My long form feedback after 0.4

Hiya GGG and Community. I hope you've had a good Christmas and soon to be happy new year. As we're about to end the year, I hope you guys got at least 1 mirror this year (not very likely, but you can hope). I want to end my poe 2 year with a bit of a long form feedback of 0.4 with what I liked, what I disliked from poe 2 in general this year and lastly some changes I would like to see before release. I also stopped playing poe 1, because I just feel like I'm done with that game after playing it for years and poe 2 is probably going to be the game I focus on from GGG in the future.

The good

Atziri vault

I think the new tweaks to to the atziri vault has been good. I also think it's smarter to release something that underperforms than being too good at release day, when it comes to league mechanics. That way you don't really have to feel the pressure to minmax it day one, and it's probably easier to buff rather than nerf after, due to weird discrepancies that can happen. I also think the story and voice lines for the vault is good and I really like the building my own dungeon system, even though I just look at it as an updated pyramid mechanic from poe 1.

Leveling and game feel

I think the leveling/campaign experience is now pretty good compared to the previous versions. I think you're close to hitting it home and make it ready for full release, except some issues I'm gonna talk about later. Game also feels good, except if you start playing skills that start cluttering up your screen (like my fireball build) and performance start tanking. But it's still early access, so I kind of expect the game not to be 100% and I hope it can be ironed out through next year.

The bad

I just want to say in the beginning, there might seem to be more things I see as bad compared to the good. But I still enjoy the game and I just want to mention things I feel is bad when playing and I wish were a bit better.

Delirium

Let's just start with, I really like the change you did with the mist visuals and I think it's easier for the eyes. But the mechanics of delirium isn't really fun and rewarding except for maybe the pinnacle boss? I don't really see the point of removing the meter that appeared in bottom left when running delirium. I wish it was a bit like poe 1, where you could see what kind of rewards you could get and build up meters. But then again I understand why you don't do that if you want to differentiate from poe 1. But then I would probably look into what new mechanic I could put in. I have done lvl 50 and 100 pinnacle delirium, but haven't gotten enough splinters to try a third time, since I would rather play around with other game mechanics, since it's a bit boring to be honest. The league pinnacle maps/bosses you do for the mechanic is very rewarding though and I feel like that is in place. Just make the map mechanic a tad bit more interesting and it's good.

Breach

Just like 0.1 for me, this mechanic is boring. It used to be very rewarding and I think it was good it got nerfed, because there used to be the only thing worth doing for a while, until abyss took over mapping mechanics. But now it just feels like it got gutted, I don't know what happened or how to fix this. But I feel like I don't really want to interact with it at all.

Expedition

I find expedition fun and I really like doing the mechanic in my maps. The biggest problem with expedition for me, is that the mechanics tied to the different currencies that drops are extremely RNG dependent. Like hitting a good item with the currency you turn in to gamble is very unlikely 9/10 times you try to "craft" with it. I liked the poe 1 system a lot more than just having to gamble on all the different items. I really wish to see some changes to what you can do with the currency, since it doesn't really seem worth it to use it. Maybe a system like the more of a certain currency you use, the higher chance for higher tier of stat to roll on item? Make it expensive, but then it at least feel rewarding to save up for or use.

Pinnacle bosses

I do like to have to interact with mechanics, but if you do to much damage and makes some of them transition too fast, they have a tendency to bug out. I did like my fight with arbiter of ash, BUT he did bug out a couple of times if I didn't calm down on how much damage I could do. He would start transitioning to phase 2 pretty quick, while I still had to dodge magma comets and he could start attack me. Meanwhile, if I slowed down a little bit, I did get to only focus on dodging the comets. All in all, fun fight but some bosses that have hp thresholds before phase change does need a bit looking into, since it was also an issue with atziri and a couple of other unique bosses.

Pinnacle bosses also have tendency to be costly to get into. I also didn't know how to access arbiter of ash properly, where I spread out on my map, instead of going far in one direction. After someone told me this the other day, I started doing it and suddenly found my first citadels. Again I know you're probably going to change this with the endgame update. But if the citadels stay unchanged, I would probably put it into the tutorial on how to more easily access citadels while mapping. I don't want the game to turn into warframe, where it's pretty difficult to get into as a new player, so more tutorials is good for new players.

