We welcome First Impression posts! Please be nice to those posts.

I played in the closed Beta, but I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed playing Act3 now for the first time.
Perhaps it was the change of scene, but it felt more polished, which is to be expected I suppose with act 1&2 under your belt and the game paying its way more for more development resources.

Looking forward to what is to come.

Only disappointment in act3 was the anticipation of what its end might bring, only to end up back at act1. I did not feel that before there was an act3 and act2 ended.

Perhaps the current writing of act3's end could have been saved till there is an act4.

Hope that makes seance, I'm trying not to spoiler.

Only gripe with the game is that though it is nice to have the option to trade, my experience is that I find it so hard to initiate trade in game that I have yet to get past the step of saying what I have to sell or even give away.
I do not even bother with this aspect of the game any more and just sell to the npc traders things that I think others would find useful.

There must be some way to make the process more intuitive and stream lined.

no quit feedback topic, i will post here.
why i quited after level 64.

experience lost on dying which led to docks endless farm runs (only map you almost canot die from various random things). that is crap.
horrible ffa loot system for a caster/ranger pov. if you want to do your job and keep dps/suport non stop, you don't get any loot. combined with summoners for example strategy to position themself on loot, to be unable to click on it.
horrible drop rate of "end game" maps. 8 h in the docks, i got 2.

I'm completely new to the ARPG genre and I gotta say I love this game. So much depth and customization along with incredible game play and graphics. AND IT'S FREE! Thank you for taking the time to make this game for all of us and double thanks for making it free. If you guys keep doing stuff like this then I'm gonna force you to take my money.

My (for now) Quit Feedback:

1) Respec
After playing ~20 Hours it gets way too hard for my first Character. No full Respec possible for trying things. Everytime do a new Character - thats too much time for me.
So this could only end up in Searching the Forums for Hours for "the best Spec" - very exciting...
Compared to D2 Vanilla the Complexity of the Skill System was so much easyier and also lack the need of a full respec... This is really not comparable imo.
Just take 5$ for this, would be fine...

2) Trading "System"
In end game just a Trade Channel might be enough, but getting a new quick Item for leveling, a channel is completely useless, because i dont really know what item i want. So an automated Trade Possibility would be necessary - Doesnt have to be an auction house. A clickable realtime channel thing would do the needs.

3) FFA Loot in open Groups
2 seconds for running with a Ranger to get 5 Boss Loot Bars in the middle of 15 other Bars of the other players?... lame. Definitely need more time there.


After these negative Points something positive:
Its a nice game and i like the Socket-Item-Skill System very much. The huge amount of orbs and scrolls for changing items stats is a real good thing too. The Skill Tree - wow. The Setting and Realm turned out very well.

To start, the begining of the game is exellent and the overall feeling I get from Wraeclast is wonderfull. From what I can tell from playing only the first act an the beginning of second act it is well polished.

the problems I have so far are more of small things that I found early on:

1. I can't buy in stock:
When I went and sold items to get Scrolls of Wisdom and in turn buy a couple Scrolls of Teleportation I had to buy one at a time and place them seperately in a invetory square. It would be helpful to be able to click on Scroll of Teleportation a couple of times to get my desired amount.

2. Stackable items don't automatically stack:
I can understand when you manually combine curency items and they make a orb that it dosen't stack with any other in Inventory. However, when I sell a bunch of items to a vendor and get enough Parchment Fragments to cerate a Scroll of Wisdom and I already have a stack of them in my invetory it drops the scroll in a new Invetory Slot and then I have to take some small amount of time to place the new scroll in the existing stack.

3. There is no way to arrange items in the Sell Tab:
My problem with this is that when I want to sell things I try to stuff the Sell Tab as full as I can and sometimes when I start to place items in I am doing it quickly so that the area I'm in currently dosen't reset. When done quickly I screw up and items placed in can cause me to no be able to place more items in untill I arrange them to do so. Right now I have to right click on the item in the sell tab, move back to the Inventory Tab, click and drag back to the Sell Tab. It would save people time if you are able to just arrange the items in the sell tab like the way the inventory works.

Again, the game is great overall but these problems are noticable and slightly anoyying.

hey! i used to play poe about year ago and promised to myself to come back to it after release, and here i am, so excited to see all the progress of development ;) playing hardcore mara atm, just finished normal difficulty, and here are some of my 1st thoughts:

1. difficulty level. yeah! that's what i call challange! i managed to die (call me a noob) twice on normal difficulty, and i imagine it's gonna get alot harder, so, yeah, difficulty level approved. unfortunately, i got this feeling, that it's more about numbers (monster hp, dmg etc) then actual difficulty. monsters are dumb as f***, most of fights are boring, almost nothing changed here. except 3 epic fights in act 3 where i actualy felt a little excited: the butcher-ish one (kole?), the general, and final boss, all 3 epic fights for whole game. the other thing is that difficulty range is too wide. 1 room: 2-shotting 7 elites and 1 boss and alot of trash without need of using pot, another room: 2 archer bosses with hit, crit, and other big cock auras, accompanied by xx trash archers burst you down in 0.5 seconds (you got huehued, and your 90% tank-ish build got huehued, and alchemy pumped gear got huehued)

2. desyncs, rubber banding, whatever you call it, this is just happening too often, taking away from gaming experience. meh. this is most frustrating and irritating in poe, and is unacceptable for quality game/server.

3. multiplayer. if u play with friends: this multiplayer is just perfect! class/skill synergies, division of roles, distribution of totems/auras, awesome awesome awesome! entirely new experience and so much fun! now if u decide to play in random pugs, don't! this is totaly destroyed by no-rules in loot system. one big mess. one big retarded, slow, non-cooperative click fest. i hate to say that, but jay wilson beat you here, consider it an insult!

