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

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shyco wrote:

1 SMALL CHANGE WOULD MAKE SUCH A DIFFERENCE, ADD AN OPTIONAL DAMAGE NUMBERS ABOVE MOBS, game doesnt feel alive without it, it what gives players the feeling of satisfaction to se it increase. It's standard now a days, and removing it from a game kills the feeling. Pls make it happen, its kind of a game turn of to not have it.

This would clutter the screen and remove some of the immersion that it has ( which is why : it won't happen imho ).
Plus GGG does not even want to add a combat log, so this ....

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Cizre wrote:

edit - another thing is the lack of a AH / marketplace. sure, theres a player trade channel, but when I see people say they want 10c for something, right of the bat im wondering if they mean orb of chance, chaos, or something else? Plus, I dont feel like watching WTS spam adds pop up constantly. There is one ring I kinda want for a build I have in mind but the current player trade chat only option is very offputting.

You see, this is a valid complaint but not in that sense.
The trade channel is there just for one thing - ripping off noobs. The real trading is on poetrade, the existence of which is pretty much ignored ingame and that's the real complaint. Trading is an essential part of the game and it gives you not a whiff of a single hint on how to do it right.

Hey there! This will be a long one. I will be saying what things I noticed and how I got to feel about the game after 120h of play and reaching mapping. :)

I started the game 3-4 years ago hearing it was the best in its genre and seeing how I loved D2 and even Torchlight, I gave it a shot - it did not cost anything after all. Even though I got to Hell in Diablo2 I remember that I died in act 3 normal and got frustrated. There were probably some other things outside of the game that captured my attention better and so I quit playing. I do not remember the first impression I had that time, only the last frustrating bits.

Fastforward to 2017. I started hearing a streamer talking about the game in a video that had nothing to do with it. Now I knew that streamer played PoE, but hearing it in an offtopic video as an answer to a fan made me somehow decide to see how things changed.

First thing I see is, that i can download it via steam. Nice!
I log in and see that my character are still there, without beeing erased. One had his name opened to the public, which is playerfriendly and kinda made me smile on the inside. :)
I start a new League witch and decide to go with fire. Every fantasy game has fire right?
- "The dead will soon rise for me, not against me."
Well so much for fire, looks like I am gooing good old necromancer.
Luckily some of the first quest/gems have/are summons. Nice!

So I click myself through the 1st act and notice the readable stone. I click it and listen to the awesome voiceacting. I notice how good all the voices were in general and made a point for myself to listen to everything that had one from there. Then I encounter NPCs in the wild, that I did not remember seeing years ago and I am thrown off, as I never expected something like that. Good!

And I am completely blown away by the voices. That and the quests made it way more entertaining to click throught the acts. They also provided more lore, that - of cource - went over my head, as there was just too much of an information overload. Remembering all the names and empires and what not, but it was nice to hear words from time to time.

I loved the overlaymap as I gave me the Diablo feeling and I loved the smoothness of the different shortcuts. Trying a shortcut that was never explained and seeing that it works makes you feel very good. And holy sh*t are those 4 different stashtabs?
(I don't remember ever having so many in any game ^^)

Somewhere around that time I remember clicking the shop button and thinking that it was in a very good spot. One that does not say: "LOOK AT ME" but still easily findable if you want to see it ... Not intrusive? Nice.

After I clicked, I got a bit scared as I got into the pay territory - more of which later.
I remember noticing that it was not as bad as I feared. I could still se my character, still move and closing it did not give me pop-ups of the likes: "do you realy want to leave" :D
So first impression was nice, even though all the option and colors were a bit overwhelming, but I understood that the game won't make me feel guilty for leaving the shop site, nor is it actively trying to shove stuff to sell in my face. Good.

I did, of course see a lot of players in town. You don't need to market your stuff, if the players do it themself. ^^ But damn, those wings do look nice . . .

