SFF Progression, Feedback, and Suggestions

New POE player, but still wanted to share some observations on the SSF experience in early access.

I am no stranger to ARPGs though. I fell in love with D1 back in the days and played most games on'n'off since.
So stay a while and listen.

Executive summary:
* SFF campaign is great.
* Ascension is a royal pain in the arse
* Maps Tier 5-10 is brutal
* Most issues can be fixed by tuning drop chances in SFF or better, ways to trade/reforge to some of the rarer currencies/items.

Longer version:

I Have not played POE for long. I got fed up with Diablo4 and went looking for alternatives, getting baited in by the upcoming early access (first feedback: what a genius move, it worked on me and I bet on many others).
Leading up to the release I played through the POE campaign, but did not play any of the endgame. Playing naïve with only self-found and my own lousy build I am pretty sure I only made it through because I could respawn-rush the bosses.
I did play multiple classes to pit T100+ and farmed über bosses across many seasons in D4, so I do know my way around build-design in ARPGs. I just did not invest the effort in learning it for POE2.

When I started POE2 I went for "standard", but I like playing solo, so never did any grouping and trading. I played a few characters in ACT1 and ACT2 to get a feel for what I liked and ended up liking the playstyle of the monk. Taking that through the campaign and up to T10 maps.

I then decided that since it was early access I wanted to see if the SSF experience was different and how it worked (specifically if I could share items between characters or if they were each an isolated individual). So I started some new characters in SSF to test it out.
Ended up having a blast and decided to finish levelling up a ranger to see if the SSF endgame experience felt different.

As a result, I have not one, but TWO independent journeys of POE2 SSF.

The second time through was obviously a lot smoother as I learned a lot of the design intricacies of POE along the first run as well as knew my way around the acts and the bosses, what gear to keep and what to not bother with.

It also allowed me to make some observations about what is hard and where the fun phases are. From a more experienced (still not expert) perspective.

First observation: Cruel ACT4-6 is a lot easier than ACT1-3.
At first you struggle not only with lousy gear, but also a not very synergetic build. First playthrough my monk was like my 4th character to get through the cemetery (the first 3 kind of easy), but the monk I just could not beat Lachlann. I ended up grabbing a random crossbow, cutting a gem and 1-shotted it with a different weapon. From there onwards my build got "booted up" and it was smooth sailing to Doryani which was a fun skill-check I had to overcome.
However, once into cruel it just became a grind. Maybe my build/gear happened to be pretty good by then, but I felt it was a little too easy making it through the second time.
Not much point with early access feedback on this though as I am sure it will be totally different when the final version gets the full campaign.

Second observation: Gear upgrades feels fresh throughout the campaign.
This is likely completely different from the trading players. But when playing SSF you feel most of the gear matters. You pick up everything to ID, anything that you can salvage and even most things for disenchanting while levelling. Making multiple trips to town and getting pretty efficient at "loot hauls".
You also sort of just "play with the junk". An item has a useless stat but 3 other good ones? just roll with it until you get an upgrade.
You would be surprised how often you actually find upgrades when you play this way. Because the baseline is so low.
As I went through cruel acts I had obtained good enough gear that I would also pick up blue and white versions of items I knew I needed for upgrades, for the potential.
When it is all you have, adding 2-3 mods to an item can actually turn into an upgrade. But bad enough that the next better item is right around the corner.

Third observation: Regal and exalted orbs are SUPER rare during the campaign - causing over-levelling.
This is a SSF choice that a player has to embrace. It plays into the second observation and while there is a workaround the workaround is not super ideal.
What ends up happening is that you clear more of the maps and do all the optional bosses. Good for the experience, but kind of draggy in cruel and certainly when doing it all over a second time (my own mistake, but an observation none the less).
The trick here is that lack of upgraded/optimized gear is easily compensated by overlevelling the zones. Whenever I felt it slowed down the curve went back to easy when I got 3-4 levels higher than the zone. It happens subtly, and I did not really notice. It is something I discovered reflecting on why I got stuck later.
Access to orbs plays a significant role in the quality of your gear in SSF. Having those extra 2 mods on every item is massive. Not only to compensate for less than optimal mods/rolls, but also because it can significantly boost an already well rolled item.
But when the orbs are so scarce and the gear is probably replaced every 5-10 levels you just cannot keep upgrading. The result is the over-levelling to mask the problem.

