Early Access Feedback - Suggestions for Quality of Life Features

Overall, I'm enjoying PoE2 a great deal. I bounced off PoE1 twice because it just made me wish that I was playing Grim Dawn the whole time, but I'm not feeling that at all really with the new game.

Positives for me include the quality of the animations, the impact of combat, the graphical fidelity, map concepts/visuals, cool boss encounters with voice cues, checkpoints at bosses, and, surprisingly for me, using wasd and the souls-like dodge-rolling. Oh, and good riddance to links and coloured skill gem slots on gear!



I have some gripes too, but I want the main thrust of this post to be about quality of life features that I think the game would benefit from:

1. Equipment Compare As Default
The extra, side-by-side tool-tip showing the equipped piece of gear for comparison when hovering over an item in the inventory/stash should be visible by default and not require an extra button press to see. At the very least, the button should be listed at the bottom of the tool-tip to highlight the function, but better that it is just the default mode to begin with.

2. Passive Skill Point Count
In the passive tree window, it should show the number of points spent so far, and out of how many total passive points are available in the game - to better track how many points are still left to attain, how many will be left if aiming for a specific branch, and for better planning if a build is possible.

3. Improved and consistent Skill Information
Skill tool-tips and expanded information pages should be able to show a before and after of the modifiers from support gems, gear, and passives (this is something Grim Dawn does exceptionally well). Often the tool-tips don't show the effects of leveling a skill gem either. In my experience on Witch, a couple of skills, in particular minion skills, have quite poor clarity:

e.g. Raging Spirits - minion information is only available during the 5-ish second window that they are summoned and not all the time. There is no indication in the tool-tip of what is improving when the skill gem is leveled up. The minion damage stays as "0-1" at all times. There is no visible information about the damage output of my infernal legion/minion instability combination. It is difficult to tell what passives are effecting the raging spirits - does increased fire damage? Does increased fire penetration, does increased damage on hit to burning? None of this is obviously communicated, and really should be front and centre when I'm looking at the skill information.

e.g. Some skill interaction appears to be spreading my curses on enemy death, which I absolutely love, but I don't really know what combination of skills and supports is doing this, at least not from the tool-tip information available.

What I would like to see in Skill Information, applying consistently to attacks, spells and minions:

Skill Description and overview of effects
Minion Health, defences and resistances - unmodified and modified
Attack / Cast / Effect Speed - unmodified and modified
Range and AoE Range - unmodified and modified
Total Skill Damage Rate (Damage per second / per hit) - unmodified and modified
Base Damage Rate - unmodified and modified
Additional Damage Rate - unmodified and modified
Extra AoE Damage Rate - unmodified and modified
Support Gem Damage Rate - unmodified and modified
Chance for Afflictions - unmodified and modified
Other Support Gem Effects
Passive Tree Effects (e.g. increased damage to burning enemies)
Total Damage Penetration

I'm sure that there are more parameters that I am forgetting, but this is the bare minimum info I need to be able to view easily.

4. Wall Transparency Option
An option for wall transparency around the character would be nice. Terrain often blocked my camera view, and sometimes in fights, leading to me not being able to respond to being jumped by a mob pack. This was especially apparent to me in The Dreadnought and Aggorat maps.

5. Vendors travel back in time through the portal with you
Having to travel through the extra portal every time to vendor a full inventory in Act 3 is grating. The whole camp does not have to move, but at the very least the main vendors should move back and forth through the portal with you.

6. Replacing Runes in Gear Sockets
It would be nice to re-socket runes in gear - even if this involves destroying the old rune by replacing it with a new one. This would help me feel more free to swap in other pieces of gear with different resistances - say I get a pair of boots with Fire Resistance when I have Fire Resistance already socketed in my Chest piece, would be nice to switch those runes to Cold Resistance rather than throwing away the new boots to try to find boots with Cold Resistance instead.


Those are my main constructive suggestions, which I hope people like the sound of and that are doable with the game engine.


I have had a relatively bug free experience aside from a couple of visual bugs - the most obvious was the whips from the mobs in the Drowned City would remain attached to my character after the enemies died, and they would stretch across the map as I moved!


Thanks for reading!

