My Feedback after 0.2

After playing the game for 1k h+ in 0.2 i decidet to collect my ideas to improve the game. I don't think this is the only way to fix the game- i just ranted a little bit about annoying things and tried to come up with some quick ideas. This post is basically a post about evrything i thought needs improvment after completing all content in my testrun in SSF this week. If i do not mention a mehanic i am basically very happy with the current state and in general i like the game a lot but still think it need some punctual improvment.

Campaign
Feels very nice – loot got better with every change -only downside 2nd playthrough with cruel.

Charms/Ailments/Stun
Charms are currently just failing their purpose – I hope we get jewels like stormshroud to fix ailments and/or stun in this game. OR new tools to get 100% it feels just bad to spend skill points/jewels slots/charms for a defensive layer and still not be 100% immune. For example, I have died many times to Xesht because I can’t fix chill/freeze for the whole fight and get slowed/frozen into stunlocked by the hands.

Essences
Is it even possible to upgrade normal essences to greater ones with vaal orbs– I never got it. I think current essences are way to RNG – give every essence a safe T2 mod l to let us target mods. It feels just wrong to only have casino to craft items. You still must gamble 3! mods with exalts/chaos on your items. In general, they are fine balanced just too RNG to craft with. Also the ratio of greater essences is way to low. Pls give us some determinism in this game

Rouge exiles
I was very hyped after the announcement for them – but they are failing currently – them dropping corrupted items just makes them feel worthless – also spending points for them if you can’t even secure them spawning feels very bad. Fix idea – Mercenary in poe1 turned out how I expected rouge exiles to be (only as enemy’s) if you remove the hiring part you could just import the mercenary window for the exiles and make them super hard but rewarding.

Delirium
Early it is very hard to get enough splinters to run the simulacrum – for maps crafted with emotions we could add a function to collect all splinters (for maps crafted with instilled emotions) like with breach – pls give some QoL
Distilling your maps just needs to be changed – it is so tedious I refuse to do it right now – just make it like is it done with delirium orbs in POE1 – why make it worse!
Kosis and Omniphobia feel too easy currently – make them real bosses!
Visuals are bad during delirium – remove some of the effect – it got better but still is not good

Breach
Huge TY for adding the splinter collection change – it feels like the most fun mechanic to interact with. It needed some nerves at the start, I think it’s the best balanced mechanic currently

Corruption/Beyond
Does not have anything exiting – if you don’t know about it from poe1 I guess you won’t even know it’s a mechanic in this game.


Rolling Maps (Waystones)
Currently prefixes are only rewarding, and suffixes only give more maps but add a lot of dmg modifiers to your map – this means ear on the corruption with 4 prefix and 0 suffix is by far the best with almost no downside for loot – I do like the risk reward system with quant/rarity per mod in POE 1 more.

Crafting

Crafting basically doesn’t exist in POE 2 at this moment – and this is very sad for me – I got very late into POE1 and the crafting system is on of the things that got me so deep into this game. It basically rolling for single numbers in Roulette. Even if you hit a good item, you just don’t get the dopamine kick like in POE1 because you know you just got lucky and didn’t use interactions smart.
I am also getting triggered by Jonathan mentioning Runes are a replacement for crafting bench / harvest resistances swap. It is just not in very late game/SSF it feels so bad if you find a perfect ring with a wrong elemental resistance and this problem is easy fixed with adding the elemental resistance swap in some way.
I am aware this will get better after more content gets added- still we need something now!

Consider stealing Last Epochs crafting system – it is probably the best systems I have seen in any ARPG it works well with ground loot – it is easy to understand and fun to interact with. If something is that good just take it – they took your atlas system too!

Omens- are very strong in theory – in reality, most of them get used by some “mafia” like Player groups to craft the best items in the game and service them for mirrors to make huge profits (maybe even real money – it’s easy to find those items if you google it). This makes the omens to strong in softcore trade. You also feel stupid using them yourself for 1 dice roll if you could get a lot of this just for the omen itself.

As long mirror of Kalandra exists in the current state, I don’t think this can be fixed. Somebody in a stream mentioned the idea of Mirror bricking both items on use so you can only mirror an item once – this would maybe be a good idea to try and would be a huge strike against those crafting cartels.

