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

This game is pretty great so far, to be honest I just think it'd just need more glitch fixes along with possibly a couple of reblanances and adjustments to stuff like the item timers.

Wow i'm very impressed with PoE. The graphics are beautiful, the number of combat options is great, and the Skill tree with gem and equipment combination is AWESOME. I love that your limited in building your character by the sockets on your gear so you have to make real choices and can't just find that one over powered combination every other person in the game is doing. I also feel like the replay value is awesome because of how you actually build up your abilities and are limited on the number of resets you have in your skill tree. I fully expect that even playing the exact same character a 2nd time the experience would be different simply by focusing on a different weapon set.

I think PoE is off to a GREAT start, but there are definitely some things that need attention. I'll start off by saying i'm much more of an FPS then rpg player. Diablo 3 got me back into the dungeon crawler genre. So coming from D3 there are a few frustrating things and most of that is with the multiplayer. I flew through the first act in single player absolutely loving how the character progresses and wanting more and more, but then in act 2 i finally started checking out the multiplayer because i was hitting parts where i thought i needed a little help. Here are some issues i have.

1) The multiplayer is incredibly difficult to actual play TOGETHER. I get not having unlimited teleporting to town makes you be much more selective about what items you pick up but you should have unlimited teleporting from town directly to your party members so you can join them. Also dieing should cost a teleport to town item since that's all it basically does

2) The MAP! not only is it ugly as dog barf but it's almost unusable. a LOT more work needs to be put into it. I would refer to Diablo 3 for a good mapping system. arrows pointing to other group members is CRUCIAL, being able to grab and move your map to see where you and your group have been vs being locked in the center is also better Imo, and other members explore the map but areas you personally haven't been are slightly darker

3) beyond the short comings of the multiplier the game play itself can seem to boil down to simply managing your mana and health when you hit a large group of enemies capable of possibly killing you. personally i would love to be able to set an autocast level on each of the health/mana slots and be free to focus more on the combat. perhaps have this as an unlock for a couple slots

4) There NEEDS to be an option that visually identify enemies. be it health bars or little black and white diamonds over their head. We need something to see them through the swarm of effects going on, this is especially needed in multiplayer to tell friend from foe.

5) I really miss not seeing a number value for the damage i'm doing, criting, and even ability combo bonus's (with so many abilities to choose from i would love to see more combination abilities but perhaps i need to keep playing because i see some of that already)

6) The notification board/multiplayer needs to be simplified to where you can select quests you currently have and filter ones you don't.

@JABUKI:

Nice that you like the game!
Please do not compare with Diablo3 since this is really more of a sequel to Diablo2 than D3 will ever be imo ... :)

I will take the liberity to comment on your comments and this is probably how most players in here feels:

1) Teleporting should NOT be unlimited since this is not how an arpg actually works.. TP's is and hopefully will always be a scroll(map) to get home and back.

2) The map sure could use some brushing graphic wise, but if they would implement a grabmap you couldnt move when map is active... That sux big time. You can how ever move the map with your arrowkeys on the keyboard if you didn't know that :) then press tab to re-center.
3) That is a simple arpg standard and shouldn't be tampered with! :o I've never heard such a crazy idea before actually :p That destroys all the fun..... :o

4) If you put health bars on enemies not highlighted the game will not be realistic anymore.
The graphics on this game and all graphical mechanics and all animations are very realistic imo, this would make it much more of a cartoon/non-realistic game like D3 is ^^

5) This should actually be an option imo, but still it's not good to tamper with the visual since it's all really realistic right now and I hope it stays that way! :) It's like I'm running around doing this stuff myself, living it... Numbers on screen would make that feeling go away....... Games are not just about numbers you know! There's more to it! This, GGG knows, and that's why this is such a great game! :)

6) Again, it's not D3.. All games on the board and the public games tab is all custom named by the party creator, and this is how a game should be imo! This is not only to do quests etc like in D3, this is to meet ppl you want to play with, make tradegames, do a special run, maybe just wanna play with swedish guys then "Swedish only" is an option to name your game. It's perfect!
It could have an option though to choose maxPlayers. For now though, you can just make the game private when it's full and then kick some ppl from the team ^^

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I thought I would write about my first impression down here, but I think my answers in this post pretty much states what I think of this game! :)
I hope you work out all connection/disconnection/lagg problems soon too, I know there's many ppl playing so it's kind of expected in this state.

My first impressions:

- The game is great, but there's still definitely room for tweaking/improvements, obviously more content would be lovely too, but that would be a luxury.
- Unfortunately the (overall, or at least vocal part of the) community is incorrigible. It seems like they're unaware that a Beta stage is for allowing players to suggest said tweaks/improvements... and yet I see posts like: "OMG why are you trying to ruin this beautiful game by suggesting changes? Go back to D3" all over the place. Sad times we live in... I feel sorry for the devs who have to filter through all this garbage to actually see the legitimate suggestions.

