My POE2 "Final" Wishlist

Issue:
Getting decent usable gear is too much of a gamble to the point players quickly find trade the best way to get upgrades

Opinion:
Players do not need 6 mod high roll gear. They should not need it. Getting them should be a bonus but not a requirement. Thus i do not think excessive deterministic crafting options is a good thing. Also the ability to easily craft powerful gear necessitates harder content and will introduce power creep to poe2. i do not like power creep. But as it currently is, to get decent gear by itself is too difficult as is.

Suggestion:

1. Make Runes more powerful. This is in opposition to introducing additional rune slots. With an extra rune players can fix their resists more easily

2. Introduce POE1-esque bench crafting tied behind progression. similar to poe1, the forced mods would be weaker than any normally rolled mods but exist to allow players to get decent gear faster. Also the costs should be reasonably "cheap" as the intention is to help players get past campaign and into the end game with decent gear thats not too underpowered.

3. Making all currency drops more common, including exalts, chaos, divines and even mirrors. For sure making items rarer makes them more valuable. but to what extent? majority of the playerbase dont craft. and trading is still the best way to get gear. GGG's entire trade manifesto is to encourage players to farm their own gear. this feature can be a separate "game option" like SSF so it doesnt upset existing trade players.

4. If there is no way to target farm base items, then scours and alterations from poe1 needs to return.

Issue:
Atlas tree's bonuses are hard to gauge, are they very good? or just a small bonus? The total points we have on our small tree makes it feel like we dont really have too many options.

When it comes to juicing, in the end players would gravitate to anything that boosts magic find.

Suggestion:

1. Expand the tree and give players more points. Make it in a way players feel that they are making significant choices that impacts their gameplay rather than being forced to grab certain nodes. Examples:

- Item drop bias clusters. making items drop more often. making items of a specific item class drop more often. that sort of thing.
- Difficulty modification clusters. for example mapping can provide players 3 portals/tries at default, but more experienced players can make the map more rewarding by taking a node that reduces the tries down to 1. Poe2 usually only has clusters that make the game more difficult and more rewarding but not the other way round.
- Content modification clusters. for example, players can choose to make shrines appear more common OR disable shrines to let other content have a higher chance of appearing.

Issues:
it can get clunky over time. Some people with OCD might experience paralysis as they're compelled to clear ALL MAPS. and turn all maps green.

Suggestion:

1. Adopt a smaller scaled atlas that is designed to be reset. LE does this with the monolith of fate. Having the atlas designed to be reset every 10-20 maps can make players have any OCD paralysis. Also it solves the issue of "wasting bad maps to juice up the area" and tower micromanagement.

2. Revert back to poe1's atlas of worlds. modification can be done where regular poe1 specific maps do not drop. but instead players can choose which map they want to run at the cost of using a waypoint. waypoint tier used determines the map tier.

Issues: For weaker players if they die they lose a map and if they didnt drop a waypoint to replace it, their map sustain takes a hit. have this happen a few times and the player can be locked out of high tier maps which can be frustrating for players to use RNG to climb back up.

Map sustain in general is a huge level of RNG where sometimes you get shitty waystones in return. On the flipside running boss maps tend to net you a few t15s.

Suggestion:

1. Completing a higher tier map unlocks that map tier from being sold by doryani. let players directly buy maps of all tiers from doryani. This also introduces a small gold sink.

OPINION:
in my personal opinion, despite maces being the WORST skill to use in poe2. mace gameplay feels very impactful and the game feels mostly balanced from a mace pov. there are things to iron out. but besides that in comparison it is the worst. i believe the only way to balance it out is only by NERFING everything else so that mace playstyle can shine.

Why not buff maces instead of nerfing everything else? buffing maces is actually the easiest way to make maces feel better without taking away from other builds, but other builds currently can clear screens and delete bosses. if this same treatment is given to maces, it will necessitate ggg to make harder content. this will introduce power creep and eventually balance will go out of control and we end up back to poe1 where the gap between decent and good players are literally millions to billions of dps.

this is also why i would not ask for moveskills or more movespeed. if we had more movespeed and moveskills, ggg would have more telegraphed attacks that have little reaction time and huge ass aoe as players are expected to have high mobility.

Suggestion:

1. Nerf all skills to be simiar power level as maces
2. Remove additional projectiles and reduce all speed modifiers. make single attacks/projectiles more impactful instead. this is to prevent spamming and cheesing via reaching high level of multipliers where 1 thing splits into 2 and bounces of each other triggering another effect. this also helps out with game performance.

