0.1.0-0.2.0 feedback and review

Apologies for the dump; these are notes I've taken while playing, plus some responding to other people's suggestions.
In 0.1.0, I played an Arc Stormweaver til level 50ish and a Mace Titan til early Maps.
In 0.2.0 I played a Lightning Spear Huntress til about T6 Maps.
Basically all of my feedback is relevant to Campaign and early Maps; some may still be preferences about what I’d like T6+ Maps to be.

General

Controller
I’d love a controller targeting mode that is a hybrid of auto-target and "target reticle", sort of like a mouse, that's bound to the direction and distance you move the right control stick from the centre. So if you move it 100% straight north, your reticle will go to the top of the screen; 50% north and it will go 50% towards the top of the screen; letting go completely would reset it back to right next to you or maybe automatically re-enable the auto-targeting system for the left stick.

Seems like the best of both worlds to me; near-instant snap-to-location when you want it, otherwise instant auto-targeting.

Power and trade-offs
There should be more instances where downsides/harder gameplay should be more rewarding if you can pull it off. Too many Passives, Skills, and Supports have downsides that just aren’t worth their upsides, and there’s a lot of “on rails” feeling that is good to guide new players in certain ways, but ends up being too restrictive overall because the upsides aren’t worth it. Eg. We have Supports like Primal Armament and Martial Tempo, but then ?

An example of a good trade-off is Demon Form (Demonic Possession): It’s powerful but has a downside; offsetting the downside is clear; it’s hard (SSF) to fully offset the downside but still very viable and is still great before you get to that stage; it’s very rewarding when you do, yet still means you’re going without a bunch of Life Regen that you would otherwise have; and then it’s further scaleable, both the pros and cons at the same time, with further Ascendancy investment as per Mastered Darkness.

Contrast this with Punch Through Support: It requires a melee hit that knocks back as well as a projectile hit, and Easy Target applies 3% More Damage per metre of expected knockback… and knockback is usually like 3m or something?? So for all that investment and time taken to setup, you get 9% More Damage on a single hit.

More differences between weapons, like Torchlight 2. Combine this with Skill Gems being usable with more weapons and you have an absolute build playground.

Other
Better support for lower-end computers.
"Crispiness" of some effects and skills could be improved; eg. Fireball in D2 or the old crit sound in PoE1.
I love the little touches, like using a Skill Book pops an effect around your character (controller only though), and passives have an ordered effect if you allocate several at once.
Add some sort of player character pain reaction (auditory for sure, but maybe others) if they've been standing in damaging ground for ~1 second with very few enemies around.
Shrines should have #1 priority for selection on controller.
If you're at your Stash and repeatedly using an Orb but also have some of that Orb in your inventory, the first use will use the stack from your Stash but the repetitions will use the ones from your Inventory - make it only use Stash ones in this instance.
Drop a grave stone on death and allow reclaiming it before you die again to restore 90% of the exp lost, so you'd only lose 1% on death if you can reclaim.

