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

I've been playing for years but wanted to leave my first impressions on Bestiary.

Thanks, GGG, for the incredible amount of effort, planning, and resources it must have taken to build this league. To pull off something of this complexity in a few short weeks/months is simply amazing, and your teams deserve a lot of credit.

Yes, I've read the rage-quit posts from the people who don't like the league. A large number of these are from gamers whose favorite build doesn't work in the capture mechanic and they can't/won't think differently to come up with an adjustment. Oh well...

I've also read the posts about necro-nets, so the screen-clear builds can net a beast after it has died. I *really* hope you don't add that. It's a terrible idea and completely breaks the whole foundation of a league you worked so hard to craft.

I played a bit last night (lvl 45 Duelist) and found myself running the Ridge. This is a map I normally race through, but I found myself hunting beasts and covering the whole map. I found a rare monster and really had to work to net it without killing it, and net it, not one of the adjacent white mobs. When I finished, I found myself grinning at how hard I had to work and the sense of accomplishment I got.

This league makes you think, hard! Some builds (wanders, minions) may have to work harder than others, but you are forced to retool your equipment and gems so your build works for two contradictory goals; quick screen clear and careful non-kill attacks. A wonderful challenge and (IMHO) a great addition to the game.

Oh, and I love Einhar's voicing and dialog; nice job!

Keep up the excellent work on PoE. I listen to people who play other games that drop poor to useless content once every two years or so, and wonder why they continue to play. In any other game, a drop of the complexity of Bestiary would take years to do and not be nearly as good as this. Be proud of yourself, culler!

I am sorry to say buy this league is really boring. There is absolutely nothing special, you might as well play standard. The pokemon league was a really bad idea. The only way to salvage this league is when you kill a rare beast a breach is opened lmao.

I just started playing Feb 22, and here are my first impressions, positive and negative. I would like to say first, though, that I really like the base game and what it's about. Also, I have only reached lvl 42, so some of my points may be off, but I won't know that until I reach end-game.

Pros:
There is a lot of depth and customization in the game.

There is always a decent amount of players on.

There are several different styles of league to choose from.

There is a new challenge league every 3-4 months.

There is a lot of info on PoE to be found when searching the internet for answers. Not all game's are represented so well.

There is always the standard league if you don't like the current challenge league.

Cons;
You have to spend so much time searching Google for answers because the in-game community is not very friendly to new players in chat. It is a very immature chat. Most players forget that one of the main reasons for playing an online game is being able to seek/provide help in the form of asking/answering questions. Chat is not just for looking as cool as possible by being as rude and immature as possible. For every one helpful answer, there are nine hateful, vulgar, profane and/or sexual-related answers provided. A little moderation, not censorship, is in order.

I wasn't crazy about how the devs gave-in on the new league's mechanic. It certainly needed some improvements, but that is normal for any game and it's new features and mechanics. The devs shouldn't have, however, completely changed how the mechanic was intended to work so quickly. Put out some fixes and patches to improve the fluidity of the mechanic, then give the players a few weeks to adjust their builds/gear to suit the mechanic. Is this a deal-breaker? No, but it's discouraging to know that the devs were willing to change their new mechanic so quickly. Developers need to stick to their vision and decisions, and not be so easily influenced by threats and insults, from either side.

Well, that's it. Sorry if I got long-winded with the cons. They are the same cons I find with most games, so I always have a lot to say about them. ;) Overall, this is a great game. Keep up the good work.

My only concern about this league is that I have no motivation to capture the beast, because when I realize how much effort does it take to craft something (and it's usually useless item) I rather skip it and move on. Just compare it with breach league. You cleared breach and you had tons of items to pick up. Here You capture some rare beast which drops one or two rare items. Then you need to capture another 2 or 3 regular beasts (which drops basically nothing) to complete the recipe and finally when you craft your item it's s..t. Not mentioning that you need to carry and invest in to those nets. And not to mention that sometimes it takes ages to kill the beast because of combination of mods it has (at least for my char so far which is RF Jugg). So basically if there are no ascendancy changes, I would not even know I'm playing a new league.