Opinion:
Personally i think POE and other diablolikes SHOULD have the ability to zoom. But the caveat is zooming is the target. currently with the overperforming skills, zooming is easy to achieve so that zooming has become a requirement while MF is the target.

Players need to work for more player power and should want more player power wherever possible to clear content faster. Clearing tougher content and clearing them faster should be the goal. Instead now players utilizing overperforming builds trivialize content so they already clear fast and clear hard content to the point that they would make themselves weaker to squeeze in MF.

Also a lot of people say MF is optional. I will use monster hunter worlds as an example of how something optional hurt the game. in their expansion, mhw introduce clutch claw. its a powerful tool allowing players to grapple onto monsters, flying towards them ala attack on titans. also it allowed shenanigans such as forcing the monster to bang into a wall which would make them incapacitated for a short time allowing a nice window of opportunity for free hits. many players LOVED this mechanic as it gave them a way to sneak in free hits. but the reality was, players were PUNISHED for not using the clutch claw. they were punished by the monster HP being buffed with the clutch claw in consideration. if you utilized the clutch claw whenever the proper opportunity presents itself, you could deal a lot of damage thru out the fight. cutting MINUTES from the entire encounter. but if you didn't you would take significantly longer time to down the monster as their life was balanced around players constantly taking advantage of the clutch claw.

this also applies to POE. similar to how clutch claws existence necessitates monsters having more hp. MF necessitates making player drops worse so that players who have MF feel like theyre getting better drops.

Suggestion:
- Nerf everything down similar to "game balance" suggestion and probably get rid of MF.
- Zooming should be possible but made difficult. The ability to zoom is the reward for having good gear.

Issue:
POE1 skills were more lenient where skill could be used by a variety of weapon classes. Currently in EA weapons skills are VERY restricted as it can only be used with the appropriate skill. This goes against poe1's flavour of "class freedom".

i do acknowledge that poe2 is to be considered a different game, i do realize that a lot of skills in poe have weapon specific animations. but its a shame if everything is to be restricted.

Suggestion:
- Allow weapon skills to be used by other weapons where thematically logical

Issue:
Some players prefer playing guys, some prefer playing girls. no gender politics no sjw woke shit. no "identifying as" BS. some prefer playing a certain gender. down and simple.

Suggestion:

1. Simply allow an alternate character model selection of the opposite gender of any class. also i would add most of us would not care if that alternate character model had lore breaking implications and we would not even care that the npcs refer to them as the wrong gender. a warning can be displayed to notify players that the alternate gender character is non cannon to appease lore purists.

2. Allow players to choose ANY existing player model. For example i m a sorceror but for my character model i choose monk. this suggestion is a perfect compromise to those that would argue that it would take away from GGG's budget/development time. the different character models already exist so GGG does not need to spend too much effort to make this possible.

Opinion:
- Most people are against this idea citing the resources taken, which i have addressed, some are against it because of lore implications, which i also have addressed with the "non cannon notification".
- There are very few people that are against it because of them being extremely anti woke. i really cant give any suggestion to compromise with them. and i honestly think that its best not to hear their POV entirely as it is very self serving and only benefits them alone.

Issue:
Trade has become essential for modern gaming. Some players simply dont have the time to grind as much.

Trading is clunky and difficult. players need to stop what theyre doing to meet other players to trade.

Some players also may QUIT a league and a very valuable item is essentially lost to other players.

Current system has some anti scammer prevention but it is not enough. Scams still happen.

Price fixing can happen and it can be annoying where a single item is listed underpriced by the same person multiple times.

Suggestion:

1. Automated trade. fixes all the problems listed in one fell swoop

2. Delayed trade listings. Whenever a player lists an item, it will be delayed by 1 hour so the player can properly review the item and can cancel the listing if he believes he mispriced. this is also a togglable option via options menu so players who dont want it can opt out.

3. Gold as a minor friction. All trades consume gold. Both buyer and sellers will have gold deducted for this automated trade. Items traded to other players will have 0 gold value. thus creating a gold sink. automated trades should have a higher gold cost. this is to reduce bots and encourage players to farm gold in order to trade. also acts as a gold sink. This gold fee "increase" should also apply to currency trading.

Issue:
Blame diablo 2 for this. i dearly miss having a companion in a diablolike. diablo 3 also has companions. i like the way they are balanced akin monsterhunter where a solo player can have 3 companions. A 2 person party can have 1 companion each, and anything more will remove companions altogether.

