sharing my experience with Path of Exile. I started early on for PoE1, and played for several months. I had to take some time off from games due to real life commitments, and attempted to come back a few years later. However, with all of the changes, the game felt very overwhelming and I just couldn't get back into it. When I heard about PoE2 coming out, I knew that this was my chance to jump back in. PoE2 TLDR I purchased PoE2 early access for my cousin and myself about a month ago. During this time I have gotten 3 characters into maps, and played through the campaign with 2 additional characters for normal mode. Steam states that I have played nearly 200 hours. I would say that well over half of that 200 hours has been just constant frustration, with each play session becoming shorter and shorter. The campaign is rough around the edges, which is to be expected for early access, but overall it is fun when you learn what to do. Endgame just seems like a bunch of ideas thrown together that are constantly at odds with each other. Breakdown of feedback Campaign Some classes feel much more gear dependent than others during the campaign. Due to upgrades being quite rare most of the time, I often found myself wearing gear from level 10 range as I moved into cruel at 45+. For a spell caster this really leads to some pretty bad situations of low damage and low defense. Martial weapon uses have the advantage of inserting runes into martial weapons and instantly getting weapons that are overpowered for campaign, which does help somewhat. Crafting or drop rate adjustments need to be a thing during campaign, especially if leagues and races are coming. There also really needs to be some sort of balance between casters and martial weapon users. Don't even get me started on how slow maces are, warriors need a complete redesign if enemy speed and movement are to be kept the same. Trading also does not solve this issue as the economy matures, because 99% of the items listed on the trade site for low levels never get a response from the owner. If you don't start at league / server launch, you might as well be SSF for campaign. Endgame The end game is where the biggest frustrations I have come in, so this section is going to be broken down into a few paragraphs. With that said, lets start with the elephant in the room: one death per map. Sure, I get it, waystones are common and the atlas is infinite. However, the game does not feel balanced at all. Enemies zoom across the map faster than the Starship Enterprise. Many of the rare affixes are entirely overtuned, such as the mana drain and lightning storm. Like seriously, I have 40% lightning resist and 3k ES. Lightning storm shouldn't two shot me. Then you have the normal white enemies that swarm you and stun lock you. It feels horrible as a chronomancer when you do the time freeze ability only to realize that you were stunned exactly when you activated it, causing it to not active yet trigger a cooldown. I have died more times than I can count from regular white enemies. This really makes me feel like I have no choice but to play a meta build, which is just sad in a game that has one of the best approaches to character diversity. Speaking of builds, melee is another one that I really find frustrating. Of course, by melee I specifically mean monk, because warrior is almost unplayable. Melee are in desperate need of some sort of additional damage reduction or benefit to defenses. The only workable solution I have found currently is freezing with ice strike while using double herald, basically falling yet again into another meta build. Forget my other monk that went with chalupa, that ascension really feels like an oversight. What is even the point of darkness if enemies hit for thousands? Why have added chaos damage if monks only have two chaos abilities, both of which suck? The whole ascension just feels like an enigma. Regardless, melee in the current state bottle necks you into freezing and stunning enemies before you are frozen and stunned, which just feels boring. Multiplayer on endgame is another mechanic that feels very lackluster. Due to the whole one death thing, my cousin or I spend a fair amount of the evening just sitting there waiting for the other to finish the map. Why on earth is this a thing? I spent over an hour combine during one play session just watching youtube and looking at other games because I had to wait for my cousin to finish the map. Isn't the goal of a game to have your players, I don't know... playing the game? Come up with some other punishing mechanic to balance risk vs reward, but the current system just stinks. Heck, add a stacking negative rarity modifier per death, even 100% less rarity per death. It would still make it feel real bad without literally making you wait. Regarding the deaths in end game maps, because I know others might chime in and say that I need to improve my gear or build, that isn't as easy as it sounds. I alch or regal and then exalt literally every usable ES armor I have found and always end up with 2-3 of the affixes being things like reduced attribute requirements, life regeneration, or light radius. I have spent millions gambling for rare upgrades and have thrown countless rares into the reforging system. Trades are few and far between if they are in the 1-20 exalt range, and are often not worth the time to try and find someone that actually has an item. So, I keep pushing maps, keep getting punished for not having good gear, which in turn causes me to get frustrated and quit my session early more and more often. Ascension Why? Seriously, why on earth did you think this was a good system? I have never been so frustrated with a mechanic in any game. Ascension is literally part of your characters progression into end game, but it feels very RNG dependent if you are not over geared or over leveled. I still have yet to complete ascension for points above four, despite numerous attempts at the 68+ trials. Each fail takes over an hour of my time with nothing to show for it. Literally nothing. I just do not understand the constant desire to waste player time. There are so many other resources that can be wasted and still "felt". Make