Doing my duty as an early access tester: here's some feedback before the patch hits.

Hello everyone!

A short summary from what POV I'm judging the game: I played PoE1 since launch, have somewhere around 2k hours ingame and idk how many on the wiki/PoB/guides/you name it. I've never mapped seriously. Never killed any pinnacle bosses. Often rerolled when my character ran out of steam or the league was just over. PoE isn't the only game I played during that time but it accounts for 50% of all game time. I love PoE and see it as the best computer game there is (including it's flaws). My passion is trying out new builds during early/midgame, whatever build starts feeling like the actual build the earliest and build discovery in general. I play mostly SSF on trade servers and occasionally trade whenever I need a key item or want to sell whatever trash I happen to identify.

TL;DR - a filthy casual. I like the game.

Here's some feedback on PoE2 after almost finishing the campaign on Kripps summoner build and dabbling with a few twinks:

- wasd is fine

-Flasks are simplified: I love it! Never liked flask piano and I'm really happy it's gone. Charms kind of fill the void flasks left but they don't feel very good yet. I'm sure there's some design space to be explored.

-Crafting: I could explain every attack/defense mechanic in the game. I know what I'm playing adn I like learning mechanics.....but man that crafting system was waaaaaaaay too complex and fomo inducing. I like slamming orbs. It's dumb but it it unburdens me of checking 7-12 other factors before doing ANYTHING to an item. The new system is easy (perhaps even banal) but it's satisfying. It can be improved in a few things though:
*Let us exchange/override runes on armor!
*We need more abundance of omens and essences.
*Increase the drop rate of quality scepters.
*Having alts in the current crafting system would feel better but I wouldn't want that to impact future design space too much. Not having the old chaos orb is fine.
*Having a shadow buff in exalt slam rolls would make me like the crafting even more (I'll fight all the haters)

-The drop rate of lesser jeweler's orbs is ridiculous. My first drop was after 2d, 4h, 29 mins in act3 cruel....that's not ok. I've bought some from players in cruel act 2 because none were dropping and I was hitting a ceiling. We need these orbs as quest reward somewhere around act1 cruel otherwise SSF is just going to feel bad. These situations are why I don't play true SSF. That one drop remains the only one so far across all of my characters.

-Armor is in a bad place. I cannot tell whether a monster's hit is going to do no damage at all or (almost) oneshot me. It's unintuitive and archaic. There has to be a better way. I'd prefer if the the % value shown in the character screen would mean "You always resist at least that % or more (up to 90%) of physical hit damage from monsters at your level." and adjust the % scaling of the armor value. That would make a lot more sense and feel way better while still being different to elemental resistance.

-Monsters and combat: Monsters are challenging and engaging. One gripe I had with PoE1 was that it didn't feel good how you'd either completely trivialize a game mechanic (through resist, immunity or in another way) or get completely nuked by that mechanic (no life recovery for RF as an example). It was very binary and was basically restricting you in the way you choose gameplay and character build instead of engaging me as a player while playing (interacting with monsters and bosses). PoE2's campaign is a huge step in the right direction. I love it. I've heard and seen not so good things about maps and endgame but if you can do it in the campaign, you can still do it in the endgame....or so I hope. It's certainly a difficult topic and going too far into this direction makes PoE loose one of it's most characteristic and beloved qualities: game breaking builds. They're fun, they bring new players in, the provide great content and it obviously feels incredible discovering and playing them. And yet, in a perfect world, monsters are still engaging. I'd love if we can have engaging encounters and game breaking builds coexist peacefully. I understand it's difficult but for shaper's beard; please let us not go back to trivializing game mechanics for a build to be playable at all.

-Rarity sucks. let's move on....

-The new socket system is awesome for experimenting and adapting on the fly. I've been playing with a friend that hasn't played PoE1 and he's experimenting a lot and loving it. The restriction of 1 support per character sets an interesting layer of complexity but I fear of it's longevity once more support gems are available.

-Transfigured gems when?

-People have been floating the idea of charm slots and movement speed being implicits. I would welcome that. Or a system similar to how gem slots are added but for these specific stats as enchantments.

-Spirit as a resource feels good so far and it makes mana more enjoyable as a resource. There's some numbers tuning to be done but in general it's an improvement.

