Feedback after 80h (Updated after ~200h)

Hey GGG and POE community,

Here is some feedback I collected in my 80h of playtime so far. I really love the game, so I want to see it become the best it can be. Please understand that these are my opinion and by no means reflect a definitive statement on what could/should be done better.
Also, English is not my first language, and while I would say my English is pretty good, there is still a chance you will stumble upon some weird grammar.

I am going to start with some general feedback and later talk about 2 things which I really want to see improved, namely: Waystones and Trading.

Date formatting: dd.mm.yyyy

General:

- The default movement speed feels a little to slow.
- The attribute requirements for skill gems seems to high which leads to a lot of attribute management issues.
- Droprate of support skillgems is to low – (This was down to bad luck on my part)
- Belts (charm slots should be dependent on item level and not a modifier)
- Minions despawning when they are to far away from the player can sometimes lead to situations where I am waiting on the respawn timer before engaging the next enemies.
- The visibility of icons on the map is next to none in some places. (Looking at you Lightning resist marker in akt 2)
- Please let us zoom further out on the atlas.

Waystones:

This mostly boils down to the decision to have only one death per waystone. Losing a waystone, especially a juiced up on, is extremely disheartening. Running a 6 Portal defense is something that should absolutely be discouraged, but this feels like a step to far.

What could be done instead is:
Each death in a Map removes 1 of its Modifiers starting with the prefixes and then going on to the suffixes. This would allow players to use the full 6 portals of a map and encourage good gameplay because if they die to much they would essentially be left with a basic white map.

Updated Part (04.01.2025):
Early on i also found myself struggeling to sustain the number of waystones in my possession. That coupled with the low droprate in early mapping made it feel like a chore you had to do to get to the good stuff in higher tier maps. (This progessivly got better with every Atlas Passive spend, but still does not feel like its quite where it should be)

Trading:

This one is my personal number 1 problem I have with the game (Same goes for POE1) and is the reason I mostly play SSF while still being on the trade league because of the currency exchange.

1. Having to stop my gameplay and open a browser with the trading website really takes you out of the experience of playing the game. This should all be done with ingame menus like the currency exchange.
2. The other thing is that other players, often, simply do not answer. In my most egregious example I wrote roughly 20 different people in the span of 30 minutes before I got an answer und subsequently a successful trade. This just feels like the game is not respecting my time.

Updated Part (04.01.2025):
I stopped trading and only use the currency exchange when i need it. It is way to frustrating and time consuming - atleast for me.

QoL I would like to see:

- Map stash + affinity
- Rune stash + affinity
- Overwriting of runes on gear
- Sub option for the ESC menu in the Hamburger Menu on the UI
- Map shortcut for “Trial of the Sekhemas”
- Map toogle for Akt 3 Past and Present
- Orb of Scouring

Updated Part (04.01.2025):

- Option for the unique tab to spoiler the uniques in the game.
- Gambling for gear in the Hideout
- Slider for opacity of skill effects for player and allies (to help with visual clarity)
- Upgrading of item base basic -> advanced -> elite (I mainly would like that for uniques so that more of them can be viable in endgame)
- Sub option for the gem cutting menu in the Hamburger Menu on the UI
- Ingame Build planner that can automatically assing skillpoints on level up and shows estimated damage values
- Level selection for cut skill gems.

That is all for now. If I find some more or my opinion changes on some things I will write another post. Until then: Have fun!

Just chiming in on what I think about some of your points:

-Movement. Agreed. A lot of others have suggested making movement speed an implicit on boots and I agree this is a good solution.
-Attribute. Somewhat agree. A somewhat solution is to make it easy to select what gem lv something is. How to make this happen? When you engrave a skill it marks it with the lv of the gem. Then anytime you want, you can adjust it's level up to that level (so with a lv 14 gem you could set its level from 1 to 14). This way, when your attributes go lower cause of changing gear, you can easily enable ur gem again.
-support gems. It's an issue in early game. But once you reach maps it's not at all, u'll be swimming in them. So maybe they can just adjust the droprate early game to discourage people from just buying them from other players.
-Belts. Agreed, this is a big issue, and u have a good solution.
-Atlas zoom. Agreed

Waystone. Agreed. You provide a very elegant solution. BTW, how do you feel about dying removing the map icons also (like bosses, irradiated, breach, etc)?

Trading. Agreed, but don't expect a solution for years. POE 1 was the same way. They should implement something similar to what Last Epoch has. POE does have 1 advantage over LE though, which is there are more and better ways of filtering the trade search. However, what's very annoying is that you can only load the top 100 results. They should at least change this first.

implicits never a good solution. It just make other bases useless.

But nerfing affixes from +30% to +10/+15% max is fine, just make characters initialy a ~15% faster.
Or give easily accessable +10% ms node for every starting position in a skilltree.