Forth observation: Mapping with SSF is a brutal start.
As you depend on your own RNGeebuz praying for gear, I ended up starting maps with kind of a lousy setup. Both times around.
Both times I had a healthy amount of T1 maps from rounding off the campaign. However, starting without proper gear (defense+resists mainly) meant a lot of 1-shots. Each of those is a lost map. Less of a problem, Mr featherhat sells them for 5k gold. That amount of gold, as well as more T1 maps is relatively easy to come by in the ACT6 zones. T2 maps are just 15k gold, so those are alright as well.
What is VERY frustrating though is to try and find a path through the map that avoids all the "upgraded" maps. A death in those means the map is reset to standard. At T1-2 getting a new map is easy and you just try again. But this time with less rewards. Rewards that I needed to be able to survive the maps with events.
First time around I got lucky with precursors and thought they were pretty easy to get, so I used them. Then did not get any more. Second time around I hang on to them for dear life as I cannot afford to waste them on a section of the map where I cannot reliably run the maps yet.
Both runs by the time I actually completed the 10 T2 maps I had my gear sort of sorted out. Not perfect, but capped/close to resistances and good defenses. Still low on HP and damage not great as you waste a lot of gear mod slots to get resistances with 15-20% per item.
At this time I was actually traveling to the other acts to buy rares from all the vendors, just to disenchant to get regal shards. And on both characters I ran without full mods on most of the gear because I did not get exalted orbs. There is no way to get exalted orbs on SSF other than drops, there is a reason this is trade currency as they are pretty hard to get hold of at key spots in the game.
5-10 ex orbs can trade you a great set of mapping gear, to make you zoom through T1-5. By that time you picked up enough to upgrade to next range of level requirement through trading.
In SSF 10 ex orbs will give you exactly 10 random mods. No more, no less.
I eventually got through this phase on both characters by outlevelling the T1-T2 maps. Mainly supported by being able to buy maps from the vendor and using towers to get the easy clears for the quest. Getting the first 4 atlas points does make a difference, but not enough to keep maps sustained as an average player with bad gear.
For trading league players, you can just donate some of your ex orbs to get waystones. But most likely you can just jump straight to T5+ using the traded gear.
What makes this start so rough on the SSF player is that you only get the lvl65 gear from the T1 maps. So you are fishing for upgrades in a pool of items that are not that likely to roll the high level mods. Using your limited resources to chance it.

Fifth observation: Getting through T3-7 maps absolutely sucks.
I would not be surprised if many players just quit here. You constantly have to go back to lower tiered waystones because that is either what dropped, or you just got nothing and had to fluff it back up from a T2 vendor map.
Getting through this slump I have experienced running several +300% waystones maps of like T5-6 and getting a bunch of T4 stones. With full clears, including breaking all the pots. It should be hardcoded that you would get at least one waystone of the maps level in a clear. I can accept that if I die I lose the map, that I lose XP, that the special spawns in the map disappear is really annoying, but that I get bumped back a tier or two and have to work it back up really sucks.
I am not saying that we need some D4 pit-level BS where you just "unlock" the next tier when you complete one and can then play any tier you want below that. But some protection against setbacks would be nice.
However, the worst part here is how outlevelling the maps is no longer an option for the average player. The XP gain is so low as you get higher that you can hardly level. This became really noticeable when I got a few lucky drops that rounded off my gear better and suddenly flew through the maps. It feels super grindy and not very rewarding.
Once I got to T8 maps though (if I remember correctly) I had enough gear drops, orbs (see below on rarity), and atlas points to get a good natural flow. For me it was only that T3-T7 that felt off. And it could be fixed by simply allowing the vendor to sell up to T5 maps at reasonable cost without limited stock. A T5 map cost 400k gold in the current game. Not really a usable option.
Starving people from doing "current" level content does not belong in a solo ARPG.

