Lots of Different Feedback - Character Selection, On Death and Other Mechanics, and Many Others

This is going to be a long one.

So I’ve been enjoying the hell out of Path of Exile 2. Path of Exile was long one of my favorite games. I have been on the forums at least since 2012, though not sure when I first started playing as I’ve generally deleted most of my characters once they moved to standard from a league. I do remember I quickly bounced as it was too complicated for me at the time. Eventually with the help of some build guides, I did eventually get to the end game. I’ve never made it too far in the end game, back in the day I’d get to one or two of the main bosses in the corners of the atlas, then now, basically the same point, early red maps where I run out of the ability to progress further. Always with a build guide though, and at that point, it’s usually gear that I’m lacking in, and skill I’m sure. And while I play in trade leagues, I am fairly solo self found in trade.

With PoE 2, I am once again going mostly without a build guide. Trying to understand it myself. So we’ll see how it goes. As I write this, I have finished Act 3, and started Act 1 Cruel. So not in the endgame maps yet, and some of the thoughts on end game are based on what I’ve seen so far. The rest is more or less based on what I’ve experienced so far in the game.

I got to say that I love WASD for movement. That is perhaps one of PoE 2’s greatest achievements. While I haven’t tried controller support, I hear, aside from a few menu related things, and chat, it is an amazing achievement itself too. So bravo on that. It is one of the game’s best features. I do wish it had a Grim Dawn like ability to spin the camera, which would have been the chef’s kiss in terms of movement and looking around.

I also enjoyed the campaign. It took me 1 Day, 15 hours, 10 minutes through the first 3 acts and to get to Act 1 Cruel. That’s with learning things, trying things on my own, and exploring nearly every nook and cranny. Probably would be closer to 20 to 30 on a normal run. If Act 4 to 6 take about the same length of time, I’m good. I don’t think we should listen to those who are complaining about the campaign length. It takes me a fairly good time to get through the campaign in regular PoE, certainly not as long, but a lot of that is experience with the game, and not exploring as much as I have with this character in the game.

This does get us to one of the problems though. Bringing alts to the end game. Yes, once you’ve played the first character through, the alts can go through much faster, you have a big pool of uncut gems, and you know the game, and I’d guess that once we are used to it all, the campaign won’t take anywhere near as long in future seasons. But still, it’s a pain to have to slog through a very long, though good, campaign. I’ll get to that in my suggestions for campaign skip later.

Anyhow, let’s talk about some suggestions and the like as we go along. Anytime I mention keys, I’m using the default key on a Windows PC, and one would translate that to whatever it is on they controller. Also, this is mostly copy/paste from my blog to here, so hopefully it copies over somewhat well.

2FA

Two Factor Authentication, even if it is just using Google Authenticator and/or Authy. No reason to make one’s own, but in light of recent supposed hacks, two factor authentication is well past time to be implemented.

Beta Notice

The PC version should remind people that this is Early Access, meaning actual Beta, and that many things are subject to change. This can be just a little disclaimer on the login screen, and then somewhere unobtrusive in the character select screen. I think some of the complaints seem to be thinking this is a finished state, probably because too many games go into Early Access or Beta, and not mean actual Beta and Early Access. Not GGGs fault, but they can certainly remind people of the fact.

Character selection.

Right now we start in the gallows, which is fine for the 6 characters currently in the game, but as we add more characters to pick from, it will be more complex. For this, I think it would be cool to start in a prison cell, sort of like we once did in PoE 1, while in a prison cell on the ship. Here it just wouldn’t be on the ship, and there’s room for all 12 characters. We select our character, and once we’ve confirmed the choice, named them, then we cut to the gallows scene. And this is where I would add another twist. Their spots are semi-random, because of the next bit. 3 weeks before a new class is to be introduced, the new class has a 50/50 chance of being seen on the gallows, 2 weeks before, they are guaranteed to be one of the characters in the gallows, and 1 week before, we can see them in the prison cell, just can’t select them. This is just to tease the characters as they become available. Once they are all introduced, then the selection on the gallows is fully random, save of course the one we selected not being repeated. The prison cell gives us room to select one of 12, and is a nice homage to the original PoE character selection screen. One also really needs to see the ascension options at character selection. I understand that GGG doesn’t really have the budget to make it go class selection, then fully customized character build, ala Diablo IV, as that would require a lot of models, and voice lines done for each class’s male and female models… and all that, but in an ideal world, that would be there.

