Thoughts after about 150h on Trials, Monsters, Rarity/MF, Currency and more

So, I've played for about 150h now and wanted to give some feedback about a few things.

Trials:

I like the idea of the trials for getting the Ascendancy points, but it should not be this punishing. Sekhema and especially the Chaos Trial, which is based on pure luck, should have easier mods while leveling / getting the Ascendancy points, by restricting some of the mods to be only available in the endgame trials.

Sometimes you get really unlucky and get 3 bad mods, which means the run is nearly impossible. It's okay for endgame, when you have a really strong character that can destroy anything, so you can concentrate on all the other stuff (besides monsters) that wants to kill you.

It's an easy fix that would make a lot of people happy.

Monster On-Death-Effects:

The amount of On-Death-Effects on monsters is sometimes absolutely crazy. It should be toned down a bit, as most of the effects mean instant death. It was perfect in PoE 1, but this is just way too crazy.

Monsters in general:

I love the monster design and all the different looks and abilities they have. Overall, I can't really complain about anything here, except that it sometimes feels like the monsters are playing PoE 1 (Speed; mobility in general) while we are playing PoE 2 (slower gameplay). If it's only 1 or 2 monsters, you can mostly dodge roll their attacks, but if there is a whole group that is jumping from above, rolling with the speed of light to you or even digging underneath to jump out on you, it sometimes feels unfair. No need to remove anything, just tone it down a little bit or bind the speed modifiers to the difficulty of the map. But that's just me, maybe others find this perfect as it is :)

Bosses:

Do not change anything about the bosses, they are perfect! Can't wait to see the other 50+ bosses!

Rarity or Magic Find:

It's kinda obvious, as so many people already pointed it out. But this needs to be better balanced. I wouldn't remove it completely, just give it a max value like for resistances (maybe 100 or so), so it doesn't matter if you have 100% or 500% on your gear. It should affect currency, but more like the quantity, not the rarity itself. You'll figure this out, I'm sure ;)

Currency and crafting:

This is one of the biggest issues for me. If I compare 150h in PoE 1 and PoE 2, I only have around 5% (if even that!) of the currency (especially for crafting!), that I have in PoE 2. That connects directly to the new crafting system, which is now more based on luck.

I need a lot of currency to spam it on all the bases I need to keep, as there sadly is no Orb of Scouring anymore. Combined with the limited space in the inventory, I feel the need to constantly get into my hideout to fill up my stashes with bases. I have around 8 stash tabs full of items I want to craft on, but never have enough currency for it. Its kinda ridiculous.

The new essences are in a terrible spot too. It's just not worth to waste your time on it. Greater essences are practically impossible to find and even if you get them, it's again just based on pure luck what mod / value you are getting from it. I've used the only greater essence I've found in 150h yesterday on an item and got +15 to max health. I can't even describe the disappointment I felt...

I've been trying to craft my own gear for endgame quiet a while now, but I've only got lucky 2 times in over 200 tries! The old crafting system was so much better in regard to crafting gear you actually can use yourself, instead of just getting bad mods / values and try to sell it on the trade market. Maybe even a combination of the PoE 1 system and something like the Last Epoch system would be possible. But basing nearly everything on luck, just feels really awful for progression.

Items from NPCs:

Vendors finally have something useful most of the time! This is really awesome and, due to the lacking crafting system, the only real source for finding better gear. This should be kept as it is as well!

Endgame maps:

I like most of them, so nothing big to complain about the art design here. The size could be toned down a bit for some of the maps (10-15%, not too much). Backtracking some of them due to a missed rare sometimes feels bad, so maybe mark rare mobs based on distance to them, instead of how many monsters are left?

The Towers are kinda boring and the layout of them feels bad. I get it, they are supposed to be "Towers", but seeing them in the endgame reveal, I thought it was basically like a normal map, but with a tower in it that you need to find. This would make more sense to me.

Strongboxes:

Strongboxes need way too much time to open them. And with the rewards being kinda underwhelming, I don't even bother to open them at the moment. Maybe shorten the opening delay to about 1.5 to 2 seconds and make them way more dangerous and rewarding would make them much more interesting.

Campaign:

The campaign is just awesome! The lore, the art design, the epic music, the bosses! Wow, you really outdid yourself on this part. I've played a lot of ARPG's, but no other campaign (even being only 50% completed) felt this good. Can't wait to see Act IV (Karui), Act V (Oriath) and the mysterious Act VI! Even after playing through it for a few times now, I still enjoy it :)

The map size in Act 3 could be a bit smaller, thought. Waterways or The Drowned City sometimes take way too long and get boring fast. Love the art design though ;)

Issues with latency spikes and PC hard-locks:

This is mostly covered in the bug section of the forum, just wanted to quickly cover the 2 issues. Getting a lot of PC hard-locks while on loading screens is not fun. I don't care about CTDs so much, but needing to restart the whole PC is kinda annoying! This should be top priority alongside with the other issue that is plaguing a lot of people even since PoE 1, the latency spikes.

PoE 1 and PoE 2 are the only 2 games that have this kind of issue and there is a long thread about it in the bug section too, but here is the TLDR:

Depending on which server instance you are in, sometimes the network latency gets fucked up by spikes ranging from 8ms to over 3000ms for me and others. It has nothing to do with hardware, software, the ISP or network connection itself on our side, as it is easily fixable by creating a new instance over a waypoint in the campaign. For endgame, there is no fix. If you open a map, and it's a bad instance, you either have to "lag your way through it" or forget about it and try a new one, even needing to restart the game sometimes. I've had this in PoE 1 for the last 2 years too, so not a new issue.

This covers most of my feelings and thoughts after around 150h now. I'm sure there will be a lot of changes and new stuff, so keep it coming!

I can agree to all of this, they really need to rebalance a lot of mechanics in unique gear and gear upgrading. Essences are pointless, it is much better to buy rare gear with 1 or 2 stats you want then just try your luck with upgrading.

At no point should a Vaal corruption give 20% attribute reduction on gear with no attributes or give Chaos Resistance on a ring that sets your Chaos Resistance to 0.

I get Vaal Orbs can do nothing, but this really looks like it was overlooked and wasn't play tested well.

Yes, that's something else I forgot to mention, Vaal Orbs. I'm currently not really using them, because I'm more afraid than in PoE 1, that they can brick my items.

Getting a good item is quite a challenge at the moment and taking the risk of bricking the item without being able to craft / find a comparable item, is just not worth it.

Same with waystones. Getting the higher level waystones even with all the atlas points is a challenge too. Then, using the few exalted orbs that I have on them to be lucky to get good rolls (like >300% waystone quantity) and then vaaling it with the chance to get a completely different waystone... nah, no chance.