Patch 0.3 - Top 10 Feedback Points (including suggestions for improvement)

Hi GGG and fellow Exiles,

General Summary / Disclaimer
Firstly I'd like to say that I love poe2. This feedback is going to sound harsh but it comes from a place of 'wanting to make the game better'. Generally the game did feel a lot better than last season. This feedback will be from the pov as a minion player. As a minion build the campaign was long but smooth - I took my time to really absorb everything. Act 4 was excellent aside from boss oneshots with no telegraphing. And the interlude was like a d4 attempt at extra content (reskinned monsters) but still somehow better. Crafting basically saved the league. Endgame is better but still lacks some player agency. However moving through the overworld atlas now feels like a slog. This post aims to highlight the biggest pain-points in the game and some suggestions on how to improve on them. Apologies in advance as some sections got quite long.

Top 10 Feedback Points
#1 Visual Clarity / On-death Effects. This is the biggest pain point in the game as a new to mid level poe2 player (1000+ hours in poe2 and about 3k hours in poe1). The issue is comprised of overlapping player spell effects effecting visual clarity and obfuscating monster ground or on-death effects - in particular from abyss. Chaos damage in the campaign? Really? Give us more solutions to solve chaos res and this wouldnt be such an issue. Give us an opacity slider for our player skills / effects and minions. Especially those spammy / noisy spectres.

#2 Crafting. Crafting got 100% better, we basically went from 100% rng slamming to somewhat deterministic crafting (in certain scenarios). Desecration combined with the new omens feel good. And crafting currency isn't impossibly rare or impossibly expensive like previous seasons. However there are still cases where crafting is lacking, such things as: res swaps, more options for crafting in the campaign, and more minion items in general. Sceptre is the only real minion item. Where are minion wands? Minion rings and minion necks? Also desecrating in the name of a 'lord' has no real meaning until you look at poe2db. Even then its bugged and doesnt work on some items (when it should).

#3 Campaign. Act 4 was insanely good looking and feeling but once again the zone sizes are far too big. I think if you're going to force players to engage with the campaign and have it be so long, then you definitely need an option to let them skip parts of the campaign or skip straight into maps on their alts.

#4 Bosses and One-shots. The new bosses are excellent in their design, feel and ability set. BUT one shots behind poor telegraphing is still a problem. One shots are fine but you should be taught what will kill you by clear telegraphing, which currently does not exist. And as I've said before this just leads to over-gearing or over-levelling the bosses to one-shot or insta-gib them. Cheapening the game experience.

#5 Movement Speed. One of the biggest factors to scale enjoyment in an ARPG is how fast you move through the content, assuming your damage can keep up. That is to say your clear speed. Since 10% of the game are bosses and 90% are maps then clear speed becomes vitally important. As a skeleton / undead minion build the BIS boots are Bones of Ullr which roll abysmally low (pun intended) movement speed (max 15% ms) forcing you to socket an 'Amanamu's Gaze' gem that scales movement speed purely from spirit. However the downside means that all other movement speed modifers do not apply to you. Is it intended that sprint no longer makes you sprint faster (yes you have a speedy animation but just sprint at the same run/walk speed as before - looks laughable like you're sprinting through treacle)? If so then surely it would be fair to make it that -movement speed penalties also dont apply, but 'slow' also slows you. So you give up sprint to walk at normal speed (still lower than normal 35% MS boots btw, because no-one has 600 spirit to get 40% MS from the gem - unless you're in perfect mirror tier gear) but still get slowed? This hardly seems fair. Also one of the things that made Trial of the Sekhemas fun was Hare Foot (+40% MS) but this also gets disabled if you have the gaze gem socketed. So it just seems like minion players are once again getting relegated to the dominion of wheelchair classes. Honestly if this was the case then I would rather just leave boots purely as a movement item and not have any spirit reservation efficiency on that slot to contend with. Because the normal rare boots craft lets you get 60-65% MS on boots baseline. No-wonder deadeyes are running around at 100%+ MS and minion builds are moving at around 20-40%.
Other options are to buff the amanamu's gaze gem to let it work with movement speed on boots, or let it scale better with spirit. Or as suggested in previous feedback posts, make all boots have implicit movement speed - like you did with charm slots on belts (Great job btw, but I wish I could have 4 charms now!). [Side note: Saw curse removal charms on poe2db - did this just not make it into game? Havent seen any drop and cant find them on trade]."

