We welcome First Impression posts! Please be nice to those posts.

I only really have one major gripe with the game at the moment, and that's the loot game. There are a couple of things here. Moment-to-moment loot game is entirely unrewarding. Crafting is not a substitute for drops on encounters; it doesn't carry the same dopamine hit, and - even if the drop rate on currency was buffed - it's so far removed from the moment-to-moment gameplay that it's not as rewarding as it should be. It's also just standard gambling (which is always expoitative bullshit, frankly). I'm playing to kill bosses and rares, to get good loot through my efforts in combat, rather than so I can sit in town playing loot roulette. If that continues through to endgame, PoE2 will be a "one and done" for me.

As to loot disappearing on death, I'm not keen on this but it's not a deal breaker. That said, it's not fun (in a bad way). On bosses, fine; I can live with that. In the open world, with the scarcity and poor quality of loot in general? Just feels overly punishing.

As much as everyone bleats on about this being a "Souls-like" ARPG, it blatantly isn't. It's a bog standard ARPG, and for the loot game to be so weak - especially when we're talking about a game made by GGG - is truly shocking. Everything else about the game is either excellent or very good (even where I'm a bit iffy about some of the decisions GGG have made, such as the dodge mechanics). The loot game is terrible, however. Probably the worst loot game of any ARPG I've ever played, and that's a bit baffling.

Edit: On the points people keep making about others complaining about difficulty, I hope GGG are paying attention and recognise how overblown this argument is. Almost no one is complaining about difficulty. The feedback on combat is really about things like dodge feeling a bit janky and lacking utility in places where it maybe should (which is true), and the game feeling a bit sluggish and unresponsive at times (which it does).

I played POE1 up to about level 65 as a ranger and haven't played for years. When I saw 2 being released I got excited and decided to take the plunge into the POE universe again.

So far I've almost reached level 18 and it took about 6 hours to get here. The learning curve and difficulty feels harder than 1 was. One of the most challenging things has been the slow drop rate. I'll clear entire maps and end up with 3 to 5 magic or Bette gear, most of which is useless to my character class.

For example, I just cleared the Ogham Manor and had 4 blue pieces of gear to show for it. I got 1 orb of augmentation and about 50 gold. That's it, for the entire run. All but 1 chest was either completely empty or had between 2 and 8 gold inside. The one chest that did have something had 2 blue gear, 1 white gear and that orb of augmentation I mentioned.

For the entire map.. and I started the map at level 17 and I'm still level 17..

There's just something wrong with the drop rate and character progression curve. It's starting to feel not fun. Just a big grind for no reward other than more scenery.

I really hope there are balancing adjustments on the way because it's starting to get to the point I will be putting the game down again and I'm not even close to finishing act 1 from what I can tell.

Please fix it.

give the option to diseble auto aim.

I like it and I don't like it. After finishing the campaign here my thoughts.

Shinies:
- Mechanics in boss fights
- Atmosphere
- Its PoE after all

Hype-Killers:
- Ruthless mode (For my taste its not enough loot if I can't even fix the most basics things on my character)

- Slog-Mode in huge maps with monster respawn after death. I am all for challenging boss fights, but 20 minutes of searching that one interesting fight in an area is just tedious.

- Maps after Campaign: Same as above + back tracking to find the "Skull" mob. Usually spawns on the opposite site of where I am currently, after clearing everything. Its just annoying.

- Skill balance: Where? Feels like 1-2 Skills per class are ready to carry your build, rest is just there to fill the UI.

- Lack of crafting: What is the difference between picking up a garbage rare in Poe1 and a transmuted, augmented, regaled, tripple exalt slammed rare in Poe2? You guessed it, about 20 clicks. Assuming you have the currency, back to the first point.


So, long story short, while I was expecting slower fights, I was expecting slower and meaningful boss fights (and this is actually fulfilled and fun). I was not expecting a "temporal chained with 200% increased effect" gameplay over all. Stretching boring gameplay parts to infinity simply isn't my cup of tea.

