Feedback after 200 hours from an Experienced PoE 1 player

Greetings Exiles!

I’m a long-time Path of Exile player with over 6,000 hours invested in the original game(and a lot more research outside of counted game hours), farmed multiple mirrors, had some insanely high end min maxed builds and about 200 hours(I probably slept a few of these hours tbh) of hands-on experience with the Path of Exile 2 Early Access. My current character is a level 88 Ice Shot Deadeye, and I’ve been diving deep into juiced endgame maps. I absolutely love the game and believe it has the potential to be amazing.

With that said, I’d like to offer some constructive feedback for the developers and community to review. I’m sharing these thoughts in hopes of contributing to a smoother, more immersive experience for all.


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1. Quality of Life


- Allow Sanctum and Ultimatum to be opened from the map device. 

- Searching for the instance to open these is tedious, and exiting the instance requires an extra stop in town since /hideout does not function there.

- During the campaign, enable teleport from anywhere in town, not just by touching the waypoint.  

- Portaling to Ziggurat Encampment and clicking on the Gate causes the character to become stuck until forced to walk back and around. Improve the nav mesh or pathing to prevent this issue.

- Improve gem UI layout to avoid excessive scrolling.

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It feels like a website, is hard to navigate and it breaks immersion. It is also hard to get a visual "big picture" of your gem setup when you need to scroll and the support gems are not distinguishable by icon or shape.

- Affinity for BaseType "Waystone" and "Tablet" for stash.

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Dumping your loot has never been this tedious to the point where I hide a lot of things I normally would click via my lootfilter.

Making a dedicated stash tab in early stages is unreasonable but an affinity(even if only temporary until the game gets more fleshed out) would be insane QoL.

- Ensure Soul Core indicators in Jiquani’s Sanctum appear on the map if visible on-screen.

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I could see them on screen without a map indicator.

- Do not remove mechanics like Bosses upon player death; instead, leave them until completed.

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It is fair to remove the mechanics that have been triggered and have a timed ending or have been failed except for bosses for immersion purposes.

It’s unclear where the boss guarding the corrupted area disappears to, which breaks immersion and feels frustratingly pointless.

It would also be better for players to be able to practice the boss fight. Let the boss gatekeep that node until you best him. (seriously it can not get more immersive than this)

Maybe have an upside of clearing it "first try" like better loot or something.

- Make burning ground more visible in grassy areas for clarity.

- Minions and monsters often get stuck in the environment (Me too actually).

- The maps should be wider, as many layouts feel too restrictive despite their visual appeal.

- Let us zoom out more on the Atlas. Finding relevant locations becomes difficult after a few hundred maps.

- I have yet to find a Citadel after hundreds of maps. Not cool.

- Having information on what mods the base you have could roll would be very beneficial.

- Give us Horizon Orbs to reroll map layouts, but keep the reroll limited to maps within the same biome or location pool.

- On-Death effects need to be telegraphed better, it is unclear if it's an on death effect or the monsters death animation.

- Hovering your resists should show you your resists in each penalty tier so you can plan ahead. And for the new players add a fine print reminding them that Elemental weakness exists.

- In-game loot filter editor would be pretty cool.

- Loot filter =~ or ~ operator for partial BaseType matching would be nice since items can have "(Tier 3)" in their name while unidentified for example.

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Alternatively we can have `ModifierTier` as a property to check against that only exists on unidentified items e.g. `ModifierTier >= 3`

- The loot filter’s `Class "Bow"` should not match crossbows. This may be user(me) error, but I’m including it here just in case.

- Rename the "Rarity" socketable to "Vision Rune" or something like this to be more aligned with the vision.

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Current "Vision Rune" is bait.

- Update Act 2 navigation prompt from "Head northwest from the caravan’s midpoint" to "Leave the caravan and head northwest to speak to the hooded one" for clarity.

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I had to read this 3 times xd.(it was late)

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2. Party & Multiplayer


- Remove player collision to avoid disruption during movement and combat.

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This is so frustrating, me and my duo decided not to play together in end game maps to avoid killing each other after playing duos exclusively for years in Path of Exile 1.

- Fix display issue where public parties show 5/6 players even when full. 

- Fix crash when two party members spawn a portal simultaneously in a map. 

- Address issue where a low level player can join an instance through their friend's map device.

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My level 28 friend joined my T5 Untainted Paradise.

- Allow resurrection in maps with conditions, e.g., cooldown or automatic portal usage or a "spectate" feature for dead players to stay engaged during downtime.

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If your entire party wipes you fail the instance, sounds fair.

In duos, the large map size means if one player dies, the other may have to wait a considerable time before they can rejoin gameplay, especially in scenarios requiring completion.

A balanced resurrection system would be ideal, as clutch resurrections during the campaign led to memorable, skillful moments that showcased a deep understanding of the fight.

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3. Enemy Design & Balance


I think the biggest design flaw with PoE 2 as it is in Early Access is that I have died more times to some bs random stray white monster's overpowered ability than to rares or uniques and I think it should be the other way around. I think these abilities should be moved to rares to make the fights more interesting, add some sort of an indicator for the ability so the player can have a skillfull and thrilling interaction with the rares.

