Patch 0.3 Feedback ~3 weeks in

I am generally quite happy with the patch - I am playing more than previous, although still rather casually, and not thinking about other games the whole time, which is a good sign! I'm a little disappointed with the pivot in game direction to the faster-paced style of aRPG - it is not as unique and starts competing more in the same space as other games instead of sitting in its own niche. But, honestly, it is still fun, and if GGG buff the bosses to feel more exciting and engaging again even with the current player power then I feel that they might have just about threaded the needle for the game feel.


What I have played and difficulty:
As of now I have played 2 characters into early endgame effectively SSF, and I'm onto my 3rd allowing trading the whole way through. My starter was a ED + Contagion Lich, which felt pretty easy even with sub-optimal gear. I then moved onto a Volcanic Fissure Warbringer that also breezed through most of the content. I am now trying to make a Physical Spearfield Witchhunter work, which is proving more of a challenge.

To me, the game has generally felt easier this patch, which I appreciate could be for a multitude of reasons. Ultimately, I'm ok with this when it comes to fighting packs of mobs and feel the balance might be about right there now, especially considering the builds I've been playing. Bosses/unique enemies, on the other hand, need a buff to feel interesting and exciting to fight again, like they did in earlier patches. I wasn't even killing them super quick like I've seen some builds do, but on my first two characters I barely felt pressured by any of them, and some still died before cycling through all of their mechanics - I feel that at least a health buff is warranted.


Crafting:
I have really only engaged with casual 'crafting' (cough weighted odds gambling cough), using Transmutes, Augs, and Essences, or their greater counterparts, then desecrating with the Abyssal league materials, and then applying sockets and quality. This felt fairly solid and provided a better foundation of gear to get my characters through the campaign and into the endgame. For the most part I had enough of these currencies just from looting, as drop rates and the rates of encountering rewarding content seem to have increased nicely since 0.2 launch. In regards to access, the only complaints I have are that the Rune pool is now too diluted by the Attribute Runes - I would like to see their drop rates reduced to make way for a greater proportion of the rest - and that I would like to see several lesser and regular essences drop from a single event so that they don't feel quite so precious and I am incentivised to use them more freely. I also feel like the light radius affixes are just spoilers to dilute the affix pool and a hold-over from old game design that should either be removed or rolled into the presence stat.

Lastly is an issue that ties into a wider one I have with missing information, which I will return to later, but nowhere in-game is there any information even hinting at what Kurgal etc. modifiers are and as such I am very disincentivised to use my abyssal omens in case I am wasting something valuable or going to put a useless affix on my item - the issue is, without looking up an external guide I just have no clue, so it's easier to just leave it in my stash and not engage - I’m not sure why these words weren’t underlined for nested tooltips to give even a general and semi-nonspecific explanation of what to expect from using them.

On that note, I would also like a bunch more initial tutorialisation in game for mechanics such as distilling amulets, the recombinator, using omens, etc. I shouldn’t have to look up what they do and how they work in a YouTube video to feel confident enough to use them… I know that this is early access, but this is basic onboarding stuff….


Trading:
I have been pretty opposed to trading in isometric aRPGs. Why make item drops so random or rare that to gear a character semi-optimally I have to grind drops of a currency rather than that item to then trade for it deterministically anyway? Just cut out the middle man and make the loot more deterministic or common - it certainly feels better to find the item itself as part of the game loop instead of just currency for trading, at least to me (can you tell that I am a Grim Dawn player...?). But, that all said, I must admit that the new in-game market system got me to actually engage with trading - at the very least, because it is very easy. For my first character, I treated it as a pity system after I hit endgame, where if I couldn't find or craft an item I wanted in the time it took me to save the requisite number of exalts, I could just buy the item. It's still dull, but I also don't have a huge amount of time to grind, so it allows me to continue to progress at a decent pace. Moreover, while the increased power of crafting has made decent gear pretty affordable in trade this patch, it has also meant that not all of the gear on my characters is traded for, as I can acquire strong items myself still, which feels better.


Some other things I just liked:
- Support gems feel more open and flexible and generally more interesting with the different tiers of the same support.
- The new act, Interludes, and the new boss/unique encounters are all very aesthetically compelling. I'm also almost sad that the interludes have to go away.


Campaign maps:
One of my few disagreements over actual design principles is with random map layouts in the campaign. I see no benefit, and it was just exacerbated for me with the new Act. I have been a staunch advocate for even more collectibles and unique monster fights per map throughout the campaign, but several times a playthrough (and especially in act 4 on maps like Ngakanu), I find myself thankful that there is only one thing to find or just an end boss on the map. THIS SHOULD NEVER BE THE CASE. And it is pretty much solely due to the maps still being large semi-random labyrinths with little of worth to actually find by exploring. Sprint is nice, but doesn't solve the issue for me. Random layouts don't even really address the purported issue of replayability that GGG seem to want it to address, as players are still calling for alternative leveling methods or campaign skips anyways. At least with a bespoke fixed map layout, players can achieve some level of map mastery, which can feel good in its own right on replay. Grim Dawn also has route blockers and several possible boss, loot chest, totem, and dungeon entrance spawn locations that can change per map seed, as well as side-quests, lore notes, and off-map secret locations to find, all incentivising worth-while and satisfying exploration. PoE2 doesn't need to be Grim Dawn for me to enjoy it, but its campaign map design and content are absolutely the gold standard for me that other games should be learning from.