Loot system exceedingly terrible, eliminates all desire to play with others.

Hate the TAB key minimap, very hard to read. Would love a persistent one in the corner.

The ability to zoom out a little further would be nice. I find myself disoriented quite a bit.

Some actual information about the classes in character creation should be added. I did like the origin stories.

I found it too easy to accidentally pick up loot I didn't want. This is probably just because I had Z on, however.

UI should be modular. I want to be able to move windows around etc. I can't read chat when a shop window is open.

Big fan of the potions and currency.

Oceania server. That is all.

I find this game incredibly fun, I like the random generation for each instance and it makes it incredibly interesting when you have to go back through and redo a dungeon. I love the artstyle and feel of the game, The fact that its F2P is just icing on the cake. I love this game and I can't wait to see all the improvements that'll come with time.

GGG your game is utterly brilliant. The passive tree is perfectly complex and rewarding to those who want to really customize their characters while preventing Min/Maxing by not allowing full respecs (please never change this). Also you gain your points so slowly that it's rather hard to follow a master plan build rather then deciding on the fly that you could really use X.

The skills system is ingenious. It allows the player to have a full sandbox system, but if you want to level up those skills you need to invest in the passives or gear yourself to it. Really nailed the "can't do everything, but can do anything" approach.

The story and voice acting so far is great!



PS: I hate you because no I'm addicted and won't get anything else done in my free time :D

I just found this game yesterday, and wow! I'm sorry to compare this to Diablo, but after all this is virtually a clone of that game, but with massive improvements in all aspects. This one actually works and is fun to play! Seriously, I'm really impressed with this game.

I love the passive skill tree! It's just brilliant. The graphics take advantage of modern graphics cards, and the method of using the skills (mouse and qwer) works really well. I also like the way that the home town is open to all players, yet each person or party has their own instance of the game.

Don't listen to the people whining. You have a brilliant concept here, and I'm greatly enjoying it even with the server crashes.

I have to admit, when I first started watching people streaming this game I wasn't overly impressed with the graphics, but after playing it for a while, I really started liking it.

Anyway, there are a couple of things about the game that I noticed:

- Minimap Colors: some of the color schemes for the minimap seem to be designed specifically to blend in with the backgrounds. Some levels are dominated by white textures, and the minimap uses white to depict those textures. While accurate, it makes it exceedingly difficult to read if there is any transparency at all, which defeats the point of having it transparent at all.
- Feedback for taking damage: Not sure why this hasn't been mentioned yet, maybe it has been somewhere else, I don't know. But whenever I take damage, there seems to be no feedback at all. No grunting, no red flashing on the screen edges, not even the sound of a weapon hitting me. Sure, there is the visual effect, eventually, of the light turning slightly red around my character, but that usually comes way too late. Other than watching my health orb constantly, I have no way of knowing if I've been hit at all.
- Perspective (Moving the toolbar): I understand that this is probably an issue that plagues all games of this type, but the bottom edge of the screen is three steps away, and the top edge of the screen is six steps away (Using my level 12 ranger with no speed upgrades). This makes it really hard for a ranged character to play while going toward the bottom edge of the screen. For this reason, I would really like to be able to move the "toolbar" to the top edge of the screen, since the bottom edge real estate is so much more valuable. (Yes, I know every game of this genre ever has had the toolbar on the bottom, and every single one, I wished the same thing).
- Animations: Seems like the Duelist takes four times as long as the Marauder to step on a crate, and the ranger is impossible to kite with until you get masses of attack speed, since after firing she has to slowly pull a new arrow out of her quiver, then carefully nock it on the bowstring, giving it a few test pulls to make sure it fits properly, before she can look up and start running around again.

Anyway, the furthest I've gotten is A2 Cruel, but I have enjoyed it quite a bit so far. Keep up the good work, and thanks for the great game.

TL;DR - Minimap blends in, can't tell when I take damage, can't see anything on the south side, ranger has longest firing animation in the history of animation or firing, game still fun.

I love the game already!
But there are several issues that could be improved.

1. Small enemies are hard to hit with my mouse, of 3 attacks 2 miss only because I dont have the enemy in targed. So increase their "aimboxes" or whatever.
2. Lootsystem in multiplayer: The time for picking up "your" items is quite too short, I hardly can fight without pressure since I wasnt fast enough to pick up my first legendary.
Maybe make the party creator set the loot rules? like "1sec for Magic+".
3. Act 2 is a bit boring in my opinion, the areas are very large and you have to run multiple times through them, even when youre at level 24 and the enemies are at lvl 16.


That were the worst things :)

But the game itself is so much in style of Diablo 2 and I loved D2 so much and I'm unbelievable happy to have a new game that is just in this style!

Go on GGG you're awesome! :)

(Sry for mistakes, english is not my native language)