Comprehensive feedback of 0.2

Hello again GGG team and exiles. Your big POE lover is back and it's time for second comprehensive feedback.
I hopped into the fresh patched game on the launch day and played a lot to see what was changed for good or for bad and here we are. I am glad that you opened communication again with your players, always good things happened to POE when there were big debates and pushes from both sides and I was scared at one moment that you would abandon that way of development of game, but fortunately you are back and in action.

Again I will make sections for making post easy to read and navigate so let's begin.


Overall look and feel of the game


It still looks and sounds fantastic, feels sharp and is best in standards of gaming industry. No objections what so ever on design part.
The atmosphere of the world is still amazing, I noticed some changes to map, areas and monsters and they all look cool! GGG's design team I am clapping to you, you really did a great job as always.

Campaign


• Omg it was awful on the first start. I will not talk about it now as it's fixed but still I had to mention it.

• At this point some of area "mini bosses" and rares still feel more challenging to beat than the main bosses of the same area. Rebalancing that must be crucial for smooth and overall better feeling.

• When traversing areas some rares and monster packs still hit and feel harder than the boss of an area.

• Resetting zones now feel a bit better but I'd totally remove it if it was on me. I can't see why it makes a game a better game, so I can't see it belonging in the game because of that.

• I still think that:
- player should get more spirit in some form to use spirit skills and play with them especially as it is a new system/resource.
- resistances must be reduced at the end of the campaign and not zone by zone.
- rebalancing math behind monster life and damage or how it's scaled must be revisited again.

Skill Tree


• If we have enough gold to afford respec, can we please respec without NPC Please...
- Back in POE1 for example when player uses regret orbs, we get respec points on tree menu right? and we can do that when and where we want. It would be so cool and useful to be able to do that same way just with the gold.

• Players are lacking defenses on tree and on gear and one way or another it must be and will be fixed.

• would be great to:
- have life clusters back.
- have spell suppression back in game in general.
- have damage reduction or mitigation back in game.
- add a new type of mod on gear like [- % increased life] | [hybrid flat and % increased life] | [Increased Movement Speed]

Ascension


• I just came to realization that I don't like how character is tested of being worthy of ascension, I really hope that the third way will be Izaro with new looks, I pray actually that it will be that. To be more precise making ascension build/archetype specific is the thing that I don't like in general.

• While Sekhimas is more or less acceptable design I still think that some mods, specifically on an ascension trials that give you points, must be rebalanced on both of the systems to be RNG but not build bricking one
- like being stuck in a room that will remove all your defenses (es/evasion/life etc.. upon entering;
- in general anything that will without a doubt kill you upon entering a zone, and has nothing to do with skill of a player. Leaving no chance to progress is very bad at that times.
- mods like that can be there for farming types of sekhimas and trials though. again, not the ones that must give player points

• I still think that first three ascensions must be free to try and access right can be earned with mechanics in the campaign. Anyone who want's to skip a headache will (one way or another) buy a carry or ask a friend and there is no way around that. So making something more pleasant to people who want to do that themselves will be very appreciated I am so sure.

• Getting last points for Trial of Chaos, is still a horrible game design. The fact that you need 3 fragments in advance in your stash to kill Tiralmaster to get points is still nowhere explained. Players still are going to find that out when they will do their first 10 rounds and get 1/3 fragments. And then in the best scenario you need to do 2 more 10-round trials to get other two. GGG, why does this make a game a better game? I can not understand.
Me myself for the first time thought I missed other fragments in previous rooms first, then I got mad I was not warned in advance that I need fragments at all, then I put one fragment into a dedicated place to check if it fits there or not at all and could not get it out. As I had only one fragment I was scared that it will be deleted on the next run and I would lose that also, because again nothing said it would not be deleted.
So many problems why? just make all bosses drop one, or last boss drop all IDK, but not that horrible experience please. If nothing - at least write on an inscribed ultimatum token that player will get points after completing this trial but needs 3 fragments to enter the boss room which is giving the points.

• Ultimatum has all corrupted items as a reward and they are all mostly useless. I think if they had 20% quality and be full socketed when dropped then maybe something would be better.

Ascendancies


• Well, I will not talk a lot about it but most of Ascendancy nodes/Ascendancies themselves don't feel empowering. Don't feel like "man I will grind those trials with blood and sweat until I win to get those awesome node/nodes on my tree." Even with the new ones I was just not sure if I needed my last two points at all and I did not get them because it would not be crucial in any sense for character.

