They removed alterations because they don't want you to spam 5k alteration orb to get something, and instead you have a worst version where instead of spamming 5k alts you now need 5k bases....
The people you have to thank for this is everyone who said that "ground loot needs to be better, we're filtering 99% of items, white items should be valuable, etc." Well you got what you wanted!
true. Also I never had problems with alt spamming. Even 17k alts or something like that. If you didn't like alt spamming in poe1 you could buy magic item with these properties. Now yeah, white bases are more valuable than blue or 99% of rares.
I completely agree with you on pretty much everything. To be honest, the more I play the game the more I dislike it at its current state and it is 6 at best at the moment (with 3 for its endgame). The biggest problems I see and you have not mentioned (not sure if you consider them balance) are :1. Horribly scaling mana cost - absolutely crippling for builds 2. Their decision to not make balance changes much more often in order to bring the game to a decent state; 3. The atlas is just horrible, your suggestion to block layouts is good, maybe we can get some similar system to the PoE1 preference system i which you van block layouts; 4. The fact that they barely addressed how slowly you get the first points of specialisation trees if you do not buy the fragments is insane, i have 3 lvl 91+ characters and i had 1 full simulacrum, it is insane. Anyways, great review man, I guess we are waiting for the next poe1 league or something to happen to poe2
I 100% agree on the balance changes take, it's so weird to me that it sounds like they're going to be trying to balance an early access game by only ever bringing in balance patches with new league economies once every few months of so, or how ever often they can eventually bring themselves to do them. I just can't see the build variety and balance of the game feeling good in even a year if we're only going to be fixing balance changes that are as glaringly obvious as things like the current state of ES maybe 4-5 times a year.
"1. Horribly scaling mana cost - absolutely crippling for builds" This one is giga true. If you dont play HoWa or Archmage (which automaticly fix mana due to int stacking and giga dps), than the mana cost/ regen breaks most builds in endgame. Because you just dont have enough mana (flask charges) to kill bosses 😂😂 This is even worse because it forces you to invest into dps which is against the 1 Portal Mindset. Its just so bad and contradictory
@ exactly, and considering how bad the game balance is now and how slow GGG is in making balance changes, this game will be in a horrible state for 1 year.
Big agreed. Just finished my T16s this morning after 3 characters about about 250 hours and uninstalled. Great foundation, needs a lot of work, and I don't want to get burnt out, so taking a long break till next MAJOR overhaul.
The "infinite" 6 link section i 100% agree with. In PoE 1 you would be an Earthquake build, thats what you have invested in, and your clear and ST. In PoE 2 you would be EQ, Hammer of the gods, Stampede. Basically in a build you include half the the entire available mace skills just because you can and theres no downside to it. So every build will feel the same. Same for Quarterstaves, every build has the same template of Ice Strike or Tempest Flurry and bell and if youre feeling spicy you have a choice of Flicker or Falling Thunder on top of that. PoE2 needs a lot of work in the build department. It functions much closer to a Diablo game then what we love from PoE 1.
I don't agree that there is no opportunity cost. Even if you use the Vaal Orb strategy for the average player it IS costly to first get that 4th support socket. And if you don't use Vaal Orbs to get your 5th socket.. well good luck finding more than one perfect.. or any. I've yet to find one and I'm 300+ hours into the game which is much more than the average player. This is significantly limits an average players ability to get more than one gem with 5 sockets. (and yes, poe2 you shouldn't call them 6L.. that's just poe1 confusion brought into a new game.)
I’m not sure having hammer of the gods on every mace build is that different than every slam build having shouts+guard skill+ leap slam/shield charge in poe1. At least in poe2 it gives them the design space to then also develop 10 different iterations of hammer of the gods, where in poe1 the only thing people care about is the primary delivery skill.
I wonder why they didn't try to have alterations get the chaos treatment - reroll one modifier while keeping the other one intact - I believe it could make itemisation feel so much better
I believe alterations in their mind fit the "no scour" philosphy of trying to limit our ability to craft a base from scratch. Chaos single modifier change is limiting enough in cost(rarity of the orb) that we can't possible hope to craft an item with them, also given chaos orbing a rare into something useful would be extremely unlikely to be successful just due to rng factor of %chance to add a good mod vs %chance to remove the good mod currently added to item. Technically anuls + augs accomplish what alterations would do but are just way to costly in rarity of anul orbs to be a viable option.
I'm assuming the thinking is that there can better much better weights for good mods without the ability to deterministically pull the lever for them. I think it sounds fine in theory and it definitely feels cool ID'ing a good item once every few hundred or so, I just think in practice for people that play each league longer than 150~ hrs the process of picking up and ID'ing things gets old pretty quickly and every other avenue for item acquisition is more or less the same thing with some minor variations. I get GGG's thinking and before the 150 hr-ish mark it actually feels good to me, after that though I started to dread logging in and just quit. I had a 1 mirror or so MoM archmage build in week 2 for context, I just gave it away because the gameplay loop just wasn't fun.
@@CaptainLance9im sure it has nothing to do with the math of a chaos hitting 1 in 4 or 1 in 6 vs an alt hitting a 50 50 every time, it would have to be more rare then a chaos orb.
Maybe some kind of recombinator for blue items only or 3 to 1 more likely for rare items would work. I think they always thought the recombinator was too strong but if it was only for blues it's not that strong. Still makes ground loot important and just basically acts like essences in poe1 where you can start with a 2 mod item if you spend enough currency.
I do like the idea to need drops, the only problem is the identifying of items. Identifying is now free, so why have the need to do it in the first place? If items would drop identified and the rarity tiering systems was improved, the system would be far less tedious. As for the crafting I assume a lot of systems will be added anyway over the development until release and after
Having a single target skill available sure beats just swapping out gems for single target fights. It's essentially the same outcome with less steps. Or do we need to feel the weight of that opportunity cost?
Agree with a lot of the points here. While I believe a lot of the foundations are strong there is a lot of undoing learnings from PoE 1 and problems reintroduced we've already solved years ago for no real reason. Another angle I haven't seen anyone explore that I think could do with a good deep dive is some of the decisions around skills being SO heavily tied to ONE specific weapon type vs Ascendancies. Ascendancies are, thematically, amazing in concept but so generic ( and in some cases, major downsides ) in the choices presented. However, then weapons and their skills are SO highly specific that while you can play a Gemling or an Invoker or a Titan they all end up looking IDENTICAL if you use a Quarterstaff? Moving the thematic choices of the build away from specialist and thematic ascendancies ( especially when they look SOO good in PoE 2 ) and onto the weapon types actually LOWERs build diversity and I'm surprised this was the design intend in how they've approach skill design. Point? Why can my Spell hit the Bell BUT I can only place it if I have a quarterstaff equipped? Why can't my minions hit it? I'd love someone to break down this weird shift if the paradigm of build choice as I also think this is a major shift in design intent causing the lack of diversity in the game right now
Unfortunately, I believe that this decision was made because of the ‘great animations’ and an implementation of all skills with their animations for all weapons is not possible from GGG's point of view.
