General Campaign and Gameplay Feedback (From Cardboard Bastards)

Hi, small youtuber, I sometimes do build guides for PoE and talk about PoE 2 a lot. I've been slowly building a backlog of feedback and suggestions, and would like to drop them here now that I feel they've had time to properly ruminate. Hopefully they can be appreciated in the context of what we've learned about the developer's own thought processes these last few weeks.

1. Experience Gain in the Campaign

Experience in the campaign is currently a bit undertuned. No doubt this is partly because of changes to zone sizing and dead end removal, but starting around partway through Act 2 I find that if I'm pathing well and covering objectives efficiently (0 mob skipping, mind you) that I simply don't get enough XP.

This is a bit of a compounding problem, and definitely one to consider as it certainly has the ability to make the campaign feel more difficult, especially when you consider PoE 1 in the equation. In Path of Exile 1, it's very easy to over-level a zone, or to at least make up a deficit simply by pausing a little and killing a bit more. Poorly performing builds benefit A LOT from this, and the experience curve in that game starts to 'fight back' around level 60, making it much harder to maintain an extreme level advantage over the campaign past that point.

[Solution] - This seems like a perfect addition to carry over into PoE 2, as campaign pacing would probably feel better for the vast majority of players if they were consistently 1 or 2 levels over a zone's level than 1 or 2 levels under it.

2. Player Speed and its Accessibility

This is a rather major one, with a lot of pre-existing community input, but it's more nuanced than just 'put implicits on boots'. Certain types of equipment (Armour bases especially) have a greater (hidden) movement penalty than others, while at the same time having the least access to movement speed on their section of the skill tree. In a game where defenses are often underwhelming, this means the slowest classes with the slowest attacks that have to be nearest their enemies to deal damage are, unsurprisingly, suffering the most.

[Solution] - The Armour speed penalty can be removed. Let's be honest, this doesn't serve a purpose; in PoE 1 there was an argument to be made in racing that you should forgo a body armour for longer (unless you're a Duelist) to get an edge. Even then, in that game, the penalty was a flat amount, could be removed, and existed alongside a myriad of other movement options. Path of Exile 2 has none of these, and is in fact suffering from a problem in the other direction, because it's not just about movement. Most notable though is that this penalty is largest for the players that already feel the slowest, and therefore need it the most.

3. Speed and Defense have no solutions, so Attack is all that's left

Some mobs are faster than others. It's somewhat compelling in moment-to-moment gameplay that ordinary mobs are able to rush at us and create a situation that demands reaction. It's not at all compelling when a hasted mob (or a rare with haste aura) creates a situation in which we have to roll repeatedly until something shifts in the moment to allow an attack/spell. It's not hard, and if you've learned it, from that moment onward it's just an annoyance (or a frustration where you get overwhelmed and die anyway). The only way around this is to be able to square up against the mobs and stand our ground, but the defenses in the game simply don't allow for this until post-campaign with investment (and not for every build, even). In the campaign, you simply cannot reliably move your gear in a positive direction enough for passive skill tree investment in defenses to feel good. Even on second characters, with a 50 regal, 50 exalt, 500,000g budget in SSF, I still find pieces of gear stick around for a very, very long time. Ironically, Path of Exile 1 has even less problems with this same sort of issue because of the crafting bench, which is wildly superior for making it viable to slot in a new piece of gear.

Of course, when I say 'the only way', I leave out the fact that you *can* just 'kill them'. This pushes people even further into defense-based investment, and in a way that is almost downright revealing, it's clear the game has been balanced around this. There are no meaningful ways to increase your total life on the passive tree, which is a fundamental equalizer in 'defensive investment' early on in these types of games. The fact that it doesn't exist makes it clear that content is designed around 'killing fast', even for the developers who seem to want engagement in the gameplay. Even things like Freeze, Chill, Pin, Maim, Hinder, and whatever else locks down an enemy are based around your ability to attack them.

