Extensive feedback after 1200 hours playtime
|
Greetings everyone.
There has been plenty of feedback already and while i probably will not bring forward anything revolutionary, i still want to provide some subjective feedback in a constructive manner. While i failed to keep it short, i promise i do not want to waste anyones time with it. This would probably find more appeal as a Video feedback 0. I have to preface my feedback with a disclaimer: I have played about 1200 hours of POE2 (per steam), a few thousands of hours of poe1 (not counted since standalone +a few hundred tracked more on steam for rewards). On POE2 I exclusively play SSF HC (and i would be surprised if total playtime outside of that would be 1 hour) so my perspective is obviously biased. While it may have more pressing issues to many, i cant say anything about trade itself, group play or just the gameplay experience with market access. This is not the classic HC SSF BTW bit, but to present how my feedback is skewed. But i gauged some feedback from casual friends that play SC Trade Of those hours, about ~1000 were prior to patch 0.2, and about 200 in post. During my entire playtime i wrote down anything that really stuck out to me, which is mostly feedback regarding QoL, Leveling and ease of access. Its hard to track this as i kept deleting "dead" characters, but i shouldve played between 60-70 characters in total (with repeating builds), of which i estimate i got to maps with 60%ish (early on i died a lot in campaign and since 0.2 release again). This means i ran the full campaign about 30-40ish times fully. I did all endgame content (all on 0.1, less than half of pinnacle bosses currently on 0.2). As far as playtesting goes, i feel like i got a good and average overall grasp of things at this point. If not, i will incorporate corrections gladly. Im aware the feedback is very very mixed in topics, and not having a precise point binding them all together may muddle the message quite a bit, same with keeping it so long (lets be realistic barely anyone will read it all, if at all) General structure of the feedback is: I. Leveling and Campaign progression II. QoL and Ease of Access III. Bugs and minor grievances IV. Misc Suggestions V. Conclusion Furthermore, to ensure clarity of feedback, i do it in the style of: Potential Issue: Definition of Issue: Example: Proposition: I. Leveling, Campaign and progression 1. Progression Putting the most important first, i got ample experience to believe that for 0.2, loot got adjusted both in quantity (most noticeable issue to what most people complained about) and rarity from MF. But it also has been very apparent that the individual rolls on the items are FAR better on average for me at least. Subjectively it feels like loot logic got adjusted to a point of less items, less rare but the good items have better rolls, likely in the hopes of making drops feel more impactful. As in 0.1 especially rares were as common as magic items are now, devaluing their importance fully, especially since theres nothing above rare (i count uniques as outside of the normal loot hierarchy due to its at times exceptional effects) The current iteration feels less rewarding though, and it made "crafting" a bigger source of progression than the masses of rares you could pick up before and luck out on, much to the dismay of many. I tend to find better stuff more rarely, and manage to brick it all magically - basically ending me with nothing at all in the end. Even after 200 hours of 0.2 playtime i feel decrepit and poor at all times 2. Campaign Potential Issue: Full campaign (Act1-6) is very long (time consuming) Definition of Issue: For first playthroughs this is not an issue, since on a narrative basis, gameplay structure and conceptual progression it is well done and enjoyable. Cracks only start to show on repetition. Once the mindset of "checklist/runthrough" manifests, it can feel like its dragging on. Milestones to hit before your build realises and a slowed power progression makes it feel samey. What feels severely lacking is options and player choice, its a long, time consuming forced experience that looses its glamour after repeat exposure. Example: My shortest run through was 8 hours, with prepared and optimised build late in 0.1. My longest was 28 hours (first 0.2 run). For casual players this is a big hurdle to try out new builds, as it can mean up to 2-3 weeks before a new build reaches "endgame" where the majority of changes of 0.2 took place. Personally my biggest issue with this was in hardcore when dying (happens) in act6/act3cruel after "only" 12 hours playtime. Even more so if it happens repeatedly. Once you played the campaign often enough, it feels like playing the game is held hostage behind a 12 hour timelock, until u can start "progressing your character". My casual friend that can play 1-3 hours every other day is basically locked to one character or two at most, before he quits because of this. Especially at league start, where someone does not