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

I tried PoE briefly a few months back and was not super impressed. Left, played other stuff, wandered back. Have now completed A1 in HC and am giving my first impressions. Did not discuss graphics, because while I don't dig the dark, depressing style at all, seems to be a big selling point.

The Good:

Passives- While the passive tree looks whoa intimidating at first, it also provides unique and nearly endless build possibilities. I even find myself idly planning out future hero builds that will likely never happen due to time constraints. I feel like my hero is a lot more mine when I decide on her passives.

Non-permanent HardCore character loss- I played HC in D3 and have done the same in PoE. Even though I'm unlikely to go back and play those heroes in softcore, I very much appreciate the option being available. Just in case I want to punk out.

Races/Events- I played a couple of these already! They were really exciting, despite me not placing well. Completely baffled as a newbie how anyone made it to level 30 in 90 minutes.

Gem abilities- Never played a game with this concept, and it's quite cool. I like the idea of gem synergy and sockets on the whole.

The not so good:

Steep learning curve- I have decent gaming experience and don't think I suck at gaming overall (could be wrong!), but PoE is very difficult to pick up and play.
-Melee "whiffs" constantly at low levels, you must be positioned just so to actually hit a monster with a blade. Meanwhile, the monsters seemingly have no problem smashing me while I whiff at the same poo shooting scorpion 5 times. Argh, frustration!
-My ranger and witch both felt omg delicate, which means I spent a lot of time kiting, something I despise. My zombie and skeleton minions also do very little aside from shamble (loudly) onto fire patched ground and die immediately.

Lack of customization- I'm currently relegated to a witch or ranger, as those are the only female options. I prefer melee (barb in D3) so I tried a couple male heroes...meh. Would settle for gender options, but actual feature selections would be better.

Storyline- Where did Piety come from and why does she hate me so?! I have no idea why my girls are directed to do half the things they do. I read all the conversation options with NPCs.

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Thanks for the read and the fresh new game! I don't think PoE is going to become my goto longterm game, but I will continue to check back with patches. Feels like progress is happening continuously so I have high hopes!

Judging by the Beta so far, PoE is building up to something great here.

I can honestly say i came across this by accident looking for RTS titles a day ago, saw the page, read some Beta reviews, gave it a chance. What can i say, wow.

Theres something about this game that actually had me looking forward to playing at the end of the day. Finally a aRPG aimed directly at aRPG fans. Something about the gritty atmosphere, the complexity, the direction of where this could go... Im in!

Noted:

1. Damage animations could be more responsive, instantaneous "hits" feel more gratifying than the current delayed response.
2. Characters development customization (colors, hair, etc.) , aesthetic options?
3. Throw some color into the opening levels! The beaches and caves, everything looked nice but it felt like a lot of the same environment.
4. New HUD and Minimap urgently needed

So far so good though! Would love to see the general aesthetic of the game be reinvigorated keep the grit, but add some shine :)

Though like i said before this has got some huge potential, and i will be seeing it all the way through. Great work GGG keep it up!

This game rocks, however...

DESYNC IS A HUGE ISSUE

My connection has some latency. I live in Alaska and usually have around a 150 ping, but the connection is consistent. I have played FPSes before without much issue.

I could overlook the problems at lower levels, but now that I am at 74 (and with a build that is stupidly soft considering these issues) the extra deaths that de-sync is causing me has me seriously considering quitting.

There is no reason these issues should persist when I can play pretty much every other online game with this connection.

I played with my wife for a short time tonight. I must say, I was amazingly pleased with the in-game community. The people I encountered were welcoming and helpful!

I was hooked from the character selection screen. The game immediately feels like an old friend that I've missed tremendously. I look forward to playing well beyond level two.

That said, my wife and I had issues teaming... we were not able to find each other. Even upon reaching the first town, I had to do some investigating to find how to reach the same instance. It certainly didn't take too long, but enough time had passed that the wife had to feed the baby, and therefore lost interest...

Hopefully, teaming will be easier in the future! I am excited to play until then. Thanks for creating what is clearly a quality game.

My first impressions of this game were very poor.

I heard about it from a friend so thought I'd give it a go, came to the site and was trying to find out what the installation requirements were. I knew I had to download something, but nowhere could I find out how big it was.

If it hadn't been for my friend's recommendation, I would have given up. But I pressed on, and started the download only to find out the file was in excess of 6Gb.

Some sort of easy-to-find warning would have been useful. I have a 40Gb monthly download limit and downloading 6Gb over that would have cost me £10. I think not giving simple, basic information to prospective players is very unprofessional.


