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

I do love the game, game mechenics, and graphics for the most part ... But the game is unplayable for most of me and my buddies (Europe, France).

De-sync, de-sync, and more de-sync. My main main char is Maurauder, playing with leap slam/multistrike/life leech. I know it's not the safest build, but with this tons of de-desync, it's like suicide. I can't remember how many time I died from a de-sync/rollback/lag whatever. Sometime ping going crazy, going form ~30/50 to ~140/150, for no reasons.

It's killing us all the fun. It's like playing with a old 56k modem. I know it's still beta, but instead of making new helmets, in my opinion, you would have to reappraise the netcode and/or servers infrastructure. It's totally breaking that (fucking great) game.

My 2 cents.

(sorry for my english, still learning)

"

no__name wrote:

I do love the game, game mechenics, and graphics for the most part ... But the game is unplayable for most of me and my buddies (Europe, France).

De-sync, de-sync, and more de-sync. My main main char is Maurauder, playing with leap slam/multistrike/life leech. I know it's not the safest build, but with this tons of de-desync, it's like suicide. I can't remember how many time I died from a de-sync/rollback/lag whatever. Sometime ping going crazy, going form ~30/50 to ~140/150, for no reasons.

It's killing us all the fun. It's like playing with a old 56k modem. I know it's still beta, but instead of making new helmets, in my opinion, you would have to reappraise the netcode and/or servers infrastructure. It's totally breaking that (fucking great) game.

My 2 cents.

(sorry for my english, still learning)

Sorry for quote you but I had the same impression that you did.

Great game but the desync it's a big problem.

I'll take a month off and i hope that they can 'fix' it.

Funny that before the patch ( forgot which one ) i had like 0 problem with desync.

GL.

Dam! i was like, this game is a game i will stick to! ;) Great work GGG!

Started a ranger in onslaught. Died to Desync against Alira, got set back into 2 Zombies + detonate dead explosions *gg*

Decided that hc sucks if you can die without it beeing your fault (maybe more of an issue in europe(Germany))?
An other point is that i`d like to use more different skills.

Looks like i never posted a first impression so I'll do that now.

Bad news first, then good news.

Bad News:
-I want to play a female melee tank character. I can do this in practically every rpg today, but not in POE. There's no reason for it, and it's annoying.

-Trading system inevitably leads to POE burnout for all except the most hardcore traders. Dealing with jerks and 9-year-olds, having to spam the chat constantly to sell stuff, ugh. Just allow me to make a searchable shop where I can create a deal that's instantly do-able when I'm offline. Why? 2-reasons:
-Trading frustration is NOT fun. I've seen developer posts implying that "difficult trading is fun or contributes to gritty atmosphere". I disagree. It just makes me regret my donations and want to stop playing the game.
-When I (or others) stop playing the game, we don't donate money to GGG.

-Balance issues need to be fixed. Pneuma's post in this forum is a very good list of them.

Good news:
EVERYTHING ELSE! :) Love the art, the fun gameplay, fun skills to use, fun passive tree, fun game-world where it's more like a history tour of a continent than a hero's tale. I like that.

I've played for a few days now. I am very pleasantly surprised how good this game is, especially for a free-to-play one in beta.

Here are a few things that would be great to fix or improve:

- Some days I see a lot of latency issues. This can have nasty effects on gameplay.

- It'd be great to have a button in the inventory panel that auto-arranges the items to make space. Part of a game like Path of Exile is managing the inventory, but the focus should be on what items to retain and when to travel back to town, not on constantly shifting items around within the inventory.

- It'd be helpful if the weapon swap always worked. It's disabled in most contexts if the other configuration is empty. This makes it harder to use the secondary configuration as extra inventory space, or to test out unarmed combat. Swapping is also disabled while selling. I often forget to swap weapons and have to go through two selling rounds as a result.

- It'd be nice if the selling window for the vendor had more space for placing items. Then, there'd be less work for users to rearrange items in the vendor's window. If the vendor window was auto-arranged this would help, but it'd also be nice to have enough capacity there to sell the user's entire unused inventory plus several worn items.

- When mana is exhausted, it'd be nice if the primary attack would revert to a normal, non-magical attack. This way users with high but non-infinite mana can place a more powerful gem-based attack on their left mouse button, but not be dead in the water when they run out of mana. This would be particularly helpful for witches who tend to have very weak non-gem attacks but who can sometimes run out of mana.

"

Zaorish_9 wrote:

I want to play a female melee tank character. I can do this in practically every rpg today, but not in POE. There's no reason for it, and it's annoying.

Echoing this. I would like to play a male ranger. I think it would be great if there were male/female character models for each class.

The other complaint I have to add is that quiver 3d art is quite bland, and they look wimpy. It detracts from the rugged look of my ranger with carcass jack and alpha's howl.

i started this game not long ago (going into onslaught directly)

i love how the trading works (compared to d3 model). no gold adds a lot of mystery to how much things are worth and its interesting choosing to use the orbs or trade them for other things.

the trade chat is also very nice compared to an auction house. makes me feel very connected to the community and the people who are around playing same time as me. on top of that its very cool being able to see other guys running around in the town

love how items, sockets, links, abilities, support gems etc works as well. not much else to say about that

the graphics took a bit to get used to but once i got used to it i love the raw old school look it has. it almost feels 2d.

the scaling and balance is just perfect as well. when entering new zones i really feel like the difficulty ups drastically, as well as upgrades on my gear always feel very powerful

the overall atmosphere i get going into new boss fights and areas is amazing as well. i was terrified of Brutus beyond belief long before i even got to see him

the support, help and hospitality from people in-game and admins on the forum has been very pleasant as well. the constant patching and care-about perfection in balance is very appreciated and important

overall though i do love the boss fights and how significantly different each of them are. the same goes true for all the monsters in the areas. the need for switching gear temporarily and changing approaches to how you manage and walk around with your character depending on what your up against is great


