feedback for 0.4

act 1:
- i opened a chest and instantly died seemingly out of nowhere :(
later i saw some yellow explody shrooms placed near another chest. i assume that's what got me. not a fun experience.

- getting lost in the woods, having to backtrack and pretty much being forced to fully eplore and clear zones felt tedious and unrewarding.

- monster movement speed is still too high and it just feels bad to get chased down by 2 packs of monsters that move as fast as you do when sprinting

- the addition of magic and rare chests feels nice, seeing a yellow chest and knowing that you're guaranteed to get a rare from that is exciting

- zones are way too big, i dont want to play a hiking simulator


act 2:

- i actually had to google where to get the 2nd half of the medallion because i assumed it was stopping me from progressing.

- valley of the titans was a mess, running into 10 deadends and then backtracking felt awful.
once i finally killed the boss i tp'd out thinking i was done with the zone... but i wasn't so i had to go back and find 5 more deadends until finally finding the thing i was looking for.
i was considering to just alt + f4 right there and then and be done with this game.

- unlocking access to the trial of the sekhemeas was a mess, it was very unclear and unintuitive how and when you actually unlock access to the next thing in act2. having about 7 active quests on the right side of your screen didn't help either.
thankfully there's the indicators on the map where you should tp to.

- i had to run down the entire mines three times until i finally found the exit hidden in a little nook. haha funny design!!!
having to cluelessly wander through cleared zones to find 10 deadends and then finally a hidden exit made me feel like there was some sadistic zone designer watching me and laughing maliciously whenever i hit a dead end.

- the spring feels like a band-aid fix to the bad zone designs, it's clunky and impractical in all those narrow spaces since you can't help but run into walls because it makes you have a turn radius... WHY? not being able to properly control your character just isn't fun. having to doge roll to start sprinting is bad enough, the turn radius makes it worse and too top it off you get knocked down to almost certainly die when you get hit while sprinting...
seems like some sadistic joke to make fun of me.

- the hitboxes of monsters or of poison burst arrow feel to small, often missing enemies while clicking directly on them felt really bad.
having some accuracy on gear and even always picking dex on the passive tree didnt seem to solve the issue.

- i gambled 13k gold in a3 to not get a single rare item, or even upgrade at all. (even after augmenting the magic items)
needless to say that that felt bad

- i eventually finished a3 but couldn't bring myself to log in again the next day even tough i would have liked to see the new a4.

- the campaign is just TEDIOUS and it feels like i'm being mocked and made fun of while playing it. the countless deadends and mazes just made this a horrible experience.

- the sprint felt nice at first but then realizing how clunky it is and the downsides of using it made it evident that none of the issues of having zones that are too big and empty were actually addressed.

- having monsters that just run you down, swarm you and make you stuck can easily be solved by looking at the triangle of: monster damage, monster movement speed and monster tankiness.
just lower the speed and add density and it would make for a much better experience.
or make fast monsters that aren't as tanky.
or make tanky fast monsters that don't 3-shot you and deal less damage instead.
but having to constantly fight monsters that have all 3 stats maxed out is TEDIOUS and EXHAUSTING

i told myself that the abyss crafting would make this game enjoyable to me, but i was wrong. none of the issues that already made the game unfun at release, 1 year ago, were addressed.

it makes me very sad to see that poe1 is being completely neglected for this.

i might check poe2 out again in another year but judging by how this went probably not.

the campaign isn't fun and the replayability is even worse than that of poe1.
steamcharts show that each patch fewer players are returning.
just start allocating adequate resources to poe1 again.
poe1 had a consistently growing playerbase until you started neglecting it for poe2.

yours truly, a concerned player