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

i will be nice

I hope a dev read this :)

Just to present my background, I'm a gamer and I play many types of games. However, I've little comparative experience with diablo-like game. Just ~100h or so. And now I can add another 100h from poe.

I found PoE to be a fun experience, but the collect-identify-sell of rare items for currency routine is really a chore. A core part of the game should never be un-fun, or made purposely harder.

That's why I would start with two simple suggestions:
- A button to identify all. There's too many clicks involved in identifying those rare items.
- Just like in dota there's a slot in the inventory for teleportation scrolls, in PoE, there should be two small dedicated slots just next to the inventory for teleportation and portal scrolls (up to xx).

UI
The UI style is old school, why not, but UX should offer us a better experience, now that we've made so much progress in that domain. Besides the button identify-all I've mentioned, the search function should be more powerful, and there should be a way to sort tabs and even to sort your whole stash.

Delving
Delving is fun, but for some reasons it's hard to access. I'm not sure why this is so. The devs have probably made that decision in regard to balancing rewards, but it's just weird that a *fun* area is kept under locks, at least until you've got the right items to force Niko to appear.

Ctrl-click
It wasn't obvious at all that I could use ctrl-click to instantly move an item from a window to another.


The story
I didn't really understand why Piety is hindering us in act 1 and act 2, and why we're doing what we're doing and hunting piety. There's a bit too many characters to track as well.
The story is otherwise surprisingly good, even if act 2 is a bit of a power-creep cliché.

Movement speed in town
I wish movement speed would be increased in cities. A small change to save a small amount of time, but an easy change to do.

Pay-to-play tabs
I've heard lots of good things about Path of Exile, notably that it was free-to-play. But I found out that I really had to buy some tabs to be able to play and continue to play post-ending. And those tabs weren't cheap either, it wasn't like 1 or 2€, but more like 10€+ (I bought during a sale of course).

Really expensive cosmetics
It seems the devs are going for a kujira kind of model. I feel that there could be some much cheaper cosmetic, while the super fancy stuff could still be sold at a premium. But I understand that GGG has lots of experience with the current model.
Anyway, unless I suddenly become rich tomorrow, I'm not going to buy those cosmetics, even at 20 or 10$.

Great simple mechanics I enjoyed
- Prophecies. Simple mechanic to understand, and it gives you something to do.
- Delving. It's a simple and fun grind.
- Abyssal Troves. Again, a simple things that pop up and that give me something to do during map clearing

Mechanics I didn't understand
- The current league, Betrayal! Rather, how to manipulate rivalries and people in position to earn more rewards. In fact I'm not even sure how to do that yet. Also it wasn't really fun early on before the balancing patch that decreased difficulty and screen clutter.


Negative points
- Identifying all items and selling rares to earn currency is really a chore.
- There's way too many divination cards! It felt like a scam to sell a tab, given how little I've gotten out of it.
- The whole flask leveling up.
- You *must* use an item filter, or otherwise you'll find yourself drown with clutter.
- While it is satisfying to hear the sound of all those items falling when you open a chest or kill someone, I feel no one would complain if identical items were grouped on the ground. Like portal scroll, etc.
- Some items are worth a lot! And technically a beginner could get a mirror or exalted drop. But they wouldn't know what it's worth. I feel this is a bit unfair.
- If the game crashes (it still has some bugs after all), you could have to restart your labyrinth again, and to me that's not cool at all!
- **Crafting recipes** are too slow to get. I wish they were unlocked way quicker.


All in all I enjoy PoE, but I really hope to see some improvements to the collect-identify-sell routine. There was a thread like that on reddit, there' sindeed no fun at all in collecting rare items. Even at my low level (I don't have any exalted or 6l), items I've picked that have been worth might have been 1 in 100 or maybe even 1 in 500. In fact, I'd probably revise that number with 1 in 1000I hope a dev read this :)

Just to present my background, I'm a gamer and I play many types of games. However, I've little comparative experience with diablo-like game. Just ~100h or so. And now I can add another 100h from poe.