UI
Ground, map, and even monsters sometimes invisible??
Heavy Stun Bar should drop back to zero as the monster is recovering, reaching zero when they're recovered.
Need just a Pause button that retains all UI elements no matter where the mouse is, so we can check debuffs and stuff.
Option for quest-tracking only the quest related to the area you're currently in (currently only binary on/off).
When you open an Alt-box (for more info), prevent it from appearing right at the top of the screen (or some other method) so that clicking the X to close it doesn't scroll up on the Passive Tree. - nvm, the boxes can be dragged
Where can I view my total Stun Threshold?
Have a "Character Item Rarity" stat in the Character Screen, with its hover-note noting that you can get more IIR through skills, maps, etc.
I love how the camera pans very slightly depending on which way you're moving/looking.
Need some way to determine distance.
The Well in Act 3 is really hard to press with a controller.
When holding the Compare/Advanced Description button, prevent the list of affixes from changing compared to its normal display, ie. each affix should stay in the same order in the list.
Allow binding Item Pickup to more than one hotkey.
Show base level requirements on Unidentified gear.
Show advanced affix info with its maximum tier, eg. T2/5 would be Tier 2 out of a maximum of 5.
Show the cost of refunding Atlas/Passives somewhere on the refund screen.
Passive Tree should note when refunding/swapping Attribute Nodes when it will cause gear/skills to be unequippable.
When an item is offered for disenchanting, make it so only the changed currencies offered "pop", eg. if you have Regal Shards and Transmutation Shards offered and then you elect to disenchant a rare, both shard types will pop in the offered screen, but only the Regal Shards should because they're the only ones changing when a rare is elected.
Allow a circle cursor to show when the right control stick is moved in combat, moving into place on screen depending on distance the stick is moved from 0,0.
I LOVE the advanced descriptions.
If a Skill Gem has a Support already on it, put that in the description when hovering over the Support it already has, ie. Instead of just saying “Your character is already using this Support Gem”, have it say “This Skill Gel already has this Support Gem linked” or something.
Show charges on Flasks and Charms for m/kb UI, like controller UI.
Sometimes the number of charges on controller UI is wrong?

UI Map
Load times are better but still way too long.
Sometimes the POIs look like they're in the wrong spots.

Atlas
Change the wording on the initial quest; it currently implies that there's a corrupted "biome" instead of corruption applying to biomes.
Show affixes on current map somewhere.
Show Unique Map mods before they're run.
Where on earth does it show that Corrupted Nexuses require 4 affixes on a Waystone to activate??
The Advanced Info button on controller doesn't allow me to select Mounting Greed on a Tower.

Monsters
Monsters sometimes "react" way too much when Heavy Stunned, eg. recoiling too far backwards, causing them to be difficult to target.
Stun sometimes just doesn't work? Monsters seem to ignore it or recover immediately. This might just be a monster-specific thing and could be fixed with the Heavy Stun Bar reflecting stun status.
Mob melee attacks almost feel like their range is too short/narrow. Perhaps this could be increased but their speed and damage could be reduced slightly? I know this can feel a bit like D3's monster homogenisation, but maybe PoE2's is a bit far in the other direction. Currently, movement and attack/cast speeds are too important imo.
Volatile Plants should despawn immediately after their rare dies.
Some monsters have a red outline but are untargetable and undamageable when doing their spawn/activation animation.

Combat
The slower a skill is, the more powerful it should be in other ways (eg. more dps), because speed is more important than just for dps.
Speed of combat sometimes/often makes managing resources and triggers very difficult.
Make minion effects more discernible compared to enemy effects, especially Companions (eg. purple orbs).
I absolutely love the feeling of tactical combat, which I believe is what GGG were going for, eg. quickly poke down an enemy or parry them > Cull the Weak/Disengage for a Frenzy Charge > Lightning Spear to clear the room. Unfortunately, due to (I believe) the speed of combat, it's often better to just spam one skill. It's like: You can't get rid of skill queueing, but you also have to be able to interrupt skills with other skills because you have to make such split-second decisions.
Reason why combat feels weird for some/a lot of people: There's a lot of scaling, plus most ARPGs are so fast these days, so going from an Endgame build to a fresh start will feel significantly slower to the brain, kind of like going from increasingly-tasty food back to basic food. So you either need to be okay with a slower game in general, or detoxing yourself, or only playing ARPGs that are fast right from the start. I think it's okay for PoE2 to be this way, though I'd still wager it's better for it to be slower in Endgame than it currently is, partly to reduce the stark transition consequence, but also because more "realistic" speeds allows for more tactical combat.
I think a part of why combat doesn’t feel “smooth” or “fluid” (overused words but apt here) is partly because of how Stun works. If the player gets stunned, they stop and skill queueing stops working til the entire stun animation is finished. If a monster gets stunned, they instantly continue acting again after their stun animation finishes, even going so far as to continue the attack they were currently performing (eg. Constricted Spitter). This could potentially be resolved by having monsters have at least a chance to take longer to recover after stun animations are finished, with the chance reducing the more they are stunned Recently, similar to D2 (I believe) and mimicking real life a bit more. Also, for the player, perhaps consider a different type of “stunned skill queue” where the character simply remembers the last skill you attempted to use before their stun animation finishes, instead of remembering the full sequence.
Reduce effectiveness of slows being applied to your dodge roll, especially if they’re applied while you’re partway through a roll.
Reduce the aftercast animation, or at least let us cancel it sooner just by moving; it feels weird having to dodge roll after every slow skill.
I get the idea of Total Attack Time mods, but they need to be WAY more powerful. If Skill X does 100 dps, and Skill Y does 150 dps but has +1s Total Attack Time, you just can’t scale Skill Y anywhere near as well as Skill X, not to mention the extra risk of Skill Y given how important speed is as you progress, even in the Campaign. IMO it’s fine for skill with Total Attack Time to begin way more powerful than comparable skills without it and end up still slightly more powerful when fully scaled.

