QOL: items dropping identified

I’d like to share feedback on a mechanic that feels outdated: items dropping unidentified. I understand this system is inspired by Diablo 1 and 2, which has influenced Path of Exile. While it adds a layer of anticipation, it also creates unnecessary friction in gameplay. Picking up every magic and or rare item, buying Wisdom Scrolls, identifying them, and then discarding most because they don’t fit my build or aren’t trade-worthy is time-consuming and disrupts the flow of the game.

Making items drop identified would improve the experience in several ways:

- Better time Looting: Players could quickly hover over and assess gear for their build or trade value without the extra step of identification, reducing inventory clutter and time spent managing loot.

- Improve Engagement: Spotting usable or valuable items on the ground would make looting more exciting, encouraging organic gear discovery rather than reliance on trading or crafting.

I recognize that this change could make gearing easier, potentially altering the game’s challenging feel, which GGG values. However, I believe PoE 2’s difficulty should stem from mastering build synergy—optimizing the Passive Skill Tree, selecting effective skill gem combinations, and crafting or recombinating gear with ideal bases—rather than the repetitive task of identifying items. A single decent item shouldn’t trivialize content; the game’s high ceiling requires a complete package of buildcrafting, not just luck with drops. Identified drops would simply make the process of finding those building blocks more enjoyable.

If removing unidentified drops entirely feels too drastic, perhaps consider alternatives like:

- A toggleable option for identified drops, allowing players to choose their preferred experience.

- Having certain items (high-level rares or uniques) drop identified.

As the game is currently in early access it is the perfect time and place to test such changes to see if this change would be an improvement to the game and feel of gear progression.

No.

"- Having certain items (high-level rares or uniques) drop identified"

Loot filter already high light high tiers item potential and hide bad rares in strict / very strict.

Asking to remove unidentified items in a ARPG is like asking to remove snowball in MOBAS. It's the core design of the genre itself.

Yeah, terrible idea, unless they'll add a loot filter option to filter by affix / affix tier. However it would take a looong time to prepare a filter like that.

In fact, there's a strongbox mod that drops identified items - I HATE THAT MOD! :)

It seems like you're still in the process of realizing the amount of items that drop at endgame. Not filtering most of them is madness, and you can only realistically filter them if they're unid.

"- A toggleable option for identified drops, allowing players to choose their preferred experience."

That would be only sensible solution I guess...

How are unidentified items a core design, they add nothing but downsides.
the only "positive" aspect would be the "enjoyment" you could get from identifying a good item, but for that you need to perform way to many steps to see if a good items has dropped.

Your reasoning here is that you just need to be proficient in setting up a 3rd party tool to be able to know which items on the ground are worth identifying.
> That sounds a lot worse than being able to hover over an item to see which modifiers it has instead of needing to identify the item.

loot filter is like core of the game, i don't consider it as third party tool since it's just a txt you paste in your game folder, and not a site / app you have to run aside. (and it's simple to use)

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KubaLy#4534 wrote:

Yeah, terrible idea, unless they'll add a loot filter option to filter by affix / affix tier. However it would take a looong time to prepare a filter like that.

In fact, there's a strongbox mod that drops identified items - I HATE THAT MOD! :)

It seems like you're still in the process of realizing the amount of items that drop at endgame. Not filtering most of them is madness, and you can only realistically filter them if they're unid.

"- A toggleable option for identified drops, allowing players to choose their preferred experience."

That would be only sensible solution I guess...

For endgame a strict or custom very strict filter is indeed necessary but for the whole progress up too endgame where gear pieces are swapped every few levels it would be a lot more helpful.

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MykroPsykoz#6286 wrote:

loot filter is like core of the game, i don't consider it as third party tool since it's just a txt you paste in your game folder, and not a site / app you have to run aside. (and it's simple to use)

you are completely correct in that the loot filter is a core part of the game and i'm not suggesting that it should be removed.

The only part that is a waste of time is the need to identify an item with a wisdom scroll just to either sell it for gold, dismantle for a regal shard or just dropping it back on the ground. you can still do all that without the need to us a wisdom scroll on it.

Well, you also can pick some item, and just ignore loot when you are full if you are lazy. I did that for a long time.