For early access, I can deal with a lot of the issues you raised, but mapping is absolutely horrible. The Civ-like atlas and tablet system is absolutely horrible and tedious and absolutely takes the wind out of my sails. I don't want to have to micromanage my mapping experience to actually make maps worth running. Let me roll my maps, throw in my extra modifiers, and freaking blast. Instead, I have to run dead maps with no mechanics, try to find tablets worth using, and worry about pathing for citadels and towers. Plus the idea of "We'll add more tower layouts" doesn't fix the issue at all. Towers suck because the system sucks, not just because the original base layout sucked. Either way. 3.26 waiting room.
about the multiple 6Ls thing versus build diversity, I believe if we have enough skills variety eventually, it would basically mitigate the issue to the point where it's not really an issue on the build diversity front. Like if we have 3-4 times more skills per wepon type for example.
My take on the endgame is making that atlas "endless" has hurt so much more than it helps. a predetermined atlaswith variation that just resets and rerolls all nodes when you do arbiter of ash or whatever would mean hitting stuff like citadels and hideouts is way less high-roll (currently you could fid 6 in 5 minutes or none in 500 maps), as well as the biome system not working very well in my experience, and preventing inaccessible maps. the biggest thing though, is that i truly don't see any advantage to the procedurally generated atlas, or the fact that T3 waystones can drop in t15s for some reason
The more I play the atlas, the less fun I have. Every fourth map is a layout I don't enjoy, and every second time I explore into the "fog" there's a unconnected/dead node, river, or mountain. Unfortunately that kills the mapping experience for me. Blocking map types would help and heavily reducing the amount of unconnected/dead nodes you can run into would make it so much smoother. I like your explanation of builds being funneled into having the same 6L single target, hadn't thought about it.
Agree with pretty much everything here! I will continue to enjoy exploring the new things for a while, but it's a struggle to make builds that aren't just the same top choices. Hopefully over time these aspects can be addressed.
I’d be cool with no scouring if they brought back alterations and the other ways of somewhat deterministic crafting which they probably will in new league mechanics, which I think they left out because they were really confusing to new players, at least in combination with everything else. And then when we want to craft we pick up the bases or even blue bases also, with an orb like scouring but that can only be used on blue/magic items. That would incentivize picking up items on the ground while not fully limiting the amount of rerolls we could do. Also, life not being on the tree limits it as a scalable defensive layer compared to others.
You mentioned it a bit, but I think the real problem of crafting is that the tradeoff to increase the value of gear on the ground is not working. During maps, gear on the ground becomes just as useless as PoE1, so really we've gained nothing by not being able to craft items we need as deterministically as in PoE1. The only option for decent gear is trade. But I trust GGG, this is early access, if there is one game studios that can fix complex problems like that it is GGG.
In the current implementation of crafting in Poe 2 I just won't play the game. The crafting system in Poe 1 is what made it my favorite game of all time.
They tied too much power to gem levels, which they can only hold back by introducing the large mana costs or there would be no downside. I brought up the build diversity issue before the release as well. I still think locking skills to specific weapons types is the biggest issue that will plague build diversity going forward.
I think gem levels were supposed to be limited in power by the mana cost increase. Which means the +level stat gives a lot of power but it should also require additional mana investment. Unfortunately right now archmage is what it is so it's just a no brainer to get max levels and mana but with further balancing it could actually become a choice whether you want to invest a lot in gem levels or other stuff.
Yea the problem is that the best methods we have to scale spell damage at the moment also increase mana consumption. In addition to Archmage and Gem Levels there's also trigger Meta Skills which can also do insane single-target damage if you can sustain their mana consumption. The only damage multipliers that don't cost more mana are critical damage and ailment magnitude. They can be used to make a few off-meta builds with low mana investment work, but they don't scale as strongly as mana builds do.
even with archmage out of the picture, with spells scaling so hard above lvl 20 (exponentially for almost all of them), there is no scenario where stacking levels isn't the best way to scale your damage, even if it means to solve mana. That it is the ONLY way to actually scale spell damage currently (no flat damage outside of archmage, only %increased which rapidly loses value the more you have, the exact opposite to gem levels), obviously makes it that much worse.
My biggest problem with gem level atm is the nessessarity on items. Found a good items and trash it again cause the single mod is missing sux. Lance said it with the excample of his wand search. This mods are no choice and that is what makes them bad (same feelings with rarity/movement speed due the slow base speed) at least for me
wow im glad to see this, i stopped after 2 weeks to play poe2 exactly for those reasons and now someone finally has to balls to speak up and not just say that everything is perfect. Yes the game will get better over time but we need to give them a year or two before it reaches the level of poe1. cant wait to see some crazy poe1 build ideas again!
SSF enjoyer here. SSF in poe2 is hot trash without crafting or any other ways of getting items than rng from the ground. Before that I could farm resources and make item I want (to an extent, i'm not talking about perfect items). Now if i miss certain item slot, i do countless 3 to 1 and pick up all rares and get nothing. Greater essences? I found 4 in 400 hours. I prefer to skip omen part. I'd rather not saying anything. I know game will grow and get more options with time but it's my feeling for now. SSF is NOT fun in poe2 period. I'm already playing my poe1 ssf and enjoying it.
Great points across the board, agree pretty much 100% with all these issues. I think another thing I would add to the list of design issues is the damage conversion system not scaling off the original damage type. This leads to a lot less build diversity because it eliminates options for how to scale your damage and shoehorns you into picking the same nodes based on only your final damage type. It also makes damage as extra an awkward scaling vector since it cannot be converted (which is unclear). I also think the current ailment system has design issues as well (scaling off all hit damage).
a thing I've thought about a few times, I think they could make something like a scour that fits the vibes of the rest of the crafting system by adding an item that removes one mod and reduces the item's rarity by one tier, and only works if the resulting item would have few enough mods for that tier (so a rare with 3 or fewer mods could become magic as long as it wasn't weird like all prefixes, and a 1 mod magic would become normal)
I feel heavy with you about the build diversity. Seeing every monk build be "Herald plus bell, plus evasion and ES" is really lame to me. Also sidenote: I hate the damaging ailment change. I thought it was such a cool and unique way to differentiate from crit and hit based builds. But here AFAIK, your ailment is just an aftereffect (outside of corpseboots)
I havnt got to that part yet but alot of it is the tree itself, I've tried to make whirling assault work and the perfect strike and they just feel like ass with right side tree, you have so many elemental nodes over there going for a none ice strike or flurry build just destroys your dps.
I think that the 6 link issue is bad more because of a lack of skills than a lack opportunity cost. What option does monk have for bossing without bell? Taking away everything being a 6 link doesn't give monk a new option to boss with. Should their strike skills be strong enough to boss without a bell? 6 links can't share supports, and supports don't enable that many new options for builds. I think that we need more options before saying it's specifically 6 links that are the issue for build diversity.
Hi, can you please tell me, I assembled according to your build "Archmage Spark Stormweaver Build Guide", but I encountered a problem with lack of mana, only sparks spend 1000 mana per second, with my regeneration 400. My character is lvl 67.
I wonder if the skill opportunity cost could be fixed by lowering the stat requirements on gear and gems. I could see it making it worse, too. Right now though, since stat requirements are so high I don't see anyone using different weapons on the same build. It could also get fixed by them adding in more gems.