#6 Minion Clunk. Minions are so clunky in this game. Having more than a few skeletons becomes a hinderance more so than a boon. Especially in tight corridors they body block each other due to various reasons. Take ranged minions for example: since frost mages have such a short range compared to storm mages, if they get stuck behind a storm mage that is attacking from a doorway / corridor - they cant get close enough to the monster and get stuck behind the storm mage effectively doing 0 dps. Why cant we just have minions that clip each other? This also applies to melee minions which have very slow engagement at high minion counts as they need to circle or enclose a mob before they hit. The only way this felt good / viable is when we had the haste spectre that boosted their movement speed / engagement rate. Yes haste aura was broken but why remove it? Just make it more costly imo. At a minimum, I feel like we need the equivalent of haste but without the attack and cast speed. Or we need frenzied minions back from poe1 - not for damage, just for QOL. Also after transitioning to spectres this patch, I saw that they have a cool tether ability where they turn into a ghostly wisp and reappear right next to you when you out-range them. Why cant all minions have these? Instead they just shuffle along like grandpas - and take so long to enter a boss arena they often get locked outside. As a side note I think that this clipping also needs to be applied to party play. Minions interacting with each other is like 20 players all trying to run around in a boss arena where each player itself is an impassable wall. This whole system needs to be re-examined before launch imo - something is not right here.

#7 League Mechanics. Abyss was very hard but very rewarding at the start. Some mechanics produced literal raid bosses when combined with abyss - especially in acts 1 and 2, when you're very weak / slow. Abyss monster damage has been tuned down and feels alot less rippy now but still equally rewarding - thanks for this change. I felt like speccing into rogue exiles for the exiles + abyss sounded very exciting because of the new desecrated jewels + soft target farm on uniques but it never eventuated as rogue exiles rarely spawned and if they spawned it was never near the abyss. I think if abyss goes core, it should have a section in its tree to 'attract other league mechanics' so that the juicing effect can be more easily controlled (basically we want more agency as to whether or not we vs those buffed 'raid bosses' or not). Aside from the performance issues (lag and screen clutter) on big abysses - generally the mechanic is a win and I hope it goes core. My only fear is that descrated materials will be too rare after this league is done - which brought much of the joy back into crafting during the campaign. For maps I'm sure it'll be fine. Also, could we make wildwood wisps move like 500% faster and have 100% more area? They're so slow that my minions kill the rare it was heading to before it gets empowered (making any points on the tree in wisps pointless). I know walking ahead of it makes it move quicker but its still slower than me - and thats saying something! I dont see why it cant just go forward ahead of you at all times and just buff all the mobs?

#8 Maps and the Atlas. Rolling t16 maps with decent mods is hard - not sure what the % is but for me it seems like a 1in5 or 1in10 to corrupt a t15 into a t16. Then for it to get non-terrible mods is like 1in20. I think there should be a way to block unwanted mods - especially with the double corrupt Atlas Node. Possibly 1-2 you can hard block and then 1-2 you can reduce the chance of them spawning. Also we need a way to recycle corrupted maps. Tangentially, the new way that curses work in maps feels alot more fair, as you have the ability to dodge roll to get away before it 'activates' but when you have a massive minion army its not cool or fair, as most of them always get hit - which nerfs your damage / clear overall. As mentioned things that sac or tank your movement speed do not feel good in this game when you're already slow and have no/low movement options. Theres a reason why the movement speed rune is 15 div for 5% movement speed. Regarding the atlas overworld, I feel like we need more agency over what maps we run. Having the ability to block 1-2 bad maps and increase the chance of 1-2 good maps would be so nice. The current slog in the end-game is the rate at which we move through the atlas. Even going from tower to tower takes so long. For me the best tablet is the one that gives you access to any tower in radius - and IMO this should be the default setting on ALL towers moving forward. Also generally the new map layouts feel good and more open - but I think the older layouts need a pass on removing tight / narrow corridors. Please and thank you! (Also did the beam radius and height for Citadels get nerfed? I dont see citadels until I'm almost ontop of them now).

