Why I don't like Path of Exile 2 - a dissertation of my depression.

PROBLEM: Stat Requirements on Items and Gems are too high. Requiring 120 int for Cast on X is insane. That's nearly 30 nodes that you need to put into int in order to be able to use this. If you're not an int based class it's just not viable at all. They are also way too high on gear, such as a level 60 evasion chest piece needing 145 dexterity to use. If you are a hybrid class or not fully into Dex, this is an enormous problem. I had to buy amulet/ring with 15 dex on them in order to use the armor - and I am a Dex based class (Monk).

SOLUTION: Cut the requirements down by 1/3 or more for all items and gems. Path of Exile is known for its build customization and freedom to play the game in a manner how you want to. Let us do that please.

PROBLEM: Weapon Specific Skills. There are simply way too few skills in this game, first of all, and second almost every single one "Requires Quarter Staff" or "Requires a Mace" or "Can only be used with Crossbows." This is utter garbage. Let me use Icy Strike with dual daggers. Let me use Ballista with a Bow. Let me use Sunder with a Staff. It massviely stifles creativity and freedom, makes the game LESS FUN (I've been using a quarterstaff since level 1...) and completely removes the ability to build your character the way you want to.

SOLUTION: Allow for more weapon types to use various skills. I do not believe that every skill should be able to be used with every weapon, but there needs to be more availability. I mean shit what happened with using your Bow as a melee weapon? I remember them talking about that years ago.

PROBLEM: The skill tree is filled with bloat, excessive amounts of travel, inability to migrate around the tree. There are far too many "filler" nodes, too many points required to get to the notables, and the notables are often times very mediocre. I have been tooling around with the skill tree and comparing it to that of PoE1. I've reshaped the tree and removed the artsy fartsy goofy design and layout and compressed the overly spindly and long paths that go to nodes to a more succinct and dense version. Almost the entire skill tree is just empty space, it's insane. It's like someone looked at it and said "This isn't big enough. Don't add anything to it, just spread it out and scale the X/Y coordinates by 300% larger and add a few more travel nodes between clusters. I have removed over 300 nodes from the tree so far and there is still a lot of useless fluff.

SOLUTION: Massively compressed skill tree. Removed hundreds of excessive/redundant nodes. Added pathways between segments/sectors of the tree so you don't have to spend 22 nodes just to get to the other side of the area you're on. Allows for better build making, higher expression, and increased leverage when utilizing specific mechanics and tools. Most nodes that were removed (aside from raw stat nodes) have been pooled into the remaining tree and their power distributed evenly among them. For example a 12% Evasion node would become 15% Evasion.

PROBLEM: Unique Caster items have high item level requirement. For example I found a Lifesprig at level 62 and it require level 58 or something to equip.

SOLUTION: Item level requirements for Uniques are static and based on the item type itself, not its item level.

PROBLEM: Ultimatum and Sanctum are worse than being water boarded with goat piss.

SOLUTION: Ultimatum and Sanctum no longer are required to get your Ascendancy. Instead you just run the Labyrinth like normal. That's it, that's the change.

PROBLEM: Respec cost are HEINOUSLY overpriced. At level 62, I need more dex so I had to spend 22,000 (almost 20% of my gold) just to respec like 4 nodes. Completely insane. The gold cost was supposed to be lax and forgiving but I feel like I am taking out a loan with the mafia every time I respec a point.

SOLUTION: Respec cost is 25 + (Allocated Points * 10). Ascendancy nodes are 250 + (Character Level * 10). Now you can actually play the game and enjoy it, and don't have to camp on skill points in case you need them for a stat increase or something. How they messed this up is insane, it's like they just entirely ignored people in Settlers league shouting from the roof tops how insanely over priced respec costs were.

PROBLEM: Inability to change ascendancy choice. This is beyond stupid. Like, crazy beyond stupid.

SOLUTION: You can now change your ascendancy by running the Lab again.

PROBLEM: There are notables and skill options which negatively effect your character and provide a downside. I don't think that I need to explain how utterly bad design this is. Giving NEGATIVE Attack speed for two handed weapons for example is completely heinous. They already take 13 seconds to wind up their attacks, it doesn't need to be slower. And no, I don't want 20% reduced Crit Multi with my 40% increased Crit Chance now.

SOLUTION: The Negative portions of these nodes have been inverted and now provide power as one would expect, because what the hell is going on with this skill tree.

PROBLEM: There is no loot in this game. I am level 73 and have done all through tier three "Not Maps" - WAYSTONES - and have nothing to show for it. All that drops are white/blue items, which sell for like 300 gold (not worth the time/effort to vendor). A handful of shitty rares - aka regal shards - and that's it. There is no amount of currency dropping, there are no essences, there is no nothing. There is no god damn loot in this game. I feel like I am being punished for playing PoE2 when I could be getting rewarded for playing something else or just staring at the wall in my kitchen to see if it changes color.

SOLUTION: Massively increased the loot drop rates for currency items, with a small increase to equipment drops. Magic monsters have 30% more Item Rarity, Rare Monsters have 50% more Item Rarity + 15% per Rare Modifier on them. Unique monsters have 100% more Item Rarity and 50% more Item Quantity. All currency items have had their drop formula increased to yield about 10 times as many as they would previously. You will now be able to actually craft items and use your currency as we said in the teaser/trailor video. We admit that we fail on this (as we did in the video "If you're not crafting gear by act 2 we have failed").

