Consolidated thoughts on POE2

Hello.
Fair warning: this thread might be long and rambling, and only be of use to those who have chronic insomnia and need to sleep.

Given that we are on the cusp of POE1's "Secrets league"; which looks so good I will not be seeing POE2 again for quite a while; I thought I'd give a consolidated opinion on POE2 so far.

Overall I've enjoyed POE2 which I view as a variant of POE1 with a subset of features with a different emphasis on certain aspects.
In a way POE2 feels more like an arcade game whereas it's older sibling has more strategic depth.

Builds
One aspect of depth I refer to is in the build of characters and how all the great great many skills and properties can interplay to create effects far greater than the mere sum of it's parts.

I think in POE2 there are far less of these interlocking / interacting elements, or fewer sets of properties which can interact, which then has the effect of there being a lot fewer build/skill variants that are viable for end-game. This means a handful of META builds with one or two skills that everyone is forced to use because nothing else is really as viable.

This then brings forth the question of what is "end-game viable"?
My thoughts on this are that a viable build is one which can engage with end-game content in such a way that the player is encouraged to persevere and continue to explore. Non-viable builds hit a wall eventually and cannot be improved beyond a certain point, capping their progress into the end-game.
An example of a non-viable build would be any Minion build in POE2 0.2 onwards. There are very limited options to scale damage: + minion levels and try to get a crap load of spirit to get more minions.
That's really it. Without something like desecrate to create corpses to unearth or the ability to get more minions due to spirit limitations, the minion player is constrained far more than other archetypes.

In contrast the METAs for POE2, Lightning Arrow (0.1) and Lightning Spear (0.2) seem to have the sky as the limit for scaling.
Single target: Superb,
Clearing: Outstanding,
Speed: Top Gear,
Survivability: Adequate (if everything dies in less than a second you cannot get hurt),
Passive Tree: So many nodes to increase damage, crit damage, crit chance, Damage on attack, damage on spear, damage with a pet, damage without a pet, +elemental damage, increase damage because the sun is shining, or not.
Equipping: A Tangle tongue at level 24 is all you really need.
But so many items of gear have great synergies even at modest Tiers.
Grilling a steak: Always medium-rare. Perfection.
(Not tried this last one but I'm sure it will end up like this)

No uncertainty as to why there is so much envy and enmity from players attempting to play anything else than LS.

However the solution lies not in nerfing LS, but in lifting all the other builds to have the same viability as LS.
For example a summoner build could do with more passive tree nodes for minion damage, minion crit etc. Mods for Increasing minions speed and power on things other than sceptres and jewels, Increasing the limit on +Spirit mods and decreasing spirit costs, bring desecrate into POE2 to have corpses to work with.
There is supposedly a working concept in POE2 of having the player use a combination of skills to be more effective but summoners lack these skills to combine. Once you have your minions setup, your Lich has nothing to do and no skills to contribute to and spend mana on which have synergies.
Desecrate with Detonate Dead/Unearth?
This skill combination exists in POE1 and I'm surprised it didn't make it into POE2.
I realise that this situation was likely due to deliberate decisions made by those who don't like Minion based builds.
However those who make these decisions should not let their personal preferences bias their decisions.

Item drops.
From the outset, POE2 was supposed to have more "meaningful drops".
And in a way... it kind of does.
My two characters, LS DeadEye and Summoner Lich are both using a great many items that I found on the ground (rares and uniques) BUT the twist is that the characters using the items are not the ones who found them.
My Lich character found: 2x Tangletongues, 1x Gloves with +ATK speed and 3 flat damage mods, Chest with high evasion and ES, Stellar Amulet with increase crit. These items made me start a LS Deadeye to try them out.
My LS Deadeye found: helmet with +2 minions and good ES stats, +Sprit amulet, +3 Minions Sceptre and I think a good ring or two for the Lich.

Now this might be co-incidental and a bit lucky but it highlights why Trade is so very powerful in game as the item drops one finds are not catering towards / biased towards the character finding them.

This method of generating items to drop creates a vast pool of meaningless rares which are meant to be traded / bartered to other players who might have dropped an item that you want which is worthless to them.

Now this would be a non-issue if it were not that GGG stated that they wanted to have drops in POE2 be less in volume but more meaningful to the player. This in my opinion can only be true if the drops one gets are more tailored to the archetype that is being played and that has mods on it that are meaningful to that archetype.
Example: Summoner Lichs get items that drop with +Sprit +ES, +max ES, +Minion Levels, +Cast Speed, +Health, +int +something useful
Conversely a DeadEye gets more drops with +ATK speed, +Crit %, +dex
and less drops that are not meaningful to the Dex based archetype.
And the game can easily determine what to limit the mod pool to by looking at the skills attached to that character and the ascendency chosen.
Less Trash. More interesting bases to slam Exalts onto or to risk in the Recombinator.

AND imagine how much less frustrating it would be to play SSF?

Combat Difficulty
Long ago I read an article written by the creator of the "ReaperBot", where he explained the challenge inherent in making an AI into a opponent to be played against by human.
The challenge was that it was easy to make the AI too weak, it was even easier to make the AI impossible to beat, and conversely almost impossible to make the AI just hard enough to be challenging but still fair.

