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

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TreeOfDead wrote:

add more stash everywhere so we dont leave area for trade

Might just remove that outdated thing called "inventory" and make picked up items go right to the stash. I'd say it would raise profit from selling stash tabs: currently, you can only haul 6 inventories worth of trash from a map(or even less if you play non-solo). Imagine how much space players would suddenly "need" if they could pick up all the shit without taking inventory space in consideration :)

this blight. dialoques sound . well i tryed unmute all dialoques. then i played blight content. i was seriusly ggg ? i feel suicidial to hear that hym or song . muted. but still that bitch screams divine power. its annoying as f....

how the hell i mute that seriusly.

overall about blight. it is time consuming to defend and hard to understand wich towers i should take. there is missing tooltips on the start reward toolbox thing.
and ofc i dont feel rewarded at all. but thats only because i stoped supporting game. i get more loot. i get my stashes full i will buy. but my stashes are empty.
and im not doing chaos orb reciepe. im not pleb. im not that kind of stupid player to hoard for 1-2 chaos my quad tab full. nosense..

My first impressions of Blight league are as following.

Minion buffs were good, it actually feels playable now.

Chaos nerf was horrible, the AoE on contagion was already horrible before massive investment and now it just makes the early game feel even worse. Combo that with assassin no longer getting generic chaos damage and it really feels bad.

Tower defense in maps is ok. It forces you to slow down but it isn't horrible. The rewards feel pretty bad though.

Blight maps feels absolutly horrible. Too much stuff going on so you either have some kind of spreading degen or some sorto of chaining extreme high damage skills to even stand a chance of doing it solo. The majority of the players will either be forced to make a character specifically made for doing this or not play it at all and I think I don't need to explain how bad it is to not have players interacting with your main content for the league! You need to massively lower the amount of active lanes at any given time to give players a fighting chance.

For now I will save my blight maps hoping you solve this issue, if you don't then I'll just start selling them because it's not worth interacting with content not meant for solo play that requires a specific type of build to do it.

My first impression of Blight League was that it is really annoying to put the maps into the different masters. It doesn't really make sense lore-wise to put the map inside the masters.

I think it would make more sense lore-wise, and be better mechanically if you could just click a master mission on the map device. Your character could say "Niko, it's time to hunt!" or something.

Thank You!

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Qarl wrote:

Hi,

We have a lot of first impression posts at the moment, and I can't individually address them, but thanks! How people interact and experience the game the first time is important to us.

Not in 2019 it isn't, LOL

Yeah well blight...the idea itself somewhat works, to my surprise, rather weil. The issues I have with the TD is like...

Too much Boomboom and blingbling going on. You either don't realize whats going on or you don't have time to react. Mobs aggro you, oneshot you, leave their lanes and when they walk in from 3+ directions you don't even have time to build towers that help you.

You either do need a specific build only for the mechanic or you can skip it entirely. The rewards are not worth the effort including risk of death (some mobs feel stronger than legion mobs lol).

Returning player here, the difficulty curve is totally broken, WAY WAY TOO EASY throughout most of the game. Like so bad it is just boring. Also despite doing no grinding at all and flask sprinting through a good bit, I'm 7 levels higher than the area I'm in. Act bosses need several times thier current hp, if it wasn't for playing older versions I wouldn't even know what most of the bosses do.

I joined in with a few friends had a blast though was a little confuzzled about what i was doing with the build but after some time and a few reboots i finally got the hang of things.
However the one thing i wanted to do and i cant is duel wielding shields.I understand why i cant but i think it would be magical if i could. who knows maybe a suggestion for a further topic.

Gems hitting level 20 should be made a lot more noticeable.

I started playing PoE about 2-3 weeks ago. Even though I have a lot of experience with many games with different mechanics, I almost quit playing because certain aspects are not explained properly to the player or simply done wrong. I'll explain what I liked and disliked about certain aspects important to me, and why I felt that way.
What I liked:
1. The difficulty curve is smooth. Since many mechanics are new and overwhelming for a new player, the game doesn't throw me under the train immediately. I started using flasks for the first time in Act 3-4, and was forced to use them more actively as the story progressed. So I had time to learn my skills and how everything works without struggling to survive at the same time. Don't get me wrong - I like challenge, but I prefer the challenge to be fair: the game either must clearly explain every mechanics at the level 1, or don't punish me for learning it as I play.
2. I like the idea of skill gems. It makes me feel safer about my choices - I can swap my skills later on if I made mistake or the meta has changed.
3. I like the graphics and animations. Even though a lot of stuff happens on the screen, I feel satisfied using my skills and destroying waves of enemies, rather than struggling in 1-v-1 battles against mobs with simple strike attacks.
4. I liked the variety of activities as well. The Labyrinth, the Delve, they all add a nice way to switch to something different when you're tired of simple leveling.