Each season ggg increase/nerf some things that ruining the game, hope they will open their eyes before...
I respect them for trying to change things, but what's the point if it's to make the game unplayable/unlikable each additionnal season..
Usualy i'm not this kind of player who are flamming gamedev etc... but this time i cannot close my mouth about few points.
What about this season completely boring, bestiary(pokemon) is probably de worst season i ever seen, the challenges requirements are more disgusting each new season ans ask you to play more than 150hours to reach them, that's not challenges, just a game time completion.
The sextants nerf, make them totaly useless or almost.
The new atlas map, now you always have to buy some other maps to continue to play in ... it's boring or you have to lock some maps(without completing them) to reach the specific maps that you want, but in this case you cannot complete all the shaped fragments in red zone. More than 60% of the maps are just disguting, nobody wants to play in.
The elders and their eld/shap maps are totaly useless (never drop something usefull on them in 2 leagues (more than 300 hours played), also only some specific builds can kill them without dying 3 times per try... you made an ascendancy revamp and you said would like that all the class should be great but it's so far to be, for most of them changes are really minor..
There are lot of others points to discuss about but i will stop here,...

Honestly i am really disapointed and i respect the point of view of others players and your but this one is mine, and you can be sure that i will not support you once gain this season cause it's just not deserved from my point of view.
I made my best to be "Nice"
See you in few months.. we'll see..

Glad you seek feedback. I enjoyed the game. Have played one character to level 50 something. Then I ran into the Innocnce boss battle. Died way too many times. leveled 4 more times and saw the trend of how the leveling was slowing down and didn't see any progress in this battle. Have removed the game from my machine. Thanks for listening.

I started playing about a week ago, as a ranger, my first impressions are very good, probably will keep playing the game for a long time.

But i have one big issue with this game. From act 6 foward, those boss fights at the end of each act got really frustrating. Until act 5 defeating a boss was about learning his mechanics and using that against him, but after act 6 they are just killing me with one or two hits. Sometimes i don't even know what killed me.

My last boss fight was against Lunaris and Solaris. Lunaris was a good fight, Solaris was terrible, always 1 hit kill. At a certain point i just gave up on trying to evande her attacks and started doing the highest amount of damage i was capable before dying. Repeated that until she died. She killed me about 10 times, Lunaris didn't kill me once.

.

This post about last impression. 1200h in game and i dont see any reason to play more.
Game is technical disaster, 1fps and disconnects and lagy moskow servers. I dont see any attemps to fix technical problems in 2 years, ggg do nothing about it. Beastiary are final thing push me stop playing, no content, empty red maps, game lost bould variety and all plays 2 rf builds. Good ideas, awesome consept play and its totaly unplayable today. New mtx every day with all thouse problem looks like laugh from ggg on players. Goodluck ggg, its been nice time.
PS:Nonative english.

FEEDBACK (AS REQUESTED) TO GGG.
As a novice to the forums I was looking for a way to reply to GGGs' request for feedback to their LEAGUES post. I play in a different way to most, strictly solo in standard league learning the game by playing, not by researching the forums or Google(unless absolutely stuck) so my comments are skewed by that approach.
INITIAL IMPRESSIONS:
Huge game/very complicated and hard to understand at first/not very welcoming to new players/very poor BASIC info from GGG/ forum seems unwilling to give out any specific basic info (with one exception whose response enabled me to learn how to trade)/skill tree terrific- endless variation/tremendous scope/requires large chunks of time/excellent combination of weapon,defense,skill tree path, jewels, gems,minions, spells etc, etc.
CURRENT IMPRESSIONS (and feedback to LEAGUES post.)

In that post GGG state: "We expect and encourage most players to play in the default leagues..."
(ie Standard, SSF, Hardcore etc)
If that is the case WHY IS SUCH A HUGE PROPORTION OF GGGs' RESOURCES USED FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF LEAGUES?

It seems to me that, apart from extending end game play, Leagues ONLY BENEFIT LONG TERM VERY EXPERIENCED GROUPS OR INDIVIDUALS who, every League, race to Level 90+ in hours and then sell their items to the rest of the player base at inflated prices. POE is a game where you must trade to experience the full range of features.

Imagine the benefit to the MAJORITY of the player base if (say 50%) of GGGs resources were to be devoted to making trading easier so that players could spend their time PLAYING rather than (trying to) Trade.