How are you PoE2 Newbies faring after basically one month?

I'm legitimately curious about how people who are new-ish to PoE are faring.
I'll define new-ish: you qualify if you never played PoE1, or if you played a few hours, failed miserably, and quit before ever reaching endgame.

I'm assuming over 90% of tourists have quit by now, so I wonder how the rest of you who stuck with it are doing.

If the PoE2 subreddit is anything to go by, many of you probably haven't reached early mapping yet. I'm hoping that the people on the forums are slightly better informed than redditors though.
I'm also sure there are a few of you who are outliers and have managed to clear the endgame. After all, there exist power gamers out there who did not play PoE1, but can easily transfer their skills between games. For those of you in this category, are you now maybe more interested in PoE1 than you were before? After all, it offers basically everything PoE2 does and is practically better in every conceivable way.

For the rest of you who do not belong in the above category, where are you at right now? Have you finally managed to reach endgame? Are you getting a taste of why vets were critical of the game? A lot of tourists were blissfully ignorant while stuck in campaign, and openly hostile against vets while having 0 idea what was even being criticised or discussed. I'm hoping most of you are past that point now?

I do have a past history with POE 1. Currently I am more interested in 2. The updated gameplay and difficulty of the campaign is more fun to be.

Lvl 91 sorceress. Only character that I have made. Clearing T15 maps easily. Juiced lvl 82 maps are still scary ATM with their damage output.

I avoided playing melee on purpose because GGG has always refused to balance melee to make it fair.

I was having fun, but i feel like im being punished constantly so my fun is dwindling now. Got 468 hours into it at least.

I have very little time with POE1. More hours recently just before POE2 release just to try to get a feel of what I may expect with story and character progressions. I have played many of other ARPGs and prefer them over most genres.

1. The fast paced and actiony feel is very enjoyable. The moments that make the game feel like a bulletstorm genre is nice and wakes you up between the grind. It is a good step in the right direction for the A in ARPG.

2. Story is following a universal template somewhat. You can skip the majority of it and understand what is going on cause it feels like deja vu. Even if it is your first time.

3. At first the skills and passive trees were somewhat intimidating. Then I just realized it had tags and the tree has a search bar. THis made navigating and theory building a lot more easier.

4. Theory builds are fun in this game. I understand that people do enjoy following a template, but I like to make what ifs. Presently working on a warrior that uses chaos and spirit. A pestilence champion I guess you can call it. Taken the road less traveled in this game for character progression is very rewarding but can be a challenge. Still fun.

5. Loot is ... crafting is fun but drops are not. Why am I finding a Lv 10 gear when I am 40? Using MF helps. But finding a lvl 10 rare when you are high level is icky. Then you have long periods (sometimes 15 levels or more) where no drops of a specific type can be found. Even at vendors.

6. Currency seems ok for me especially when you add MF. I am not in endgame cause I been just playing with builds in story. But the drops are good but not crazy rare or frequent within the 3 Acts.

7. I won't say much about bugs cause it varies from player to player and I have rarely noticed any. No crashes, glitches, or artifacts. As for builds, I cannot say. I leave it for the serious crunchers to do.

Well, there you go.

Edit:
I have a little over 100 hours on primary client and just over 200 hours on Steam client. As a newbie to POE2 I enjoy it and will be playing it for a while.

I played 111 hours of PoE 1 and since i started in Sanctum League, it was impossible to play if you didn't follow a build guide. I don't like that. PoE 2 is different, much more fun than that game tbh.

As I'm not a "veteran" (who, by the way, are mostly very annoying and have an inflated ego), it took me a little longer to get to the end game and be able to notice some problems, but nothing major. I think most people are too emotionally involved with PoE and forget that PoE 2 is in early access. There's a giant blue warning on Steam explaining this, but whatever.

I will continue playing, following the development of the game and having fun. When they announced PoE 2 I was very excited precisely because of the fact that PoE was inaccessible to new players. I don't see the point in copying builds, in my view a game like this is based on:

1.creating your own build,and see how far it goes and;
2.dropping items.