• The right to respec them is really good addition although I don't like method you suggested.

Loot | Crafting | Items


• Loot this patch is awful. it's totally unacceptably bad. on my multiple progressions I was tracking what I got at the end of act 6 with the ring and on all of them I got 7 exalts and 3-4 alchs. what does that even mean? it's crazy low guys, player must at least have 20-30 exalts and alchs dropped to be able to create something. Otherwise trade guys will be just saving them and buying an item on a trade instead of slamming it, because for that 1 ex I dropped I could get 20 times better gear than craft anything.

• I am also on the side of getting more essences in the campaign.

• Runes - making them destroyable and replaceable was a good decision, it was a help but it did not solve that many problems as I imagined, I thought that they would give more defensive stats than before.

• We need a way to swap resists. Right now, changing one item results into a full gear set reset and it's also not a good game design. don't have harvest? no problem we can have an omen that will remove a fire resistance modifier and add cold resistance modifier of the same tier for example, and so on.

• We still can't essence runed items, I did not like that a bit in past and also now!

• Regarding an issue that if an item has a stat on it and player can wear it after equipped it but not before, can we at least get common unique ammy in game with like +100 to all attributes but some disaster downsides at least to make gear changes easy but the item itself useless for anything else..

• Essences - instead of having them functioning on a normal and magic items only can we have them work on a rare items also? To avoid slamming we can add a rule that essence is giving an "essence mod" to item and while an item has one, another essence can not be used on it. By doing so all the other systems will be more interesting. crafting can get way more interesting, like imagine getting 4 mods, fracturing one that is desired, annulling others, than chaos spamming to get second good mod, than greater essence slamming to get third good mod, then some omen or exalt slamming, annulling bad mod and recombining and mixing this in any way player can imagine, it would be so much better way to upgrade a gear.

• Omens - as powerful crafting omens are still to rare and you still really need them to make a good item so would be awesome to get them more frequently but for example putting a price on using them, so to say if you use "X" omen it consumes 5-10 exalts and we could have with that better exalt sink in economy than just slamming and get more resources and tools for crafting. let's return a crafting bench to a game please, and make a great exalt sink with that also.
- So to sum up we have too much of systems to get only 2 mods on item and to start an item but I really think that we at least need to be able to get minimum 3 good mods on an item deterministically and if not 4 and have the rest left to RNGsus.
Because if you are not going to give a player a way to craft anything first of all RIP SSF and hardcore, secondly we will always default to trade where it's faster and more useful. And now this is the only option we have as if you sit down at the end of a campaign and want to start mapping you have absolutely not a single tool to get your resists even in place before starting mapping, not to mention anything else... So yeah of course everyone is going to a trade website.

• All of that is actually related to another problem that is -"if an item does not have a one good, crucial mod then it's not a good item". Best example of that is +# of skill gems system, which still has a major problem. without them (if it's not something mirror tier) weapon feels dogshit. if u don't have +8-10 to all "X" gems on a weapon, neck, and shield combined weapon is kind of useless in endgame as the damage output is not corresponding with the difficulty of instance. And the fact that everyone NEEDS it, makes weapon with the mod either scarce or very expensive on the trade league. in addition not being able to afford a gear with those mods means player is basically doomed to never have fun and go high tiers. Not talking about pain for SSF guys. At that rate we could just get gem levels to 30 for real. Or make it so power equal to lvl 25 is distributed around 20 levels and the mods will be present like +2 on a weapon, +2 on neck and +1 on a shield as a maximum amounts, so that having them could be a luxury or good addition so to speak but not having them must not mean that your weapon is shit.
- Also, can we please get movespeed on other items as well as a modifier? even thematically its not a problem so why don't we try to implement something like that on other pieces of gear like helmets, shields, armors and gloves.
- Realistically, finding and crafting items yourself should be a core of a game like this, and if a player can't improve itself this way it's insanely bad.. All of this is tied to another issue that is coming next and is not only a gear. The sad part is that every time someone mentions these or similar topics in dev interviews there is always one obsession from GGG's side that ground loot is sacred, and must be sacred and a player must get one's best from there. And this drives me so crazy that I want to fly to NZ to look into Jonathan's eyes and ask him to change his mind. Well it's a one in a billion chance to upgrade something from ground, secondly there is not much interest to grind that kind of gameplay as there is not much of a reward.. Secondly if you want to make ground loot cool, make it cool who is saying anything, you don't have to make crafting worse in exchange.