"

Stebobibo#0581 wrote:

-support gems. It's an issue in early game. But once you reach maps it's not at all, u'll be swimming in them. So maybe they can just adjust the droprate early game to discourage people from just buying them from other players.

Hmm then it really seems like i just had bad luck in regards to support gem drops.

"

Stebobibo#0581 wrote:

Waystone. Agreed. You provide a very elegant solution. BTW, how do you feel about dying removing the map icons also (like bosses, irradiated, breach, etc)?

I do not like it. I believe they, even with the current system, should just stay as permanent “Terrain features” of the Map node. The game usually gives you enough nodes to path around, so you would not have to play a mode like Expedition, for example, if you do not like it.

"

vzmNitie#2139 wrote:

implicits never a good solution. It just make other bases useless.

But nerfing affixes from +30% to +10/+15% max is fine, just make characters initialy a ~15% faster.
Or give easily accessable +10% ms node for every starting position in a skilltree.

This I agree with. A increase to the base movement speed would be the best solution, at least in my opinion.

I updated the Original post with some further QoL suggestions.

"

_UncleTobi_#1226 wrote:

1. Having to stop my gameplay and open a browser with the trading website really takes you out of the experience of playing the game. This should all be done with ingame menus like the currency exchange.

I'll add to that:
Make trade automated.
The whole system via searching on a website > whispering > waiting > ah offline,too bad > repeat is archaic.
Let us buy whatever is put on the auction house automatically without relying on the seller being active in that very moment.

Games like FF14 do that.

My 2 cents - personally, I've gone through the campaign (to mid Act 2 Cruel), but not to maps (like mid 50s level). My experience was decent at the start, then slowly now just dropped off. I enjoyed the overall improvements from POE1 (sound, gameplay, gems, etc). However, I felt the "dark souls-like" components to the campaign made it a bit too tedious at times (although overall it's not a bad change). Furthermore, I felt the "game balance" wasn't really there in terms of offense/defense, and has lots of room for improvement. I feel (and some pros agree on this, like Kripparian I believe, etc) that no matter how much you put into defense (armor, life, resis, etc), you'll still get 1-shot -- so why build any defense? That's where the balance is too one-sided and it removes a critical element of the game, to be able to actual think about your build...now it's just pure offense basically. In terms of end-game/maps, again, I never got there in PoE2, but I did for PoE1 (where I did mapping a bit) -- it's just not really what I'm looking for.

I felt there were quite a few parallels to Diablo II in terms of setting and some other aspects (Act 2/3, in particular). I enjoyed that part but perhaps it was more nostalgia than anything. However, I do also remember that D2 was fun to replay and go through the campaign again. With PoE2, I just don't really feel the same way unfortunately (yes it's Early Access, but I still think some of the things mentioned in this thread are just too much to change). Several reasons would include perhaps the difficulty (still feel too many possibilities of "1-shots" in the game, and elemental aid mechanics like bleed, etc are a bit much, when there are very few ways to actually defend against it, with too few defense passive nodes, etc) and map size where D2 had a good balance in both aspects (where I remember many would replay the campaign during each ladder reset again and again -- one where I doubt will happen for PoE2 player base). Again, a large part was the aforementioned things above previously. I do feel D2 was a masterpiece and to be able to recreate an improved version of it would be an insane feat in itself. Of course, PoE2 is not necessarily trying to do that, but I guess that was what I personally was looking for. Though, again, if PoE2 campaign replayability improves just like in D2 then I do believe the game's longevity would increase for the player-base -- for now, I don't think players would replay the campaign and also not many for maps either (whole other discussion there from the PoE1 map veterans). Another bonus from D2 I remember was "speed-running" the game with friends to help them level up their characters fast. In PoE2, it's still possible but the setting for "party experience" has to be disabled in order to do this, but at the expense of the party experience -- while in D2, this trade-off was non-existent so it would be much more fun to speed-run your friends through the game, hence increasing more replayability -- again, now there's no real incentive other than to beat a boss, but with no experience during the run. Moreover, the "party scaling" was much more "balanced" in D2 I feel than in PoE2 and playing in parties for PoE2 is much less fun than it was in D2 -- again, this hurts PoE2 game longevity/replayability.

I really don't have any belief that the above will change at all in terms of patching, etc. In the end, I feel it's difficult to design a game that caters to everyone of course. So, I say just enjoy it for what you can (personally, I enjoyed the time overall but I don't think the game has any longevity for me). Good luck and have fun.

