0.4 Realistic Feedback

I won't talk about what's not added, what's missing, what we were promised with 0.4, etc. Instead, I will focus on what you added, what the experience is like for solo play, and the current state of 0.4:


First, the reduction of average player crafting agency.
With the removal of homogenizing exaltation and coronation, we've seen a sharp decline in availability of more endgame items, and due to such, a drastic rise in early-league pricing.

I'm not sure whose decision it was to remove these as they were the 'average persons' way of crafting mid to good tier gear without forcing players into highly variance-driven, gambling-style crafting loops.

This aspect of the current vision does not align with the limited number of agency-driven systems available in 0.4. There are not enough systems available in the games current state for players having agency over their items.

0.3 was a step in the right direction, but as per usual as of late, it's 1 step forward, 3 steps back.

If these systems need reworking, that’s understandable, but removing them altogether while their long-term implementation is still being evaluated, despite the community enjoying, using, and relying on them for crafting agency, is an unreasonable stance that should be re-evaluated.


Next, the 'league mechanic'.
Excluding the various bugs and issues that are being addressed with the Temple of the Vaal, it does have its good points.

There is a refreshing take on PoE1's Vaal temple setup, and I can respect having some agency and more deterministic ways of getting the rooms you want.

Unfortunately, that's about it. Because if you want this to go 'core', you're going to need to:

- Clearly explain to new players how to prevent rooms from being destroyed, paths, how to level them up, how to preserve their states, etc.
- Buff the medallion rate
- Increase ways of stabilizing rooms.
- Provide ways to recycle or exchange unplaced rooms in hand.
- Strongly consider reworking some of the rooms rewards.

If you're beefing rooms up to t3, doing multiple runs to target those areas, they should match your effort to them.


In addition, we need to talk about the big "OoOoO Shiny!" feature you marketed in your trailer:

Limb replacement.

These are frankly cool as hell, and a really good way to introduce some power creep at minimal scale that doesn't turn you into a god, but the tradeoff, is that once you die without reviving, you lose every limb.

This encourages less slamming mods on maps so you have revives available (because setting that room up is a pain itself), and frankly, is too punishing for the amount of time invested into it.

In its current form, this penalty discourages engagement and would benefit from a mid-league adjustment or temporary mitigation.

Some band-aid fixes:

Potentially give it a "map over time" modifier.
Require the player to visit the room again in X amount of map runs / temple runs to maintain it as prosthetic maintenance.
Make it chance based (10% chance to lose ONE augmented limb.)


Literally any alternative you can think of is better than its current state.



Now onto the ascendancies and classes:

As for Druid, I have no input. If the Druid lovers are happy, I'm happy, but it does not interest me, so I skipped it and decided to go all in on Disciple of Varashta.

I absolutely love this ascendancy. It is an 'all-rounder', not overly powerful, but not underpowered by any means. It reminds me of early Scion, if I were to draw a comparison.

The djinns are great, though you may want to look into the single target aspect of Ruzhan. He needs some love.

As for me, I've been using it as a buffer/debuffer with Navira and Kelari with physical spells. Both are fantastic and honestly can be left as is, though a bit more love to Navira's bubble would be great (higher shield threshold OR mana regen).


Next: The abyss currency.
In 0.3, we could easily ctrl+click these into our Currency tab's free slots at the bottom. Now, because they have the 'ritual affinity', but the ritual stash doesn't have space for it, we have to manually drag and drop these in.

This needs to be reworked back to its' 0.3 state until you figure out where you want these to go. This is basic QA stuff that should have been looked at prior to launch.


Ending remarks:

There's really nothing new added for endgame (I know I said I wasn't going to talk about what wasn't added, but hear me out.)

Endgame currency farming is still "go all in on abyss", endgame unique farming is still "go all in on ritual."

I really do hope you revisit the atlas tree again and consider buffing up essences, strongboxes, wisps, etc. it looks like you were considering it since engineer orbs were dropping at the start. :^)


Thanks for reading.

+1 I agree!!!!

AGREE

1+

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pazoozuu#0640 wrote:

AGREE

<3

This is very well written and informative. I hope GGG sees this

Good for the players but bad for the “viSiOn”, I think Johnathan won’t approve that