Thorough feedback from an experienced, but fairly casual player

I have played POE 1 since closed beta from time to time, with 3.13 being my most time played and enjoyed (I didn’t have as much time to play anymore after a few leagues past that).

ARPGs are one of my favorite genres and have played most popular and niche games since my childhood (Diablo, Dungeon SIege, Divine divinity, Sacred, Grim dawn, Titan Quest, Torchlight, Borderlands, Chronicon, Nova Drift, Star Valor, Warframe, Hellgate: London, some others and recently Last Epoch)

I really like the slower and tactical playstyle of POE 2, reminds me of soulslikes. I hope GGG sticks to this vision. I have started as a crossbow mercenary, tried bows for 1 level, but continued my first 3 acts with crossbows and mostly grenades. With investment into cooldown reduction, I could focus on attributes, especially STR and life.

I have made notes during my playtime with POE 2 and would like to present the issues or things that I think are noteworthy and also present possible solutions. But first things that I have noted but will be changed with the next patch:

• Uniques will get better, but they still seem to be far away from build enabling though. I would love to see low/mid level items be more interesting or useful across most levels (some uniques don’t feel special at all and can be easily replaced).
• Runes can now be overwritten: This is just a good change in general, making it easier to fix your gear and slowly upgrade your whole gear over time.
• Armor is getting buffed: More changes are coming soon, but I will mention here that I would like it to be reworked completely and try out other systems compared to POE1. Maybe Armor applies to all hits and not only physical ones? (maybe less effectiveness against elemental ones) Maybe it provides a flat damage reduction value and a scaling % reduction value? Also would like to see PDR changed to physical resistance, so the wording is same as it functions the same.
• Related to armor, I would like to see ES scaling be brought down a lot. Maybe give it some QOL as compensation instead. More on this in the end game section. (when it gets updated)
• There will be changes to the affixes on items, I would love to have T1 being the highest tier again, just to easily spot what the highest mod is/can be. Currently it is hard to distinguish a good mod from mediocre/bad ones.
• Visual clarity is being adjusted, I hope in future they let us turn off MTX from other players and adjust or let us adjust the amount or transparency of effects on screen. This goes also for the magic and rare monsters, I like their effects (and many other effects) having their own visual effect, but often it is still hard to see magic or rare monsters.

Now with the recent stuff mentioned, I would like to list everything in different sections and chronologically. I started my experience after the patch introducing the teleporting checkpoints, A1-A3 without doing any trading or using more than the 4 base tabs during mapping.

Campaign progression

• If the goal is to allow players to craft more, basic currency should be much more common, especially in Act 1 and 2. I only got 1 ex in A1 and 2 ex in A2, in A3 it got much better. (can be adjusted only for those Acts)
• Disenchanting should be made much more apparent from the start, I don’t remember if there was a tutorial, but I only realised it was important to do in the middle of A1 (and I am a more involved player)
• The salvaging bench should be part of every vendor (maybe as a button), so you don’t need to go to different places each time.
• If gems and items are this important, there should be an easier to acquire baseline (otherwise it can be very RNG based). My suggestion would be:
• 1) Receive Boots with movement speed as only mod as a quest reward, this introduces you to crafting. You would get such boots every 1 or 2 acts with better MS.
• 2) Important rares/weapons as quest rewards (possibly a window with a few choices).
• 3) Remove most gem rewards and make those gems be included in vendors. Prevents it being reliant on good drops. The offered level/tier can be slightly lower than dropped ones.
• Quests completed are hard to see and update slowly, also the markers are often in wrong places (other nearby zones)
• All quest rewards that award permanent increases that you choose from should be changeable.

Zone changes

• Generally areas should be 10-30% smaller.
• Map/zone fog reveal should be 2x to 3x as big and reveal the rares around you in that radius. (makes backtracking less of an issue)
• Finding a new zone entrance should activate the teleporter of the next zone if it is near the entrance.
• Underground icon is too similar to the town icon, especially in Act 2 it is very hard to find the encampment everytime it moves. Make the encampment in Act 2 static on the map in one central spot.
• Act 2 Dreadnought areas should be just one area.
• Utzaal is too big and should be split into 2 zones or made much smaller.
• Act 3 past and present zones seem bugged, it should be much easier to switch the timelines.
• When you use the portal button after going into the past, you should appear in the present encampment at all times and not go through the teleporter each time.

Bosses

• Generally bosses shouldn’t oneshot with ok gear, unless maybe really well telegraphed/long wind ups. Bosses could deal multiple big hits instead to allow for small mistakes.
• Rudja: One shots with swing attack even with extra resistance and HP, or requires good movement speed to run away
• Mighty silverfist: One shots even with high life
• Blackjaw: Hard to see AoEs/attacks, can also one shot with lower HP
• Ketzuli: Overall underwhelming fight, attacks are easy to dodge, the visual assets are loading slowly too
• Viper Napuatzi: Spearmen attacks are too fast/hard to dodge

Item changes

• If the systems stay similar to now, I would like to see movement speed implicits on boots and charm slot implicits on belts. As an example, there could be 40% movement speed boots without any defences, or low movement boots with less freeze duration on you or lower slow magnitude on you, etc. Would make the campaign progression much smoother too.
• Not really an issue for the campaign, but if I want to go heavily on strength, I am limited to specific item bases (anything with armor). I am not sure if that is the best way for build variety to do it.
• I think the currencies could be simplified more. Orb of transmutation and augmentation could be one that makes an item magic or adds a mod to a magic item. Regal orb and exalted orb could be unified into one that makes an item rare or adds a mod to a rare item. Alchemy orb could be 3-6 mods, with lower chance of higher mod count, makes it possibly more exciting to use.

