Hi,
After reading a lot of the recent Posts here on the forum, i´ve decided to give my 2 cents on here as well in the hope to bring some other perspective rather than just trolling around, since the combination of shitty internet connection (i live in Germany, a third world country regarding internet connectivity) and Server issues are not allowing me to play the game uninterrupted at the moment.
So started playing POE back in 2017 when the Abyss League came out. I did not want to play with a guide because i wanted to experience the Game for myself, because in my opinion that´s the way to play any game... it took me roughly 25 hrs to finish the Campaign the first time i played it. The game owned my ass hard, i had no clue what the hell i was doing, bashing the mouse on the desk, you get the picture. That´s how it was... at the end of the current POE1 cycle, i am able to comfortably finish it in roughly 10-12 Hrs, which is good enough for me.
POE is the only game i ever play because i am a working guy and only have time for 1 in my life, also SSF because i at some point in the past got tired of feeling all the Div(EX)/hr farming/trading shit, and if one wants to experience this Game or POE 1 for that matter in the most honest way, its a blast. It slaps you in so many ways when you don´t know what you´re doing that´s it´s kinda silly.
The Campaign in POE2 in the first playthrough is absolutely brutal when you don´t know what you´re doing because how can you, the game is out for only like a few months, nothing is really figured out yet, there are some aliens out there that are blasting, which i truly admire, hats off to you guys, i like watching all the youtube content, keep it up pls ;), but me man, i was struggling. I had to farm the freeking Utzaal and Jungle Ruins zones in Act3 for the viper fight for like 2 days to find the Gear to get through her, a very good fight GGG please do not nerf it any further, its worth the struggle. I am excited for the other half of the Campaign, i am sure it will also be a struggle, in a good way, but maybe tone the white mobs down a bit please because they make most of the bosses look like a bunch of pussies with some cool mechanics. Especially the ranged skinny spearthrowers and BlowGunners on Speed... they are a handful, especially in the endgame, a gang of 4 Blowgunners or the skeletons which seem to throw their heads at you or something will most likely just mess you up before you can even get to them, even when you are a Smith of kitava, but i probably just don´t know what i´m doing.
I will say that the endgame since 0.1 has improved a lot, the wast maps do not feel as barren anymore, a lot less one shots all around, except the chaos damage volatile plants with their bubbles, the frequency of them and the sudden spam directly under you to blow you up is just a bit overtuned for my liking, which has degraded my playstyle a bit to the point that i constantly have to spam Sunder in late yellow maps to not be dead all the time.
The multiple Portals feature is great, i find that majority of my maps have 3 or 4 of them which is enough to not feel the pressure of death and a map loss all the time. Maps are plentiful to find, it is way to quick to progress through the teers of them in relation to just what a pain in the ass it is to get suitable gear upgrades.
The RNG of getting the Gear is a bit much, for that kind of crafting i would like to see a bit more exalts and alchemy orbs dropping, and maybe some more Omens that kinda steer the direction of the blue item regaling/exalting, not limiting them to prefix/suffix rolls only but also in the elemental/physical way perhaps, that would be cool. Still enough RNG left to hurt, but no where near to how it is now, i had to pick up some 50 mace bases i wanted to get a ~500 phys DPS roll to hopefully get to red maps, and that´s only for the weapon type of which there are more to come (swords, flails, axes will dilute this even further), the FIRE RES+STR suffix rolls for the rest of the equipment i need is another pain altogether, i think that 20 bases on AVG for each piece of equipment to get the rolls needed to progress to like T13 maps should be enough, maybe there is a better way but i just didn´t find it yet, the Expedition crafting is no where near to what it is in POE1, i get it but man, its tough.
The Distilled Emotions crafting implementation feels kinda out of place at the moment, especially the way how the popup window for enhancing comes up on right clicking, it does not really correlate to how the other crafting works, maybe adding like a Palantir (LOTR) style crystal Orb Stand in the hideout for them could be cool, like the old days of POE1 for Catarina crafting, before the Betrayal times;).
So all in all, i am sure that POE 2 is going to be a great game, i kinda like the slower pace, lets me see all the cool mobs that are constantly owning my ass, something that power creep will most likely take care of in the future, but for now i am still enjoying the beauty of the zones and of the mobs, we should appreciate it because in like 2-3 years, we will be zooming past them and not be able to observe that any longer, unless you´re SnooBae or alike, they are deleting them already at speeds that GGG is surely not so happy about, Nerfs incoming for sure.
Take care people, and be Nice to each other please, for the love of god.
