Personal feedback probably incomplete (possibly incoherent due to a language barrier).

Hello;

This is my personal feedback for version 0.2 and the game overhaul following the recent changes. As the title suggests, English is not my first language. Therefore, I may be unable to express my feedback clearly. If anything appears incoherent or unclear, please leave a message, and I will do my best to clarify any ambiguity.

Let's start with 0.2's "Vortex of Negativity." While it's undeniable that some monster numbers were overturned and some skills undertuned or bugged, I believe most of the negativity came from the fact that players had no preparation to face the challenge, which in turn accentuated the feeling of being underpowered. POE 1 or 2 are complex games with a lot of moving parts and variables, which take time to assimilate and put together in a way that is even remotely efficient and somewhat workable. And when the patch notes arrive so close to the actual release of the patch, and with little to no useful information (sometimes even with numbers that were not what we actually got live), that leaves people with a fear of the unknown, particularly when we know things will get nerfed.

While I understand that presenting a wall of numbers is unappealing, it's necessary data for the historical fanbase of the game. Even for the somewhat less involved players, if the skills are grouped by weapon type, for example, they can look out for what they are interested in playing and ignore the rest. When on release day, no one has any idea what they're doing. They're given two options: either use a previous character, take an uncut gem, and read the skill descriptions to compare the numbers on old and new skills (which is somewhat frustrating because you could be playing the patch instead of doing groundwork that could have been done before the patch if patch notes were provided more in advance and with actual data), or try to go with the flow and figure things out as they go, directly facing balance issues and getting frustrated because their poorly assembled builds get repeatedly wrecked. This makes the situation look much worse.





Now, for the actual gameplay, I will focus only on endgame gameplay (after the campaign, early maps, and beyond) because it's the part where most players will invest the most hours, and therefore, the part that needs to be the most balanced. First of all, I'm really happy to see changes toward a more beginner-friendly game in the later parts of the game (ascendancy respec, easier access to pinnacle content). While some see this as a downfall of the game into a "casual amusement park," I see this as giving less experienced players an actual chance at learning the game by playing, rather than watching two to three guide videos on how the boss/mechanics work.

I find it odd that reaching the resistance cap isn't synonymous with my character being "tanky," but rather that my character has reached the bare minimum to survive elemental damage. On that subject, I find that elemental shrines, burning ground, and elemental strongbox affixes seem to deal a comparatively insane amount of elemental damage compared to monsters.

For monsters, my only suspects for being unbalanced are those that use physical ground slam AoEs, particularly the "Azak Stalker," which seems to deal a surprisingly significant amount of damage in a rather large area. This attack is not particularly noticeable and has a quick animation, making them rather lethal and somewhat unfair compared to the rest of the bestiary.


Now, in terms of frustrating monsters to fight, I have many more issues to express. First of all, every monster that has a hitbox while being untargetable is rather frustrating, blocking paths of escape or just movement while you cannot kill them. This doesn't feel like meaningful combat, but rather an unfair, arbitrary trap, particularly when they spawn around you, such as in a ritual.

TThe Priest of the Sun's death laser is inconsistent in terms of what it can and cannot go through. Furthermore, sometimes they seem able to cast it while not even ever being on my screen, yet still reach me with it.

Every monster that can disappear from your screen, such as the ice specters or those worm-like creatures that burrow underground, breaks the flow of combat. They have unclear patterns regarding how or why they disappear, and, worst of all, they often reappear already in an attack animation, making it hard or impossible to react to their actions without taking a hit, which, in a pack of worms, could be lethal.

Speaking of attack animations, why are some monsters not immediately interrupted when they reach the heavy stun threshold? Additionally, why do the hitboxes of their attacks remain at the original position when you use knockback to move the monster away? This seems to happen more often with slower, bigger monsters, attacks, and bosses, and it is particularly frustrating.

Regarding bosses, could we have a slight delay between the moment the boss becomes damageable and its first attack? Alternatively, perhaps reduced damage for the boss's first attack? It's often unclear to me when the fight actually starts, and I will, more often than not, get hit by the first attack a boss throws immediately after the fight begins. On the same subject, why do bosses often execute multiple attack patterns while being forcibly immune between their phases? I do find multi-phase boss fights more interesting, but dodging attack patterns while the monster is immune to damage and refusing to transition from phase 1 to phase 2 doesn't create a great experience.




Now, onto my biggest frustration with Path of Exile 2 (PoE2), and it's not even a gameplay aspect: that godforsaken thing called trading. I'm tired of messaging people who don't answer, changing prices, delisting and relisting their items, trying to scam you by not giving the correct item, the correct amount of currency, or the correct type of currency, or making you do math because they pay you in a nonsensical pattern of currency. I understand that an asynchronous, automated system needs some safeguards to prevent duping and some limitations to prevent people from only doing that, but, man, give me something else than what we have at the moment. Make the buyer pay a hard-to-sustain gold fee, put a limit on the number of items you can buy daily using this feature (forcing further trades to be done the old-fashioned way or waiting for 24 hours), block relisting for a period of time to prevent item flipping. I will take anything to not have to deal with trading frustration anymore. And yes, I know about Solo Self-Found (SSF), but I do not find the idea of subjecting myself completely to RNG to determine what I'm allowed to play or how efficient my build is to be appealing.


This is all the feedback I can think of at the moment if anything is unclear please let me know