Some of my thoughts so far
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Take these comments from the perspective of someone who has 1000 hours in PoE 1 and a couple hundred in PoE 2. A new player basically by comparison.
I played invoker to 90 and while I have played the other classes somewhat, I've not ascended any because after starting my monk first, they just don't feel fun to play. My feedback on other classes feels invalid because of my lack of time spent. I think Jonathan Rogers said in Tri's interview (could have been Ghazzy and DM's podcast) "often players are excellent at coming up with problems but don't have solutions." I'm not a designer, I don't know your full vision, but I'll try to offer some solutions where I see problems. Also I'll try to stay away from feedback I think is probably due to be fixed soon anyway. Topics covered: A. Equipment & Crafting B. Respeccing with gold and respeccing ascendancies. C. Currency Drops D. Ritual & Bossing E. Map Sustain F. Map Tab G. Movement Speed H. Charm slots on belts I. Expedition J. Delirium K. Breach L. Highlighting rares + mechanics M. Loot Gremlin? N. 1 Portal O. Rarity P. Trials Q. On death effects R. Merchant Recipes S. Extra currency T. Flasks & Charms U. Towers V. Precursor Tablets W. Parry Extras (What I'd like for monk third ascendency + praise). Spoilered the topics for ease of navigation. --- Equipment & Crafting
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There's a lot of equipment that has been affordable for me and perfectly fits my build, but I've passed up on because it has bad runes slotted. Equally, I've been running around without runes in my really good gear because I don't know what would be best.
I like DM's suggestion that you can't remove them from corrupted gear but another option I'd like to suggest is a currency can remove them. Make the currency rare so it is priced accordingly, perhaps as rare as a greater jewellers orb would be appropriate? Make it even rarer than that if you have to, whatever it is, just make it possible to remove/replace runes in some form. Respeccing with gold and respeccing ascendancies.
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This should be free (at least during early access), you're only decreasing the amount of feedback you can gain during early access by not allowing people to respec easily and often. The amount of people giving you chayula monk feedback vs invoker feedback I imagine is a huge difference.
This also might be a stupid idea but there could be a specific dungeon map that you can do like moment of zen which is where you go to respec your ascendency, you can fight a chayula monk boss to be able to become a chayula monk, perhaps you are not worthy of this class. Each time you respec ascendency maybe it could get harder and perhaps there's specific loot you can get from respeccing. Currency drops
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I honestly think anything that's deterministic should be rare and anything that involves gambling is common. The more random the results it can provide, the more common it is. You should be showered with the random currency so you won't feel as much need to hoard them throughout the campaign and won't feel so bad when you slam items and don't get a good result. Players should be gun-ho about slamming items up to 6 slots with exalts, who cares you get tons? You want them to have the mindset that these currencies are for you to use for crafting your items rather than hoard them for trades.
During the campaign you should see things like ritual, essence etc in every single map and it should guarantee an omen for example that is used specifically for crafting. It doesn't have to be the full ritual, or maybe you get the guaranteed omen if you do all 3/4, I don't know how it should be balanced, but it should appear as an option in every map (once, can't be reset for farming it). By the end of the campaign if they aren't using it, they should have a decent stockpile of specifically deterministic crafting currency. If there's 100 maps, that's a decent amount of tries to get good gear purely from crafting deterministically. Ritual & Bosses
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The king in the mists invitation should be on a specific ritual altar like in the first game with an audio or visual clue that this ritual is special. I've probably missed one or two. Anyways, I literally won't have time to track him down and when it costs 5-6 divines for the invite, I'm never going to run that map because the likelihood I die is high. I'm gonna sell it for divines if I ever find it, I'm not gambling 5 divines like that when I could die on the thorns (if it still works like in poe1).
I think that the Pinnacle bosses should be fairly easy to gain entry, but clearing them should be harder. In my mind they're like "who cares if you come for me, I'll crush you beneath my boot". It's always nice to see the skill ceiling and just how far my character is from clearing it. It's also nice to know that I'm just playing scared and I can actually start attempting much harder content. It needs to be made more clear the breakpoints for things appearing such as breach splinters and simulacrum shards in T12 or 13, and also expedition boss not appearing below monster level 79, that type of stuff. Map sustain
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It should not be possible to drop a tier 1 map in a tier 15 map if it's also not possible to drop a tier 15 map in a tier 1 map. You have to have both or neither or it will feel horrible. 1 above and up to 3 below is fine I think but 3 below is far rarer than 2 below etc.