Temple of Chaos/Ultimatum:
This game mode just remains completely un-fun to me, and I wouldn't touch it at all if not for having to suffer through to obtain my 3rd and 4th Ascendancy points. Solely negative modifiers with no real risk-reward system, only to be faced with the tornado bird boss and likely repeat it all again, is just a miserable experience for two points and a socketable. I can't even really think of a way to redeem it...


Visual clarity:
The game can get extremely messy with obscured ground effects, insane bloom on skill effects, and no terrain transparency. I'm pretty sure that everyone and their mothers are complaining about the green on green on green of Abyss ground degens and exploding crystals. It even worse when the ground degens are layered underneath a screen of Volcanic fissures so you have even less chance to see when you are standing in one, and when the bloom of those fissures is so overwhelming that it obscures the floating crystals and hurts your eyes. I have tried to adjust my graphics settings to improve the clarity, but it really hasn't helped enough to justify reducing the graphical quality of the rest of the game - it would be nice for skill graphical settings to be separated from general game graphical settings. On top of all of this, there have been several instances (particularly in endgame forest maps) where my character and sometimes my whole screen is completely covered by foreground terrain e.g. tall trees or building spires. I really dislike losing sight of my character like this for seconds at a time, and would like to see all objects in front of the character be turned transparent, no matter what.


Class and skill balance:
Several Ascendancies still don't feel wholly transformative or impactful (outside of a few specific nodes such as Tailwind/Wind Ward in Deadeye or Soulless Form/Eternal Life in Lich etc that add strong generalised offensive or defensive layers and are therefore quite safe, strong picks for nearly any build). I appreciate how there was more of an effort to endorse character themes and archetypes with the additions to the passive tree and skills/supports, which is difficult to actually achieve given how freeform building is, but this is also what Ascendancies should be for - putting some thematic confines on builds to empower specific archetypes and fantasies in-line with the bonuses it provides and inspired by the in-game artwork. This is where having missing classes, ascendancies and weapons hurts a lot, as it feels like there are large holes in the RPG fantasies on offer right now, as well as a bit of a skew towards ranged and spell builds without much support or variety for melee.

Also, while all aRPGs have leveling skills/builds to some extent, the time taken to actually level to acquire enabling passive tree points and/or enabling gear in PoE2 is pretty long for an aRPG, and so it feels like it takes much longer for many builds to actually come online - sometimes not until endgame - which can be unappealing if there is a specific idea that you actually want to play. I'm also going to throw in here that I'm still not overly enamoured with the Unique items on offer throughout the campaign, which are either underwhelming or require too much of a trade off in lost defences to be worth using most of the time.


Information availability/visibility:
Possibly my largest problem after map layouts. Presenting information about the character through stat-sheets and skill tooltips still needs a lot of work, as in some cases it is quite unintuitive, and I'm still finding examples of missing information. Firstly, some stats are presented to the players as global modifiers, such as Item Rarity (which I hate as a stat anyway, but I digress...), and so would intuitively makes sense to me to find on the character stat-sheet. However, it is actually counted as a modifier to skills and so is buried at the bottom of the pop-out skill-sheet. I'm sure that there are other examples that I can't pull from the top of my head right now, but I'd love for the UI team to sit down and go over the current player information and consider where things are being shown and what can be consolidated down into the main character-sheet as opposed to being broken up across the individual skill-sheets. Also, resistances and defenses are being displayed twice on the character sheet, which is unnecessary use of space.

On top of this, some information is just completely missing as far as I can tell. For example, on my Warbringer I have the Shattering Blow node that Breaks 50% Armour upon Heavy Stun, and The Molten One's Gift that requires "Fully Broken Armour" to take effect. So obviously I want to take nodes that will increase my Armour Break from this to 100% (requiring at least a 100% total increase). Nowhere is there a summary of my increase to armour break stat, so that I can easily keep track of my current percentage increase and decide what nodes might be the most efficient to take, instead of having to keep track manually in my head. Nowhere outside of the passive tree node is there even an acknowledgement that my character does break armour on heavy stun at all. The Maxroll planner has a tab to the left hand side, which can be expanded to show a quick and dirty summary of all the stats and bonuses provided by the passive tree choices, which allowed me to see when I hit that 100% increase to armour break. Why is something like this, at the very least, not in game? I often feel like, in-game, that I don't have a good sense of my characters' procs and bonuses and it's because the presentation of all this information to the players is either incomplete or unnecessarily separated across info-sheets.

As an addendum, the skill tooltips when hovering over them in the hotbar are woefully inadequate - at the very least show a DPS total and breakdown, if not also added effects.


Other Quality of Life Issues:
- Passive tree pathing planner/highlighter functionality so that I don't have to go out of game
- Inventory space is still miserly, with no auto-sort/compress for inventory nor stash, no currency auto-loot, and no auto-transfer - leads to lots and lots of annoying clicking and dragging that could be solved like it is in other games
- No even basic in-game loot filter
- I personally do not like the concept of stash tab mtx without the ability to earn premium currency in-game like GW2 or Warframe. At this point, with all the different types of stash tabs, Premium tabs could (and in my opinion should) at least be purchasable for in-game gold.


I have not commented on the endgame because GGG have promised that changes will be coming next patch. In general the arcadey, endless map grind is not really my thing, but I'll wait and see if they make it more compelling to me.


Even with all I have had to say, PoE2 is, unsurprisingly, still shaping up to be a very solid game. Personally I would like to see them complete the core game content (campaign acts, endgame, classes/ascendancies and weapons/skills/supports) before they focus on too many more leagues prior to 1.0 release, but otherwise the game really only needs some tidying up around the edges to feel good to spend time playing alongside my other choice games.