System improvements

• Remove sockets from gems and make those sockets be character specific. Makes skill experimentation much easier.
• Skills with flat activation time prevent scaling with attack speed, instead change that into giving a penalty to AS scaling (eg. instead of +1 sec flat, have the skill give penalties to your %AS bonuses)
• Skill disparity is very big, I hope they bring everything in line as more gets added, but currently (as with items) there are clear good and bad skills to use, with not much in between.
• On death effects should only be inherent to specific monsters, not modifiers. There can still be effects that spawn during the fight AND on death. That way it prepares the player during the fight. (or remove altogether)
• All chests/pots should open automatically when near them, currently only happens with some.
• Strongboxes take way too long to spawn and fight, needs major rework.
• You should not be able to outrun the delirium fog, also the visual effects are too strong in the fog, the clarity with breaches is much better in comparison.
• Asset loading, especially atlas and campaign overview maps and skill effects, takes too long.
• I would love to see infinite/9999 stack sizes in the stash tab, with so many currencies it gets full very quickly, especially if you want to play more than 1 character.
• Introduce an account wide quest reward upon completing the campaign for 1 premium stash tab. So that all players can benefit from trading. Or introduce a better trading system. (currently very unfriendly for new players)

I hope the devs take a look at this and can resolve some of these issues.

Thank you for your time reading this

Chris

Endgame

• All end game mechanics should feel rewarding, many don't feel that way yet (strongboxes, deli mirror, ritual, expedition logbooks, etc)
• You should not be able to outrun the delirium fog, also the visual effects are too strong in the fog, the clarity with breaches is much better in comparison.
• Simulacrum is too hard, especially the first difficulties.
• Sustain/recovery could be an issue currently, making it very reliant on flasks. Getting regen, leech, etc is very difficult or impossible. Maybe leech could be for all damage types, or the regen values increased, or more ways to gain recovery. Something feels off here.
• Mana cost scaling of skills is too high, getting cost reduction or conversion should be much easier without spending that many skill points. Now you either stack mana or go blood magic.
• Spirit system feels off, you have not enough to really delve into it, and some builds have too much.
• Unlocking points for non-mapping atlas trees takes way too long, I would like to see something more like this for all mechanics:
• 1) 2 points: Finish 10 maps with that specific completed event (mirror, breach, ritual, expedition)
• 2) 2 points: Collect 1 breachstone/10 logbooks/etc for each
• 3) 2 points: Complete one boss encounter
• 4) 2 points: Complete one boss encounter at max difficulty
• Finding the bosses or splinters takes way too long, breach might be the only one that feels ok. Couldn't find any ritual or logbook boss, and my simulacrum is only half way complete.
• And/or make most of the items from those mechanics start dropping starting with T1 maps.
• Citadels are too hard to find, I only have seen one, even after the change. The mapping and citadel search are at odds with each other.
• The tablet/mapping system needs rework, maybe removing the towers and them automatically unlocking when traveling nearby could be one way to improve it.
• Expedition gambling rarely offers any decent options.

Updated list also can be seen on reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile2/comments/1ilqbry/my_thorough_feedback_to_ggg/

Currency stash tab (and premium stash tab, it's in the name even) is basically the "premium" version of the game, you can't really expect an F2P game to be completely free without some friction to encourage you into the shop

I know the EA costs money, but that comes with enough points to improve your experience with the stash

@Strangehill#1736 I hear this argument all the time, I still think that doesn't really justify the poor experience. Even with only 1 premium stash tab you will be at a huge disadvantage compared to multiple quad stash tabs. The currency stash tab presents everything in a nice way (same with other currency tabs) and also offers a space to craft, plenty of reasons to buy it. Letting anything stackable go to 9999 would make everything just so much easier to manage. I hope you understand

I do, but I also understand why they've chosen to do it this way rather than paywall the entire game

I am just presenting a way to improve the experience, it was done this way with the start of poe 1, I believe it can be revised with Poe 2, since it is only a little bit extra. I am not asking to let you buy extra stash tabs with your ingame gold.

"

chrisstian5#0506 schrieb:

@Strangehill#1736 I hear this argument all the time, I still think that doesn't really justify the poor experience. Even with only 1 premium stash tab you will be at a huge disadvantage compared to multiple quad stash tabs. The currency stash tab presents everything in a nice way (same with other currency tabs) and also offers a space to craft, plenty of reasons to buy it. Letting anything stackable go to 9999 would make everything just so much easier to manage. I hope you understand

If people had infinitely stacking currencies in any tab, no one would ever buy any of the currency tabs (I definitely wouldn't have).

You can arrange the items in your tab any way you want. With infinitely stacking currencies, quick-stashing them from inventory would place all your currencies in their respective slots in the tab, making currency tabs worse than redundant, because a single stash tab would be able to accommodate basically all the important currencies in the game.

I agree with basically everything in your feedback, even giving people a free premium tab so that they can benefit from trading without having to resort to 3rd party add-ons (not an extra tab, just make one of the free ones a premium one).

I just wanted to address your argument about the currency tabs.

Updated with endgame feedback, a refined version can be seen on reddit as well (making nice lists here is not doable)