The game itself is pretty cool, though.

in general, amazing game so far. can't wait to see how it will improve. Some issues still need improved upon like desyncing, but I don't see very many issues aside from that... also botting is an issue. when you see 12 dualists run from the center of town to the waypoint at exactly the same time, you know something is wrong lol.

you guys need a new customer service team... pretty sure you hired the WarZ guys! Idiots can't do simple math and are def tryin to screw me over, so i'm done donating till you get someone with a brain in there... that was my first and prob last experience i'll have with them... glad I wasted $460 donating to POS ppl like that. thanks devs for a great game, you just need a better team to help you guys

My first impressions:

Positives:
Complexity of skill tree. SUPER POSITIVE
Complexity of loot system. SUPER POSITIVE
General fun factor: D2-esque

Negatives:
Camera: Minor annoyance but my eyes persist in saying it's at the wrong angle/distance.

Loot System:
The loot system carried me to mid-game merciless just fine. Now I am stopped dead by lack of upgrades. I've gone 11 levels so far with nothing.... nothing rare/unique that dropped and nothing that was a decent craft base. If I manage to go 20 levels without finding a single piece of mid-range gear for my class I'll begin to think the grind is just too much for me personally. I suspect that's what is going to happen. By the way, when I say "upgrade" I'd be happy with a 4 link, 400+ ES chest piece. I'm not talking about godly stuff like 650+ ES with resists and 6L.

Trading:
The loot system wouldn't be so awful were it not for the even more awful trading system. There are no in-game metrics available for pricing things and there is no way to sell stuff without both parties being online. In short, the system you have probably works fine for people who want to spend their game time scanning the trade channel. That's not me.

Chat:
Granted that I'm never the most social of players in these games. Yet I cannot recall another game where I almost immediately turned off chat entirely. The only "chatting" I do in POE is voice chat on a mumble server.

Freemium Model:
YAY YAY YAY. I NEVER pay freemium games that are "pay to win". I play them until I can't any more without paying then I move on. Your system feels more like a "request to donate" than "extortion" and so you got my money.

tried this one out of curiosity and didn't expect to get sucked in half as bad as i did. it reminds me of titan quest even more than of diablo 2 and still has so many own and original characteristics to stand on it's own, setting a new, high standard instead of beeing just a good clone of all it's inspirations gamewise. it also shows that a lot of heart's blood has been poured into this title instead of trying to make quick cash by serving some none existant demographic of what players are supposed to like. in fact i personally feel very targeted by what the game does (right) and provides.

so here's a roundup of things i like about path of exile :

the story and characters are interesting, the voices mostly very well done and beneficial to the atmosphere, the optic and design mostly dark and brutal (i like how the first act end boss already looks like one of clive barker's cenobytes), sound and music crisp and high quality, the combat bloody and very satisfying, the starting area has that opening up effect i found in games like unreal and fallout 3 - when you first find yourself in a limited space only to be pushed out into a way larger and more impressive world, the levels are atmospheric and even in recurrence not boring (except for the pyramid at the end of act 2. might just me, but on several floors just an idol and several henchmen for almost every room got old very fast. also didn't feel very "pyramidic" to me, could have been just an ancient cellar), the skilltree is huuuge and once you got the hang of it, you can pick your goodies from all sides of the spectrum - very nice!, the posibilties of item customization almost endless (if yer rare item's props won't do - it's chaos orb - for you!), the monster types are real treat (don't know where to start here - oh well, since the old diablo days i loved it when a game came up with goatmen and here they are again for me to slay. horray! also i'm a big fan of cobras in general, even of the word cobra and it's sound, so i was amazed when the first of these snakes at the beginning of act 3 popped up, the concept of the bandits was awesome - having enemies with twisted personalities who bargained for their life when approached - priceless, the random apperances and voice dialogues of piety are a great tease and make the game feel more alive), great variety overall (and just when i thought "man, the helmets of the next quality look just like the same", you guys released and update and ... guess what? ... new helmet visuals!). from what i've seen and played so far i'd say this is the best title in it's genre right now.

i rarely encountered any technical or connection problems (true story, i'm rather surprised by how many issues are mentioned on here cause i can recall having any of those), so i can't comment or complain on those and issues with the gameplay could be resovled by getting deeper into it (like the one time i thought it was a bug, that i couldn't kill enemies in a certain area till i found out that it was because of a creature that gave this as a magic effect).

it's also great how all microtransactions are totally optional. (mostly) as a thank you for the fun i had, i recently provided my character with a dance move, a red frog and a customizable stash slot. i'm in the 3rd act now and once i completed the first playthrough i'll decide on weather to buy a supporter pack or not (pretty sure i'll go for divine though). the shop needs to grow bigger of course, but i'm sure there are some ideas on that.

very pleased with the path of exile and i'll highly recommend this game to anyone who has a slight soft spot for dungeon crawling.

ps : anyone knows if there are plans of releasing a poster or other item with the wraeclast map on it? i'd totally prefer that in a supporter pack over the skilltree one.