Feedback at lvl 89/t16-t18 maps

About 180 hours in now, and starting on my 2nd character. This feedback is mostly going to be centered on my map experience so far. I'll split this into good things, things that are to be expected because it's EA (so this section is basically just "hopefully this is in the pipeline and probably is), and some actual issues. I am playing SSF, on a Gemling build I cobbled together myself, so that will impact some of this.

Good things

- I'll get the controversial bit out of the way first. I like the one death per map. I did not like it initially, but once I reworked my build and put some defences in, and approached fights a bit more tactically, the death count plummeted to the point where i'm losing maybe one map in 10, and mostly after halfway through so i'm not losing much. To me this now makes the game interesting rather than just the mindless poe1 glass cannon mapping experience.

- The moment-to-moment combat (outside of one thing) feels great.

- Having a choice between doing maps with bosses and not having bosses is something I like. *BUT* boss frequency on maps should be increased later on, when there's more map boss variation available.

- WASD controls are the best thing that ever came to the POE franchise.

- Maps feel extremely different within tiers, because the variation between monster types is huge. This is something I felt was lacking in POE1, where everything died in 0.01 seconds so you rarely even knew what mobs were in the map.

- Loot in high tier maps is in a good place, possibly bordering on overtuned depending on your point of view, but for me I'm happy with it.

Things that should come with time

- More map types (in particular, can we get some different map shapes? Would be nice to have some more straight ones, some circles, a couple wide open squares like Dunes in 1 etc). At the moment there is a distinct similarity.

- Obvious stash tabs that will come later, though waystones is probably needed sooner rather than later given a lot of us I would expect now have quad tabs full of stones sitting around.

- Bulk map upgrade option (use the disenchant option in the hideout merchant to facilitate this, maybe? It has the right interaction window like the vendor recipes in 1)

- Hideout gamble vendor...going to act 3 cruel is just a pain in the ***.

Things that feel bad

- Early waystone sustain, and high tier maps dropping too many low tier waystones. To avoid disrupting drop balance too much, the easiest way to deal with the first point is by massively increasing the number of stones the vendor in hideout has for sale. Second part is harder, but maybe something analagous to watchstones in poe1?

- Crafting is...in need of more options. Runes should *definitely* be replaceable.

- Too much reliance on on-death effects. This was necessary in POE1 because no monster ever lived long enough to attack, but that isn't the case here. It's not that they kill me (any more), it's that stopping and waiting around for 2-3 seconds upwards of 40 times per map for pools to vanish or big mobs to explode breaks the gameplay.

- Movement speed is a bit on the slow side. This will be hard to address because any increase in movement speed amounts to an enormous defensive buff to players.

- 10% xp death penalty is fine, albeit very punishing. I hear, though haven't experienced, that this goes up to 15%, which feels a bit overkill.

General conclusion

For me (and yes, a lot will disagree with me because this is a very different game to POE1, a game we all love and have spent a lot of time on), this game is massively more interesting and fun to play than POE1.

If this was a finished game, I'd rate it somewhere around 7.5-8/10. As an early access game where I expect a lot of the things that currently feel off to be added in down the line, it's an easy 9 for me.

I look forward to many years playing both this and POE1 at their respective league launches.