Exploration/Zones
Allow a D4/MMO-like open world levelling experience after completing the Campaign once per League. This can be great for more casual players, and allow more of a sense of community.
After that, allow Waystones to be used on Campaign zones; sometimes it's just nice to be able to farm areas you know and love.
Reason: I find Endgame a bit overwhelming. I got to my third Tower at ~T6 Waystones and there were just affixes and mods everywhere. Pack density also gets crazy and there are a lot of effects going on all over the screen. I'd love a way to play a bit simpler, like D4/GW2 open world.
It's fine to have dead ends; just make exploring feel more fun by having more chests in dead ends, or things like PoE1/D2 sparkly chests.
Activate any Checkpoint near a Waypoint automatically when you activate/teleport to the Waypoint.
Maybe consider saving Checkpoint states in zones, so that if you unlock a Checkpoint (or certain ones) once, they will be automatically unlocked any time you create a new instance of that zone.
I don't know if this is possible, but the layout of Zones should reflect what they look like on the UI Map.
More small random encounters, eg. in Torchlight 2, there’s a lot of instances where there will be a chest with chains around it, and as you approach/click it, it spawns a few tough mobs to defeat to unlock it; or there will be a tough-looking skeleton with its own sword through itself, pinning itself to a post, and if you kill all monsters around it an event starts and spawns more monsters, and then at the end the skeleton champion pulls its own sword out and fights you. These are great little encounters that can tell a tiny little story/add to the world building and lore without the player having to think super hard about optimisation like with League Encounters. Rogue Exiles are a great start.

Quests
Allow more quest item drop-offs, like the keys to Lachlann.

Character build/modifiers
The more conditional a modifier, the more impactful it should be.
During my time (start to Tier 6 Maps), it seems that there are some recurring build themes that are just wayyy better than anything else. Eg. Monk Quarterstaff builds have very little access to Attack Damage, so they basically have to stick to one element or Inspiring Ally, or just go to the high AD clusters. Crit just doesn't seem to scale anywhere near as well as straight AD.

Passive Tree
Perhaps consider rescaling passive respec cost to be a combination of [increasing per point refunded, to a cap] x [increasing per clvl] x [decreasing per experience gained without dying], though that last one could cause people to get "stuck" by making a bad build and dying heaps.
Defences
Maybe Armour could have in-built push/slow resistance, to offset its reduced movement speed?

