Last 0.3 Feedback before going into 0.4

Greetings everyone.

I originally wrote an extensive list of feedback shortly after 0.3, but with substantial endgame patches and Hotfixes arriving, i always delayed posting it. Considering 0.4 arrives tomorrow, i considered any further Feedback on 0.3 moot. In the end i wanted to post it anyway now, i wrote it already after all. I deleted the parts that were already adressed. Its overly long anyway.



I. Leveling and Campaign

Act 1 is still amazing and holds up after many reruns, the only exception here is freythorn. Freythorn generally has an awful layout to navigate, the height difference does not work well with the camera and its easy to wander around wasting time, unless u find the main altar first and can use the energy strings - it disrupts the game flow way too much. Either reducing the area, slightly widenening the paths or having less elevation changes would all be very beneficial.

Act 2 is great. Pre 0.3 it was definitely my favorite and i still love sanctum/sekhemas. Only gripe would be the doors in spires of deshar as the click interaction is very unreliable and frustrating at times. Its easy to not hit the door interaction properly and/or have issues with the collision. (Clipping into/above the door on dodgeroll)

Act 3 is the biggest pain point still. It is still a bit too long and feels tedious despite the "campaign improvements". Ultimatum still is absolutely unenjoyable, while also being a huge risk for slightly weaker melee characters. Overall i have started to really resent Act3.
Venom crypts has a similar issue as freythorn, as u wander around in it for seemingly way too long for a neglible mandatory reward, without any payoff/boss of its own. Always thought that Snake Queen Kabala was supposed to be a boss here.
Azak bog is not great, but the size reduction helped slightly, and knowing the layout for the league makes it far better.
Matlan waterways is still not enjoyable, it feels too long by 25% and theres still 2-3 too many levers.
Jiquanis machinarium and sanctum should be 1 zone, but at least can be rather quickly navigated later on.
In general Act3 feels bloated/overloaded with multiple instances of 2 zones having the same concept, making it a drag (Infested barrens+jungle ruins / Machinarium + Jiq Sanctum / Azak bog + freythorn / Drowned city + apex of filth / utzaal + aggorat / black chambers + molten vault + temple of kopec)

I fully understand why this is the case, design wise and what concept is being tried here, but the zones are not distinct enough, or have individual highlights to make it enjoyable and create a constant feeling of repetition on top of being the longest act in general. Act3 almost takes me as long as Act1+2 combined, and even Act4 on top for later runs. It just feels unfinished, unrewarding and repetitive.

Act 4 of the campaign:
The first playthrough of it was amazing, second playthrough substantially faster and still enjoyable. Third playthrough even more so. This impression kept up the entire time. Act 4 provided something to look forward to after suffering through Act 3. Im am very happy with it, and its my favorite part of the campaign so far.
The only issue are the final two areas (karui village) which has a horrendous layout, is annoying to navigate, the huts obstruct vision often too much, and it is VERY samey in enviromental design. It kind of suffers from the same issue described above about Act 3 about 2 huge areas having a similar concept. The map version of the second half is actually very good, and i would be happy with that being the campaign layout too.
The new monster types of Act 4 are great - although turtles and ToTa are very janky to fight as melee

The introduction of map mechanics in Act 4 is very well implemented and feels very natural.


The interludes:
When they got announced, i was already very on board with them, as in my previous feedback post i hoped for something similar. I knew they were gonna be nice, but i didnt expect them to like this much, especially Interlude 2 is absolutely amazing to me. Though the interludes seem to have a theme of gank bosses, and overdo this gimmick a bit too often for my liking.

Interlude 1 is the weakest in my opinion, and feels the most "tacked on" out of the three. It has some cool visuals, but the zone progression does not feel great. Blackwood feels crammed in and not natural in the progression.

Interlude 2 is absolutely amazing, it is visually interesting and distinct, while being very similar to some Act 2 zones, it has its own vibe and the zones flow so well into each other. To me it stands on par with Act1,2 and 4 on its own. The side areas and the boss placements are great and flow so well. While Khari Crossing is a bit big, this makes the zone very unique, and its easy to navigate. Interlude 2 feels very polished and actually more like cut content instead of remixed content like the others. I honestly wish we could keep this one somehow. The whole setting and the azmadi boss are peak, and the suspense buildup for it are enjoyable. Also love the return of asala.

