Feedback as a new PoE player after almost 1000 hours played

First off, I just wanna say that I absolutely love Path of Exile 2. I really hope my feedback can help in some way because I genuinely want the game to be even better.

I’ve spent almost 1000 hours playing so far. I played Standard League when it first launched, and now I enjoy Hardcore SSF the most, and I’ve made three characters that all made it to mapping.

Here’s some feedback and suggestions I wanna share based on my experience:

1. Movement Speed

I completely understand why you guys don’t want players stacking a lot of movement speed. It would ruin boss fights by making it too easy to dodge everything and skip mechanics. I 100% agree with that decision.

As someone who’s also a souls player, I definitely wouldn’t enjoy it if bosses became a joke.
Imagine fighting Bosses in Elden Ring but with double movement speed. You would just run in, attack, and run out over and over, completely skipping mechanics just by running.
It would make the fight way too easy and ruin the whole point.
It would feel the same in PoE2 if you allowed too much speed.

I really enjoy the bosses right now. Learning their mechanics and improving at each fight is a huge part of the fun, and I wanna keep that feeling.

That said, I think there’s a way to improve the movement experience without ruining boss fights.
You could add a skill, buff, or mechanic that gives like 20% movement speed but only when there are no rare or unique monsters nearby. Maybe within a 3-meter radius or something like that.

This would help with the complaints about maps feeling too big or too slow, without letting players cheese fights against rares or bosses. It keeps the challenge where it matters.

2. Gearing through campaign

Since I played Hardcore SSF and got my characters into maps without dying, I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of the early-game experience without trading.

You can definitely beat the campaign and bosses even with just blue gear if you know the game and the bosses mechanics.
But the vendor prices during the first playthrough feel really bad.

While doing campaign on my first character, even after selling rare items, I often still couldn’t afford basic blue gear from vendors.
It felt awful and I really don’t know what the thought process was behind setting it up like that.

Now that my first character reached mapping and can afford campaign gear from vendors, playing my second character feels how my first playthrough should have been.
At the end of the day, vendor items are still RNG, so it’s not like you're guaranteed good gear; you just have a chance to buy something useful.

3. Crafting and Item Progression

After I was completely done with PoE2 for the first league, and when the Phrecia event started in Path of Exile 1, I decided to give PoE1 a try.

Playing PoE1 really showed me there’s a lot of stuff from it that I don’t want to see brought into Path of Exile 2.

Especially crafting.

I agree with your philosophy that ground drops should matter. I don’t want gearing to become all about mathematical crafting like in PoE1. The dopamine hit from finding great gear naturally in PoE2 is exactly what I want.

Here’s my suggestion to fix crafting without ruining that feeling:
Let players at least have three useful affixes while leaving the other three random, just like it is now. Like orb of alteration with greater essences being common.

This would give players more control over their gear progression while still keeping the excitement of chasing the perfect item.

That’s the dopamine hit I want to keep — not sitting at a crafting bench endlessly trying to mathematically create the perfect item like in PoE1.

4. Quality of Life Improvements

Please add more basic quality of life stuff.

Inventory sorting would be a huge help. It’s a small feature, but it makes managing your items so much smoother and more enjoyable.

Affinities for all gear types would be such a blessing. Adding affinities for items like gloves, rings, amulets, jewels, etc., would make inventory management far less of a chore

That’s all the feedback I wanted to share for now.

I seriously love this game and really want to see it be the best version of itself. Thanks for taking the time to read this!

I disagree with the third point. Loot progression is in a horrendous state. You gotta understand one point: 1000 hours in 5 months since the launch of early access is not 99% of players. That's a whopping 200 hours per month, more than what a full time job consumes.

If you are average Joe and you have say 2 hours on regular days to play and you don't get loot upgrades, don't get currency, don't have crafting options without grinding 10+ hours a day it gets boring real fast.
I agree that ground loot feels the best, but goddamn is it slim pickins. 99.9% is just straight garbage and the few things that are good are almost guaranteed to be bricked after you slam it with exalts. Other forms of crafting like omens are completely inaccessible and might just not exists altogether for 99% of players.

I don't mind the game being challenging and not like PoE1, but goddamn there needs to be a route to gear your character without it being tied to no-lifeing this game 10+ hours a day.

This is really good feedback!