Items
A lot of the names of gear makes no sense, eg. Feathered Mitts are Armour??, especially considering similar/same names are completely different types in PoE1, eg. Serpentscale Boots.
I love unique items like Seaglass Spears; adding an INT requirement but doubling crit chance.
Maybe boots could have their movement speed split into both a prefix and suffix, for more likelihood of rolling a speed affix but also more trade-off to balance it out.
I understand that an Auto-Sort Inventory button takes away from the feeling of moving items with your hands, the weight, etc, but it's a bitch sorting my inventory with a controller.
Flasks and their mods need balance for the Campaign and early Endgame; they're almost too strong, and the +% Recovery is way stronger than everything else. The trade-off mods, like losing Mana when you use a Life Flask, need serious buffs.
If you've selected something to equip when using a controller, like a Charm, prevent its "drop area" from being on unequippable spaces. So basically, selecting "equip" on a Charm should only give you Charm spaces to place it, and moving past the edge of your Charm slots should go back to the first/last Charm slot.
I'd love to see Sets and Runewords like D2, but they definitely should not be BIS.
Why are Flask affixes not tiered?
Loot drops
PLEASE don't make loot like PoE1. If for some reason you decide to, please have the current loot system in a Ruthless mode, though I believe PoE2 should stick to its harder/slower roots and have an "Easy Mode" if some people want PoE1-like gameplay.
Loot feels so good in 0.2.0, and I'd argue that SSF is the way to play. It feels more personal and focused, ie. there isn't an overwhelming explosion of drops that you need to sift through or filter out, so you can just focus on the few drops you get and try to make the most of your limited resources. (No it's not focused as in class-drops ala D3/D4, but imo this type of "focused" is less fun.)
However, I'd MAYBE advocate for higher unique drop chance.
I had a Magic Strongbox drop zero loot - this should never happen, given how rare Strongboxes are. Also please make it more obvious when Strongboxes open, as it's possible I missed it.
I love monsters respawning on death, but I hate loot disappearing on death, especially given how difficult it can be to pickup on controller.

Crafting
Feels a little basic, but otherwise really good to me. I don't believe the amount of crafting we should be doing should be increased; instead, consider lowering overall difficulty.

Vendors and Gambling
I love their current state with what they sell.
However, they could do with a way to reset them other than just levelling up.

Spear skills
Skills that target enemies with Parried Debuff need better auto-targetting of them.
Cull the Weak, and similar skills, should gain multiple Charges if they kill multiple enemies.
Provide more info on Whirling Slash and how it interacts with Elemental Ground.

Skills
There is plenty of room for allowing more Skills to be used with more weapons, and more Supports to be used with more skills, eg. This Reddit thread.
Maybe Chromatic Orbs can be brought back in and used to change the colour of Skills, and then the colour corresponds with the weapon types it can be used with.

Bugs/Anomalies
When on controller, if the character menu is opened while characters are talking, upon closing the menu they restart their speech instead of continuing on from where they got paused.
Sometimes Map icons don't get marked off. Certain ones (eg. Troubled Camp in Act 3) never get marked off.
On controller, when using Quick Move to move a Flask out of the Flask Stash Tab, the cursor placement goes to the inventory instead of staying in the Flask Tab.
On controller, sometimes the Advanced Info button does weird things, eg. If you hold it when hovering over an item and press d-pad down, the Advanced Descriptions stay open (this is good though), and sometimes when pressing it on the Atlas it will give a blue outline to a Map description instead of immediately going to the first mod.
Controller cursor sometimes doesn't automatically go to TP after cast.
Delwyn sometimes exclaims to follow the Wisp after it's already gone into the Rare/the Rare is dead.
Sometimes using Tempest Bell on Zalmarath the Colossus causes it to just disappear when you're too close, yet you still can't build Combo til its timer has finished.
Why does Shadow Dancing (Passive node) say “you’ve” for its ES line but “you have” for its Evasion line?
I feel like there wouldn’t be chickens casually strolling around Ogham Village, given its state.
Sometimes sockets don’t always show?
Recommended Supports sometimes say they can’t be socketed in the Skill they’re recommended for.
One With The Storm doesn’t apply to Charged Staff?

