We welcome First Impression posts! Please be nice to those posts.

Hello GGG. You asked for a first impression of a player, and I've given it a chewing on for about a week now so figured I'd comply.

Context, I dabbled in it to humor a few friends a few years ago, left, and got back into it a week or two ago to humor my brother. This time instead of just yoloing into it expecting it to wane off into obscurity again (as was common with the beforementioned friends), this time I went in trying to really learn the game itself and figure out what it's about.

I usually like to play either a high dps caster with one big AoE and one big single target spell, or something really tanky that can just wear stuff down at his leasure. Figured that with all the options available the game could cater to that somewhere.

I'm highly disappointed.

The game pace during the storyline is good, fair few skills overall feel pleasant at first but it very quickly becomes clear that you don't want us to use anything that renders the player stationary for more than a second or two or use a melee skill at all. That rules out half the skills available, which is ... I don't know nice words to say there.

Defensive investments also have proven to be practically pointless. Health and resistances, yes. But armor, evasion and energy shield might as well not be on the skill tree at all with how ineffective they are to add survivability to a character. Armor, evasion, fortify, endurance charges up, effort to prioritize health over damage output everywhere and 80% ele-res all and I still get regularly one-shotted by a freaking yellow mob and because of the heavy focus on defense couldn't actually out-dps yellow/boss health regen at times. Block I tried out too and it worked quite well but at the expense of functional damage output and health pool total, similar to evasion it's when-not-if it fails and sees you one-shot.

So with melee and stationary being off the list, and survivability being a dream, leaves damage output at a distance with a speedy character. And that too fails. Both two mage-builds (armageddon brand, hex blast witches and elemental strike hunter) just stranded by hitting the wall of a boss running up with assumedly +100% move speed and one-shot the idea of this working, ever.

Heck, I literally couldn't even hit fast creatures with armageddon brand even at +70% increased radius of effect as it darted out of the impact zone. And having it remain stationary by me not moving or trying to have a golem attract its attention resulted in both golem and me one-shotted.




Quite frankly, the game needs incredible amounts of revision. You've been stewing in a build-up of mistakes in design and it shows. Bluntly put, I mean something like doing all of these in one go:

- Triple the benefits of skills affecting armor, evasion and energy shield.
- Cut back monster hp scaling by 20%.
- Remove monster health regen entirely.
- Cut down the health pool of whatever those yellow mobs are in early maps to 20% of current value (I don't know how you could screw that up this badly).
- Really, and I mean really look at the damage output and actual mechanics of your attack skills to see if they actually work to put damage onto creatures at all.

And then test how that feels compared to whatever the current mess is to really get a reality check about how the solutions for some supposed problems have been worse than the problem you were trying to fix.





Before anyone says "Just fix your build bro", please go away and never talk to me again. That's like an economist saying that we should just stop all industry because investment is the only real way to earn money nowadays and the more people do it the more money is created. No, the game is borked, your opinion is invalid.

As is, I'm hitting walls hard to actually unlock anything. I'm not finding any gear that pushes me a map tier higher, I'm not unlocking crafting recipes, I'm still dabbling in the added content stuff but most of it murders my fps (I don't have an expensive gaming rig) below 1 so most of that is off the list too.

Crafting costs too much as I'm barely breaking even on maps, crafting options are limited as I don't have bench crafts that are actually helping me ahead and while I'm stubbornly going to try and specifically build a cyclone tank to survive a dabbling in delve, I don't have much hope of actually finding anything worthwhile there either.

This is my first ever post on GGG's forums. Like others here, I felt compelled to share feedback on the worst league I've ever encountered during my many, many years playing this game.