Runes

So the inability to remove runes is one of the bigger errors the game has made. I can understand the idea, but I think there’s a better way to do it. Early Act 4, no later than early Act 5 (for current EA, probably as soon as we get to maps), we should gain the ability to upgrade the Salvage Bench to be able to remove the rune. The rune is destroyed, and it might cost 5 Artificer’s Shards (if you have none, but have a full Artificer’s Orb, then it’ll break that into shards, and it just does that behind the scenes in the chest if you don’t have any on you). There is a chance it might destroy the socket too, though this goes down as the gear improves, and perhaps as experience in doing it goes up (it would show this as you hover the hammer over the item, chance to destroy socket x-y%, and that range gets better over time). This gives the mechanic a cost to put a new rune in, but saves good enough gear to make it worthwhile to resocket it, that is gear that is good enough to keep using for the moment, but the rune is perhaps out of spec. Heck, even if it costs a full orb to remove, and then add back in, it’d be worth it. Just let us do it, add a gold cost too if needed. But I think given we’re doing it ourselves at an upgraded salvage bench, the gold cost doesn’t make much sense, just shards, or one orb.

Crafting

So crafting is okay, but not great. Last Epoch rules in the crafting game. And I think we can get to a better point. Once again, using the Salvage Bench, and an upgrade that we can get in Act 6 (for current EA, probably as soon as we get to maps). This time the bench now has a slot we have to put the gear in, then there’s slots on the sides that we can put currencies into. Then slots along the bottom for scrolls, that I’ll detail in a moment. If we spam a currency into an item free hand like we do now, it works as it does now, using this upgraded salvage bench, we can be a bit more deterministic, especially with the scrolls. The scrolls serve the same basic purpose that the Glyphs do in Last Epoch. They can’t be used free hand, they have to be used in the upgraded salvage bench. They help lock in certain suffix or prefix. Say we have a Scroll of Endings (none of the scroll names are fixed in this, just lose ideas), this randomly locks a suffix, if there’s a locked suffix, it first unlocks it, then locks a new one (the chances of the same one relocking should be greatly reduced). A Scroll of Beginnings then randomly locks a prefix. There can only be one locked afix. Back to the slots on the sides for crafting currency items, when selected, and the item is in the item slot, it might show the potential rolls, and then maybe one can be selected to remove that from the potential pool, and then roll it. They could go full LE, and have items that have a crafting potential, and each deterministic craft then costs an x to y amount of craft potential. This like in LE, would be a random amount between x and y. Perhaps there’s a total Salvage Potential, and each time you remove a rune, it costs one salvage potential, adding runes costs none, but deterministic crafting costs the random amount, though should be favored to the lower end of the x to y amount. The better the gear, the better the Salvage Potential, and the lower the spread between x and y.

Item Tiers

So when it comes to tiers, PoE 1, did it so that 1 is the best, higher number the worst. This was flipped in PoE 2. I’m good with that as I think it makes far more sense for newer players. Higher is better. However, I do think when holding the Alt key, one should see “Tier x (of y)”, so you can tell how much more room you got. Is 5 the highest? 3? 6? 6 is one more than 5 ain’t it, most blokes are only rocking at 5… no seriously though, it should tell you what the max possible tier is for that item in the details when you hold the Alt key. Also, Tier should be underlined with what that means. Like it shows right now something like +15(11-15)% Fire Resistance, same with the tier listings, and to be fair, I’m not sure how to show the tier, as the Alt key doesn’t seem to say Tier on any of the items, but it should. I could be just confusing myself with some things there though.

I do really like how it says Implicit, Prefix, and Suffix though when one uses the Alt key.

