feedback after 441h

overall, this is a great game with insane potential. i love it, but i got kinda tired.

my greatest issue: performance
my personal performance issues:
once i enter a map, fps drop, epic lag which settles after waiting for like half a minute or killing a couple monsters.
we are talking about 5-10 second lag spikes, resulting many times in death.
after the lag sorts itself out, game runs perfectly.
re entering map does not make it reoccur.

friends have many disconnects or even crashes - i have a few too but nothing compared to them. i got a different issue as described above.

i tried settings etc but it is as it is.

party play definitely lags for everybody who i played with.

magnitude of lag in general increases the more people play (total users in poe2).

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now that would be less of an issue in poe1 with 6 portals.

i personally dislike the one portal system, especially if you loose so much while the majority of my deaths come from lag.
to add insult to injury, if map was not completed, you have to run it again with zero loot.
it is not enough to lose out on dozens of ex investment of a highly juiced map, 10% exp and all the loot.
but if you are lucky, you didnt die, you just disconnected/crashed only to find out on login, that all portals are gone. at least you keep 10% exp in that case. but that scenario happened rarely (dc/crash & portal loss)

i find that utterly frustrating, especially, if most of my deaths come from major lag spikes especially at the beginning of a map.

i have seen people who go back into portals into a highly crowded map - to actually press ESC to pause the game to let it load all the shit to not die on lag.
something i started to use myself actually, but that is not how a game is supposed to work, it feels really really extremely bad.

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towers:
it feels like a waste of time running shitty maps on unjuiced land and also having to have to run the bad maps you dont want to run to not juice them.

the combination of not being able to choose layout and the atlas with the nodes which have an actual location, is highly toxic.

to add many more insults to the vast injuries:
tons of unwanted layouts brick/contaminate a nice tower arrangement up to a point where you are left with too few good layouts worth the actual juicing.

what do you do, waste your expensive tablets on a tiny amount of maps, because a third had bad layout and half of the tower range is water?
or do you continue farming unjuiced shitty maps to clear another location?

but that is not enough! although there is a land connection, the waypoints do not connect between natural obstacles like water!
now your tower juiced some nice maps - you can not reach.
oh, you rather not juice the area then? no problem, farm some more white stupid unjuiced trash to clear another location!

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where the f*** are the citadels? WHERE????? literally! completely broken feature to a point of non-existence.

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MY WISH:
make juicing (no more towers) "location-independent" like in poe1 and also give us an option to choose the layout.

just in case another lag or crash deletes the map, at least we can run another juiced map instead of wiping broken bricked trash.

i have no idea why you are forcing us TWICE (pre juice & post death) to run the worst content in the game: unjuiced worst layouts - so our towers dont waste themselves on the trash!
it feels like you guys (devs) are trying to make us players feel forced.

i hope you realize that this system actually TAKES from our choices and FORCES us to do what we dont want to and there is no way around!


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icon range on minimap
as soon as it is discovered, i want to see where that breach is, no matter how far i am!

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screen & noise clutter

if you use certain abilities or play in a party, you cant see or hear shit, which is beautiful with on death effects, CE and one portal.
especially party play is messy as hell, making it almost impossible to see or hear any signs of a CE for example.
add some lag to spice it up and you got a russian roulette feature in the game.

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party play
if you die, you either wait in the hideout till the party is done, or you start your own map.
the others will likely finish their map before you finish yours.
do they now join you, or do you leave your map half finished?

if the others join you, juicing becomes much more complex, if you want to keep a certain level across the party play.

if you prep an area - the whole party of 6 people is gonna do a single trash unjuiced map?
or will they all be clearing their own area simultaneously? sounds like the situation defeats party play a bit, or at least forces you to prep an area solo.
guys, the whole area prepping idea plainly sucks. it sounds good, but it simply does not work like intended, except if you wanted to create frustration on multiple levels, then it was a great success.

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on death effects & explosions
are just stupid.
the amount of time i had to waste by waiting for some monster to explode while it is blocking the path in a stupid layout... is FRUSTRATING
playing builds which do not rely on regen with all the stupid lame degen AOE - no matter if burning ground or on death effect - really sucks. especially when you have to back-track the map on burning ground.

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mod combos on rares

ever had a one shot capable, teleporting, mana siphoning, proximity tangibility & corpse explosion rare on a super juiced breach? no? prepare for ptsd brother.
dont worry, its just one portal anyways, nightmare will be over real quick. at least you are taken the burden of deciding if you wana try it again.

maybe the next map crashes or lags you to death, having two maps wasted in a row is real. not too often, but more than enough that you play too often a zero sum game on top of it.

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atlas - not many options available, if you dont do it right, you barely get enough waystones to sustain your endgame. NOBODY goes for strongboxes, essences or shrines. why? - because these mechanics are underpowered.

i juice my stronboxes into rares. the amount of currency spent is not found in the loot. the strongbox at least seems to be rather wasting my time with trickeling hordes hidden in dumb fog.

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crafting - i loved it in poe1, the depth, complexity, options, the actual POWER AND INFLUENCE you as a player had with your interactions.

the super dumbed down slot machine of a current crafting system literally makes it feel useless.
to add even more insults to injuries, the actual omens, which are supposed to be used, are literally nonexistent-kind of rare, absolutely beyond any reach of an average player.
in poe1 you paid 2 div to protect pref/suff. in poe2 you pay 20.

i personally find that way out of balance.

lack of reroll:
since value of bases has risen, since you need insane masses of them, if you want to start from scratch (white item), you suddenly have the need for multiple quad tabs, increasing logistics more than stupid graveyard corpses.

in poe1 you just alt / chaos spam a base item.
in poe2 you fill it up, maybe have one or two essences and then recycle it.

i tried that fun with like 4 quad tabs full of maces. i got nothing.
i tried buying bases. good luck, buying a material which is needed in masses one by one with 90% of the sellers not reacting. SO FRUSTRATING OMGGGGGGG

this game rewards me for farming, barely at all for crafting at some point.

i miss the process of slowly assembling your item. prepping base, rolling prefixes or suffixes and finish the other...
you kind of had a goal in steps in front of you which you actually could afford.

i made some really dope items in poe1, burned through hundreds of divs.
if i recall how many essences it needed to actually finish prefixes on a phys axe to get at least 2xT1 & 1xT2... it was something like 4k.

dont tell me, that you want us to go through thousands of bases to just get half of the item done. really, like wtf.

the whole effort multiplied itself in the current situation into abnormal stupid realms beyond the moon.

PLEASE, for gods sake, make a crafting bench that runs on gold. give us the power to target prefixes & suffixes, reroll etc.
PLEASE!
if you want to keep the omen direction, PLEASE, increase the drop rate SIGNIFICANTLY!
make it possible for joe to work on his suffixes or prefixes. make it affordable.

it wasnt for free in poe1, it cost 2-5d per step, depending on the craft.
but paying up to 20d for a single step in poe2? that is outright insane.
not to mention the amount of time it takes to farm 2d in poe1 or 20d in poe2... MAGNITUDE of time needed increased AGAIN.

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item rarity & quantity

please remove it from gear, rather make a passive MF tree like a skill tree which is accessible for all builds.

i would love to "sacrifice" certain item types to increase drop chance of other items, preferably specific ones.

-> no more basic, advanced items, no more strength & int gear
---> more dex gear, more expert dual string bows, more currency, more jewels, etc

that would act as a loot filter by itself and reduce trash items from the ground, helping performance.

i would love if the mf tree has a kill-count progression, similiar like if it had its own exp bar.



I hope & trust this all gets sorted out, once at least the performance works, I feel like coming back.