[Solution 1] - I can acquiesce that fixing this is too big a problem for conjecture. I want to say 'just give us the ability to raise our life', as it creates a stat you can invest into with guaranteed return on investment through the campaign, which then requires support and investment in other defenses in the endgame when you can actually build them up. It's the beautiful system from PoE 1 all over again, which I hope the devs can look back on more fondly now and learn from; it would be disastrous if they decided not to do certain things simply because PoE 1 did them.

[Solution 2] - All of that said, a slightly more mechanically complex, but less obstructive to the current game solution would be bringing back the crafting bench in a new way. Give us the ability to use Artificer's Orbs to perform crafts that take up Suffixes or Prefixes on an item, and in turn add sockets to the item that can only be used for specific types of runes. (I.E., if an item has great prefixes, you can craft an extra socket that lets you slot a resistance rune. With that craft though, the suffix is lost, unless you remove the craft, which naturally would destroy the rune). Probably hard to implement, but it would solve A LOT of gearing frustration in the early game, and even give us some more flexibility in the late game to squeeze an item just over the finish line to qualify as an upgrade.

4. Everything Takes Too Much Time

There's a theme here, but I started by saying implicits on boots were too simple an answer, and I meant it. Even with movement speed fixes, with some of the gunk in the cogs of campaign leveling cleared, and itemization adjusted to ensure players don't fall too far behind, there's still a fundamental issue with the overall balance of how quickly players can act.

It's not a secret in Path of Exile 2 that the best skills to use are often the ones that come out at a good pace and have a big impact. This is why spells like Spark, and attacks like Lightning Spear feel so good to use. They're quick for what they do, and merge seamlessly (or step aside) into setup for combos that kill stronger enemies. When you engage with a skill that is inherently slow, it has to hit very, very hard to justify its existence. Even so, if a skill is too slow (looking at Maces right now) then its damage is basically 'zero' because a situation can turn and outright punish you for trying to force the issue. No, being able to dodge-roll and cancel this does not solve the problem! If I have to reposition three times to get one attack off, but I have played a skill that does not suffer that way, I'm going to stop playing the slow character and go back to the fast one.

[Solution] - Establish a floor. There is a point at which an ability's speed becomes so low that it is a failure in all aspects and it is effectively a meme. You might be able to make it work today, but as the game progresses and new things are added, this will ultimately become a hindrance. Faster alternatives will become better and feel better to play, while these options remain feeling slow and clunky despite also improving numerically. Sources of Less Attack Speed on supports and Reduced Attack Speed on the tree need to be reigned in, and skills with heavy inherent attack speed penalties need to be adjusted accordingly for the long term health of the game.

5. The Loot Problem

Johnathan does a pretty good job talking about how just because people report a given problem and want a certain solution, it's not always correct to go that route. Loot is kind of in this vein right now, in the sense that 'more loot' would help with frustrations, but it wouldn't necessarily solve the issue of 'getting upgrades'. 0.2.0 took a FANTASTIC first step in this regard with adding the Recombinator, for a number of reasons, but the most important thing here is that the Recombinator is now a deterministic source of... destroying bases.

I'm not kidding, that's actually a very, very good thing. It's clear the devs are trying to cultivate value in the items we find lying on the ground, and with no scouring orbs in sight, bases are a commodity that players now focus in on. The thing is, the system is too strict, and anyone who plays SSF can tell you that in earnest. Finding a base, throwing currency at it, and not hoping even for a whole item, but just to get some of the more important mods is currently a brutal experience. You go through it all for a chance at the Recombinator, just to see both of the bases poof and the process start all over again.

[Solution] - Give us Orbs of Alteration. Yes, let us reroll items, specifically magic items. This isn't going to break the economy, or remove the value of a Stellar Amulet. You will still be rewarded for carrying transmutes and augments and throwing them at a base you happen to find in a map. It's not going to let us scour items back to mundane, and once an item is made rare, it's past the point of no return. What it does allow is for people to set up Recombination on bases, or to set up bases for Fracturing. The amount of loot dropped wouldn't have to change as much, because getting to the 'exciting' part of crafting is no longer something you might not experience for days at a time.



Anyway, if you made it to the end of this novel, go tell your mom/dad/other you love them and take my thanks for the several moments of your time spent on it.