A long time player 16k hours asking GGG for a life line...

I am a long time player looking for an excuse to play through the massively layered tedium and excessive RNG upon RNG that POE has become... not a tired player looking for an excuse to leave and play D2. Speaking of D2 say what you will about outdatedness but D2R just feels like a better gameplay loop... Does it have anywhere near the QoL features or content? No of course not... but it does have:

1. Killing monsters with swords and spells instead of mowing screens full of XP globes with Tactical nuclear smart bombs

2. Picking up loot thats actually good occasionally instead of filtering 99.9999% of it out and ignoring half to three quarters of the stuff that does show, and then vendoring 99.999% of the stuff that you DID PICK UP.

How completely stuffed up is your itemization and drop system when point #2 is not even an exaggeration... You can confidently use a super strict filter in POE and feel good in knowing: you didn't miss a single thing.

I'm looking for GGG to realize that there's such a thing as too much RNG... that "Multi axis RNG" actually has diminishing returns. and we hit those diminishing returns a long time ago and now more "axis" are just making the massive gulf between a normal player who actually has money to spend on games because he or she has a job, and the .001% (streamers and 10-14h a day fast clear speed meta players, aka sweaty's or no lifers) more and more ridiculous and extreme when its already a GALACTIC SIZED GULF.


I'm looking for GGG to realize their itemization ISN'T THE GREATEST THING EVER. CHris my man, your passion is unquestionable... But you are SO WRONG ABOUT HOW GREAT YOUR ITEMS ARE. And this is to say nothing of the outright lousey and increasingly worse gameplay loop that has devolved into a clicker app.

It feels worse than ever to swing a weapon... (especially after the "melee revamp" where you literally made Melee LESS VIABLE by making it more clucnky and aweful to use, with even more opportunity cost to use the worst playstyle in the game). It feels worse than ever to CAST A SPELL (its always better to totem/mine/trap/sling or CoC them) because you keep making it cost more oppotunity to self "hand cast" a spell. It feels more mandatory than ever to "explode whole screens or feel no sense of reward" because GGG has tuned the game to ONLY FEEL GOOD WHEN YOU EXPLODE SCREENS... It feels worse EVERY LEAGUE to pick up anything that isn't a high currency...

In harvest I picked things up and saw "potential with the right Harvest craft" and for the first time in years POE actually felt as good as Diablo 2 to pick up ground loot... It WAS FUCKING WODERFUL...

Whats worse is Chris KNEW IT WOULD FEEL WONDERFUL... it literally fixed the gameplay loop and made loot worth looking at (because we could fix 1 out of 999 rares that dropped with Harvest crafts)... So ofc "it ruined the game" as he predicted... becuase Apparently good gamplay loop = ruined game. Because yanking the goal posts further away from the players is more important for your game than IT BEING FUN TO PLAY.

Chris knew because he knows he's deliberately holding fun hostage for the sake of prolonging the time it takes to progress in the game.

So GGG beheaded that sucker because 600 or 1000 sweaty streamer/Quin69 wannabes Cried out about "printing too many mirror items and getting bored"...

Ludicrous next to NONE of the playerbase actually did that... It took dozens to hundreds of maps to craft even mediocre items and the blocking strats that made WAY TOO GOOD Influenced items could have been nerfed. The only people who did that, already have a problem... the couple hundred no lifers and couple hundred streamers who can choke down playing POE as a job because they're trying to make a living, or avoid dealing with reality.

Anyway here we are... I am playing more D2R than POE... because monsters in D2R actually feel good to fight (and not mow down like some sort of cookie clicker app) and loot in D2R feels good to pick up... Imagine that... The core gameplay loop that POE was trying to emulate but has strayed so far from...

Can you guys please start designing for fun? Instead of for "prolonging the edging"? Extending our play time is only desirable if the core activity is FUN TO DO.

Right now POE is not fun to play, the across the board nerfs were clearly a mistake without also fixing the loot system, the game feels like a endless series of chores done in SLOW MOTION because only Meta skills feel good to use any more. But it also feels like chores because the GAME HAS BEEN TUNED TO ONLY FEEL REWARDING AT Empy/Cutedog speeds... You slowed the game down but left the loot tuned for clear speed meta and removed the most fun addition in the games history (actual crafting on items).