Having played further and experienced the new patch for a bit, I have some more preference-based feedback I'd like to share:


7. Campaign Map Design
I would much prefer some more bespoke, fixed map design for the campaign (not sure for end-game yet), as opposed to sprawling, random labyrinths that can make following a winding path to an empty dead end frustrating (especially at the pace that our characters move) - Ogham Village is one of my favourite maps because of the relatively fixed loaction of the Executioner boss arena. Either that, or I would like a more points of interest like camps, boss arenas, collectibles, hidden stashes/treasure vaults, etc. per map to add more engaging content per map, to fill out the dead end paths, and reduce the distance between interesting events. The strength of PoE2 for me, with this action combat system, is really the boss and mini-boss encounters, so more of these per map would be excellent.


8. Separate and Limiting Skill Buildcraft
Skill build-craft feels a little limited in that it seems to pigeonhole you into specific play-styles or keep play-styles quite separate. For instance, why does the Withering Touch support gem have to be specifically for hits that deal chaos damage? Why can my Solar Orb or Raging Spirit minions not spread it so that I can tie Chaos damage skill support freely into my fire build? Where are the damage conversion options so that a portion of my fire damage is dealt as chaos damage? Also some things that feel as though they should interact don't - It would be really nice if Hexblast could trigger Impending Doom... and how about curses socketed in Blasphemy applying Decaying Hex... please!


9. Accidental Animation Cancelling and Cooldowns
Skills go on cooldown after accidentally animation cancelling them and not actually getting the skill effect off - this makes putting in supports like hourglass often feel annoying, even with a lot of extra cast speed.


10. Movement Speed
Base movement speed could maybe be bumped up by 5%. Getting 25% movement speed on boots feels night and day, to such a point that it feels almost mandatory. Don't know if I like the idea of it being implicit on boots or not, but probably land on the side of it being a good idea.


11. Loot Quality and Randomness
I personally do not feel that we get enough orbs and essences during the campaign to justify the poor loot quality and the complete randomness of "crafting", even with a decent chunk of Item Rarity increase on my gear. It really takes away from progression and buildcraft. It always felt awful to use one of my four exalted orbs, to take the one out of ten rares I find/roll up that actually looks useful for me, and then add two absolutely useless modifications to it to brick the item. I hate gear gambling like this, and spending all of my gold gambling for a usable glove roll at the vendor too. It all feels completely at odds with the slower pace of PoE2 compared to more blasty aRPGs like PoE1 where you are showered with loot. I prefer this pace for this game, but then individual loot quality should improve to compensate for the lower quantity. This is also the kind of game where it would be perfect to tie higher chances of prefixes/suffixes to specific bosses and mini-bosses so that they can be target farmed on item drops.


12. Empty Chests and Interactive Objects
Why are most interactive objects on maps empty? Not even a few pennies? I kind of feel like an idiot for clicking on them... And why does loot from blue chests not feel any better than from white chests? Yellow chests do feel substantially better... usually...


13. Looting Essences, Shards and Orbs
When do you ever not want to pick up essences, shards and orbs? Can we have an option to auto-loot them like gold please?


14. Gem Drop Rates
I see barely any Spirit Gems dropping, and even Suppport Gems feel a little sparse, but my stash is overflowing with Skill Gems. It would be nice to see this ratio evened out a bit.


Still very much enjoying my time in PoE2, and I'm actually looking forward to rolling up some alt characters and going through the current content again to see what fun things I can build with them. But I am starting to find myself wishing that the game would play into its own strengths and gameplay style a bit more.

Another list of observations and feedback about my time playing through early access as an Infernalist Witch with minimal minions:


Bugs:
1. Icons on my map in Cruel are not greying out after completing the corresponding events. This may be an artifact of Cruel being somewhat placeholder for future campaign acts. For me the icon for Rootdregde, and the icon for the Ultimatum key pillar in Utzaal remain lit up despite completing the events several times and restarting the game.


2. I'm encountering some enemies that lose their lifebar and become invincible. In particular for me, at least one Feral Primate in each run of the Matlan Waterways. They chase me through the entire map, they damage me during lever animations, and they prevent me from using my portal.



Time for some QoL suggestions:

15. Coloured Item Backgrounds
I would like for the inventory backgrounds for items to be coloured by rarity. Simply because it will make it much easier to be able to work out which vendor I am taking them to at a glance. Having to mouse over each to find out rarity maybe instils a little better item analysis, but it is kind of annoying not to just have the immediate visual indicator.