"

chobo999#2010 wrote:

Spoiler

My 2 cents - personally, I've gone through the campaign (to mid Act 2 Cruel), but not to maps (like mid 50s level). My experience was decent at the start, then slowly now just dropped off. I enjoyed the overall improvements from POE1 (sound, gameplay, gems, etc). However, I felt the "dark souls-like" components to the campaign made it a bit too tedious at times (although overall it's not a bad change). Furthermore, I felt the "game balance" wasn't really there in terms of offense/defense, and has lots of room for improvement. I feel (and some pros agree on this, like Kripparian I believe, etc) that no matter how much you put into defense (armor, life, resis, etc), you'll still get 1-shot -- so why build any defense? That's where the balance is too one-sided and it removes a critical element of the game, to be able to actual think about your build...now it's just pure offense basically. In terms of end-game/maps, again, I never got there in PoE2, but I did for PoE1 (where I did mapping a bit) -- it's just not really what I'm looking for.

I felt there were quite a few parallels to Diablo II in terms of setting and some other aspects (Act 2/3, in particular). I enjoyed that part but perhaps it was more nostalgia than anything. However, I do also remember that D2 was fun to replay and go through the campaign again. With PoE2, I just don't really feel the same way unfortunately (yes it's Early Access, but I still think some of the things mentioned in this thread are just too much to change). Several reasons would include perhaps the difficulty (still feel too many possibilities of "1-shots" in the game, and elemental aid mechanics like bleed, etc are a bit much, when there are very few ways to actually defend against it, with too few defense passive nodes, etc) and map size where D2 had a good balance in both aspects (where I remember many would replay the campaign during each ladder reset again and again -- one where I doubt will happen for PoE2 player base). Again, a large part was the aforementioned things above previously. I do feel D2 was a masterpiece and to be able to recreate an improved version of it would be an insane feat in itself. Of course, PoE2 is not necessarily trying to do that, but I guess that was what I personally was looking for. Though, again, if PoE2 campaign replayability improves just like in D2 then I do believe the game's longevity would increase for the player-base -- for now, I don't think players would replay the campaign and also not many for maps either (whole other discussion there from the PoE1 map veterans). Another bonus from D2 I remember was "speed-running" the game with friends to help them level up their characters fast. In PoE2, it's still possible but the setting for "party experience" has to be disabled in order to do this, but at the expense of the party experience -- while in D2, this trade-off was non-existent so it would be much more fun to speed-run your friends through the game, hence increasing more replayability -- again, now there's no real incentive other than to beat a boss, but with no experience during the run. Moreover, the "party scaling" was much more "balanced" in D2 I feel than in PoE2 and playing in parties for PoE2 is much less fun than it was in D2 -- again, this hurts PoE2 game longevity/replayability.

I really don't have any belief that the above will change at all in terms of patching, etc. In the end, I feel it's difficult to design a game that caters to everyone of course. So, I say just enjoy it for what you can (personally, I enjoyed the time overall but I don't think the game has any longevity for me). Good luck and have fun.

enough with the copypasta

"

_UncleTobi_#1226 wrote:

Trading:

This one is my personal number 1 problem I have with the game (Same goes for POE1) and is the reason I mostly play SSF while still being on the trade league because of the currency exchange.

1. Having to stop my gameplay and open a browser with the trading website really takes you out of the experience of playing the game. This should all be done with ingame menus like the currency exchange.
2. The other thing is that other players, often, simply do not answer. In my most egregious example I wrote roughly 20 different people in the span of 30 minutes before I got an answer und subsequently a successful trade. This just feels like the game is not respecting my time.

Ya trading is a problem. But it will take ages for GGG to implement in-game trade, I'm telling you. It might even be something they don't agree with implementing.

Here's something they could implement quickly that would solve some problems: Simply allow players to chat while paused. Speaking from personal experience (and I'm sure many others have similar experience), I have to ignore a lot of whispers because I'm in the heat of battle. Bosses take long, so can a lot of regular fights, especially with rares. And there are a lot of timed events like delerium and breach. Allowing use to answer trade requests while paused would go a long way.

"

Stebobibo#0581 wrote:

Ya trading is a problem. But it will take ages for GGG to implement in-game trade, I'm telling you. It might even be something they don't agree with implementing.

Here's something they could implement quickly that would solve some problems: Simply allow players to chat while paused. Speaking from personal experience (and I'm sure many others have similar experience), I have to ignore a lot of whispers because I'm in the heat of battle. Bosses take long, so can a lot of regular fights, especially with rares. And there are a lot of timed events like delerium and breach. Allowing use to answer trade requests while paused would go a long way.

Ideally, I would prefer a proper auction house which would allow bidding, buyout, and the placing of buy orders. I am aware that that is something that is not very likely to happen, but I gave the feedback in the hopes that at least something will be done. It could be your suggestion or a simple reputation system in which players can vote on sellers. I do not know what the best course of action is, just do something.