it cost gold to pick up where you left off during the ascension, or make it so you can insert another trial coin and get the option to return to where you failed, or literally anything else that allows you to continue trying. Heck, you could even make it so that you loose all keys and can't open any chest if you die. Save the dead and loose it all for chase items like temporalis and chest farming, not players who are generally under geared and still progressing trying to get their first ascension. Classes that I have tried Warrior Please delete everything that the "mace user" has and just start over. It is literally that bad. Skill speed penalty on slow weapons in a game where enemies feel like they were fed crack all their lives just makes no sense. Sorcerer Lots of fun when you have a build that works and decent gear for the content you are doing. Extremely hard to play during campaign without luck or trading unless you follow a specific meta build / path, such as spark (which even this hits tough points depending on support gem access). Gear is very hard to find at high levels. Witch Witches feel confusing because there is a ton of "support" for minions, yet they are not meant to be the "minion class", which again feels like multiple systems competing with themselves. The ascendancy choices are kinda strange to, you can be over powered on a meta approach or kill yourself trying to do blood magic. Early game also feels very sluggish if you go minion route. Minions in general need a lot of work. Chaos damage options again are limited. Ranger Easy to gear during campaign, fun to play even with off meta build during campaign, but falls apart during end game unless you go with a meta build. Pathfinder did not seem interesting enough, but dead eye feels good. I am sure the class will feel much better if evasion gets a buff. Monk I already touched on the monk ascendancy choices above, so I won't go into that. The biggest issue I have with the monk is staying alive. There really is only one to two build options with the monk, but it is fun to play. I think that this class could greatly benefit from a complete overhaul of the Taco Bell ascension as well as some tweaks to defense. After that, add in some more variety for builds and it would be in a wonderful place. Marksman I tried a crossbow on my monk at low levels, experienced reload, and decided to never try this class. Final thoughts The game itself, at it's core, is fun. The frustrating elements take so much away from it. I will keep playing, although each session is likely going to be less and less, while my cousin plays. If it wasn't for him still playing I would likely of quit by now. I hope that some of these early access issues get ironed out, and I would love to see where the game is by this time next year. Last bumped on Feb 28, 2025, 8:03:50 PM
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You only have 40 lightning resist and its a two-shot. Lol. Maybe some valid points but i laughed at that. The mana siphon is pretty overtuned, especially for MoM builds but maybe that is the price you pay. That's a mechanic I would have preferred left in the dust of Diablo II in all honesty. At the very least I would like to see it made so that enemies cannot have Mana Siphon, extreme speed, and proximal tangibility simultaneously
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" I am well aware that those are not "great" stats, but that is the problem with starting the game late. Had I started playing earlier, there would be more trading for progression. At this point my options are keep pushing maps to complete my quest for atlas passive points, or farm low tier maps where I instantly kill enemies until I get a few divines to trade for better upgrades. The issue here is lack of drops while progressing to tier 15 maps means that I have to trade, but the economy issues make it so that people don't want to waste the time trading drops that are not super valuable. People in my position end up getting stuck with mostly just self found drops, which are very few and far between. |
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Normally the complaint is getting 1 shot with full resists and 6000 life, but getting two-shot with 40 is just funny. Sorry
There are a lot of people trading cheap items out there, but sometimes it's not worth their time to tp out of a map just to sell something for 1 ex. Still many do. It's just a matter of luck, really. I forget if you mentioned what class you are playing as but right now if you aren't playing one of the stronger builds you are going to get locked into that rut you're talking about. I remember feeling the same way with my Witchhunter, and now looking back it's actually just because i had no idea how to play this game |
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" Nothing to apologize about, I get it. If I was a higher level and not in this rut, I am sure my complaint would be as you described. It really just feels like enemy damage is not balanced. I try to avoid meta builds, especially in a game like this where it feels like it encourages exploration and trying different things. Sadly, as I am starting to realize, that just isn't the case. You have to damage stack multiplicative damage so you can scale and kill the enemies before you die to a one shot. You can't use armor or evasion because they don't work. That leaves just a handful of builds with no real player agency. Hopefully this is something that they can change in the future. I have basically given up on all of my characters expect for chronomancer and invoker. I can't afford the gear for ether, but my chronomancer is managing level 8 maps at a 1 win per 5 attempts ratio, so I am progressing. Just frustrating, and it really shouldn't be. |
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I said the same thing in my post a week or two ago. The passive tree inspires you to get creative and then punishes you when you do. I tried to play my own way and basically softlocked my character by running out of gold to respec half way through the campaign. Just felt like crap. Would be nice if you could experiment with stuff without such a penalty.