Interlude 3 is very "ok". It has some of the cooler zones and concepts in it, but somehow feels bland until the ravine. It is very enjoyable to run every time though. The final boss ending is very anticlimatic though, and feels weird - also them bugging out after "forfeiting" and going for a sucker punch almost killed me twice


II. 0.3 Additions
1. Sprinting:
I was sceptical at first about sprinting, but its implemention, the risk/reward consideration and how it weaves into general gameplay are amazing. At first it feels weird and a bit janky, but its very controllable after some time. Especially Act 1 and 2 benefit the most. Funnily enough, Act 3 was the one that needed more speed the most, but its not viable there, be it from ground clutter, constant obstruction factors or just density of monster, many having ranged attacks. I do like it a lot though, it just shows that the issues of Act 3 need a different solution.

2. Loot:
The improvement of currency drops was a huge difference. Especially abyss (with its guaranteed drops in campaign but in general too) boost that impression by double at least. The Jewel rng/weighting feels a bit too favourable now. Whereas in 0.1 and 0.2 good jewels were hard to come by (especially some combinations), in 0.3 they felt far too common. Artificer droprate is a bit "too" good now, so good that it feels meaningless to even have them in the first place.
Gearing up was honestly a little bit too easy now, making a lot of early content trivial very quickly, even more so considering how strong crafting is later on.

3. Abyss:
I do love the reworked abyss, i liked it in PoE1 before, so i was surprised to see it improved to such a degree. Its far bigger in scope than i initially thought and every part of it is good, except some of the abyss modifiers of rare monsters (mostly a melee issue). The Abyss depths are a good disruption and highlight to go down to. The rewards are nice, the interaction of wisps going down the depth is great and rogue exiles getting turned is amazing to have happen naturally. (although prone to bugs at times) The sound design is absolutely stellar, and the sound of the monsters crawling out suits it perfectly.

4. Mapping:
Most of the new maps are very good. I did expect the "simpleton maps" to be a bit more simple still, but i will take it.
I was never a tower hater, i only wanted them to be rarer still and never overlap while being stronger and not visible before running adjacent maps. The solution now is serviceable but not perfect IMO.

Trial of Chaos
ToC would improve a lot if picking the modifiers for it would influnce what boss monsters u will encounter. Could visually/color code it too. F.e. picking 2x blue would result in chimera in next boss fight. A little bit of player agency is sorely needed. I do understand the theme of "trial of CHAOS" but its just not fun as is.

Wisps:
Wisps are sadly still very annoying to follow around. On a good build that kills monsters too fast, the wisp may never reach a destination. It suffers heavily from movement speed dismatch. It also still does not feel rewarding to do. It is not visually appealing or noticeable really when possessing a mob in all the chaos. It should at least increase monster size and maybe a ground aura/ring like poe1 strongbox monsters, as it is very easy to lack track of.
The interval/cooldowns between the skill activation is a bit too short too.

Support Gem tiering:
I was not happy with it at first, as it adds a bit too much bloat and clutter, and leftover lower level gems that are semi useless. The twists of most of the highest level gems make up for it, as they provide plenty of interesting options.

Lineage gems:
Underwhelming. Except for a few exceptions they are not interesting or build changing, and many being regular, common drops contribute to that impression.

Async Trade:
Probably the best addition. I always preferred SSF, but this made trade enjoyable for me. I love the utility, while keeping the aspect of visiting player hideouts. It also increases player interaction to a degree, as i found myself going to a hideout with the owner present and just starting to chat while browsing their other wares. It feels less restrictive and forced than old trade. The feeling of coming back from a map, and seeing multiple people in your hideout browsing or chatting is amazing too. And on top the feeling of logging in the next day and seeing all the currency you gained over night.

It is more reliable, quicker, offers more freedom and has a higher connex of choice-result when searching for items. It also lessens the burden of interrupting gameplay while mapping.
In general its just a huge benefit and probably the biggest improvement to general endgame play possible. The only request i would have is being able to favorite items both on currency exchange and the marketplace.

Skill tree additions:
There are quite a few welcome additions, and i like the new density especially in the INT section. That being said, most of them are not that interesting. In all builds i played except crit focused builds, there were noteable pathing changes and builds seem to be more dense/tighter. The need to path further for good nodes lessened. Overall i am still not happy with though. There have been some major improvements in it but whats mostly missing are options to individualise (keystones, jewels) beyond the generic "increased damage"

Build diversity:
Build diversity has slightly improved, but its not enough for the impression to change. There are too many restrictions and many interactions are a bit lackluster. There are not enough mechanics that fundamentally change skills or gameplay, and many playstyles pigeonhole the player too much, due to the multitude of restrictions.
I understand the push and idea behind weapon requirements for class identity, but it restricts the overall pool of options and choice way too hard as we have too few skill gems as of now. The weapon set swap change helped lessen the burden of the weapon requirements though, but i actually liked the weight of the swap before.

