Observations so far after "finishing" Act 2

I just got to Cruel with my Templar (29) so thought this was a good time to summarize some observations and bugs I've noticed throughout PoE. Only been playing since the open weekend / availability of keys for purchase, hadn't been following the game before that. For the record I also have a 26 Ranger and 9 Witch but obviously no experience with the middle/end game at this point so I won't talk much about balancing etc.

Post is split up into praise, suggestions, and bugs. It's long, but they asked for feedback...

Things I loved:

1. Combat. Physical combat feels great. The different sounds for melee impacts are awesome, and in general there's just a very solid feel to it that makes me want to keep wacking things. The sound of metal-on-person when hitting humans with a mace makes me cringe, perfect. Arrows also feel great to me, and I love seeing them stick out of enemies. Most spells also have a nice "impact" feeling.

2. Locations. The variety of areas is, I think, actually pretty good for only two acts. Compared to the amount of time in very similar feeling forest or desert areas in Diablo 2, for example, the different times of day and area types give nice variety. Every time I start thinking there are too many dark caves, I come out into a beautiful jungle or daytime area that gives a great contrast.

3. Innovative Mechanics. Systems for skills and passives are a lot of fun if a bit intimidating at first. I love the barter system, especially how valuable it makes identify scrolls at the beginning. Flasks are a brilliant solution to the potion conundrum.

4. Atmosphere. Some great, creepy moments. I don't like spiders in general, so seeing them come up the walls in the Chamber of Sin or the Church dungeon really creeped me out, but in a good way. Also the corpses climbing out of Alira's pot, which took me two encounters with her to notice :) Wraeclast in general seems like a neat setting.

5. Respecs. Just as I was getting ready to write an annoyed post about how regret orbs are too expensive for a level 18-25 character who made a mistake and hasn't found enough scouring orbs, along comes the perfect quest reward in Act 2. The limited respec system strikes a great balance at least to level 30.

6. Communication. Great seeing dev responses on the forum!

Suggestions:

1. Difficulty. Getting to cruel was a noticeable (and enjoyable!) jump in difficulty/danger. I know there's a monster-improving patch coming, so maybe there won't be any need for this, but something like a "hard mode" (i.e. you can play through Normal in either "normal" or "hard" chosen at the beginning, then move to Cruel which is simply Cruel) would be welcome. Just increase monster damage by 10-15% across the board would be my suggestion for that, and maybe if you're nice add 1% drop rarity or something :)

2. Quest Rewards. Rewards in general seem fine, passives and skill gems are fun. I'm sure there will be more interesting things as Act 3 comes out and as polish happens. But I'd suggest telegraphing certain quest rewards, so that beginners don't skip an optional quest that has a very-useful-to-beginners reward a la Golden Hand. I don't like the WoW-style "you will receive:" dialogues, but maybe build something into the NPC's quest text? Or even just switch that particular reward out with one of the gem rewards on the main line quests. Given the complexity of the passive system to a newbie that seems like a very important two free respec points to me.

3. Skill Levelling. Why do we need to click to level up skills? Is there ever a time we would not want to level them up? Just feels confusing and pointless - the little spiral of light and text do a good enough of job of letting you know about it if that's the only real function, imo. Or is it about alerting you if you haven't met the reqs by showing it greyed out? Seems like you could simply show the greyed out gems below the inventory or something if someone has one equipped.

4. Quest Items. Don't make quest items take up space in my inventoy, it just makes me resent the game's plot/story. Separate tab only for quest items, or just turn them into icons below the inventory or similar.

5. Inventory. I felt very strongly at the beginning that the inventory wasn't big enough in general and that some items took up too much space, but this was in part due to feeling like I needed to pick up every white item to build up some identify scrolls. So I see that being less of a problem moving forward, but would still be happy for some improvement here like an auto-sort button, separate orb inventory, additional two columns/one row, or very slowly expanding inventory over time (say an extra two columns per 15 levels, so double size at level 90).

Coming from Torchlight or D3, it's not obvious how making us go back to town 2 or 3 times as often adds any fun or challenge to the game, and we already have to spend a bunch of time playing tetris just to maximize our space as is.

6. Tempest Shield. Purely aesthetic, but any chance we could get a round/tower/kite shape that applies based on the shield type?? Otherwise love the effect.

Bugs or other issues:

1. Monster corpses disappear into the ground when you kill them on a ramp.

2. Auras and other toggle-able abilities get bugged out easily in terms of matching up graphic, buff application, and mana reservation if you toggle them rapidly or in combat. i.e. Graphic still showing but no buff applied, or similar.

3. Costs to buy items show up as red despite having sufficient orbs in my stash. I was able to reproduce this by changing characters, for example. No issue with my 29 Templar, then log in with the 9 Witch and everything that costs transmutation orbs shows the cost in red despite a big stack in the stash. Purchasing still works.

4. You use the word "weaver" throughout Act 2 to mean spider, but then have skeletons called "weavers" in the Cathedral of Bone. Good word but no need to overuse it :)

5. Ok, this isn't a bug, but the level of D3 hate on the forum is sometimes off-putting. I'm not playing PoE in order to prove how much I hate D3. It doesn't help the community, and you're going to have a lot of PoE players happy to play both as you expand the audience, so maybe occasional mod reminders to stay PoE focused or not to dismiss suggestions just because "that other game" has it, especially for smaller items that aren't the big lightning-rod issues.

Overall great game and I can't wait to see the next steps as it progresses!