New Gem System


Even though I liked the presentation of new gem system UI, how it suggests potential supports, how they are sorted by class etc. back in POE1 if you were struggling, you could step back and grind xp and by doing so you not only get the talent points, but also gem levels. In POE2 you don't.
Now in most cases players are just stuck and can not progress in any direction, so all of that power and stats must be obtainable for everyone, it must not be trivial but there should never be a complete blockade in a game that "I am stuck"

• Not being able to downgrade, a gem is also sort of a problem. I had "testing" gear on and accidently over leveled gem with 4 sockets as gear had more attributes, this can potentially brick a characters progression.

• Not being able to cut gem if u don't use it, can't use it or don't have corresponding weapon type I don't understand why is that a thing. I wanted to prepare all gems upfront for a build in a stash tab but I simply could not. Also I wanted to quality and sell some gems and "quality and corrupt" high level gems but I again was not able to do that.

• Not being able to use skill until a certain level. I also don't think it's a good design. I would be happy to be able use any available gem in game at every character level and with low damage on lower levels obviously.

• Supports are too conditional and even when conditions are met they don't offer enough reward.


Movement/Mobility


• We need travel skills even more so POE2 is shaping it's identity, characters are turtles guys.

• Game would feel much more better if the base movement speed is increased, and movement speed mods could be found on other gear pieces as well.

• The dodge slow down by the end of the roll feels kind of sticky.

• Body slamming, and death in crowd is till a big issue. I think it would be reasonable to adjust alertness radius of monsters.

• Reduced attack speed is essentially multiplicative for your damage. For the trade off of increased damage? And it is awful every single time.

UX/UI


• Acts maps needs a better icon for the player position. Looks a bit too similar to the objective markers and they overlap each other in a way it was hard to understand where the player is. Even a simple contrasting color change will help. Like instead of green make the marker contrasting red for example..

• Secondary/bonus objective icons on the map are not "logically" placed in terms of the actual location in the area they're in. Would be cool If the icon is on the left of the area on the map, you'd expect it to be on the west side when you explore.

• The energy shield bar design doesn't appeal to me. It's too small. When I receive damage, I can't see it at all. Some find comfort in using an overhead icon that can be turned in settings, some of us have great peripheral vision and when I saw ES drop/fluctuate in POE1 I could clearly react. I personally don't like overhead indicator. It distracts me and I prefer using peripheral vision that works well with life fore example.

• When we click Doriyani to respec points it would be cool to see what respecing will cause in terms of attributes right away before confirming the choice. It's not about cost, it's about convenience and QOL.

• Would be great to have a button that explains what reforging bench does. (what it can reforge). Why just don't explain it right away when it's introduced or in any other time you think is better.

• Expedition locker.

• Anointing items is not intuitive, why don't we have a window in the middle of tab to be able to put item into it and anoint. Also the fact that anointing order is important must be stated somewhere, I know lot's of players who could not anoint ammys just because of that and thought it was bugged.
Regarding anointing maps: Please let us slam the damn oils on them, please....

• Forgetting to upgrade a gem. In POE1 I loved the notification that popped up when your gem was ready to be leveled up. I had full stash of uncut spirit and skill gems but I was so taken away with optimizing builds that I really forgot that gems must be leveled. In result I was mapping in endgame maps with LVL 10 gems.

• The function to open skill/support/spirit gems menu by only clicking the uncut gem. It would be great to have a dedicated button or NPC to be able to browse through gems and gem types without actually clicking on uncut ones. I also was in a position on league start where I did not have spirit gem but wanted to look up what were the requirements for one but I was not able to do so, so I had to pause upgrading gear until it dropped.

• Would be great to be able to see all applicable support gems when choosing a skill on the left side of the window instead of just the recommended ones. Could be 3-9 recommended gems on top and "rest" on bottom with some divider between them. "Show all gems" kind of makes you browse all supports but would be cool to browse all support gems that literally support any chosen skill.

• Pleeeeaaaassseeee - Add collapse/expand all button in "G" skill menu. Please. Or at least let the game memorize the last setup a player did. e.g. collapse all.

• Having a button to switch atlass view on a top down view of it and being able to zoom out a lot in the design would be amazing QOL. Design could be simple as in cinematics, giving that hand drawn vibes, minimalistic and easy to navigate.

