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Hello! After trying the D4 beta I thought I'd finally give this game a try, and frankly I liked it a lot more - with just a couple of exceptions.

First, I love the mix-n-match skills and all the gems and how they interact: this is clearly the heart of the game and it's great. It's a deep and interesting system and it immediately makes me want to explore it further. I sort of wish it was easier to get started with some of the skills - right now it still costs me 1 scroll to buy each one - and I can tell that "extra tabs" is how you make money by how much stuff there is to hang on to, but I don't have a problem with either of these things and I'm sure after a while I'll have plenty of currency to buy whatever I'd like to mess with. And given how much this game hits you with, it's probably best to slow it down.

The monsters and powers just feel good so far. I've heard this game described as the spiritual successor to D2 and that's 100% true. I like the randomness of the layouts - "mostly" random but still recognizable, but at the same time it's not the same tiles over and over. D4 had a huge problem with this, surprisingly.

My biggest issue with the game is definitely the skill tree. I'm sure I'm only like the hundred thousandth person to mention it, but I feel like it either needs to be simplified - you could easily roll all the passive nodes into each other and give fewer points - or at least make it cheap for a newbie to reroll. I'm not even that far along and I just realized I messed up a few of my starting points... and I might as well just make a new character. That's... incredibly disheartening. I know you don't want end-game folks to reroll constantly, but maybe make any character under level X (30?) reroll for free, then under level Y (50?) it only costs something cheap, and then eventually it costs those insanely expensive orbs. As it stands, this is the one feature that is keeping me from wanting to keep playing the game: the idea that one or two misclicks means I need to START OVER. That's just... insane. If I wanted to play on hardcore I'd play on hardcore. :)

The only other thing that really feels dated now is the need to identify items. I know you're waaaaay too far down that rabbit hole, but I'd suggest at least making rares id'd already. That's not going to hurt any economies and it will make it a LOT friendlier to new players. I'm sure I won't even be picking up rares soon enough - which is all the more reason you might as well take it a little easier on me.

Again: love the game, love the core system, and I don't mind the complexity. I just don't want to play "skill tree" on "hardcore," and that's the one thing that might kill my PoE adventure before it starts. Maybe make cheaper refunds be another game mode choice? You've already got a zillion, what's a few more? :)

Anyway, if anyone actually read this, thanks for your time! Can't wait to see what happens with PoE 2!

ps. I just read another comment and it feels like the same thing: making respecs cost little or nothing for new(er) players would solve a LOT of heartache, especially for how complex this game is. I mean: we're gonna mess up. Why make us start over every time?

"

I'm not even that far along and I just realized I messed up a few of my starting points... and I might as well just make a new character.

Hey bro, unless you're following a build, you just take whatever skill points look good thats how I play

You can change them later on

"

loroku wrote:

Again: love the game, love the core system, and I don't mind the complexity. I just don't want to play "skill tree" on "hardcore," and that's the one thing that might kill my PoE adventure before it starts.

Just came back to say: I was wondering if there was a game that was basically exactly like PoE except it has a more generous skill respec system... and there is. It's called Last Epoch. So it looks like my adventure here DID end before it started.

This game is far more polished, well-built, and deep, and I love that, but the respec system is absolutely holding it back. What's more: I read that this game is actually 10 years old. And "a less hardcore respec system" is probably the most obvious QoL improvement that could possibly be made - like I said, I'm probably the 100,000th person to mention it. So for 10 years, the devs have seen the dozens and dozens of other games that have a more fair respec system, watched how they've innovated, and said: "nah, we're good." Which makes me think this game has no intention of improving itself this way. So: sorry, I'm sure it could have been fun, but maybe when PoE2 comes out you'll have a better system? I'll definitely keep myself posted, because this game is like, a handful of changes away from being truly great. Thanks again!

hey bro try PoE when you're done with last epoch

I'm not a new player, but I am, like everyone else, new to Ruthless, and I wanted to provide my feedback for that mechanic here.

In short, I absolutely love it; it's very much what I've been wanting from an ARPG - slower, more deliberate, and harder.

I'm a long time ARPG player, and I've played most major ARPGs starting with Diablo 1. But I've never engaged much with the end game mechanics of PoE. I'm much of a slower, more immersed player, and I tend to just play through the "standard" campaign of an ARPG and stop before the end game. Ruthless makes that leveling experience challenging and rewarding.

I want to say again that Ruthless is the most fun I've had with any ARPG, including the Diablo 4 beta - which was also getting praised for being slower.

Love the game, love the new Ruthless mode - if you keep it supported in PoE2 I'll be there day one!

Suggestion fix the trading site please.

Suggestion: Please stop designing the game with league mechanic generated NPCs that are orders of magnitude more difficult to kill or which have absurdly high damage output that outmatches any gear or skills used to successfully accomplish the current map or Act level.

Long-term, experienced player here that's looking to find how getting slaughtered wholesale via Crucible for what amounts to zero reward is supposed to drive excellent gameplay.

FiX this Trading Site pls. This makes no fun

there is little to information found in game about how the supposed mapping end game has to be done, like finishing objectives, etc, its incredible how little info i could find on the website and had to rely on youtube guides for example simply to have an idea of what i am supposed to do after completing the main questline, i had fun for 2 weeks and today i had 0 and will probably leave this game because of how bad the end game is

Very new to the PoE experience. Just got to the blood aqueducts with my current character. I wanted to share something I just learned, as some of the old hands I hang with knew, but others didn't.



So, about the stash tabs.

I recently upgraded 3 of my basic stash tabs to premium, and because I had also just learned to put tabs into folders, one of the three that got upgraded was hidden from view, and so I thought that I only got 2, as that was all I could see.

When I went to count up my total stash tabs, I made a mistake in counting them up. In the image above, the left hand column has space for 30 tabs. I have numbered tabs from 1-35 there, but no #10, #11, #12, #13 or #29, leaving me 30 total tabs in the left column, and in the right column, I saw 4 repeats, and just assumed that that meant I had 26 more tabs in the right side, but if you look closely, you'll see that there is an empty space below the FLASK tab, and this is what threw me off when counting my tabs.

Maybe eliminate this empty space, so that 5 repeats would show up in the right side, so everyone can easily get an accurate count?

Anyway, now that I know how to stack tabs in folders, I'll have a lot easier time keeping track of my hoards of loot, lol.

One of the things that confused me initially, and left me wanting, was the lack of a way to separate low level items for me next character(s) from my main character, and this image shows that this problem is/was just because I didn't know how to do this.



I can have as many characters as I want, and I can have some space for them to each have any amount of individual storage space as desired, I just have to buy and put the extra tabs into the folders.

In the Image above, I have my mule character (my name for a new character, that I want to play and remake as often as needed until I get some more of an idea how to play the bow character) having a stash tab with their name on it, and within that folder, 4 premium tabs used as storage spaces reserved for, and separate from, all the other storage tabs I have, which really is going to help me keeping low level items for my new characters in folders that don't have to have higher level items in them.