POE is a game I love, but I have to address some concerns

PoE is a game that I love but I need to address some concerns

So, I have played PoE since 2018, and I have experienced a lot of changes with this game. I'm someone you could consider too casual to be a PoE map blaster but more sweaty than someone who'd play 10 hours per week. I feel like PoE is respective of my time and rewards you for time spent playing and progressing in the game. PoE 2 has been out for 2 weeks, and just because it is early access, I really want this feedback to be taken with some consideration if any GGG dev is reading. I've played about 100 hours in the game, and I just need to talk about these things. Let me start with the good:

**Good:**

The visuals, the sound, the music, and the crispiness of the game are top notch. It gets an easily 8.5-9/10. It is very clear how much thought and care went into each aspect of the game. It is easy to see where your skills are and it is so satisfying hearing a fireball sizzle and burn things on contact. It really adds to the immersive experience while playing. At the time of writing, I have 2 characters, an infernalist witch in maps and a level 22 ranger deadeye.

The campaign is beautiful. I love the storytelling and how it feels when you feel like you are apart of the story. In POE 1, I felt like the story was sort of disjointed and didn't matter. I was just along for the ride. But, here, you get cool cut scenes after finishing acts, and you are actually engaged. The bosses feel like a real challenge, but once you figure out their mechanics, it is a breeze and a joy. I do find myself enjoying PoE 2's campaign more than PoE 1's. I have high hopes for when the rest of acts 4-6 come out it'll be an epic conclusion in this storyline.

The gem system and progression is so smooth and very good for new players coming into the game. It is very nice that they integrated a gem system which leaves very little margins for error if you pick the right skills and synergies and build your passive skill tree that complements your playstyle. I have a minion infernalist witch as my first character and it's been a blast seeing this character go from zero to hero, but I know that's not the universal experience.

The ability to respecc your passives with gold is such a good qol from PoE 1's Settlers of Kalguur, and the ability to exchange currency with the currency exchanger is also a very good choice. I hope this stays both for the futures of PoE 1 and 2.

I also love the addition of spirit instead of mana reservation for persistent buffs and meta gems. This adds an interesting layer for what you can do in terms of build options. I do kind of miss auras though we still have weak auras and some for attack based builds.

**Bad:**

There is a lot to love about PoE and its systems. I could go on about how you can feel your character getting stronger with new upgrades and getting to that next milestone in terms of power. But, there are times during the campaign where I felt the break points with painstaking experience. It is not an exaggeration that act 2 is the hardest part of the campaign, whether you are a veteran or a complete new player. Some builds will kind of have an easier experience, but it is clear that a lot of players have trouble with some of the monsters and bosses. Even when I was on a minion army infernalist, I still had my share of troubles, namely with actually feeling like I was not doing the damage I thought I should be doing. In act 1, I just use essence drain and contagion until I got flamewall and SRS. It was strong and dominated act 1. In act 2, I quickly felt my damage fell off. And that is largely attributed to spirit gems being too low leveled for the zone and the next upgrade being far out of reach for this type of content. Spirit gems are a dime a dozen and there's no real way to target farm these. So, farming for player power is pretty much dead unless you're looking for gear to build defenses.


So, anyway, once you reach act 2, you experience an incredible fall off of damage. It was at this point where I had to switch my focus entirely to my skeletal arsonists and just get enough spirit to summon more of these guys. It is such a slog fest to go through more than half the game with stunted power. I was told that you wouldn't see another spirit gem until halfway through act 3 when you encounter the Ignagduk witch, and you get one for free guaranteed at a higher level. I was lucky in the aspect where I dropped 2 lucky spirit gems during act 2 and it made my experience slightly better. But for those who have less fortunate rng it can feel really bad. Then, after about lvl 29, I dropped my first lesser jeweller's orb, and I added 1 extra socket to my arsonists. And then, my damage was fine again. I went back to melting bosses. So, this progression of power increased to the point where I was dominating cruel acts 1-3.

Then, I get to maps. I'm in mid-yellow tier maps, just taking my time. I'm not blasting very hard so I have just mild annoyances. At the current time, the market is experiencing inflation. Ex to Div ratio is going up every day. It is hard to keep up, honestly. Hope it gets better. Anyway, this part relates to the character power feeling stagnant again. Level 14 skill gems, level 3 support gems, and level 14 spirit gems drop from the end of cruel act 3 and still drop in up to waystone tier 2. Back to what I was saying about power dropping off like a hill compared to the zone and monster power. I needed a lvl 15 gem like 1 tier ago. I bought some level 15 and 16 gems off of trade and I was back to dealing damage and melting bosses and packs. I'm really annoyed at how quickly your damage can fall off if you don't constantly upgrade your skills and items. But, it is the nature of PoE. You are always doing this.