• Why in game there is no direct and easy to understand button that navigates players to a trade site?

Endgame


General thoughts:

• There is a need of being overpowered.

• Many encounters and rares spam too hard.
- The plants and most of projectile monsters are so spammy that even when knowing and prepared I will frequently die to their intensity.
- Purple orbital laser from another screen killing player. No please.
- It's hard to recognize the real threats.

• Grindy game can't expect constant focused gameplay. Keeping up maximum concentration to look out for rare monsters and inspect their mods and all the other monsters and tracking their AOEs and effects/attacks gets tiring fast.
The result is that this game has no chill playstyle and having no chill playstyle where you can't even scratch your had without pausing a game or look away to see what your friend does or watch something on different monitor while playing game is very bad characteristic in my honest opinion for a game like POE. Sometimes we want challenge, sometimes we want chill and blasting easy content. At this point in game there is not relaxing content presented. Also this is an issue when player is tired from real life and wants to spend some time playing POE. at this time you can't play POE2 when you are tired and have bad focus.

Subjective thoughts and concerns:

• All of us players have least and most favorite maps as they do not have the most loving layout for the time being. Would be cool to reintroduce favorite map system. As we now have different biomes, we can choose favorite map per biome e.g. favorite cave, forest, desert, jungle etc. map.

• Early maps are still useless. It does not have purpose and is not rewarding. There is no early farming, one of the most important stages of the grinding game. From acts you are in t15s with same gear in like 2hrs maximum.

• I also don't like the system where to spec into a league mechanic you have to defeat it's boss continuously and more importantly the harder ones each time.
- Farming is for getting money/loot and upgrading character to defeat hard bosses and hard pinnacle content. In POE2 it's somehow twisted, player must defeat pinnacle bosses to spec into farming points. I just can't understand why was this a better thing for game. when even the points are not worth that much of an effort in the first place.
- Plus you don't even get 2 functioning points you get 1 functioning and one +hard level next time point. Atlas tree in POE1 feels far more superior to POE2 for me as there you could do 30-40 maps and get enough nodes to spec into one mechanic and do them on low tiers. it would not be super juicy maybe but you'd get stuff. Stuff for yourself, or for sale to make money.
- Basically regular player with not so complete build can not kill 4 different difficulty bosses for couple mechanics and get those nodes as fast as one needs them. For example simulacrum. Simulacrum in POE1 even the 15 waves was like a build tester, can we handle that pressure or no, take into consideration levels of defense and offence a player can have there. How is a player that just reached mid maps, barely is res capped and want to spec into deli considered to clear simulacrum to get some nodes on atlass. Same goes with all the other mechanics. I would love to see different approach to endgame nodes and how we take them.

• There is a big lack of endgame defensive layers to push hard content. Would love to see some back on gear, tree or anywhere in general. I would never step a foot in endgame farming without ailment immunity, some mitigation/Phys damage reduction with spell suppression and one other defense. Here in POE2 defense is basically resistances, evasion and huge ES for most of the players. which is not for every character and still not enough for ones that have.

• Visual clarity needs revisiting. I thing the phenomenal graphic with what POE2 is presented actually make monsters too hard to notice on their native terrains, I played on 3 different PCs and on all of them I encountered same problem, on two 2k monitors and one 1080 with good and normal graphic settings. I just shoot around on wild guess that everyone is dead near me. I guess having monster life bars always on all enemies not the ones that get hit by a player would fix this issue on beginning stages, on further stages I guess rebalancing contrast and lights may improve overall visibility.

• We already had that problem in POE1 solved and now somehow it appeared in POE2 and I can't understand why. Why does a high and a low level boss have same token to enter. It makes no sense. other than that it also loops back to the farming (especially early farming) problem I noted. To start farming you need to be rich and powerful, and I am pretty sure it must be vice versa, to get strong rich and powerful player needs to start farming. Neglecting the atlass nodes acquisition problem, the cost for tokens is so much high that even if u can't get the item yourself you can't even buy in the first place. Firstly because of money, like 7 divines for king of the mist, then you are not sure if u even can kill it, and do it at least 2-3 times. So like risking in the best case scenario 21 divs for couple points? Naah, you are encouraged to not play at all and drop or buy a carry or ask for a help. why? I never bought any carry for atlass in POE1 for example, it's so easy and logical to get all one needs for early atlass.
- on the same note, an update that was introduced maybe will be bad in full release if not in EA already. I think first level of arbiter must be just free before first kill, not free always.

