Condensed Progression Feedback

This is simply a bulleted list of issues with the initial progression up to ascending in act 2, nothing positive is mentioned because that level of concording is pointless in what is functionally a complaint post.

Obviously if something I am complaining about is fixed in later acts it is completely irrelevant as it obviously would not solve the problems at the point of having them.

• Vendor recipes are gone so you can't fix things with resistance rings, movement speed boots or weapon upgrades
• Loot in general sucks, normal rarity items and gold in low stack sizes are functionally not loot
• Quest rewards feel non-existent, the most notable being a choice of charm of which I chose the least actively relevant for Act 1.
  
  • This feels like an obvious source for rings and amulets which otherwise doesn't exist
• Gold costs on everything useful are astronomical at the start, actively discouraging using the shop at all or encourage completely unfun inventory selling runs

• Runes are not common enough to be actively used to fix problems
• Sockets are not common enough to be actively used to fix problems
  
  • You need to get appropriate gear with appropriate mods with appropriate sockets or you need to get a mass of socketed gear to make artificers orbs
• Runes are completely RNG and so you might not get types you need
• Runes cannot be replaced or removed so if you use the type you need you are actively disincentivised from swapping that piece

• Normal currency is not common enough to try and get useful stats
  
  • Regals and Alchemy orbs might as well not exist even into Act 2
  • Alterations not existing means you can't try and get more useful stats on bases in most cases
  • Rares should at bare minimum disenchant into more regal or transmute shards based on the number of modifiers on them

• Rolling and enemies body blocking feel terrible
  
  • Rolls should have phasing on smaller enemies and should push back larger ones on cooldown, the chances of getting stuck because things spawn on you because you had the cheek to 'walk towards your destination' is far too high otherwise.

• Areas are overly big with frequent dead ends that feel utterly terrible
  
  • You could genuinely divide every single area except the twilight strand equivalent by half comfortably
  • Dead ends add nothing and should not exist
    
    • The rare and magic chests mentioned in interviews feel like trolling. They range from 'literally nothing' to '20 gold' in quality early on, they would need to be multiplied by a minimum of 20 to even slightly feel okay
  • Movement speed barely exists and currency doesn't exist to try and get it short of actively burning everything you own which feels terrible
    
    • An inherent out of combat movement speed buff or a literal run ability on a cooldown feel like obvious absences
  • Checkpoints are often nonsensical and respawning enemies feels bad in general

• All aspects of the skill gem levelling system feels bad to engage with early
  
  • Gems should level like PoE1 and I don't know why they don't or what the goal of making skill progression drop based was meant to add to the game
  • You should be able to buy uncut skill gems and uncut support gems so you can actually experiment with things
  • The menus in general are pretty bad, supports should not be visible if they are unusable when choosing non•recommended (and you should get the list of gems it can support when hovering)
  • Minion levels don't say what they are doing even slightly outside of early spirit cost reductions meaning it looks like you are simply making them cost more spirit

• Rare monsters feel bad a lot of the time
  
  • You have a lot of really bad Path of Exile 1 mods still, you already know what sucks about 'cycling invincibility' and I don't need to tell you
  • The stagger bar feels like it should be lower on rares

• No ascendancy respec is purely anti-player with no value or merit
  
  • I literally cannot think og a single positive this brings in any capacity outside of a completely asinine 'story' or 'meaningful choice' to your character, both of which are completely the product of your neuroses and should stay in your head instead of being forced on other people
  • Shapeshifting abilities need to actively detail their downsides instead of it being nested in a second tooltip that needs you to pin the shapeshifted form's skill to even see
  • Demon Form disabling your weapons and spirit and minions and being fundamentally broken in a myriad of ways as a first ascendancy felt like bricking my character and was the only reason I chose that ascendancy in the first place

I'm aware I'm probably shouting into the void but I'm sure catharsis through venting is an active goal of your game design for Path of Exile 2.

Equipment based loot seems slightly less awful during campaign now.

But let's have some more complaints and suggestions for no one relevant to read or care about.

