Updated feedback from a new POE player (340hrs, T15 mapping)

As promised in my last thread, I wanted to provide updated feedback. I have taken a second character to endgame, this time all the way up through T15 maps, again with a build I created on my own with no guides, so my feedback is completely my own.

Updated thoughts on difficulty scaling and enemy design

I still think that the greatest promise for POE2 lies in the initial vision for the game described in early marketing materials and demonstrated in the first Act of the game--namely, slower and more deliberate combat, and enemies with well-telegraphed abilities that require skill to dodge and intelligent buildcraft to mitigate. This would set POE2 apart from POE1, allowing it to be the parallel game that GGG has said it wants, rather than a true sequel that makes POE1 irrelevant.

However, some of my previous statements about the difficulty of mobs as they currently stand--their high speed and damage--were probably made a bit too strongly and harshly out of frustration. Now that I've experienced a second character with a better build (and one that builds just Evasion instead of hybrid with Armor), I think the issue lies less with the high speed and damage of the enemies, and more with the fact that Armor as it stands is flat-out useless and Evasion is only useful if you stack it high enough to avoid most attacks and/or take the Acrobatics Notable.

There are four issues with enemy balance that I stand by needing to be fixed, however:
1) Enemies using high-damage, very fast (often AOE) leap abilities from off-screen or just barely on-screen, and one-shotting the player before they have adequate time to react
2) Enemies that have both extremely high speed and extremely high damage, making +30% Movement Speed (at minimum) a required stat in order to have any chance at dodging them (this is especially a problem with Rares that have both a mana drain aura and a large high-damage AOE ability)
3) The way enemies push the player around feels very awkward, as if the push merely adjusts the player's x/y coordinates on the map with no accompanying reactive animation or possible counterplay
4) On-death effects from enemies only serve to force the player to wait a few seconds before moving to pick up loot, or catch the player unawares in the middle of an intense fight--they feel like a frustrating "gotcha" in an already punishing game, especially when obscured by effects like Poison or Delirium or by scenery and obstacles in the foreground (which happens extremely often)

Issues with defenses
Of the three main defensive options (Armor, Evasion, and Energy Shield), only one is consistently viable in a game with a great many enemies with large, fast, high-damage AOE attacks, and even then it is only able to mitigate those attacks with certain Notables and/or Uniques to buff it to ridiculous levels: Energy Shield.

Kripparian's much-cited pair of YouTube videos explains the problem with Armor in POE2 in much more detail than I can, and I'm sure the dev team has seen those, so I won't go into details here. Suffice to say, Armor is next to useless by the time the player reaches endgame when it comes to mitigating anything other than chip damage from small swarms of enemies, and even that can still kill Armor-stacking builds very quickly if they get boxed in a corner.

Evasion is more useful than Armor, simply because it is easier to stack to a level where it actually makes a difference in incoming damage, since the great majority of chip damage and a good number of high-damage attacks from enemies will straight-up miss the player. However, by the late end-game, many of the highest-damage large AOE attacks from Rare and Unique enemies, which are one-shots for the overwhelming majority of possible builds in the game, appear to bypass Evasion. While it is highly unclear from in-game resources which attacks Evasion applies to and which it does not, I am making the assumption based on my experience with the game that these types of attacks are what the Acrobatics Notable is intended to be used to mitigate. However, there are two problems with this:
1) Acrobatics is only easily accessible for Rangers and Monks on the Passive tree because of its awkward position, forcing additional build sacrifices on top of the whopping 70% multiplicative reduction in Evasion rating in order to either path to it or give up other powerful Notables by using it as their Amulet infusion, thus narrowing build diversity for classes with access to Evasion nodes on the tree
2) Even for straight Evasion-stacking classes like Rangers, it is extremely difficult to stack enough Evasion to make taking Acrobatics not feel like a tremendously unfair trade-off, given the scarcity of ways to obtain extra Life points available to Rangers--it feels like a choice between "die to an inevitable one-shot AOE from off-screen that bypasses Evasion" or "you now have a small chance to dodge the AOE, but now you'll die to chip damage from swarming enemies in Trials and in Breach, Delirium, and Ritual maps because instead of evading 80% of their attacks, you're only evading 25% of them"

Energy Shield is the one defense option that seems (kind of) good to use, if you can get past the feeling that you're breaking the game by using it to its full potential (which is why I haven't). With certain Unique items and Notables available to certain classes, stacking 20K+ Energy Shield (that recharges almost instantly) on top of up to a few thousand Life points is entirely doable, which is a huge part of the reason that certain classes are considered so OP by the playerbase at the moment. The downside of this, other than feeling blatantly broken and therefore unsatisfying for players like myself, is that it makes classes that can't incorporate this into their builds feel incredibly fragile and punishing to play by comparison, in a game that already seems fond of punishing the player with its endgame mechanics and systems.

