A High-Quality Game, but a Fading Friendship (Suggestion)

Hello GGG Team,

I’m a new player in POE2 and have never played POE1 before. My only experience with this genre comes from Diablo IV, which I absolutely love. Since I started playing POE2, I’ve spent around 250 hours in the game, and I truly enjoy it. However, there is one thing I feel is missing: friendship.

I’ve always found the most joy in gaming when playing with friends. In the end, I’ve come to realize that the game itself matters less—it’s who you play with that truly makes the experience enjoyable. When I played Diablo IV with friends, I had a great time because loot drops were not a source of competition. We could run together, progress together, and grow alongside each other without worrying about who gets what item.

Now, in POE2, I’m not sure if this is by design, but the loot system makes it difficult to play comfortably with friends. Every player needs resources to grow their character, so there’s an unspoken pressure when loot drops. Sometimes, I feel obligated to give an item to my friend, even if I want it myself. Other times, my friend gives me something they also secretly want. This creates an awkward situation where we don’t want to play together because we feel like we’re competing for loot or hoping for good drops to fuel our own progress.

I would like to suggest a feature that allows players to hide loot they cannot pick up, making it so that each drop is randomly assigned to a specific player. Currently, the system allows you to see items but prevents you from picking them up, which feels frustrating because you see something great but can’t take it. Instead, I think it would be better to have an option where you only see items that are actually yours to pick up.

I don’t know if this is possible, but right now, every evening after work, I still log in to play with my best friend. However, we barely talk anymore. Instead of running maps together, we each run our own, sitting in silence on Discord. Even though we’re playing the same game, it doesn’t feel like we’re truly playing together—unlike other games where we’re constantly chatting and engaging with each other.

In the end, I know this post might not gain much attention, but if the dev team sees this and agrees that others might feel the same way, I’d really appreciate it if you could consider this suggestion.

Thank you, GGG Team.
I will always love POE.

I think it would be nice to have separate loot tables for different players, for the reasons you outline in our post. Having to compete with your buddies for the distribution of loot is not great.