-The new look of the game is great. I'm playing on a 980ti (yes I'll upgrade soon. yes, it's hot and loud) and the game is mostly playable in terms of frame rate when everything's tuned down. A few things can be improved though...
*Most humanoids that are not moving slow (like skeletons and zombies) are hard to read. Their silhouette often blends too much into the surrounding and some animations are hard to interpret or just not very well made (especially among the Vaal)
*Visual clarity in combat needs big improvements. Especially when playing a build with fire, my effects obscure ground effects and even monster animations too much for encounters to be engaging (it forces me to trivialize encounters). Having minions and fire skills might be the worst scenario for visual clarity (and frame rates) but there still can be done a lot to improve it. Allowing players to choose the opacity of skills and minions would definitely help but I'm sure there are more elegant ways of handling this issue.
*I miss that brutal PoE1 flair. Walking through the lunaris temple for the first time with all it's gore and screams was a thrilling and unforgettable experience. I don't think I've played another game with this raw, edgy feeling. The monster and environment design feels like it's lacking that aspect. I can feel it in the interns pulling the arduran caravan or the design of count geonor's wolf form and how the hooded one ends him. But the overall world design feels somewhat lacking in that department. The piles of bodies in the dreadnought area just don't cut it in the way they're just dropped there. It's a hard thing to put in words but I hope you get what I'm trying to spell here.
*Apart from the previous point, I'd enjoy seeing the occasional funny or silly design every now and then. PoE only ever did that in pets as far as I can remember (I love my singing skeleton). I don't want silly things to be dominant or necessarily persist longer than a league but some more of that couldn't hurt (but please don't make another band as a pet)
*The voice acting has been great so far with a few exceptions. I find the voice modulation of sin a bit weird and jarring (as it's different from PoE1). But the worst offender would be Servi. The accent is all over the place, the text is weirdly written and I just don't buy whatever emotion she's selling. When her son dies, she acts like she left her coupons at home before arriving at the shopping mall. She's the only character where I'd see a complete overhaul as appropriate.
*Repetetive sounds from player MTX in town is really annoying. Please do something about it.

-The drop rate of skill and support gems throughout the campaign feels good

-Slamming exalts in the very beginning of the early access when nobody knew the drop rates and there was no economy felt reeeeeeally great

-Ascension: I always hated sanctum. I never loved nor hated the lab but it did get stale so I was looking forward to having something else. I still don't like the new sanctum. I think I never will. buying items to get as much honor resistance as possible just to do it the bare minimum amount of times that I have to will never feel great and doing it without honor resistance past act 2 normal is insanity.
Ultimatum needs tuning but is ok.

-Area exits should be placed where the world screen suggests they would be found.

-Raising shield quickly after casting a spell sometimes but not always cancels the casting. I'd prefer if the shield wouldn't cancel the casting. Dodge roll on the other hand should interrupt casting (as is does right now)

-I was very sceptical of the introduction of gold into PoE. The current implementation, however, fills a very good niche and I grew to like it. Be careful around that topic though. Don't take away my orb economy!

-"We fixed life leech"....as in: nobody is playing leech?

-loading screen gears are not grindy enough

-attacking a bell as a monk using ice strike while fighting a boss feels bad, because hitting the bell is too difficult. the monk will wildly pump around the boss and often into 'fire' while also staying outside of the range of the bell. I've also had situations where putting down the bell wile hovering the mouse on the boss would put down the bell in an unpredictable location somewhere within the hitbox of the boss but sometimes also outside of my characters range (and not even in front of him for that matter)

-raising the shield wile hovering a monster will lock my character to that monster. if I then start casting spells while holding the raised shield button, it will only cast on the locked monster instead of where my mouse is pointing. this doesn't feel intended nor good.

-'using' should be a keyword with an explanation text. Is it only while I'm casting? or is it for the duration of the spell? or even while it's still on coldown? what about minion skills? am I only using them when I press the 'command minion' skill?

-the recombinator tool might not even exist for what I'm concerned. the usecase is too narrow, the inventory management too much of a hassle and the result still too unpredictable. I have no use for a recombinator on trade league.

-skeletons 'die' too often because they're offscreen. when I move, I want them to move with me as soon as they finish their ongoing attack animation while not fighting bosses. when I'm fighting bosses, I want to tell them where to stand and only move from there if there's fire, an incoming attack or I tell them to move. Besides.....if I can cast and walk at the same time; why can't minions?

-when I use skills with a buff aura for my minions (like offerings) I want them to move towards that target and stick around

-Insert on-death effect here (Who enjoys that?)

Thanks for reading my words and try to do your best in roasting me in the comments 🗿

It took me close to 15 hours play time to get a lessers jewelers orb. Funnily enough I found a perfect before a greater and I was about 350 hours in by that point. I am currently 625 hours in and have found a grand total of 5 perfects, 9-10 greatest and probably 400 lessers.

You can beat the Pinnacle bosses without needing all 6 sockets... Generally, and I feel like this is a hot take but the 6th socket is almost like a flex spot... Well, I guess all orbs are over time because you become so accustomed to just using what you have with no upgrade for such a long time it doesn't matter anymore. At least I can see that for a casual and a jewelers is a very strong upgrade while leveling.

I think they drop rate is what made campaign so fun and difficult. Since you didn't get a massive power spike so early.. I got my first lesser in act 3 btw and this is probably why cruel difficulty feels so easy because most people get it around there.

Nice post.

Thanks for your replies :)

yea, it really makes a difference when your lesser jeweller's drop. I think I'd be fine if they were drop disabled until after the second quest where you could get one. that way GGG has a very tight control about power spikes in the early game which is probably good for racing and excellent for enabling weaker players to get to endgame without trading. 2 skills with 3 supports is all you should need to get to mapping.

Most of your points are fine when talking about early-game, but you sound completely oblivious by saying rarity sucks and crafting is in a good spot.

As among the players who hit mapping in week 1 playing at 6x your pace, and I haven't even played POE1 in years, don't rattle off about your 2k hours in POE1 when you take so long to even complete the campaign this late.