I stopped playing 2 weeks ago because of the bad and boring end game system, i think the atlas system is so bad, you are forced to do things you dont want to do, and if you want to do something you cant. like bossing. 2nd reason i stopped playing was the how limited the "crafting" was. i picked up items for almost a week, and didnt find a single upgrade, was also slamming items, and 1 bad slam could make a usable item unusable. Hope they change the currency atlas system into some kind of side content like heist or delve, and bring back the old atlas system, its better in every way.
This is such a good video and really puts some of my internal thoughts into words. It's a really nice feeling you get when you feel a certain way about things and someone else comes out and literally says what you have been thinking for weeks. I hope poe 2 and EA gets more stuff and more changes and gets to the point where it becomes something amazing but still think it needs a LOT of work and honestly the more I play the more I miss playing poe 1 tbh. I really think there best bet here is to take a lot of resources and move them to poe 1. Continue with the game we have loved for the past 11 years, give us a new great league and continue to constantly update and patch and bring new content to poe 2, get the rest of the game developed and make some big end game changes and other changes and continue to pump out patches and resets for it.
we traded a system where you didn't pick upgrades from the ground and just crafted them for a system where you don't pick up upgrades from the ground and instead just buy them from someone's dump tab if I wanted all my upgrades to come from the ground, I'd play SSF
It's actually worse because in POE 1, even in SSF, you still mostly craft your own gear since you can farm the materials to craft. The only thing you need to pick up is item bases. You still have a clear goal that you can 100% reach, even in SSF.
@@vgorp3849 let me be clear: if you check every gear item you pick up from the ground to see if it's an upgrade for yourself before putting it into the dump tab, you're never gonna get your build very far.
@@vgorp3849The problem with your implied argument is that one person's ground loot can't match the sheer quantity and quality of pre-identified, searchable ground loot from 1000s of other players.
I really don't want to write off PoE2, like obviously it will be good at some point in the future, but I am getting really worried about the state of PoE1 while this beta test is running...
Im suprised you like the boss fights , story bosses are awesome but endgame are impossible to balance without making the mechanics really really badly designed, unclear and unfun , + bandaiding every boss with an artifical damage reduction if people kill them too fast , same as poe 1 end game bosses
this is definitely a part due to not being entirely comprehensive, like for example I am not very convinced by the current "difficulty" system with endgame bosses. Bosses in reference here was definitely just thinking in general sense of the various bosses they made not differentiating for example arbiter boss vs fighting geonor in act 1
i remember hearing (or reading) about half a year back that they were planning systeme where u can "salvage" mods from rare to be able later craft them on items - does anyone know what happened to it?
I simply agree with all your points, being a avid poe 1 crafter, I feel there is nothing to learn for this system we have now. The depth is just non-existing, which is sad.
"crafting" is the same for me as day 1 EA as it is now. ID something on the ground and gamble with exalts. GGG is clearly ok with deterministic crafting since they put omens in the game but seems to think that regular players shouldn't be able to interact with that system
I think making orbs of annulment way WAY more common would help a bit. It would give players the opportunity to repeat the early steps of Trans-Aug-Regal-Exalt in the pursuit of solid 4 mod items. i’ve played multiple characters into end game and found so few annuls compared to even divines. Yes it’s more steps than simply alt spamming, bur given the devs general attitude towards design it seems like a reasonable compromise in design vs feel.
The thing about the map layout omg yes its got to the point where with the new towers the swamp tower is such a nice map i just ran it over and over yesterday, you can kill all the rares without finishing it. And ya you miss out on league mechanics but not having to worry about min maxing towers and jist knowing that you can blast a nice layout is so good
What do you make of the idea that crafting is very weak right now to accomodate the inevitable power-creep down the line? As well as crafting needing to be weak so that dropped loot can be strong.
I think publicly releasing a game in a state nobody wants it to be in-on purpose-with a promise that someday in a distant future it will reach the state everybody wants it to be in is a really weird idea in principle. It's irrational on every possible level. As for making crafting weak so that dropped loot could be stronger in comparison, sure, you _can_ do that, but then you're substituting a rich and diverse system that contributed to making PoE 1 stand out as the ARPG of the decade in the 2010s for a far more basic system that leaves players with little to no agency. It's a matter of whether the trade-off _really_ has the value you _think_ it has. This discussion really started back in the D2 LoD days when people were comparing the power levels of ground drop items (fully random) vs. crafted (largely random) vs. runewords (fully deterministic), and even back then the meta was largely revolving around good bases and ~2 pass check mods. That's to say there is no truly right or wrong way to do these systems and different games made different decisions there, but it's always a question of which system you want to define the shape of players' experience at a given level of personal proficiency and character progression.
@@moozooh they made crafting weak because they dont want to scare the noobs saying poe1 is too hard. Hell, ive seen people saying the current item system in poe2 is already too hard lmao
@@bmpm844 For the record, I completely agree that in many respects, GGG wanted PoE2 to be more beginner-friendly-which also makes sense strategically if they want to bite at the other major ARPG player bases which they couldn't cover with the utter complexity hell of PoE1. But if they really didn't want to scare off noobs, then why make the game as resource-starved and punishing as it is? I've gone permadeath-only in every game that supported that since the 2000s, and PoE2 is scary even for myself because so many things can kill you very quickly and you have so little to rely on for defenses until waaay later in the game when you get your build rolling. In PoE1 I can rush through the campaign as a melee only using the gear I pick up from the ground with an occasional alch or bench craft. In PoE2, as a melee, I felt completely naked during the campaign because everything just shat on me and I could do nothing about it. This just looks like identity crisis to me. I get that Jonathan likes Dark Souls and he wanted to create something of the kind, but Dark Souls itself is impeccably designed and balanced around the kind of experience Hidetaka Miyazaki wanted it to be, and PoE2 is trying to be several things at the same time which are sometimes orthogonal or antithetical to each other.
I agree with the Gem Level thing. The insane amount of relative power they gave from gem levels is kind of absurd. It's anywhere from 12 - 20% more damage (than the previous) per level. I know we had the same in POE1 but I don't think it was as problematic because there was more power on the tree, gear, and gems. In POE 2, I feel like 95% of your power literally comes from Gem levels alone.
