So Long and Thanks For All The...Frustration?

What a letdown. I can't bring myself to log in and do my 5th map after hitting endgame.

Performance - Best aspect of the patch and it was a wash. I stopped locking up where it freezes and you wait 2 minutes for it to unfreeze and reload what you are looking at(usually a boss). Great, but now I run into mobs doing minor teleport/glitchy movements.

Loot - The point of the game. Worse than last league, which was shockingly fun and had me engaged for about 100h. About the same amount of trash items drop, with the off-chance you get lucky to find something you can use or sell. Currency...well, I didn't get to the *required* point of 100-ish rarity to see anything other than your average trans/aug orb-fest.

Monsters - Didn't notice a reduction in pack size at all. Still saw dozens of monsters on the screen every time I moved forward. Sure as hell noticed the 40% increase in HPs as everything felt like I was moving through water. They also swarm super fast still and it always felt like they were the heroes in this story, not me.

Maps - Still too big. A few in Act 1 and pretty much everything past it(including endgame) are too large. Matlan Waterways or that Ravine map are good examples of player feel - you reach the checkpoint at about halfway and it feels like the map should be over.

League Mechanic - Colossal waste of time past Act 1. And even then, it should just drop the orbs instead of making us carry gear to craft on. Gets larger than most maps, tons of monsters that all leap/rush you, and zero reward. Also, so much for this game being for the "casual" players. Either deploy a detailed instruction manual that you can access via Doryani or simplify this thing. Build-your-own dungeon sounds fun on paper, but this implementation is awful. Also, full of absolutely frustrating bugs where you get locked in empty rooms and stuff. I mean, did anyone at GGG play this thing and build more than 1 temple?

Crafting - Gone. Not because you removed the homog omens, but because the drops are based around us encountering abyss on every single map/zone. That was last league. Made it to 70 and got 1 Abyss area I could enter. Essence also feels more rare.

Endgame - What the focus was supposed to be in this patch. I'll be honest, if you guys have to split your 4 months between 2 games instead of having dedicated teams then you should stop adding mechanics in PoE2. Just focus on campaign, classes, weapons, and balance. Because endgame is worse than last league, although I didn't play anymore by the time 0.3.1 dropped.

TL:DR - Made everything worse and added a league mechanic that does nothing but waste time. Stop bandaiding solutions - it just bloats the game and makes it worse over time. Have a team meeting, put the problem on the board, and brainstorm real solutions - think out the domino effects of each solution and how they may cause more issues down the road.

Bonus Gripe - Time to take a hard stance on your league economy getting wrecked. Every league you have botters/RMTers. Ban them. Ban botters, ban sellers, ban folks who bought from sellers, ban the accounts that transfer currency to sellers. Exploits ending the economy in 3 days is unacceptable. If you can't justify banning because it doesn't seem like an obvious exploit, you should do a league wipe. I know this sounds horrible. But it would be better for you fix the problem, wipe the league, give another free weekend, and let players have a chance to enjoy the league. Right now what happens is many casuals don't understand why a single piece of equipment costs everything they have gained since character start(or more) and you have a bunch of frustrated people and lose tons of players. A league wipe and restart sounds like it *might* do that but I'm betting 3 months and 25 days of fun normal experience would retain more players than 5 days of fun followed by 3+ months of wrecked economy.

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FruitLord#0833 wrote:

Monsters - Didn't notice a reduction in pack size at all. Still saw dozens of monsters on the screen every time I moved forward. Sure as hell noticed the 40% increase in HPs as everything felt like I was moving through water. They also swarm super fast still and it always felt like they were the heroes in this story, not me.

Well considering nothing changed about monster density until into maps, and the full 40% value quoted only applies at T15+ maps... What you noticed is probably bias and RNG.

Other than that and your final gripe, the rest is generally pretty reasonable gripes that I can relate to even if I still am having fun for now.