What I disliked:
1. The passive skill tree. When first introduced, the player thinks it's as important as a skill tree in any other RPG game. What player couldn't know at this stage is that 90% of the skill nodes are irrelevant, just fillers, and can easily be replaced with a "+" sign next to a stat on the character screen without any gameplay effect whatsoever. Alright, you like complexity - but if you want to force this complexity on the player, you better add something that makes it tolerable for a new player. And currently there is no such tool.
2. The item drop system. My god, you could save half of your yearly bandwidth by cutting the garbage items and players won't even notice. I understand that the game shall never drop only the best items, because it takes away variety and control from the player, but dropping 90% of absolute garbage that players won't even pick up under ANY circumstances is the other side of a bad decision. I just felt annoyed to go through the cluttered screen to see if there are anything worth sparing a single mouse click. At higher levels I learned about item filters, and it helped a lot, but only brought more frustration: okay, guys, you messed up with the loot system big times. But instead of simply fixing the bad system you made a quick hack of hard-to-setup item filters to fix your own mistakes. There is no convenient integrated tool to setup a filter, I even have to use some third party website to create one! That's a bad decision multiplied by another bad decision. While loot filter is helpful as a separate tool, it shall never be a must-have fix for a bad ingame system.
3. What I also disliked is that pretty much every drop can have something good or bad. If you read through the guides and what more experienced players aim for, they aim for a quantity of monsters rather quality. If you want good items, you don't farm some strong boss like I used to in Diablo 2 in similar ARPG. You just pick a location when the monsters are packed the most, quickly kill the biggest packs not bothering about smaller packs or individual monsters, and move on. Some even recommend to not kill certain bosses because it's a waste of time. For me, when I kill a rare mob or a boss I expect a better reward, and I'm okay with getting lower quality items from regular mobs. But now I kill the boss and get a few white items just like from any other normal mob, and when I open a random common chest in the room nearby I get better items. That's honestly dumb. ARPGs are about a) loot and b) character progression. And the (a) is not very well designed right now. Yes, I will do the same - pick linear maps with high mob density to farm items, but that should be a concern for leveling, not for finding gear.
4. Lack of proper helpful tips. Yes, you added several pages explaining mechanics, but... First of all, if you need several pages to explain your mechanics, they're not "deep and complex", they're not very well presented. You knocn on the door and offer to buy your shiny new vacuum cleaner, and you start your 5 hours long sales pitch.. That doesn't work like that. You have probably 1, maybe 2 hours at most, to get player captivated. But what you do right now, is force the player to open outside guides to read how the system works in a normal language, read how the skill tree works and how to properly build your character. That alones takes several hours, and player have to start doing it at level 1. Those who didn't do that just quit, immediately or a bit later, when they realise they're just as confused as they were 1-2 hours ago.
5. The gear is irrelevant if you don't aim for the best-in-class. I completed the whole story at level ~70 with Act 4 gear, because I didn't get any good drops, and the effect of items on my performance is minuscle. The skill tree and skill gems define 98% of what I could do, my damage and survivability. At the same time, the game tried to convince me that I should bother about this item with a white name just because the one I found 40 levels ago gives me 30 less armor. Okay, but this one has linked sockets, and that's ALL a player needs. Even best-in-class items are bad, if they don't have proper sockets and links, how the normal/magic/rare items would be different?