Map Tab
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When you introduce the map tab, I hope there's an affinity for map juicing in some way. It's not clear anywhere that you can apply delirium to maps, nor is it clear you can corrupt maps with vaal orbs. I would love it if you showed those videos for skills, but for using currency, useful ways they can be used.
Movement speed
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I think needs to be on the boots as an implicit. T1 gets 5%, T5 gets 25%. You should still be able to roll it, so a max roll T5 pair of boots would have 60% movement speed. I hate how deadeye plays, but when it gets tailwind, a bunch of movement in the direction you path anyway, and the same movement I get? It makes me want to play a class I otherwise wouldn't touch. Either put it on the boots, give us movement skills, give us a movement charm, give us something please. I play monk so I do get some movement, but wow I could never play warrior like this.
Extra charm slots on the belt
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Shouldn't take up a mod slot. I would say make it 1 on a white, 3 on a rare, but nobody will use anything else but rare then. In that case, perhaps make charms rarer? or make charms gain less charges the more you have equipped. I'd honestly prefer this not to be an area of my build I have to put any consideration into, just give me 3, but if the devs at GGG want there to be a level of friction don't put it in lack of charm slots or make it sacrifice a mod slot. If you REALLY have to, we as a community will tolerate you taking out thorns or light radius, that's our compromise. Bitter pill to swallow though, losing thorns.
Expedition
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Feels really bad and it's explained terribly. Perhaps it feeling bad is because I don't play it well, but the logbooks take too long for barely any reward, I'd put them on a level with strongboxes which feel horrendous. I've recently learnt that I should pick the best rewards first because it will effect all the future bombs, and then look for the flags and unearthed boxes, but it still doesn't feel good to play; takes too long, feels tedious, unrewarding.
Delirium
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Has something broken with it, breach doesn't lag my PC with at least twice more monsters than a mirror of delirium or delirius map. I want to juice my maps but it just makes them unplayable from lag. I've not gotten enough splinters together yet and I will sell the simulacrum when I get them, it's just not worth the risk given the economy and how I hear it's overtuned. I think these need to be doubled in drops or have the current tier (12 - 15) be doubled and maps (7 - 11) be given the current tier drop rate.
Breach
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Is in a good state but it feels bad when you get it in somewhere like maybe crypt? or augury? Monsters get trapped in the hallway and perhaps AI pathfinding will be fixed soon but it won't address that on crypt when the pathway is narrow it's going to spawn 5% of the monsters that willow or sandspit will spawn because they can spawn in all directions unimpeded.
Highlighting rares and mechanics
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Once you've found one mechanic, it should highlight them all. The amount of maps I've left before finding the 3rd or 4th ritual because the map is complete and I have no idea which of the 10 pixels in the fog of war is hiding the ritual. The same for when I find a second breach hidden that I would have liked to try to merge with the other breaches.
When you've killed one rare, the next closest should be highlighted perhaps or like in the trial of sekhemas with the chalice trial or escape trial you get a floaty thing to guide you to the next one. This could address the backtracking issues somewhat. Backtracking is probably the worst feeling in the game, it wastes so much time. Loot gremlin?
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I think a rare loot gremlin would be great, basically something that will come and yoink expensive drops up and steal them away. Maybe you find him in a moment of zen type map or maybe you randomly encounter him later, the more loot he picks up the juicier he becomes but the stronger he becomes. Why? Because I weep tears for the guy who died with a mirror of kelandra in reach. I've died with a divine on the floor and it feels bad. At least give us a way to not lose everything. Maybe he triggers only when we die with some juicy item in our light radius, and he gains a modifier for each item.
1 Portal
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The 1 portal thing is a problem. If you want some level of friction with it then perhaps you could strip a certain level of rarity off per portal used? I think this actually would be a good way to address rarity and group play. Loot scales far too much with players compared with difficulty, so just strip away a certain degree of rarity per portal used. With 5 portals left open it's 250%, the last portal you have 50% rarity. This will allow for players to try again if they died, just with a small penalty to their drops, or for players who didn't die it will encourage them to take the best loot out first (which they normally will). They will then have to decide at which point is the rarity in this map low enough that it's more profitable to just start a new map.
Rarity
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If we want to keep rarity and not remove it or gut it completely, we need to make it less toploaded where the top players can get the most of it. These are my thoughts on it.