4. pvp. i love this aspect in each and every game. it could be unbalanced, pay 2 win or whatnot, and i still gonna worship pvp. theres one thing that bothers me thou. i dont know how is it goin in late game, but in low level bracket, theres more trolling then actual fighting, ie archer standing in corner of map with traps laid, just waiting for you to step on them and burst u down, shadow running like a hurricane around fckin pillars or whatever, me, just standing there with my tank-ish build, hp regen gear on and rejuvenation totem active. srsly... out of 10 fights, the real fights are 1, maybe 2, rest of it is plain trolling. it's fun, but not long-term.

overall, most of the time, this game is soooo much fun! i love it! maybe its not a game to keep me hooked for a year or two, yet, but hey! i'd say you've already beaten 1 of 2 'fresh and big' arpgs out there! baby steps, but yeah, i can feel your passion in this game :) oh, and big ups for being faithful to f2p model, quality games don't have to take my money by force ;)

I have to say the game is rather impressive.

Every level feels exciting as you get to pick up talents from the huge talent forest. Even when picking +10 stat nodes it doesn't feel unrewarding as you get closer to a really nice group of nodes by doing so and it makes you wanna level up more.

The difficulty level is spot on. It's relatively easy in the lower difficulty levels, but there are still situations on trial and error, especially when first time encountering lighting casters and heavy chaos damage.

I love the F2P model as well, even tho I'm little worried about it backfiring as it's so fair to the player. I'm definitely going to support the game myself, even tho the pricing of i.e. special fireball effect seems kinda high. I'm probably going to buy the coins just to support the game but my brain tells me not to spend 8 dollars on a single spell effect.

And the lag issues are kinda irritating. Most of my deaths are from client/server desync when I have no idea where the monsters actually are and stuff starts warping around the place.

This is my first post.

I heard about POE on the forum of another game (you can guess which!) and made an account a couple of days ago and I'm really impressed.

There are lots of ideas/features that I really like:

1) the huge skill tree
2) item development/crafting through the use of orbs
3) interesting quest completion awards
4) gems that gain power with experience
5) no gold
6) composite characters (currently I have a dual-wield shadow who uses zombies)
7) linked gems
8) no AH!
9) no Pay To Win

I find the game engaging and it keeps drawing me back to find 'just one more waypoint'. The game is also a paradigm switch in that you don't need to pick up all the whites that you find to sell for gold, so the inventory can be smaller. Great idea!

I think the wide range of skills and gems should ensure that debates about 'best build' will run and run: it will be rare to find a character exactly the same as yourself and I personally feel drawn to creating new and different characters to see how they work out.

A great deal of original thinking has gone into POE and it shows everywhere. GGG have done a great job.

Considering this is a beta release, it's holding up really well, with a few minor server issues.

I'd say that currently the waypoints are a bit too far apart, meaning you have to go back through a few (respawned) areas to get back if you die before you find one. But if I was running a beta and wanted stress tests on my code, then that's the way I would build it.

Overall: great job!

Stergeron (known in other places as Grombleface and Erikthered)

Hey

I will split my first impressions into both some positive and negative stuff.

The first visit ingame was just amazing. Felt like a ressurected and improved D2.
I love the idea of this huge passive skill tree, makes it possible for so many unique and personal builds for your character. And the same with skill/support gems.

What I did not like was the lack of some statistics.
For instance, scrolling combat text would be a nice feature to add to the game.
The lack of combat numbers(damage/status effects and so on) makes it so much harder to measure my total damage output or how frequent my stuns are. And I'll be honest, I love those BIG numbers when a crit occours.

Yes this might make a mess on the screen while a big fight is ongoing, but a checkbox in the options to turn this on/off would be nice.

Oh and a tab for spellcaster stats besides the "offensive" tab would help alot, I'm still confused while playing my witch.

I feel like this is going offtopic so I'll just end right now.

First impression is...lots of potential !

These are my first in-game experiences, classified as +good, +/-mixed, –poor(a.k.a. needs improvement).Please keep in mind that I only have 3 characters playing default at this moment (lvl 29ranger,lvl27witch,lvl10templar), thus having limited, subjective experience playing the game.

What drives me to play PoE ?
+ Unique building system
+ Explore and conquer
+ Finding that rare or unique item
+ ARPG from Indie
+ overall good looking game
+ freedom of choice to trade real money for in-game features supporting the game financially

Character creation
+ easy access to predefined starting class/stats and model
+ wide naming convention
- generic model appearance

Gameplay
+ controls
+ storyline/quests
+ gameplay

Art style
+ no cartoons
+ darkish
+ Shabby clothing, exile style

Maps
+ atmospheric maps
+/- some outdoor maps/area’s could be more dark/dusk
- onscreen outdoor maps difficult to see in lighter environments

Skills/attributes
+ Freedom of choice over skills and attributes is unique.
+/- The skill tree is somewhat overwhelming at first
- significant risk making wrong design choices and gimping your character
- limited/ re-spec options

Gear/gems
+ complements nicely with the skill/attribute tree
+ gem leveling system for more powerful characters
- gem leveling restrictions based on character level

Crafting/Recipes
+ Original crafting systems using orbs and augmentations
- vendors do not hint for any recipes nor requirements

Trade
- no auction house

Longevity
+/- worried that playing the same maps over and over in higher difficulty won’t cut it for me and looming boredom
? Is it possible to add new/different content to existing maps in higher difficulty ? that would keep me interested ;p