I've played melee and ranged, so far, and here are my thoughts, ordered simply by what comes to mind first when I think of problems with core design philosophy:

1. Zone design:
I hate narrow corridors. I hate overlarge maps that seem to be large simply to make you have to walk further.
- I will absolutely use PoE1 to expand upon this. PoE1 had wide open maps that mostly allowed you to go where you pleased, and when they didn't, they had wide enough corridors to still be able to freely maneuver.
- In PoE2, that freedom of movement feels heavily restricted
- Edited to add: The punishments for death are also terrible
- Dying should not clear the loot
- Dying should not respawn the enemies

2. Skill system:
While I like the idea of your skills being independent of your gear, so you don't have to mess around with socket numbers, links, and colors in your gear, in order to set up your skills, I'm finding the PoE1 alternative to be vastly superior in reality.
- Limited number of worthwhile skill gem options to choose from
- Extremely limited number of worthwhile support gem options to choose from
- You can only use each support gem in ONE skill, and not in multiple; this a particularly egregious mistake in design philosophy
- Increasing the number of support gems you're able to use on a skill gem requires the use of Jeweller's Orbs, which seem to be fairly rare
- Additionally, requiring the use of Jeweller's Orbs means that if you decide to change your build, you need to use more Jeweller's Orbs on your new skill(s) of choice, whereas in PoE1 you could simply swap out the gems in your equipment
- Edited to add: I can't believe I forgot to mention this, but the method of leveling your gems feels vastly inferior to the experience system from PoE1. You shouldn't need to use consumables to level your gems; that's just adding an extra unnecessary layer of RNG and steps

3. Loot drop rate:
Most people play an ARPG to see loot drop, and to feel excited about getting upgrades from killing enemies. If you make the drop rate of high end gear too high, people get bored; but likewise, if you make the drop rate of loot too low, people get bored.
- Thus far, the drop rate of high end gear is extremely, punishingly low
- The drop rate of 'good' gear is also punishingly low
- The drop rate of 'OK' gear is also ridiculously low
- The drop rate of even trash-tier gear is absurdly low
- Upgrading your gear without trading feels punishing and unreasonable even just during the campaign, which is a problem not seen in PoE1 or any version of Diablo 2, and certainly not in Diablo 3. I never played Diablo 4, so I can't compare with it.

4. Currency drop rate:
My understanding is that the excuse for the low loot drop rate was that you wanted players to craft more of their own gear. While this is, on its face, a horrendously out-of-touch with player psychology design philosophy, it's also an entirely failed goal if currency doesn't drop frequently enough to be of use, and if you've eliminated one of the core currency items used in crafting.
- That would be: The Orb of Alteration
- Once you've added two affixes to your item, it's bricked--unless you want to upgrade it to a Rare item and use Chaos Orbs on it
- And that would be fine, if currency dropped frequently enough to allow players to actually craft their own gear
- If you can't find gear to trade for currency
- And you can't find currency to craft with
- It's not going to keep players engaged in the crafting system

5. Trials
- Honour
- No. Just no
- Unnecessarily punishing, and is brutal on players with builds that are meant to be able to tank hits--which would mainly be melee builds
- Sanctum
- Should have stayed in the dustbin of PoE history

6. Movement skills
- Where are they?
- Are they coming?
- Have they just been replaced by Dodge Roll?
- Why doesn't Leap Slam count as one of them, with a significantly greater jump distance?
- There should be at least one movement skill for each attribute at this point in the game's development

There are many other issues I've noticed with the game right now, that are basically just balancing and tuning issues. Player and monster damage, health, attack speed, move speed, breakpoints, etc. Skill and ability radii and effects. Passive tree node adjustments. Things like that. I'll mostly leave those for other players and for the devs to sort out, but:
- Attack radiuses on AOEs should be bigger
- Move speed should be faster
- Passive tree needs more survival/sustain/max HP nodes
- Ascendancy nodes feel weak, and in some cases are weaker than some Notables on the regular tree.