"

Jack_Whitehand wrote:

- A button to identify all. There's too many clicks involved in identifying those rare items.
[...]
- There's way too many divination cards! It felt like a scam to sell a tab, given how little I've gotten out of it.

Nice feedback. It's always cool to see people can provide such with no agression. :)

As for the points I quoted, I am not sure if you're aware that:
- While it's not what you want, you can use Shift and right-click your Scroll of Wisdom to identify items in your inventory faster;
- Divination cards are one of the GGG's sources of profit as all of them were designed together with players who bought such possibility. I'm also not sure why you find this tab a scam. It's not much more expensive than a simple premium tab, and it can store more cards (which is still less when you don't have many, but after playing a lot, my premium tab in Standard league was too small to store all the cards), sort them, and show pretty pictures. I find it being more a collector tab though, yeah.

If you decide to stick to the game and explore more, there's a huuuge player-made document with all the game story. You can also find guides about Betrayal Syndicate manipulating (unless you prefer to figure things yourself, of course).

Regarding identifying all items, I think that GGG does not do it because having to manipulate ( including identify ) items gives them "weight", it makes them feel more real.

There are also some items that are better off not identified too, so by not doing it, they avoid players making potential mistakes too.

This was not to advocate or anything ( I personally don't really care, I don't think that there is a need for such a featuer though ), more like to explain why it probably won't happen ever.

But since most items are just recycled, they only feel like trash, not just a present.

I feel the reward/work ratio of the collect-identify-recycle process is very low, and that even if identifying item one per one make them more real, it makes the pain of having go through it and the low rate of rewards more real rather.

As for mistakes, it's something that exists with other mechanics in the game. If you click on the identify button, you indeed clicked on that button.

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Iangyratu wrote:

"

Jack_Whitehand wrote:

- Divination cards are one of the GGG's sources of profit as all of them were designed together with players who bought such possibility. I'm also not sure why you find this tab a scam. It's not much more expensive than a simple premium tab, and it can store more cards (which is still less when you don't have many, but after playing a lot, my premium tab in Standard league was too small to store all the cards), sort them, and show pretty pictures. I find it being more a collector tab though, yeah.

I've collected around a hundred cards and got out of them only three or four items. I'm not farming for them, sure, but there are taking almost a tab worth of space, and not doing much.

Thanks guys for some nice discussion!

Here are my impressions after playing POE 2 months:


Gameplay:

I begun a templar, i discover the ascendency after, i kept playing summon gardian templar. Ok, it's pretty "facepalm style". The only problem i encounter when playing summoner : timer areas / escorting. The clean speed is not the same with minions as for casted spells / attacks.

Trade:
Having in game auction house, granted by premium stash, would be easier (no more time to spend with players who want to buy something cheap, or who don't respond).

Game informations:
- The game is not "explicit", it would be nice to know, for exemple: how many favor points we earn, is it affected by map level? Master level ?

- I can agree that we have to know the game, but spending time on internet / programm to understand how it works is not "fluent" for me.

- Spell informations (in stats) seems wrong for minions. It the same as the player stats. It perhaps could be easier if added in character section separatly.

- "Raise Spectre" should add "stats" for any raised mob with attacks, or added separatly in "character" section

Difficult mobs:
- Immortal syndicate is too strong. Usually OS by intervention without letting me respond, kitting is hard/impossible.

- Cavestalker in delve mine: same. At 200 depth+ don't let me do anything to survive.


There are good things too :)

+ I discover new things every day when discussing with players. Usually good mentality. :)

+ Even if i made my first "discovering facepalm character build", i enjoy playing it, progressing and improove the efficiency of my build.

+ I love making Hideout !! (even if i'd have more favor points or would like to buy favor point if it was tradable).

Thanks again.

1. played only 1 melee char. i find it stupid and annoying when my char dies because he doesn't attack while he has tons of targets around him. strongboxes and similar high density mob situations are the worst. melee char surrounded by mobs, you click one he doesn't attack most probably he wants to move 1 pixel to get closer to target, he cant because of mob density and after 3 seconds char is dead. Dont know about others but for me this is like the basic of this type of games. Everything you build on top is worthless when you have such issues.

