Early Access - 0.3 Feedback

Hey GGG & Community,

This is another follow-up feedback on the 0.3 patch (my previous one on 0.1 after 450+ hours here on the official forum). I skipped the feedback on the 0.2 because, well, there wasn’t all that much that I wanted to address. I’ll try to keep this one moderate in size though. Pinky promise.

I’ve now clocked in 1,150 hours in the game so far and I still love it! The 0.3 patch is amazing - my friends are concerned about me and my parents got used to not getting hold of me for hours.

I’d like to address my thoughts and feedback on the great “campaign skip” debate, Act IV, trading & a few more things. There will be some to Act IV!

Let’s start with:

Act IV

I loved it. I was blown away by the final boss fight: it reminded me of that scene at the end of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie where the baddie transformed into a hulking meatball to fight doctor Hyde. Yes, I’m old but still have a good memory.

The option to go between different islands was really cool.

Abandoned prison reminded me of Act I in POE - I love me some of that sweet nostalgia! The solitary confinement level with sea waves that hindered the character’s movement was cherry on top for me! I’d really love to see more of this in the upcoming acts in the campaign - maybe not in the endgame though.

Character interactions with the rest of NPCs were awesome. Tavakai calling me a nutball amused me so much! The witch interactions were hilarious. I ran the campaign with the Warrior & Monk as well but Witch still won it for me. Guys, I think I’m in love. I think I can fix her.

Interludes

Onto the interludes - I liked those too but they stand in the shadow of Act IV. It did feel quite refreshing to go through these as I would have instead signed a will before repeating the first three acts again (I’ve completed the campaign over 30 times by now).

Other Changes in 0.3

Changes to balance were awesome. I didn’t like the nerf to the havoc that the lightning spear Bloodmage unleashed in 0.2 but I understand why. I’m no longer mad. What I am mad about is Detonate Dead still being nerfed since 0.2. Please, let me abuse the damage numbers and pop endgame bosses with the Threaded Light. Please?!
Besides that - I overall feel like the game balance is at a better place now and I believe so does the community.

Instant weapon switching is amazing! It’s so good. I’m rocking Carn’s Warrior Shield build and am cooking something of my own with the Warbringer and totems. Instant weapon switching unlocked a whole new pandora box of builds.

Updates to Ascendancy Trees felt quite good too! Bloodmage, Witchhunter (more like Passive Skill tree Hunter am I right?) and Warbringer introduced quite interesting changes.

I feel like good-quality items with high-level modifiers are dropping like hot cakes and I have, so far, been very content with the currency drop too.

Would Love to Have

Would really love for other characters to have a small inventory pouch for currencies & gems. For example, when I want to upgrade a strongbox, corrupt an essence, identify an item or swap gems on a character when fighting a boss.

Regarding the passive skill tree - I’d love it if we're able to start progressing from anywhere, regardless of the class we choose. I’m thinking - why not? I feel like this would open up a door to so many more build variations. I could be very excited about writing all this as well so there may be something I’m not really seeing here.

Also, I noticed that there were new enemy mechanics causing debuffs (e.g. on-ground effects) introduced into the game and I’d really love for there to be a Glossary of all the debuffs & buffs that are in the game (those are on POE2 wiki but why open a website to look those up every time?). Also, when there’s an enemy with that new debuff ability, it would be great for the game to pause to introduce that new debuff the enemy does. The thing is - standing in something green or red while taking heaps of damage and trying to navigate to the top left icons to read out what that thing is that’s dealing damage isn’t really cool.

Skipping the Campaign

Right, so, as for the elephant in the room - I think the best course of action here would be either for GGG to run like an official mass pole on this topic or even better - have a look at the current in-game numbers and see whether they like what they’re seeing.

I bet that they are asking themselves a question as to why people are asking to skip the campaign and whether they can polish up the campaign so well that it would be irresistible to most of us. And also - it’s important to know who’s asking for this. Is it your average grinder or someone who legitimately has very little time to play 1 or even 2 characters deep into the endgame per season? How many characters does one need to create to warrant campaign skip? Maybe it’s worth focusing on fixing what’s wrong with the campaign (according to most) and then people would change their mind about skipping the campaign?
Last but not least - is it worth to “compromise” a game in favour of those who can’t afford time to then displease those who do have the time? There are so many questions worth answering still.

My take though - I love going through the campaign. Sure, some areas are a bit too long (in Act II and III) but I’ll go ahead and quote someone (I genuinely forgot who it was) who said not long ago that: “It’s Path of Exile not Destination of Exile”. As cheesy as it may have sounded - I resonated with that statement. I don’t want to just boot into the game, complete the campaign once and then start my second character at level 65 and go into maps.

Yes but Tim (me) - what’s wrong with giving the option to players to either do campaign vs skipping it? To that I say - what about staying at a 5-star hotel where it smells like shit? I’d imagine - you’d want a refund and never come back.
My biggest joy is to build out a character rather than go straight into the endgame or speed up the level progression. By going through the campaign I get the feel for the build I’m cooking or following and also try to experiment with a few things here and there.

Look - there are enough ARPGs with campaign skip - like Diablo 4 & Last Epoch. Those are the casual ARPGs and there’s nothing wrong with them (I’m holding myself back from unleashing a massive rant on Diablo 4 here…but I’m strong) and they can co-exist with POE2. I don’t believe that POE2 should replicate all features from other ARPGs.

Also, if you think about it - Endgame maps and main campaign are very similar to one another. Difference is that you play at a higher level and you get to somewhat control what happens on the maps (in terms of the content) - you run through the map to kill a mini-boss or big boss and proceed to the next.

To Jonathan, Mark and the GGG team - do what you think is best for the game long-term. Stand your ground on whatever you think is best. I love the campaign that the GGG team crafted and am looking forward to playing through more Acts and I don’t think it’s the best move to offer a “campaign skip”.

Trade

Chef’s kiss to the GGG team. Thank you. I understand the reasons for not wanting to have the “auction house” in the game but hey, if you already have it on a website - why not have it in-game. In-game Loot Filter next please!
Having an instant trade is so, so good. You can throw things into your merchant stash tab, set a price and off you go, without being pinged or having to ping others and wait until they respond. Amazing. Of course, there are a number of improvements that could be made to the instant trade that I’ve seen on Reddit from a number of gifted folks but as the first iteration - it’s brilliant.

Crafting

The crafting is moving to a better direction with this league. I really liked the Abyss crafting and changes to essences too!

Endgame

Whenever I open Youtube and see Jonathan’s irresistible goatee on a thumbnail - I know that the rest of my day, and probably week, is going to be buffed by a Divine Shrine. That’s right - Jonathan announced the changes to Towers. I liked the sound of that but I am still not sold on the idea of an “open world” Atlas. I liked the idea on paper but scrolling through a ginormous map with seemingly no end is a chore and I feel like I get no sense of progression & achievement after completing maps.

What I think would be really cool is to have a hectagon-like Atlas. You start with one hectagon where you have a few maps with a final one, say, being the Tower (or something else) and once you’ve beat that final area - you’re done with the whole hectagon. It’s marked green or something. Boom. The next hectagon(s) is unlocked for you to explore.

By the way, could we please enable the option to “collapse” mission objectives? It felt like I had a massive chore list on the right when I started the endgame and it semi-blocked the view for quite a while.

Thank you!

As always - thank you! I’ll continue supporting the game as much as I can and I am glad that I found something to be really passionate about in my free time.