****I posted this on another video talking about their dislikes, and it's long, and therefor gets zero engagement, but here are some of my thoughts**** I think there are actually so many problems with this game, that MF becomes an easy one to target. But I don't think it's the games main problem. I am absolutely baffled by the decision to divert so far from the games predecessor, I don't get it. I'm an average player, and I do get it. I think this is a carry over issue from the original game (of which I have many thousands of hours played) in where the economic structure is not dissimilar to the one currently present in western capitalism. Resources, beget resources. If you're able to play 12 hours a day, especially as a league starts, you'll ramp up quite quickly. And that's no different in either game BUT - and here's where I think I'm on firmer ground - in PoE 1 I'm able to grind out and get to a place where I want to be. In some leagues with more success than others, but there are many variables, and I honestly think the problem is deeper than MF. So to make this seemingly as long winded as possible; 1) Power, Player power.. Gear seems to be the only way to access player power. The skill tree is stupendously underwhelming, the gem system is simply put; bad. And then your left with gear. When everyone is looking for the same gear, it gets out priced very quickly, and there isn't much you can do about it, which ties into the next two things; 2) Build diversity, and the lack thereof. All the builds are the same lol. Stack this, stack that. Mostly because there is such a lack of player power, the biggest two played builds are mana stackers, and stat stackers. They've gone out of their way to make this game more palatable for new players which is nice. BUT in 'removing' a lot of the complexity, they've watered down a lot of interesting, unique, fun, and POWERFUL builds. 3) A lack of ability to farm // not powerful enough to do so. The atlas passive tree is both backwards, and a joke. So I can't level my gems to become stronger, I've gotten all the levels I can get to put points into underwhelming passives on the tree (which honestly, is a big reason - I believe - that stackers are so prominent. It doesn't feel bad having to take +5 stat passives for 10 fucking levels in a row to get to some upside//downside notable) and I can't farm any gear because the 12 monsters in my map, and the 2 rare mobs didn't drop anything, and I have no passive points to put towards breach (the only thing that matters) There's so much that needs to be fixed. -The gem system is both awesome and terrible. Uncut gems, decoupled from gear is great. Just make it so they gain levels, I don't understand this change. -Make it so you gain passive points on the atlas tree while doing content, instead of after the boss of that content. -Give six portals per map, or take away exp loss. If I wanted to play hardcore, I would -Rework the passive skill tree. Make it more interconnected, make it less lackluster. -Not everything needs to have a positive, and negative effect. I don't get this philosophy. -Crafting needs to be fixed. I don't even like crafting, in fact I hate it. Every time I've tried it, I end up spending more to make something worse than what I could've traded for. I'm a casual player to be certain, but a good crafting system does two things; It allows the giga-chad-sweaties who play 12 hours a day to make the best items with some level of certainty. Secondly it makes many currency items valued, and therefor gives a nice base for the casuals to farm and trade. The easiest example here in PoE2 is essences. They're actual garbage, and yes those creating the mirror tier items will buy them. BUT in PoE 1. Just crafting avg. gear for the average player, essences are at worst a great start, and therefor the market for them is incredible. I could go on and on and on and on, but no one will read any of this anyhow. There are actually way more issues than positives in this game, and whilst some people are enjoying it, I'd think it rather healthy to really dissect what is inherently bad about this game, over praising it. We know what's good. PoE has become my favorite game, over the last 7 or so leagues, really just diving into it, and looking forward to every new league with the most anticipation; At this point, I honestly think there are so many real, fundamental issues with PoE 2, that I'd really just want a PoE 1 league. Because I honestly don't see these things being changed, and to be frank, it doesn't even appear that people see these as issues. So whilst I think MF in a vacuum is certainly a problem, I believe if you fix the structure surrounding it, and would be a lot less so, and the game would be much more enjoyable for more people.
I read what you wrote - and i am not in the mood to answer on all the points you made sepperatley. But i think most of the arguments you make are true to a certain extent. But the tone of your wall of text to me sounds as if the game was out for 2 years and 7 Leagues and you still didn´t get the game you wanted in the first place - when it is in early access...and GGG have proven to really care to make a good game. Give it some time! The game is out for 6 weeks or so - with a major holiday in between...they fixed a lot of bugs allready, they did some small balancing allready...they surely have a lot of CONTENT in the pipeline. I start to lose interest myself right now....but i played a shitton of poe2 - and so did many of my friends...and for a 30$ EA Game ist is insanely good - and i expect it to get better :D Give it some TIME. You will see in a year we will play a totally different beast of a game.
@@mikea.1652 First, thanks for reading, much appreciated! Second, wall of text? I have paragraphs! Thirdly to the real point, I understand it's EA, and I'm many thousand hour poe1 player, I know what ggg is capable of, and regardless of weather they produce the game I would personally want or not, I respect them and they listen and are awesome. BUT My issues with the game are core and fundamental choices, I believe the developers are pretty firm on. They're not tweaks or bug fixes, they're paramount choices, that to me are what make the game much, much, much less fun than PoE 1. I am more than willing to change this stance as they change the game thought, I'm not that myopic ;) Thanks again for engaging!
I think diverting from PoE1's design choices makes perfect sense from a developer's standpoint because they don't intend to abandon PoE1 development and they _also_ don't want for one of the games to cannibalize the other. This is not an easy situation to find yourself in (I anticipated this would be exactly the case ever since they confirmed the games would be separate from each other), and realistically you _want_ for the two games to have their own identity and playing experience. The main problem is that some of these decisions are backwards in the sense of running contrary to what made PoE1 more successful in player-retaining mechanics compared to its peers, mainly player agency and decision space. It's not an issue of the lack of content to engage with, it's an issue of feeling shoehorned into engaging with specific design decisions where PoE1 would give players more meaningful choice at any point. I've been playing it since the open beta in 2013 (the functional equivalent to early access), and even back then the game felt more responsive to my choices as a player. Just take a look at the first couple seasons of the build of the week series to see the difference. And it's not like PoE1 back then had more content than PoE2 has now!
@ Yes, I agree with this whole heartedly. There's also some good discussion to be had around the first portion though. 1) PoE 2 was initially billed as a new expansion to the current game. A lot of people, including myself, continued to buy buy mtx to support GGG and show appreciation for the game. When the tune changed, and it was then announced as a stand alone game, ok fair enough. Then the game comes out and it's so far removed from it's predecessor that some may feel like the money the spent didn't really accurately portray what they'd been told, or wanted? 2) IF they continue to support PoE 1 in a positive and effort filled way, not just half-assed, then okay, I can be more on board with the idea of PoE 2. It still won't be for me probably, due to their design choices, but I'll still have a live service game to enjoy (though I wish it just had the graphical improvement of poe2.) but that's a MASSIVE if. They've already walked back the idea that the development of the second game would not hinder the game. Then we got the 8 month league, now, PoE 2 is kind of in a bad spot, and there's LOTS of work to be done. I'm wondering if we go a year now without a new PoE 1 league, and at that point, why bother even allocating resources? Obviously a lot will unravel as time moves forward. I'm not set in stone on anything, but at this very moment, in this current paradigm, I think PoE 2 is mostly unfun, and PoE 1 seems to be all but abandoned.
Read through the comment and some of the replies. I kinda see the concerns but I disagree with a good chunk. I'll try to engage with what I can and remember. So, apologies if I mis represent/forget things here and there. To me, the crafting system is still in its early days and as much as I disliked it in the first couple of weeks of EA, some aspects grew on me eventually(still needs a lot of work though). I personally prefer the pick up, ID, keep/drop over the alt spam. I do believe that the answer lies somewhere in there instead of rerolling the same base x amount of times until you get what you want. I think that the lack of deterministic methods is what makes casual crafting a waste of currency when you can find something cheaper in trade. Once crafting becomes viable, that feeling is going to disappear IMO. The system is also lacking actual high value bases as well. Something like ilvl86 influenced items in PoE1. Same as the previous point, build diversity is pretty low right now but that'll solve itself when more items/mods/tree nods and gems (scaling avenues in general) get added and some get balanced. HoWA for example being BiS for pretty much every decent attack build is an obvious sign of imbalance that I'm sure the devs are aware of. I do think that the ability to farm for content is kind of inconsistent/difficult in some cases but then again, balance issue. Should be better with more updates. Farming for a ritual boss is a good example of an encounter being too rare but a breachstone is pretty fair imo. I personally hated the 6 portal system in PoE1 and I'm glad it's gone because it felt like a bandaid solution to problems that were unsolvable in that game. Dying was literally more rewarding because you're pushing content you're not supposed to be able to clear. And defences didn't really matter in SC and it was mostly a QoL rather than an important aspect of the game. It made the progression in SC meaningless tbh... Once the devs get rid of what makes dying unfair, PoE2's 1 portal system will feel good (already does to me with some exceptions). They already are improving on that with the attempts on bosses and such. And no, it's far from being a hardcore mode. I also like the exp loss. There needs to be something to keep your in place when pushing content your character can't handle. I don't like losing map events though. Again, the devs are aware that deaths in maps are too punishing and they are looking into how to make it fairer. All in all, I think I share most of the sentiments around the state of the game. I do think that it's a really good base though. I disagree on these being core problems rather than just balance/lack of content issues.
