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

I'll add to the group indicating the timers on the new league are terrible. Casual gamer, and have been with PoE since beta. This game used to be fun casually, but has become more frustrating to the casuals as time has gone on.

Only way for me to not rage quit now is to play with my kids-- whichever of us sees a stone yell across the room to whomever's instance it is for them to hopefully open a door while the others try to buy time. Not being able to pick up stones and open doors in other's instances, or use altars is a dumb idea too. SSF (or even solo) is a joke, since I can't clear a room fast enough, grab a stone and run to the door that needs opening in time. 1 of 4 temples opened so far I could get to the top. 3 of 4 found me shouting at my monitor for lack of time-- loud enough to spook my cat. And the randomness she gives you a room is, well, random.

And before you all yell 'better builds! better gear! blah blah blah....' I'm casual, and the depth of the skill tree makes it so you shouldn't need a 'select path only' as defined by elite you-tubers/streamers per character to actually play.

just my 2 cents.

-Z

Hi,

I'm not a new player but I need to share with the staff my first impression (remains the same until today) about Lab.

It's boring, frustrating and it's an obligation. Is it possible to suggest another way to earn Ascendancy point? Lab is really a burden for me and I'm sure I'm not the only one in this case.

You do a wonderful work on your game btw, it's make with heart and it's a pleasure to dive into all this love.

Been playing the game for about a week now, first time playing PoE ever so here is some of my personal feelings thus far.

1. Difficulty Scaling - The game does not really do that great of a job at explaining the importance of resistance at all. At best, you get the message of being permanently debuffed by -20% completing the first part of the game. But, before that even happens, the ease of things jumps rapidly from being a cakewalk to being 1 shot constantly with no warning. I'm cool with things staying the way they are, but more focus and encouragement to gear for resistance's should come from the game itself, than me having to ask in global chat and get flammed for being new. The few helpful players will immediately tell you to gear for 75% resists (Cold, Fire, Lightning) and ignore Chaos. Where is this info in the game? Why should I have to ask other players for this info?

2. What Killed Me? - Something annoying to me is that I have no idea what kills me half the time. There's no log for combat, no info on my death other than the chat log saying I was slain. This isn't helpful at all for new players trying to learn the mechanics and various threats in this game. I can't tell you how many times I'd just fall over dead thinking "What the fuck?" to myself with nothing near me, but the game says I was slain. It would be extremely helpful to have more information on what killed us. Or a full-on combat log.

3. Terrible Drops - I've leveled 3 characters so far, all of which seem to get the exact same drops. I constantly get bows. On all 3 characters, nothing but bows. I am honestly wearing almost nothing I've found on my own cause of this. Most of my gear comes from my guildmates hand-me-downs because I have found literally nothing of use for my characters. Of the small handful of Unique items I have gotten, more than half of them have been Bows. I'm all for having to farm and earn gear, but when this is all I am getting on 3 separate characters, this is kind of stupid.

4. Better Control Binds - How come I can't have multiple keys do the same thing? Why does PoE only allow me to set 1 key to an action? This feels like a 1990's design choice.

5. Better Communication On Allowed Third-Party Tools - There does not seem to be a specific location I can go to for a list of what is and isn't allowed/approved. This game seems to have a very strange manner of what it allows and what it considers 'illegal'. Some macros and automated things are allowed while others aren't. But where is a list that defines this? We should have a list of approved tools so I know what I'm interested in using isn't going to randomly get me banned. Going to a tools site and seeing them quote a random post from a dev ages ago mid-topic of some random thread is really not that assuring that something is safe to use.

6. Ability To Buy Inventory Space - So we have a cash shop for more stash space and such. Why not inventory space? With how bad drop rates are I find myself having to rely more on trading, which means I need all the materials I can get to afford anything. Having to make constant trips back to town kind of sucks cause a few 2hd weapons fills your inventory entirely.

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Now for some unpopular opinions cause I know the community has strong feelings on some of this.

1. Auction House - I think an auction house would be much better suited than the current trade system. However, I don't think the AH should be stocked with anything BUT what players find. This would be like trading is already, just with a middleman to handle the trade for us. Nothing non-player-found would be on the AH. So there is no argument to say its a game killer, it literally does nothing but be a middle man for the trade that would have taken place anyway.

Trading so far in this game has been a nightmare. 90% of the time people don't respond, have DND on, or fake list things with an auto-reply saying "Haha fuck you." or something on that line. I landed up having a guildmate sell me a 6link body they were still using cause I was having no luck at all with trading for 2 days straight. As a new player, this almost made me quit because I couldn't progress further without relying on others.

2. Better Drop Rates - While I understand the game is to farm and find things, that has not happened yet for me across 3 characters. (2 Lv70, 1 almost 50.) Of all 3 of my characters, 1 is wearing something I found. The rest of the gear on all 3 are from my guildbank. If I started this game solo I would have already quit because I literally find nothing of use for my classes. I'm not asking for Diablo 3, fully geared in an hour, drop rates, but some better adjustments focused towards the class I'm playing would be nice. Like I mentioned above, I constantly get bows. Nothing but bows..

3. Addons / Customizations - It would be nice to be able to have some addons similar to WoW for some stuff. As many playrs have said, tooltips in this game are near useless and give wrong information. The character sheet is next to useless for actual stat information such as DPS not being anywhere close to my real DPS. Having tooltips with better information would be nice, along with stat compares and such. All of which could be user made with addons.

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As it stands now for me, I really like this game. I want to keep playing this for a while, but the feeling of having to rely on others sucks. I want to enjoy the game alone and not depend on other players for basic things like simple information or even gear cause RNG hates me.