What sucks:
- Why nerf defense options in a game famous for its one shot player kills? Do you guys even play this game? We need MORE defenses, not less. The game is too difficult for people that don't spend all day on youtube watching obscure crafting videos.
- Archnemesis is the worst mechanic you have ever added. No, having ANOTHER source of one shots does not make the game more fun. All it does it drive players away. And you were already doing a fine job of that.
- We get it, the last league was loot mania and now that it is gone we are all depressed over the current starved for loot state of the game. And then you choose NOT to add Sentinel to the main game? Why, because people loved it? Because it was fun? Why do you guys hate fun? You know, maybe having MORE loot makes the game more fun.
- And there it is. I do not feel like GGG cares what we find fun. It feels like there is an arrogant and disconnected mentality at the top that chooses to die on the hill rather than care about player feedback and fun. You guys are going to kill this game at the rate you are going.
- Why nerf minions? That was your one way to introduce more casual players to the game and now it's another gear dependent mechanic, and they die all the time now. And don't get me started on yet ANOTHER specter nerf. Why nerf something that wasn't easy to use in the first place? Have YOU tried playing this archetype, with its' annoying mechanics around re-summoning them?
- Why ban players for buying currency when your game design encourages that route? We don't all have time to play 24/7.
- LoK is the worst league mechanic ever. Boring, slow, repetitive, unoriginal (another Alva... yay?), and worse of all extremely unrewarding. Why are you guys so obsessed with not rewarding players?

What's good:
- There are many alternative ARPGs to play, and like many Diablo 4 is starting to look REALLY good to me.

I do like the almost customer service tone you took on that answer. I will rebuttal with this, when u can literally pay to play POE and u can even if u want to admit it you can and kids do daily why would u think that anyone would have anything less than a crappy experience their first time in POE? The currency market is DEAD at best, this latest patch just finished putting the lid on the casket for the currency issues in POE. U have let the community diminish the value of the set currency values so badly they cannot be fixed not matter what u do besides a rewrite and u know it! adding leagues every 13 weeks doesn't fix the hoarding and website sellers from continually creating values on gear and currency that is not right ok or even standard by the games original design and yet GGG does nothing to remedy it but " STash Tab Sales" cmon.......

just a humble players opinion

I never complain about a league even when it's really bad but this league I have to say it's been the worst experience I ever had.

First off the currency changes.

Divine orbs.
Have you honestly realised how reliant people were on having them more commonly in the first. In terms they had to be used multiple times and sometimes this meant a piece of gear near needed evened out stats and need to use many yet somehow this seemed like the currency that needed to be more rare. Like what was that even.

Also unlike Exalted orbs that had cards and shards and multiple alternatives to get them Divine orbs now absolutely now. What a really terrible decision at that your drop rates completely or horrendous and you continued to ignore the community about the issues. I'll come back to drop rates.

Exalted orbs.
This currency was more correct being the more rare currency. It's the make or break it currency and tremendously boosted your gear and was extra essentially. Even then Exalted orbs had more reasonable ways to obtain them then Divine orbs currently have.

Drop rates.
you know almost every league I made a few chaos orbs a map generally to get by and eventually progress. However I think I've only seen like 10 chaos orb drops this entire league after doing hundreds of maps. Also the economy is terrible and is lacking way to much. I don't think you guys get how much of a fail the new loot system works. I've got literally every node into increasing drop rates and still that's almost a big fat 0 for anything dropping that'll support me progressing. Thanks to make the game pretty much feel like work to get not even peanuts it's looking grim for that 30 divine orb starter build that generally is nothing near that. In terms most the player base dropped this league due to the poor choices for the league. i think you guys at GGG need to realize if it's not broken don't try to fix. Often you guys just end up breaking it and messing up everything. No one wants white and yellow maps to be another campaign. They want to progress to red maps and work on the real endgame -the endgame bosses and high budget builds and extremely rare items. Most likely with the way things are now most people will never get that far and eventually get tired of the enjoyment of the game and complete drop it. Continue to bring the players down and they likely will drop this game altogether.

As for League mechanics. Well it's not that fun. To be fair I'd just rather do delve with what it is to us. It's like even kind of like doing Alva. It's not very unique and interesting mmechanic to be fair and honestly the map looks pretty boring visually compared to pretty much anything else in the game. I feel however that the amulet is a better version of scourge modifiers though honestly I preferred scourge content as the Tier 10 tainted maps were fun and unique and currency was enjoyable. I don't feel that the this leagues content is interesting. I feel like I've done everything it offers forever now. I also feel the bosses on it are not that fun and interesting either. They're pretty boring.

