4500 Hour POE1 Veteran - General Feedback - Positives and Negatives - Spoiler Warning

Hi All,

For background i have over 4500 hours in poe1 and have been playing for many years starting in Incursion League. I lived and watched POE1 become an absolute monster of a game and how it improved league by league. I managed a 13s 85% quant feared with my own CoC VD (178mil dps in affliction) and have multiple lvl 100s. Cleared all content in the game, except Uber Maven (never attempted / had much interest). I relished the challenge of trying to clear wave 30 simulacrum each league, so i enjoy challenge.

Now onto feedback for POE2.

Current character is lvl 52 Witch Blood Mage in Act 2 (cruel)- Unleash Arc / Mana Flare / Mana Tempest + Cast on Shock Comet - Armor / ES hybrid (wand/sceptre)

What is my initial first feelings?

I really enjoy it.

The changes, the fresh outlook on skills, enemies, graphics, story is amazing. But with anything that shows positives it does come with some negatives that I'm sure will be adjusted as EA continues. I am amazed the game feels as 'complete' as it does with how much content they released in EA.

Positives:

- Game seems to be optimized quite well for its current state
- Skill gem system feels like a breath of fresh air
- Weapon swap has so much potential and is amazingly smooth
- Tooltip info boxes is absolutely amazing QOL, no more googling random mechanics
- Character models and graphics look amazing, cant wait for more mtx to be added
- Splitting reservation to a separate resource is so sick, love it
- Mana values feel more important now
- Life values feel more important now
- Boss fights feel good, all feel different, and look great visually
- Spells feel impactful and purposeful, this is hard to quantify
- Story feels rich and fluid, massive improvements over poe1
- Unique skill interactions are very cool and build defining
- Music is on point
- Voice acting is on point
- Zones give you this feeling of a 3 dimensional world not just a flat tileset
- Systems seem to be very fitting in how they were implemented into the game (sanctum, ultimatum, ect.)
- No portal scrolls is amazing
- Gold for respec is amazing
- Auto waypoint collection is nice (no more forgetting to click them)
- Some affixes for rare items are super cool and simple to understand
- I've respec 3-4 times and feel i can swap stuff almost anytime to try something new


Negatives / Constructive feedback:

- Some parts of the story is a bit hard to follow, i had to really take a look in act2 to know where i was even going lol
- Please remove all enemies re-spawn when you die in a zone, only have the bosses respawn, this artificially adds a lot of time to the story that isn't necessary
- Some zones feel way too big, running slow through them gets a bit old
- Movement speed is a problem, ms rolls on boots are uncommon and it still feels slow until you get a 20% one. Maybe a small global ms increase 5-10% would be tremendously helpful for players
- I'm concerned without some forms of ways that decrease campaign time, the sheer amount of hours for acts 1-6 required will hurt the player base / discourage getting to endgame (arguably the most important retention metric)
- White lvl enemies are WAY over-tuned in damage and hp levels (spell caster POV)
- Gearing is extremely stale / slow and you will wear blues till your lvl 40+
- Rare item drops are usually quite useless and when they do drop doesn't give you a sense of progression (huge pool of item types)
- The elation of finding a nice gear upgrade is more a thank goodness i got something, then a woohoo check out this mace! In theory you could double the rare drop rate and it still might not be enough to help the average player
- You don't get a sense of being able to adjust much of your build when encountering a difficult boss / enemy. The tools for this are limited
- Dodge collision needs a bit of tuning, maybe allow you to roll through white mobs?
- Party collision needs to be removed, the amount of times me and my party (3-6 players) got stuck in doorways was comical
- First ascendancy is much too hard at lvl 22 for the general player base. Some ascendancies don't offer much power creep with the first 2 points, so for a difficult encounter it doesn't offer much reward (coming from someone's who likes sanctum)
- Blood mage needs a base 2% life regen with the first node, its way too punishing to manage life costs while bossing, especially with ones that have degen's
- Second trial is a a dps check, i feel like a enemies gain 80% of extra chaos damage is a bit too steep of mod choice. This was rng for me until i got a good run and good boss
- Pathing in the skill tree seems pretty far per point to get to bigger nodes. Considering the tree is even bigger then poe1, the huge frequency of int/str/dex nodes is a bit frustrating, lowering this by 20-25% would help a lot of progression for players
- Some currency drops are far too rare. i was lvl 45 by the time i got 1 alc, that's a tad ridiculous considering the alc isn't a guaranteed upgrade when used
- I feel the lesser jewelers orbs might be a bit too rare, most skills don't gain that much power creep by adding one more slot
- Unique's are limited in how many types can drop so ill watch for how they progress long-term (most are only useable for a short duration)

In closure i have high hopes for the game and the raw potential for POE2 is unrivalled. Can't wait to see updates week by week during EA. Will continue playing into endgame. Will offer a second review specifically on endgame / mapping.

Thanks for your well constructed review, I can personally agree on every point as someone in the mid 30s and the tail end of the campaign, and as a ~1500 hour PoE1 player.

The dodge roll collision in party play is such a gigantic issue because the rest of party play is so unbelievably fun, fighting the act bosses in a group is epic and exactly my cup of tea.

For me it comes down to: gameplay and presentation - almost perfect. Balancing - needs a bit of work.

I agree with your final point about potential... I think PoE2 has potential to be the greatest ARPG ever made, and one of the all time GOATS of gaming period. It just needs a little bit of fine tuning, and I have faith GGG will get there eventually.

Agree on much of what you wrote. I like to add that the pause function is bloody handy too, specially when playing solo and something IRL happens. Much better than portal out and even works during boss fights.

On the downside I like to add that I don't feel any kind of reward due to progression - which is the reason I love PoE1. Even early levels in PoE1 you can find uniques that you can sell and even some decent currency.

I'm in A2 in PoE2 and still feel that nothing has happened at all. No WOW!-moments. No rewards. Nothing to look forward to.

Ah yes i forgot about the pause function, definitely nice qol, also works in party play, helpful to prep before a fight or something (helping others through act 2 ascendancy)