#9 Inventory Management and Identifying. This might be a controversial one. While playing Sekhemas (alot) I was struck with a question. Now originally I was going to suggest that GGG just simply add 'identify' to Balbala, but during my time I considered the questions: ""Why do we find items unidentified? Why does it even exist?"". And this lead me down a rabbit hole. If all items dropped identified, we could setup more particular loot filters to find and regulate the loot we get, saving us time - instead of picking up things that might be good and trying for that 1in1000 or 1in10,000 shot. I know poe was designed on the back of d2 philosophies, which took inspiration from DND, but nowadays I feel like identifying items is less exciting as we already know what to expect. The only time identifying something is cool is when its a drop off a new boss or league mechanic you've never seen - and then you go 'ooo whats this?'. But that would already happen even, regardless if it dropped unidentified. This ties into inventory management and the town loop cycle.
Town loop. Currently we pickup a bunch of items, go back to town, talk to the Hooded One / Doryani, ID them and then sort them. Stashing useful currency and items, then salvaging, reforging, or selling the rest. OR if you're me - literally just dump everything into your dump tabs and sort it out later so that you can get back to blasting. I think POE2 has this problem of breaking the flow of the game - even with its league reward windows but for now lets just stay on the town loop. My thinking is: ""I just want to blast. Let me blast. And stop putting things in my way that prevent me from blasting."". Are we all such DND Larpers that we need to go to a special bench to salvage, then a special bench to reforge, then a special npc to sell, then a special npc to identify. Do we think this level of immersion is necessary - especially in the end-game? Firstly I think the best fix would be letting us lock particular items in our inventory, then making a ""sort"" button as well as a ""bulk deposit"" hotkey / button on the inventory. After that then let us have a single npc we can talk to, to do all the things but with different tabs - for those who want to sort loot manually. Ideally we automate the entire process: we delete identifying, ID scrolls and ID'ing npcs, then let us mark items in our inventory as 'junk'. Then anything that is marked for junk will be auto salvaged (if possible) or sold when we 'bulk deposit' - and all of that gold / currency thats generated goes into the relevant affinity tabs. Its not rocket science but I think having this small automation would save so much time and feel like huge QOL for people who play alot of maps. I know I for one would really appreciate it.
While you're there is it possible to get the expedition locker back, increase the size of the sanctum relic locker and add affinities for each of the categories that Ange has. Thank you."

#10 Asynchronous Trade. Moving into W's now. Possibly the biggest win of the season and the biggest step forward for the ARPG genre in general. Can't give you guys enough praise for this. Extremely well done. For years I have loathed trade and been a strictly SSF player, and async trade this league brings back a very primal enjoyment for me. That being said the search / site could use some work. If we could have a hotkey to link an item into the trade search system that would be sweet - and then eventually have something similiar to awakened trade as a price check - that would be amazing. Having the filter for all trades or instant buy out is actually bis. I basically never use the manual trading now - less chances to get scammed. I think there should be a reporting system for people mis-using or scamming. For example the one I saw was people listing a bunch of Ultimatum or Sekhemas keys for 1ex and then putting in one for 1div or 1mirror. As a QOL or combat to this, it would be nice to see a small icon of the currency on the bottom right corner of the item you're purchasing so you can easily identify if you're buying in exalted orbs, divines or mirrors etc etc. OR you could have an option to only let us buy stuff with currency that we have in our bag. Anything like that to help safeguard the majority of players from scammers. Gold costs are a bit expensive at the start of the league, but after a few days in you end up with more gold you can ever possibly spend. Also can we get a 'bulk move' to get all our currency from Ange (I play on PC controller and this works to deposit currency into the stash but not grab currency from Ange). Please and thank you.

Thanks for reading and for listening to our feedback. Looking forward to the 'end-game' league in december. Still blasting btw - having fun trying all the new minions builds / spectres.

Kind regards,
Tylicius