About Beyond. Honestly I think I preferred Beyond over Scourge though Scourge mobs have interesting visuals. I also don't feel the Scourge mobs even feel rewarding like previous Beyond but that's really just your messed up loot system you guys thought was an improvement I bet.

You guys btw never considered to deal with trade and how it remains a place where people advertise loot but never sell it. You guys need to find a way to push players not to just gloat about their items in trade and attempt to bring the market done by keeping their items held their. Those items should go down when they are bugged a lot as they should've been selling it and that's what trade is for. To by and sell not manipulate the market and gloat about rare items.

Got some new player impression feedback!

First time finished campaign in previous league, but didn't continue since this league was coming, and necromancer became kinda boring once I've figured out for SRS build you're supposed to have other minions summoned aswell ^_^

Started playing at current league launch as bane occultist, but gear was quite scarce compared to necromancer playthrough (really struggled with resist caps, which wasn't a problem before); then saw a new lightning conduit starting build which looked both more active (2 button setup) and more relaxed (don't have to target every stray enemy with bane click) and decided to try that instead.

Currently lvl 89 and doing red maps (PoB says stats are: 1.2m dps and 30k effective hp), my impressions are:

gameplay
Complexity of the game and variety of content are the main reasons I've played the game so much (100 hours atm). Gameplay of LC is something I also vastly prefer to my previous builds, so kinda enjoying it!

difficulty
Yellow mobs felt very overtuned until I bought gear with 90+ suppression and/or patches.
Right now they're mostly fine outside of some high-level lake encounters and occasional random oneshots-and-hard-to-kill, the latter ones don't feel good to encounter for two reasons:
- first is I feel like more often than not they don't even drop anything so killing em feels pointless;
- and second reason is unlike actual bosses who have some mechanics, telegraphed attacks and whatnot, these ones usually just do something like charge directly at you and you die in their aura in about 1s, so I kill em by placing storm brand and run around while they die, preferably offscreen - not exactly a fun challenge.

But, again, right now it feels like these are far and few in-between, with vast majority of yellow mobs feeling completely fine - just something to look out for while killing packs, not murdering machines like they felt before.

progression
Going through atlas is what I've enjoyed the most, though in terms of average rewards I felt like doing heist is better than any white/yellow map, and in terms of where vast majority of my wealth came from: 4 divines total, half from heist, half from white maps; dropped from yellow mobs that I oneshotted, who, as I understand, had specific modifier - so atm I feel like the best option for me to buy doryani upgrade would be swapping to +item rarity gear and just blitzing through white maps searching for these yellow mobs, which, honestly, sounds very boring.

crafting
As I understood it, outside of bench enchants and some other options, the majority of crafting is playing roulette with very low odds - learning this triggered my gacha games ptsd, so I hard passed on it ^_^

This is my first post here. This is my 4th league that I have played. In the beginning, I played minions as most starters do. I "graduated" to more main stream and now I like to play builds a little more off the beaten path. No, I dont do 100million dps, but I do slowly prod along, until this league. Everything I liked has been removed from the game (skills cost no mana or life while focused) or seriously nerfed into the ground. I do not have the opportunity to play everyday. Im happy to get on a few times a week. But again, I slowly prod along. My personal opinion, for what it is worth, is there is something wrong with this league. I see where GGG says there is nothing wrong, but there is something wrong. The game does not play as fun for me right now. That is why I play. As a release of stress. Im going to bide my time here for the rest of this league and see if it gets any better. If not I have a decision to make. I truly hope that you put serious thought into the next league of this game and think about who is playing it. Good Luck. b

On my end, it didn't feel like the currency swap from exalt to divine was thoroughly factored in. As other posts before this mentioned, maybe go back and review what else needs to be changed and decide whether to update further acquisition processes.

Loot balance seems unnecessary. Maybe find something else innovative to adjust it around.

This league introduced a ton of major changes at once. Much of it felt hastily done without enough review. In the future, I'd like to suggest introduction of such major updates more gradually. I think it's okay to have a major changes take multiple leagues to decide and brainstorm on. That said, I think from day one, I figured leagues would be a testing grounds for good and bad ideas before they go core.