In general the class fantasies are not fleshed out enough on their own to warrant the strict focus on weapon requirements. Every single archetype/fantasy just has too little expression and too few skills to actually blossom. Other weapon skills that would fit a class fantasy or have significant overlap are withheld. Thus the frame is decided for the player while being too narrow. What is sorely needed is a few simple base skills that are shared across multiple weapons where suitable, and every weapon type having more of their own skills too.

Infusions are cool in concept, and the fact that they change the skills visually and mechanically is very very cool to me. While collecting infusions is annoying, and especially lackluster in early game, there is potential here.

I do think with the meta being what it was in 0.3, it wouldve been a good decision to walk back some nerfs from 0.2. Its mindboggling that deadeye was not nerfed prelaunch, as the hype cycle a week before showed ample reason to do so, and it soured the balance impression for many people as they were desperate for a strong league start.

I have run close to 20 builds in total, and they all very mostly viable with slight differences, as most power came from gear. Deadeye was the biggest exception with a huge difference to even the second strongest, that in turn had a huge gap to the other builds. I do think it was one of the better patches for experimentation, although most builds ended up in the same things to make them ramp. Many archetypes only got 1 or 2 ways to boost their build, creating a very narrow impression.

Hollow palm is cool, and i am happy with it. Wouldve been cool to have an accompanying martial artist ascendancy though. I do think the giants blood nerf was good and deserved. It furthers the fantasy of sacrificing for damage.
Deflection is also implemented in a good way. The armor change is great too, especially elemental damage taken. Mana stacking is not very rewarding anymore. Maximum level/cutoff for curse skills is extremely annoying and basically ruins some builds early on.

My biggest issue currently is Glory. I absolutely loathe glory. From its generation, restriction on skills and how it dictates gameplay flow / how your fights are supposed to go. It feels like im forced to play a certain way just to incorporate a skill into a build, locking away said skills. The fantasy of "ultimate skill" is not done justice, as some Skills are more suitable as opener skill for example.

Spear of solaris especially is my biggest issue. I love it visually and conceptually, and really want to make it work, but its so underwhelmingly weak, annoying yet tricky to scale, and has low uptime. The fact that its glory generation scaled off of monsters stunned, also heavily clashed with the elemental spear skill set. Going for any fire theme immediately diminishes the uptime for the skill. It is yet to be seen if the changes alleviate this. Those do not suit the fantasy that spear of solaris offers.

III. Requests and Suggestions

If weapon restrictions are not liftable, please consider adding "universal skills" that are useable for multiple weapons, suit multiple class fantasies and are very simple in execution.

Jump skills, throwing weapons, dodge skills and charge generation skills should generally more open for multiple weapons, as it shapes playstyle and build diversity. Especially charge generation being locked to certain weapons or certain uniques is incredibly restrictive.
I fully understand this damages the weapon identity to an extent (f.e. spears being the mobile choice) but this isnt the case anymore already with seamless weapon swaps (having a spear in offhand only for movement, very limiting too)

Some misc. suggestions
-Strongboxes: Clicking close but minimally off of the crafting options should not automatically activate the strongbox, just invalidate the click until its a clearer decision to activate the box "naked". Activating the box because you are 1-2 pixels off feels very stupid.
-Ritual mobs should have more spawn points, and spawning "inside" the player should be disabled by default. Monsters spawning in the player, immediately pushing the character or disabling normal movement feels jarring. It would be fine to give the ritual mobs slightly increased toughtness that diminishes after a second or so of lifetime.
-Some maps are way too dark (flotsam, trenches) and some too bright (untainted paradise)
-Atlas passive to influence the speed of monsters spawning in strongboxes, and also a sort of selector for less monsters, more rare vs more monsters of random rarity. Also an option to spawn monsters of other league/map mechanics like breach monsters or abyss monsters. A passive to have a chance of the monsters counting as "natural monsters"
-Atlas passive for breach that adjusts densite and monster type too.
-Atlas passive for delirium where killing a map boss has a chance to spawn kosis/omnipobia
-Atlas passive similarily for killing a map boss having the chance of spawning a scourge boss
-Atlas passive for ritual, where u could turn off a specific modifier for -30% tribute gain
-Atlas passive for wisps that provide a chance for the wisp to leave the monster after its death to hop onto the next one. Also an option for increased reward or additional wisp when possessing. Special passive that provides the chance for the wisp after the monsters death to split into 3 smaller wisps that aim for different rares.