Minions and tight spaces, especially doorways

Minions, and enemy AI seem to have trouble with doorways and other tight spaces. A tight hallway, okay, but doorways shouldn’t be as much an issue. I’d think that on the engine side, a door should be marked as a door, with a radius of say 2 meters. Inside that radius, the Minion AI goes, highest DPS melee first, then if equal, healthiest, then if equal, just random, then same with ranged, though ranged should be beside or behind my character. Same on the enemy AI. Mele that can jump over the others, can and should do that, and in terms of enemy AI, I’ve seen that work still, so that seems to be fine. It’s the other AI that seems to be having problems. I shouldn’t have to run into an area, then hope they follow through. And the ‘ click option should be able to force them, even if they are having troubles.I can see needing to use the ‘ option in tight spaces, but doorways shouldn’t be as big a problem as it is. This is more a bug report than anything else, and I know it’s been reported repeatedly, but it is a fairly big issue and bears repeating.

Zombies

Speaking of minions as a minion player. Zombies seem useless as they are now. There’s not enough corpses to resurrect, especially in boss fights, which might not add mobs to use as a corpse. Like I hear there are things much later, but if I have access to the Zombie early on, I should have something to help make them soon after, even if it’s the next tier, but something earlier.

Chapter 3’s eras

There needs to be a way to get to both eras of Chapter 3. Either we go through the rift and can pick, or better yet, the map screen we get another set of tabs under Act 3, where we can pick the era… or like the right side has a spot where we can pick above or below ground, have that on the left side to pick era. I can picture this being an issue even after Act 4 is added, where the rift sends us t o Act 4, and can’t pick the era. Ideally the rift gives the option, AND we can pick it from the map, either another tab below Act 3’s tab, or an option on the left side to select era, or a button… something, even if it’s just clicking the above/below ground buttone more than once… or like there’s the option to go to the trial below the above/below ground button, maybe like that, bug above the above/below ground button that selects eras… That last one might be the best option, and most consistent with the UI.

Acts 4 and 5, especially the 3rd Ascendancy Trial

These need to drop near as soon as they can, especially 4 with the other ascension trial. Act 6 I get is probably something that will only come out near the end to keep the surprise, but now that the End Game is released in a semi-stable form, some of the teams should be released back to get those acts done. Which act is left as cruel I don’t know…

Campaign Skip

So GGG has repeatedly said there is, and will be, no campaign skip, though it’s one of the most requested features. I think there’s a fair way to do it. One character has to make it to the end game obviously. All side bosses and content must have been completed between the characters at end game (if that’s easy enough to check, otherwise less ideal is one character did them all, ideally between any at the end, this way all side content has been experienced). Then in the end game, around Tier 3 (maybe Tier 1) one of the earlier bosses you see is one we’ll call Skipper Chronos for the purpose of this, not a final name. He’s pretty well guaranteed to be one of the earlier bosses experienced, and probably one of the easiest bosses of the maps. First time you beat him, he drops 2 Skipping Stones (and other than gold, nothing else). These are stackable (up to 20) and tradable currency. You take a stone to the Hooded one, and pay 1,000 gold per act skipped, to bring a character from wherever, to the end game, and at level 58 or 60, with the gear they have on them. Now, said character has to be in the same location as the Hooded one to be able to be pulled forward, so that means playing Act 1 far enough to rescue him, and revive him. And further on, then just have to be in the same town as he’s in. In Act 6, and want to skip for whatever reason, 1,000 gold, Act 5, 2,000 gold, and so on, so pulling a character from Act 1 to the end game costs one Skipping Stone, and 6,000 gold. Meet Skipper Chronos again, he’ll drop one guaranteed, and a small chance to drop 2. Third time, 50/50 dropping one, slim chance of dropping 2, and it keeps going down. Now he’s got his own spots on the Boss atlas tree, which improves the odds of him appearing, and guarantees better Skipping Stone drops, like first node with him, boosts his chances to appear 10%, but also guarantees a minimum of 1 Skipping Stone, with a 50/50 (or 30% maybe) of 2 Skipping Stones. Second node on the tree for him, again boosts his chances to appear, like 20%, but now the odds of 2 Skipping Stones is much improved, and the first time of getting a 3rd stone. The negative of these is that there’s little loot dropping in maps with him, as he only drops the Skipping Stones, so improving the odds of him appearing comes at a cost you might miss the chance at better loot from real bosses. So those two nodes appear early on (maybe as a side to Spoils of War for one, and Fit for a King for the other), but you have to really think if you want to risk just getting Skipping Stones, which are likely valuable early on, but as a season goes on, they become less and less valuable. Having a Skipping Stone alone isn’t enough to skip the campaign, like I said, you have to have completed all the side quests and bosses between characters in the end game, before you can use the Skipping Stone to bring others forward. So the first character is likely the sacrificial lamb to get everything done, and so you can then start skipping the others to the end game.