16. Salvaging Interface
Can we just Ctrl click for the Salvage Bench like every other vendor please?


17. Strength, Dexterity, and Intelligence Source Breakdown
It would be nice, on the character stat sheet to be able to hover over the Stat and see a breakdown of exactly where my increases are coming from - passives, gear, world buffs. This would allow me to better understand where I can remove or add further increases to tailor my stats to be able to use new pieces of gear or level my skills.


18. Combat log or Death Recap
It would be helpful to be able to see some sort of combat log or death recap information to have some clarity on where I need to improve my build or my play-style.


19. Modifier Information Placement
Why is the Item Rarity Increase modifier displayed under skill tooltips and not just displayed on the character stat sheet?



And for some new personal grumbles...:

20. Item Rarity Increase
Item rarity increase is an awful idea for a gear modifier. It feels near mandatory to get any items and currency to drop, so it feels similar to movement speed on boots, and just eats up a modifier slot on gear. Just remove it and increase the base loot quality.


21. Mob aggression and pack size
This is a continuation of my "PoE2 needs to decide what its identity is" discussion.

To output my top damage, I need to combo a curse with a skill that spreads an exposure debuff, and then my main damage skill that benefits from those damage increases, plus create two offerings to buff further. I like the feel of casting these skills and this slower pace that the game initially presents with. However, the tuning of mobs seems to ramp up out of reach of this playstyle towards the end of Act 2 Cruel and throughout Act 3 Cruel, where my character is constantly rushed down by large packs of fast, aggressive, high-damage mobs, like Pale-Stitched Stalkers, who threaten lethal damage within the time that I can get only a single skill cast off. This has been particularly frustrating in The Dreadnought, Jiquani's Sanctum, and Utzaal, and increasing cast speed hasn't seemed to help.

It starts to feel as though blasty, hit-based immediate damage, one skill builds are being incentivised, as the best defense is a dead mob that never has a chance to hit you - plus you want to clear fast to farm maps. Videos of end-game builds look pretty much like they play like PoE1 builds.

It might be just a case of lowering the movement and attack speed of the most aggressive, in-your-face, high damage mobs. Or it might require lowering the health of the most aggressive mobs. Or it might just feel better if packs of mobs were tuned so that those stronger mobs came as single monsters in a pack of less aggressive mobs, allowing more of a chance to cast skills and actually capture mobs in AoEs without having to constantly run away and having the mobs run past the AoEs immediately. Aggressive swarms of weaker, low damage mobs are ok, so long as they don't chain interrupt.

Something else that would help is making it so that the first damage tick for spells like solar orb and contagion occurs on the spell cast, instead of having further downtime post-cast. There is already a cast time for these spells, so having further downtime feels bad and makes it harder to land damage when it is required.

I don't know if I have articulated this properly, but the main point is that PoE2 needs to decide on what combat loop it actually wants to aim for and incentivise. Personally I would like to see less trash mobs and more boss-fights for this game compared to PoE1, because that is where the more distinct, slower combat shines the best to me.



I'm starting to get a small itch for the availability for freedom of Grim Dawn's buildcraft, but currently PoE2 feels like a different enough style of aRPG, and the boss encounters are so good, that they satisfy slightly different niches in my mind enough that I still want to keep playing and don't feel like I'm bouncing off of it.

I literally spent 4 hours setting my towers and maps up to have over 60 quant on maps...... everytime a party member enters after me it kicks me to log in and i loose my portals..... 4 times in a row! wasted 4 hours and maps i spent all day crafting.

Just a few more points for now as I start the endgame grind and also create a new character to get the feel for a different follow up play through.


22. “Filler” Affixes
The more gear I roll up, the more I hate the “reduced level requirements” and “light radius” modifiers. They don’t feel like useful mods, they feel like bandaid fixes to game design, and also like they are there to dilute the pool of affixes to increase the gear grind. I’m sure there are other redundant or overly minor affixes that also just feel like they get in the way.

Affix space is also taken up by the need to cap each individual elemental resistance separately (although I have seen one ring with all elemental resist on it) - I’m more tolerant of this though, because there are less resistances to cap in PoE than in Grim Dawn.