2. Difficulty spikes. What's with the random difficulty spikes that are mostly instant kill? Most common situation, Syndicate Gang Bangs. You deal with some tough situation and you get 2-3 overpowered syndicate members joining the battle and doing some huge dmg. Proves a lot of things, but not that who decided to make it that way intended to make it fun. We are playing a game for gods sake, there is no need for a miserable gaming experience.

3. Is this game a mass scale epilepsy check test? Is it so easy to get an headache in this game, tons of colors throw up together you dont know what exactly are attacking, what direction are you moving to, if there is any particular mob around you (boss, unique mob). Is just a throw up fest.

4. Once you finished the story you have no idea what to do or how to improve your items / get better ones. The game goes into so many directions you have no idea what is your char prepared for and what game mode to play in order to have the most benefits. Also this game can easily be played as an offline single player game.

Not sure if this ever gets read by the staff :/

1. First time league player since the open beta in 2011, in the beginning the game was not for me. Right now I am pleasantly surprised and have played it non-stop since betrayal started.

2. Love the games mechanic of gems in sockets and working together to get a stronger build. This is something I both love and come to hate. Later more on this.

3. So many things to do, Delve, hunt creatures, maps, incursions. All this stuff makes my previous game look very amateurish.

4. Casters are fun, from elementalist to necromancer to branding and trappers. It all looks fun, and what I played is awesome. My necro minionmancer is so much fun.

5. Melee, errrr. Where is the melee? Where are the hammerstun warriors, the mace/shield or greatsword builds that a game like this should really have? Melee seems like just a close combat caster..

6. Drops..... For an arpg or any other game I have played before, this game is by far the worst in drops ever. From my more than 2 months of playing every evening I have found absolutely nothing for none of my builds. Oh I found currency to buy them, but this is beyond ridiculous that all of my drops are utter garbage.

7. Links on gear. Something so trivial for this game, and yet another thing I have not seen drop for myself. Now OK it would probably ruin the economy to have the 6 link drops a bit more frequent. But to be honest, not even a 100% more chance to drop or link it would be enough for me to get even one. I love the 6 link part, but 6 link weapons are out of my reach, and 6 link chests I have found the total of 0 times. Much fun....

8. Maps and the Atlas. Wow, I love this part. Reminds me of rifting but done much better and with more thoughts. I would not mind a recipe to get higher tier maps exchange of the lower tier, since those accumulate and do nothing since you do not get XP from them anymore.

9. XP grind, until the late 80's it is fun, the penalty is not my favorite but it's doable. From 89/90 and on it gets to be a chore and therefor no fun. The DP beyond 90 is way to high since one bad move can cost you 2 days of grinding maps/Delves..

10. One shot mechanics. The cheap-shots as I like to call them. For such a complex game to rely on such a cheap mechanic as one shotting surprised me. I thought the Devs of this game could do better than this. It is by far the simplest method to hurt a player that does not bring much challenge besides remembering the tells from the champ.

11. Inventory, omg I love this. Special tabs for all my things and so much to store. For a hoarder like myself this is a dream.

12. Weapon switching. Is there even one player using the second weapon part in this game? From watching many guides it seems nobody uses this besides leveling gems.

13. Crafting, done pretty good. But the recipes are locked behind so many different parts that I feel like I havent even touched a tenth of it all.

OK I feel I need to stop now it is almost a tl;dr post.

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crocodilu wrote:

3. Is this game a mass scale epilepsy check test? Is it so easy to get an headache in this game, tons of colors throw up together you dont know what exactly are attacking, what direction are you moving to, if there is any particular mob around you (boss, unique mob). Is just a throw up fest.

Play Whispering Ice. The only color on your screen(except interface) will be white :)

I was just kicked from the server because I was performing actions too fast.

I am far from being a RTS pro, please put that limitation client side (I don't really see any reasons to do otherwise ?). Remember that every time someone's game crashes or shut down, it's time and loot lost :(.