Collected thoughts on Path of Exile 2

TL;DR - I'm not a fan of how the game turned out.

Visual design is great. Story design is exceptional, makes me wonder about content on IV-VI. The "feel" of the areas peak throughout Act I(not you, Grim Tangle, screw you and your barely visible exploding corpses and mushrooms) and Act III(third half, so to say to avoid spoilers). Act II trails behind the other two in the atmosphere.

For backstory, I was sorta excited to see what comes out of the oven. "Slower, more meaningful combat approach than in PoE? Cool, let's wait and see, I could dig that." was what went through my head.

Then came the content reveal, and eyebrow raises. Breach, delirium, simulacurum. Three of the zoomiest zoom-checks there were in PoE. Ok, Maybe it'll be reworked. Spoiler - they had not, in fact, been reworked. They're the same. Except they're not, because player power is different now. They're the same, if not greater, level of danger due to player power being noticably lower.

Refreshed atlas - both better and worse. To explain: picking up simply a tier"n" waystone and popping it into the map device regadless of area name is a step forward, you don't have to drop THAT ONE PARTICULAR map to progress. This however is also the step back, as it cuts out the ability to just loop through one or more maps that feel the best when playing that one certain build of yours, because we're dependant on atlas generation.

During 0.1.0 I played merc(77) and titan(88). As clunky as crossbows were, still managed to have some fun later on after the campaign. As for the titan - seeing how loud the forum was about melee being in a shady place, played him around corrupting cry. It was hella far from being fast, but with pdr band-aid in form of cloak of flame, and stacked up on regen, was fairly safe.

This time around(0.2.0), I played amazon(not lighning fury wannabe, played quartstaffs) up to 51, but I give up. This ain't it.

Combat is simply unfair. First thing you see when you turn the corner is three flying knees to the face that drop you down. If you're lucky enough to avoid it, there's a slam-dunk incoming from a monster just outside top screen border. Or a meteor. Off to the checkpoint you go. Maybe they didn't get the memo, that combat is slower now, or it was lost in translation. Nevertheless, good luck outrunning half a dozen of speed incarnations. They hit hard btw, just so you know. Brace for impact.

Defenses are weird. Armour is a trap, Evasion is fairly ok, Energy shield seems the best out of the trio. Dunno why armour formula is a function of hit damage, and not of zone level. Also, there's no debuffs that reduce ES or Evasion shield - looking at you, broken armour.

Dodge rolls and one shot attacks do not belong to hack and slash genre. Don't try to change my mind. That's lazy design. "Just don't get hit" doesn't really help as a response. It's disheartening, to see progress removed, because the animation is longer than you expected or you didn't notice a slow, and you screwed the dodge. How long the attack tracks you when the sword is falling down also feels off.

Maybe if the combat's harder, the rewards are greater? Yeah, no.
Both times, I had the luxury of inheriting a weapon from a friend that started earlier, and that carried me hard through campaign. Both times, game didn't bother throwing more than bare minimum of crafting currency my way. Up to Act III this time, I managed to find 2 alchems, 5 exalts, and around 8 regals. Exalts were swing-and-miss every time, alchems didn't produce anything noteworthy. Given that everything non-magic is heavily dependant on what you're wielding, it's no secret that I struggled to go on.
Progress feels slow. The only power spikes are ascendancy points, as passive tree doesn't provide any sense of empowerment, might as well simply not be there.

I understand that we're on early version, still there are some things that seem weird to be here:
- monster slam and shockwave attacks - on contrary to same player attack types - do not care for line of sight, surface holes, curved hallways and so on
- recently discovered that tempest bell can be moved by monster attacks, or when monster's stun bar is filled and it staggers, pushing the bell away

The game doesn't feel right. I used to pop PoE after work, to clear my mind a bit, clear some maps, drop some mobs.. generally speaking to relax. PoE2 is the exact opposite for me - it is the job, after which I gotta clear my mind and play something else to relax.

Do not misunderstand - I'm not saying that you(the reader) shouldn't or straight up can't enjoy the game. If you do - I'm happy for you, maybe even slightly envious. I, however, do not, so I'm afraid I'm shelving this until the official release. Till then maybe the Vision will solidify into something great, even if that thing would not be to my liking.

Thanks for the read.

+1

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wurro#1715 wrote:

This time around(0.2.0), I played amazon(not lighning fury wannabe, played quartstaffs) up to 51, but I give up. This ain't it.

Combat is simply unfair.

To say that the combat is too hard, and at the same time refuse to use better players' builds and advice to progress, seems completely antithetical.

If you are not using something proven to work easily, why expect it to without doing the work to prove it yourself?