This balancing act in POE2 is still a similar challenge for GGG.
The game has to have challenge to be rewarding but there are times when that balance has tipped over into the "unsporting, cheap shot" territory. The majority seem to be cases where the design process seems to have been cut short and a "RNG one shot kill the player" output tacked on.
Specific examples of this are: Zarokh and the "run like you're in that dream where things are chasing you and you cannot get away" phase which results in an instant death if you got a hourglass layout that sucks.
Instead of an instant death, perhaps a time based debuff instead? -ATK speed/-CAST speed. or cooldown time increases or something that fits with Zarokh's time manipulation theme? Maybe it resets the entire fight back to the beginning. Like "Ground-hog day". Unless you can solve the puzzles and finish the fight you're stuck in an infinite time loop.

Another example might be the Arbiter of Ash and his tendency to shoot his killer laser into the safe zone circles. Should either of these be a guaranteed one-shot with no counter play?
I'm certain there are more of these RNG one-shots with no counter play and every time I get one or see one on the many streamer videos, I cannot help but think that they exist solely because GGG could not think of something better to use instead.
Kind of like ending the story you're writing with " .... and then he woke up suddenly and all of it was just a dream. The End."

Trials
I wrote another post about the two Trials for Ascendancies, so I won't labour to repeat all that here, aside to mention that I think it was a mistake to couple the Ascendency points to Trials which are set-up to be so challenging, that in order to complete all the trials, one needs to be powerful enough to trivialise the trial itself, which then renders the Ascendency points gained as largely trivial in terms of benefit to the character at that elevated power level.
One needs to show that one does not need the money before the loan can be granted.

IMO the POE1 Labyrinth was a better idea for Ascendancies.
Perhaps a hybrid approach for POE2?
A Labyrinth but composed of a string of mini-maps with various League mechanics and puzzles. Drawing from older league mechanics and the current league mechanics to keep the Labyrinth fresh and interesting each new league and also random enough to remain challenging.
At certain intervals, a rest area with ones stash available like in POE1 before going to play with Izaro. So one could apply the skills of game knowledge, tailoring the passive tree, swapping gems and items on the build for certain scenarios. These are skills that are employed in the end-game so why are they not part of the Ascendency trials if the Trials are intended to ascertain if one has "Git-ten Gud" at the game itself?

Oh and one last thing: In the Trial of Chaos, if you died midway through, then all the items / cores you've already won are lost.
This feels a bit unfair.

League Mechanics
I sense a divergence in philosophy with POE2 and some of the league mechanics imported from POE1.
The principle in POE2 seems to have been: Slow the game down but make everything more memorable/significant. Reduce the volume but increase the fidelity of the experience. Less but greater.
So in light of this, Breach and Delirium do not seem to fit with this paradigm. These are both mechanics that are time gated. Speed and "bulk processing power" are the keys to success in both of these but speed has been de-emphasised in POE2.

In contrast, we have Expedition where one needs to approach the entire thing with all the due care and consideration needed when planting dozens of high explosives. Too much and you're cooked, too little and the earth-shattering kaboom does not improve your view of Venus (Marvin the Martian reference). So the expedition mechanic seems to be a better fit for considered meaningful engagement instead of the "rush rush, run and gun" style used in Breach and Delirium.

Perhaps for POE2, Breach acould be changed to a format where one needs to kill a given amount of mobs in a limited sized area and there is an increasing amount of breaches per breach level, even a mini-boss in these breaches at higher levels. No time limit but the breach does not close/end until the mobs in it are are killed. The breach mobs are fewer but stronger and require more tactical combat, more meaningful play.
Delirium could perhaps be like in POE1 if you choose the Atlas passive to have it not timeout if triggered but it will only clear once you've completed the map. Killed all the rares, Boss and or completed all the other mechanics. This could create an interesting effect when combined with other mechanics. The player then has a choice of doing certain things first then triggering Delirium or risking it all and trying to do it all: an Expedition, kill all rares and the boss and do a few breaches when Delirous.

Player XP
All the various threads about XP loss and the climb to level 100 are created by the cap on Map / Waystone levels.
To wit the XP gained from killing level 79/80 mobs falls off just as one gets past level 90.
So the best way to solve both issues is to increase the max waystone level to perhaps Tier 20.
This then disturbs the levels of the Pinnacle content requiring that they also be pushed up to accommodate the increased player power and of course the gear / mod levels would need a new Tier too.
Perhaps even a 5th Ascendency level be available.

But none of this sounds like a bad idea to me.
I don't think it's a bad thing to be able to shift the Pinnacle content upwards to make it more challenging given that there are builds which are surpassing the present limits of Pinnacle content.
So instead of nerfing player power, which nobody is fond of, increase the heights of the Pinnacle content?
Build it and they will come. And lo they shall complain about climbing it, all the way up, but climb it they shall.

So if you're still awake at this point, I thank you for enduring my prose and I wish you well.

Looking forward to POE1 3.26.