Third Impressions

I've been playing PoE since its beta, as something of a hardcore casual. I'm not deep into the 'competitive' aspect of the game (nor was I during the ladder in D2), but play pretty frequently and approach the game with a more 'hardcore' mentality of what's good or bad, this is more just a general first impressions about the newest addition to the game with forsaken masters. These are in no particular order, and is pretty long.

Overall Gameplay
Path of Exile keeps its core game play, which I was worried would fade or become muddled after a while, but GGG has managed to keep true to their intent, as well as keeping transactions from interfering or diminishing game play. I'm not sure how you guys are making your dime, but I hope you are making plenty to keep the game going for keeping money out of the game play equation. I can't express enough how good this stand point is for the longevity of the game.

Hideouts
While I was fairly unimpressed with the hideouts as an idea for the game (coming form someone who -loooved- Dimensions in Rift for nothing but a decoration fest), they felt a little out of place in a hack and slasher. But they're nice. Just the ability to have a spot to put your stash where you want it or for me who had a constant habit of clicking on the wrong stash, to be able to put them in very distinct spots. However, there are still some odd problems in it.
--Items need a Z access placement. It's really weird to have a table or desk lay empty, with letters and books laying over the floor.

--All Decorations that obviously should have a collision need one. I know there are a few fallen columns and derbies that I can walk right through despite the stones coming up past my waist.

--Decorations need a better place, either the ability to re-arrange them in the hideout panel, or a way to ditch decor you either just don't want (bought by mistake or simply to see what they where). Even if it's for only a very minor favor return (10% of buy value) or just ID scraps, just a way to get rid of what you don't really want without a total loss would be nice. On the same thought, an ability to preview them wouldn't be terrible (but that's a much more technically complex endevour). A last mention of Decorum, it might not be a bad idea to allow one to buy decor items from masters not in the hideout. It's a nice and otherwise 'useless' feature that many people will never get a full view of because their master choices will always be for the betterment of their character, not their decorations.
--Crafting tables should be offered when you can invite a master into your hideout. It's not obvious at first that you keep the crafting table after the master is dismissed, and once you realize it, you want to put all of the tables in your hideout to use. This then requires an annoying and costly tedium of inviting and dismissing them. As a smaller nit pick on the tables, I'd change Caterina's table to something else. it's really strange to have the others, which more or less blend in with most areas and the other tables, while hers looks really out of place in any interior or artificial hide out.

--Quests; Daily quests suuuuuper need to have their level be based on the character which accepts and starts them. Grinding low quests to get a crafter up a bit when the mobs are level 30 and I'm 70 is not exciting and feels like work since there is no risk. Meanwhile, I get an MMO grind feel out of it if I want to play a lower, newer character, but I can't do my dailies on that character because they're not the same level as my main (or where ever that character is). This is even more true with trying to get friends into the game, now they can't group up for my dailies because they're too high level for those characters.

--Masters themselves; the crafting element of adding a single enchantment to an item is really well done. The enchantments are pretty desirable in general. I'd definitely look at allowing the crafted enchantment to be a separate thing not bound by normal enchant limits, so all items could have their max prefixes and suffixes and a crafted one. I'd still limit how stacking the same enchant works, and simply allow the crafter enchantment to overwrite the older (presumably weaker) version of it (So for example, if you have an armor that is otherwise good but only has +20% armor, so you could use your crafting enchant to make it a +100%, but it would not make it a +120% armor). This adds a desperately needed element into PoE which is control over items, to which there is virtually none, even removal or re-rolls are meaningless if all you want to do is pull off a single property (though Vorici helps control a great deal, as one of my big issues was trying to simply get a right color of sockets). Lastly, there needs to be a way to remove crafting enchants much sooner. Because there isn't, I've often simply not used them, knowing (or suspecting) they'd have a better version of the same enchant down the line. This means until you hit max (or at least a high) level with a master, that master's crafting is effectively a dead feature that you should never use. The ability to remove crafting mods should be a level 2 or 3 ability at a moderate cost (an orb of Scouring? It's pricey for a step back, but it's something, I actually think the price should be more in line with 10 to 15 transmutes).

--So as a final thought, one of the things I like about PoE, and disliked about D3 (and to an extent, TL2), is Character unification. What I mean by this is that you're account matters more than your character. This is done with things like Shared stashes, which is fine, it's easy to ignore that to people like me who want their characters to be more individualized apart from each other. However, with forsaken masters, it's taken a step closer to a unified account, since you only get one hideout for all of your characters (along with one master rep per account). I'm sure I'm in the minority for this, but I'd love to be able to split the masters and have a hideout and rep level for each different character. Naturally at this point it would have to be an opt it, and I doubt that sort of an implementation is really practical post launch, but just my 2 . . . Wait, why don't keyboards have a cent sign ><

Leagues
While I haven't had the chance to do the Beyond league, I have been doing a lot of Rampage. While it adds a very 'arcade' feel to the game, which can be fun, particularly when grouped with friends, I actually hope this doesn't make it into the core game (for that very reason). It does step away from the core of PoE, and even single player always makes me feel like I'm in a rush, that I don't have time to sit and think since I'm losing out on potential by not kill chaining. It'd make a great race element, or a thing to throw in for some maps, but I feel it pulls away from the core feel of the game, pulling away from the dark, gritty world.