As a person who only plays Hc SSf the only thing i can say about the vendor/money issue is that the soul of this game does not lie in "soulslike" games it rests within Diablo 2. Because PoE 1 was the spiritual successor of Diablo 2, not Diablo 3. That was only the contuniation of the Franchise.

The reason why i bring this up is because Hc mode (same as in diablo 2) is a fail and come back stronger strategy. You collect gear, you die, you start new with better gear. You advance further, you die and so on... Your new charakters inherit the old gear of their ancestors.

It gives the first charakter of a new season the spice and the euphoria of a lucky drop is very satisfying. For example i found with my Huntress a Scepter with 2+ to all minon skills and +spirit for lvl 18? 16? idk something low level.

So i personally wouldn't really recommending changing the vendor and money policy of the game. Since they promised to work on better rewarding drops anyways but what i would love is a bit better pricing on gambling. Because some gear can be very diverse like gambling for a "Wand" is a total waste of money because... fire, frost, lightning, physical, chaos... you will never get what you need even close. As for rings i got a unique ring yesterday and who doesn't love jewelry?

"

Slart1bartfast#0332 เขียน:

I disagree with the third point. Loot progression is in a horrendous state. You gotta understand one point: 1000 hours in 5 months since the launch of early access is not 99% of players. That's a whopping 200 hours per month, more than what a full time job consumes.

If you are average Joe and you have say 2 hours on regular days to play and you don't get loot upgrades, don't get currency, don't have crafting options without grinding 10+ hours a day it gets boring real fast.
I agree that ground loot feels the best, but goddamn is it slim pickins. 99.9% is just straight garbage and the few things that are good are almost guaranteed to be bricked after you slam it with exalts. Other forms of crafting like omens are completely inaccessible and might just not exists altogether for 99% of players.

I don't mind the game being challenging and not like PoE1, but goddamn there needs to be a route to gear your character without it being tied to no-lifeing this game 10+ hours a day.

And not every game is made for the "average Joe" im a long time player of PoE 1 (Since Closed Beta) and i only have 362 hours in PoE2 and the state is not "horrendous" you can totally gain by just playing a few hours per day.

If you want everything to be thrown at you, play a game that was tailored for your "Average Joe" there are enough, tons and thousands of games like those. Enjoy those but not every game has to be for your own pleasure. Get it?

If you think you have to compete with others that's your own personal issue. People who play Hc SSf can totally enjoy the game in their own pace.

"

And not every game is made for the "average Joe" im a long time player of PoE 1 (Since Closed Beta) and i only have 362 hours in PoE2 and the state is not "horrendous" you can totally gain by just playing a few hours per day.

If you want everything to be thrown at you, play a game that was tailored for your "Average Joe" there are enough, tons and thousands of games like those. Enjoy those but not every game has to be for your own pleasure. Get it?

If you think you have to compete with others that's your own personal issue. People who play Hc SSf can totally enjoy the game in their own pace.

No need for the gatekeeping. Jesus christ. I will fuck off then because clearly people like you do not want to see any other feedback than your own mirrored back at you.

"

Slart1bartfast#0332 เขียน:

I disagree with the third point. Loot progression is in a horrendous state. You gotta understand one point: 1000 hours in 5 months since the launch of early access is not 99% of players. That's a whopping 200 hours per month, more than what a full time job consumes.

If you are average Joe and you have say 2 hours on regular days to play and you don't get loot upgrades, don't get currency, don't have crafting options without grinding 10+ hours a day it gets boring real fast.
I agree that ground loot feels the best, but goddamn is it slim pickins. 99.9% is just straight garbage and the few things that are good are almost guaranteed to be bricked after you slam it with exalts. Other forms of crafting like omens are completely inaccessible and might just not exists altogether for 99% of players.

I don't mind the game being challenging and not like PoE1, but goddamn there needs to be a route to gear your character without it being tied to no-lifeing this game 10+ hours a day.

I understand where you are coming from but all I was asking was give us 3 good affixes because 4 good affixes is usually good enough.

I don't want the game to easily give me perfect items because that kills the fun real fast.

All I'm saying is give the players more attempts to create a GG item while being the baseline is 3 good affixes while still the other 3 is still RNG like the current state right now

"

yotsuba#8431 เขียน:

I understand where you are coming from but all I was asking was give us 3 good affixes because 4 good affixes is usually good enough.