Harvest crafts doesn't offer anything unique to itself over fossil and essence. With essences you can get very targeted mods. With fossils, you can combine various fossils to make a good chance of neat mods to happen. harvest now is just generic chaos, life, fire, ice. etc. There's nothing unique to it. Maybe either modify the other two or modify just harvest to make all three offer more unique crafts. So people invested in one of the three specific crafts can focus on the content alongside the crafts and trade for the other two kinds of crafts.

you know GGG u did create something very kool here, however making the game:

Read your character sheet to build maps to beat you= very bad idea
System Ai literally loads maps based on it as well so if you have lets say perfect resistances but no poison buff at all the game will load all your maps to have enemies that do nothing but Poison damage,it's quite literally insane to be honest.

The system can't keep up with chars that have over 125% movement speed u literally run into a wall in the middle of a field and can't go on till the server finishes loading the rest of the map lmfao that is pretty actually!

divines have now taken the market over and exalts are now obsolete even though they are still the only currency in the game that adds affixes to gear and items without destroying or modding the item, so now the economy is so bad items that were once being sold for 1exalt are now being sold for 1divine when divines are being sold at a rate of 9exalt per 1divine orb so that item that was once worth 1exalt is now worth 9exalts lmfao BROKEN currency and economy and needs to be completely re-written to be fixed not adding a new league every 13 weeks or new types of crafting currencies will fix this epic mistake!

stop taking our exp for the love of God especially after we load a map that is literally designed to beat us! creating so many negatives to very little positives in an otherwise great game really sucks but the game itself without you is quite great but to see "STASH TAB" sales every 30 minutes instead of bug # 5billion solved and fixed makes me angry especially when i can get on youtube and watch some streamer teamster run HC deathless with no gear and is barehanded lmfao please noone is doing that NOONE! but yet its being done by a streamer with triple legacy mirror gear that is all current modded doing 500000billion dps lmfao this game is a great paper accomplishment.

quite literally pay to play IMO. but otherwise a fun hack an slash for free and the skins are kool ( the key is the microtransactions) realy sucks for the community too that its all based on that instead of making a great game that rewards its players not punishes them constantly and continually!!!

you know GGG u did create something very kool here, however making the game:

Read your character sheet to build maps to beat you= very bad idea
System Ai literally loads maps based on it as well so if you have lets say perfect resistances but no poison buff at all the game will load all your maps to have enemies that do nothing but Poison damage,it's quite literally insane to be honest.

The system can't keep up with chars that have over 125% movement speed u literally run into a wall in the middle of a field and can't go on till the server finishes loading the rest of the map lmfao that is pretty actually!

divines have now taken the market over and exalts are now obsolete even though they are still the only currency in the game that adds affixes to gear and items without destroying or modding the item, so now the economy is so bad items that were once being sold for 1exalt are now being sold for 1divine when divines are being sold at a rate of 9exalt per 1divine orb so that item that was once worth 1exalt is now worth 9exalts lmfao BROKEN currency and economy and needs to be completely re-written to be fixed not adding a new league every 13 weeks or new types of crafting currencies will fix this epic mistake!

stop taking our exp for the love of God especially after we load a map that is literally designed to beat us! creating so many negatives to very little positives in an otherwise great game really sucks but the game itself without you is quite great but to see "STASH TAB" sales every 30 minutes instead of bug # 5billion solved and fixed makes me angry especially when i can get on youtube and watch some streamer teamster run HC deathless with no gear and is barehanded lmfao please noone is doing that NOONE! but yet its being done by a streamer with triple legacy mirror gear that is all current modded doing 500000billion dps lmfao this game is a great paper accomplishment.

quite literally pay to play IMO. but otherwise a fun hack an slash for free and the skins are kool ( the key is the microtransactions) realy sucks for the community too that its all based on that instead of making a great game that rewards its players not punishes them constantly and continually!!!

just a suggestion for player quality of life improvement
​
can we have auto trading for eg. put item on sale, and other people buy it automatically at the stated currency price without going back to hideout every time. so the buyer buy from my stash itself. and when we finished the map or login into game we can see a list of item sold and the currency received :)

thanks!