Rares should be more exciting and difficult while white and magic packs should be a more relaxed experience. I don't think whites and magics should be easier in any way other than not having these off screen oneshots that you would typically expect from rares and uniques.

Lost men zealot guy's meteor is a good example or the green coffin slam that is 3 times as wide as most alleys you can find in the game. Now before anyone says "skill issue", I very much enjoy this type of gameplay, I just find it ridiculous that a stray white monster will be able to do that from offscreen while I have no issue tanking / kiting / dodging a giga juiced Deadly Evolution rare. Move these abilties to the rares and make them more powerful.

Tankier rares with more mechanics for people to show off their skill and less bs white mob off screen oneshots ty ggg ily.

- Reduce overtuned abilities on white/magic mobs and shift them to rares for more engaging encounters.

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Example 1: Lost Men zealot’s meteor.

Example 2: Green coffin slam, too wide for alleyways.

There are many more, I can detail in a reply if you need me to do the science on this one.

- Reevaluate white mob abilities like slams that stun in packs.

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Do white mobs really need to have slams that stun and then spawn in packs and time their spams with a very short delay from each other?

- Rares should be tankier and more complex, while white/magic packs should be simpler, avoiding off-screen one-shots.

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Make rares take longer to kill with more mechanics, the damage numbers on them are fine but they are quite easy to deal with. These guys should not be less frustrating than trash white mobs.

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4. Ascendancy Design


- Make ascendancies more impactful.

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I unlocked my 3rd ascendancy only after completing a T15 Delirium Breach, which felt too late. Ascendancies should be exciting milestones and feel like a huge powerspike.

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Closing Thoughts

I’m deeply invested in Path of Exile 2's success and hope my feedback contributes to its refinement. The core of the game is fantastic, and I’m thrilled to continue playing and offering thoughts as it evolves.

Grinding Gear Games, thank you for all your hard work and dedication and congratulations on a massively successful early access.

If any of these suggestions resonate with the community or developers, I’ll be happy to expand on them further.



Much love, GGG.
Good luck on your vision crafts, exiles!

I do like a lot of your points.

+1 for layout rerolling, the current solution of just running it as a low tier is terrible as its a waste of time.
The issue is mainly caused by bad map layouts with way too many narrow passages or extensive foliage which hides enemies/on death effects/turns into insane shotguns.

+1 for ALL of OP's QoL changes, for the bow/Xbow issue you could use BaseType instead and list every possible base you want after, its tedious but very doable and more specifit.
I would like to add an atlas reset which basically compresses the current atlas, removing finished maps AND a higher zoom out level. Searching for specific locations after running a few hundred maps turns into a nightmare, looking for where my citadels are takes minutes at times.

Also give us the OPTION to disable rare death effects so we can actually see on death effects which might have procced instead of it being overwritten by some stupid visual fluff.
Same goes for foliage, please let us scale down/disable foliage for the same reason+mobs hidden behind trees etc. and render on death effects OVER bushes and other visual fluff.

Campaign I think was great.... Other than A3, areas are just too massive and backtracking through empty areas feels terrible, have to revisit it with the checkpoint teleport.
THE SAME CAN BE SAID FOR MAPS THOUGH. Missing that one rare has the exact same effect, my solution would be to add 25% more rares into maps but let them complete on killing 80% of rares - ALWAYS have to kill boss if present.

I would love to see the party collision disabled as well, less for the blocking reason. If you move into the collision of another player you start rubberbanding quite often.

Remove Eternal Knights. It is fine if a mob with a shield is tanky, which is the case, it would also be fine if they counter attack proj's at like hp threshholds, but currently when there are a lot of projs on screen prior to a knight being visible you might just die at times, with little to no counterplay.

Oh also towers, make us just path through them and have them automatically completed, since there is hardly any mob density to talk about there is no reason to not just run them on a t1 - which is just tedium.

PLEASE REMOVE AUGURY PLEASE GGG I DONT CARE ABOUT ANYTHING ELSE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE

Another huge issue is Mana on my bow character, I spec a ton of mana leech(3 clusters), mana regeneration/reduced mana cost of skills(another 3 clusters) and mana leech support + mods on 2 of my items and I still run out of mana and mana flask charges(even with gains charge/sec on the flask and belt and alchemist's boon with clarity).

I feel like mana is for magic idk wizards, witches stuff like that. It breaks my immersion that my build becomes unplayable when the boss is 30% hp because mana is so hard to manage on a bow attack build. This needs to be addressed immediately, if the only viable way to play bow builds and kill a boss is to buy a unique ring, we have a huge design flaw.

Yep game sucks, it's just ruthless 2.0
If they don't fix it its dead on release.

ever considered getting some mana regen/flask charge regain

Nah the game is great, it's just early access and the purpose of early access is to find the flaws and fix them before the release. I love the game and want it to be in the best possible state when it comes out

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Toaru_Majutsu_no_Index#1288 wrote:

ever considered getting some mana regen/flask charge regain

I will look into the huge mana regen mod on the ring and see if it will make a difference. Thanks for the suggestion, I am already running leech but 70% of my phys is converted to cold with ice shot so regardless how much I invested into leech it is barely noticeable

I've downgraded to these rings and at least it feels playable