Potential implementation and possible changes

I've never felt invested enough to make a forum post for any game I have played so bare with me.. This game is beautiful in many ways and as a D2 lover this is what I hoped D3 & 4 would have been after waiting years. This game does so much right and the below is just Ideas/criticisms after hours of grinding. Somethings that I think would be pretty sweet in this game.(WARNING!!! This will be lengthy, I also know these are easier said than done but anyways...)



1. Runes/Rune words: Since POE1 had a crafting bench that added depth in crafting, what if you had a rune bench where you could craft runes with a prefix or suffix or just a group of affix with a random generator but could allow for a chaos orb to reroll it. Another possible route, making a set of runes that drop blank and can be crafted using a jewel and a rune to make a rune for a piece of gear. Something along these lines would add further depth and creation for players who want to make some awesome gear for their builds. Runes should be removable, deletes once removed.

2. Evasion/Armor: This is more of a cool factor thing, but hitting max evasion grants a slight time warp effect maybe a 15-20% slow on incoming attacks, melee and Ranged with in a 2-3 meters of the character(cue matrix bullet dodge scene.. exaggerated). what ever the diff is from the max 75% Evasion?? 25% of the attacks swing or fly normally since you're evasions high it makes sense you'd have a quick reaction time. Max armor, perhaps could have glancing effect on attacks like a clank of a sword off armor, would make the player feel more badass or tanky for investing their time in getting max armor.

3.Loot: For currency, I think it should be illuminated to make it easier to see and to give the player a better dopamine hit. I know filters solve this but not everyone is that invested or even knows you can download filters to help with this. Chests: Rare chests should drop 1 rare guaranteed, same for magic dropping a magic item, this would feel better when seeing it on the ground. Unique Items, they are hard to come by, I feel they shouldn't have so many downsides on them, all the ones I have found have a downside that almost makes it an instant dump and doesn't feel too great after you finally fine one and it feels almost useless.

4. Ascending: (Trial of chaos) feels rough and needs to be tuned better. Trying at lvl 38 it felt basically impossible. I know you can over-level it, but if that's the case why not push it further towards the end of act 3 right before the boss in Arrogat, where you're at a higher level. (Ascending) should be adjusted and bring more power and lose the downsides, POE1 did this amazingly and in POE2 it feels lack luster for most choices.(I've Ascended 3 different classes already, only ranger felt decent enough) Since a lot the the choices are more mid, it forces builds into 1 or 2 paths instead of allowing for more depth and choice for players, doing this would allow for leaving the two faced nodes in the passive trees with less adjustment. After all, you're ascending, a player should feel like a badass for doing so. (Honor system in TOS) Should be tuned or removed, example for tuning perhaps if honor is ran out you go back a floor or 2 with an honor loss 1/3 of your starting honor this would feel better instead of feeling like you've slammed your face in a wall and doing it all over again from scratch.(keys for ascending) I found this confusing along with other players. After the first one, since more than 1 drops, any keys that drop after should be labeled in a way that indicates that the keys will not give you ascendancy points.

5. Maps: act2 and 3 maps should be reduced by 15-20% in size, wandering around to is fun at first but after doing the campaign 3 times I noticed acts 2 and 3 have zones that feel super sluggish and I can see players getting burnt out from going through these over and over. (End game maps) should have a boss/ small boss in every 1 out of 3 maps, along with a rare count, allowing bossing pures to slam more bosses and others who just need the map can just clear the rare mobs.

6.Trading: Going to a trade site to trade is such crude system for such a brilliant game. Poe1 is one thing, but having no trading in game is both annoying and discouraging. Most new players probably have no idea there is trading system outside the game, and will hit a wall they otherwise wouldn't if this wasn't the case. perhaps creating a trading center in the game you can go to similar to Runescape's Grand Exchange, Mimicking the trading site.


7. Gambling: nerf the cost of gambling by 15% its mad expensive Act1 - 3. 10% from cruel and 5% endgame. I understand there needs to be friction but 9k+ to roll 1 item is mad when you barely make gold until act 3 cruel.

8.Passives/Refunds: Some of these nodes need tweaks obviously but the big nodes feel lack luster, in poe1 you could path to strong nodes and feel like its worth it to explore the passive tree, I found myself staying closer to the starting spot and this may limit build creativity.(Refunds): Refund cost should drop Act1 -act3 by like 50%, the rest seems fine. If builds are nerfed since EA perhaps a next day hold on respect cost or a 80% decrease so players can adjust for the patch afterwards. If not perhaps removing refund cost until builds are more balanced.

9.POB: An In-game POB or just a testing tree would be sweet to optimize and speed up balancing the game and allow players to learn the game quicker.

10: Ladders: An ladder with different announcements and achievements for players along with your players current position on those ladders. Having something to confirm your position in the game and adding another in-game grind would increase player retention and give more competitive players something to look forward to. Playing d2 ladder and being on the ladder a few times was such a cool feeling and this game would benefit greatly having this feature.

11. Gems/Gem system: Having so many two faced Gems feels lack luster when adding power to your character. This doesn't feel to great when you're trying to make your class feel strong. leave them for tier 3 gems or remove some negatives. Approaching balance from gems being 70% positive/30% Negative two , ascendancy 100% positive, powerup, Passive tree 50/50 more interesting upsides & downsides on Keystones nodes.

12. On death mechanics: Remove all of them and keep the big dudes exploding. This is just annoying, being slapped by a purple pop when trying to grab a piece of gear and slowing down to wait for an explosion after killing something feels janky AF.

13. Boss: before The first boss should be nerfed by 3%-5% HP, before I get the git gud comments, I liked the challenge and it feels good to overcome it personally as a ARPG enjoyer but I feel new players will bounce off the game because of the bosses difficulty. This is hard because after learning the boss he's quite trivial for me now but in the eyes of a newcomer it can feel overwhelming as I had two friends spend hours trying to beat it because they were brand new, and I had to assist one of them because I was worried about him leaving the game out of frustration.

Random other fix, (titan valley relics quest) - KBM is janky holding alt to place seals in the seal spot, this should be click and go for smoother play.

Ill try to add to this as I play more, but these seem the most apparent to me at least.

All this being said I've had a blast playing this game and its got great potential to be that much more amazing. Thanks to those who made it this far LMK what you think so far and if any of these things you agree with or don't at all :)