Semi-casual feedback

For context I'm a semi-casual player (dad with job). I have a 97 wolf druid and started the game with Abyss league. Never played POE1.


A. General requested changes:

1. Headhunter needs to be more common so it can be cheaper on the market. It's such a fun piece of equipment and takes the entire experience of the game to the next level. I could not afford it last league and my experience of the game was better this league because of my headhunter.

2. Please make it easier to get to level 100. As a semi-casual player this is taking way too long and I am a completionist so I want to be able to do this. The amount of character power you get from the last few levels is not that much so this should not be that big of a deal. I would be fine if you did this in STANDARD LEAGUE ONLY to keep the leaderboard challenge during the active league.

3. Please dissociate rarity on gear from raw currency drops, or remove it from the game altogether. I prefer the latter, giving up character power for magic find has felt bad since I was a teenager and that was 3 decades ago. Over-dropping currency is a major cause of over-inflation. See below regarding currency sinks.

4. Armor and evasion still do not work well enough for endgame. Please fix the formulas for these two global defenses and add additional defensive options like skill/spirit gems and skill tree keystones. I'm not a game designer so I can see the problem but don't know the best solution. Changing the 10 to a 5 in the armor mitigation formula might be enough. Life stacking as the solution would probably feel bad and basically be pseudo energy shield.

5. Please allow unlimited attempts on the citadels... the only thing I COMPLETELY HATED this league was failing a citadel. If you need to keep a penalty just wipe the floor of loot and delete map modifiers that would juice the boss loot after the first failure, but let us try again.



B. Crafting is currently in a terrible state. I have never gone to my workbench in my basement planning to create a toy for my son and accidentally made a picture frame. Gambling as a primary crafting system is just bad. I know that some degree of RNG is necessary, but more ways to direct the process are needed. Suggestions:

1. More mechanics to make a small piece of the crafting process semi-deterministic should be added. Desecration is a perfect example of this because you can always Echo for a retry or Light Annul for more retries.

2. The cost of necessary items for crafting is prohibitively expensive. Any item that is necessary for endgame crafting should be made more common. I recommend increasing the drop rates of things like annulment orbs by 5-10% per league until you hit a sweet spot. Crafting omens are also too rare. Essences and runes feel like they are in a good spot.

3. Allow me to transmute augmentation orbs into greater augmentation orbs and greater augmentation orbs into perfect augmentation orbs, both at a ratio of 10:1. Same for transmutation, regal, exalt, and chaos orbs. This will help to sink the currencies combating inflation and perfect orbs would be more available for crafting.

4. Fix modifier and/or currency levels so that perfect orbs can never give you worse than a T2 modifier.

5. The immured fury should show up in every 5th or 6th cleansed map consistently. I should get at least 1 every time I clear a Nexus of Corruption. "Fracturing Orb" is a setup mechanic and does not directly contribute to item power, so it should LET ME PICK which modifier is fractured. Every player in this game can easily get a few fracturing orbs and making them easy to use without the possibility of bricking your item would be extremely good for new players trying to craft.

6. Create other map modifier bosses like the immured fury, preferably one with cold and one with lightning element for balance. Incorporate into the atlas through a means other than cleansing corruption but keep their commonality similar. (Atlas needs content after all) They should also come with good crafting orbs like the fracturing orb. I have thought about what crafting mechanics would be good for these and could only come up with one - "Contracting Orb" from the cold element boss that doesn't exist yet - basically an orb of annulment that lets you pick which modifier to remove but prevents that modifier from being added to the item again - so you can't remove a T2 flat damage to try to reroll a T1 flat damage but you could remove a damage modifier if you were really going for more level of skills. Contraction should be limited to 1 use per item to prevent cheese.

7. Improve the odds of getting a desired modifier using catalyzing exaltation. If you do this, the drop rate of catalysts will likely need to be increased.

8. Improve the odds of successful item recombination.



C. Quality of life requests:

1. I'm 45 years old and my vision is not what it used to be! Please make the icons on the Unique Stash Tab look more distinct and iconic. For example, the gloves icon does not look like a hand and the curve at the end of the staff is very subtle. Make these easier to see.

2. Please fix unique item names so they don't start with the word "the". If I'm looking for a unique item on the tab, I can go by the first letter to help me find the item I'm looking for but it's a pain if there are a ton of "the" items.

3. Add a "Send to Hideout" feature - allow me to send items to my stash from within a map if there is a tab available that has the affinity and room for the item. Make this a button hold on controller so I don't fat finger this accidentally.

4. Create stash tab affinities for each type of weapon and armor (e.g. "maces" "boots"). This will allow the stash to auto sort for the player as you add items.

5. Sort button for stash tabs, preferably by size and then base type.

6. Auto-send-to-stash for currency items as I pick them up.

7. Allow me to use currency items in my stash on map mechanics like strongboxes. Show me how many I have as I make the decision to use.

8. Ange should always be able to see what is in my stash. Now I have to cycle through my tabs before I go to her to sell stuff.


Thank you to anyone who took the time to read all of this. I'm newish so some of this might be off, please reply with agreements/disagreements, preferably with rationale so I can learn from the reply. :)

I'll just say I read it, thanks for supplying your feedback will comment more later.

I like 100 being a stretch goa. However! it should come with greater rewards, I have another post here and the suggestion is basically give us ~24 more passive points as a reward.
Diablo IV made 100 easy and it made it worse, then they dropped it from 100 to like 60 which made it even worse.

Agreed on crafting, love your analogy with the picture frame.

Agreed on Armor and Evasion, Armor is "almost" there, decrease the amount of diminishing returns at the top and get rid of the movement penalty for armor.
All the defenses should still feel different enough.

Disagree on Headhunter, this is a chase item and it's actually not too difficult to get (even in previous seasons), you can Orb of Chance or save up to afford it.

I like a percent of our crafting to be deterministic and tying that to unique bosses on maps seems fine.
I like this season because currency is so prevalent that we can actually use it for intended purposes, so either keep Temple as a good way to generate currency OR if you nerf it, increase currency drop rates or give a deterministic way of acquiring as suggested.