So far I am loving the EA and having an absolute blast. There’s one thing that does concern me on my character. I rolled a mercenary and am mostly finished with act 2. One repeating issue I have is regardless of how much ammo I have left for the crossbow I keep running into situations where my merc will aim but just refuses to fire. This doesn’t seem to be lag as myself and the mobs aren’t stuck in place and they’re still able to use their attacks and I can and do get hit if I just sit there. It’s especially noticeable on high velocity rounds as the crossbow will kick up like I’ve just shot it several times in quick succession. It’s like something gets stuck and trying to “reload” doesn’t always work. I can use grenades just fine and it’s not as simple as the reload just gets erroneously triggered as the time to reload and shoot is less than whatever’s going on here. It does seem more likely to occur right after using another skill. It hasn’t gotten me killed yet but it very nearly had on multiple occasions. I don’t have this issue on witch or warrior. Only other major issue I’ve noticed is tinker’s tools seems to be bugged. Otherwise I’m having a blast.

I feel that, if we dont have alterations to reroll blue items (wich would be nice, you have to keep any blue thing that have something that looks like useful), we should start getting a lot more alchemist orbs at some point so, instead of getting a random yellow item on a base we cannot use, from time to time we can pick the base and try our luck.
As it is right now, nobody wants to use the alchemist orbs cause you drop 3 in 40hours of gameplay.

Half of my cons addressed in the 0.1.c patch, nice

The game is a masterpiece! Every boss fight is unique and interesting, it always makes me want to explore and find the next encounter. The look and feel of the game is incredible, melee feels so satisfying I can't stop myself from taking boneshatter and a hammer regardless of my class (doing mercenary with crossbow and hammer right now). Would it be possible to add reload during dodge roll so that's shotgun/sniper feel better to use?

I like the loot quantity for the campaign, the gameplay is extremely fun, so stopping the fun every 2 minutes to go sell/disenchant would be annoying and getting overpowered items constantly would remove the need to actually enjoy the combat system since the enemies would die too fast or we would be invincible very quick.

Please do not transform it into a walking/looting simulator, everyone I know is too busy enjoying the game to go waste their life complaining on the subreddit that it isn't PoE 1 with a different coat of paint. I don't want to disregard other people experiences, but I think there's a big difference between having an idea to better the game and saying "the game is boring" because their idea of fun is walking around while enemies die automatically.

This is a true masterpiece, not just something brain dead you do while watching something actually interesting on a second monitor.

You guys truly did something amazing, keep it up!

- - - OVERALL

Presently at the time of writing patch version B, act 3 at Napuatzi.

Appreciating of developer vision but concerned of reception by less experienced gamers. Would appreciate an overall experience of difficult equal to what I enjoyed as a Witch player, presently solo and towards the end of the third act, without using "auto-bomber" or frost-spells.



- - - TECHNOLOGY

Graphics:
Performance tuning is needed, I'm on Linux and may be enduring worse performance than intended of course. Will see if I can get things better from my end, modern Ryzen 7000 series APU system that gets detected as an ancient ATI Radeon?

Audio:
No complaints, brilliant work on the music, my regards to the production staff from composing to mixing.

Netcode:
Seems improved, more reliable, the potentially longer TTL is very appreciated.



- - - GENERAL

Class balances:
With act 1 experience and observations, looking past overtuned overpowered abilities and combinations, I will say this: Casters need skills. Rangers need weapons and skills. Both benefit from equipment. Melee needs skills and weapons and equipment. Tuning at an innate (?) level is required.

Mob-blocking:
This needs tuning. The characters seem to have no weight, a bare little witch is moved as easily as a warrior in full plate with a refrigerator in each hand. The effect is often jarring when getting swung around by an enemy tail-strike (act 2 lamia) and it's difficult to see where you are. I like this extra sense of risk and danger. For better or worse this also affects ground-unit minions; they shield you, but they also cannot all concentrate attacking on one target. Another game demonstrating this was the Monster Hunter Wilds beta where the hunters got pushed around rather than stumbled or knocked over, I chalk that down to our experience being from a quite old beta.