Changing Ascension

So you can’t change from one ascension to the other. I get that they want to make sure that choosing one comes with consequences. However, I think, like campaign skip, there’s a way to make it fair, and make the choice harder. It should be expensive to respec the ascension tree, and that final node might cost even extra. However, once you select that final point, it pops up with a warning “WARNING: You will lose <x> ascension points and <y> gold if you continue. Do you wish to continue?” At this point, you don’t have any ascension points at all, and you have to restart whatever trial you want all over again. This gives a rather high cost to the change. You don’t get to move those ascension points over to the new ascension, you have to restart from scratch. This keeps it closer to GGG’s desire to make it a more solid choice, while giving players the freedom to change if they find later that style didn’t actually suit them.

On Death Mechanics

Another one of those super controversial things in PoE 1 and 2. Makes less sense with the one one death. And with all the other on screen effects, it can be hard to see when an on death effect is about to trigger. Like my flame wall, and all that should be near invisible when an on death effect comes up so it is that much harder to miss. I want to know the flame wall is still there, but maybe match the opacity of the map overlay so that you see those effects go down, the minions fade down, and then I know, oh, there’s an on death effect about to trigger, and hopefully can see it. That is assuming the mechanic is kept in the first place.

Maps and the One Death Only Mechanic

So I’m far from maps yet, but I understand the frustration over the limit of 1 death per map. I think there’s a potential solution here. Zana. Zana can return, as an NPC in the end game, we might see her in the first town after we find a first waystone in the campaign, where we’ll have the option to talk to her, and she’ll say something like, “ah, a waystone, see me later, I might have a use for you and the waystone then”. Once in the end game, then we can see her to reopen the portals to the waystone we died in at a gold cost. 1,000 gold per portal that has been used, growing each time, and there’s a total limit of 6 still. So if we use 3 to bring loot back, and then die, then that’s 3 portals used, 3 left. She can’t magically make more. Die first portal, portal 2 costs 1,000 gold, portal 3 costs 2,000 gold. In the case of dying after 3 portals bringing back loot, you are in portal 4, so that’s 3,000 gold right at the start. She can also solve the problem of the bricked nodes, but only if it’s a regular node, nothing special like a tower, or town, or whatever, for 10K, she can reopen the portals to it, again, each portal is going to cost extra after the 1st one. If it was a tower it might cost even more, like 25k for each successive attempt at a tower (so a second attempt using her is then 50k). Citadels might be lost if you can’t do it in 6, and you have to chase them down again. If it was a regular node, but had a boss, that boss flees if you lose all 6 portals, even going back to restart the node by spending the 10k to explore it, bringing it back down to whatever it would have rolled… there could be a small liek 5% chance a boss ends up there again after it was failed, then explored, but odds are it’ll be a fairly normal map after it was explored, if they really wanted to make it harsh, then explored ones can’t drop uniques, unless a boss ends up there again. The one death just seems too harsh, and I think this method gives them a way to allow it to go forward without compromising too much. But, I think it is still best to just return to the old 6 portals per map, and not have to do this work around. It just doesn’t make much sense, especially if you want to appeal to newer players. Maybe Tier 16 on maps, can do this workaround, like you’ve gone through Tier 1 to 15, now escalate or empower them, and now you have 16 on, at this point, you have one death to a map, unless you use the Zana workaround, and at some point, say Tier 20, if they’ll ever exist, you can’t even do that, you get to the way it is in the game now. But Tiers 1 to 15 should allow for portals, without the Zana workaround proposed here.

