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

Been playing, off and on, since Open Beta. Standard League only, solo for the vast vast majority of it. I don't group up, I don't seek help, I don't trade for anything. I sort of want to play the game strictly on my own ability and the RNG.

I typically play intensely 100 hours or so with each new content drop before going back to something else. In this way I've eventually gotten two characters to the mid-80s.

I'm still learning constantly, mostly because I refuse to dig too deeply into other's builds. I do my wiki reading at least, but there's no fun for me in replicating someone else's build at all. I like that special rush you get when you put together your own combination and see it work, rather than just replicating what looked cool on Youtube.

For me PoE has always been a few things:

1. Less-than-technically competent. Sorry guys, whether it's your budget or your skill sets, PoE has never played truly gracefully at any point of its history. Now it peforms better than ever before, but it still has ugly technical and performance blemishes.

2. Wonderfully freeform and complex in its interactions. I judge every ARPG I touch by how restrictive and layered it is compared to PoE.

3. Rewarding. Even though I may go dozens and dozens of hours without upgrading my main in any way, I always feel like I've gotten a little something for my time, between maps, currency and all the other sundry stuff added over the years.

4. Tuned way too high sometimes. Dominus back in the day, Malachai, Izaro (sometimes), various map bosses, the amount of spike damage in this game has always been berzerk. It feels like, as an admitted scrub, that once players had builds with reasonable survivability and insane DPS, it dictated the way content works. My highest level toon has shit DPS compared to a lot of what I see out there, but I manage to keep the deaths down. It's often discouraging to fight bosses on my melee toon then switch to my summoner and watch her obliterate it in a fraction of the time. As an aside, Immunities are not something I ever thought I'd see in PoE. The idea that suddenly you need at least two characters to meet all challenges is kind of antithetical to what I thought PoE was supposed to be about. You don't invest ??? hours in a character only to find your entire build is invalidate by one boss mechanic, who ever though that was a good idea? Give them enhanced resistance, that's totally fair, make some builds work harder for it. (*COUGH* MELEE *COUGH*) But don't just give bosses total immunity.

5. Not friendly to Flavorful builds at all. It took me a while to learn how to focus on specific aspects of a build for it to be even Merciless viable. Fewer skills, more support of said skills, more capitalizing on different priorities via gear choices and uniques. Being a generalist tends to hurt you in this game and I think that makes it hard for some people to get into. I've been playing my Scion as my main since she was released and slowly refining a sword and board/Spectral Throw build. And there have been times I've wanted to walk away from the game entirely because of how difficult it was to make it viable. But I was too stubborn to admit defeat, got some drops that really helped and slowly refined and pared down the build to what really mattered. And now it tediously chops its way higher in levels. I did it while keeping my build to what I felt was flavorful to a degree....but I can easily see someone else climbing that mountain, looking down and going "You know, this isn't really what I wanted in the first place. I wanted to be a fast moving melee guy and instead I ended up shooting Ice Spears or some shit." A lot of my friends have had this complaint with PoE.

6. Hard to get my friends to play. Many of them simply can't find an appreciation for PoE despite getting why I like it on some level. I can't really blame them sometimes. Graphically you either like its style or it looks, at best, old fashioned and hard to read. Technical problems. Lag. Penalties at the highest level of play. A huge grind just to reach the "end game", from the perspective of your casual player who probably enjoyed Diablo 3. Seemingly byzantine skill tree. A real lack of flash or pizazz in a lot of departments. (Stark is one way you might define PoE's look. Barren, compared to a visual orgy like Diablo 3, is another.) I've tried a few times to bring people to PoE. The last friend I managed to get all the way through Normal before the Malachai fight broke his spirit completely. (He got to experience that Death Zerg Rush to kill a boss, when you know you're hopelessly outclassed in every department.)

7. Infuriating. This game has pissed me off more times in recent memory than any game I've played in the last 10 years. Seriously. Literally "have to get up and walk away so I don't punch my monitor" mad. ESPECIALLY in the pre-lockstep days, but even now. When some bullshit hits before your brain can even process it happened. When you're dropped out of game and something is unrecoverable like a master mission. When you watch hours of progress go up in smoke in 10 minutes. When you get fucked in the Labyrinth by traps and a touch of lag. While this is mostly on the technical side of things, PoE has seriously hacked me off. I've learned to take it in stride over the years but when I've been playing for a while and I eat a bullshit death that comes out of left field, is when I retire it until the next content update.

