Feedback considering new average players and the current endgame system

Hello!

I played POE2 on EA launch till i was capable of doing 15 maps on monk lightsaber HF HT, it was fun, but several issues and excessive punishing designs made me wait to come back and try again when druid became a playable class. Some things got way better, others are still terrible imho so here goes some different feedback for areas of the game.

I never played POE1, so my point of view is quite "neutral" and casual from an ARPG player. My most played ARPG were by far D3 and Torchlight2.

From what i understood POE2 was supposed to be quite different from POE1, running around while auras and crazy screen clutter cleared everything in the map never caught me as something interesting or relevant gameplay wise. As i lvled my first go trough POE2 with the monk, i learned the hardway, what stats were relevant and how i could get them in my gear. I read zero guides till i was doing T5 maps.

POE2 is clearly a CRAFTING and TRADING game. Drops are irrelevant for most of the game, i want to get something and upgrade it with LAYERS UPON LAYERS UPON LAYERS OF RNG.

That does not feel rewarding

For most of my gameplay with the monk on .1 and now the druid with .4 storywise and endgame wise, i changed my weapons around 3 times. Once i got 2 good stats on a weapon, it became ABSURDLY impossible to replace it until i was at least 20 levels in doing t5+ maps.

From a gaming reward structure system, that is ULTRA LOW.

Yes i was buying from rng vendors, yes i was trying to roll with some orbs to at least get a decent magic weap or chest or whatever. And considering my builds on both characters there were 6 main villains.

- Resistances
- +%dmg
- Attkspeed
- Movement speed
- Skill lvl
- Spirit

I understand how juiced and op things can get, but if i'm not trading, be it by option or going on SSF, the game just doesn't give you anything good at any decent rate.

How come am i doing t15 maps with 2 tablets and a lot of my gear drops are lvl 40-50s gear? I'm lvl 90...

At least 80% of what i get is basically vendored, sharding is pmuch useless for me atm so much garbo i have.

This isn't fine, in any way, in any game.


I'll divide the game per parts so i'm not repeating myself on certain areas:


Story/lvling: Playing on my druid i can say you guys made things pretty decent, scaling, pacing felt MUCH better then .1 I highly suggest diminishing the size of the maps and dropping more skill gems, new players will get stuck on some parts and that will feel really bad considering how many resources the game DOESNT GIVE YOU early on. Increase gold, skill gem and some baseling class items and things will be even better!


Ascension and trials:

The main issue - The currency to attempt is used and you lose it, that's the entire problem of everything. Let us buy with gold ascension ones from the vendor after beating the initial quest ones and let the others that reward economy stuff be random drops, that would at least make things less problematic.

Sekhemas: Too long, it's boring and way too long. Honour and most of the stuff is just terrible for melee characters, most of my runs are basically, let me avoid everything and get to the end. That's not a trial, it's just an avoiding game, just unfun. The theme, bosses and areas are great, the way it's set up, it's not.

Chaos: Everything is just a debuff, let me choose what i can ignore to try and burn stuff down to get to the end and just die to a 1 shot over the clutter of graphics. I'm psure you guys didn't test playing a bear druid on all the debuffs on average gear, if you did, the trial wouldn't have the options it have. Feels it was just vibe coded.

Endgame:

Getting decent gear feels really bad, as i posted above. I think it was at least 18 hours till i saw 3-5 good items because i got ULTRA LUCKY ROLLS with an exalted orb. If i had a bad roll, guess what, i'd have maybe 1 good item after 18 hours.

The way we access extra bosses with the currency from breaches, rituals, etc is pretty decent. I was really happy to know i could try Xesht several times after my druid rampage bugged on the wall and he hit me from 7 miles away from where i thought i was. Trying bosses again shouldn't be such a big deal honestly, but apparently it is in citadels? I fail a citadel i gotta rng find it again, that's just too much work and rng to actually feel i'm progressing considering the amount of time/hours i have to play.

There are a lot of interesting types of content to farm stuff up on endgame, atlas points feel a bit too much and just more rng to waste time on.

My biggest gripe is how, aside from tablets, i can't really focus much on anything besides the rng i get in random maps.

Oh hey go buy stuff, then you can farm more, but here you got no divines? Can't spend 50 hours a week grinding? Better luck next time.....