I do like a good challenge and learning boss patterns, as someone who loved silksong and lies of P, I welcome challenges. But if bugs get in the way, that experience is gone, so I hope you can figure out something in the future.

Blocking

As someone who have played souls games, no one really blocks, same for this game. I don't know how this mechanic works, but I do like rolling away from huge hits and aoe effects. My gripe with blocking isn't really on the player side, but on the enemies. Enemies seem to be able to block indefinitely with minimum disadvantages. Actually, some of them get benefits. Excuse me for not having a specific enemy name, but there is a big example in act 1. I don't remember the name of the enemy, but it's an undead enemy you meet in the cemetery and grave site of the duke and his wife. Undead enemy with a shield that shoots chaos projectiles at you with every hit it blocks. If you are like me and use firestorm, this enemy is quickly becoming a death sentence. It's okay when the enemy can shoot some, but these ones can quickly shoot 30-60 projectiles in mere second and it's chaos damage. There should be cooldowns for enemy triggered effects and blocking enemies should get staggered more quickly after taking a lot of hits, since that I also how I imagine it works for players.

Overall on the bad

I really like the game and it's in a good spot except for bug fixes and league/boss/monster balancing for my part. It's also expected in early access and I look forward to the next versions of the game and how it develops into full release. I hope you get enough constructive feedback from players and the game turns into a great product before release, I'm really looking forward to it.

Changes

At the end I just want to mention some changes I would personally like to see going forward. These are just my opinions and I hope I don't step on any of the communities toesis for these.

Expedition lockbox

I don't know why it's taking so long, but I think an expedition lockbox is needed. I don't like wasting away one of my stash tabs on expedition currency.

Levels to skills on items

To be honest, "level to all skills etc" needs to be nerfed. It feels like all the weapons you try to make, NEEDS at least 3-6 to the certain skills/spells you're speccing into. I would like it more if it were scaled down to a max of 1-2 levels with a very rare chance to obtain on items as right now it feels like it's something you need and must have. I would go as far to say a weapon without one of these suffixes are bad, because everyone wants 3-6+ to spells etc.

Featured builds

If you feature builds on social media, nerfing it or making it unplayable by next league is bad PR. The reason to why I say this, is because I have 2 friends that wanted to try the featured lich crossbow build this league, but due to nerfs, they decided not to try it and didn't really like how it was featured last league and now is in their words "borked". I understand how and why the game has to change during early access, but if you feature a build, you should probably be careful about tuning it for next league for new players. Most new players are looking for fun stuff to play for upcoming leagues, where creator made builds aren't always the easiest to follow. So when the main social media channel posts a build, you are trying to be a reliable source for that build. Which can be negative for you, if you nerf or scale it too much down for the next league.

Guilds

Guilds needs more fun stuff to do. I don't have any recommendations, but I wish it had more features like maybe guild housing? Where guilds came together building different sections for themselves or something. Guild runs? Where you get like a 2% increased rarity find or exp gain. Guild stash is neat and all, but I wish there were more to it. But then again I can see it be a problem if you don't want to join one and the fear of missing out if you do too much with it.

Skills filling up my screen

Spell and skill effects have a tendency to fill up the whole screen and make it difficult to see ground effects and boss attacks. Maybe it's possible to add "player skill opacity" to the game? Or like final fantasy 14 did, where you can reduce spell effects (at least I think that was a setting). The reason for this change comes from finally testing out a firestorm build this league and now see how visual clarity could be a problem in the game.

Pinnacle boss loot 2, electric boogaloo

Some of the pinnacle boss items have been adjusted into the obscure. Maybe it's a time for a full redesign of these items instead of how they are now? Ingenuity is an example of this, where it probably need a full rework.

I do like build altering uniques, where the new atziri spear is a good example of this. Where you can get a spear with a unique ability where you can make builds around it. Maybe more pinnacle bosses should drop uniques, that have abilities to make builds around

End note

Again I like the game overall and I'm looking forward to see more changes being done in the future. I also think it's important with constructive feedback during these "new internet" days, where everything is so negatively loaded. English is also my second language, so I hope I don't have terrible grammar and writing.

If you read through all this or even just skimmed it, I hope you have a great day and a great new years. I hope poe 2 is great when it releases in 2026 OR 2027 if it needs a delay. Stay sane exile!