Sweaty-Casual 0.3 Feedback (Great work!)

So to preface, I've beaten Uber Elder, beaten T3 Arbiter, but by many metrics I'm still a casual player with a little over 1.5k hours altogether in both games. I tend to feel PoE 1 is a "better" game because it's had a decade of polish and attention. I am absolutely in love with PoE 2, however.

TL;DR - if you care, I'm casual by many standards, but I'm not at all casual by casual player standards.


My overall feedback for 0.3 is thus: it has been an amazing transformation from the clunkiness I experienced in 0.1 with the addition of sprint, campaign changes (like making waypoints close to zone entrances). I have yet to try the Huntress, however, I did not play during 0.2. The end game needs some polish, and the balancing is still severely under-tuned, but the additions from 0.2 and 0.3 made reinstalling and playing again millions of miles more enjoyable for me. On both ranged and melee classes.

9/10 patch. -1 point for nerfing builds 12hrs before launch (you literally waited for Fub and Rue to publish their videos, didn't you? lol)

For more in-depth analysis: + = positive point, - = negative point

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First, the good.

+Act 4 was gorgeous. I loved the boss gauntlet that it seemed to provide, and the non-linear island hopping made traveling easier than in Act 2. I also really loved the secondary voicelines from NPCs when you would either run away from their dialogue too fast or even kill certain bosses too fast. These elements made the story-telling actually that much BETTER for me, when compared to other ARPGs that run on rails. The story developments are good too, I'm excited to see where this leads.

+Sprint is amazing. Pretty sure I did a speedrun test and was able to clear act 1 in under 30 minutes just trying to race from boss to boss while dodging mobs. The only downside is that my thumb got sore from mashing spacebar to either dodge enemies or instantly change direction. Many players seemed to have mixed reactions to sprint, and I can understand their desire for wanting a toggle to maybe disable sprint. Frankly, I think it's well designed as is (skill issue), but I understand their position as a player.

+Crafting. I fully expect abyss crafting to be neutered, but the additions of new orbs and the abyss system has been a giant boon to a player like me that predominantly plays SSF. (I do trade, but mostly currency exchange, or buying/selling crafting bases.) I think I heard some players complain about needing to collect bases and such, but I remember interviews GGG saying they wanted bases to feel important, and I like this feature. It's still annoying to reforge/recombine as a pseudo replacement for alteration orbs, but I admit I have no idea how to fix this. Adding alt orbs means bases will be irrelevant again. (At a high-end they still are, because you can annul magic items. Expensive, but an option.)

Now for the bad.

-Class balance. It goes without saying I'm sure, class and skill balance is still completely wild. I'm not talking about Deadeye being the most popular build, necessarily either (I know that alone doesn't define "balance"). A few streamers did a podcast https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PmNX00g0ELY, and I think Rue is spot on. Items are too powerful. SO powerful in fact that the builds almost become irrelevant if you have the right items. I think Rue also made a good point in that, it's impossible to perfectly "balance" a game such as PoE (League of Legends, for example). At a point, things become too complex, a meta will inevitably form, and players will use it or not (it doesn't matter what the "balance" is). I don't know what a good solution here is. I think it's better to buff players than to nerf them, however. And vice-versa, nerf monsters instead of buff players. (Buff monster instead of nerf player, buff player instead of nerf monster, etc.) But this is the fun stuff the developers get to play with all day. Have fun and good luck.

-/+ Towers and endgame. GGG has already said this is the goal for 0.4, but I wanted to give some feedback anyway as I wasn't around for 0.2. Frankly I don't hate towers as much as others. I agree with their criticisms, but I just don't care that much. I appreciate that they're much shorter now, it genuinely makes them kinda fun to blast through real quick because they're usually also very linear. I don't mind sextants 2.0, but I absolutely hate the infinitely scrolling atlas. It is buggy, it is laggy after a point, there's not enough bookmarks, traversal is unfun, the map itself isn't engaging beyond being a laggy loading screen for me. I hate it. It's abhorrent and ugly and buggy and slow and tedious. Give us a way to reset the atlas entirely or something else. After blasting 1,000 maps it's nigh impossible to find your way around anymore, and so the best strategy is literally just go in a straight line away from the monolith and only divert to tower groups. It needs a massive rework, but I'm hopeful 0.4 will bring a better system.

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Rapid fire for some other things I want to mention:

Rhoa mount - this thing might be too OP. Even fubgun was saying he was surprised it wasn't removed (I did not play 0.2 so I had no idea). No other classes have access to anything similar. It's just a free "evade all enemies and slow-downs" mechanic that costs barely any spirit. Completely trivializes combat before my character has end-game god-levels of dps. Not saying it needs removed, but maybe a giga nerf-bat? Fellow deadeyes feel free to hate me here I don't care.

Support gems shown by skill gems are still totally crap. How does Ice Strike not have martial tem, sorry rapid attacks, listed as a key support gem? I understand the idea is just give newbies something easy to digest, but you're giving them trash. Update these lists to more relevant support-synergies, for the love of god, please. Joe-Shmoe wondering why his warrior stops feeling good in Act 3 because he keeps picking "recommended" supports.

Suffixes/Prefixes (and item drop tiers) need to be made more obvious. Now that crafting has been improved, give us a p/s on the left side of a modifier to tell if it's a suffix/prefix. It would make alt-tabbing far less frequent when crafting, and improve readability for console players alike. QOL ask this game has needed for over a decade imo. The other thing is items dropping at different tiers than item modifiers are rated at. Drops go from low numbers (1) to high number (5) as best, but modifiers go from high numbers (8) to low numbers (1) as the best "tier" system. This is confusing. Especially considering Tier 5 item don't necessarily guarantee tier 1 modifiers. It feels like there's no consistency, so why bother?

Girly/gooner MTX. I know this is controversial in PoE1 especially, players do not like pink in their gothic epic, but if PoE 2 wants to appeal to a broader audience I think this should be re-looked at. For example, my sister actually loves PoE 2, but she can't stand playing it for very long because, in her words "why does my sorceress look like a warrior?". I think there is probably a healthy middle-ground GGG can find that adds more "pretty" mtx, while not detracting from their current style.

Lastly, please, for the love of god, let us put simulacrum splinters in the delirium tab finally. They currently get sent to the "fragments" affinity tab.

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Overall I'm very hopeful for PoE 1 and 2, and I'm so happy I reinstalled to try out 0.3 and the changes made within. You guys have done a wonderful job, and at such an incredible pace. I'm very proud of the team, and very excited to play more.

Another thing to mention (which I touched a bit on when I mention Rhoa mount), I noticed in another thread, is combat.

I do agree that combat has become more like PoE 1 versus the deliberate, intensive fights GGG envisioned. Frankly I think making BOSSES hard and mobs weak is the way to go. Make the bosses the focus for combat, and let mobs be mostly trivialized.

Then, later on, you can design league mechanics that juice content for blasters versus bossers so players don't feel FOMO for not having a build good at one/the other.

I personally like the flow in an ARPG where I feel like I'm genuinely getting stronger from act 1 to end game. PoE 1 does this flawlessly, but PoE 2 struggles depending on which class you play. Monk is great at this, Deadeye was not (I coasted the entire game.)

Forgive me if I am not allowed to bump this.

I am just curious if anyone else cares to opine on my thoughts? I mostly played Deadeye and Invoker this league, so my perspective is limited to that +YouTube videos of other opinions.