• Since all balance is inherently around trade, it should naturally feel good with trade in the equation. It currently does not feel rewarding to 'craft' even slightly in trade.
• Mid-range currency drops are terrible and this means crafting is a mistake over trading every single time above magic currency.
• Essences suck, runes not being replaceable sucks, everything that seemed like it would obviously feel bad within seconds of being shown it feels bad.
• Bring back ctrl-alt-c to copy a full item description with proper info thanks.
• Charm capacity should just increase with item level on belts, they aren't actually good enough to be tied to low weight mod rolls
• Tiered unidentified items are still a bit shit.
• Crafting is identifying with a lot more steps without Omens.
• Bring back old tiering, 'T6' means absolutely nothing if I don't know how many tiers there are. At least make it 'T6/12' or something.
• The Omen of Whittling reads like it needs you to know item level requirements which cannot be seen in game at all.
  
  • Detailed item copying and the alt hovers would be obvious places to expose that information.

• Gems never feel good in any capacity
• Just bring back natural levelling, RNG based level upgrades is awful in every aspect.
• You go from too few gems to too many of a useless level, you cannot use any of these on new characters as your amassed Level 14 gems don't do anything for them until they are already endgame.
• Uncut supports have the opposite where new characters can use them to immediately get Tier 3 gems which seems like a massive, obvious oversight?
  
  • Don't get rid of it though, it's crushingly boring otherwise.
• I feel like obvious actual solution to both of the above is simply making it so you can choose a gem's level based on character level
  
  • Ideally this would be combined with actual levelling being back and the level of your character dictating the maximum starting level of a gem.
  • Have a gem vendor for Level 1 gems and use the power based maximum for uncuts (Yes this is literally just what you had on old PoE1 non-lily gem vendors)
  • Cap the max level to 14 or something and have it so you can get Facetor's Lens with explicit levels above that to add valuable drops
• Jewellers rates are bad, I want to be starting to use 5 links by the 70s not trapped on three or four links with Vaals being the only hope of more.
  
  • I think gem bound sockets were a mistake and you should have it based on parent gem socket. Have it require multiple jewellers the more slots you have already upgraded (First through third four socket upgrades cost 1 jeweller, then 2, then 3, etc.)

• Bosses should have indicators of where they are when they go off screen. Identical to the citadel, player and home icons on the atlas map.
• Waystones share every single issue campaign zones have but worse.
  
  • Maps are too big for the content they hold.
  • Maps lack any rewarding side content while being huge, they are campaign maps without set pieces, quest rewards or side bosses.
• The rare on death effect looks great and also completely masks on death effects, it should probably not exist.
• Bosses being only on every fifth map feels very bad.
  • Stick them in every map as weaker versions with worse loot
  • Make the maps with boss icons actual bosses with just an arena and no normal map attached
  • Make arena bosses have actual loot
• Strongboxes are in a hilariously bad state, every aspect of them is worse than PoE1 for seemingly no reason.
• Delirium and Blight feels very overtuned.
• Precursor Towers should not be maps outside of a token first one, having to clear a full map for what amounts to a couple scarab uses feels bad.
• I assume it's simply not in because you haven't finished the map tab but you really need to add Waystone Affinity even without the tab.
• Rare icons should always appear when a monster is nearby too, not just after an arbitrary amount of mobs are slain.
  
  • You should already know this from master missions
• The normal Atlas Tree functionally exists to make Waystones sustainable without feeling utterly terrible with any other choices being obviously incorrect. Compulsory nodes should just be baseline with the drop rates coming with the quests if you want to gate it over time for some reason.
• Map scarcity has repeatedly proven to be a major detriment to fun, stop doing it.
• The atlas should have filters or a search, just like delve did.