Suggestions/opinions
UI
i feel like the minimap in the top left is slightly too small and the big minimap feels like it plotters my screen too much in some areas. (like in the Warehouses walking inside houses its impossible to navigate through a minimap).
i wish the minimap in the top left could be customizable to whichever size you want and i wish you fine-tune the large minimap to be more equally transparent and easy on the eye in all the areas/acts

it bothers me a bit the lack of options about health bars. i wish there was an option to always show life bars on enemy units even if they are undamaged. things like showing damage numbers coming up would be a cool option as well. diablo 3 does this in a very nice way so you can see in practice easier how much improved crit helps or how much your shield is blocking.

Enemy damage
i think enemies stack and scale damage slightly too high in this game. for example how lightning enemies go from dealing almost no damage to completely fuck you up suddenly once you get 1-2 lightning stacks on you.
the fact that enemies can deal critical strikes as in more damage to you sometimes is a mechanic im not a fan of as well. because i need to over-gear and over-safe things so it becomes really easy to survive just because i have to take into consideration that i can get critted and have bad luck for 1-2 seconds and take tons of "unexpected" damage.
some of the bosses attacks feel like this as well. they just have huge burst burst damage without much warning or chance to dodge them, im talking about Brutus hook being slightly too fast to dodge and the lazer cannon from Vaal being instant without much warning at all.
when playing boss fights at times i feel i cant avoid being hit through being nifty with my movements while other bosses i can defeat without taking damage what so ever through kiting.


overall i give this game a 10/10 and it exceeded my expectations going into it thinking that it would be a very fun/cool game.
my goal is to beat Onslaught on each difficulty. my first char (ranger) died in start of Cruel act 1 (fedit pool charge stunned by dog-skeletons). second char (marauder) died in Cruel act 3 (in the final dungeons before the boss, frozen by some yellow faggot while tittie bitches bursted me down in 1 second). 3rd one (ranger) died in Cruel act 2 (1 shot by vaal lightning). currently on my 4th char (ranger), am in start of Cruel act 3, melee with shield trying to take it nice and slow :)
might not be the smartest idea to start out on Onslaught and only play that along with switch playstyle after each char, but im definitely learning quick from my mistakes. its been a thrill so far and good job with the game!

edit: just a final thing i forgot to say. i wish the game had more speed to it during the first 15 levels. perhaps starting out with at least a few town portals and a 10 movement speed boots dropping from the first few monsters in act 1 normal would be nice. it felt like the game got twice as fun once i got my first quicksilver flask and being so slow early on might make a bad first impression for some players.

I enjoyed the game just like I was kid again, playing diablo 2 once more. Played hardcore with a friend was one of the more enjoyable experience, we died a few times, but that made the game that much more challenging.

When we reached map level (after dying 3 times just short of them) was when we started being discouraged. The problem was that we spent a lot of time finding three maps and when came time to actually start doing the maps we didn't get a single one to drop inside the maps themselves. It was either go back to farming some more, only to run out immediately again after, or join a full group of people doing maps. We both lost interest almost immediately since there was no way to progress anymore by staying the 2 of us so we both stopped.

In my opinion it should be scripted for the boss in each map to guarantee a map drop regardless of rarity or other drops. That way people didn't get forced to group like we were. Just a thought anyway.

I really like this game and will buy it when you get around to releasing it. I hope this game influences other companies that have simplified their content in recent years *cough* we know who.

Liked

What I liked about it is a long list but here are a few things. The look and style of the game is great. None of the huge shoulder pad armors or weapons that look too heavy to actually swing. Just realistic looking, with a few items that add flair.

The maps and environment after Act 1 are really high quality. Act 3 in particular has some nice detail. Act 1 would benefit from an opening cinematic to get you to push past the fairly dull environment.

The skills and passive tree allow a massive amount of build variations. This game has so much depth in that regard that I don't think I would ever have the time to try all viable builds that seem interesting.

Crafting and itemization is very well done. I got my first character to 79 without trading at all. I've been able to solo everything except haven't tried Piety yet. My health is very low at 1200, but good blocking, resists, and dodge/evasion, and do about 6k damage un-buffed.

Disliked

Many of these issues are probably being addressed already.

Disconnects are a major problem for me. I can't do more than one Lunaris public game without getting an exception error having to do with memory. Almost all Act 3 zones cause a disconnect when changing zones.

De-sync is another major problem for my shadow. I think much could be solved by simply removing the requirement to aim when you shift-attack. Diablo 2 had the same issue, but every veteran player knew not to mouse lock your target, just get in range and shift-attack. From what I can tell this doesn't work in PoE because you don't automatically swing at things in range, you have to aim at them. And if they aren't where they appear it doesn't work very well.

Multi-player has a few problems. The amount of visual effects going on makes it nearly impossible to see what you are attacking. And this is a big problem when some many types of monsters can do massive damage to your melee character if you are in range. It would be nice if these effects could be toned down in multi-player games.

Some of the monsters seemed a little on the over-powered side for my shadow. The poison bomb throwing guys in the sewer can be ridiculous when in elite form. The ignite curse fire guys in Lunaris do way too much damage even with 75 fire resists, and with desync it's frustrating to try to kill them to get the curse off. The dogs at the docks should lose the ability to insantly swivel why casting fire damage and have their range reduced.

Over-all its a great game. Can't wait for the final release.