• Endgame mapping for me just feels a bit pointless and boring, unfortunately. The atlas offers no risk vs reward scenarios to make me want to improve my character.
So, to give a parallel to POE1:
- you get to maps, you're really weak. You progress your atlas. Every every extra map that you complete gives you a point. Every point gets you closer to what you want to farm.
- have progression in how to get there. So there're two things going on at once that are balancing each other.
- As you are progressing, you are getting stronger, character is getting stronger, strats are getting stronger, getting more points.
- You are seeing more of everything. And it just feels better right?!
- Getting more currency makes you able to invest more in my character and I'm getting to farm more of what you want. And it sort of just like keeps growing and growing and growing.
In Path of Exile 2 it doesn't feel like the atlas passive nodes are impactful enough. You can basically map without them almost. I feel more progression in endgame by getting rarity on my gear than I do with Atlas progression. So, it just doesn't feel like it me getting stronger is tied in with my strats getting better, content getting harder, and monster dropping more stuff there. It just sort of lacks that kind of like synergy. In POE1 I choose what I want to do whereas in POE2 you're kind of just revealing fog and hoping that the developers serve you your strat. It just doesn't work for me in comparison.
When you're going through the beginning uh stages of POE1 every map is valuable. You're looking for exactly what you want, you're choosing exactly what are you going to run here or there and every decision that you make can save you hours and hours, maybe even days of time in your progression. And finding all of those really awesome things just feels so good.
I'm very surprised that in POE2's endgame design is not like that and you are kind of moving away from that GGG.

• Bosses are the core of POE 2 yet doing Xesht 0 and Xesht 4 offers almost nothing.

• Crit multi top end is way too high, crit builds are too insane.

• Spears starting is very weak unless your playing a bugged build.

• Map suffixes are pure negative, some of them are just way too harsh for the normal player. Like Pen, crit etc. Poe 1 map system is way better, get downside get rewarded, now downsides are not giving you rewards.

• Only certain map affixes matter for juice. Map mods need a full rundown and I guess we need to reimplement the base quant and rarity as implicit modifier of a map.

• Why is there a downside for shrines? Even something that must help you 20 second in game has a downside guys, what is this design?

• Why is not ultimatum in maps? it would be amazing place to get soulcores and corrupted tiered rares.

• Quant tablets are too good vs everything else. Everything else is useless

• 80% of skills in the game just straight up feel terrible to play.

• All loot in game is rare monsters, rare monsters are not always rare loot. This needs to be addressed.

P.S.


• Can you guys remove all the fucking RMT shit from this game I'm tired of this very much.

• Make a game separated from Chinese as in POE1 Please!

• There is a restrictive feeling of game being on rails, like there must not be a right one way to play the game. You must be powerful in general, but if you do chores like vendors, and shit then you could go even more powerful.
Creating a build is also railroaded compared to POE1. For example why is stuff like heralds are martial weapon only? Why is mana tempest spell only? Why are rohas spear and crossbow only? Same thing with the uniques as well. Why is everything but LA having a 1sec delay for proccing? Feels like We are playing dev approved builds instead of coming up with anything.

• Most of the skills must not be locked behind weapons.

• Rework tree, items, gems. We are at mercy of RNG and it's stupid.

• Every time on interview when Mark and Jonathan speak, they kind of contradict each other, also it feels like mark wants to make a game I and thousands of others want to play and Jonathan wants to make a game where me and thousands of others don't want to play. I think GGG should just better articulate general forward direction on what they want to change and how will the future look like and show us that. Oh and "it would kill the game for me, but I'm better than you all" vibes is not good vibes when you must create a product for sale.

• Meaningful Combat -
Me and many more players didn't play POE1 for thousands of hours and did not give you thousands of dollars to be challenged on twilight strand guys. We aren't challenged by POE1 campaign so much but we still love the blasting through it every league. Fast monsters are fine but that must not be the primary reason why you want to kill them. Killing monsters should be something you want to do because you need xp, loot and combat is awesome. Now we kill monsters that are annoyingly chasing us and don't have drops. that what's make it bad.

P.P.S.


Much love to GGG again! I bought and play POE2 because I love the company and want the game to be "again best on market".
I will always share my thoughts in times like these, and I am happy to see that many more players are here doing the same.

Nice run down. I agree.