- Firstly, make it clear what it does as a keyword and also include what are the breakpoints for it. As far as I can tell after 100% it has diminishing returns, but I'm just going off what smarter people have said. Does it affect currency? Is it basically quantity and rarity rolled into one stat? Nobody seems to know for sure. - Where I see it as fine: Delirium on the map. Anyone can add this, so it's only gated behind if your build can handle the juicing. - Tablets: All tablets should have rarity/quant/both as an implicit. At least in this way everyone will get some, only the most dedicated will try to get the best rolls for it as explicit. Maybe not have it as an explicit? - Flat per mechanic. When you see boss + corruption + breach + ritual, maybe each gets 10% rarity. - Flat per map tier. Each tier of map gets 5%, so by T15 you're getting 75% rarity on the map. - The portal rarity thing I said above, where you lose rarity per portal closed. - The idea should be that everyone can get rarity just as a matter of playing like normal, but any rarity on top of that will take you into the diminishing returns breakpoints. Warriors can't afford to ditch affixes on their gear to slot in rarity in the same way sorceress or deadeye can, but if they can get a good amount without sacrificing their core stats, I feel like they won't care so much. - IMO It's the lack of understanding that makes rarity so controversial, everyone has a different opinion. I believe it's somewhere in the middle between players like fubgun just killing way more enemies quicker along with a better juicing strategy than you or I, better knowledge, AND rarity does help somewhat. I don't think it's anywhere near the degree everyone thinks it is. Movement speed, attack/cast, fork/chain, magnitude etc I think are probably way more impactful because these don't have diminishing returns in the same way that rarity does. This is all highly speculative, but it's how I feel at the moment. Trial of Sekhemas & Chaos
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I would much prefer just one floor, but the level 40 coin is much harder than the level 20 coin. I feel this will be a similar thing to how the simulacrum was shortened from 30 waves to 15, they got rid of the early tedious waves, that's how it feels right now (pre-removal). Also, it needs to be MUCH clearer that honour resistance relics exist and that relics are not used up. Playing Sekhemas as melee feels impossible until you get the right relics and then it's not terrifying.
Trial of Chaos You need to make it clear you will need keys by the 10th trial, or at least make a key drop from every boss not just the last one. I think that the trial coins should be buyable or craftable like the sekhemas coins where you see which afflictions and boons you will have. The reason both trials feel bad at the moment is they are mandatory and gating off a large amount of player power plus the time investment is huge if you brick your chaos run, or walk over a landmine in the gauntlet and lose 1/4 your honour if you have no relics. Let's not even get into how bad the boss feels at that half way point. Is it mandatory to get the 40% movement speed boon? Is lightning warp mandatory? Are 35% boots mandatory? It probably takes an hour for me to test these questions myself. On death effects
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Feel cheap, overlapping ones are big yuck. I don't even know if tuning them will fix it, I think they will always feel cheap. I was telling a newer player something like "tankiness can be over-rated, if you kill the enemy first they can't harm you, a dead enemy does no damage" and then realised that this was the biggest lie ever.
Tri said before that he's more scared of dead enemies than alive ones and I think that's the best way to put it. A good example of an on-death effect is the big guys with tree trunks which their belly lights up and they look all drunk and then explode. It feels super rewarding that I've now recognised this enemy type and adjust how I fight them. I feel like this is the benchmark and what GGG are actually trying to go for. Bring back merchant recipes?
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I think that you could introduce currencies or affixes related to these NPCs like Una in act 1. Some form of music based affix? Like you can craft an item with forking as a modifier by using a recipe with una? Like how for Pohx's RF build he told me to sell the scepter and 20 quality fire gem to craft ++ to fire gems. I say forking to sort of reflect music forking outwards. Maybe the woman who had her partner killed by the executioner could be a way to craft malice aura or something on a weapon, I don't know. Basically a way to not let you forget about all of the NPCs and introduce some level of deterministic crafting that's thematic. The hooded one could be used to remove light radius from gear, like an annulment but for specifically light radius.
An extra currency
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I'd like to see which drops from each monster type like how some maps says "Has 10 additional pack of vaal monsters" or something similar, I'd like to be able to see a vaal currency drop from vaal monsters that I can use to juice my maps like with the delirium anointing. Add an extra 50 or something packs of vaal monsters, or the transcended ones.
Flasks and Charms?
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These just feel kind of bad, I like the direction you've taken it to avoid the piano fingers, but I do feel it's undercooked. I don't even pay attention to my flasks or charms and yet I don't feel like I'm losing much from not caring. I actually thought about certain situations in PoE 1, I might need my armour flask here, oh maybe I'll need my fire one. Now? I hate being frozen, so I'll wear that and then hate my life when I'm chilled.
Perhaps a good solution would be to allow our mana and health potions to have additional cool affixes to make them more interesting. Something like how jewels have a lot of interesting things, flasks could too. Towers?
