How are you PoE2 Newbies faring after basically one month?

I played the campaign of POE1, then the league changed and I had to start over and that turned me off. The complexity of the game was alluring but I didn't feel like putting time and energy into a character that would become obsolete in a few weeks time. Also my interest in gaming was at a low point in that time, and I lost interest in almost every game after a few hours. POE actually managed to keep me very engaged compared to other games.

Luckily that drive has returned and in combination with the less lucky health issues I have more time for gaming now.
I got just over 100 hours in, and my ice sorceress is on T2 maps. I'm having a blast, looking forward to some tweaks to pick up my lvl 28 warrior and also start a monk. I kinda forgot about the leagues until I had already started playing POE2, so I hope they don't come soon. There's enough fun to be had at least for some months before they come, and then I'll play maybe a league once per year or so.

I am complete noob even to the aRPG genre. The last aRPG I played and enjoyed was Diablo II, and that was quite a long time ago.

I gave POE2 a try just because of all the fuzz, and to my amazement, I got hooked in a genre I thought had nothing for me. I think its a brilliant game, save for the Trials and Ascendancies that have been in my experience completely game breaking and unenjoyable (actually they have been a source of pain and will happily pay someone else to run them for me if I feel I need more than 2 ascendancy points).

I've been playing with a single toon all this time, the aforementioned ascendancies being the reason I don't try other chars. I just hated doing them for my main and just thinking about having to do them all over again it is just a no no for me.

Well, I never played any PoE/Diablo games before, but I did play Lost Ark two years ago... so I’m not sure if I’m considered a newbie. Maybe I am, because I’m a coward and scared of everything in the late game. My builds are scuffed, but I’ve enjoyed it so far. I’m slowly reaching level 92, doing mapping and all.

I did a couple of trades too—bought two quarterstaffs, one divine each. One has +30 INT attributes, and the other has none. I just learned, after meddling with my respect (GGG really needs to add better notifications for this), that I can change my builds based on my weapon.

So I created a defense and offense build. If I get hit, I swap to defense mode (it has +/- 2k more ES). Then, I can use Ice Wall to switch back easily to offense (because I have that quarterstaff with +30 INT). Ice Wall also acts as my defense, on top of Blasphemy + Time Slow Curse. It lets me partially divide the enemies.

Finding these things is such a blast, in my opinion. That’s why I love the game. Also, if they change the drop rate for SSF during launch, I’ll probably migrate to the SSF league on launch day.

I’d like to play more often, but sadly, I have to work, and the game keeps crashing on my PC.

And today, I finally brave enough to do my first Citadel clear.
https://youtu.be/B9Go9mng9fc

I have some experience with POE1, but I never played it seriously and haven't played it since Prophecy which was around 2016 maybe?

I've always loved ARPGs and POE in particular because of its stunning breadth of player customization and darker feel.

A friend recently got me POE2 since they know I used to play POE1 and I was SUPER excited because I had no idea GGG was even making a new game.

I have right around 57 hours in now playing essentially SSF and I think for 98% of that I have been having a blast. Right now though I am working through the Dreadnought and just got to the Vanguard, and the things that are pain points are beginning to really become frustrations, and I don't want to list them or even bring them up on forums or discussions because I know I'll just get a huge list of "git good", "skill issue", "diablo baby", etc. comments.

Some of the things I like so far:
* Art and theme (this is something I've always liked about GGG games)
* Act 1 story was pretty good and the boss (Geonor) felt like a big step in difficulty, but was rewarding and fun to challenge
* Enemy variety seems to be pretty good so far and the different affixes for them pose an interesting obstacle sometimes
* Sound design is pretty good, enjoying the BGM very much

Some things I don't like:
* Player collision (makes playing with friends very irritating especially with how constrained maps are in most areas)
* Enemy collision (getting deadlocked in a tight walkway unable to do anything is really irritating and a frustrating design choice)
* Dodge roll not allowing for dodge through enemies because of collision
* Trade is STILL done through an external website
* Drop rates for currency feel really low? I have gotten very little useful orb drops at all
* Gear drops feel stingy so far, I have gotten very few useful magic item or rare drops and because of lack of orbs I can't really craft gear or even attempt to
* Armour feels completely useless, and it seems to make you slower? Why have a drawback and then 100% uselessness on top of it?
* POE1 I remember stacking life and that was useful, but POE2 seems to be entirely balanced around just having an enormous amount of energy shield which doesn't really fit how I desire to play so I abandoned my warrior for now because it just felt like a slog

I know I'll probably get the usual responses and people looking at my profile to see my lack of supporter badges, achievements, character level, etc. and get told that the game isn't meant for me and whatnot, so I'll kind of leave it there.