Also, if maps don’t have checkpoints, they should, especially if we start allowing more than one portal to it.

I also hear lots of complaints about having to backtrack for monsters to complete them, though not sure what to do about that, as we don’t want lots linear maps.

Waystone Tab


Undoubtedly coming, but it’s needed from what I can tell. Not sure how this can be done once a waystone has been modified from its base form. Like stack 50 at a time of unmodified ones per tier, but after that, not sure how they’ll do it. Probably why it’s taking a while for them to work that detail out.

Auction House and Insured Trade

So GGG got part way there with the Currency Exchange. And I think an Auction House is the correct next step, despite their desire to keep it more of a one on one interaction. Leave the option for in person trading in place, because that’s the cheaper option for the players. They know the value of currency via the Currency Exchange, and that currency has a gold value to it there. That gold value is paid by both the Buyer and the Seller on the Auction House as a tax. The Auction House only opens up when one reaches maps, and even if they add it to their Hideout, it is there in seasons only after they reach maps. It’s got the equivalent of two tabs for free, up to 4, with additional tabs being available as MTX, an MTX that is understood will be available each season only after a character reaches maps, and both regular auction house tabs, and quad auction house tabs should be available. Both players must have space in their tabs. The seller obviously has to have it in the auction house, and the buyer has to have room to receive it, even if it is fairly instant. Tabs can be set to per item, or a tab can be set per tab. The gold cost makes it more expensive to use, and you can’t use it until maps, so there’s two costs each player has to make before they can buy/sell on it. Regular trading can go on as it is, and without the gold cost, and need for both to be in maps, making it the cheaper option, and better option likely for early gear. The limit of 2 or 4 tabs, means not too many items are listed at a time, unless they pay for premium auction house tabs. Maybe, once an item is sold via the auction house, it gets tagged with a $ crossed out, meaning it can’t be sold via the auction house again, this minimizes reselling for profit, though one can buy there, then sell on the regular trade market at a higher cost, but the existence of the auction house itself adds competition to the market. GGG also knows what the trade site is selling items for, so it can set a default value for the item for players that might not know what to price it at, then they can adjust up and down from there. If they want, they could lock in a minimum price, well above the trade value to an NPC, just to keep players from using the auction house as a dump and causing prices to fall too much, though they have to be careful not to have too much price control. If they really wanted to discourage auction house use, they could add a short shipping timer to move the item. It leaves the seller’s inventory as soon as it is sold, but can take up to an hour or two to arrive, probably just 15 or 20 minutes for low tier items, but higher tier items might have that hour or two wait. This would be displayed to both the buyer and seller with the gold costs. They can further discourage use, by once an item is put in the sale tab, it can’t be removed by the seller, so it sells, or it can be destroyed. One can always change the price down, but maybe not up. So lots of downsides of selling, and the tax and wait might be the downside of buying, but it gives a way out for people who might not feel comfortable doing it in person.

On the person to person trade, the window should the buyer list the item, and the cost, it then ask them to confirm the cost, when they confirm, they are locked in until the buyer accepts, declines or asks for a negotiation (which technically should be done before anyhow), it offers it to the potential buyer, then the buyer has to agree, or decline, or negotiate, which opens the chat, where they can chat a new price, the seller then can put in the new price (they again can’t change price until the buyer does one or the other, that is the price is locked once they confirm the price), confirm again, then the new offer is showed. The buyer can’t suddenly swap what they have in the offer window, as the only way they can swap what’s in the trade window is to decline or negotiate. This change to trade alone might help with some of the issues people have with in person trade. This could be perhaps called, insured trade, where it goes like this. Seller has items for sell period, buyer asks for item via insured trade, the seller then does it via the listing trade window, or if the buyer doesn’t care, they can do the regular trade method, but that gets to complicated having 3 ways to trade, an auction house, an insured trade, and regular trade. So either no insured trade, or that and the auction house become the two methods… I mean I guess there’s nothing to stop regular tade… but I can’t imagine if the other options are there, too many people would use regular trade outside of two friends helping one another out.