I don't want the game to easily give me perfect items because that kills the fun real fast.

All I'm saying is give the players more attempts to create a GG item while being the baseline is 3 good affixes while still the other 3 is still RNG like the current state right now

I can agree with that. Removing some of the rng to get a decent baseline would certainly smooth out the looting experience a lot.

"

Slart1bartfast#0332 เขียน:

"

yotsuba#8431 เขียน:

I understand where you are coming from but all I was asking was give us 3 good affixes because 4 good affixes is usually good enough.

I don't want the game to easily give me perfect items because that kills the fun real fast.

All I'm saying is give the players more attempts to create a GG item while being the baseline is 3 good affixes while still the other 3 is still RNG like the current state right now

I can agree with that. Removing some of the rng to get a decent baseline would certainly smooth out the looting experience a lot.

my man

Very good feedback.

My biggest critics atm is also the loot and the crafting.

I'm also in the boat that items on the ground should matter more and not those who've been created by the 1% on the crafting bench who have no other life than playing POE.

But the problem atm is that loot on the ground is simply not good enough.

Only this weekend I've surely picked up around 5000 items, even every single blues & whites item that fits to my build and not 1 single upgrade.

You would think OK, maybe he's good equiped....Nope, I don't even have my resistances capped (Cold = 23%, Light 57% only fire is overcapped with 104%)...and around 2000 life and 1300 Armor.

Even with avarage gear on I haven't found 1 single upgrade for my character over the weekend and I've picked up every single item on the floor + checked vendors.

It's rly frustrating when you play 3 days and don't find anything useful even with potato gear on.

The game feels more like Warframe atm than POE....Becasue the only not frustrating way to find upgrades is to simply zoom through maps, find currency and flip it till you have enough Ex/Divs to buy stuff on trade.

Even if I love trading I rather want to create & find my upgrades by myself, so I only sell items but don't buy them....I use only the currency merket, so I can change my Divs to Exalts f.e. to craft (or better said gamble) my own gear.

But the next problem with selfcrafting even whites is that it currently kills the game flow.....I have to stop every 2 minutes only to gamble all my blues and whites in my full inventory even with the knowledge that 99,99999% will be crap.

I would wish myself 2 things:

1.: Loot drops should be more meaningful....Means if an item with Tier 1,2,3,...drop it should have high rolled meta stats and only them (Means Tier 3 items have only 3 affixes/suffixes but all 3 are very good and very high).

So we can craft this item further on our own.....yes they can also turn out bad after throwing Exalts on them but they give the player at least a short dopamine moment that we've found something good in the first place.

2.: More tools to craft an item further rather than being a "1-time gamble".

I miss Alt Orbs f.e. so much I can't describe it.....It's so tedious to have to throw away all the blues even if 1 roll is very good but the 2nd turns out very bad.

Ofc with Alt Orb it would be 50:50 but it's still enoguh RNG so it won't hurt the game to much.....but at least we would have an option to develop our found items just a bit further.

"

Dragonhearth#5290 เขียน:

This is really good feedback!

As a person who only plays Hc SSf the only thing i can say about the vendor/money issue is that the soul of this game does not lie in "soulslike" games it rests within Diablo 2. Because PoE 1 was the spiritual successor of Diablo 2, not Diablo 3. That was only the contuniation of the Franchise.

The reason why i bring this up is because Hc mode (same as in diablo 2) is a fail and come back stronger strategy. You collect gear, you die, you start new with better gear. You advance further, you die and so on... Your new charakters inherit the old gear of their ancestors.

It gives the first charakter of a new season the spice and the euphoria of a lucky drop is very satisfying. For example i found with my Huntress a Scepter with 2+ to all minon skills and +spirit for lvl 18? 16? idk something low level.

So i personally wouldn't really recommending changing the vendor and money policy of the game. Since they promised to work on better rewarding drops anyways but what i would love is a bit better pricing on gambling. Because some gear can be very diverse like gambling for a "Wand" is a total waste of money because... fire, frost, lightning, physical, chaos... you will never get what you need even close. As for rings i got a unique ring yesterday and who doesn't love jewelry?

I’ve just been hearing a lot of complaints about gearing in the campaign, so I’d like to add some feedback to it.

I have no problem if they are not going to change it.

But I think it would make sense that this should be the most ideal change about gearing in campaign if they would cater on reddit crybabies.