Learnings after LE campaign

I just finished the last Epoch campaign and here’s a write up of my learnings (ie my opinions) relevant for PoE2, in no particular order:

- I think PoE2 has more ability to maintain interest because it’s harder: cutting through mobs like a hot knife through butter is fun, but only for a short while. I enjoyed the PoE2 & LE campaigns, but I felt a stronger urge to make a second character in PoE2 because skills have a different feeling, it’s not immediately “whatever you do, everything dies” which LE felt like (again: also fun, but doesn’t feel meaningful and thus engaging for a shorter time)
- loot goblins/lizards are fun. They over extend you but have a great risk reward ratio if you know how to kite (or simply do a lot of damage), but only if they stay special (unlike D4 where they overdid it and the loot is uninspiring). I suggest adding them to PoE2. Btw: this isn’t wisps, they stand and fight, I’m talking about chasing a running bullet sponge (although don’t overdo the live pool beyond reason)
- heartseeker (D2 guided arrow) with pierce is really fun, and I’d like to see it in PoE2. I understand D2 removed pierce for balance but I’ve always thought this was a real pity, playing it in LE confirmed this.
- skill personalization: PoE2 support gems are nice, but generally only having 2 or 3 is really boring. There’s clearly 1-4 best ones, so there’s not really personalization. Also, they generally don’t really change the skill that much either. It’sa good system but it’s not as engaging as LE’s ability to totally revamp your skills (without needing a specific unique item for it, that immediately reduces personalization). I’m honestly not seeing any quick wins here, but worth considering a few seasons down the line perhaps.
- cinematics: I think both games are mediocre in this area. The opening trailer for PoE2 was so amazing, the drawings with narrator don’t hold a candle to it.
- linear campaign: I love linear campaigns. I’m doing complex work all week, I don’t game to then do project management. Act 2 & 3 feel like project management: go here, get that, come back and go there to get that, talk with person A B & C, go there. It’s awful in my view. I love those acts’ visuals, enemies, bosses, but having to talk to Asala one more time before I can enter my friend’s town portal and I’m gonna find a bug that lets me strangle her.
- quests: LE has no “talk to this person, then this person, etc” quests: excellent experience. PoE2 has that in a different way: act 2 and 3 are one big “go here go there come back go there pick this pick that, talk with A talk with B find C”. Honestly this is such a tedious experience, it’s awful.
- quest rewards: in LE you can get 15 passive points and 8 idol slots through side quests. However, there’s enough side quests to get many more than those 15/8. This provides player agency as you can choose to do the ones you like and/or find along the way. This is great, and I’d love it if I could have such agency in PoE2. Honestly it just feels like finding a bunch of stuff like the lightning res altar in act 2 and the body with the letter in act 2 are mandatory, but sometimes you’re walking for ages to find it…
- warp to player: when I want to play with a friend and you won’t let me, do I really want to play your game? If my friend is in A3 and I’m in act 2 I can’t warp to them. Even worse: even if we’re at the same quest it breaks some times because you weren’t in the right zone when the other person did something. In LE we just warp to each other like you’d expect: a magical portal opens up and the portal doesn’t care whether you talked to Asala or not, it’s a reliable time and space bending worm hole that doesn’t complain.
- neither games have escort mission with killable NPCs, please keep it that way, they suck
- crafting: I like the PoE2 crafting actually, BUT it’s extremely incomplete. In fact, let’s call it gambling. I like PoE2 gambling. But I like LE crafting too, yes, that’s actually crafting. Imagine I go to a blacksmith and say: I want a sharper sword, and he says: well perfect, I’ll work on it and it has a 12% chance to get sharper, a 12% chance to become lighter, 12% chance to become razor edged, …. Would you hire that blacksmith?
- visuals: obviously much better in PoE2.
- stash tabs: I get it, monetisation. But I paid the same for LE & PoE2 and I feel that LE gave me more stash for my money.
- inventory/stash management on controller: I think PoE2 does it mostly better, but I like the ability to use the cursor with the right joystick. It smoothens out a lot of use cases (but it’s not strictly better in all cases)
- item shrines: apologies I don’t know the name, but LE has these items that give you 4 items and you can choose between “Save and upgrade”, “get now” and “don’t need”, where option 1&2 summon a boss. These are fantastic, and I’d suggest stealing the idea.
- extracting power from items: this feels really good, and I thought the recombinator would do the same. However, the recombinator isn’t available during the campaign which was a big let down to me. I find items with 1 good and 1 bad mod all the time, but they aren’t an upgrade. That’s how I end up using the same items from A3 to A6. Let us recombinate things (with 100% chance) during the campaign. Honestly why isn’t this already the case? Such a missed opportunity for QoL…

Well, that’s it for now. Again: I think PoE2 has the bigger potential to be the game that engages people for a long time, but I think all the above would enable that potential to come through much better.
Thanks for your continued hard work!