Explanations
To write: Why making loot "better" will still lead to "maxing out" quickly. Though I do think the curve could be flattened a little, so that upgrades come slightly more slowly than they currently do in earlier stages of the game, and slightly more quickly in later stages.
I think it's very difficult to make crafting more efficient than trading, at least pre-top-tier. D2 had a good system with Runewords though. Maybe LE's system. Maybe bound items.
Making trade frictionless will solve the frustration of it for sure, but it will come with trade-offs, eg. it will be EVEN BETTER than crafting.

Patch notes feedback
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3753015
"Massively adjusted the Azak Bog, firstly by the aforementioned changes to interrupt events, but also changed the monster composition of the area to have less Ranged and Elite monsters."
- less -> fewer. This seems grammatically minor, but it changes the meaning quite substantially. "Less Ranged and Elite monsters" implies that the Ranged and Elite monsters are less extreme. "Fewer Ranged and Elite monsters" implies they are fewer in number.
Nerfing monsters is understandable, just please be wary about player powercreep (which will essentially be the outcome with monster nerfcreep). It's okay for some monsters to be asymmetrical and even bordering on a bit ridiculous, ala Souls in D2, because it creates very memorable moments. In D2, the player sees a fallen pack and knows "I can chill a bit, but I do have to kill the Shaman"; whereas they see a Soul or even a lightning bolt fly in from offscreen and go "FUCK TIME TO MOVE QUICK". This flow is the opposite of what people call "smooth", but imo is much more fun and engaging.
0.2.0g
Reading patch notes
I’m a little concerned this is overbuffing loot, but I think some of the buffs sound very promising, such as Unique Bosses always dropping at least one Rare item, and Corrupted Nexuses granting 5 Atlas Passives.
Update after playing: Pros and cons. I just hope PoE2 doesn’t go the way of PoE1 or LE; IMHO, if you need a loot filter before you’re doing super juiced content, there’s too much loot.
Loot
Are Tier 2s supposed to drop in Normal Campaign??

GGG interview with Ziz 09-04-25
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiFLwjFI4S4&t=928s
Fun is subjective

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiFLwjFI4S4&t=3364s
PoE1 players may be conditioned to think being maxed out on gear is the standard

Could it be that a bunch of PoE1 players went straight from Legacy of Phrecia to PoE2 0.2.0 and suddenly felt the stark difference in loot drops?
ZiggyD noted the same thing: https://youtu.be/EtKI62waEhY?t=837

Jonathan: Are you selling Rares?
My thoughts: I'd also throw in Magics too. People who just filter everything out and pick up almost nothing are going to have less gold and currency. I'm pretty sure PoE2 expects that you will grind a bit if you do this. And if you do neither... do you not expect the game to be harder? Like, you're intentionally interacting less (or not at all) with several systems yet expecting the game to be easy.

MrLlama's video - Where has Path of Exile 2 Gone Wrong
MrLlama's video - Where has Path of Exile 2 Gone Wrong?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DjpUCQ2_1s4

Issue:
Start game is too slow.
Response:
I just tested PoE2 with a Monk, D2 with a Barb, Dark Souls with a Warrior, Torchlight with a Destroyer, and LE with a Sentinel. PoE2's early game gameplay absolutely feels like a hybrid between PoE1's stat-based builds and Dark Souls' skill-based combat. Could it be faster? Sure. Could it be slower? Also yes. I guess it depends on what you go in expecting; if you play it tactically, then combat won't be as good as Dark Souls but will be way better than every other ARPG, and loot will be personal preference (I love it); if you try to play it like PoE1, then combat and loot will be miserable because you're expecting it to be a different game.

Issue:
Too much power in items. Make more power inherent and on tree/guaranteed.
Response:
I semi-agree, though I don't think it's as big of a deal as people are saying. Comparison to D2 Sorc with 17/17 Fireball/Fire Mastery and 0 fcr = Oculus adds about 61% dps (37% more damage and 18% more cast speed). Also, people are acting like getting unlucky with drops is some new bad thing in ARPGs?? RNG varying per run has been like... most of the selling point of the loot system for all ARPGs ever.

