Feedback for 0.4 - what to improve for 0.5

Since 0.4 is basically already over for a considerable amount of the player base, myself included, I will summarize what my thoughts are on what should be improved, in order of importance more or less, tho I did reduce this down to the “top 10” I think a lot more needs improving bu these are the elephants in the room.

1- Endgame rework
People have been asking for this since 0.1, now the sad part is that expectations are really high for this since its been the main request and its been delayed several times, so even if they do a great job on this I’m worried that it won’t be enough. I’d say that this is more important than a new league mechanic and if Jonathan is so focused on adding a new league it better be a simple/non intrusive one like they did for abyss, I really think that spending a lot of dev time on the league mechanic at this stage may not be the best time investment for the dev’s, but that’s just my perspective.

2- Delete rarity/buff base loot
Rarity has no place in the game, its another stat tax. Just another request everyone's been asking since 0.1. Playing with and without feels like a huge difference (I’ve tried it). Also want to touch on group play, group play is so far and above single play that a few groups of players can drop the equivalent of several dozen times what a solo player can in an entire league de in part by their freedom to use a rarity bot to massively juice drops, something you mostly can’t do in solo play because you won’t be tanky enough or have enough damage to clear high level content.

3- Better ways of ascending
I have no problems with the way the first 4 ascendancy points are acquired, they feel just right (maybe it’s a bit more bullshit when you play melee, but I haven’t because im not masochistic)
The real problem is the 3rd and 4th ascendancy. Its a huge jump in difficulty compared to the other two. They are also not fun, so much so that this league I was like yeah I’d rather just pay 40ex for a carry than do this bullshit, and the insane part is that most players would agree about not having fun doing the 6th/8th points of ascendancy, they feeling like a chore, rng hell, and pure bullshit, so much so that doing carries is literally the most profitable strategy in the game (at early league), that just screams “failed game design”, when a mandatory/crucial part of the game is so disliked that players actively avoid it. It should be fun and it should feel like a challenge, but it shouldn’t feel like bullshit or dragging your balls through glass shards to get ascendancy points. This also negatively affects lower-end builds/off-meta, not to say that they are impossible to do off meta, but they’re significantly harder if you don’t one shot bosses

4- Reduce Act 3 maps size/clunk
Having played once again through the campaign it starts to stand out how much bigger act 3 is compared to the rest of the campaign, out of all of act 3 two maps come to mind: the waterways with the flood levers, horrible design, just wow I don’t think anyone is the community likes that map, and the drowned city map, that map is WAY TOO BIG, like if it were half the size it would probably still be too big. Other maps need it too but those are the most egregious examples. This makes it feels like act 3 is too long, its literally 2x the length of Act 1. There’s also simply just more maps in act 3, maybe some redundant ones could be chopped or made smaller

5- More crafting options for mid budget
Crafting feels pretty much all or nothing, either you slam and pray or you must spend multiple div’s crafting to get a mid/decent item. This League felt like a huge downgrade from 0.3, the league basically didn’t add anything to crafting other than some high-end corrupting which is very expensive/premium/ late game focused. This could also be alleviated by making certain items/currencies more abundant such as the various high tier omens, but I’d rather have new items to make it more fun because we still need chase drops, just give us something. For example, give us an option to change one resist into another, that is such a big Qol missing still. IMO removing homogenizing was a big mistake without putting in anything to improve mid grafting, yeah it was “OP” I’d agree it but going from that to poverty crafting again feels underwhelming.

6- 90% of power comes from just your gear, of that 75% is your weapon
This feels very noticeable once again since crafting is in the gutter. This also happens because of +levels on gear. You might have the most gigabsuted 6xT1 wand, if one of the suffixes doesn’t say “+5 level of X spells” its literally vendor tier/ recombination fodder. This also happens with amulets, if it doesn’t say +3, its “trash”.

7- Life vs ES on tree
Es was kept untouched, I don’t have problems with that, what I find odd is that there’s still no life on the tree, ES is simply just a better life stat. its trivial to get 6-8k ES, many high end players easily have above 10k with the top end reaching 28k, to get that amount of life is not possible, it seems the upper limit is around 18k and the investment is insane, you need to use some unique items with very BIG downsides. And the downsides of ES are easy to overcome, there was essentil sanguis but now even the soultether belt trivializes ES recovery. Id’ suggest just buffing life instead of nerfing ES. Add some max life nodes and maybe buff the life that strength gives.

8- Chaos resistance.
Still too rare and hard to get, still mandatory. Its easy really, make it more abundant as a resistance or make it more rare on enemies, maybe both. This fact+ES being so good just makes CI a no brainer

9-Map layouts
Currently there are some god awful map layouts that feel criminal to run, Mire comes to mind as far and away the worst just remove this one; sun temple is just horrible too; and many other maps especially those with a bunch of “holes” that you need to path around, some of those maps look like Swiss cheese, and all the maps with sure narrow hallways...
I’d suggest making most of the maps smaller, with less holes, and remove mire. The “fun floor” for layouts is way too low considering I don’t have a choice on which layouts I get to run. Maybe the whole map endgame gets reworked and we get more agency.

10- Hyperinflation
Regular exalted orbs become “useless” after week 2, that is the main problem because that’s the “index currency” for most casual players, in poe1 chaos usually holds stable at ~150-1d for usually a month maybe a little longer and goes up to 350-1d, maybe a little more right at the end of the league.
In poe2 ex->div’s usually go over 400 in the first 3 weeks basically pricing out most of the weekend players and it usually balloons to 1k-2k to a div by the end, something unheard of in poe1.
Right now we are at day 18 of the league and exalted orbs are already 485-1d, note that this is in part caused by the current “temple mechanic abuse/ over buff” but I won’t get into that, as it’s not the main fact for the exalted orb hyperinflation. The fact is that there is no exalted orbs sink late like there is for chaos orbs, because you can sink chaos easily in crafting with a fractured base for example. It would be healthier for the later league if chaos had their drop rates changed with exalted to become the new base currency, but that would introduce the problem of no gear upgrades during campaign and would also negatively impact early ssf. It’s a hard problem to tackle that’s for sure, maybe introduce a crafting mechanic that needs exalts as cost, like the crafting bench in poe1. But I really do feel like this is putting a very bad impression on casual players, logging in on the weekend to find out that their 40ex went from buying half a div to buying 10% of one and just quitting because they cant keep up with the prices. For example there are multiple support gems valued well above 10d right now.



I know this is not the most in depth feedback I also have some opinions about other aspects that nedd tunning like: “forced into 6 mod maps to have 3 tablets with no revive”; wisps are still terrible, bucklers/parry is a complete joke and needs heavy rework, skills base values balance and some other aspects.

I would like to say that I believe these problems are all fixable and GGG has a great team so im not worried that in the future this game will be great, I truly want this game to succeed and improve, want it to be more fun and still be challenging in the end game, I’d love to introduce this game to my friends so I’m giving feedback in hopes it gets to a good spot for the 1.0 release