I do realize that if this is ever implemented, it will be waaaaay far down the pipeline and late in development.

Suggestion:
1. Add/implement companions.

Issue:
10-20 years ago i would say auto pickup currency pets are a blight in the gaming industry. true gamers should manually pick everything up. 10-20 years ago games were not the loot pinatas they are now. we had less to pickup actually.

10-20 years later. i m old. i dont want to click too much unnecessarily. i dont want to play a pick items off the ground simulator. but the compromise is gear should require manual picking up. while currency should be "vacuumed".

Suggestion:
1. Add/Implement currency auto pickup.

Issue:
There are many players who DONT WANT to start fresh every league nor do they want to replay the campaign. BUT they want to play temp league content.

Suggestion:
1. Allow temp league content to be available on standard.
2. League specific items are marked so the devs can easily void them at the end of the league if deemed necessary
3. For significantly new mechanics such as phreacia, players may need to interact with an NPC to gain a new portal device that will enable the new league content. Existing characters that interact with this NPC could also have their passives unallocated too.

Opinion:
This suggestion can bring back standard league players rather than alienate them.

The counter argument is if temp league content is allowed on standard, temp league economy would suffer. i would reason that if players rather play on standard anyway, there is zero loss. something like how a pirated movie is not a real loss as the person likely would not have spent a cent on the movie to begin with had he not pirated the movie.

Issue:
In most cases, playing multiplayer is just better from a numbers standpoint.

The immediate counter argument is playing MP may be too cluttered and messy/laggy. this is a TECHNICAL issue. not a mechanical issue.

Technical issue aside, if the game was balanced properly (see balance suggestions), there would not be too many effects on screen at once, which would help the game performance and visibility.

The other issue is that due to MF bonuses, it is still highly beneficial to play as a party. some players will rebuke this but i would ask, if this is not true, why do XP parties exist in poe1? players who megajuice their content WANT more players to join the party, NOT because he needs their help, but just to juice the drops even more.

I would also point out more players means enemies have more targets so players enjoy an easier playthru. Also more players mean more utility. a dedicated curser/marker/aura player could be employed. heck players could optimize with players having dedicated "setter" roles where they prime enemy ups for another player to consume status for huge dps.

Suggestions:

1. Remove MF bonuses from party play
2. Rebalance the game so that there is more visual clarity
3. Ensure game performance does not drop for party play

Issue:
Its one of the best additions to the game but by having a "swap speed" penalty, it reduces the "fun" of being able to use 2 different weapons.

Suggestion:
- Remove the swap speed penalty entirely
- Do not introduce nodes to encourage players to swap weapons. This can have an unintended effect where players may feel forced to grab them.

Issue:
Some players say the game is too hard while some say its too easy. In my "atlas suggestion" i have actually mentioned something along this line.

This can and perhaps SHOULD be extended to things like XP penalty and map attempts.

1. Players should be given the opportunity to remove XP penalty but may be rewarded if they opt in (leave XP penalty enabled)
2. Players should be given the opportunity to have multiple map retries but may be rewarded if they choose to use only 1 portal.
3. Players should be given the option to CULL or REPLACE content with other content that they prefer.

Opinion:
at the bottom line i want players to have fun and play the way they want. but i also want elitists to be rewarded for being good at the game.

POE2 really opened up my eyes on what i really want in a diablolike. i've played many different diablolikes and POE2 is the closest to "my dream diablolike".

in fact its to the point i actually am disinterested in playing existing diablolikes.

POE1 is an epic game where you can become godlike. the powerfantasy goes bonkers, but it is not what i want.

for my first feared kill, which was during settlers, i recorded it. it was a great achievement for me because i've never completed it ever since it was introduced. after years perhaps? i finally completed it. but looking at the recording. all i did was just DPS all the bosses and barely avoided anything.

in POE2 my battle with the count had me moving out of the way. rolling here and there. managing my potions. i felt like my skill mattered. i felt exhilarated. my gear was shit but i could hack him down. i died like fuck. but it was much more satisfying than anything i have ever experienced than in poe1. it meant something.

to be honest i dont expect that ggg would change poe2 to exactly what i want it to be. but if they did. poe2 would be the best diablo like for me. PERFECT.

but with that admission i would say i am thoroughly satisfied with my mace playthrough despite the setbacks.