So I caught up with my first character and reach the end of act 3, going through all the different locations, their monsters and taking in all the feelings. I remember acknowledging how good the monsters and their mechanics fitted into the locations and the music. (Also I tried a solid minute to kill a blue scorpion in a desert layout, only to realise that it is in fact a very neat way of promoting stuff ^^') I remember dying again, but it somehow did not make me quit this time. I was still frustrated and thinking: "this would be the end if I were to play hardcore like I initialy wanted".
I reached the Scion and felt good that everyone could unlock a character after they proved they they could handle it, paying for the game or not. I thought about why you would not make her available from the start and understanding that the current way is definitely the right way to go about it. :)

I killed Dominus and "Catch and roast yourself a nice, big fishy." was probably the third time I thought about buying something, just to give you guys money. The first two times were the 4 chapter story in "The Crossroads" and the masters.
Sufficient to say that I liked the voice acting . . . a lot. Even "stay awhile and listen" can't come close to that. :)
"Petarus and Vanja" were Nr. 4 by the way.

I loved what was done in "The Crystal Veins", unlike in "Prisoner's Gate", "The Wetlands" and all throughout Act 3, your path is not blocked and you just have to find a way to unblock it.
No, this time there is no way, you have to make one, break down the walls. I realy liked it, even though it seems like not much at all. Daresso's world was spectacular and I was afraid and unsettled of Kaom's. Layout, music and colors were on point.

I remember that I started watching a lot of video guides on youtube to get better at PoE and learn more. Pluspoints were that I could play AND "watch" at the same time, even on one monitor. The borderless Fullscreen sure worked a lot better than other games. :)

I got into Cruel and . . . well you know the problem, I saw a video of you talking about the drop of players after they finished the story and how 3.0 will change that. :)
The good thing, the very good thing, was that I could revisit all the stones and other . . . voice pages? to unterstand the whole story. It finally made a lot more sense. After I listed to the stones in act 1 I though about how good it were, if you could just walk away from them and still listening . . . HOLLY SH*T!!!! YOU CAN!

This was probably the last drop that made me want to buy something. The care and love that went into every feature that I encountered no matter how little, be it from audio, mechanics, graphic or lore. Everything just cries out "This is for you guys!" which made me buy somethig from an online game for the first time after more than 15 years of sticking to: "Never ever buy from a Free2Play game."
. . . well and of course the fact that an exile just needs more space to put stuff into. :)

I clicked on the shop icon with the iron determination to waste money on something. Of course I went with the stashes first, and luckily there was a discount on them. Only then I notices that there was a message in chat all the time, that told about the special. ^^'
I remember liking the option of only beeing able to buy 5, 10 or 20 poins. It limits the possibilities in a god way and you won't have to decide about the end amount right away. Also, beeing 10p short on something realy keeps you up at night thinking.
And thank you for not going with 4,99 or other stuff like that. Realy, thank you. It is very much appreciated.

So, now I had a lot of stashes and wasted a lot of time organizing stuff. As I made my way through cruel and merciless I did notice a few negative points for the first time. The first one beeing the repeating of the same story of course, though finally understanding more of the story realy made it A LOT more enjoyable to replay, also hearing my character talk again. :)
Another big negative are gems . . . *sigh*.
Yes, they look all different (kinda), but if you have more than half a stash of them AND don't know any beside the ones you use, you have a hard time organizing and keeping track of them unless you memorize them and probably forget one or two names of relatives while you're at it. Also if I want to dispose of the cheap ones, I still have no way to tell if a gem I don't know is easily replacable or not. A very cheap sortingsystem would be nice. If you make it exclusive for premium stashs I would buy one just for gems, without using it for trading . . . which brings me to the next topic.

At first I wanted to play solo self found, but all the videos mentioned trading and so I also wanted to try it and get rid of all the extra alteration and chrom currency - having no gold as currency makes sense and is amasing. In a few minutes I found someone via another site and managed to trade ingame. It was probably the most surreal experience I had in any loot&lvl game. It was so easy. It's a bit sad what the ingame chat is, in comparison to all the online sites. Coming back to the stashes I noticed how easy it is to price items for public trading and am again astonished that the game incorporates this so readily. Maybe I just have a soft spot for any game that incorporates Internet and Browsers seamlessly.