23. Paying skill costs for skills that cannot cast
I’m not 100% certain this is happening, but I think it is. I have a support on my Offering skill that adds a life cost to it, and requires 2 offerings to be made to take effect. I cannot recast the skill until both offerings end or are killed. However, if I press the skill button early, when it is greyed out because one offering is still alive, I believe that it still pays the health and mana costs even though it cannot cast?


24. Belts with extra charm slots
I thought this was patched, but I have not seen a single 2 slot belt at all since the update. Their patch notes words included “significantly more common” and “from level 23” and “level 64”, but all of my belt drops have remained 1 slot.


25. Greater Jewellers Orb and Gemcutter’s Prism Drop rates
Having now completed cruel difficulty, which I understand is a stand in for acts 4 to 6, I don’t quite understand these currency drop rates… my build had very minor progression from Act3 to Act3 cruel, with some minor improvements from slightly better gear, minor increases from the passive tree, and finding a slightly better combination of skills and supports. But it felt as though progression kind of stalled as I wasn’t able to upgrade my skill gems much at all throughout this entire period. My gems levelled from 10/11 to 14, but otherwise I didn’t find significantly more lesser jewellers orbs, I found no greater jewellers orbs, and I found only 2 gemcutters prisms. Switching between 80-100% Item rarity and 160% item rarity and grinding locations over and over hasn’t seemed to make a difference like it has for other currencies and gear. Now I don’t really feel prepared for the endgame and my buildcraft feels limited. Surely it makes sense that you find lesser jewellers orbs throughout acts 1 to 3, greater jewellers orbs throughout acts 4-6 and perfect jewellers orbs in the endgame? And maybe we can salvage skill gems for prism shards or something?


I’m not sure I’m particularly interested in endgame grinding at the moment - I’ve never been a leaderboard or tier pushing kind of player, much more interested in just creating and playing builds that feel fun to me, so looking at rolling up a Monk, Mercenary, or Ranger character to see what I can build there.

Oh, and I forgot

26. In-game Loot Filter
I know that you can download/write a loot filter file out of game and load it in through the option menu. But honestly, not having a proper in-game option like Grim Dawn or Last Epoch kind of feels lazy at this point…

27. Buying Regular Stash Tabs
This probably cannot happen because of the business model, but, considering how many different premium stash tab types there are to buy in the microtransaction store, and how they are strict upgrades, it feels pretty stingy to charge for regular stash tabs too with no in-game way to earn them. Personally would like to see the ability to spend a substantial chunk of in-game gold to buy extra regular stash tabs.

28. HOT TAKE: First playthrough SSF until endgame

Ok... this will probably be my most unpopular opinion on PoE2... This is more of a small rant than actual feedback though, because I doubt very much that this will be implemented. I'm sure that many people will also disagree with me, but hear me out, at least.


I think that trade should be disabled until your first character reaches the endgame, at which point it can be unlocked for your account - effectively forced, limited, SSF.

Trading seems to have a huge impact on the tuning of drop rates and sense of gear progression, and even on the style of gameplay being incentivised later in the game:

1. it warps the perception of crafting materials into trading currencies, disengaging you from wanting to craft with those currencies.

2. finding currencies to trade with for gear that enhances your specific build is just not as exciting as you finding that gear yourself.

3. leading on from that, it removes design space for game mechanics such as target farming uniques or affixes from specific bosses.

4. all crafting material/currency drop rates, and probably gear drop rates, get tuned with use in a trading economy in mind, as opposed to how using them (and how many you need) on your character feels.

5. as such, there is pressure to use as much Item Rarity Increase on gear as possible, in both trade and SSF, but for different reasons, which sacrifices build space either way.

6. trade access to an overabundance of gear results in somewhat designer gearing that facilitates an over-represented number of builds that break character survivability and that blast through content at PoE1 levels of pace

7. those that do not engage with trade can end up struggling more as content assumes a higher level of power than is generally available with in-game progression.


There are probably more reasons and impacts to consider, but the final point is this: If everyone has to go through it, then there is theoretically more of an incentive to improve the underlying experience for everyone. Trade should be an addition to the game, not the game itself, and not the primary way to experience character progression.