Temple of Vaal:

Confusing and bugged. I was hyped to check this league mechanic, the Vaal and all the lore/theme really got me hyped during the story gameplay i had on both times, but this temple was a complete mess. There are many posts about it but my biggest issue is still the same:
Bugged terrain, terrible scaling and random 1 shots. It feels every week you guys are hotfixing stuff up, sometimes i run in and delete all the mobs inside, same amount of rooms, same amount of stuff. I do the exact same thing (none of the exploitative shenanigans we know people been doing), out of the blue my rampage isn't stunning the bosses, my totems are just not stunning??????????????????? What happened? A random buff they got? Some random stuff? I die, go back in, oh wait now everything works and i just insta delete a boss or some rares? Like i HONESTLY HAVE NO IDEA, what i know it's that i'm not lagging because when i'm lagging i can see the characters rubber banding, this is just straight terrain or hitbox bugs. And the temple is OBSCENELY full of it.
If i do a lot of dmg but don't force a boss into a second phase i get 9-7 spells worth of scripts in a row with boss pmuch stuck in a corner bugged, like how is that even a thing? I killed atziri and her aoe killed me, then i'm stuck unable to release i see her necklace drop, i can release after rp, go back, doryiany blows the portal, oh look i'm out of the necklace, can't open the chests, lost all my temple, great design, WHY DO I EVEN NEED THE NECKLACE IF IM STUCK OUT OF THE ROOM IT DROPS WHEN I KILLED HER? My dmg just changed witouth me changing my spec, my gear or the type of rooms i setup when i farmed her for currency, some hotfix just bugged her 2 days ago and it's still going.


Druid:

Needs more work, several passives bugged, ABSURD PATHING ISSUES!!!!!!!

I start rampaging, some rare or a boss hits me, i do a 360 bugged spin, start running all over the place where the server isn't showing me where my character is to me, get hit by 1 billion different things, get randomly stuck, stop casting even with nothing hitting me, A LOT OF BUGS.

You guys really need to fix aoe, terrain, running, jumping, etc. I lost at least 7-8lvls worth of xp dying to super bugged mobs due to how terrible pathing and npc ai worked against each other.

Some spells and gems only work or have a place in the game if i have god tier gear/scaling. That's just bad design.



SCALING AND HOW ENDGAME FEELS LIKE

During several parts of the endgame, just feels i'm kinda jogging, i run over stuff to see it dead, collect barely anything remarkable, rinse repeat.

I'm not sure what you guys want POE2 to be, i can safely say i had more fun during lvling and story then i am having in endgame. In story i can see what the bosses do, i can plan some stuff and swap skills and that won't be so catastrophic to my build.

In endgame i basically have to quadruple down into some stats and do so much crazy crafting and god tier slotmachine gambling, to a point i don't even need to look at what a boss is casting, like why? The entire part of the game should be about my build working against bosses but not to the point i delete them.

Affixes on monsters should make me have plans, swap stuff up. But if i get 1 shot by 5-7 orbs or a small patch of fire basically drains my ES and HP in 3 ticks, like what am i even supposed to do if the npc have teleport, mana drain and path of fire?

The game currently feels to me that i gotta be above this one tier of gear, where i can just speed farm and ignore everything, or learn a way to farm divines decently and just trade so i can get to that tier of gear.

That's not rewarding gameplay! Not even close.

Please reconsider the structure of rewards, the visuals and gameplay overall are phenomenal for this game. The rest really isn't.


So as a brief summary for the main points:

- less stats in gear that are dealbreakers in getting anything to drop and feel it matters
- Scaling really needs to be reworked
- Ascension and trials need a rework
- Excessive punishments for 1 shots and whatnot feels random and unfair, even at 75% all resists, how's that even a thing
- Dying to a boss and just losing the entire shot at retrying it is excessively punishing
- More control isn't bad, just make people want to try other classes and play the game more. Knowing i could be lvling a necromancer to spend another 30 hours to get 3-5 good items, just makes me not even bother.

-DEATHLOG - We need to know what's going on for the ultra dmg and random deaths so we can understand what's going on.

Thanks for reading till here! I do hope you guys make the game even better!

Good feedback, +1
Although I've been hearing this for months and not many if any changes. Maps did get smaller but now we also have less mobs so the maps feel even more empty.