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wurro#1715 wrote:

Then came the content reveal, and eyebrow raises. Breach, delirium, simulacurum. Three of the zoomiest zoom-checks there were in PoE. Ok, Maybe it'll be reworked. Spoiler - they had not, in fact, been reworked. They're the same.

This is a categorically false statement. They have been changed, all of them, including every single monster. They look similar, but they play very different, as well as the end of them is completely changed.

"

wurro#1715 wrote:

Both times, game didn't bother throwing more than bare minimum of crafting currency my way. Up to Act III this time, I managed to find 2 alchems, 5 exalts, and around 8 regals.

That sounds like a healthy amount of currency for only act 3. You do not need rares in every slot to progress, nor should you try to get them, because ilvl is generally more important at that stage.

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wurro#1715 wrote:

Progress feels slow. The only power spikes are ascendancy points, as passive tree doesn't provide any sense of empowerment, might as well simply not be there.

I did not have that experience at all. In fact I treated it like PoE1, ignoring putting a point in anything while I kept playing, I would die, and I would put one level in say, 10% attack damage and immediately feel it. It seems disingenuous to say that you are severely lacking power, but cannot feel the difference when power is granted. That is simply not possible.

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

To say that the combat is too hard, and at the same time refuse to use better players' builds and advice to progress, seems completely antithetical.

If you are not using something proven to work easily, why expect it to without doing the work to prove it yourself?

Every time I played a toon in PoE, D2, D3, GD, LE, Torchlight 1&2, Wolcen even(sic!), I played by no guides, and I stood my ground and pulled it off. Do you want to say that there are limited choice options to play PoE2 with?

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

This is a categorically false statement. They have been changed, all of them, including every single monster. They look similar, but they play very different, as well as the end of them is completely changed.

Is it though? If you still gotta blast hundreds of enemies to collect fragments, how is it not a zommy technology?

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

That sounds like a healthy amount of currency for only act 3. You do not need rares in every slot to progress, nor should you try to get them, because ilvl is generally more important at that stage.

I'm not expecting to be dressed up in uniques 5 minutes into the game. The whites and blues didn't yield anything worthy after transm+augm, what am I to do with that? Random, yeah, but still detrimental to the experience.

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AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

I did not have that experience at all. In fact I treated it like PoE1, ignoring putting a point in anything while I kept playing, I would die, and I would put one level in say, 10% attack damage and immediately feel it. It seems disingenuous to say that you are severely lacking power, but cannot feel the difference when power is granted. That is simply not possible.

Again, same game, different playthrough experience.

There is less to work with in PoE2. That is a true statement. The skills are not balanced yet. If you are fine with standing your ground and working with what you've got, then with some effort, getting to maps is possible with anything. It is just a frustrating experience, and one that can be subverted if you can let go of being anti-meta or whatever.

For gear, set up an item filter, pick up the bases, check your vendors, loosen your expectations, look at what you need objectively, replace the low ilvl stuff with any decent stuff closer to your level. If you are doing that, then you will find something good enough to progress always.

I don't really understand why picking up a lot of fragments makes it zoomy. Kind of the opposite, as you have to stop to pick them up.

I don't really believe that you cannot feel the difference in power from the tree if you feel like your power is at 0. The tree is pretty damn powerful.

Obviously, the game should be fun. It could be more fun, there could be more viable skills, the combo skills could be more fluid with one another. We could see a little more loot, etc.

A well thought out post pointing out these issues is more than welcome, but this is not it. There is too many logical jumps made out of frustration, which makes for poor feedback.

+1 OP

+1

I might have skipped to the wrong dot regarding the zoomy tech - it is not picking up the splinters that makes it zoomy. It's the time limit, in which you gotta kill as much as possible for decent chances of collecting non-marginal amount of shards. Maybe this would present the thought better.

I'm not running a drop filter, and in all honesty, I didn't really feel the need to, given scarcity of items dropping. I'd visit the vendor every level hoping for something to work with, but either they were offering cold resistance on which I was overcapped heavily(110), or it was a low-tier base, which would require regal and three slams for a questionable sidegrade if the slams hit good.

It can be a frustrating experience, as you say. But if the smoother experience happens with only a selected few skills, why such a vast choice? Sure, I was only using Ice strikes, Tempest bell, Wind dancer, one herald and basic attack, oh and killing palm for some life regen(support gem), but it was going ok-ish. It's just that, as mentioned, the game fights back so hard to stop your progress.

I'm not saying "campaign should be done in 6 hours top, blasting everything with a click", I acknowledge that various skillsets may have various combat effectiveness. There's no set time for playthrough with each skill, nevertheless each skill should be able to clear it.

By no means am I an omega-level player, no, but it ain't fun to play it as it is.