GGG: please make monsters feel good to fight, and loot feel good to pick up... Its actually the only problem POE has... but its a core fundamental problem and its only broken because of your refusal or inability to understand that; retention based on multi axis RNG; HAS DIMINISHING RETURNS THAT YOU GUYS HIT 2 to 3 YEARS AGO AND DOUBLED DOWN ON SINCE.

You're not making the game (fun) last longer... You're making the unrewarding clear speed tuned slog last longer.

ye it would be nice at least if they could acknowledge this loot problem a bit more, and I certainly have suggested that items in this game depending on their item level CANNOT roll crappy tier'd mods in order to reward those players for actually progressing their characters' levels up enough to benefit from that. Wouldn't it be nice to not roll a t11+ life mod on a piece of gear with item level 83+ and instead make minimum tiers that can roll on an item on drop to constrained to like T5-T1 instead? Ye, that would be at least a more realistic shot at getting a craft-worthy item to work on instead of looking at it when you pick it up and automatically see that it is just another trash item to vendor.

I agree with a lot of what you posted for sure, and it would be nice and more fun to tweak drops in this game that actually people can get excited about, instead of having to go through tens of thousands of drops of items where the mod tier rolls on those items actually are exciting and impactful. The reward being that this scenario would be more likely the longer a person plays and gains those levels in order to farm the items that have the better mod drop ranges on gears/loot in general.

I am not very positive things are going to change. 3.14, 3.15 and 3.16 very clearly show where the game is headed. Or at least, where it is headed at the moment. And a lot of that are things that you describe - rightfully so, if you ask me - as pretty unfun.

Or maybe they will completely revert their direction again, just like they did after 3.11 and 3.13. Their "vision" doesn't seem to be very consistent or long-term focused sometimes.

Personally, I'd be content with a (voided? permanent?) private league that has Harvest (3.13 or even 3.11 style) enabled. Or making either Standard or a yet-to-be-opened league a "casual league" for all those players that don't want to invest 2-10 hours per day into the game, for whatever reason. But even standard league is pretty bad for casual gameplay (see the map tab fiasco and lots of broken builds).

I can hardly say i have many hours on POE but i would like to share my thoughts from a maybe more clear point of view.

D2R is boring since it has lack of depth. Talent's are boring (but at least you can respec 3 times which is fair.
The problem is that you play the same over and over again..and the overall mechanics are shallow.

PoE on the other hand is super super complicated. You read and read and read and still struggle to understand how the endgame works, how some mechanics work. Past leagues and their mechanics are complicated if you didnt participate and it's hard to identify their usefulness.

PoE crafting is ... tragic. From what i read, it's just plain better to buy items instead of crafting them. It is super complicated, RNG to the core (1500 fusings to 6link a 6 socketed item in average?!) and you end up just not touching it. I read people on the forums say that you touch crafting after you have A LOT of experience. Frankly, i wouldnt like pressing 1000 clicks and hope for something.
Let alone the fact that it combines past league mechanics which as i said is complicated. You have to understand how oils work, how fossils work, how beasts work, i mean ... REALLY?
Still, even the mechanics are complicated and super hard for new players. Prefixes, suffixes, impriting, scouring, annuling, it is super super hard for new players.

Another issue i have with PoE is that combat does not feel meaningful. There are TONS - whole screens of useless mobs trying to reach you and with a series of spectacular flashes you make them disappear only to be replaced with the next horde of mobs. You dont even really see the screen because there's too much stuff - you can hardly dodge when the whole screen is filled with spellcasting monsters shooting their magic on you. It's just noise that makes your head explode.
Now all i do is spam aoe and run around waiting for things to die. It does not feel interactive and i am not even playing any of the dreadful 'totem' specs.

It would be nicer if the volume of mobs was significantly lower and died appropriately slower.