know what is "good" or worth the time to play, is it quite the hurdle to their enjoyment. Playing something new is not an option when they have to commit 2 weeks of leveling just to experience something else - so its highly likely to be stuck with something they may not enjoy once they reach endgame Proposition: I have 4 propositions in mind that felt natural, and should respect the spirit of the campaign a) Alternative 1: "Alternative campaign progression after completion" -Shortcuts can be unlocked after killing an act boss, which drops a consumeable, stashable key item. Examples: - Act1 - Key: Highroad passage key: Road between Grelwood to Ogham village, similar to POE1 Prisoners Gate Area. - Act2 - Key: Amulet of the Unwanted: Opens a passage to cavern system bypassing the sandstorm to deshar from traitors passage. Similar to Poe1 Mervils Caverns. - Act3 - Key: Doryanis Blood : Immediately gives access to temple of kopec through a sealed backdoor path in jungle ruins) b) Alternative 2: After completing the campaign the first time, through the power of the map device yadda yadda: For all succeeding runs the Campaign Map is revealed and teleporters are available and active (functionally allowing skipping if character power is high, and hitting selective areas for powerups) - allows for more player choice and how quickly they want to progress. c) Alternative 3: Removing Cruel altogether already and replacing it with an alternative leveling approach. The campaign is great but doing it 2 identical times right after another, and maybe even multiple times increases the impression of tediousness. Personal Suggestion: "realm of the mother" - Character wakes up after the cataclysmic event (moved from act6 to act3 ending) in a 15 floor dungeon for progression into maps. Similar to maps in design, optionally it can be used as an introduction to endgame mechanics (akin to what freythorn does with ritual, could be two floors as a breach only floor, and every third floor a boss fight). Hideout access would probably be necessary d) Alternative 4: 15 random remixed campaign maps that have bosses or endgame maps to keep things fresh. 3. Minor leveling feedback a) The areas in the past of Act3 should rarely drop low tier soul cores instead of runes. It would fit the narrative/lore and eases the dependence on Trial of chaos as its only source. Personally i very much dislike trial of chaos (mostly because i find it to be boring/bad investment of my time while still having a higher risk for a SSF HC character. The rewards outside of the very few soul cores and vaal/chaos drops on bosses are not appealing. I tend to only do them on ranged characters for 2nd ascendancy and once i got 10 stages available and feel strong - so very very very late into a league. ToC is not a part of my experience between those two points. My friend on SC Trade likes to run ToC though as high main method of income, so i assume the method of selling soul cores is lucrative, but thats mostly because so few people like to run them? What i assume is a higher value due to Low supply from content not being enjoyable. b) VENOM VIAL Potential Issue: Permanent choice that needs to be preplanned and cant be adjusted even after many hours of gameplay and gear/build changes Definition of Issue: Especially for new players its easy to make a wrong and permanent choice. But even veteran players may find their build evolve to a different point in their progression that would benefit from a different vial. Example: Someone starts out with a mage build, picks mana regen but later regrets this and wanted Stun threshold instead. Similarly, new player opting out for +5 to stats, not knowing the importance of chaos res. Or a veteran player taking chaos res but evolving his build into a CI build that would benefit from the +5 stats. Proposition: aa) Turning it into a repeatable quest, gathering the venom quest item again gives a respec similar to ascendancy respec bb) Option to swap cost of gold or currency sink (chaos orbs/div even?) cc) Endgame mechanic, rare free spawning monster, similar to essences that drop a currency as respec tokens. (Crystallized regret or whatever). Single can be used to respec a skill without gold, 5x for respeccing Venom Vial, 20x for respeccing Ascendancy. 