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A lot of people have a problem with them, I'm not one of them. I actually find them kind of fun when you roll past everything and get a level of dopamine hit when you went past so many wrong turns and end up at the wide staircase, that feels good. It's a nice little break from the stress of on death effects in maps. Even when you get it wrong, there's not the same level of backtracking that you get in certain maps. You don't have to find all the rares. I do agree that they need work, but a lot of people despise them. I do think juicing your maps should be so heavily reliant on finding them and making venn diagrams and killing off certain nodes so it won't be affected by breaches in radius, I do think that needs work. Maybe allowing you to put one of each type of tablet in them would make it feel better? This would mean that you're only running trash maps until you get to your first tower and then afterwards you can add ritual, irradiation, breach from the same tower.
Precursor Tablets
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Make precursor tablets much more common, I've had to keep buying them as either the node on the atlas tree is broken or I'm unlucky. If you make them more common and allow one of each type of tablet to be used in each tower, you might need to scale back the numbers, or it might be fine as it is because the difficulty of the maps will force a degree of tablets used. This could be further condense the meta even more into ranged characters thriving and melee being in an awful spot.
Parry Mechanic
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Introduce a parry mechanic like how there's a roll mechanic. Armour sucks. To my understanding it's no good for ground effects or one shots. Evasion sucks for similar but different reasons. ES is good. Parry would work like the perfect windows for various skills in the game. If you successfully parry, it's like evasion with 100% all damage avoidance. When you're getting swarmed, you can't parry because it's too many hits but your armour should cover you. For those big hits though, a parry on a small window would feel super satisfying once you've mastered it. You could have parts of the tree support it, or even have skills like counter attack which works like retribution in poe1 where it can be used after a successful parry. Maybe you have this planned for the gladiator, but if not, I think it would be a great addition.
--- Some extra things I'd like to see, most of all the classes. You've probably got this all worked out already but I just want to throw out there that I'd love to see a drunken fist as the third monk ascendency. Like how pathfinder has their concoctions for their mana flask, the monk could have a similar skill but for its health flask. Each one could be a different alcohol, or something? One gives splash damage to your attacks, another gives more knockback, another does stun buildup. There's currently an unarmed node on the tree opposite the quarterstaff, but no way to make a build out of it that can really compete with just going staff. There's also various skills in the monk tree which have daze/stun, and then on the tree you can get stun/daze/blind. It would be good to see a fist type character which can really tie all of these loose passives and skills together into something cohesive. Would make so much sense if it was wind/earth focus as the invoker is cold/lightning and the chayula is chaos. Some proper gauntlets would be nice too to use with the unarmed monk. Maybe points on the tree which convert evasion to armour, turn him into more of a pugilist who doesn't care if you're hitting him, it's actually making him more angry and bloodthirsty. --- I like a lot of what's been done with the game, it's almost across the board I like everything you're doing but I'm viewing it through what I think it could look like in the future. I really appreciate the effort you've made to make the game more approachable but I definitely feel like you can go further. I still don't understand what extra means. I understand more and increased (more is multiplicative), but what is extra? Some key words need to be added, but I don't feel like I need to dig through a wiki and use tons of third party programs. Most of all I want to shower whoever did the monk animations with praise. The skills are great sure, but I feel like the animation is the foundation. Until you play monk you won't really understand, but I feel like Mohammed Ali, dancing and floating and flurrying. My standout skills even if I don't put them in my build. Shattering palm: Amazing leveling, the ring of ice feels great. Satisfying to freeze and blow up a screen. Ice strike: Feels super snappy and powerful Bam.. BAM.. BAMMM!! Flicker Strike: I hate and love it, I feel like it's gotten me killed more often than it kills enemies, and I feel like I'm being imprisoned when I'm stuck flickering for years, but it's pretty comical either way. Charged Staff: It makes me look like darth maul... Would be good if you could change the colour so if my staff had fire on it, it would be a red glow, ice would be blue, wind would be... you get my point. Lightsabres please? Tempest Bell: Whoever thought of this, you are a king/queen. An amazing skill. Whoever thought of letting me use it to body block myself on burning ground, we need to have a conversation. --- Those have been the things I've been thinking a lot about since launch, would be interesting to know peoples thoughts. I have many more, and more depth for the points I've already made but I figured I'd leave it at that. All in all, I'm very excited for the future of PoE 2. I hope your break was revitalising and I'm looking forward to the first patch. Thanks for your patience in reading some/any/all of this. Looking forward to any discussion. Last bumped on Jan 5, 2025, 7:14:04 AM
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