I felt as though playing somebody else's build would really wreck my enjoyment of the game, but it actually made me enjoy it a lot more, and gave me a better idea how everything works. There are so many synergies that exist if you know where to find them, but it takes a lot of researching and planning so if you aren't willing to do that it is better to let someone else do it for you. I believe this is just the nature of POE |
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" It's not just meta builds, just builds. The game doesn't hand hold you, for good or for worse. It takes time to learn and yes, a lot of frustration. I wish it didn't feel like a punishment, but ultimately the game rewards you. I have many frustrating moments on my Warrior but now he is level 92, and I am playing one of the least popular builds Earthshatter + Warcries. Even with an unpopular build & ascendency, having someone's build as a guide helped a lot. because the amount of support gems and passive skill tree nodes can be overwhelming, and ultimately you need to focus your build, you'll d a lot better with having a template. You still have a lot of agency. Once you use someone's build you can swap supports, or do all kind of variants on a theme. In the end you're not wrong, your feedback I think highlights how the game lacks this template/guide rails to help players learn the mechanics as well as have a good experience on their first characters. That said some of your feedback is completely off. Pretty much every guide I saw out there when the game came out recommended to check vendors every level. You're bound to find decent items this way. Then you should use your currency throughout the campaign. It's hard not to come up with a decent wand, rings, armor etc. Either way I like when people take the time to post their original viewpoint and experience. thanks for sharing! |
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I complain only two things:
- XP penalty - random Critical Kill |
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" Thank you for taking the time to reply. As I have played more I have learned to check vendors and such, but that is not something that comes natural after years and years of playing various other games. I am sure I missed some upgrades over the course of leveling characters that I have made. Had I of read guides and such before playing, that may not of been a learning point. I guess that is where my feedback stems from and what I aimed to share with the development team. My perspective is not a PoE veteran, but much closer to a person new to the franchise. The core of the game is fun, but there are lots of frustrations that I have experienced. Some can be eased by reading guides, others are just fundamental design choices. Regardless, I am sure that I am not alone in my new player perspective. The core of the game is good enough for me to feel it important to voice how the game feels to me, so that hopefully it spurs some positive changes to help attract other new players as the game reaches the point of being launch ready. As for hand holding and being on rails, I generally dislike this style of game play. The more linear and forced the game feels, the less I like it. I also generally avoid guides (sometimes to my dismay) because I like the reward of learning things on my own. I just feel that the punishment for mistakes is overly aggressive on here. Several times I was soft locked during the leveling process in the campaign. Once because I found an interesting unique and decided to change my skills and respec, only to find out it was very ineffective. I didn't have the money to spec back, forcing me to grind a low level area for an hour or two to get the cash to respec. Sure, that is my fault, but it is also evident of the larger problem - the game doesn't encourage you to deviate from the prescribed things that work. Doing so waste a ton of time. Similarly, I was rocking a fire build on my chronomancer while leveling, then hit act 3 normal. Every boss ended up being nearly impossible due to fire resist and how poorly the resist curse works (Long cast, doesn't last long, cost tons of mana, bosses have many attacks that force you to dodge roll away and not attack). I didn't have the cash to respec, again causing me to spend an inordinate amount of time gathering cash and respecing. Obviously if I make a new sorcerer I would have all of that stuff planned in from the start, and a guide might of warned me, but, again, this goes back to not deviating from the prescribed things that work. In the end, I will still log in and plod along with my cousin, but hopefully we can see some exciting changes as more classes come and things change. Thank you again for the response and I wish you the best out there! |
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