50x Tokens combine as entrance key to a pinnacle boss like breachstone/delirium. (theme of dementia) 4. Endgame suggestions a) New Item suggestion: Taintstone: Can be used in the same 2x2 together with a waystone when opening a map - to apply a league mechanic directly/force it onto that map b) Towers Potential Issue: Towers are in a better place than before but still not something players enjoy. The prepwork for running maps through towers is still not very enjoyable and feels mandatory to "juice" the maps. Definition of Issue: Its a waste to run a tower before reaching t15s. And to not use 6mod waystones on it. Psychologically people want to minmax so they wait until that point, to run some of their best waystones for maximum effect. This extends the prepwork and anticipation before a player can run their favorite maps - tunneling them into running disliked maps to clear them, to progress their map level or go to a different direction to prep a different tower in the meanwhile. Due to the amount of towers players either have to do a lot of prepwork or cave and put in bad ones for underwhelming effect, deflating their weight as a highlight on the atlas, turning them into a chore. Example: When i reached maps, i disregarded the corrupted nexuses and towers entirely, progressed steadily to t15 maps. I uncovered enough of the atlas and prepared about 4 tower clusters, 2 solitary towers that were each near 4 corrupted nexus. This took about 10 hours playtime and in the end the difference was not very noticeable or rewarding. That being said i would/will do the exact same thing just from a minmax standpoint without market access it has highest chances of benefitting my playstyle. Proposition: aa) Even less precursor towers (33% further reduction), but increased effect and area of each tower - should be even more of a big find on map/keeps novelty and is a visible highlight on the atlas. bb) Tower tablets should be the keys to the towers instead. Towers have 6 floors with a lever at the end of each. Players can activate the lever or go further. Every floor has a new random modifier. Similar to Trial of chaos in this. Stronger effects for every stage. Corrupted waystones have possibility of additional floor, double modifiers per floor or stronger modifiers. cc) Allow repeat entry with new tower tablets to go for further stages. (only issue would be applying map mechanics, i would suggest reentry only with white tablets) dd) These changes would move away from dependence on waystone level and point of current progression, and allow people to decide how far they want to go at whatever pace they want. c) Temporal jailer boss: Stationary, turns invuln for a phase and summons 1-3 rogue exiles to its aid. (2% chance of 3, 10% for 2, increase with atlas skill tree) (Endgame boss for rogue exiles) d) Icon of want: Gimmick boss, has a random maze layout with a few rare mobs in it. At the end holds an unique strong box (can have more strongboxes in loot room, all corrupted) Activating the altar with the icon summons boss version of either alva, risu or finn with rogue exile moveset that can drop 1-10 random items of current level pool II. QoL and Ease of Access 1. Crafting Potential Issue: Still higher tedium of crafting Definition of Issue: Despite not having the massclick crafting that was orb of alteration (i like alterations but i see why we do not have it), functionally not much has changed. Example: The loot is scarce enough that its an effective way to collect white base items or 1-2 mod blues and transmute/augment them during maps and then immediately throw them out. In general the importance of white items increased substantially to me. If this playstyle persists i would love some QoL for it Propositions: a) Able to use the orb of augmentation on a white item if also holding an orb of transmutation, automatically uses both on the white item b) Orb of scouring is desperately needed. Even if rare, would be necessary since some item bases feel more annoying to accumulate than others. Finding a magic item, scouring into alchemy would be benefitial, as well as allow a better way to use Orb of Chance in targeted chancing. Sitting on many orb of chance while never finding any white base is annoying, to say the least. c) Selling skill gems to a vendor should have a gold value of their level multiplied x25 or x50. Its easier to sell than throw away by a lot, but having to sell em for 1 gold or 25 gold each automatically makes both feel like a complete waste of time, especially when cleaning stashes (improves stash management) d) Chancing is very underwhelming in general, especially visually. Considering how rare it can be during certain stages of the game, theres needs to be some sort of feedback to it to engage the gamba receptors. A sound on success/sparkle would be nice e) Ability to use scroll of wisdom/transmute/augment orb on a stash tab as a whole, uses said item for all eglibile items in said tab as long as u own enough of said item f) Ability to right click on stash tab and "sell to vendor" / sell in bulk to turn whole tab to gold after a confirmation g) Ability to ctrl-leftclick on stash tab/map tap moves all into inventory III. Bugs and minor grievances 1. Rare Monsters Potential Issue: Visual Clarity, and cause/effect of rare mobs Definition of Issue: Some rare monster modifiers seem more common or at least more noticeable while maintaining a high grade of obnoxiousness Example: A good amount of DD effects or other mods are already adressed (especially health regen), maybe even to a bigger degree than i though, but some modifiers still stand out like volatile plants, corpse explosion mod and summoning minions. Proposition: a) Volatile plants need to be visually clearer (Plants itself