• Ascending feels awful in general
• RNG heavy everything is a terrible feeling for getting what should be a normal part of progression.
• A bunch of Ascendancies have active downsides and seem designed to be used in exact, specific ways. I thought this was the opposite of what you intended?
• Sanctum is literally taking the least bad negatives a dozen times in a row and then losing to unclear traps, badly designed boss moves that can't be read blind or just overpowered rares. It doesn't feel good in any capacity.
• Mob telegraphs in Sanctum are no where near sufficient
• Sanctum is everything people hated about lab but now worse with debuffs and secondary health pools.
• At minimum you really need deterministic seeded quest trials for the content if you want to force people to do it
• Acts 4 to 6 might fix this a bit, but if it's the bad auto-battler as a trial it will amount to a series of mario party minigames to get your core class identity which is pretty ridiculous

• Respec costs are actually worse than I thought, literally hitting millions late game. I really think you should stop clinging to insipid, anti-player bullshit and just hard cap the costs at around 2,000 a point.
• If you want to pander to the false idea of character identity coming from permanent 'choices' being made, add opt in toggles that give you a big dick icon on your portrait or something.
  
  • This could work very similarly to private leagues and only unlock after campaign in the way scion did (probably with an option in gameplay somewhere like tutorial toggles to get it early)
  • One portal, Bad Respec Costs and No Ascendancy Respec seem like great contenders for special player icons over any of it being forced, terrible core design

• One death boss sets is absolutely insane and should not be how anything works
• You made the issues with no one fighting PoE1 bosses because selling them was actively the best possible option notably worse.
• You made the issues with blind, genuine, untainted first hand experience being the worst possible choice over watching guides notably worse.
• Pinnacle bosses should always give a quest variant bare minimum as their first version.
• For non-quest sets I would suggest making fragments turn into a full set adorned style with a loot percentage enchant.
  
  • Make loot percentage enchant go down 16.6% each try.
  • 0% ones can be used until you win (ideally this would be actually 15% steps and 10% minimum but you know.)
  • This would mean winning first try is most valuable, winning earlier is more valuable and being bad is least valuable.
  • This restores the 6 portal equivalents, creates an aftermarket for depleted sets to sell to people just wanting to test bosses.
  • Depleted sets could also be salvageable into something to make them disappear from the market more regularly, but nothing so valuable as to diminish the value over running it to do the bosses for the sake of bosses.
• You really should just make generic MMO visualisations for large attacks, the level of punishment you are courting means that telegraphs are utterly useless if they don't let you react properly instinctively.

One more in an edit for the road

• Charms are passive at most in their impact, they have theoretically good effects behind far too many charges used. 80/80 charges is insane for 'gets you out of freeze once'.
• Extra Charms feel like something you should naturally gain with bases at higher levels to encourage active switching for their benefits.
• Instead Extra Charms rolls are very high level and you will lose one of Strength, Fire Res, Cold Res, Lightning Res, Flask Charges Gained, Flask Charges used to get benefits of charms.

And more because I was reminded about how bad they feel

• Quest rewards don't feel rewarding and quests barely feel like you are completing anything, even the permanent buff ones feel utterly inconsequential which is very weird. Even the medicine chest felt more meaningful than anything in PoE2.
• The quests feel disconnected from the world and super video gamey in a way that is way worse than poe. I knew why I was killing the Dweller of the Deep. I don't know what candlemass is doing in the count's manor. Why isn't someone telling me about accursed rituals and blood sacrifices and tying it in to Sanctum since it's rehash from there (vice versa, I suppose)? You give me less than the medicine chest had in path of exile 1 for a permanent buff.
• Yes that is a paragraph not a bullet point, no one is reading this shite anyway.
• Boots should just inherently grant movement speed based on item level. You could have bonuses on corruption still.

Bump

Probably the last of shouting feedback into the void. Trying to engage with the endgame in a manner that is fun or enjoyable feels like getting blood from a stone.

I could probably brute force it to the point I can regularly use precursor tablets to add breaches everywhere or similar but really, I'm just not having fun with the systems so I shouldn't bother.

I didn't and likely won't hit my goal of doing all the pinnacle bosses at least once and I doubt it would matter with one portal and no way to practice or learn anything outside of copying full time streamers' homework.

