The game was fun until I got to maps

The campaign is awesome. Good story, nice character progression, good graphics etc. Well done all around.
BUT....
- I am forced to trade, no way to beat the brutal acts with just ssf gear
- getting the third and fourth ascendancies is a horrible experience (I still haven't done it)
- one portal per map? are you serious??
- no map stash tab
- the new skill system is confusing and restrictive

GGG, what have you been doing all this time? I understand that the game is early access, but most of the design decisions happen before you start working. You know Sanctum and Ultimatum are bad mechanics and nobody likes them. Why did you make them mandatory? The only explanation I have is: out of spite. The forum and Reddit is full of negative reviews. Even streamers that are partial to you, have very few good things to say. You must have known this was coming, but you did it anyway. I hope you reconsider all of this.

You're not forced to trade thats just your personal level at this game.

SSF here and I did ascend on melee. Through sanctum nonetheless.

One portal per map, yea death is punishing.

No no map stash, probably just not in the game yet. Probably dont have to purchase another

New skill system is confusing because its new

Lol, im a new player and im SSF until now and im doing t3/t4 maps. I only sell itens to be able to gamble my own. I don't know why people are having such a hard time, especially veteran players. Sure i died a lot for some bosses, and the first time i tried both ascendencies i got my ass beat, but still, i only played 120 hours of PoE 1 and im doing my own build in PoE 2 and i just cant agree that the game is too hard. It's fine.

I guess the fact that i clear the whole map, even when i was leveling, instead of trying to rush paid off.

While I don't necessary agree with OP's points, I very much agree with the title. I enjoyed the campaign greatly, went through it fully with 2 characters, and played a lot of it across 3 other characters.

I always had the goal to progress the story, even when I already knew it. All the little objectives of going through the different regions, with enemies designed for them, while trying to keep my level and gear appropriate, and trying to be as efficient as possible after the first run was fun.

Then I got to maps, where
- I don't have a clear objective "run 10 t1 maps", "run 10 t2 maps", "run 10 t3 maps", "run 10 t4 maps"... this is boring.
- All the maps blur into a mass of uninteresting enemies that I mow down.
- No gear upgrades from map drops. Everything I got from that point was traded or gambled for gold. My characters are not really evolving anymore.
- I don't know what I'm doing there, there's no end goal. I mow down enemies so that I will eventually get more gear so I can mow down more enemies... There's nothing more to look forward to.

I'm in maps now. Glad to be done with the campaign, lol. I was all gung-ho about making all these alts but I am enjoying my gemling grenadier quite a bit. Before this I haven't touched PoE in yeaaaaaaaaaaars, but I was able to hop in and blast. it's a very intuitive game. We have lots of great streamers who teach the game. I've died once in maps. Lost some XP. Kinda felt bad. It would be cool if there was ways to recoup some of it (gravestone or whatever).

I'm playing in the SSF league. I do get a little jelly at how easily traders can get stuff. Maybe buff drops for SSF? Just an idea. Last Epoch has excellent SSF drops that help in that regard.

Overall difficulty is good. For me. Is it good for 90% of the general player base? Maybe not. I can't make that call though. That's up to you guys :D

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Maifayrina#1823 wrote:

Then I got to maps, where
- I don't have a clear objective "run 10 t1 maps", "run 10 t2 maps", "run 10 t3 maps", "run 10 t4 maps"... this is boring.
- All the maps blur into a mass of uninteresting enemies that I mow down.
- No gear upgrades from map drops. Everything I got from that point was traded or gambled for gold. My characters are not really evolving anymore.
- I don't know what I'm doing there, there's no end goal. I mow down enemies so that I will eventually get more gear so I can mow down more enemies... There's nothing more to look forward to.

That's PoE endgame gameplay though. Kinda like Last Epoch. You reach maps and the game becomes an infinite grind to min-max your character where all you do is farm crafting currency and items to upgrade your character or sell for more currency.

PoE2 is sort of the same in that regard, but with a lot more variety of content. You can actually plan your way through the endgame map and hunt down bosses instead, if you prefer. You can customize your experience a lot more to get more breaches or some other mechanic you prefer.

But that's the game.

I do agree though: maps in T1-6 don't seem to give that many upgrades. At least my progress has been a bit slow (without Trading).