Dawn of the hunt- mechanic
This is probably the worst league mechanic I have played since I started playing POE (TOTA ) – chasing the light feels just wrong – it is slow – you need to wait with killing the enemy so the wisp can catch up and buff them- even after multiple buffs it feels not really rewarding- basically it is a worse version of tormented spirits from POE1 and is for me just not fun interacting with. Only useful option I saw for it was stacking the unique tablet on bosses to farm tiered items in trade. Was a real bummer. Personally, I hope I does not go Core.

Ritual – Feels nice to play - I wish you add the filter options to ritual like in POE1 crafting omens like whittling are almost too rare because they are the only good way to really finish an item. To make them affordable for normal players (people who play way less than me). Problem here is not ritual or the omens more the trade league where prices get set by some “cartels”

Expedtion - collecting artifacts feels very bad – also storing them in the tabs is a real pain – not understandable for me why you did remove the expedition locker – bring it back.
Crafting with recombinator feels very underwhelming early on you must spend all your shards to recomb for a 20% chance to hit 2 good mods or delete both bases later if you want t1 mods it get to under 5% - this feels very bad.
Crafting with Rog/Gwennen/Tujen needs more rares – to start with a magic item feels very bad – cause it is almost impossible to get a decent outcome – I tried it in my SSF run and I did not get a single good item from expedition early on. Tujen has way to less options to choose – he needs more items per reroll. You start having enough artifacts after you start using Tablets and get more quant in later maps – but this only starts after you are in t15’S

Strongboxes in general feel good – just a bit to slow in my opinion. The unique blacksmith one that drop you one Corrupted weapon feels just bad – only do it for rares and XP. Dropping corrupted items in general feels very bad! Currency symbols could be bigger – very easy to miss click.

Trial of Sekhemas – feels great and very polished, major boon 40 honour per room? come one guys
Trial of chaos- Elevators makes me want to log out and never play the game again. Also, there is way too much travel distance between rounds. Make the Hourglass version of this trial speed up if you kill rares too”. Remove corrupted items from rewards – they are just useless.

Curses map suffixes
New curse roll on maps is nice in theory – but it’s hard to see (if you use delirium for example) also temporal chains curse- effect is way too high – I skilled all reduction notes on the skill tree – even with only 20% it’s just bad to run - this needs to be changed or removed. Runes in the chest are not enough to fix this – we need more options


Movement speed
Personally, I hope for more option to scale it – the game feels for me by far the best if I play deadeye and can run faster.
Shrines
After removing corruption and gold shrine they feel good!

Defences- Currently hybrid ES evasion feels like its in a good state – Playing only evasion with for example Acrobatics doesn’t feel good enough – haven’t tried armour in endgame so cannot give feedback for that.

Atlas tree
I guess its ok because of current lack of endgame mechanics not as exiting in comparison to POE1

Mapping – After playing mercenaries mapping in poe 1 just is more exiting than in poe 2. This has multiple reasons: for example the random mechanic spawn chance in poe1 - every map can have something good inside. If you get an empty map in poe2 you can only collect rares – and you must do it to get to the next tower. Also like some maps like Vaal city, Sun Temple, Hidden grotto just feels like a pain to run. If you see that map on your atlas you know u have no fun for next 5-10 mins.
Tablets – we need a tab for them too – also to 3to1 the 1by1 is very annoying -maybe give us juicers some QoL
Crafting maps with Distilled emotions is a chore – I refuse doing it with the current system , I wont put in waystones 1by1 – make them like delirium orbs .

Sink for currency – mainly we need a Exalt sink . Chaos is fine currently because it is in combination with fracture it is the only way to “craft” (gamble) for items.
In my opinion worst maps in the Game
Hidden grotto – to big – to many dead ends
Vaal city – same problem as Grotto
Mire – some chokepoints are very deadly
Vaal Factory – Monster types in this map do like 3x dmg compared to normal ones – layout got a lot better – maybe it is them doing lightning dmg and there is no real way to get shock immune (except pathfinder)
Misc
Bring back blessed orb !!!
Elemental Resist swap
Uniques with skills can’t be used on low level – very disappointing for twink lvling (example lifespring)
Remove rarity from gier and balance game around it (we still got quant and rarity on towers/maps)
Fragment tab !!

Feedback I hear in videos, reddit etc that’s is bad:
Make perfect jewellers a 3to 1 recepie
Not enough loot – I actually like the current loot – so filter only hide 95% of items instead of 99,9% -economy balances around loot anyways – more ex = inflation= bad

excellent feedback! based takes like these are (at least to me) an indication that someone really _has_ played a lot before posting.

however, i do have some slight pushback to give in addition to a couple more improvement ideas.