Overall I am enjoying it and it feels nice to have a bit of difficulty baked in, but as it stands I have no idea how I am going to make it to or past Cruel difficulty.

It has been a VERY rough ride and I even got to the point where I was so frustrated with not getting a single orb or useful drop for the last handful of hours of play time that I was going to try getting things from the trade website, but everything is already listed in exalted orbs and I think I've gotten maybe 6 or 7 of those throughout my entire play so far.

Looking forward to see what GGG has in store for the game and what new things they plan on implementing.

I’m doing the same as I was a week after release because I haven’t played. I have 5 characters, my first a level 14 Merc and my last a level 22 Witch. A lot of people are complaining about end game, but to heavily borrow from the title from another thread, the early game reveals problems for new players and returning players alike. The end game is the least of the problems for a person here to enjoy the combat, bosses, environments, and build-crafting.

After watching ascendancy videos, I started out figuring that I wanted to make a gemling merc for flexibility. The first levels were pretty terrible because I tried to use skills. I learned that movement and my basic attack were the best in most situations. After about 10 levels, I decided, from what I heard, that I should be able to get a few minions. I mean, starting classes don’t matter, right? I can have any skill with any class, right? Right.

I watched streams and spent roughly 2 hours of hard mental anguish wrapping my head around the fact that skills were bound to weapons, and that I had committed so many gems to crossbow skills that I was in trouble. After actually making a witch I learned that sceptres were the only real way to get spirit. Then I tested the witch and realized swapping weapons robbed me of that spirit, so I could never have used the merc with minions and a crossbow anyway.

Throughout my witch run to 22 I came to several conclusions. I’m going to list the changes that need to be done to bring my interest back. Any one of the changes will be a massive positive sign that the devs are interesting in people like me spending their time with the game. If they make two changes, even better, and I’ll definitely be back. If they make three or more, we have a serious problem because they are going to start alienating other people.


Desired changes:
Spirit linked to equipment is a terrible system. My understanding is POE1 had a system based around taking a portion of your mana. This sounds more intuitive to me. Even if it’s not better, spirit as a whole separate resource is poorly explained and realized for the casual, lonely guy that just wants a skeleton or two for companionship.

How intimidating the passive tree is will always be a problem. Make it fully refundable so people don’t have to break out their cartography skills and a website to engage with it. Better yet, how about you condense it or find a way casuals can simply ignore it. I’ve posted a few ideas.

Obsession with and the enjoyment of inventory control is for bureaucrats and the self-important. Everyone should have a free currency tab.

Orb shards shouldn’t exist. There is enough unusable clutter on the ground already.

Orbs should be automatically looted to the stash. No one is going to craft in the field.

Gem levels are even worse than the orbs. Give everyone a gem tab.

Eliminate gems. Gems are skills. Skills have minimum level limits as well as inherent levels. Why not let the skills level with the player? You also have to find a gem of the corresponding level. Barring the elimination of gems entirely in favor of a skill point system, please allow vendors to sell gems. I will not go back and farm content just to get gems to cut into skills that won’t work well together. A compromise would be to allow gems to be recut at will.

The campaign takes so long because the maps are large and you don’t exactly know what you are looking for on the initial playthrough. Please make them about 1/3rd smaller on average. I actually like them decently large, but this is over the top.

The instanced maps with loot that disappears on death is a bad system. Diablo and Dark Souls did it better: let people die, respawn enemies on the map, and let them collect their corpse and the loot they left with the same spawns.

Why did my town portal disappear along with my map when I was managing things in town?

Please halve the number of players I encounter in town. They are all wearing the same thing anyway.

Base the drop economy around SSF, and slant the drops toward the currently played class. Blizz got something right.

Eliminate MF and light radius on equipment. Blizz got another thing right.

Larger inventory by at least 1 long line. Your currency wastes a ton of space.

A universal ident skill instead of scrolls would be great. You still give people their stimulation, but they don’t have another item to deal with. They don’t need to exist as an actual item.


I’ll add that I have a list of great, relatively timeless games. How easy systems are to understand and control is important so that you can get back into the game relatively quickly and start enjoying the content. If I go back and play a game, and it’s too hard to get back into, I remove it from the list. POE1 is not on my list, and neither is Diablo 2.

Just for fun, I’m going to make this my last post until I start playing again.