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!