I agree with all of your bullet points, but I wanted to talk about your take on crafting. I think we all know the current crafting system sucks because it's all just a different form of "transmute-aug" spam and "anull-exalt" spam and things like that, all of which are essentially different forms of medium/high-risk gambling. I just wanted to also argue that if people want the crafting issue to be tackled, those people should also be aware that not every player is a crafter - myself included. I never liked the crafting system in PoE; I hate that you pretty much need a degree in PoE crafting just to make any of the "item showcase" items by yourself -- none of it is interesting to me, and it's the same way for a lot of other players as well. I'd rather just keep blowing through maps, having a good chance of IDing a decent drop off the ground, sell it to a player that could use it, then use that money to purchase my gear upgrades. If GGG is to address the crafting issue, then they need to also make item drops in general feel better. This was something they've said in one of their interviews that they would improve upon about how "players will want to pick up a majority of the items off the ground." To me, this was a promise that they would severely reduce the amount of garbage drops (so, no more pressing "ALT" and nearly crashing your game because of the absurd amount of filtered items) and make a push for a "smart loot" system. But this ended up not being the case at all, not even close. There's still a bunch of trash on the ground that you filter out, and they exacerbated the problem by re-introducing "+% Quantity" into the Magic Find affixes.
I don't love the current state of PoE2, but I do love the potential. GGG tried a lot with PoE2 and not everything hit, but I trust them and I know that they will, eventually, make changes that will better the PoE2 experience overall.
Sacrificing Poe 1 as fuel for the fire for Poe2, when Poe2 is literally just "the vision" 2.0. its sad. We've already been through "the vision" constantly and players are consistent and adamant that "the vision" sucks balls. I honestly feel like Jonathan and some of these designers really believe that their company is successful because of their personal belief in this theoretical perfect game design they have, and not because the company became relatively good at listening to his customers instead. Almost all of the great things about Poe 2 are things that could easily have been done in and for Poe1. In my mind, because of this, Poe2 is a massive failure. But people are going to quote steam chart numbers of a game that was marketed to the tits and basically gets the community of multiple different games all try it out for the first time at once, so I don't get to have a leg to stand on. Other than the fact that poe1 is a massive success and has uniquely been able to hold and grow its player base for a decade **" in large part because it rejected the vision *** that Poe2 is insisting it bases the game around. It's just a disaster waiting to happen or a massive mistake that will eventually get turned around and we wasted 6 years for nothing. And PO1 one is definitely going to go by the wayside. At every turn they have been quote "forced to make tough decisions" and hamper Poe one in favor of Poe2. This is a massive lie, its pr bullshit that eay too many people fall for. This is a very deliberate choice by them and one they could reverse and weigh their priorities differently at any time they're choosing not to. and they're going to continue to do that. Any of this cope of go back to POE 1? They're obviously still on track blah blah blah. It's just flies in the face of every single thing they've said, and more importantly, every single way they've acted for the last 3 years. We are in the worst timeline. There is no Doctor strange at GGG headquarters calculating the perfect sequence of events where we sacrifice half of the wreaclast cinematic universe in order to overcome the vision room that is implanted into Jonathan's head and come out victorious with a game that is focused on fun things that the players like as opposed to perfect theoretical gameplay design. RIP.
Scours or Alts wouldnt save this system but if they ever did add them I wonder if they'd be a lot more rare. Good vid man, I agree with most of the stuff you said.
With more crafting options added over time I don't think this basis is too bad. Omens are super powerful and so are greater essences, once they balance the drop rates of these, late game crafting should feel better. Early game crafting is where it's quite bad, maybe more essences and crafting material drops in the campagin could help. Having runes be replaceable is already a great buff, as long as you can get the currency to make sockets. Totally agree on the +levels, too easy to get, gives substantial damage, but at the same time makes skills cost insane amounts of mana. Would rather see scaling changes so mana cost doesn't ramp so drastically and the damage benefit wasn't as big. It's really wierd using lower level skills because you don't want a higher mana cost and have so much +skill levels already. Endgame feels okay, but easy to get burnt out and there is a lack of skills and combinations to explore which such outliers that we have now. Didn't really consider the 9x6L problem, but all I know is that I don't like swapping gems when I get to a boss. Excited for their future plans, I don't want to play PoE 1 personally at this point even when it gets a new league.
Maybe scours return but can only remove all prefixes OR all suffixes on an item, and once you use it on an item you cant use it again. Its a 1 time per item thing. So there's 2 types of scours. Prefix removal or suffix removal. And once you use one of them on an item, you cant use the other OR use the type you used on the item again.
This, or they could make a EB version but for life. Also a bit insulting that blood mage has life cost added for orbs and life overflow but grim feast has no cost.
Right now i would like proper statement from GGG what endgame speed is supposed to be . From 1 hand there is interview with mark where he says that ppl looking at endgame videos should be able to understand what is going on and then there are current breaches + temporalis + fill screen heralds
Double standard, GGG say mandatories thing are bad yet when question about it on boots everything is fine, rarity everything's fine. (now i don't think rarity is has much of a problem that everyone make it but i think it's a fundamental design flaw bare minimum would be to release content where it's "impossible" to rarity)
Point I most agree on: Crafting, especially no scouring orb. To me crafting is me working on a single item, changing/adjusting it constantly through multiple steps until I get the result I want. The way it is right now, 1. I am forced to craft on new base if the craft went south, which makes it feel more like gambling than crafting, 2. Not enough varieties (not much of an issue since I'm sure they'll add more in the future) Point I'm not sure of: The 6L skill system. I think builds end up being limited by the support gems as there are not that many of them and we can only use 1 of every type. The problem right now IMO is just that skill balance is so off that it feels like there are no options, as choosing the weaker option is just a waste. I do see your point though, and maybe it'll feel better in the future when there are more skill options in the future.
