POE 2 Feedback

Hey all,

Just wanted to provide some feedback on what I perceive as problems with POE 2 as I see it thus far. I wouldn't by any stretch of the imagination call myself a veteran in the POE space, but I would consider myself a "hardcore casual" which to me means; I've been playing POE 1 and now 2 at least once and at most twice a week for the past 10 years with gaming sessions that are between 2 and 4 hours.

I wanted to take the opportunity to provide feedback on the things I dislike with POE 2. Before delving into that however I wanted to state upfront that GGG got an absolute ton of things right and I like in general most things they've implemented. If the only categories for POE 2 were "boring", "mediocre", "good" and "great" I'd put this game in the "great" category. With that said it has its warts and it's these warts that I personally find super annoying that I'm going to touch upon below.


Dodge Roll
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At first I thought dodge roll was going to be both a fun and neat feature. It ended up not being fun. `Neat` I suppose could still apply, but is has turned into a `tedious` mechanic with most boss fights following the same kind of pattern:

Throw a single attack -> dodge -> Throw a single attack -> dodge -> etc.

This really isn't fun in the least. I can't both, let's say, apply a curse and land at least one or two attacks before having to dodge yet again. In my humble opinion this sucks. In a game that supposed to be an "Action" RPG, I want to smack things with a stick rather than dancing (dodging) with the boss.

With that said, I don't think dodge should be removed, but I believe the reliance on it as a core mechanic should simply be tuned downwards. I'd like to see, let's call it, 70%-90% uptime of me swinging my stick instead with maybe another 5%-10% of me having to use an actual movement skill, which doesn't exist currently, outside of dodge.


Gems
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I'm not sure how else to put this but in my humble opinion, the old gem system from POE 1 is simply better in just about every way. In my mind this is without question. Here's the things I don't like:

- Gems being tied to a weapon. Let it be known I understand the *why* this is, but I can tell you most certainly, it's inferior. It's because they wanted pretty animations. I get it, but it also takes away from the "build the character how you want" sentiment. I suppose it comes down to what you value more and for me, it's the latter.

- Leveling gems based on area level. This is a mistake. Honestly, I'd much rather keep a gems' experience tied to the gem. This dependency on having to find upgrade gems just to upgrade the gem you have doesn't feel right.



Passive Skill Tree
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I'm really not sure what it is about the nodes. Mobs and bosses are such slogs that I feel the only option here is taking damage related nodes to really speed things up. And that leads me into my last and final item:


Slow
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The game just feels incredibly slow.

From the fighting bosses perspective, fighting bosses, as cool as they are, is just downright slow and tedious.

From the lack of movement skills to zip around at least a little is non-existent and again makes the game to me at least feel slow.

From the size of the maps, getting from point A to point B simply takes an incredible amount of time.



There are a very very minor other things but overall these are my personal pain points.
Hopefully GGG takes some of this constructive criticism to heart. Again, satisfied? Absolutely. Just looking for tweaks here and there to make things better. Truly I'd ask for a redesign in the whole gem system but reality is in there way here and it probably won't happen.

Thanks for reading!