Campaign Feedback from a new player (And some general stuff)

Hi GGG team,

First of all—I’m really enjoying the game, and I love seeing the progress and updates as development moves forward. Thanks for all your hard work.

Just for context: I played through the PoE1 campaign with a guide but never really touched the endgame. In PoE2, I played 0.1 as Witch into Deadeye (don’t ask) and reached level 96.

[Campaign Feedback]
As a newer player, I have to say—I think the campaign is too long, and you're likely losing a lot of interested players before they even get to touch the endgame.

I've seen this happen with my friends, and I've felt it myself. The campaign just doesn’t feel engaging enough, and it lacks the kinds of specific quests or guidance that help teach core game mechanics early on.

A few specific examples:

Important quests like skill point rewards or side bosses should be better guided. If it helps your character in a significant way, players should be directed more clearly.

Some zones and quests feel like they don’t make much sense progression-wise. For example, in Act 3, moving through the Infested Barrens to access the Waterways lever—this still confuses me, even in 0.2. Following the quest/zone info lands me in Waterways with no way to progress because I missed something venom-related (which sometimes is called poison?). That whole part could use a clearer path.

Act 3 zones feel way too long. I legit have to hype myself up with "just push through this and we’ll hit endgame soon.” The problem is, it’s early access—if I want to test multiple classes, I just can't bear going through the campaign again. And I haven’t even touched the Cruel part yet.

Transitioning from Act 3 to Cruel 1: You get teleported to the beach, but you might still have stuff to sell to Oswald. How do you go back without being yeeted to the beach again, even after beating the mini-boss and entering Clearfell?

[General Campaign Thoughts]
There’s a huge difference between something being hard and something just feeling annoying. Right now, some of the campaign feels more like busywork—a bit like school homework that has nothing to do with what you’ll actually be doing in endgame.

Honestly, I’d be happy with a tight, engaging 3-act campaign where the bosses are still tough and mechanics matter. Everything else feels like fluff that just pushes new players away instead of onboarding them.

To be fair, I hate questing and campaigns in general, so I’m definitely biased. But when all my friends quit somewhere around Act 1–3 Cruel without even touching the endgame, it feels like a big missed opportunity—not just for them, but for you as a studio.

When someone buys into early access and never even sees the part of the game that’s meant to be exciting, that's a rough first impression.

[Performance Feedback]
Performance-wise, I’ve had a rough time getting PoE2 to run well. I’ve got a decent PC—it runs mythic WoW raids and other CPU-heavy games just fine—but PoE2 kept crashing and freezing so badly on launch that I had to take a break.

It got so bad during 0.1 that I ended up writing a Steam guide to help others, because my friends and community were constantly asking me how to fix their own performance issues:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3403877799

I get that it's early access and there’s room to improve, but I hope this shows that the early experience (both gameplay and performance) really matters. If people bounce off hard in the first few hours, you might end up only retaining the PoE1 veterans… who are already mad that this isn’t PoE1 😅

[Early Endgame / General Game Design]
One last note: You don’t need a million league mechanics to make the game deep. Things like Strongboxes, Excavation, Wisps—they add width, not depth (yes, I tried to be funny).

What players really want is engaging combat, challenging bosses, and mechanical depth. Stuff like screen-wiping a Breach with the right build? That’s the kind of satisfying moment that makes people keep coming back.

If you focus too much on side mechanics, you risk ending up with a game that’s super wide but kind of shallow where it counts.

[Final Thoughts]
Please, for the love of loot, let us skip the campaign on new characters if we’ve already done it once. No one wants to do Acts 1–3 twice per character during early access. You’d get better testing data, and players would feel like their time is respected if they could actually try builds and game systems without spending 80% of their playtime stuck in the campaign.

And I totally get that you don’t want to make sweeping changes mid-league, but this is early access. Most players would be thrilled to see changes happening live, rather than waiting for another 0.X patch to see if something small got tweaked—right before they have to run the whole campaign again.

Hopefully some of this feedback lands well. Apologies if anything came off a bit blunt—English isn’t my first language, and I just really want to see this game shine.

Thanks again for making something awesome. Keep on grinding! ❤️

Quick Addition to the performance part.
I can only run PoE2 smooth (60 frames no freezing) on a Geforce Now Ultimate edition.

My specs are 12700k, 32gb ram and a 3070TI.

"

ovrumv2#0894 wrote:

[Early Endgame / General Game Design]
One last note: You don’t need a million league mechanics to make the game deep. Things like Strongboxes, Excavation, Wisps—they add width, not depth (yes, I tried to be funny).

What players really want is engaging combat, challenging bosses, and mechanical depth. Stuff like screen-wiping a Breach with the right build? That’s the kind of satisfying moment that makes people keep coming back.

If you focus too much on side mechanics, you risk ending up with a game that’s super wide but kind of shallow where it counts.