Crafting:
This is from a perspective of before the C patch arrived that improved droprates - Sometimes bad luck is experienced with crafts, and it seems my warrior got just that. My witch still uses a level 10 weapon with phenomenal modifiers. I appreciate the crafting because I give myself the time to investigate my equipment, figure out my build and what I'm lacking, and aim for it. I use the vendors and pick items out in the wild, there is plenty of loot for me to use as is, and I long for the day I slam a rare that will take me into maps. With improved droprates I will surely enjoy it better.

One-life one-try:
The sense of satisfaction is immense and really rewarding, but I'm between the streamers who trivialize all the content and already play endgame and those who have a hard time to do anything without a youtuber guide and constant hand-holding. I hope that the final product feels more fairly tuned, so that the player senses that it was their fault and they need more practice on a boss, rather than "I have no chance and it looks unlikely that I will ever defeat this encounter".



- - - ZONES

Size of zones:
The sense of mission and undertaking helps the immersion into the game, but I would like to see a slight decrease in size. Act 1 felt fair, Act 2 also with the final few steps being a bit too large, Act 3 is where it became ridiculous. It's made more extreme by the lack of movement abilities and rarity of movement speed boots, I would try to adjust act3 down just a touch.

Act 1 general:
Good. Would give it some more tutorial hints to instruct the player towards shopping and crafting. Its boss was a phenomenal encounter. My warrior struggled with offensive and defensive capabilities through most of it, especially at the act boss. My witch turned the previous struggle-bus encounter bosses into cakewalks, and encountered difficulties with the act boss only during the swarming stage. My ranger which still is in progress has a twin-stick-shooter experience this far, and I consider the inter-class balance to not be fair.

Act 2 general:
For my warrior it was too slow and painful, for my Witch it was fast and only slightly risky. The zones got more size constrained and ducted into channels, making minion gameplay slower than it would be without a spell to relocate the minions magically to a desired mark on the screen. Lost City sometimes felt like the old Diablo 2 command of [/players 8] had been used, and upon ascending the city later in the act the tight lanes got ridiculous as a minion user, my warrior would most have appreciated it for certain - until stunned or devastated due to lacking defense and offense. The Dreadnought was a pain of tight lanes and having to dodge out of the way of jumping enemies, my warrior will need a massive stun threshold before even trying, and the act boss was an immense HP sponge of a boss - but it was a great experience of dodging and being in danger and risking life and limb - yet I did it in that one single try.

Act 3 general:
The size and scales of the maps, the tankiness and hard hits of the enemies, something felt off even though I was level parity upon arrival with the witch. The treant sub-boss was strangely hard to burn down in the first zone. The city could perhaps be adjusted down to require slightly less running around, feature NPCs instead, so move the bench and whatshisname over? Zones huge, progression could maybe be made a little pinch more clear? Appreciated the HUGE monkey boss and figuring it out, a threat to ranged as well as melee. The village with the witch was a horror to navigate and to try to find the boss in, and the encounter with her felt like a prototype design from long ago that wasn't quite perfectly in tune with everything else this far. Easier with all that followed, the great ziggurat was impressive and lengthy, like act 3 from Diablo 2 on substances! I'm submitting this after dying to Napuatzi for the TOOMANY'th time and giving up. (preceding encounters and bosses bar the guy who bathes in gold were single try completions, and I have chaos resist equipment in use, pain tbh)



- - - ASCENDANCY TRIALS

Trial of Sekhemes:
Very enjoyable system, but melee suffers terribly at the moment. Why should a slow tank of a character with impaired mobility that often has to drink potions, be treated after the same rules of a long range evasive character that doesn't get hit and never has to use potions? I wish you good luck in solving this issue - consider the lack of movement abilities again.

Trial of Chaos:
I have not completed it successfully and fully, but the start of the very first phase is ridiculous as you leave the elevator only to find yourself surrounded. It seems more tuned towards melee, but is that correct? If melee consistently was the same difficulty I found with the witch with minions, my warrior would not have been with such an overall negative experience and could instead have considered this their alternative way of scoring an ascendancy.