8. Irresistible. It's the game I've played the most since I quit WoW years and years ago. The unapologetic challenge is appealing for someone like me, despite how I sometimes resent it. The metric of advancement is appealing (lots of ways to get things, make progress, it's metered rather than D3's habit of rewarding the player trivially every 30 seconds.) The fact it's not a game that's easy or intuitive to play, much like Dwarf Fortress, makes me feel special for having gotten as far as I have (even though I know it's not very far and that I'm not special.) That it is still one of the fairest F2P games out there in terms of its economy. I've even come to see the Death Penalty as a good thing because it gives the game some edge, some reason to be something other than boringly competent like D3's endgame. (I may also just have Stockholm's Syndrome after not being able to walk away from the game.)

It's hard not to have a love/hate relationship with PoE sometimes. From the times you stand back in appreciation for all the moving parts working together, and the little touches they've continued to build out the game with, to the bewilderment at wondering just who in the hell they're deving this stuff for sometimes.

If I had one wish for PoE, it'd be that they step up their visual game. PoE has some really high rez goodness in its visuals going on that some how has always fallen flat. Particle effects are incredibly detailed and yet they're not really all that interesting at the end of the day. That's been PoE's look since Day 1. (It was Titan Quest's look too.) That realistic grittiness. That stuff is all ok...I've just always wished there was some actual life and color in PoE. And I'm one of the people that said D3 was too cartoony. Say what you will about Blizzard games, murky is not how you would describe their visuals and yet murky and dumpy has always been PoE's look. And the animations...well, there's been plenty said about those already.

I couldn't get into Path of Exile the first few times I tried the game. That was pretty frustrating, because I'd heard a lot of positive things about it and was really trying to give it a fair chance - but something kept driving me away. I couldn't even put a finger on what, at the time.

It was partially due to technical issues, which you've improved by leaps and bounds over the years. I really can't tell you how excited I am for the x64 DX11 client later this year!

Another factor was the camera angle. This was a big one - it felt like I was looking down on the action too steeply - at times I felt physically uncomfortable; almost as if my body was afraid of falling. This is a sensation that I've never had when playing any other game.

Out of all the issues that silently drove me away from the game which are still relevant today, I would have to say that responsiveness is the biggest one. Everything takes too long, which results in your character feeling 'trapped' in an animation while you desperately try to react to what's happening around you. Coming from Diablo III, this felt really, really bad.

It seems that the game is designed so that this is one of the limitations of being a puny, low level, defenseless Exile which you can shed gradually as your character begins reaching its potential. That's a disastrous piece of game design - you're intentionally making the game feel bad at low levels when people are having their first experience of the game. People won't play a game they don't enjoy just because they hear it improves later down the line. For better or worse we're living in the age of instant gratification and things have to feel good immediately.


tl;dr: Initially I wanted to like the game - and even succeeded in liking it - but I didn't enjoy playing it. I'd keep coming back, but overly long animations, an uncomfortable camera pitch and technical issues would drive me away. You've mostly solved these issues, though I still sometimes find being stuck in an animation frustrating. If enemies get one-shot mechanics, I should get a responsive character who immediately reacts to me trying to avoid them.

Is the STEAM store in the Philippines gonna get Path of Exile? since when I click on this link: http://store.steampowered.com/app/238960/ it says that "This item is currently unavailable in your region" and also I have been enjoying PoE from my friends who suggested this to me.

So after nearly 4 years and 3485 posts and counting, I'm finally burned out and should be entitled to rage against the GGG machine. I think GGG has a few Cogs loose and a broken Sprocket or two causing their gears to jam.

The impression after 4 years for me is Breaches look to be MEH. That's sad that GGG has lost it's focus. They need a fresh start with PoE II.

New pathc is awesome.... game is crashing so many time. While loading or just crash in a fight. And now I lost my shaper portals because of Disconnect from server, I clouldn't back to Checkpoint... FeelsBadMan GGG...

Toons of dead mechanics. Armour, evasion and life are usless.
Toons of usless items. Cards, armour scrap, orbs like blessed and other. All of this to force me buy stash? Why u dont do game better instead?
And all LAG FREEZE AND DISCONNECTS. Game write and read data on hdd soo intese so game just go to login screen sometimes. No i dont buy SSD just to play POE. All of this ON MINIMAL settings. Yes my pc old its 6 yo but other game (csgo, dota, wot) works perfect even of high or normal settings and non of them dont crash because of hdd.
And finish this project dead high lvl content. Its unplayable and not intresting at all.
Wasted.