Visibility, readability, and telegraphing issues

One of the things that makes many of the bosses in POE2 so damn satisfying to fight, is the fact that even though many of them have one-shot abilities that are difficult to avoid, they are usually very well-telegraphed, giving the player the opportunity to learn the fights and avoid those attacks with skill and a little buildcraft. There are a few fights I've encountered (notably, the endgame giant skeleton boss and the scorpion boss in the third Trial of the Sekhema) with spammable one-shot attacks that feel like they desperately need some tuning to be more avoidable, but the majority of deaths I've experienced to bosses across the campaign and endgame are simply my own fault.

However, this is not the case with deaths to non-Unique enemies. This boils down to three issues: visibility, readability, and telegraphing.

Visibility is a MAJOR issue in POE2. There are a wealth of effects, not least of which are Poison, Delirium fog, and clouds of darkness around Strongboxes and Rituals, that completely hide on-death effects and AOE abilities that will one-shot almost every possible build in the game. A large number of maps are made up of tight corridors with foreground walls and obstacles that don't go invisible when the player's character or an enemy are behind them. Trees and buildings in outdoor maps do the same thing. The sheer number of times I have died to effects or enemies I simply cannot see is frustrating beyond my ability to describe, especially in endgame mapping where death results in the loss of a Waystone, all juiced map mods, all resources used to juice the Waystone, an XP penalty, and however much time I invested to set up that juiced node.

Readability is also a major issue, by which I mean allowing the player to discern what is going on from moment to moment in the middle of chaotic combat in small areas. This is most exemplified by Rituals in general and Breaches on certain map types. When large amounts of enemies fill the screen, not only does performance tend to tank regardless of graphical settings, but with all the effects and attacks going off at once and enemies swarming the player from every direction, it becomes extremely difficult to discern what is going on on-screen, resulting in a situation where it feels like the only counter-play is "keep moving and hope you don't step into a one-shot". While these situations can be fun if the player comes out of them alive, I have not once been able to tell what killed me or what I could have done differently to survive when I've died in them. Furthermore, given that Breaches are easily one of the most effective farming methods in endgame mapping, the lack of readability while doing them pushes the player towards meta builds capable of one-shotting vast swathes of enemies with a single ability, further narrowing buildcraft in one direction that is counter to the skill-based gameplay promised in the game's marketing and early Acts.

Finally, telegraphing in the game is a major issue. While most Unique enemies do telegraph their most powerful abilities really well, Rare and Magic enemies most of the time do not do so adequately, especially enemies like Vile Vultures and Quadrillas with high-range, high-damage AOE leap slam abilities that often come from off-screen or just barely on-screen. When combined with narrow corridors in maps, visual obstacles, movement obstacles (small terrain and pots or vases that block dodge rolls), and large AOE one-shot on-death effects, the player feels punished no matter where they're looking at on their screen. If they're watching their character to make sure their positioning is good and they're not standing in any AOEs, then they're punished by enemies that leap from the edge of the screen and one-shot them; if they're watching the edge of the screen to catch any sign of mobs leaping at them, they're punished by an on-death explosion or being caught on a tiny obstacle when they dodge-roll. And all of this is assuming they even CAN see those obstacles, AOEs, or enemies, given the visibility issues described above.

On the whole, a good percentage of deaths in endgame mapping feel unfair due to these issues, giving the player the impression (whether true or not) that there was nothing they could have done to avoid that death. Which, given the high penalty for deaths especially in endgame, is frustrating and anti-fun.

