Endgame is really terrible.

-Tower maps. Just why. Its like if you had to run a Pillars of Arun map in PoE1 every time you wanna use a sextant. WHY???

-Im level 90 and havent even seen a citadel yet. I thought we learned this lesson in PoE1 that gating endgame bosses behind ridiculous RNG is terrible, but I guess not.

-One portal per map. Another awful decision. Imagine spending hundred hours to find a stupid Citadel boss and then it one shots you in 5 seconds and that's it. What the fuck is this game design decision? Theres no way early beta feedback didnt tell them this was terrible. Its like they are just seeing how much anti-player design decisions they can get away with to increase retention through frustration. I dont think its a good long term strategy for them.

-Maps are all giant maze layouts that require backtracking most the time to hunt down rares. The worst PoE1 map layouts are better than most the map layouts here.

-Removing bosses from every map was a weird decision considering boss fights are one of the few things they did well in this game.

-Strongboxes are super slow and unrewarding, how did they manage to mess up such an easy concept from PoE1?

-Nonstop scrolling and getting lost in the crappy new atlas, no way to zoom out

-Economy is already cooked due to MF builds farming 10 times faster than everyone else. MF probably needs to just be removed but thats a whole discssion for another post.

-Overall grind is insane and not worth it. Like I said Im level 90 and still barely have any breach splinters, delirium splinters, havent seen a citadel boss. Average player is never gonna see any of this stuff.

A guy on Reddit summed up the whole experience really well:

"All in all - it's dull, boring and aimless. You get to wander a digital oblivion to see a fraction of a chance to get a shard of a thing for an opportunity to MAYBE see a boss."

Bring on 3.26 already.

i'm also lvl 90 and agree with everything you said. its just a boring grind with nothing to look forward to. in poe1 i would be lvl 97-98 by now with this much time invested

I’m sure they’ll make changes you have 9 months to a year before release and most if not all these problems will be solved.

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EverquestOnlines#1488 wrote:

I’m sure they’ll make changes you have 9 months to a year before release and most if not all these problems will be solved.

The biggest problem is a design decision and will cost them almost all their PoE players.

The monolith system is awful, the map layouts horrible (even Maze is better from PoE) and the length of the campaign is insufferable.

In this state it won't survive 3 leagues, guarantee you that. No one running through this league every 3 months with a new character.

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EverquestOnlines#1488 wrote:

I’m sure they’ll make changes you have 9 months to a year before release and most if not all these problems will be solved.

The problem is most these issues I mentioned are fundamental design flaws with the game rather than things that just need number tweaks. It's extremely concerning how backwards things have went in this game compared to PoE1 where they should have learned these lessons a million times by now the past decade.

I posted on the first day that I played PoE2 that I was not impressed. I left it until today and gave it another shot.

I tried a sorc and messed about a bit more with the witch I was leveling before. It's "ok"/fun but to be honest, it's not grabbing me.

Why do we have gold? Was that actually necessary to add? This isn't a complaint... I just do not get why they made that decision.

I hated the campaign in the original and I'm unlikely to bother playing through this. I was actually quite looking forward to playing this because I haven't had a game grab my attention for more than a couple hours in at least 5 years.

I agree with the points made by the OP in this thread.

I came downstairs to play because I'm having trouble sleeping tonight. Loaded up the game, and logged out immediately.

I suppose some people will like this and certainly new players will but eventually the campaign will become annoying like it did in the original. Forcing the campaign again was a mistake in my opinion. I'm playing to GRIND, especially the endgame.

Sorry GGG, your game just sucks. It's too bad because it looks really nice. Something happened in development and it looks like CORPORATIZATION and ACCOUNTANTS making design decisions to me.

I may try again but these days it takes a LOT to take me away from real life:

- family, friends
- reading
- writing
- art

These things grab my attention, not this "whatever" boring thing GGG has made.

I wish it was not like this. :( Bye GGG.

You didn’t even list any reasons to not like it the campaign is probably by far the best part of the game.

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EverquestOnlines#1488 wrote:

You didn’t even list any reasons to not like it the campaign is probably by far the best part of the game.

campaign would be good if the areas were smaller or we had movement skill/quicksilver flask. nobody wants to wander around in a giant maze for 30 minutes at turtle speed.. and nearly every area is a giant maze.

Main issues imo:
-Too zoomed in needs more zoom out so navigating is easier on the eyes.
-Does not remember your last node between runs & logouts
-Map layout are the typical dogshite PoE1 indoors maps with lots of obstacles
-Waystone bonuses are lame tbh. Mainly increased waystone drop chance and if luckly more monsters (either rare/magic or both)
- Not much real bosses. Why no big bosses and instead lots of these random trash rare mobs? I admit that's just personal taste and can understand if it's more dilluted boss wise early on so progress is easier.
- Visual clutter. PoE 1 again. Even without Delirium or Beyond popping in.
- League mechanics. Not much, the same 4. EA problems so it will be expanded later on.
- High dmg telegraphs in general. I like it when small trash mobs about the size of player model have lots of physical damage and can oneshot through 4k armor (without any DMG mods on map) on level 70 (around 60% tooltip DR). Such big hitters should be reserved to only bigger mobs (like the walking giants in campaign) and bosses.

"

dylan33#3435 wrote:

-Maps are all giant maze layouts that require backtracking most the time to hunt down rares. The worst PoE1 map layouts are better than most the map layouts here.

This is my greatest concern and complaint about PoE 2.

ARPGs are all repetitive, we all know that and that can't really be changed, especially in an endgame. So it's damn important that the repetitiveness is enjoyable. The fact that layouts are this bad AND the fact that you have no real control over what content/layouts to run, makes me suspect that burnout will be a real problem in PoE 2.

What the hell happened to player agency?