Visually, the game looks a lot like my days in Diablo 2, not a bad thing. I enjoy the nostalgia. I've got bored of the same old endless Greater Rift climbing in Diablo 3. Made it to mid 70s GR but it's starting to feel like an actual job, so I came to look at the alternative to see what all the fuss was about.

Feeling, nostalgic, that's all I can say. It really feels like the first time I started playing D2, except the controls are better, the visuals are 3D. Yay, 3D D2! Oh, the Den of Evil quest near the beginning, it just oozes D2 nostalgia.

My weapon damage doesn't affect my spell damage, oh, how I hated that in D3. It always seemed strange that I needed a strong base damage on my weapon when I'm controlling weather or summoning meteors from thin air. It's like somehow my weapon cloned itself, transformed and became the magic being casted. I'm also not tied down to a certain "set" of armor, like in D3, from what I've read. Thank you for that.

The skill tree looks very intimidating the first time. Good thing I have some education, lol, I took a while reading through each and every node. It started to make sense after a while. Having played the new remastered FFX recently, I understood the structure. However, I think casual players will have their minds blown just from seeing it initially. It's a small barrier-to-entry for new players I would say. Would it deter the more casual? Definitely. But, I find it quite interesting, it must've been a pain to balance and iterate over the years.

I've played a few hours and noticed, I might need more stash tabs. From my experiences with D2 and D3, I won't have enough for more than 2 or so characters. "Don't pick up everything, only things I will use," that's my philosophy from D2 & D3. I've played F2P games with worse storage though. So with 2 characters, I should be able to fit the majority of items I assume, only time will tell.

D3 does have smoother gameplay in some aspects, and I can hit 70 in under an hour with a friend, it's a time saver but it really does feel like a cheat. You can't have a cake and eat it too; D3 makes you eat the cake pretty fast. PoE is more like a nibble. PoE really tugs at my nostalgia for D2; the slower gameplay in the beginning, gradual progression, random generation(like D2), color palette, and even the bit of the music.

I've made it through Act 1 and thoroughly enjoying it. Players who'd only experienced D3 and enjoyed it a lot might not find Path of Exile interesting and for many of the same reasons I enjoyed it so far.

I haven't experienced any crashes with the Dx11 client, as mentioned by others. It could be that my hardware is more current, or I haven't played long enough to run into a problem.

First i've got a Cycloner, then it was nerfed, so i try to make a BV build Scion (becasue the Duration nodes proximity), but Scion was nerfed. So i made a witch with Curses and BV, but now You nerfed BV. So i respec all my points and start the road to reclaim my character efectiveness but i couldn't do it... The clearing speed of my character it's 50% that it was yesterday, i need more inefficient points to HOLD 20 stacks of blades because with less than 20 "Portal Skill" kills faster. I don't know what are you thinking of this... Now You buff Golems to promote the new unique items, no because the needed. And you nerfed BV now just because it didn't get any place in this league. And now you buff Cyclone again? WTF. Just TRY to leave something that makes this game fun; if a lot of people was playing BV, it was because it was fun, same for Cyclone, now you nerfed what it was fun and with a Happy face you tell us "Fire Golem is 60% stronger", what do i care?. Buff Golems, traps, everything you want, but stop nerfing all that gets popular and fun just for sportor by forcing us to switch builds...

Stash tabs are pay to win , sup .

First i've got a Cycloner, then it was nerfed, so i try to make a BV build Scion (becasue the Duration nodes proximity), but Scion was nerfed. So i made a witch with Curses and BV, but now You nerfed BV. So i respec all my points and start the road to reclaim my character efectiveness but i couldn't do it... The clearing speed of my character it's 50% that it was yesterday, i need more inefficient points to HOLD 20 stacks of blades because with less than 20 "Portal Skill" kills faster. I don't know what are you thinking of this... Now You buff Golems to promote the new unique items, no because the needed. And you nerfed BV now just because it didn't get any place in this league. And now you buff Cyclone again? WTF. Just TRY to leave something that makes this game fun; if a lot of people was playing BV, it was because it was fun, same for Cyclone, now you nerfed what it was fun and with a Happy face you tell us "Fire Golem is 60% stronger", what do i care?. Buff Golems, traps, everything you want, but stop nerfing all that gets popular and fun just for sportor by forcing us to switch builds...