🛠️ Feedback: Campaign Is Excellent, Endgame Lacks Pull, and Clarity Needs Work

Hi GGG team and fellow exiles,

First off—huge congratulations on the state of Path of Exile 2 so far. The campaign is polished, fun to play, and offers a solid progression curve that respects both build variety and player agency. It’s the best campaign experience you’ve delivered to date.

That said, after investing significant time into both campaign and endgame content, I wanted to share some feedback that speaks to player experience, long-term retention, and game clarity. I hope this perspective can offer value across design, UX, and gameplay teams.
✅ What’s Working Well

Campaign pacing feels strong — it rewards build knowledge and creative pathing without punishing experimentation.

Drop moments during leveling feel great — getting that one powerful item that shapes your journey is incredibly satisfying.

Combat has flashes of brilliance — especially when it forces you to think, time, and react (more on this below).

❌ What Needs Improvement
🧭 1. Endgame Lacks Clear Progression Incentive

Despite having a strong character, I haven’t felt compelled to chase pinnacle bosses. Why?

The Atlas UI/UX feels like a grind treadmill, not a journey.

There’s too much decision-making upfront, followed by long stretches of content that don’t feel like progress.

There are few short-term goals that help players understand how close they are to big milestones.

The experience flattens into play maps, get loot, repeat—without a sense of narrative or escalating danger.

✅ Suggestion: Build systems that telegraph progression visually or narratively. Let each region feel like it’s ramping toward something. A sense of preparation for something greater is key to long-term motivation.
⚔️ 2. Combat Doesn’t Always Reward Skilled Play

Great combat systems reward:

Prediction

Timing

Reaction

Too often, endgame combat boils down to:

Trash mobs that are brain-off.

Elite packs that suddenly one-shot you without clear warning.

Doorways, indoor spaces, or trees that block vision and punish curiosity with instant death.

✅ Suggestion: Replace reliance on reading tiny modifiers with visual telegraphs, aura effects, or color-coded danger cues. Extra-fast mobs already feel dangerous by design—you can see and react. That model works.

If we can't see danger coming, we're not being tested—we're just being punished.
🌲 3. Terrain & Visibility Are Actively Dangerous

Indoor areas, terrain props, and narrow spaces often obscure enemies entirely. Walking through a doorway frequently means death before you even see what you’re fighting.

✅ Suggestion: Either reduce terrain density in these areas or ensure enemies telegraph their presence before line of sight is broken. If the cost of visibility is death, players will naturally disengage from exploring.
💰 4. Loot Feels Great—Until It Doesn’t

Campaign and early endgame loot pacing is solid. But once you're deep in the endgame:

Your stash fills with genuinely great but unsellable items.

There’s no good way to extract value from mid-tier rares with strong individual mods.

The pressure to hoard and expand stash tabs becomes too high just to preserve theoretical value.

Yes, stash tab monetization is part of the model. That’s understood. But the value loss here creates long-term burnout.

✅ Suggestion: Introduce systems that allow:

Salvaging modifiers or implicit values

Vendoring mid-tier rares for meaningful currency

Tagging and organizing loot in ways that support value retention

Respecting the player’s time and loot value builds long-term trust and engagement.
TL;DR

Campaign is excellent and deserves praise.

Endgame lacks motivation and clarity; Atlas UI and pacing feel grindy without direction.

Combat needs better danger telegraphing—reward timing and reaction, not just build power.

Visual clarity and terrain must be improved to support fair fights.

Loot systems need value extraction options to reduce hoarding fatigue.

I love this game. I want to push further into the endgame. But I need the game to meet me halfway—with better clarity, better pacing, and more meaningful feedback loops.

Thanks for reading, and for continuing to involve the community in shaping the future of PoE2.

– A longtime player and fan

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coolhandlukethedukeofnukes#2731 wrote:

Hi GGG team and fellow exiles,

First off—huge congratulations on the state of Path of Exile 2 so far. The campaign is polished, fun to play, and offers a solid progression curve that respects both build variety and player agency. It’s the best campaign experience you’ve delivered to date.


⚔️ 2. Combat Doesn’t Always Reward Skilled Play

Great combat systems reward:

Prediction

Timing

Reaction

Too often, endgame combat boils down to:

Trash mobs that are brain-off.

Elite packs that suddenly one-shot you without clear warning.

Doorways, indoor spaces, or trees that block vision and punish curiosity

– A longtime player and fan

True, the campaign was fun and I am looking forward to play the rest of it.

It is also true that the bottleneck in this game is not skill, but abusing unbalanced skills and bugs.

Agreed on many points, and I appreciate your take.

I do think you're right that some of the current strongest builds rely on either overtuned skills or unintended synergies (bugs or borderline exploits), and that's definitely something that can create the illusion that skill expression doesn't matter. But from what we've seen, I genuinely believe GGG is very aware of the current imbalance and is committed to tackling skill viability and outliers throughout the Early Access cycle.

They’ve already made it clear that balance will be ongoing—not something they pretend to get perfect upfront—and honestly, I think that’s the right call. It’s part of the development model they've chosen, and I respect it. Trying to balance hundreds of interactions perfectly in private testing would just slow development down to a crawl.

And to your point about bugs: yeah, there have been a few, like the Energy Shield amulet interaction, but in general GGG seems to be classifying these things sensibly—fixing unintended abuse cases while still keeping room for creative build expression. I think they’re walking the right line there: encourage freedom and diversity, then prune back the truly broken stuff once enough data comes in.

On the role of the player in Early Access…

I also think it’s important to manage expectations. Buying into Early Access is basically opting into a live testing role. This isn’t a finished product, and frankly, it’s not meant to be yet. If someone’s showing up expecting polish and perfection, they're setting themselves up for disappointment. This is the double-edged sword of open development—transparency builds trust, but also invites scrutiny.

That said, I’m fine with this trade-off because it makes my feedback feel meaningful. Unlike vaporware projects or endlessly delayed MMOs, PoE2 feels very real and attainable. You can see the core pillars are there—it’s just a matter of iteration now.

And yeah, I think the community is split right now.

There’s a clear divide between players who want PoE2 to be more like PoE1—stat-driven, optimization-heavy, number-first—and those who are here for the action RPG, skill-based, reactive combat experience. Personally, I’m in the latter group. The more the game rewards moment-to-moment decision making, not just gear and passive tree efficiency, the more it stands out in a sea of stat-checking games.

I don’t think the studio needs to pick one side entirely—but I do hope they continue pushing into meaningful combat interactions. A great example is that Cemetery enemies (I think it's the Death Knight?) who reflects your projectiles. That fight made me stop, think, and change my approach, which is exactly what combat should ask of you. I'd love to see more enemies that force tactical adaptation, not just tankiness checks.

Final thought: GGG has the tools.

We’ve seen what they're capable of. The foundation of PoE2 is strong. What they need most now is time, data, and community feedback with the right framing. I just hope they don't over-index on only the loudest voices in the content creator space—especially if those voices are locked into PoE1 expectations. There's a real opportunity to evolve the ARPG genre here, not just repackage it.

Thanks for the thoughtful comment—appreciate the discussion.