I would like to post my "first impression" about ... the forum. I don't use it that much, after 9 month of playing the game. Today (as I already did before) I wanted to see if there was some answer to my posts or my topics. No way to have access to that. Ok, so lets tweak into some search using my aka and opening each answer in a brower tab : search absolutly non functionnal, giving 2 answers among the several post I did so far (and it's not a limitation with time or section). And one of them is not even my own, it's a quote by another player.

SERIOUSLY I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS ANYWERE (and I've been on the net for more than 25 years now). Even bulletin boards were more functionnal than this. Even a teenager can set up a phpbb.

POE is said to be player oriented, but how the hell do you manage to communicate with your players using complete dysfunctionnal tools ?
(get some http://www.mesdiscussions.net/ or whatever)

Now I have to make my search semi manually, using my web browser search function. Seriously, as time pass on I have more and more doubt about "GGG legend" I was sold by friends and on the net.

"

Atlantis_arch wrote:

I would like to post my "first impression" about ... the forum. I don't use it that much, after 9 month of playing the game. Today (as I already did before) I wanted to see if there was some answer to my posts or my topics. No way to have access to that. Ok, so lets tweak into some search using my aka and opening each answer in a brower tab : search absolutly non functionnal, giving 2 answers among the several post I did so far (and it's not a limitation with time or section). And one of them is not even my own, it's a quote by another player.

SERIOUSLY I HAVEN'T SEEN THIS ANYWERE (and I've been on the net for more than 25 years now). Even bulletin boards were more functionnal than this. Even a teenager can set up a phpbb.

POE is said to be player oriented, but how the hell do you manage to communicate with your players using complete dysfunctionnal tools ?
(get some http://www.mesdiscussions.net/ or whatever)

Now I have to make my search semi manually, using my web browser search function. Seriously, as time pass on I have more and more doubt about "GGG legend" I was sold by friends and on the net.

Really ?

Incursion League is really great! I hope that after this league you can retain Alva and the Temple and add them to the permanent content of POE. THANKS!

OK, having finished the Acts and being now in the Epilogue with one of half a dozen characters, I thought I'd give a bit of feedback on first impressions. I can see this is a huge timesink of a game, and really I've only just started, but just on what I've experienced so far:-

The four things this game has going for it that are truly great are the art design, graphics and general visual/audio flair; the combat skills implementation (I mean in-combat, fx, etc.); the build system, which is really, really deep and fascinating; and of course the excellent loot implementation. These four factors together make it a hell of an addictive game, and I honestly don't have much in the way of complaints in any of these four areas from an objective standpoint (although for personal gripes see later).

I'd say where the game's lacking is in four areas:- The biggest problem is the networking glitches, the lag spikes, etc., which are incredibly irritating in a game like this. Lesser problems are:- the surprising bumps in difficulty (one-shots that come out of nowhere, etc); concurrent with that, lack of in-game explanation of the uses of things, the things you can do and need to do in combat (the help is really lacking and it's a bit annoying to have to go out of the game to get better explanations, I think a smoother induction and progression would be better, but I get that's a ROI thing for developers); and lots and lots of little QOL irritations.

Tbqh, it's the QOL stuff that annoys me the most, e.g. little things like: not fully customizable keybind/alt keybind controls, irritating old school movement system. Why can't I just STOP when I take my finger OFF the bloody move key (or off the left-click-to-move), why does the character HAVE to mosey on to the point where the cursor was? Just to honour an older, clunkier system? Please give the option of release key/Lmouse to stop!!!

A personal preference I have is that I hate things like boss fights that you have to "learn" in stories in order to progress, but I understand it's a traditional gaming thing, and it's necessity for the game to have good, characterful, tricksy boss fights, I just generally don't like that sort of thing, as someone who's into games for the trance state not the challenge, I usually prefer just mindless slaughter with only slight bumps in difficulty.

What really fascinates me about the game most is the build system, and the way you can dream up your own synergies and things - it's just a shame that (judging by the popular/advanced builds) the game ends up having a few uber builds/variations that everyone makes, and all the interesting builds you could make just aren't as effective ultimately. But again, that's not a sin of this particular game, most games get like that after a certain age.

Anyway, it's a wonderful game that I've really enjoyed so far. I don't have as much time to put into it as it deserves in order to get the most out of it, but I've really have fun with what I've played.

As a newish player, it's kind of odd to see friendly NPCs (masters and Alva) being next to monsters with no interaction between them.

If making these NPCs actually fight monsters would cause problems, how about giving these NPCs some kind of fear aura that keeps native monsters a reasonable distance away?

"

PoofySleeves wrote:

As a newish player, it's kind of odd to see friendly NPCs (masters and Alva) being next to monsters with no interaction between them.

If making these NPCs actually fight monsters would cause problems, how about giving these NPCs some kind of fear aura that keeps native monsters a reasonable distance away?

I'm glad somebody brought that up.
I wish those NPC were into some "safe" areas, like elevated ground or something, or mechanics such as what you are suggesting.

"

Fruz wrote:

"

PoofySleeves wrote:

As a newish player, it's kind of odd to see friendly NPCs (masters and Alva) being next to monsters with no interaction between them.

If making these NPCs actually fight monsters would cause problems, how about giving these NPCs some kind of fear aura that keeps native monsters a reasonable distance away?

I'm glad somebody brought that up.
I wish those NPC were into some "safe" areas, like elevated ground or something, or mechanics such as what you are suggesting.

That's a good thought. Like Helena when you first encounter her hiding near Fidelitas, or Navali in her cage.