Looking for fair and honest oppinions on Current state of game

I have played 0.1 and 0.2 quite a bit, and always felt the game in general to be a bit too slow for my taste. Especially the flow of progression in early 'seasons' was, for my taste, just to sluggish and i am not the biggest fan of having to try bosses 15 times and grind for hours to be able to get past certain points.
I am probably not a 'casual', but i simply work 40 hours+ a week and have other things that take my time away, so i barely have one, max 2 hours a day for gaming, and i also play other games.

Now, im debating if i should give 0.3 a try, but i did read some concerning info that for a lot of builds the killspeed is extremely slow and that we are back to white mobs being hp sponges.

Dont get me wrong, i love POE in general, i just want to know if it is worth it to sink the little time i have into it.

Honest opinion -> avoid and wait


.3 Feels like ggg had the thought "if they want to be faster we will make the game slower". Act 4 feels like an absolute slog and everything feels deliberate to slow you down, multiple classes are pigeoned holed into a few decent builds, anything outside the meta and you won't have fun.


Sprints cool but if you have a unstable connection (mine only fluctuates 10-20ms) your character will constantly try and sprint when you dodge, the server seems to default to you always wanting to sprint (it's weird). Plus all the rubbering banding/broken animations.


All in all honestly i think this is the worst EA launch so far, the amount of issues still present, the new issues added and a wonky sprint thats tied to dodge :s.

This game is the opposite of respecting your time.

Poe has been generally moving away from giving player power from passive tree/ gems to items. Their logic is if you just hand the players power, they'll just quit the league after finishing their builds, and if they quit they will not be spending as much money on the game. So they have made it such that you have to spend many hours farming/crafting items or currency to purchase items. They had added layers and layers of rng in everything to make things take as much time as possible.

Poe2 is the most egregious example of this philosophy. The passive tree barely provides any player power, far less than poe1. The gems are far weaker than their counterparts in poe1 and have been nerfed every patch. "Crafting" in this game is basically gambling, with very little agency or determinism (at least poe1 still has decent amount of deterministic ways to make your items). All these systems are to ensure player spends as much time as possible in the game.

Fun is subjective, some people find the endgame to be the fun part, when your build works and feels good to play.

Others just want to finish the Campaign kind of like "Dark Souls" or "No rest for the wicked".

The game currently is trying to be that campaign for one type of player while also being a fun grind at end game.

Unfortunately I believe a lot of people play PoE for the end game when the build works/plays smoothly, those are the ones unhappy with the campaign.


For me it's not that the campaign is hard or boring, it's that almost all playstyles are boring to play through the campaign.

For example, a good, working build that is somewhat fast could make the campaign fun. A clunky, slow, not working build makes the campaign boring. In PoE 1, about 99% of all skills early game, works to get you through the campaign, some faster some slower, but none of them have requirements to use it's potential that is hard locked and balanced for that hard lock like we see in PoE 2. This makes many PoE2 skills unfun to play through the campaign.

Most melee builds currently are not working and feels bad to play through the campaign. There are a few that can take you through decently, but in comparison to ranged it's not even a contest (in terms of game play feel).


If they created a new league mode where you would start at lvl 64 with enough gold or some other currency to gamble for your first set of gear to go to white maps, and don't have to do the campaign, I'm pretty sure a lot of people would start from there and feel like it's the start of their game/journey.

Right now, we have to play boring not working builds through the campaign until we can get rid of the clunkiness using passives and skill gems that synergize.

After few month wanted test it again. 0.3 loading times, crashes etc. Minions are not playable.

The campaign is soooo sloooow and boring to progress.

This league they nerfed to the ground (basically deleted) the only shield builds i enjoyed playing on my warrior as a league start and there are no good skills to choose from that work as stand alone skills.

Campaign is super slow because devs force you to use COMBO skills without making all the skills required for that specific COMBO available at low levels.

Last league everyone played Lightning Spear as a one button build now everyone plays Lightning Arrow. This should be a red flag for the devs that people don't enjoy COMBOS.

COMBOS force you to sit still in a game with map layouts so massive that even if you attack on move mounted on a Rhoa it still takes hours to complete.

DEVS don't respect your time, they want you to play the game as slow as possible and they nerf to the ground everything that works as a stand alone skill.

What if...? What if PoE Deuce plays the way it does (slowly, so you spend more time accomplishing a given objective) and heats up your processor as has been reported because, in the background, it's using your computer to mine Bitcoin, or some such? Just spitballing, here. =0[.]o=

So i skipped last "league" bec. i thought it was not worth it at all.
Came back this league with great hope but well nah.

The campaign is still in a terrible state. It is long and zones are still too big. Even with sprint and added waystones to go from a to b all of this is not helping when you need 20 minutes to go from beginning to the end of the zone the first time you get there.

Thats just the campaign.
My bigger issue with the current state of poe 2 is that the skills all feel and play bland and boring. they wanna force combos upon us but they just are not working as they would like to.

At this point of writing if you look at poe ninja level 80+ its 61% deadeye 58% lightning arrow/rod

they made the same error this league as the last with lightning spear.

At this point i do not belive GGG is testing balance at all. Dont get me wrong it is a beta and they have better stuff to do especially with the 4 month cycle.

But if one class is chill 1-2 button build with a mount that just roams around killing bosses blindfolded having fun and the other classes feel like playing the piano but you have to pick glowing orbs up you cant see and do negative damage while doing so..... well all going to play the fun thing or quit playing.


i understand what GGG is going for but this is a arpg not a strategy game.

With that said the problem i see long therm is that they will force combining skills even more and more making each individual skill weaker itself and so killing off all 1-2 button builds.

One point a lot of ppl are making for a long time (myself included) in poe 1 is the stress on the hands. but poe 1 has 1 button builds. Now think about the stress for your hands if you have to piano skills like flasks in older poe 1 without automation.

poe 1 had the solution of 1 big key that presses all flasks or flask macros. but if you have to press skills in the right order at the right time you cant automate this. Well press F for your hands.


I wont even go in to Balance at all bec. this is a lost topic for now.


tldr. campaign still too long. play Lightning arrow/rod deadeye if you wanna have fun or wait until sombody figures out something new.

If you think it is an indie game that cost only $30 and have no replay value after finish campaign , then probably ok. (but no, Tencent is a big company)


But the game long be a game asking people to loyal and buy supporter pack, in return that have new league every 3 months

So that in current state, would you pay to buy a new pack for a "new" league which is Remastered Abyss? As well as Act 4?

People will move on to other game if Act 5 is still not yet release, and grind to end game still the same LONGGGG experience. While GGG may happy they already cash in the $30. As long as not finish the EA tag. They can forever no making this game F2P. Despite the game now 100% need you to buy point for Merchant tab anyway

GGG seems to be focusing on a more deliberate pace, which encourages more thoughtful gameplay, and I love it.
I never liked Path of Exile 1 is that matters.

Act 4 have been great, i really enjoyed the boss fights.

The new sprint mechanic also feels great but could need some tweaking.

Class balance could be better for sure, just don't listen to all the meta slaves, they will never enjoy the game.

Overall, this patch feels great so far, in my opinion.

It just seems like Path of Exile 1 players can't get over the fact that they have to use more than 1 button to play.