Graphical Clarity
This was a huge problem in D3, which is graphical clarity. It's really easy to go nuts with a spell's appearance, but it can quickly just drown out the battlefield with 'eye candy' that quickly becomes clutter keeping the player from seeing what's going on. While PoE is hardly the worst offender I've seen with this, it becomes very apparent with some shrines, the lightning nova and fire storm ones in particular. In addition, there are several effects, like the frost totems in Haku's areas where it's extremely hard to judge their area of effect, hitting further that they appear they do. The rampage league effects are similar, particularly since you're often knee deep in dudes to try and keep the rampage going, bury all that in the normal ability clutter and action, it's really easy to lose track of what's what, or where you are.
As an addendum to this, something of the ten-thousand dollar question in all of these sorts of games is camera angle. It's always awful to fight southward. Is it unthinkable to simply put a directional toggle for the camera? Just press and the camera inverts so the angle is better while southward? Unlike camera zoom, it doesn't help ranged characters, and it keeps your field of vision the same overall, but you don't lose sight range while fighting or exploring at a southward vector.

Loot Spotting
While pretty minor, since the game has an automatic version of it built in, it would be a nice thing to add qualifiers for what auto-displays for drops. For example, right now the game always shows currency 4link items, rares or better, and maps (among a few other things). But it would be nice to have a check list that saved with each character (or account wide) so you could add or remove things while leveling about items you don't care about, or things you specifically might care about (like, show rapiers of higher level than mine with 3Links, show items with BRG), etc.

Story time!
So with Forsaken Masters I started a Scion, having done many of the other classes with builds I thought where cool, Scion was a bit different for me given her freedom, the reason I shied away from playing one. That aside, why do no other characters have those added little comments, like when inspecting the weathered stones in Act 1, or any sort of plot relevant comments (such as her comment after beating Brutus, or when talking to Piety)? Like I realize she was added after the other six, but it still feels like the other six only get half the story. On the same line, a few of the scions comments do not pair up with what was said to her with Piety, particularly the pre-brutus encounter with her. Piety says something about how it's a pity he's not going to leave anything left, then the Scion goes into this tirade about how she doesn't know who she is anymore. It has nothing to do with what was just spoken at her.
--Plot Hole: So, first, there is a difference between plot hole and left vague, and GGG actually does a great job world building and just making an interesting setting, I hope they leave the mystery and intrigue they've got going. Second, I realize PoE is a game first and a story second, but the horrifically bad story of D3 drove enough players away, whatever merits the game may have had.
There is a pretty major plot hole, and it's actually a game play issue too. It begins at the end of act 1, where your 'driving objective' is lowering the barricade to help the exiles of Lionseye get inland. This sort of wrap around quest that starts and ends in act 1, but goes through act 2 is fine, but right as you get into the city of act 2, you go mess around with unrelated things, because its most efficient to take the eastward quests (and judging by the mob levels, its the way you plan on having them go, since driving straight to lowering the barricade is really hard). Presenting the player with a more obvious reason why they are delaying the attempt at lowering Shevornnes Barricade would be a great idea (or shifting the level of those zones so it is your first objective.
Now that isn't exactly a plot hole, but after you do that, you're going through the Vaal ruins. I get why they want the player to go through there, to break the Vaal seal and activate the pyramid and the Oversoul, BUT there's no clear reason why we have to go through the ruins. Obviously people live north of it, it's accessible enough that Oak raids from the north side. This can easily be fixed by adding a quest dialog from Erameir (or better yet, Helena) about how Piety has a blockade established that has cut off the normal route. You could even show the player this by changing the encampment at Shevronnes barricade having mobs the player at that point can't hope to beat (a solid fortified wall with tons of zone level +5 to 7 blackguards and a unique with invulnerable minions if they dare try the head on approach). As it stands, Oak would have to pass through the Vaal Ruins any time he wants to go raiding, Piety cut through there and then the tree overgrew to block the passage on her way to Sarn? Or there's an obvious road and the character read the script and stuck with it.


Overall the game is still great and a ton of fun, I hope it continues along the lines it's been developing on, with more gems and interesting and versatile builds, I also hope they manage to add some additional acts and story elements down the road (along with voice overs for the current additions of lore bits they added to several bosses with forsaken masters).

Good post, I agree on many issues:

offer crafting tables at L3, quest level for masters (why isnt's this a bug?), earlier level master scouring, customizing loot spotting, the second quest hole (make the Wetlands on this side of the Vaal Ruins and have the Vaal Ruins lead into the Dread Thicket->Caves, by the way, it sucks to do the outside sequences after the Vaal Ruins in the dark).

I like the Rampage feature the more I play it, getting used to ignoring it when I want to. If its made permanent, maybe it can also be made optional.