being taller, projectiles a harsher shade of purple) Both the stalk and the projectile are easy to miss, under the corpse of a dead monster or on some terrain (example augury arches) and can lead to a death that wasnt properly visible and feels unearned. b) Reviving minions needs to either have aa) max range or bb) a small cooldown cc) animation on the rare mob itself (this modifier can be very obnoxious, both when the minions latch onto you but the rare mob does not, and follow quite some time and even more so as melee when facing a very very mod stacked rare mob and the minions revive almost as fast as u can kill them) I personally watched someone quit over that, so while its just "annoying" to me, it can be quite the issue c) similarily, corpse explosion modifier needs an animation on the rare monster or a slight cooldown d) Ability to turn down quests during the campaign. Currently you can only accept a quest or the npc is unaccessible, and if the prompt is already open it basically locks/freezes the game until u press accept. Im aware this is kinda meaningless but somehow it gets under my skin. e) Ability to create gem loadouts. The equipped gems is very very cool, but having a "homepage/default" as a standard, we can customize would be great for repeat runs of the same build. Last season i got to a tenth version of the same build and after a while the constant clicking or searching gets to me now f) Charms are still underwhelming. Not much to say, really needs a visual on the character imo g) On Act3/Act6 Hub, its extremely easy to get stuck between Sin and a stone pillar on the bottom right of Sin by rolling into it. Very annoying to get out, not difficult but annoying. h) Atrocious fps on penitentiary map (drops from 100 avg to 25) For my entire friendgroup, no matter the pc specs. Seems very normal and easy to reproduce IV. Misc Suggestions 1. Delevel gems or disenchanting gems for jeweler orb return. Please. Having a gem tab full of level 78 gems of what you need when starting a new character is mindbogglingly annoying. And while leveling you use new gems, which means even keeping level 78 gems meaningless. Especially if you throw greater jewelers/perfects on em, you want to keep them if another character doesnt use it anymore as to not waste it. Alternatively let us disenchant skill gems to get back the jewelers orbs. Would be same result. 2. Unique item: Talisman of Greed. (Charm slot) Walking over currency items, automatically picks them up for charges. (80 max charges, each pickup 5 charges?) Picking a million augmented orbs or transmutes at level 95 is mindnumbing, and depending on clear speed and playstyle can be annoying. Also might be skill issue but i often missclick. 3. Onehanded crossbows to use with shield or dual wield. Would be neat. 4. Twohanded spears. Would be neat 5. Orb of balance. Very rare and balances out the tiers between all modifiers on an item to an average. Would be fun. Having a 4 modifier item with 2x t12 and x2 t2 with a bad distribution would make it useable suddenly. 6. I would like to gamble on flasks/progress them a bit longer than level 60. Basically the moment one reaches maps, that aspect of itemization falls away except the few unique ones that dont fit every build V. Conclusion Whew, quite the book now that the bullet points are formulated. Kinda expect no one to read up to this point, but if u did thanks. Im sure everyone will be very normal about this. Personally i just wanted to write down and express my biggest points of friction in a constructive manner, as i think this game has immense potential. As a general point, i want to mention that while i think 0.2 improved many many things, and the game in many ways, i still enjoyed playing 0.1 more than 0.2. Especially the current state of balance between builds is egregious, where everything except 3-4 builds feels exceptionally weak and even slower to level than before. The difference between the most powerful builds and the bottom end (that got larger) seems more daunting. With the economy being more scarce and builds being so weak except for the same gimmicks, it has not been very enjoyable overall sadly. I do hold strong hopes this will change though as the last changes went into a better direction. I prefer proposing ideas, or things to think about. I generally dont like to talk about solutions as is, as i mostly go off feelings and feelings are subjective, and thus rarely provide general remedy for objective issues. Every suggestion has consequences and will find people that dislike it either way. (Detecting issues, describing them and adressing them entirely is probably one of the hardest things in any field). Hope it wasnt too much of an unhinged rant and digestible, also sorry for not AI/Spellchecking it, im a staunch believer in the charm of human shortcomings Last bumped on Apr 27, 2025, 8:26:52 PM
|
|
|
Excellent read and very well prepared OP. Thank you for taking the time on this and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.