RNG crafting issues

I stand by my previous statements about crafting needing to be overhauled in POE2. I still very much like the idea of making loot drops more meaningful but rarer (though content like Breaches do undermine this in their current state, as I am sure the dev team is aware). However, the crafting system being based on layer upon layer of RNG with no deterministic options heavily undermines this system, and it's only going to get worse as the loot pool expands with new Ascendancies and systems being introduced to the game in the future. I understand that GGG wants to simplify crafting when compared to POE1, but making everything dependent on RNG is only going to frustrate players in a different way that POE1's crafting system does. Assuming that the reason more players do not engage in crafting in POE1 is because the mechanics are too complex is the wrong lesson to take away from POE1. Complexity is not the problem--lack of resources for the player to understand how to engage with complex systems is. The solution to this is not to make crafting into a series of gacha pulls. Simplify systems judiciously, and provide in-game tutorials, tooltips, and quests to explain those systems to the player, and they will engage with them.

The other issue with crafting and buildcraft in POE2 is the fact that certain stat lines are effectively required for all builds, namely +% Movement Speed and +% Item Rarity. Easy solutions to both of these have been suggested by the majority of the playerbase, from HCSSF streamers down to new POE players like myself. Simply make +% Movement Speed implicit on all boots, and if you must include +% Item Rarity as a stat line, cap it at 50-100% and remove its effects on Currency/League-specific items and Quantity of drops. Bam, problem completely solved.

Provide more clarity in-game on how systems work

This is an issue I hadn't addressed in my previous post, but one that became very clear to me while trying to figure out how Poison works in POE2 for my Pathfinder build. Simply put, certain mechanics and terms are not explained adequately by the current tooltips in the game, and this is evidenced by the sheer volume of posts online from people online asking how those systems work and the sheer number of conflicting answers in response. Concepts like "More/Less vs Increased/Decreased" are easy enough to understand once the player gets the hang of them, and at this point they're tradition for POE so I understand keeping those in place. But Magnitude? Tooltips for Passive tree nodes that vaguely refer to effects without providing explicit numbers or percentages? Needing to press Alt to dive down into multiple layers of tooltips only to still be forced into trial and error to answer the simple question, "Will taking this node increase my DPS or not?" This is counter to GGG's stated goal of making the game more accessible to new players.

One solution that would help this is including damage/defense formulas at the bottom of tooltips, or even better, dynamically showing how the player's current stats will be affected by taking a specific node on the passive tree. Even if neither of those options are feasible, at the very least for mechanics like Poison and Elemental Ailments, including a note on what damage types and damage sources impact that mechanic (such as, in the case of Poison, "Poison scales off of Physical and Chaos damage from initial Hits, but not off of Elemental damage"), would go a long way towards helping the player understand which nodes to take and which to avoid.

There are also a large number of nodes on the Passive tree and some item descriptions that would benefit greatly from a re-write for more clarity, such as Gas Arrow, which states "Does not Hit, but Poisons enemies as though Hitting them"--what does that even mean? Do Critical Hits affect Poison damage from this skill? What about Passive nodes that affect Hits? A new player reading this who hasn't understood the difference between Hits and Spell damage will have no idea what this means. Even I'm still not sure what it means, I just know from trial and error that it seems to work with at least some of the Passive nodes I've taken, which is not a good thing for a game that lives and dies at endgame by players being able to optimize their builds.

Fixing these issues will, I think, cut down on the number of players still complaining about the cost of respecs in the game, as well as giving players the tools they need to be more confident in their own builds, rather than feeling pushed towards following meta streamer builds over making their own.

Endgame Mapping

I don't want to harp on the topic of endgame mapping too much, considering it's Early Access and I expect a lot will be changed about it before the 1.0 release. However, for the time being, it really needs to be better balanced. The fact that I can go into Atlas map nodes with 3-5 League mechanics on them, plus 6-10 modifiers, with a fully juiced Rare Waystone, and leave that map (if I survive the one-shots) with less currency than I used to juice up everything in the first place, is bad. I know this doesn't happen to everyone, but it's happened to me multiple times, for multiple maps in a row. I'm not sure if it's a bug, but the RNG feels really badly tuned. The bottom line is, it feels REALLY bad to spend hours of time, plus even more hours' worth of farmed currency, to get just a few nodes on the map really juiced up... only to have RNG completely screw you over on all of them and set you back further than you would be if you hadn't done it at all. That is going to be a "fuck this, I quit" moment for a lot of players if it's not tuned to be more consistently rewarding, assuming the investment cost of juicing up those maps remains the same as it is now.