• Rares as only source of real loot feels bad
  • I miss my beetlewife, Tails, I really do.
• Rares need full time markers, visual tells and audio cues.
  • Is the idea not to have icons to not turn zones into literal rare mob checklists? Because that's just all maps now, you made maps that!
• Maps in general feel bad because they are big and empty and boring and you need to chase rares which feels terrible
  • Would be nice to get mods without the prefixes 'big' and 'boring' and the suffixes 'of drudgery and dissatisfaction' more often like fortress.
  • Would be crazy if we had some kinda map based system that took you to specific areas instead of travel stones across a bad 4X map.
• Bosses are the only rewarding part of most maps but you don't always have them which feels terrible
  
  • Bosses should be in every map, and drop around 2 rares of loot
  • Boss nodes should be literally just a boss arena map and drop around 2 maps of loot while being notably stronger and tankier
  • The 79+ requirement for the boss hunting tree makes doing any of them below 79 a mistake because they are non-negligible, consumed resources
• If voidstones don't exist, there's no way to force bare minimum gameplay quality which feels terrible
• Atlas Tree progression sucks, I've pushed to T15s without completing enough of the boring 10/10 questline chores to be able to make maps interesting
  
  • I am actively encouraged to do easy content as fast as possible over interacting with engaging content to make the latter even exist.
  • Most of the tree's nodes are all things that should be minimum defaults not unlocked over one hundred and fifty separated maps
  • Why are the nodes for things like Essences not guaranteed, who thinks it feels good to find essences, strongboxes or shrines in a whopping 20% of maps maximum investment?
  • Every aspect of precursor towers is garbage.
    • What were you thinking bringing sextants back?
    • Tablets should have a visible radius when using them
    • There should be a bossing precursor tablet for people who want to boss
• Scarabs should very much come back, you can even use the stability ones to make it so you have up to three extra portals for the choice to have multiple tries at the cost of mechanics
• Mechanic trees being tied to endgame bosses is absolutely stupid and encourages paying for those clears before engaging with the mechanic in any capacity
• Rares continue to need full time markers, visual tells and audio cues.
• Citadels should be something you can search for, make it so you pay Doryani 100,000 gold or something and he adds markers to the nearest three. Just anything to add some semblance of structure and goal chasing that isn't idle game but bad.
  
  • You could expand this to cover Unique Maps, zones of high corruption, biomes of interest, etc.
• Many layouts have completely imperceptible invisible walls (or even visible holes that look like doors that lead to those) that force you into having the map overlay up at all times, which feels bad.
• Proximal Tangbility is maybe the worst mod ever created thus far.
• Why is energy shield so awful visually? Put it back on the orb or let us have console style divided ones so I can actually tell how much ES I have.
• Why can't my demon form use a portal? Can I get portal scrolls back instead of the animation that forces loss of stacks?
• Why can't I use lockstep? Why is it the forced terrible console hybrid mode? Why is desync back? Should I get my /oos macro again? I feel like I need it because you took us straight back to 2013.
• Mechanics should all have permanent icons on being revealed (Ritual, Breach, Expedition, Essences, etc.) so you can find them in the gargantuan spaces that maps have become
• Gold feels bad as a drop, when you get decent amounts it feels like PoE1 archnemesis conversions where you hit 'a huge pile of useless crap'. Bosses and rares should genuinely not be able to drop gold as a real drop, it should be an additive extra. Obviously if you introduced more kingsmarch like mechanics it would be better.
• Rares still continue to need full time markers, visual tells and audio cues.

Do try to remember that baseline engagement should actually be fun, grinding heavily so you can actually start to try and play 'the actual game' is dire.

A couple more things in an edit while they are on my mind.

• The passive tree feels bad to navigate and lacking in real decisions or power boosts. I do not care about levelling if my next 8 levels are +5 stats to get <10% DPS.
• Increased Item Rarity affecting currency is bad and you should feel bad.
• '+X to levels of tag' is an absurd modifier that means basically everything without it is a brick, this level of power ought to be baked into the skill gems really.
  • Triply true if you find a +3 or +4 during campaign, everything after it will be a downgrade
• Movement speed on boots should still be implicits
• Ascendancy options and overall make up still suck
• Archmage is the only way to get power on a caster and leads to all builds using spells using archmage