|
|
|
Nice work! I wrote months ago about the reviving minions both as feedback and as a bug report (reviving them from the other side of the map is a bug IMHO). Still, no action from GGG.
|
|
" In every of your propositions, you always talk about way to go through campaign, but never about the main thing : experience, lvl and stuff. If you want an alternative of the actual campaign that keep the spirit of the game, you have to keep some difficulty to go through, maybe have less area but more xp gained. I think its not possible to have 2 ways to go through the same area with 2 different % of xp gained. So shortcuts are a good idea but devs have to create 2 types for the same area : area for players who go through normal way, and area for players who took shortcuts. Cause you cant give the same amount of xp for players who take shortcuts, or in any case, finish campaign with a fastest way, than players who want to play normally. Other issue : stuff. If you take a shortcut and was lvl 20 and now lvl 30 in the new area, what about your stuff ? You are stuff lvl 20 for an area lvl30... So in my opinion, there is just one way to do it : having a choice at the start of the league between normal league and short campaign league. But I really think with experience, it would be faster to clean campaign in the future. 8h is totally okay to do it for me. Just remember dozens of hours needed to finish the 10 acts of PoE1. Then now, its just easy. I think it would be the same in the future for PoE2, specially when we got 6 acts. " +1 " As a SSF player myself, I have an issue with endgame mechanic of tower. I rarely find a 6 affixes map and so, if I want to put 3 mods on a tower, I have to do it with 6 affixes. So I have to use exalted to have some maps with 6 affixes. But I need and always use my exalted to craft. Solution : having more maps dropped with 6 affixes. " Interesting idea but, even if we have less towers as you ask, Im afraid it would feel more boring to do towers than now... " Solution (I already ask for it) : having a box with only white lootsof the last map made. It resets everytime just after started a new map. It could be a good way, for people who want to craft, to take this white items to craft around. It could be even better with some options to select white item we prefer (type of weapon, of armor,...). And about QoL, I would just add as a solution, to have disenchanting and salvaging with the same NPC. " I strongly disagree. Having orb of scouring would result of the same way as PoE1, just having 1 solo item and just try all our craft with it. So if we have orb of scouring, magic and rares items looted are no longer important in end game. And so, it would ruin what GGG tried in PoE2. " For me, all previous changes made were good and right now, I can easily say I see any effect of any mob while clearing map and I never die on it, except when Im bad ^^ I must have the feeling thats sometimes, I die on a bug that on a actual effect of any mob. So for me, its totally okay and no work is needed anymore... Last edited by Legoury#0138 on Apr 27, 2025, 6:40:53 PM
|
|
" +1 Really like this idea, its simple and could be really useful when you play SSF or HCSFF and you want to try some build with your greater or perfect. " I personnaly prefered playing 0.2 than 0.1, just for the end game that is really more enjoyable. And as a SSF player with my own build playing huntress with thunderous leap + primal strikes, I can easily say I disagree with diversity of builds ^^ Last edited by Legoury#0138 on Apr 27, 2025, 6:53:43 PM
|
|
" Good points to consider, but i do think it would not be difficult to address. First, i think it is important that the legacy way remains open to players, one to collect campaign rewards if needed/wanted, and if the alternative routes are too challenging too. I dont think there needs to be a hard choice, just options 1. Difficulty I do agree that the alternative areas would have to have a higher level of difficulty to properly reflect the higher pace and as a way to reserve it for actually progressed players. By default having the areas have a higher level, and also higher density would be one way out of many to provide both difficulty and increased experience 2. Stuff This i do not think is an issue. As most people would have twink gear/leveling uniques to carry them through the early game, early game drops would not matter much besides currency or the occasional good rare. Item level of "stuff" does not really matter on later runs if a player has been able to run maps for a while already |
|