I agree with the item drop lottery, it is like i understand that there is no other way in the game to just spend x amount of hours for an decent item to drop, and that x amount of hour can be any number. You dont really feel like you are going toward a better item, but just collecting currency to mindlessly click on a semi ok item and hope for the best. Item crafting shouldnt literally be just click gambling. Also i feel they should buff rune ele resist on armor. 12% is barely anything, i am playing ssf and i finally capped my res at tier 14 map lol
You can have interesting loot without removing crafting Synth bases, fractures, quality above 20%, etc, all already do that in PoE 1, they just have to lean on that
You touched on a major issue with POE1's crafting as well being that drops on the ground become useless. And once again we can point out Last Epoch's crafting which not only has exceptional crafting from the ground up but also combines exalted affixes, which are drop only, to ensure your drops are worthwhile because those exalted items form the "base" to craft with at high end. That's before we go into legendary potential and smashing rares and uniques together so you don't have to try and try and juggle power levels between the two rarities since you can effectively use both.
I never really thought about it that way, but the infinite 6 link being limiting is a very fair take. Indeed, since you have no limits, every build can fit the "best" skill in their build. Maybe things will change with more skills but having skills being specific to ONE weapon also accentuate the problem. If staves and maces would share their skills, then melee builds would at least choose between bell and hammer. I really dislike how melee skills are tied to only 1 weapon type. we need more skills that can be used with different weapons
The design of 1 portal for juiced maps, is why I rage quit 9 time. Now I am off for much time- I won't get back untill 6 portals, it is literally like some type of hardcore
I have a few items waiting to be whittling'd so i can make thsoe 10-20 ex items potentially into 1-20 Div items... Nobody and i repeat nobody and their mother cares about accuracy on their necklace or armour or evasion even... Idk why GGG chooses to die on a hill of wasted chaos and exalted orbs about crafting.
You are totally right about crafting, most of the poe1 community feels the same. Still, whatever they do, i *hate* it when I have to study 2-3-4 hours to understand how a mechanism works and then bring spreadsheets and overcomplicate stuff. Like recombinators are too complex imho, cemetary was faaar too complex etc. By the way, they had mentioned that you would have to use different skill for different minions / cases, but i havent found that to be true. You now have to use even less skills than on poe1. About the endgame, something's not right. The "I will focus on X activity and build for it" is not possible now and you are forced to do everything which is not appealing. Having to do maps (especially after you died) without anything on them feels terrible too and it's not that they are 2mins of your time. Moreover, the fact that in order to level delirium / breach you need to farm 300 splinters enabling you to farm better and then do that over and over sucks. I did that only after I felt my build was fine and I wouldnt need to sell those for gear. Finally, map bosses are so well done, that I feel they should not die before having done most of their abilities. At the moment, the least amount of threat is map bosses in a map!
I agree on all points except the 6 link opportunity cost argument. I think there is a build diversity issue, but I don't think it's because every skill is 6 linkable and needs opportunity cost. We have opportunity cost in other forms for those links (limited support gem count, weapon restricted skills, builder/spender setups, etc). To me, the problem with the diversity is the limited number of options so solve those problems, and a lot of it being trying to remove the clunk of multi-skill setup, and aim for triggering/automation in order to have one-button play. The skills do not feel like they mesh together well. Each one feels like an independent skill with a single input, and a single output. There is some mechanical overlap among some of them, but there's no fluidity to them. You cannot chain 2 attacks together and preserve your momentum. You cannot single target with mostly 1 skill alone. Everything does tie back into a single skill for that archetype (this is the one part of the video I agree on) to boost your damage enough to feel good for single target. But it doesn't feel like a true "combo", it feels like "dropping a supplementary object" into the fight to wail on in order to multi hit a boss. A lot of this is due to the way the game is still largely a keyboard/mouse game, and having the animations for skills still be fairly independent. If we had the ability for skills to chain into other abilities more fluidly, and not have mechanics that are so bad independently and too good when using the "DPS boost button" it would likely feel better. What I envision for this is for example, a staff attack that lunges you into a target, and staggers normal monsters in an aoe, then you use another attack that leaps you over the rare monster, and slams behind them causing a shockwave under their feet, and a secondary shockwave that resonates outwards. Chaining of abilities into combo strings plays well into ARPG fantasy, while still being able to feel "mighty" because its an ARPG and not a fighter/brawler game. That said, if they lean into this too hard, it could start to feel like a Batman game. This maybe is something that should be implemented on a per-archetype basis, but I still think string-comboing abilities could work as a caster. I just can't specifically think of a way to do this that doesn't feel like desecrate/DD, ED/Contagion, etc.
The point I'm (probably poorly) trying to hammer down here is that the multi-skill system they are trying to pitch doesn't feel good to use. The lack of fluidity between skills makes us creep closer to one button playstyles (or trying to) in order to leverage the damage and bypass the clunk. If it didn't feel so bad/clunky to string different things together, there would be less incentive to minimize the amount of inputs, and thus more variety in the skill choices. I also think this is why builds are compelled into specific build styles, as those are not just the strongest ways to play, but also the most optimal ways to play. How can I get the most out of the least? On top of that, some skills just feel terrible/awkward to use. They offer one really cool aspect, but the skill just executes in a terrible/disappointing way that immediately turns someone off of it. Also, strikes having to heavy stun for "melee splash" is terrible. That needs to be changed. Make the splash larger on a heavy stun, but give it a baseline innate splash range that doesn't require targets to be heavy stunned. Strikes still lag behind in PoE2 as they did in PoE1 simply because AoE is always king. Why would I want to use a skill that has mobbing related mechanics tagged onto it, but attacks like it's a single target ability?
I think its great to try new things and thats what Poe 2 does. They had a really good system in Poe1 that was very much ahead of every other ARPG, and they wanted to try change. If omens were so common the cost dropped down to 1-2divs instead of 7-13divs, then i think things may change as the omens are very useful, they are just too rare. But for that to happen you would have to increase the droprate by alot. At least 500% more common
I feel like their goal of ground loot being valuable is better achieved in poe1. I would rather have an inventory filled with fractured bases than these new tier 5 rares.
To me, this is the best feedback video I have seen so far - for one simple reason: You point out problems you see (or feel - that's valid too!) without immediately providing solutions. There is no "oh, it would be so easy to do X" or "why don't you just do y" in this video. This is - and I'm saying this as a former developer and product owner / product manager - the best input you can get. Well done, Lance!
I completely agree with your points-the crafting system was explained very effectively. While it's clear what GGG aims to achieve, the cost of the current system doesn't justify the rewards. Although I'm not at the same endgame level as you, it still feels like the system falls short of accomplishing its goals. Personally, I found crafting with 5,000 Alteration Orbs incredibly tedious and monotonous, so I understand their perspective. However, it's an unrealistic expectation for the average player. What GGG needs is a streamlined solution, like a blacksmith NPC in the hideout. This blacksmith could replicate the functionality that many players achieve through automation scripts: spamming Alteration Orbs until a desired modifier appears. The NPC could handle tasks such as crafting specific modifiers or ensuring 5- or 6-linked items, making the process more accessible and less frustrating for players. That said, I don't think the critique of PoE2's crafting system has gone far enough. Path of Exile 1 is the best crafting system in any game-ever! The system may have an excessive number of splinters, fragments, and similar components, its depth and flexibility are unparalleled. My expectation into POE2 was GGG would avoid overcomplicating the system, and focus on simplifying what already works exceptionally well without compromising its core appeal. I do see that, for example: I dont see 100 different types of essences. But I also, some of the appeal is gone as well.
