Poe 2 Feedback 2.0

"

Elhazzared#4582 wrote:

I initially posted some feedback, since then there has been some changes and I got far enough to get some better feedback on.

First I'll address drops and start by saying that the early game drops are still trash. Act 1 and 2 is basically impossible to get decent gear. Almost nothing drops, what drops is mostly white and what isn't often is trash anyway. The idea that we are supposed to craft early on doesn't works because we just don't get enough currency for that either. It's not until somewhere along act 3 when drops start being more reliable and builds start coming online that the game actually starts being fun and its important to understand that a game should be fun from the very moment you start playing.

Secondly we have the issue with rarity gear. Rarity just gives way too much and the base drops are complete trash. This forces players into a mandatory chase for rarity in their gear which makes gearing even harder. In other words, rarity is like an uncapped extra resistance that is completely mandatory. Ideally, I'd like to see drops being boosted by what would be 200% gear rarity and then massively nerf the effect of rarity on gear so that it's only worth going after rarity if the player is going to pursue a MF build that gets several hundreds extra rarity.

Lastly because gear and drop are all intrinsically connected, we need a better crafting. PoE 1 crafting IS bad, it's actually one of the worst crafting systems I have seen because of it's inaccessibility and the fact that it's only available for people with very high levels of currency which is not even 1% of the player base. PoE 2 however is worse. it's easy to understand but the crafting is bad because of being complete RNG, even worse than PoE 1. Chris Wilson said that PoE had to learn from other ARPGs or be left behind when he talked about LE market system however PoE has failed to learn anything about making a simple and reliable crafting system for it's players. It is very much being left not just behind but completely in the dirty by virtually any other ARPG that has crafting. Please don't make the same mistake as PoE 1. Make crafting much more deterministic and relatively easy to craft decent gear while keeping it hard to archive top tier gear. If you can come up with ways to do all you've done in PoE 1 and 2, this should be easy for you.

Next is regarding trading and the in game trader for currency and other stackable items. Simply put, the trade site should not allow for trading things that you can trade in there to prevent players from being exploited. This was bad enough in PoE 1 and will be just as bad in PoE 2 if nothing is done about it. The system already easily handles huge bulk trades as well as small trades so there is no need for a redundant system that is merely used for scamming people.

The trade site also needs to be fixed. The fact that the trade site can't understand the value of the currency it uses is a problem and one easily solvable as it clearly works in PoE 1. I see no reason why it shouldn't work just as well in PoE 2.

Now moving on to the end game I'll start with the elephant in the room. In PoE 1 Chris Wilson always said that once you get into mapping GGG owns your soul and it is widely regarded as true by it's players. However that does not hold true for PoE 2 and the problem comes from multiple sources.

First, you only have one atempt per map and that is just too harsh. Deaths are always to be expected, no matter how good or how bad you are, death are going to happen and if we consider the average player then depending on the build it may happen a bit too frequently. This is just not fun, in general even in PoE 1 dying often takes the fun out of the game for many people but if you add a massive penalty like losing the map, that's just telling the players to go play another game instead.

Second is the atlas itself. The idea behind what you did may have looked cool at first but ultimately it means players can't really pick what maps they play, they have to chase the nodes that have the things they want and therefore the maps that happen to be in it. In PoE 1 we only need to do a map we don't like once for the completion but now we have to do ones we don't want often and the ones we may like only come up every now and then instead of it being the overwhelming majority of the played maps. While most ARPGs work like this you have to remember that what made PoE 1 mapping was it's approach to let players play the maps they want.

Lastly we have a currency making problem that I wrote about in another post. It is extremely hard to make currency and therefore aquire the necessary gear to progress. In PoE 1 we had this problem for over a decade until the new trading method was introduced and players could trade things like scarabs instantly, things we refer to as bubblegum currency. PoE 2 however has nothing like this. All we can rely on is straight up currency drops which doesn't amounts to much, especially early on and possible good gear that may be worth selling but just as with PoE 1, an item worth selling is an oasis in a desert to say the least. Some method needs to be introduced to allow for currency making, even in the early mapping so that players can reliably progress or they will get stuck and quit because there is no point in playing a game where they are artificially prevented from progressing.

I didn't do any of the pinnacle boss fights, didn't managed to get that far before I was bored with the artificial wall in front of me, not having control over maps and deaths leading to map loss. However I was already very much against how difficulty pinnacle bosses are in PoE 1 so I don't see how that would change here. That being said I don't mind pinnacle bosses existing, I mind them being mandatory like for example to get your ascendency points. Pinnacle content should only exist for people who want the challenge it, but it shouldn't be mandatory for progression.

Lastly because I just brushed the issue, the ascencion mechanic in PoE 2 is the worst ever. It was horrible in PoE 1 but you managed to make it so much worse. Again, people should be having fun and such a basic form of progression (because ascencion are essencially special leveling points) is the opposite of fun. It is at best an exercice in boredom and at worst unbearable enough to make people quit. I know there is a 3rd trial type missing but judging by the first 2 I doubt the 3rd will be any better.

"

QticaX#4168 wrote:

This is wrong on so many levels.

Firstly, drops and currency are fine. SSF is a testament to that.. every SSF player has done perfectly fine thus far.

Secondly, good items drop. Pick them all up not just "tier x" items. If they roll good mods slam them. I've made a little over 140d this week from drops/slammed items.

Thirdly, you clearly never played POE1 because you don't need to be the 1% of players to craft.. you just need to learn how to craft. It takes time its complex. POE2 system is based off of Diablo 2s cube crafting RNG.. this makes mirror tier item much much more rare than in POE.

People overestimate crafting on POE or are so overwhelmed when in reality it is very easy to understand when you sit down and take the time to learn it.. it is the best crafting system in any ARPG. It blends RNG with predictability.. this is what you want in a player-to-player trade economy. You do not want deterministic crafting as that completely defeats the purpose of trading and any form of progression when you can just craft godtier shit in a week.

That's not what this game is and that is not what GGG wants.