In terms of loot, in the beginning you sort of upgrade gear, afterwards it feels SO SO SO hard. I mean now i dont even *dare* to hope that i will find an upgrade so i just vendor items for Chaos so i can go trade the item i need. Even uniques are totally useless, i got stash full of them and i dont even dare to think they will be useful to alts but i can't be sure so i dont vendor it.
It's very VERY hard to know which items are worth selling, or useful to other chars unless you have plenty or you are experienced player.

In terms of difficulty, good specs feel solid, until you get one shotted by something you didnt even see (and i dont even know if there's some sort of log where you can see what did you die from).
It's a personal opinion, but i dont like fighting a screen FULL of mobs where i dont even see what did i die from nor do i like melting them like i do. It does not feel rewarding / challenging.
Puzzles are nice, hard mobs that you need to outmaneuver are nice but running through a screen FULL of mobs with phasing or running like mad inside the nightmare hoping to avoid the oneshot by something you dont even see....



Despite what i wrote, i like PoE (and i suspect it's hard to make those drastic changes i would like).
Just as a new player, I can see the over the top complexity on mechanics, loot and crafting and the overly chaotic combat. I would really love to see some improvements there

Excuse to play? This is a game, not your life. If you are not enjoying it, just find other game that you enjoy.
You know you can stop playing? It might be hard to believe, after playing this game for 16k hours, that there are other games out there.

Biggest problem of this game is the low life pool of players and necessity to instantly heal the character to full hp due to one shots

By increasing life pool and reducing monster damage leech and recovery can be decreased without them becoming bad

This way your character lives longer than 250 ms and fights can take longer than 10ms without your character tripping over its shoelaces

I think the complexity of POE makes balance impossible.


If you lower incoming damage, the tankier builds will be truly immortal.

If you reduce leech and LGOH then we all die to degen.

They are trying to balance damage around effective life pools that range from 10k to 200k.

They should also significantly reduce the drop of items

For example they could reduce currency drops but significantly increase the chance for rolling higher tier mods

White base types: Introduce more high level base types and make them all strong and interesting so you care about more than just astral plates.
Remove low tier base type drops at high levels they are just waste of pixels. 6 socket and 6 link drops will be fixed with POE2

Blue Items: I don't think there is any value in the identification system therefore it should be removed completely. Blue items drop identified and sometimes they have interesting mods.
During leveling it is easier to actually find items that help you.
It is easy to just be lazy and never identify items and then finish the acts with white items making the experience way more frustrating for long term players. Remove tedious tasks to not burn out long term players.

If the game had a proper system in the first place we would have never needed item filters.

Rare Items: Rare items should actually be rare and not covering the screen with useless labels. Without the identification system all mods are revealed and the unveiling system adds another layer of mystery that is lost by removing the identification system. Remove the identification system but keep the unveiling to make rares more interesting.
The only thing the identification system achieves is that most of the loot goes unnoticed and is ignored.

Unique items: In my opinion uniques should drop more specifically from certain sources and be level dependent.
Some low level uniques should only drop in low level zones.
This way we aren't showered in useless uniques and the average unique gets more value
By enabling the drop of a certain unique item from a certain unique boss we can promote target farming.
For example Kaom in Act 4 drops Kaom uniques like Kaom's sign but only the map version of Kaom drops the high level items like Kaom's Heart and Kaom's Roots.

I would allow the drop of Kaom's Primacy for Kaom in Act 4 even though it is a level 58 item and therefore too high for the zone. (You want the item before starting mapping because later on it will be less useful)
But one thing this game is missing is dropping items that are too high for your character level.
In other games this can occur and can be inspiring for a new player to use this higher level item later on.
POE2 can fix the problem of low level uniques not being able to get more sockets.
By spreading out the uniques to various encounters there is less garbage dropping in maps and certain zones get a unique identity that is lacking right now.

You can always ask... but you should expect to be ignored. They can't make a game that makes everyone happy. They shouldn't even try. They had the right plan when they said they wanted to make a game that THEY would want to play.

What you should do is question that. Do they still want to play their game?

Word harvest league and ritual were the most fun I ever had in this game. I hardly played last 3 leagues. This league only first 2 days.

Feels bad cus poe is my fav game but they keep making me hate it more and more.