The hideout is a very nice place to be able to never go into towns. For good or for bad.
I also very much like the fact, that the stash is at the same place of the screen as the marker of the hideout in the worldmap. I don't remember if it is default or if I edited it, but either way, customisation is nice, even though I might not use it. :)

Oh right, the Laberinth. What can I say? Amazing? Probably. The Trailer looks like a whole other game, even though it is the same, I just have not reached there yet. That's the bad thing about summoners, you can't realy see enemies, bosses or the ground in generall. ^^'
I sometimes even unequip my little gang, just so that I can see the dying animation on enemies.

Now the settings. I also like them. :) Having the health displayed is great and seeing how I might not even use 80% of the posibilities is even better. The F1 key also makes me feel comfortable somehow. And the Item Filter . . . oh my god, the Item Filter . . . I don't know how I played without them and the fact that the game incorporates them so well and easy is fantastic.

Lastly, I just found out a couple of days ago, that the leaguestones are only bound to this league and are not part of the actual game. I could not realy belief it. They were integrated so well, it is almost frightening. I don't even want to think about what it feels like without those mechanics.

So today I reached the last fights of merciless. Had a flashback to the Diablo-fight because of Piety's beam and got myself and my minions oneshot . . . a lot.
Now I did a couple of maps and I can already see myself buying even more stashtabs and sinking even more time into maps.
Also, how are people getting to where I got after 120h in only 7h? :/

What can I say in general? Fantastic free to play game, with loads of moments, that make you feel, as if all the developers give you warm hugs through the game itself. :)

The game is great (playing only SSF HC Legacy). 92 level max, 69/126 atlas.

Most interesting thing so far - Labyrinth (for the first time and for different builds later). Regular Atziri fight is good, too. Well, anything different from "hold attack button 'til they die" is good and i'd like to see more of that.

Most disappointing - unpredictable one-shots. Mechanics you simply didn't notice or thought of them as of not very fearsome until "resurrect in town".

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Dimmian wrote:

And holy sh*t are those 4 different stashtabs?
(I don't remember ever having so many in any game ^^)
<...>
well and of course the fact that an exile just needs more space to put stuff into. :)

Oh, good. Was going to say you're wrong about 4 tabs being "many" but you got there yourself :)

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Dimmian wrote:

Another big negative are gems . . . *sigh*.

Haven't you done side quest in act3 Library? Siosa (quest-giver NPC there) sells all gems except handful of drop-only ones.

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Dimmian wrote:

Also, how are people getting to where I got after 120h in only 7h? :/

Twink gear, twink gems combos, beelining instead of exploring so they're not overleveled.

Loving the game!

Played a couple of years ago (don't know exactly how many) for awhile but the game was basically unplayable for us. Crashed every zone, Lagged to hell, so even though I loved the concepts I stopped.

Gave it a try again near the end of breach league and so much is fixed its playable. Too playable

Its the first Free to play game where I have spent money on micro transactions and plan to keep doing it. (I want the game to succeed so I can keep playing)
Also got my wife playing and we very often play as a party of two.

This is the TRUE successor to Diablo 2 :)

The consumable currency is brilliant. I love that. The voice acting is very immersive and I try to listen to all the ones I come across.

The diversity has so much built in replay ability. I've gotten several toons to 80+ but only two to 90 and 91. Gave up on the others because I messed too much up with them.
(Big learning curve in this game but that is good. Some free respec's for a new account would be interesting, but only allow the use of one after a period of time.

I really enjoy the different mechanics with different bosses. It keeps things interesting.
The one shot abilities really got me down at first till I realized that they were advertised and you needed me to actually play the game instead of mash buttons :)
There are some one shots I cannot figure out though. Maligaro both at the end of act4 and in the Core map.

The item filter is fantastic and fairly easy to edit and maintain for your own needs. (It helps that I'm a programmer I suppose)

There are some deaths I've had that have left me with WTF moments where I just die incredibly fast to "Yard Trash" leaving me with the feeling that the game sometimes forgets my abilities.
EG. Died on a blue map to yard trash where mobs have high crit chance and multiplier (only mod) and I have brass dome. Same mobs can't touch me on next try.
This has happened a lot, specifically that exact condition to the point I don't trust brass dome's ability.
Some sort of combat log would allay my doubts and teach me what to improve, even if its just the moments leading to death log.