PoE 2 allowed me to do this. I don't use the trading site to buy items, I just sell items that I drop/gamble to acquire currency and I'm currently on t15 maps. I'm playing practically 100% SSF (except for an item I bought for use) and practically nothing that bothered me so far in relation to the game was enough to take away my fun (failed to generate terrain on sekhma and 1 death policy on maps are the exceptions).

My only complaint is not being able to use loot filter in GEFORCE Now, this is really bothering me, but I know it will be resolved soon.

I barely played POE 1, but I do love POE 2... that is, right up to maps. The maps just aren't a fun experience. I even like Trials of Sehkmas, but I do think they need to have fewer rooms and less frequent afflictions.

I'm an ARPG junkie though and love the slower pace of the campaign. POE 1 was too zoomy for my taste.

For me, staying with POE 2 largely depends on what the design philosophy is for this game. I did manage to hit 200 hours, so I certainly got my money's worth even if they go in a direction I don't like.

Game starts out great with tactical combat but eventually in maps it’s PoE1 zoom zoom boom boom.

Bosses are fun.

Campaign is great.

Crafting is garbage.

Endgame is mid. Certain maps are cancer, running towers is a waste.

Please let us use all portals to complete a map after death like PoE1.

Crafting is really bad….needed to be said again.

All these skills that have synergies seems underpowered. Most meta builds are 1 clickers.

I stopped playing until further updates are made.

Not entirely newbie as I played PoE 1 from 2013 january till end 2014. I did quit PoE 1 as it was too grindy.

I came back to PoE 2 hoping its not that grindy and yes, its not that grindy as PoE 1 was at start but still takes lots of time.

The game is pretty good but I hate trading just like I did in PoE 1. I hope they would develope PoE 2 more around self-found. Death penalty is still annoying and its even worse than it was in PoE 1.

I think the time issue is my biggest problem and probably will play PoE 2 more casually. Like level a char to around 90lvl per league and then take a break until next league.
After 90lvl and min-maxing you gear it becomes noticeable less fun and it becomes just currency farming simulator. End game grind is good for streamers as its their job and they wont run out of content that easily. For casual players its just too much of grind and spending hours just to trade isnt what casual players are looking for after rough work day :P


Edit; Forgot to mention that I have 160 hours in PoE 2 atm and I have 92lvl ranger.

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PrimordialDarkness#3913 wrote:

I'm legitimately curious about how people who are new-ish to PoE are faring.
I'll define new-ish: you qualify if you never played PoE1, or if you played a few hours, failed miserably, and quit before ever reaching endgame.


For the rest of you who do not belong in the above category, where are you at right now? Have you finally managed to reach endgame? Are you getting a taste of why vets were critical of the game? A lot of tourists were blissfully ignorant while stuck in campaign, and openly hostile against vets while having 0 idea what was even being criticised or discussed. I'm hoping most of you are past that point now?

-I only played a bit of POE1 campaign and hit level 62. I was mostly just playing as a warm up for POE2.

-POE 2 overall there are a lot of things I like and some things I don't like. I thought the campaign was fun and I like aspects of mapping. I now have a level 86 monk and a 74 sorc.

-Biggest problem for me is the loop I sometimes feel stuck in.
THE LOOP: Can't get enough currencies to drop to feel like I can craft since I have never successfully crafted an upgrade. Then again... I don't get enough currency to drop to purchase upgrades very well either due to the prices being so high now. So I die a lot, lose progress and struggle to advance my characters.

-Other major problem for me= Ascendancy trials. I hate them in this game more than I have ever hated any game mechanic in my 35ish years of gaming.

-Would like to know what kills me when I get one shot (especially from offscreen) so I can figure out how to better my survivability.

Decided to stop playing yesterday until they announce the next real patch, mostly just so I can feel out what direction they plan on moving in. That will effect my desire to continue.

Overall, a lot I love about the game but some of the hang ups are very glaring to me. Whatever they decide to do, I already feel that I got my money's worth. I have a bit of an obsessive-love-hate relationship with the game.

Anyway, that's my newbie POE2 take. Interested to see what they do next!

New to poe, I played along the beach in poe1 to the first town and that's it.

I'm on the verge of giving up on poe2 for now, at least. Not due to the difficulty per se, I got one guy to end game and them immediately started another. On my fifth character now.

The problem for me (I'm not trading) is the absolutely truly dire item drops and crafting system.