Sixt observation: Ascention trials...
OMG! - 1-shot, random rooms and effects. Not being able to get these items reliably is beyond crazy. Sure, trade leaguers don't have problems as you can just buy more.
I mean the first and second ascension are perfect. When you unlock them they are brutally hard. But as you learn how they work and gain some levels they are pretty easy. The first floor and 4 trials variants that is. The 2nd floor is not that bad either. I have yet to try the 7-trial chaos one as the one ultimatum I threw at it got "wasted" on an impossible choice of challenges that got me one-shotted.
So in SSF we have to: 1) grind low level djinns (no exp and little usable drops), then 2) farm floor 1+2 for relics, then 3) farm gear with HP+ES because EV is useless for honor, then 4) farm higher level djinns, then finally 5) drop the djinn in, repeat floor 1+2, then get a chance at floor 3. At level 80 I tried a lvl68 djinn. Got easily to floor 3, even to the second to last room. Then got all my honor sucked up by group of casters dropping AOE with no dodge path in 2 seconds and got thrown out. Half an hour of carefully choosing rooms, getting to that point with 100% honor and then stuck that way.
Similar thing happened on my ranger too in the first floor. 100%->0% honor in 1-2 seconds getting moveblocked by beetles or something. There is something about how evasion works against that trial that is not right. I read similar complaints from warriors regarding armor. The honor system needs some adjustment to make it properly account for "effective health" of any type of build. Whether it be evasion, shield, health regen stacking, or even life-on-hit. It seems the only usable method is to stack ES as it works for everything.
Hopefully the final game version will have more trials and only the first, and repeatable, version of each is required for skill points. Gating such power level behind unbalanced RNG is silly. I may be more inclined to accept it if there were multiple ways to get the same points. Like if I could do a 7-trial chaos as alternative to the 3-floors of rooms. And I am perfectly fine if there is some tier of level that is super hard, but mainly just bragging rights. Like Über Lilith in D4. No loot except for a 1-time small step towards a unique.
Even better if there was more options for ascension, including one that was way more grindy but less perfect-dodge and gear/build dependent. Personally I would love something more thinky, but I also know how fast those are invalidated by the internet. So something that requires you to kill a bazillion of each monster type, run 1000 maps, or some combination of achievement from just playing a lot. 1000 maps of any tier for example... by the time you get through that many you would have either eventually tried and gotten lucky on the others or you kind of deserve to ascend just from persistence alone.

Seventh observation: Uniques are kind of pointless in SSF.
I am glad I have the unique tab. At least there is a mini-game a'la pokemon where I can collect sets of item types I cannot use.
My monk has a full set of rare wands, all the shields, all the hammers, and focus'. Nice to look at, but they will never get used. The way I typically play ARPGs with seasons is that I will rotate between classes from season to season. Play one, then another the next season and so on. So anything that does not fit my current class is pretty much junk. I could of course disenchant them all and get a few chance orbs to try my luck at an item that actually fits my build, but the chance orb chance (heh) is also tuned for the market economy. Not like I will end up with hundreds of them (which would be thousands of disenchanted uniques). So far I have two drop on each character, and another two on the monk from disenchanted doubles of uniques (really no reason to stash two of the same useless one, so I blow the ones with worse stats).