So what don't I like? (Perhaps people can tell me what to fix)

Game still crashes very regularly if you log out or switch characters from town. Very rarely if you do it from your hideout or another zone.
Turning multi-thread off helps a lot here but the crashes are still far too frequent.

Opening a chest in game can sometimes kill you, not because of actual effects but because the game freezes while it loads the needed assets.
I have tried many options, pre-load, multi-thread etc etc. Problem persists but only sometimes. My PC is fairly decent too.
Yes I ID chests first and use an anti freeze flask if needed.

De-Syncing in Uberlab or its trials. (This only happens to me in Uberlab too. Other labs are fine). Suddenly being placed back on the red hot floor in a maze of fences kills you.
I've tried the "Stepping mode" but that feels horrible in general play. My latency being in South Africa is 150's.
There is nothing I can do about that and the rest of the game is perfectly playable at that latency and I've never noticed a desync.

Other players spell effects. I really don't need to see them and should have an option to turn them off. (Even some of my own)
My PC handles these just fine, I don't! My wife is playing with SRS as her main skill and I am a dagger and board melee and trying to target/avoid threats in a sea of red flares.
My ignites do the same thing to me in darker zones. (Abyss etc)

The guild stash behaves differently to normal stash. It is no where as fluid. (Minor annoyance)

Most uniques are pointless. Remove the pointless ones and make unique drops rarer to make the effective drop rate the same.

Melee seems heavily prejudiced against. Of my two 90+ Characters my melee one is much harder even though he is better geared.

Grouping sometimes seems to make things much harder. Both my wife and I can kill Atziri (normal) fairly easily solo but in a group of two can't even get close.
There are a couple of fights where this "seems" to be true.

Gear drops are not relevant enough to the player. Most (if not all) of my gear is bought from other players which I've funded by selling my drops to other players.
Diablo2 had this to a small degree but plenty of the gear you used was self found.
I did try self found but the game gets bogged down and you end up farming way more than I liked to be able to progress causing you to out level content and getting penalized on XP

>My latency being in South Africa is 150's.
Lockstep is only good if your ping is under 50, nothing you can do here.

>Other players spell effects. I really don't need to see them and should have an option to turn them off. (Even some of my own)
Won't happen ever. SBT.

>The guild stash behaves differently to normal stash. It is no where as fluid. (Minor annoyance)
It's because every operation with guild stash requires immediate syncing with item database. Your own stash instead only syncs with it when you logon, logoff or change locations.

>Grouping sometimes seems to make things much harder. Both my wife and I can kill Atziri (normal) fairly easily solo but in a group of two can't even get close.
IIRC she gets additional big flameblast for each group member. Also, generic damage/hp increase.

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silumit wrote:

>My latency being in South Africa is 150's.
Lockstep is only good if your ping is under 50, nothing you can do here.

BS

I'm playing lockstep with ~130+ ping usually, always.

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silumit wrote:

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Dimmian wrote:

Another big negative are gems . . . *sigh*.

Haven't you done side quest in act3 Library? Siosa (quest-giver NPC there) sells all gems except handful of drop-only ones.

I just checked and you were of course correct. Thanks to you I can free up a stash :)
Though if I wanted to keep the gems that cost chance/alc, I'd still face the same problem.



Also i just realised, but the gems don't fill out a lot of the 1x1 field, do they (the image)? Most only take about 50% and of that most of the space is filled with the gem's color and because it is so small, I can't realy see much of the details and have to look very close.

What I want to say to the developers is, the gems confuse me.
The images are pretty but small and if you don't count the color, you mostly have no idea what the gem does or is, if you don't memorize it. I very much appreciate the fact, that the round ones are all support, makes it easy to spot them, though if not for a video I've seen from way back, I probably would not have noticed it. ^^
Maybe splitt the gems that have a tilt to the right into 2 categories and make one tilt to the left instead (mirror)? Like auras, curses, minion or mobility gems for example like this:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/asdfcn0yn4506sl/gems2.jpg?dl=0
It's not much but even a small improvement could help a lot.

You can just hover over them to know what's what.
And there is a search bar to search by name or level or whatever if you need.