-The option for bosses being "possessed" by a map mechanic, boosting them but giving a f.e. a 15% chance of opening or dropping a portal to a midgame boss.
Minor variants of pinnacles like (king in the mist themed, takes place in an
arena like the kitm maze tile set), where the general fight could be something like 3 enemies of cultist variant. 1x is a debuffing enemy 1x that actually fights who is slow and a buff enemy that boosts the figher. The Buffer is faster and has avoidance behaviour to keep the distance. Both the debuffer and buffer apply their skills depending on where the fighter is in the arena.
Breach could have a minor breachlord variant (a fragment of xesht), Expedition a lieutenant of sorts, that is just a better execution of the rare monsters. Wisps one of the amped up wildwood monsters.
-Still would love the previously brought up idea of the "taintstones" to change up a single map at will, to either terraform or adjust the map type.

If anyone made it this far, thank you and have a great day.

the person that did layouts is going for rp/atmosphere above all, they did however throw us a bone in most cases and made the layouts readable, you can skip everything that you aren't interested in, see below.

"

urxtyr#3521 wrote:

Act 1

follow outer edge, works on 9/10 layouts.

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urxtyr#3521 wrote:

Act 2

The Lost City, Buried Shrines also has a door problem.

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urxtyr#3521 wrote:

Act 3

Sandswept Marsh (33): full_explore (marsh) -> PoI#1/Boss >> follow edge -> PoI#2/Exit
Jungle Ruins (34): follow edge -> PoI x2/WP/Exit x2 >> cross (middle) -> Boss
The Venom Crypts (35): follow edge (outer -> inner) -> Quest Item
Infested Barrens (35): follow edge -> PoI/WP/Exit x2
The Azak Bog (36): follow edge -> end >> loop (center -> other edge) -> Boss
Chimeral Wetlands (36): follow edge -> PoI x2/Exit x2
Jiquani's Machinarium (37): cross (yolo) -> Quest Item x2/Boss/Exit
Jiquani's Sanctum (38): explore/reset (u-shape) -> Quest Item x2/Generator x2 -> Boss
The Temple of Chaos (38): Trial of Chaos
The Matlan Waterways (39): linear-ish -> Treasure -> Canal Lever
The Drowned City (40): follow edge (W -> E) -> Exit#1/Swarming Nest >> cross (N or E) -> Exit#1/Exit#2
The Molten Vault (41): linear-ish -> League Start Quest Item/Boss
Apex of Filth (41): follow edge -> PoI/Boss
Temple of Kopec (42): follow edge -> Stairs -> Stairs/Boss
Utzaal (43): cross (yolo) -> Boss (E) -> Exit (N or E)
Aggorat (44): follow edge -> Quest Item (Drop: Vaal Goliath)/Treasure/Exit
The Black Chambers (45): cross (yolo) -> Boss

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urxtyr#3521 wrote:

Act 4

Ngakanu (53): follow edge -> PoI/Exit
Heart of the Tribe (53): follow edge -> PoI -> Boss


i hope my notes are understandable and help out.

"

i hope my notes are understandable and help out.

They are, and i agree this helps. I do admit, just going by Time alone may not be the best quantifier for my point. For most of them i already have a path figured out, and i do think im fairly good at getting through them myself now. I did try to take some knowledge from our speedrunners.

To me this is a crutch though, and does not really remedy the issue itself imho. Especially Act3 still suffers from the double-zone repetition of themes/lack of flavour. Even if i get through one fairly quick, i still have to go through the same thing (mentally) again. Despite readable layouts, i think its fair to say Act 3 still is very bloated, and design wise there definitely is unneeded repetition/lack of content that warrants its length.

For example, my times for my last "fast" (random build, but leveling gear) runs are: Act1:42mins; Act2:1h15mins (total 2h); Act3:1h30mins (Total 3:32h). Despite that time Act3 not being that much longer, it overstayed its welcome.

Imo it all comes down to the simple impression that Act3 has not earned its length and size. Even if we get better at passing it by, it is not enjoyable and desperately needs some more refinement.

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urxtyr#3521 wrote:

i get where you're coming from bud, but think about it from a lore perspective, the area that act 3 takes place in was the hub of the vaal civilization afaik, it kinda has to be epic.

however, anything that isn't directly vaal could be trimmed for sure, spec zones like The Venom Crypts and The Matlan Waterways, i have no idea what the reasoning for those.