Poe 2 is fundamentaly cursed

This thread is probably going to be a longer side so if you are allergic to words then perhaps save yourself before you invest yourself. As with all feedback threads, this is open to discussion (whole point of it rather) and my task as I see right now is to highlight things that have been bugging me for some time. The fact that i'm spending my time writing this is only a testimony to the fact that I want the game to be the best it could ever be... otherwise I wouldn't bother.

Itemisation:

I cannot stress how much I despise poe2s (and 1 also to some extent) itemisation. I have never ever seen a random rare on the ground that would make me excited.. why? Because the worst and most common case scenario is the item is straight up dog and the best case it's nothing more than a payslip - 99% crap, 1% money, 0% excitement. Affixes on rare items are uttermost boring pieces of crap that I still wonder how a creative studio such as GGG could ever think it's okay. I'm not even going to yap about how much of a majority of affixes is a straight up necessity to patch holes that have been artificially enforced (see: resistances). Is then, littering an affix pool a solution? Na, not really - it creates a problem of a bloat and some stats are so required that not being able to roll them would be frustrating to the next level. Instead I suggest making an "unique" prefix and "of uniqueness" suffix where hundreds of different, build-enabling affixes could roll (effectively limiting the unique to 2 per item). GGG has an abundant library of affixes from various mechanics of poe1 so it's not a question of super workload but of willingness to change the stance on itemisation. those affixes should only and only roll on items on the ground - you should not be allowed to roll them with orbs, with exception perhaps of alchemy orb. you could add them to rituals and expeditions, making that part of the content instantly thousands times better.

Items should be 8 affixes, not 6 max. 4 for magic and 8 for rare. if that requires rebalancing the affix pool to keep it in check, so be it. Why? because then you can make rare items actually rare and stop the spam - if i find 1 rare item per map that's bad, if i find 10 rare items per map that's probably ok, if i find 1000 rare items per map that is equivalent to 1 because aint nobody clicking that. Right now it would be insanity to suggest anyone who cleared act 1 to use magic items and that is straight up sad and makes the game ironically poorer content wise (why have them in the first place). items with 2 affixes will never compete no matter what. With 4? if those are good 4 affixes then yes. This allows rare item currency to be more sparse without a world spread butthurt because rare currency needs to be rare to be valuable (hurr 1 d to 400 ex durr). 8 affix items should be extremely hard to create, that being by adding some gambling mechanics, grinding ones or lowering affix efficiency - it is up to GGG (suggestions?)

Item level in current form is straight up punishing for no reason. Currently, if a rare item drops lower than ilvl 82, there is legit no point in picking it up - why? because if your item doesn't have 6 t1 affixes it wont sell (exaggeration but point stands). It is understandable that you shouldn't be allowed to find merciless in act 2 crossbow but all those limitations should be removed in t1 maps. instead make item level work as an offset to chance to roll better affixes be it slightly or gargantuanly, doesn't matter because thing that matters is an effect on players psyche

Item sinks:

Ye we got cool new orbs and everyone is happy meanwhile problems that i tried to solve like limiting the currency that drops have not been fixed and will never be without surgical precision of adjusting drop rates. It's a dirty solution and it could be way way more elegant with a couple of changes. Remove greater and perfect orbs (jewellers included) and drop only base orbs (if people argue it's too many clicks then drop them in stacks like poe1). Create an orb selling npc that will sell you tiered currency that you pay with normal currency equivalent and base the cost exponentially. This removes the problem of most common drops being totally devoid of any value. Make 10 tiers of affix changing orbs and change their work to be able to choose one of x affixes where x is tier of an orb . should work like abyss/betrayal unveiling making it essentially x value of lucky with player agency what to choose (eg: if i use tier 4 exalt to add prefix on a body armour i will have an option to choose one of 4 affixes myself - this removes situations where i roll t1 thorns on es base with perfect exalt while id much rather have 16 spirit instead).
Make almost every currency have their tiered functions like for example wheatstones or blacksmiths - t1 will add 21 quality, t2 22q and t10 30q but t10 would costs like 100 000 blacksmiths if we make it exponential so 1 super mega rich whale would create a value for drops for nearly entire player base only to add some miniscule percent upgrade to their build in effectively single player game (if you want to make an argument that this dmg spike would allow them to farm maps 100000 faster then please leave).Artificers should add more sockets to gear because sockets are god damn fun. make artificers rare. Gemcutters should add quality above 20, alchemy should allow you to choose 1 of x brand new set of affixes, vaals choosing effect of corruption and make them super rare and super expensive (can roll 3 bricks in 3 vaals anyway) and tiered mirror should be a meme. Uncut gems, gemcutters and jewellers should be applicable to items that have some sort of skill bound to it and totally remove arcanist etchers.
Runes, at the very least, should be acting like poe1 scarabs. add some funny amount of quant or rar when applied to the waystone window and you create a value for runes while allowing more juicing celling. bring back tiered runes and make them rare. allow talismans and soul cores to have powerful juicing effects adding value to other game content

Maps and tiers:

Map tiers are unnecessarily bloated. there should be 5 tiers maximum and perhaps 6th with a corruption outcome. Every map should spike difficulty very harshly, ideally balanced where t1 should be fresh after campaign, t2 easy endgame, t3 baseline, t4 aspiring, t5 ultimate end game, t6 masochists. make maps very rare to disallow sustain without heavy juice. doryani should still sell maps where not being able to sustain t1 maps gold wise would be a challenge on its own - ideally you want to allow sustain with gold that has next to no use beside faustus flipping (sad gameplay imo). Because there are less tiers, the area level jump would be rather steep so adding ways to increase area level by one from a couple sources (like runes) should be added.