I dont have the fond nostalgia for scour/alch that people seem to have discovered. Crafting definitely needs more currency options, especially something like harvest, but returning to scour/alch serms like a big step backward to me. Life/ES on tree definitely needs a full rework.
The thing that drives me most insane about POE2 is all the stuff we were promised that got removed for more annoying systems. Like they promised we'd use jewellers to gamble up sockets and it could never go down; instead we got a fixed system of tiered jewellers orbs that you HAVE to go through. We were told gems could drop with sockets on them; uncut gems cannot get bonus sockets (which is so stupid and easy to fix). We were promised a more interesting skill tree but with so many nodes having negatives and so many build types having no nodes (thorns, wands, etc) build diversity feels like it's at an all time low. Part of this certainly is balance is way off, but I feel the tree compounds this issue.
A base is worth nothing atm u throw a transmute at them and thrash dem then. Maybe someone remember the old day with itl 86 elder astral plates. This was a good time. But i got a little out of hand in poe1.
I really don't like the difficulty and annoyance of the campaign, i can run through PoE 1 campaign on even a really bad self made build and still get through it relatively quickly, but PoE 2 campaign felt like a slog especially on league start and does not make me excited to run it every league let alone for multiple characters, twink gear or not.
hard disagree on the 6link thing, those skills need investment to be the best single target, the oppurinity cost is the skill tree needed to support those skills, which yeah you can use the weapon swap for them, BUT THATS THE CHOICE YOU MAKE, its not free at all to add those skills
To your point on crafting, I am conflicted. I seriously believe that the core of an ARPG is finding an item on the ground, and identifying it to see if it's an upgrade or not. PoE1 largely negated this because even though I'm a relative noob ( only 2K hours), I simply never, ever, gave a shit about any item that dropped on the floor unless it was a Fracture or influenced. If it was a sought after base, I'd also pick it up. I didn't care about drops because I knew eventually I'd just be able to cobble together somethinf better than anything that can drop using one of the many gacha 'crafting' systems in the game. This, to me, is a problem because I believe the design ethos of the whole genre is "kill monsters, get loot, lather, rinse, repeat". All the systems in PoE1 largely negate this and it devolves into the player really only caring about currency drops. Engaging with this system on the high end eventually became reserved for those who could get that currency the fastest while also having an encyclopedic knowledge of how everything interacted. On the other hand, I think PoE2 has leaned a little too far in the other direction, and there needs to be some sort of middle ground. In general, I believe on average you ID better loot in this game than in PoE1, but there can be long stretches without upgrades or a clear path to one. This leads to the same problem PoE1 had but with a different root cause, you just end up caring about currency so you can eventually trade of the item you do want. I genuinely believe making Omens far more common would really alleviate this issue because as it is right now, they basically dont exist as you rightly said. Also, I do believe this game will build to a certain level of complexity. You have to remember that a part of the early access goal is to onboard new players who wanted to try the franchise without being burdened by all the excess bloat that PoE1 had accrued over the last ten years. Launching the game with overly complicated crafting is another way to push newer players away, and I genuinely believe retention will be easier if these systems are introduced gradually over time rather than all at once. They also iterated on the 0.1.1 stream that more systems ARE coming. I trust the process. Whether you bothered reading all this or not, hope you have a good day.
Thank you for posting those, your opportunity cost section is something I’ve been posting about on X and people are losing their minds calling me a hater. I just want build variety and diversity 😂. But nope 🙂↔️. They don’t understand that’s one of the reason why Poe is such a unique game 😅and they don’t have this in poe2
I think as far as gem scaling goes, the levels are only really needed because there are very very few sources of flat damage anywhere. HoWa is top tier because it adds flat damage.
agree with all you said. +levels is just a feels bad most of the time. You'll either have an awesome wand with no + levels and its trash, or a + levels wand with all the rest of the mods that is still trash but better than an amazing one that has no good mods. I think it's ok to keep it as is, just make the scaling of gems less steep, make the first few levels impactful and the later ones not so much. So you can choose where to get the first few + to spell levels. Crafting I feel like eventually it'll be better, with more options, also possibly a balance thing. I like the idea of loot on the ground being meaningful. I think that could be a good difference between PoE 1 and 2, the Chaos / Scour difference.
i hate it that you have to put HotG on every mace build on a weapon swap instead of trying to make your main skill do all content. It feels like i just have to play what clears best in set 1 (anything + Herald) and what does the most damage in set 2 (HotG + dmg ailment) and im not beeing rewarded for building a wellrounded character around a certain skill.
the gem system still rubs me the wrong way. i don't like the amount of slots i "waste" on spirit gems on my monk, i don't like uncut gems at all (maybe quest rewards only uncut, everything else normal gem drops), gem drops are extremely underwhelming. why not drop skill gems with x sockets and quality instead of uncut gems? just weird
I personally fall into the side of preferring the new endgame, I do hope they change the objective of mapping in some way so that we don't have to have pointless back tracking for single rares (even with checkpoints, when you only find one at the start and end of a map and miss one in the middle its stupid) but I personally find the most boring part of poe1 is the endgame mapping where I am basically stuck re-running the same map with the same layout over and over again because it is both the easiest way to setup a load of maps to run at once as well as probably the most efficient map for what ever atlas strategy I'm currently doing. Exploring the atlas is quite enjoyable from a general RPG sense of seeing new zones and finding the different bosses to fight, I think we just need more control over being able to avoid some of the worst maps, whether that's from being able to stop certain ones from spawning (like the opposite of favoured maps in poe1) or from giving better options for moving along the atlas (E.G more possible routes from each map so that you aren't forced to path through a bad map and making similar maps likely to chain in a biome so at least when you find one you're likely to run at least 5-10 in a row maybe)
The opportunity cost of Hammer of the Gods is the support gems. If I play a mace strike / Boneshatter build, any support gem I put in HotG is one I can't use in the other two skills. The issue here is that HotG is still very effective with a few niche support gems.
Im pretty much done until they add more classes and more melee weapons, I just cant get behind spells and bows unfortunately. Crossbow is ok with the shotgun skills but those need some major buffs. Waiting for daggers, axes and swords.
THANK YOU, only one i saw mention the mana costs being ridiculous. i decided to do cold sorc, and im forced to invest into mana as much as an archmage would just to afford using my skills. right now, i'm refusing to use archmage, but i acknowledge that doing a sorc/caster without archmage is an objectively wrong decision. regarding your 6l opportunity cost issue, i kinda disagree with you, having multiple full power skills where each skill is useful in some situations while others are useful in different ones is waaay better than having 1 skill that you optimize and base your entire build around, right now there is just 1 skill for these different situations but that can be remedied once GGG adds in more skills to the game. Having builds be based around archetypes is way better than having them based around specific skills.
They removed alterations because they don't want you to spam 5k alteration orb to get something, and instead you have a worst version where instead of spamming 5k alts you now need 5k bases....
The people you have to thank for this is everyone who said that "ground loot needs to be better, we're filtering 99% of items, white items should be valuable, etc." Well you got what you wanted!
true. Also I never had problems with alt spamming. Even 17k alts or something like that. If you didn't like alt spamming in poe1 you could buy magic item with these properties. Now yeah, white bases are more valuable than blue or 99% of rares.