Eight observation: Rarity, SFF is kind of broken until you get to 50+ +rarity
Towards the end of the list, but now we get to the main course. Something is completely off with how this interacts with the game formulas.
It seems +rarity increase the chance of rolling orbs rather than shards on the loot tables. Combined with atlas nodes, tower tabs, and map mods that increase quantity of items you get a LOT more stuff as you add rarity.
Needing to get your defensive mods, resistances, build mods, AND rarity on your gear is pretty brutal for SSF.
But it seems like it is not just for endgame. I had periods where my random gear happened to have rarity as a "bonus mod" on an otherwise most viable piece of gear. Once you get above +50 interesting things happens with your drops. Rare mobs are more generous and the orb-shortage eases off for a bit. Here I am talking about mainly exalted and regal orbs, but also alchemist (which are extremely useful in SSF) and jewelers as well as the quality upgrade ones.
Another observation is that after I got rarity up I started seeing a lot more uniques. Pretty junky ones, but as SSF it always helps to get the unique tab filled out just in case some build comes along and make them playable.
In summary it feels like it is unintentionally overimportant as a stat compared to how one would expect it to scale the progression. Sure I would expect it to give me an increase in blues and yellows compared to not having it. But the currency effect is out of control and if the balancing is done with this in mind, and for a trading economy game, it will totally ruin SSF.
Fun fact, in my just over 150hours of playing I have found a single Divine orb. The good news? I don't need to worry about only having one, because I have no gear that I would even remotely considering using it on.
Perhaps the fix is as simple as giving all SSF a flat +50 rarity to the character for playing in SSF. Who cares? it is not like it will affect the economy in any way that I get a few more orbs. Then I can boost it further with gear if I want to farm something, or I can just focus on enjoying the game. Having to RNG my way to a set of gear with proper stats AND the rarity before the game seems playable is a bit too much.

Suggestions:

1)
Allow SSF players to delete a mod from an item. And not just annulment orbs that take a random mod, but a way to pick a specific one. Make it cost some currency that can be farmed and that is not totally luck-dependent. I have seen two omens in all my time playing and one was for auto-refill a charm. Probably good in the right pinch, but I am nowhere near good enough to ever get in a situation where it would matter.
Chaos orbs are nice and all, but I have too often had an item with 5 pretty decent rolls and one useless one. 1/6 chance of hitting the right one is not my idea of fun.
I have done 100's of reforgings of bricked rares. At least for every 3rd one you get a bonus chance. I don't mind pyramid schemes in ARPGs, but give me a way in SSF to trade my time for progress rather than time->RNG at odds designed for a trade economy.

2)
Unlock waystones at vendor for reasonable prices at current quest level. I get you want to get most of the in-demand consumables funneled through the trading system. But for SSF it is just unnecessary frustration. People would complain a lot more than they already do about this if it was not for the overabundance of lower-tier waystones that drop all the time. I am certain they flow into the market and as long as you get the occasional good item (for a class you may not even want to play) you are good to go. Not really an option for SSF.

3)
The passive SSF rarity boost mentioned above.
Or just get rid of the stat altogether and balance drop chances differently for SSF.
Alternatively provide ways to obtain exalted orbs when they refuse to drop.

4)
Ascension changes.
See above, long list of things to do there, but just making them bragging-rights optional beyond those where you can repeat would go a long way. Hell, I would even accept no-loot in the repeatable ones if that is what it takes. Or pile all the loot at the final boss. If you complete it you get the loot and cannot repeat, if you die you don't get any loot, but can restart.

5)
More a personal preference thing, and likely something that splits the waters. Make a map for alt-leveling.
I have now gone through the campaign 4 times (two characters act1-6) I am kind of done with the dialogs. I play ARPGs to blast hordes of mobs in a power fantasy, not run fetch quests. If I wanted that I could have stayed with MMOs.
The way they eventually did it in D4 works well for alt-lovers. Once you have beaten the campaign whenever you start a new character you can choose. One option being just skip it and you start at level 1 with all the world events accessible. From there you can choose to level whichever way you want. Cherrypick sidequests, do events, dungeons, whatever. Plus all the "unlocks" are just automatically on for the whole account.
I did not particularly enjoy having to chase down specific bosses 4 times for stat-boosts. If I could run a "leveling map" where all nodes just could be activated without waystones and had monsters my level I would be more inclined to level more characters. Now I will probably stick with these two if I stick around for the season. Then pick others when it resets.

Thank you for making it all the way to the end.
Amazing game for a F2P and very clever to put quality of life upgrades in the microtransactions as one-time fees. You don't NEED the stash tabs to play the game, but it certainly makes the experience better. And with the bundle it is reasonably priced.