Issue: Auto attack feels too strong.
Response: This kinda contradicts your above statement. Also, it's nice for auto attack to not suck in an ARPG for once.

Issue: D2 WW sucked with -50% damage.
Response: Probs, though the scaling is additive with other damage bonuses, so not as big a deal as you're saying. Feels-wise, sure. WW also is so much better than every other Barb skill the majority of the time. Not sure how its unique feeling could be kept without homogenising it a bit though.

General response to above points: This is a personal preference of multiplicative/big scaling vs higher base power but lower scaling.

Issue: Can't decide where to invest passives/skills due to everything feeling lacklustre.
Response: Yeah I kinda feel this too, not as much though. But again, contradiction; you mention scaling is too high already, so a change to this would scale the entire game up very quickly.

Issue: Mechanics and gameplay are too complicated, eg. Combos, and things like Projectile hit for increased Melee damage and vice versa.
Response: Yeah somewhat agree. I respect that GGG are TRYING to do something new though. Could be personal preference of do you want 1. Just pick a skill to improve and spam that, or 2. Actually have a variety of skills that you use depending on the situation. Some say this is causing an identity crisis, and I somewhat agree; I think this is where the points of "game's too fast" come into play and are fair. GW2 comes up against this type of discussion all the time: Should an easier/simpler build be as powerful as a more difficult/complex one? I think both games actually do a pretty good job of having and encouraging both options.

Issue: What's the point of going down defensive passive lines, especially at the start?
Response: Agree. You might get like 20% more ehp but lose like 50% of your damage.

I tested a Witch here and got absolutely stomped by 3 Porcupine Crabs. This has changed my mind about the very start; I think kill speed is fine (could be slightly faster but still fine), but time-to-death (ttd) could definitely be considered too high, especially from ranged mobs. One could say this forces people to Dodge, which is also a fair response imo.

Issue: Combos feel good and bad at the same time. They can feel janky, and mentally draining from having to do it for white mobs ie. too often. Sometimes don't work, so many steps, and mobs are too fast.
Response: Similar to above; sort of agree. There could be more options for simpler gameplay. Perhaps the game could be overall easier but slower if you play it simpler, and much faster if you pull off combos?

Issue: D2 Sorc combo hypothetical = Frost Nova > Lower Resist > Static Field > Nova. Might not need to do Frost Nova against slower enemies, etc; you can take out pieces of your combo depending on what you're facing.
Response: Agreed, though I'd argue that PoE2 already has some of this. Probably not as much as D2 though, which is weird because the monsters seem simpler in D2 yet... I guess they stick to their tropes more than in PoE2? It does feel like PoE2 mobs are ALL too fast/tanky/damaging, which isn't 100% true but sort of FEELS that way.

Issue: Map size is too large, though having variety is good. Kiting white mobs around/back may be contributing to this. Combine with dying being too punishing because of respawns.
Response: I agree a little, though I think it'd be more fine if exploration was more rewarding. Maybe it'd help if there was better indication of where to go? eg. D2 has paths in some zones. Could have some smaller zones and then some zones their current massive size but they're more rewarding.
The dying being too punishing I also find interesting, because I feel this too (and in Dark Souls), but also dislike it when dying is not punishing enough (eg. D3). So I mostly disagree about allowing players to death-run the entire game.

Issue: Grinding specific areas isn't unique or fun in PoE2 like it is in D2.
Response: Agree. I think higher/guaranteed specific drops in certain areas or from certain mobs is actually a good thing when used sparingly, like in D2 and GD, though maybe not on the level of WoWC.

MrLlama's list of "Where PoE2 has gone wrong":
1. Item necessity
2. Loot - core of ARPGs
3. Skill power (auto attack stronger??) - reminds me of whirlwind in d2
4. Skill/Build Restrictions (tree, gem, etc)
5. Combos - think of sorc - Move speed of monsters vs combo timing vs atk speeds
6. map sizes/monster densities
7. Grindability feels amiss - areas respawning on death still feels bad