Thoughts from a long time PoE1 player

Hi reader,

I don't post on the forum much but am a big fan of well-intentioned feedback as well-intentioned feedback comes from the heart and shows you care about making something better. Others will certainly disagree with my feedback and say git-gud and thats ok. That is their feedback.

For context, I've been part of the PoE1 community since 2011. I have played most leagues and make multiple characters (often 4-6) per league. I've played arpgs for decades but have always returned to PoE as my game of choice. I am not mechanically good and pinnacle bosses were often a challenge for me. I've never had a level 100 character, I celebrated when I got my first 4 no-carry voidstones, and often use guides. I enjoyed mapping and getting better league over league.

What brought me back year after year league after league when dozens of other games failed to capture my attention?

Build diversity
Sure, nerfs and patches change the meta but generally speaking, I can almost always make 2-6+ functional characters per league
Feeling powerful
There was (almost) always harder content to put you in your place, but generally, I could play most of the content and build my way to power through trading what I found.
It appreciated my time
I have never once felt that a mechanic in PoE1 was a filler. Everything had a reason and was part of the progression (or was an optional mechanic like Sanctum, like Delve, etc for those who enjoyed it).
Control to play my way
There wasn't anything that forced me to play a specific way while levelling, with limited exception to Trials but those were fairly even for all (e.g. Sanctum, Delve, Ultimatum, pinnacle content, etc were all choices).
Net positive gambling mechanics
At its core, PoE does a great job with gambling strategy to give you the exhilaration of gambling while having it be tuned to be in your favor so the chance of reward is often worth the risk. This is across most of its mechanics whether that is maps to crafting to the league mechanic.

My hope playing PoE2 was that I had hoped PoE2 would be a better version of PoE1. Remove the clutter, make it a little harder / slower, integrate mechanics better, reshape the meta, new things to kill us as a surprise, etc. Instead, it’s a completely different game for a completely different audience.

If that was the goal, I can understand that, it just isn't for me. I will likely go back to playing PoE1 until it ceases to exist after which I will wait for other arpgs to fill the space.

Of the above PoE1 list:
- Build diversity will probably come in time.
- The gambling mechanics as implemented, reducing currency spam and making bases more important is a good direction and I think will improve/settle with time.
- The others don't seem to align with the direction of the game.

The changes that would be needed for me to play PoE2 are primarily better use of my time and more control to play my way. The obligatory hardcore-lite mechanics are not for me.
- Zones are huge with tons of winding paths for no reason besides wasting my time. Most casual mobs are not a threat, so this just makes things slower.
- Bosses are too punishing. I mentioned I'm not mechanically good (i know, gitgud). The combination of length of boss (for most builds), likelihood of death with 1 mistake, and cost of needing to redo the whole thing leads to just getting stuck and frustrated as I cannot progress further.
- Don't force me to play certain mechanics to make my character (Sanctum, Ultimatum, likely others in the future). This limits build diversity.
- Zones resetting on death and maps with 1 portal isn't good balance. Disconnects, lag spikes, crashes, etc are a fair number of my deaths. I shouldn't lose my loot or time to these.
- Lack of movement skills.

As with any well intentioned feedback, you should always provide suggestions for how to fix it. For me to enjoy the game and leave PoE1 behind and have PoE2 be my daily driver, I'd:
1. Shrink map size by 50%.
1b. optionally, keep the map size but have checkpoints be permanent and add them to maps.
2. Reduce the difficulty of campaign mechanics. If a character gets stuck, there is literally nothing you can do (besides buy a carry).
- You have 16+ tiers of maps. While you can introduce concepts and have some degree of dps checks in the campaign, use maps to ramp the difficulty. Don't use the campaign to make it hard.

FWIW, things I love about PoE2:
- Visuals. The atmosphere, animations, mtx effects, and skill effects are great.
- Clutter reduction. Having the things given to me (items, currency, etc) be more prone to being valueable vs 99% junk is a good direction.
- Key spamming reduction. Not having to currency spam, piano flask, etc
- New surprises (having new bosses with new mechanics to catch us off guard makes me think of the brutus move outside of his chamber).
- New skills and potential skill interactions (embracing the idea of having multiple skill interactions is an exciting base to build on).

All said, there is a lot of good in PoE2. But it is a different game and in its current form / seeming direction, probably not for me. There is a lot of time, its early in early access, so I have hope and will watch it progress, but for now, PoE1 will remain the game for me between the two.

Thanks, have a nice day!