What could help new players like me:
1. The direct and indirect stat changes from passive skill tree can be replaced with a simple "+" next to the stat on the character screen. Honestly, some of them can even be automatically distributed on level up without any major effect on gameplay. This will reduce the skill tree ten times and make it so even new players can afford time to learn the possible build routes. On the other hand, if you really want to stick to complexity, what about integrated recommended builds? Lets be honest: almost all new players use build guides. Guides from forum posts and third party websites. The promise of variety is a lie - the difference between most builds is close to +10 str in one version and +10 int in another, and new player is incapable of making their own adjustments, because at this point they have no idea what they're doing. Alright, just embrace it. You know meta like no one else. You know what newer players will be comfortable with. Make 2-3 archetypes for each class and ADD them to the builder. Highlight the build path on the skill tree so the player will know what to follow without spending HOURS on learning the tree. These don't have to be (and shouldn't be) the best possible builds available - leave it to the community and outside guides. Just the common, basic builds best for leveling. Give the player time to fall in love with the game and let him make the decision about optimal build for later. Okay, you picked the witch: here's your basic summoner and basic spellcaster builds. You KNOW the summoner witch will be the hotness of the meta, and will be used by vast majority of newer players. Why won't you just add a common build for it into character builder? Add some salt and spices - and here we go, you can let community to paste a code that could add custom build into the builder to follow! Everyone wins, and the efforts required are much less than you spend on a single new map or boss.
2. Remove the refund points from quests and replace it with a single FULL respec given by a NPC/skill tree menu in the end of the main story. At first, I didn't even know I'll be given refund points. I felt like I will make fatal mistakes when making my own build, or I'll have to spend hours with skill tree builder to do what other players have already done (and wrote guides about it) - so I chose guides. So right after the first zone I stopped: here's my first level, I HAVE to make a decision in which direction I will go (especially given how important skills are in comparison with the gear which can be easily swapped). If I had a recommended build of 2-3 archetypes, that would've been an instant decision: I pick what I like the most and just continue learning the game. And please, please avoid 5 screen long help pages with animated images about "According to our statistics, an average player reaches maximum level 92, gains X skill points, also Y points from obligatory story quests and Z points from side quests. We also give B points for respec, so you... z-z-z-z-z". I don't care. I don't even know what I will do, how many points I may NEED to respec. Just clearly state to me that I can't make a mistake with my build, because I'll be given second chance with full respec later, when I'm ACTUALLY capable of making decisions. First of all, this will help players to immediately continue playing the game instead of spending hours reading guides and then abandoning the game because "it's too complex". Second, this will also help a bit with Orbs of Regret economy, since after the first full respec all other refund points can only come from the orbs. This doesn't affect balance: for me, as a new player, it doesn't matter if you give me 16, 18, 10 or 600000 refund points. I have no idea how many I may need. Just give me a single "get out of the jail" ticket and I'll be happy.
3. Remove the redunant loot. Players quickly learn that it's garbage and not worth picking it up - the common items have exactly the same price on level 1 and on level 100, a wisdom scroll fragment. But very fast you're given hundreds of scrolls, which makes picking items unnecessary. Again, if you're a hoarder like me who spends all map portals to bring as much items from the map as possible, and just can't get rid of thousand of junk items.. Help the player learn about item filter early in the game and add an integrated, convenient filter builder. 3-4 presets will be more than enough. "Hey, you're level 30, and you probably don't want to see most of the items we for some reason show you. We recommend to apply "Level 30-50" item filter, it's already available in the menu. Click here.". Let players know you have convenient tools for them yourself, don't let them learn it like me from a chat messages like "I would've quit PoE months ago, like you want to do, unless I started using item filters on a third party website".
4. Make item stats more impactful. I don't bother picking up items if they don't have all-linked sockets that I need. On lower levels, the effect from the stats is minuscle, and it doesn't worth spending time swapping them.
5. Also clearly explain to the player that most of the items are supposed to be adjusted. You call different orbs "a currency" and new players - me included - treat them as such. I don't want to spend them, I save them for later. It's funny, but if you were to call them "Item enhancers" that would have helped a lot. We don't sell or buy items with currency - we EXCHANGE our unneeded items for ITEM ENHANCERS that we're going to use. I realized that the game is not going to drop useful items only on higher levels - just like in any other ARPG, I expected good loot from higher level bosses, but all I've got is the good BASE which I MUST adjust with stats, sockets and links orbs to use. Don't be shy, just let player know about it - IN A FEW SENTENCES - that if he wants better gear, he must either trade with other players, or actively spend his own item enhancers to adjust items to their liking.

Alright, it's getting a bit too long. I won't comment on end game - I don't have enough experience, plus I'm sure you already have lots of useful feedback on it. What you seem to be lacking is the feedback from player who just quickly left or was going to leave (like me). Even some changes in these mechanics, like preset builds + full respec in the end game, will help new players a lot, IF they will be clearly informed about it and won't just learn about full respec in the end game themselves or from other players.
Also, time is money. You have very little time to convince the player your game worth playing and paying for - we have very little time to decide whether we want to continue playing and paying. We both interested in you cutting the time needed to make this decision. So, please, consider spending more time on enhancing at least some of these parts. No one will care if you release the new league a month later - if you manage to make the game better during this one bonus month.