The second thing I have trouble with is getting meaningful weapon and armour upgrades. PoE 2 has done away completely with deterministic crafting. I get it, it's the Vision. It's what makes PoE 2 distinct from PoE 1. But I was led to believe that PoE 2 would have systems that made crafting even more accessible to new players. But, with the absence of a crafting bench, you give players less agency and rely more on rng and trading to get better gear. Right now, if I want a armour with the right attributes for my character, with flat life and double lines of resistance, I cannot reasonably craft this during the campaign. A gear like this does NOT exist in gear that drops on the ground or in the vendor shop. It’s possible for it to happen if I reclear zones over and over again. But, at a certain point, I have to wonder if it even matters anymore if I have a couple of transmutes, augs, and a couple essences. I don’t even want to use my regals and exalts, I will buy an upgrade from trade. So, GGG made a gigantic fumble on this one. I don’t feel that crafting power is there for us. Personally, I got extremely unlucky in the campaign. I checked every vendor every time I leveled up trying to find gear to cap resists. I could not find a single piece of gear, jewelry, or weapon that was a quality upgrade over my act 1 gear. And if it was, I didn’t have enough gold for it. Gold costs need to be significantly reduced for act 1 and 2. I could not find 2 line elemental res gear, nor any with good enough flat life. I used up to 20 ex in cruel act 2 to trade for gear just to cap my res out and I was back to dominating the campaign again. It should not be necessary to have to resort to trade just to get usable gear. So, with that said, crafting is a problem in this game. Often times, you find a base that has the required attributes, and crafting often begins and ends with the first transmute and augment. There are also no do-overs or alteration orbs. That item is now fodder for gold or regal shards. You also don't get any scouring orbs and annulment orbs are nonexistent for a majority of the game.

**Ugly:**

So, about the trials of ascendancy... I thought with the live stream reveal that it would be a cool concept to have new trials and the feeling of having to fight near-impossible odds and obstacles in your ascent to power. It makes sense from a story and tonal example. However, it is very clear that there is a lot of balance issues with both the trials of sekhemas and chaos. The Sekhemas is bearable once you have the relics for honor resistance and movement speed. It is very good that you have helpers for that, but ultimatum, on the other hand, there is no help for that one. But it is required to do so for your 2nd set of ascendancy points. Overleveling is necessary if you have no idea what you’re doing, but it also feels like no matter how high your level is, or no matter how good your gear or damage is, it is impossible to avoid all the traps and ground effects, and this is BEFORE you reach the boss in a lot of cases. I was led to believe that you would be able to choose either of the 2 trials from the very beginning. But during the campaign, they are required to run. And it is horribly balanced to where if your build cannot handle it, this isn’t a gear or leveling issue, it is a build and a bit of a skill issue. In the endgame, when you try to go for your 3rd and 4th ascendancy you can choose which of the 2 trials you want to do, but both are borderline impossible to do if your gear and levels are not up to speed. It is very rare to get inscribed ultimatums and baryas that even if you trade, it’s like 5 ex per entry and if you fail, you just lost currency. I don’t get why they had to implement 2 of the worst parts of PoE 1 and make them the trials of ascendancy in PoE 2. If they thought that PoE 2 only 2 ascendancies were going to be achievable by average players, sure that’s fine but say it in writing. As of right now, 3 floor sekhemas and 7 wave trial of chaos is already more difficult for an average player, never mind the 4th ascendancy with 4 floors and 10 waves. This needs to be relooked at and assessed. Are all players supposed to be able to eventually run it because it needs to have enough risk for reward. Right now, it’s just punishment for very little gain. And by the time you actually complete the trial, you’re exhausted and don’t want to play anymore.

Now, the Zones in this game are WAY too big. In PoE 1, it is standard to clear maps in about 5 minutes outside of fast builds. I liked being able to crack 20 maps in an hour so I can go to work or do other things. But, it's clear you need your whole focus and energy to play PoE 2. In PoE 2, maps even in the campaign are large and some have deadends, meaning you have to backtrack a lot to find the exits. In endgame, a lot of maps feel large but also feel somewhat empty. You have to find rare monsters like bestiary and kill them all to complete a map. It is not quite clear how some maps are completed but that’s what I found. I hope they add checkpoints and tp to maps too if they're going to be this large.

On top of zones being large, it feels really bad to die. I didn't mind the 1 life, 1 kill in the campaign. You technically have unlimited chances to fight the boss over and over again until you master it. In endgame maps, your first death is your last. Your entire map and waystone is voided, and if it's a citadel boss or pinnacle boss map, that can mean a setback of several hours of work just to get back and reattempt it. We're already punished for dying with the exp penalty, but you have to factor in that if you die, you lose the map, the loot that drops, and progression penalty. I'm not sure of other people, but if I die in PoE 1 for example, lose all Sirus portals because of some stupid deaths, I just walk away from the game and take a break and come back. I am getting demotivated very often in POE 2. The moments of triumph where I melt bosses, then come and map and then die to a volatile plant because visual clarity is still GGG's weakest point. There is no counterplay to just getting randomly one shot. There is also no counterplay for these untuned high chaos damage ground effects. It's still quite broken even after the nerfs. So, I don't quite know how to continue going about this.

Let’s talk about flask charges and refilling at the well. This archaic system was cool in Diablo 2. Now, you have built a habit in players for over 10 years. We are not used to having to manually refill our flasks. How many times do you leave a map, dump your loot, and then go right to the next map, forget that your flasks are empty, exit the current map, refill at the well, and then continue on your merry way? I think most people find this unnatural. Just bring back flask charges gained on kill but more reliable so this doesn’t need to happen. It wastes 1 more portal, and wastes everyone’s time for such little gain. I don’t see a point for this being in the game.

Conclusion:

If anyone stayed and read this whole post, I salute you. I do still love POE and I think PoE 2 has potential to be ARPG of the decade, but at the current state of the game, it has very glaring issues I hope are addressed. Thanks for reading my long-winded review/rant. What do you guys think?