Campaign:

While it is clear that it was created with love I feel extremely betrayed by GGG because what they promised during development that campaign would never feel the same, meanwhile what we currently have is a same checklist like poe1. Campaign should allow a player to choose at least 2 routes where one would be a quick jump to act end location with a looong and high ilvl spike pre zone and other, intended, also a shorter than current route but with many side dead ends functioning as a way to progress your character in a natural way. The boss rewards should be put in some other campaign tree, perhaps ala pantheon where you would allocate those rewards based on some arbitrary progress. Even though the campaign is way better than poe1, it won't take long for people to become fatigued and I sure already am.

Thoughts?

Can I get short version please?

items boring, shit economy, dirty solutions, maps bad, campaign slog

The items are designed to be as they are so crafting matters. And also. GGG want a hard game so they dont want anyone becoming too powerful too quickly. And also its a way to keep people playing longer, or so they think.

Its not item drop RNG that's bad luck for everyone its a design.

Those items selling for 50 divs and up to mirror tier. DO Not DROP, they crafted !!

It wont change, no matter what Lies they tell everyon on their interviews !

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R3cKiTT#5326 wrote:

The items are designed to be as they are so crafting matters. And also. GGG want a hard game so they dont want anyone becoming too powerful too quickly. And also its a way to keep people playing longer, or so they think.

Its not item drop RNG that's bad luck for everyone its a design.

Those items selling for 50 divs and up to mirror tier. DO Not DROP, they crafted !!

It wont change, no matter what Lies they tell everyon on their interviews !

Dont use "hard game" to defend for the stupid design, massive maps, on-death effects. Hard game is like Nioh 2, but it's not stupid.

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Items should be 8 affixes, not 6 max.

That alone is unforgiveable levels of bad.

That would give our characters 20 additional rolls on gear, which would make the game act as if we were wearing 3.4 additional rare items....


That is so absurdly overpowerd it's actually stupid. Literally. Not being hyperbolic, if you think you need 4 more pieces of gear worth of stats then you should go play D4 -- this is absolutely without a doubt the single worst thing I've ever seen posted here. Ever. Shame on you.

we have a lot of useless itens...

we need some trully new things to control economy and avoid the abuse that happens constantly

we also need better maps, and at least better currency from maps (this one could be easily improved if the point before was adressed)

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Paradajs#1090 wrote:

those affixes should only and only roll on items on the ground - you should not be allowed to roll them with orbs, with exception perhaps of alchemy orb. you could add them to rituals and expeditions, making that part of the content instantly thousands times better.

I have no idea what you are saying. Are you saying valuable affixes should only be ground drops? Are you saying there are just too many affixes? Are you saying you should be able to guarantee the slam you want?

Making crafting insane doesn't make content more valuable. It makes all of the rares on the ground less valuable, which is why you are not making much off them in 0.3.

Grind for your gear against RNG, that's the point. The company's name is Grinding Gear Games after all.

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Paradajs#1090 wrote:

Items should be 8 affixes, not 6 max.
....
8 affix items should be extremely hard to create, that being by adding some gambling mechanics, grinding ones or lowering affix efficiency - it is up to GGG (suggestions?)

Where do you get this idea that 8 is better than 6 for the game? Like, what is your reasonable conclusion that makes it the case? Why would it be a necessary change? It does not matter if some items "cannot compete with others" that is sort of the point. You are meant to grind the gear. Making it 8 mod will not solve the problem you are having, it will just give you more base power. It just doesn't really make sense.

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Paradajs#1090 wrote:

Item sinks:

This section starts off with you asking for them to base currency around a price the game sets, which is not a player driven economy that people want to play on nor the devs want to create. Then it devolves into just nonsense. "remove everything I don't use, and make the stuff I wanna use better and easier to get" is basically what it translates into.

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Paradajs#1090 wrote:

Maps and tiers:

Map tiers are unnecessarily bloated. there should be 5 tiers maximum and perhaps 6th with a corruption outcome.

Again where does this idea come from that adding or subtracting from things makes them better. The tiers are there for progression balance, some builds will skip a bunch, some builds will slowly work through them. Just removing tiers doesn't "remove bloat". It's a part of the basic system in the game that everyone understands. It is not confusing.

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Paradajs#1090 wrote:

Campaign:

While it is clear that it was created with love I feel extremely betrayed by GGG because what they promised during development that campaign would never feel the same

They were talking about more unique tilesets because the PoE2 system generates it randomly instead of per league/ rotating like PoE1. It was never their intention to make it a roguelike with infinite variance in the actual things you do. Nobody ever told you that.

honestly id say one of the issue with items is some affixes are so strong that they make up like 60% of your damage if not more. on top of that movement speed and attack speed are things that you have to heavy invest on the passive ore get that lucky roll or trade it. so a shift from gear power to the passive i think is the best move for the game also some stats just cant exist in this game like reducing the movement speed decrease from using skills. you can have 2 second skills and screen wipes in the same game.

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Bluoto1375#8225 wrote:

honestly id say one of the issue with items is some affixes are so strong that they make up like 60% of your damage if not more.

Which single affix in the game makes up 60% of your total damage? Mate, that is not a thing. Probably your entire weapon does that, or a unique that gives you some type of scaling that you invest in, but not an affix.

I don't see the point in making the game more about levels and XP than the gear. Levels are essentially free while you spend time grinding the gear, to make you less susceptible to dying and faster at killing things, so you can level more.