So the order is, seller and buyer meet up, seller brings up the insured trade window (probably a right click the item, insured trade), they put the item in, game can automatically bring the price it was offered for, or if they seller and buyer negotiated another price already, they can change the price now. They click confirm on their end. The window now shows to the buyer, and both players see the item from the seller, and the price next to it. Below that is the currency from the buyer, in the same window, but a clear line between the two. The buyer now has the 3 options shown. If accepted, trade accepted is shown to the buyer, and the exchange is made, currency leaves the buyer, and the item goes into their inventory. If declined, the window closes, and they can talk more or boot the visitor. If negotiate is picked, the window stays up, the item says in, but the offered price grays out while it might be changed. When the seller accepts the new price, the price is locked again on their side, and on the buyer side, the new currency shows up on their end, assuming they have it on them (or in their stash if they are in the buyer’s hideout), where it all starts again.

Monsterpedia

Johnathan already said he wants this to come along. Or something like it anyhow. As I see it, after you experience a monster, it appears in the Monsterpedia. You can see the model, see its idle animation, see its attack animation, all via buttons, turn the model around to see it from all sides. Along with the model, is information about it. Name, type, zones, keywords (linked of course), vulnerability and immunity (linked), all by mob level etc. So some might still have ???? after the level number because maybe you haven’t hit that mob at that mob level yet. Not sure the best way to arrange this, by name, or by act, then maps… the search function should be able to find it by name or act. This is basically modeled after the Monster Hunter series monsterpedias. To get back to vulnerability and immunity, maybe it says something like the tier, then the name of the vulnerability or immunity, then like S+, S, A+, A, A-, etc rather than a straight percentage or range that is likely hidden.

Filter

Probably least important, because we currently have Never Sink, but what happens when he decides to step away? Again, Last Epoch is the shining light on this, where almost everything can be set via the in-game menu. One can do it all via, type, tier, rarity, and even character level, so maybe after level 30, I no longer care about tier 1, and only want tier 3 and above on one item type… so it’s not like it would need to be massively overhauled every season. The people who make the actual filter, which 90% of the playerbase will still use, will have to watch for more specific things to highlight, and add sounds (outside of default sounds), and icons to the dropped items (which should still continue to be supported on the back side, but the built-in filter maker might not feature). It would allow people to easily dial in a filter they downloaded, to suit them better, as I doubt too many people will want to do it all from scratch. This should also be per character, not per account.So I don’t have to remember to change it each character. Though that might make it more complicated from the server point, in which case, maybe one has the option to download a filter to a character, with the online filter staying per account, and easier to swap what system one is playing on at the time.

Drops

Speaking of filters, drops could be modified some. If I’m in Tier 15 maps, I shouldn’t get a bunch of Tier 1 maps dropping, maybe down to level 13, then down to 10 the next level, but below that, it should be very rare. Yes, above, especially if I have that marked in my atlas, but a Tier 1 should be a very rare drop after level 5 or 7 or so, and growing increasingly rare. Have every 3 tiers perhaps lumped together as a drop set, and as one moves from one drop set to the next, the ones further down the line drop less and less, in favor of ones in the same drop set. Same with flasks, and many other items. I don’t mind white items, but their tier and quality should be closer to the level I’m at, so I can still look and say, hey, that might be craftable. I’ll probably still ignore white, unless it has some specific affix that I’m after that my filter is helping me highlight. Even if this means it drops less items, which should be a possibility. Like it rolls, an item comes up matching too low a drop set, it rerolls to see if it drops it (slim chance, say 10%), doesn’t drop anything (semi decent chance, say 50%), or tries to reroll it again period (even if ends up below threshold, probably the 2nd best chance, say 40%), at this point it at least tried. Percentages there are just examples, and not what I’d probably set them at, as I’d probably add a bit more nuance.