PROBLEM: Zones are way too big. It takes like 20 minutes just to walk from one end of the Drowned City to another end, for example. This is excluding while being harassed by those god damn water hags which 100-0 you insta with a 2 second aoe slow that just out right sets player hp to 0.

SOLUTION: Many zones have been divided into smaller zones. Such as "Upper Drowned CIty" and "Lower Drowned City" for example. We have added waypoints to these zones, and multiple checkpoints which you can teleport to as we..

PROBLEM: There are too many 1 shots and cheese bullshit mechanics in this game (not specific to bosses). I have 2300 life, max ele resists, 30 chaos, 70% evasion, and a monkey will throw a rock at me from off screen and 1 tap me. Guess I should only travel via dodgeroll eh?

SOLUTION: Massively lowered damage scaling during endgame, you should not be getting one shot, aside from a handful of large windup attacks such as those Penance Bearer guys with the big tree stump for example. There should always be room to react and there should always be counterplay involved while playing this video game that is supposed to be fun to play and not just annoying and frustrating.

PROBLEM: Support gems suck. There it is. I said it. Most of the support gems just suck. They WAY too heavily nerf your damage output (Chain for example) and disallow creativity and building an interesting way. Lightning Infusion removes half of your Fire/Cold damage, are you high? Who the hell thought of this? Maybe I wanted to make a Cold/Lightning build to freeze and shock things. Guess I simply won't be able to use these supports to boost my elemental damage. This wouldn't be AS HUGE of a problem if we were allowed to use the same gem multiple times, or if there were more support gems available.

SOLUTION: Retuned support gems to have much less of a downside, and a more impactful power increase that you can actually feel.

PROBLEM: Hyper Cringe on death explosions; because you already can't see shit on the screen anyway. Let's have that mob explode and 100-0 you from full hp and full es with capped resist.

SOLUTION: Once an enemy has been slain, the threat it imposes is no longer a variable to deal with. It's dead, Jim.

PROBLEM: There are no monsters in my maps.... it's like I spend 30 seconds running between groups of 3-6 mobs. The mob density is thinner than my hairline and it's depressing. The highest tier "Not map" - Waystone- that I have done is only tier 6, maybe it gets better? But that combined with no loot makes the game just boring as hell to play.

SOLUTION: Increased the spawn points for enemies in maps, but reduced the total number that the spawners create. More frequent engagements with slightly fewer mobs at once. This will help the map feel more populated and that you are actually playing Path of Exile, and not Walking Simulator Path of Smell The Roses.

PROBLEM: There are not enough options for crafting. What I mean is all we get are Trans-Aug->Regal->Ex. Maybe once in a while throw in an essence. My usual crafting situation is something like Transmute to magic, add a random mob with an Augment, hit it with a regal to make it rare and then vendor it. We have no beast crafting, there are no resonators or fossils, and we have no crafting bench. It IS AWFUL. Honestly it's just the worst. How do you take such a massive leap backwards in progression and development here?

SOLUTION: Each town now has a small piece of wood nailed to a stump which you can used as a bench to craft your items and add modifiers to them. Something like a ... crafting bench perhaps? Added many more crafting options and currency tools as well because my god I'm so depressed.

PROBLEM: Dying in a map loses the entire map. Whoever thought this was a good idea needs a stern talking to from HR because this is cruel and unusual punishment. You already lose 15% of your exp. This is completely ludicrous to me. The game is supposed to be played for fun, enjoyment, and entertainment. I do not want an exercise in masochism while I play the game.

SOLUTION: Maps no longer despawn when you die. You can now activate that breach while in delirium and not get 100-0 by a random monkey throwing a rock from off screen critting you for 4400 damage and not worry about losing your map.

I just want the game to be fun. The game is currently not fun, at all. After the 5 years of development and this is what they have, I am not sure if they can fix the game in the 6-12 months of time that it will be in beta.

To me, the most egregious and biggest issue BY FAR is the skill tree - it is AWFUL. Path of Exile 1 Skill tree is a 9/10. Path of Exile 2 skill tree is a 2/10 It is a complete and abject failure in my opinion and needs to be COMPLETELY remade from the ground up. Thank you for coming to my ted talk.

Stay sane exiles.

main agree is the poe2 skilltree its so limiting combine that with the gem system/selection/level,stat requirements for gems and im feeling very shoehorned into only a few builds per class where as in poe1 i felt i had basically full creative freedom

Btw. what's the point of Divine if there is no crafting bench and block?

To reroll that 88 life down to 83 xD

Wow. I like this feedback and thanks alot for the time you took to write all of this down in words. So many words. But in a fassion GGG might understand.

Thank you, I just want the game to be good...

I know we all want it to be good, but what they're doing just isn't fun for me. Honestly I'd be happy if they took the gem/socket system and stuck it into PoE1. That would be the perfect game imo.

+1

PoE 1 gives you opportunities to play what you want.
PoE 2 takes all of this away from you and forces you to... play LA or hideout warrior.

+1 on everything in this thread.
GGG should've taken the whole crafting system from PoE 1 and brought it here. It's so good, advanced, interesting and has so much depth, it really makes it interesting to research and dwell deep into. Almost like a game itself.

PoE 1 skill gem system is also a billion times better. Screw this crap.

It's crazy to me how they just "unlearned" everything that they learned when making PoE. It's such a massive step back in almost every direction.

The only things better about PoE2 are the graphics.

Solid and deep EA feedback as intended.