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Mark_GGG wrote:

"

karoc wrote:

3. Skill Levelling. Why do we need to click to level up skills? Is there ever a time we would not want to level them up?

Yes, there are multiple reasons.

• The lower level gem will usually cost more mana. If you're having mana issues, leveling up gems might not be worth it.
• You might want ot trade the gem to a firend, or swap it to another character, who doesn't have as high attributes as your current character, and couldn't equip the leveled version
• If you have additional attributes from gear, you might not want to level the gem up if that meant you could no longer meet it's requirements from your base attributes, but only because of that gear, as doing so would mean you then couldn't replace that piece of gear with an upgrade and still use the gem

Why not making a selling recipe (or a other option) which can freeze and unfreeze the lvl of a Skill Gem and get rid of the "+" ^^

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

karoc wrote:

3. Skill Levelling. Why do we need to click to level up skills? Is there ever a time we would not want to level them up?

Yes, there are multiple reasons.

• The lower level gem will usually cost more mana. If you're having mana issues, leveling up gems might not be worth it.
• You might want ot trade the gem to a firend, or swap it to another character, who doesn't have as high attributes as your current character, and couldn't equip the leveled version
• If you have additional attributes from gear, you might not want to level the gem up if that meant you could no longer meet it's requirements from your base attributes, but only because of that gear, as doing so would mean you then couldn't replace that piece of gear with an upgrade and still use the gem

It would be nice if the level up button could be a different color if you base attributes are enough but your gear allows you to. Right now you have to look at all your gear to make sure it safe to level, off-stat gems.

Also I think you have a typo in your first point.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"

karoc wrote:

3. Skill Levelling. Why do we need to click to level up skills? Is there ever a time we would not want to level them up?

Yes, there are multiple reasons.

• The lower level gem will usually cost more mana. If you're having mana issues, leveling up gems might not be worth it.
• You might want ot trade the gem to a firend, or swap it to another character, who doesn't have as high attributes as your current character, and couldn't equip the leveled version
• If you have additional attributes from gear, you might not want to level the gem up if that meant you could no longer meet it's requirements from your base attributes, but only because of that gear, as doing so would mean you then couldn't replace that piece of gear with an upgrade and still use the gem

Hmm, well thanks for the explanation. Those all definitely make sense. And I assume eventually there will be tutorials / documentation that might point some of these out in game.

I can't even begin to express just how much I agree with almost every single word of the OP's post. Wonderfully thought out feedback--both the good and the bad!--with some very good points and ideas. Particularly:

"

4. Quest Items. Don't make quest items take up space in my inventoy, it just makes me resent the game's plot/story. Separate tab only for quest items, or just turn them into icons below the inventory or similar.

5. Inventory. I felt very strongly at the beginning that the inventory wasn't big enough in general and that some items took up too much space, but this was in part due to feeling like I needed to pick up every white item to build up some identify scrolls. So I see that being less of a problem moving forward, but would still be happy for some improvement here like an auto-sort button, separate orb inventory, additional two columns/one row, or very slowly expanding inventory over time (say an extra two columns per 15 levels, so double size at level 90).

This. Eleventy-bajillion times this.

There is far, far, far too much scurrying back to town to vendor stuff, and far too much time spent on inventory management, especially in the absence of any kind of inventory auto-sort option or button. It really disrupts the flow of gameplay, it does it often, and it's a critical activity that you just can't afford to skip given that the game economy and crafting system revolves around the orbs that you receive from bartering vendor trash.

Don't get me wrong, I think the barter system and doing away with gold is a brilliant innovation that adds a whole new level of depth to the game. But having just completed Act 2 last night myself, I found that even if I only pick up blues and small items like rings and pots, I'm still having to run back to town every few minutes to clear my inventory--and even doing that, it's very difficult to build up a supply of wisdom scrolls unless I just don't bother to ident most blues before selling them. It's tedious, time-consuming, and not at all fun.

Shorter: town runs to vendor trash is a chore, not fun. The less time players have to spend doing it, the better.

PoE is its own animal, and I applaud your vision for it. But there are a few similar games that had very good solutions to this problem and I'd like to call them out.

- In Torchlight every character had a pet who could be sent back to town to vendor stuff for you and return after a time. This was a brilliant idea that worked very well. Obviously pets aren't as integral to PoE as they were to TL, but there are other ways this could be done. Perhaps in town you could hire a companion (say, for a few town portal scrolls) who would travel with you and perform this service when needed. They would do little or no damage and have a fair amount of life so that the first magic monster you come across doesn't pop them, but they could still die and when they were gone, they were gone. When you sent them back they'd be absent for, say, five minutes and would deposit your earnings in one of your stash tabs, then return to you. They would persist between zones but disappear when you log out or die.

- In Titan Quest, you received additional inventory tabs as quest rewards throughout the game's main quest. This was great! It made it actually viable to carry around a couple of weapon swaps or resist armor. I couldn't even imagine trying to do that in this game and still being able to pick up anything.

Ultimately, the idea here is to keep players doing what is fun--fighting monsters and finding stuff--and minimize the time spent doing what is not fun.

Finally, not related to inventory management, I'd like to call out one more suggestion that I think would dramatically improve gameplay in almost every part of the game: transparent scenery. When the player is behind scenery, the scenery should turn at least partially transparent so that the player can still see what's going on. This is a really serious problem in the forests and some of the more cramped caves and ruins, in which I spend more time NOT being able to see my character and what they're doing than I do being able to see them. I've come close to dying more than a few times because of it, and in general it's just really frustrating, especially given just how many parts of the game take place in areas where this is a problem.