Conclusion

That's all the feedback I have for now. Frustrations with the above issues beside, I'm still having a huge amount of fun with the game, and I still think that when all is said and done, POE2 has the potential to be a revolutionary game in the ARPG ("Diablo-like", LMAO thanks Rod, please shut up and go make a good game) genre. I'm looking forward to the upcoming 0.1.1 patch, and I hope GGG continues to make good on the promise this game has for the future. If you do, I can see myself continuing to obsess over it for a good, long time.

Spot on with end game mapping. It's simply not rewarding considering what you invest into it.

That was a great review—really impressive that you managed to get two characters to the endgame without relying on build guides. You highlighted some key friction points, especially with endgame mapping and the inconsistency of drops when using waystones with added difficulty. Far too often, the increased risk doesn’t translate to a meaningful reward. Beyond that, the endgame feels like it’s missing autonomy and purpose, but I’m confident GGG will address these issues over time.

I dont really care so much about the enemies it is what it is
They only thing i care about is the end game atlas map. (When you click on the map device and it brings the map up).

Why is there no coordinate system so you can keep track of areas of interest? A simple x,y coordinate system originating from The Ziggurat Refuge would go a long way.

Also being able to zoom out more would be a much welcomed change. It seems like you go in every direction from the start and find a couple towers close to each other or w/e, and then you have this wide map you need to drag the screen across and then you just get lost. And its super frustrating and for me makes the game unplayable. I had 2-3 of the keys for arbiter and i just spend 105 exalt to buy the last one because I was like... i dont want to play this anymore. Beat the arbiter and now I am just staring at the end game map, because it feels pointless. IDK.

So coordinate system, it doesnt have to be a crazy elaborate thing, like how you have the health and mana numbers above your gauges, just put a littel text being like 000,000 somewhere off to the side. Or hell even allow room for 00000,00000 if people just wanna go in a straight line for miles. That and allow us to zoom out, noobody looks at a map and zooms into one tiny little area. Imagine if you wanted to explore or use google maps and all you could do is be zoomed into the street level.


anyway... hopefully some dev hears this and hopefully you guys implement it.

idc about monsters, especially that little basic one in endgame that machine guns yellow lightning at you... lol

Very interesting feedback of a new player.

Just to add my own review from a "more experienced" point of view player.

For issues about difficulty, movement speed of ennemies, telegraphing attacks, visibility : I can just say that all of this "issues" for you, are not anymore issues with experience. This game is not unfair, at all. I died 150 times with my 1rst character during campaign, and 12 times for my 3rd one this season. And every of my deaths were fair. It doesnt mean some bugs cant appear and kill your character. But you need more knowledge et experience to go through obstacles of this game and what feel unfair in the 1rst playthrough are not anymore after few playthroughs.

About some specific issue :

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orcmonkey2000#6524 wrote:

3) The way enemies push the player around feels very awkward, as if the push merely adjusts the player's x/y coordinates on the map with no accompanying reactive animation or possible counterplay

I agree on this point. Something feels weird, the way you are bumped when ennemy push you.

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orcmonkey2000#6524 wrote:

Issues with defenses
...

You forget something really important : Shield.
Block chance is the 4th defenses and it really mix well with other defenses you talk about.
And yeah, GGG knows something is still wrong with armor in the game...

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orcmonkey2000#6524 wrote:

Complexity is not the problem--lack of resources for the player to understand how to engage with complex systems is.

I totally understand this point, but I think its really hard to balance it.

For me the real issue is not (only) lack of currencies, its lack of tutorials to help players to understand games mechanics and try to craft.
As a SSF player myself, I have tried almost all crafting mechanics ingame. I bought stuff from Alva, tried to recombine together, failed, used a fractured orb, lock a 30% MS on boots they crafted with all my 40 chaos orb to obtained a beatufil +150 life, 2 x 40% rez and evasion boots.
I also, divine my good belt to have 3 charms slots and not just 1.

But I had to do it because Im a SSF player. Why would I try to craft with exalted, divine, chaos,... if I could use it to buy stuff on market ?
PoE2 has to make you want to craft with tutorials. And yeah, maybe with an extra drop of currencies to have the possibility to try and fail ! But again, with my currencies, I would just want to buy more stuff...