Don't you see the glaring contradiction in your line of thinking here? You either want mechanical depth, or you want to clear the entire screen in one click - can't have it both ways.

What the vast majority of 'players' actually want is maximum rewards for minimum effort. They want to either be able to print their own items, or be showered with currency, which then can be used to instantly buy whatever their heart desires.

I won't argue with the fact that if that was supplied, it would indeed keep the masses coming back, because that is the sad reality of the current gaming landscape. People are chasing cheap dopamine hits, not depth.
Let us at least be honest about it, okay?

"

Transitioning from Act 3 to Cruel 1: You get teleported to the beach, but you might still have stuff to sell to Oswald. How do you go back without being yeeted to the beach again, even after beating the mini-boss and entering Clearfell?

So this is a dumb thing they have no solution for but you can get back through various means, you just need to be on the correct area "time" - for example you need to maybe get back to the area prior to the gateway opening, you'll need to teleport to either the temple of Filth to get the pre gateway timeline, or if you need to get back to the town without using the gateway you'll need to go to the riverbank, use a town portal, then go to Act1 Cruel Clearfell, then you can use the map and traverse back to the Ziggurat where you can turn in quests as normal from there.

The same map issues exist now with underground areas, you are no longer allowed to go back to the main map from a "underground" area, you'll need to teleport with a portal to town, then teleport to another area from there.

They need some love here, as that campaign switch from cruel/etc is horrible... HOWEVER, that being said I believe the campaign is not suposed to go to cruel difficulty there anyway/ there is no cruel transition in the long run, just more acts, so that'll be fixed in the future. when the rest of the campaign is added

uhm no, not at all.
If a bossfight was better made in endgame, why would you trade that time to invest into making strongboxes that nobody cares about?

I agree with the other stuff and what people want. But if Jonathan says he wants PoE2 to be boss focused, and players like that and they love breaches, why do you spend dev time to make strongboxes if the "core" is not fun, engaging or well recieved.

What i was trying to get across was that adding systems/league mechanics when core basics of the game dont work well, might add fluff and nothing with actual substance.

I decided to not put too much into this part but i see i should probably have explained my point a lot better :D

"

arandan#3174 wrote:

"

ovrumv2#0894 wrote:

[Early Endgame / General Game Design]
One last note: You don’t need a million league mechanics to make the game deep. Things like Strongboxes, Excavation, Wisps—they add width, not depth (yes, I tried to be funny).

What players really want is engaging combat, challenging bosses, and mechanical depth. Stuff like screen-wiping a Breach with the right build? That’s the kind of satisfying moment that makes people keep coming back.

If you focus too much on side mechanics, you risk ending up with a game that’s super wide but kind of shallow where it counts.

Don't you see the glaring contradiction in your line of thinking here? You either want mechanical depth, or you want to clear the entire screen in one click - can't have it both ways.

What the vast majority of 'players' actually want is maximum rewards for minimum effort. They want to either be able to print their own items, or be showered with currency, which then can be used to instantly buy whatever their heart desires.

I won't argue with the fact that if that was supplied, it would indeed keep the masses coming back, because that is the sad reality of the current gaming landscape. People are chasing cheap dopamine hits, not depth.
Let us at least be honest about it, okay?

I wish you actually had a cohesive point, instead of just reiterating conjecture like 99,9% of all the other posts on these forums. At least then it'd be almost possible to have a discussion with you.

What makes you think that any amount of considerable time was 'traded into making strongboxes'? That system has been present for years, the only change in 0.2 were lazy atlas points and a few unique boxes added. Hardly any investment needed.

You keep harping about side mechanics without realizing that breach is technically one. In fact everything is currently if we follow your logic, since there is no cohesion to endgame, just a few systems haphazardly thrown together, mostly consisting of rehashed content from poe1.

Almost as if the game is still in development and things need to be added/subtracted/changed - what a shocker.

Did you mistake the feedback forum for a destiny discussion thread on reddit?
Almost like you cant fathom that other players have different feedback than you and that you might not like it.

The feedback are for the studio, not a crybaby with way to much invested into the game and not his IRL life so hes on PoE2 Feedback forum starting discussions like hes doing a political debate.

Thank you for the feedback to my feedback, but my feedback is still my feedback, hope you find some more enjoyment in your life :)

"

arandan#3174 wrote:

I wish you actually had a cohesive point, instead of just reiterating conjecture like 99,9% of all the other posts on these forums. At least then it'd be almost possible to have a discussion with you.

What makes you think that any amount of considerable time was 'traded into making strongboxes'? That system has been present for years, the only change in 0.2 were lazy atlas points and a few unique boxes added. Hardly any investment needed.

You keep harping about side mechanics without realizing that breach is technically one. In fact everything is currently if we follow your logic, since there is no cohesion to endgame, just a few systems haphazardly thrown together, mostly consisting of rehashed content from poe1.

Almost as if the game is still in development and things need to be added/subtracted/changed - what a shocker.