Campaign: i don't want to hijack your thread so i'll just link a google doc:
Trial of the Sekhemas: agree 100%, probably the best content in the game, this is what i imagined PoE 2 would be across all content when i first saw the trailers years ago, small groups of monsters with deadly attacks and meaningful combat ala dark souls. levers and gates _HAVE_ to go tho! all trial's need to be short and sweet, no backtracking nonsense.

The Trial of Chaos: agree 100%.

Charms/Ailments/Stun: i disagree, face tanking in this game should not be a thing even with heavy/full investment (especially not on pinnacle content). you can practically be freeze and/or stun immune with current tools but you'll have to sacrifice something else for it.

Crafting: agree 100%, gambling is not fun if you never win! what fool (in sc-trade that is) is actually interacting with this system when you can just convert everything into divines and buy the stuff you need (already made) off the trade site.


Alch & Go (Waystones): agree 100%, difficulty (suffixes) should be tied to the premium stats (rarity/quantity), move map over-sustain to the prefixes.

Azmerian Wisps: agree 100%.

Corrupted/Cleansed: 4 real? imo it's the best mechanic currently in the endgame because it works on every map layout, only problem is you can't spec into it for "some" silly" reason (*cough* the devs hate determinism *cough*). also +1 to Monster Level of Area should be baseline for all of these maps.

Essences: yes its possible to upgrade normal essences to greater ones with vaal orbs, however there shouldn't be a need for this shenanigans. PoE 1 Essences is the superior system and should have been brought over as is.

Rogue Exiles: this might be too big of an ask but... how about making this mechanic spawn a portal to the rogue exile's hideout instead of the rogue randomly invading your map, additionally you could tie some target farming to different hideouts/exiles. because it is a separate arena and its opt-in you can make the fights in there as crazy and rewarding as you like.

Shrines: add more options to the shrine type selector.

Strongboxes: imo, stop with the waves. change it to one press > something difficult happens > reward.


Breach: love breach on good layouts, hate/skip breach on bad layouts.

Delirium: agree 100%, the monsters could be more interesting tho, every mirror is the same, they spawn and rush you.

Expedition: agree 100%, also make logbooks fun! if Olroth ain't in my logbook i just leave, cba read like 30 Remnants on a bad UI, and btw why is the UI so bad? it's hard to make out what's already flagged and what ain't.

Ritual: love ritual, love omens, so much potential here, only problem is you can't invest into making specific omens "rain". who gives a shit if this "destroys the economy", why shouldn't the average or ssf player be able to craft cool shit? why would you add a mechanic to the game that only rmt'ers / crafting teams can use?

my mention about was about the corruption mod itself not the cleansed part - cleansed feels way better for me and i was happy about evry fracturing orb in SSF - also no delay spwaning enenmys feels better. But corruption is kinda bad - for example some of my friends who i intodruced to poe2 didn't even know it is a diffrent mehanic than normal spawning enemys.


like some of your ideas too, for example the rougue exile one

i still to my opinion about charms - i want to get 100% immune to schock stun freeze - i am not a HC main but i think if you can't do that it will kill the HC scene

gonna check your doc - thanks for reply

do you mean the corruption isn't fun/cool enough? in that case i fully agree, it's pretty much just a subtle Delirium, but imagine if they developed it more and we had a atlas tree to spec into it, that would be pretty dope no? check the possible map modifiers here:

https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Coalesced_Corruption
https://www.poe2wiki.net/wiki/Cleansed_map

hehe, i know ailment immunity is a thing that many PoE 1 players want, i personally don't love the idea, maybe as a rare socketable or a keystone with a big downside that could be a fair tradeoff.

yep exactly - that what i was about the mehanic itself i like cuase i know how it could be better but right now it's just not unique enough and needs more.

Yeah if you getting ailment immunity in poe1 is always a big step for myself - it feels so much smoother to play - it could be a socketable it could be a unique jewel like in poe1 (you still need to invest into something to make it work) i don't really care how it has do be done - i just want one or even multiple options - like right now we can get almost curse immune (or even complete if you get 3 sockets ) with socketable- but it is locked into the body armour slot - and i dont wanna give those up because the Defence stat from body armour in my eyes is just way too important. All those things shouldn't be free ofc - but it should be possible.