@@SepehrRezaee yeah and the problem is currently, ground loot is not even more valuable than in PoE1
Why not just let you pay N alts to get the mod?
Just let me spend 1000 alts and buy +5 gem lvl mod from a bench.
basically - new PoE1 league when?
announcement late january COPIUM
Wait, a poe 1 exists?
@saulocavalcante5769 yea until ggg realizes it's more profitable to put all there recourses into poe2 and they abandon us.
@@CaptainLance9maybe they meant … next January?
I completely agree with you on pretty much everything. To be honest, the more I play the game the more I dislike it at its current state and it is 6 at best at the moment (with 3 for its endgame).
The biggest problems I see and you have not mentioned (not sure if you consider them balance) are
:1. Horribly scaling mana cost - absolutely crippling for builds
2. Their decision to not make balance changes much more often in order to bring the game to a decent state;
3. The atlas is just horrible, your suggestion to block layouts is good, maybe we can get some similar system to the PoE1 preference system i which you van block layouts;
4. The fact that they barely addressed how slowly you get the first points of specialisation trees if you do not buy the fragments is insane, i have 3 lvl 91+ characters and i had 1 full simulacrum, it is insane.
Anyways, great review man, I guess we are waiting for the next poe1 league or something to happen to poe2
1 simulacrum means you’re doing a lot wrong.
@ for sure, we are not all god gamers like you ;)
I 100% agree on the balance changes take, it's so weird to me that it sounds like they're going to be trying to balance an early access game by only ever bringing in balance patches with new league economies once every few months of so, or how ever often they can eventually bring themselves to do them.
I just can't see the build variety and balance of the game feeling good in even a year if we're only going to be fixing balance changes that are as glaringly obvious as things like the current state of ES maybe 4-5 times a year.
"1. Horribly scaling mana cost - absolutely crippling for builds"
This one is giga true. If you dont play HoWa or Archmage (which automaticly fix mana due to int stacking and giga dps), than the mana cost/ regen breaks most builds in endgame. Because you just dont have enough mana (flask charges) to kill bosses 😂😂
This is even worse because it forces you to invest into dps which is against the 1 Portal Mindset. Its just so bad and contradictory
@ exactly, and considering how bad the game balance is now and how slow GGG is in making balance changes, this game will be in a horrible state for 1 year.
Basically: the game has a LONG ways to go. The potential is there for sure.
Big agreed. Just finished my T16s this morning after 3 characters about about 250 hours and uninstalled.
Great foundation, needs a lot of work, and I don't want to get burnt out, so taking a long break till next MAJOR overhaul.
just like d4 but d4 is already longer on the way and still further away we can see who wins the battle (i doubt d4 wins but its a fun game for a week)
@@Snaking0 Lol no, D4 has no potential.
@@masonhales It has same potential as poe unless you ape.
The "infinite" 6 link section i 100% agree with. In PoE 1 you would be an Earthquake build, thats what you have invested in, and your clear and ST. In PoE 2 you would be EQ, Hammer of the gods, Stampede. Basically in a build you include half the the entire available mace skills just because you can and theres no downside to it. So every build will feel the same.
Same for Quarterstaves, every build has the same template of Ice Strike or Tempest Flurry and bell and if youre feeling spicy you have a choice of Flicker or Falling Thunder on top of that. PoE2 needs a lot of work in the build department. It functions much closer to a Diablo game then what we love from PoE 1.
I don't agree that there is no opportunity cost.
Even if you use the Vaal Orb strategy for the average player it IS costly to first get that 4th support socket. And if you don't use Vaal Orbs to get your 5th socket.. well good luck finding more than one perfect.. or any. I've yet to find one and I'm 300+ hours into the game which is much more than the average player.
This is significantly limits an average players ability to get more than one gem with 5 sockets. (and yes, poe2 you shouldn't call them 6L.. that's just poe1 confusion brought into a new game.)
Couldn't agree more.
I’m not sure having hammer of the gods on every mace build is that different than every slam build having shouts+guard skill+ leap slam/shield charge in poe1. At least in poe2 it gives them the design space to then also develop 10 different iterations of hammer of the gods, where in poe1 the only thing people care about is the primary delivery skill.
I wonder why they didn't try to have alterations get the chaos treatment - reroll one modifier while keeping the other one intact - I believe it could make itemisation feel so much better
I believe alterations in their mind fit the "no scour" philosphy of trying to limit our ability to craft a base from scratch. Chaos single modifier change is limiting enough in cost(rarity of the orb) that we can't possible hope to craft an item with them, also given chaos orbing a rare into something useful would be extremely unlikely to be successful just due to rng factor of %chance to add a good mod vs %chance to remove the good mod currently added to item. Technically anuls + augs accomplish what alterations would do but are just way to costly in rarity of anul orbs to be a viable option.
I'm assuming the thinking is that there can better much better weights for good mods without the ability to deterministically pull the lever for them. I think it sounds fine in theory and it definitely feels cool ID'ing a good item once every few hundred or so, I just think in practice for people that play each league longer than 150~ hrs the process of picking up and ID'ing things gets old pretty quickly and every other avenue for item acquisition is more or less the same thing with some minor variations.
I get GGG's thinking and before the 150 hr-ish mark it actually feels good to me, after that though I started to dread logging in and just quit. I had a 1 mirror or so MoM archmage build in week 2 for context, I just gave it away because the gameplay loop just wasn't fun.
@@CaptainLance9im sure it has nothing to do with the math of a chaos hitting 1 in 4 or 1 in 6 vs an alt hitting a 50 50 every time, it would have to be more rare then a chaos orb.
Maybe some kind of recombinator for blue items only or 3 to 1 more likely for rare items would work. I think they always thought the recombinator was too strong but if it was only for blues it's not that strong. Still makes ground loot important and just basically acts like essences in poe1 where you can start with a 2 mod item if you spend enough currency.
I do like the idea to need drops, the only problem is the identifying of items. Identifying is now free, so why have the need to do it in the first place? If items would drop identified and the rarity tiering systems was improved, the system would be far less tedious. As for the crafting I assume a lot of systems will be added anyway over the development until release and after
Having a single target skill available sure beats just swapping out gems for single target fights. It's essentially the same outcome with less steps. Or do we need to feel the weight of that opportunity cost?
yeah and weapon swaps can give variety as well.
Things I like : *4 things*
Things I dislike : *150 pages of things*
That sums up my current feelings about the game.
Reading hard. Me like smash 😂😂😂 right there with you brother 😅
sums up my feelings. beside visuals, every aspect is worse than poe1
Visuals, Sounds, Atmosphere, attacking while moving and Vaal Orb. Rest is a downgrade tbh 😂
Agree with a lot of the points here.
While I believe a lot of the foundations are strong there is a lot of undoing learnings from PoE 1 and problems reintroduced we've already solved years ago for no real reason.
Another angle I haven't seen anyone explore that I think could do with a good deep dive is some of the decisions around skills being SO heavily tied to ONE specific weapon type vs Ascendancies.
Ascendancies are, thematically, amazing in concept but so generic ( and in some cases, major downsides ) in the choices presented. However, then weapons and their skills are SO highly specific that while you can play a Gemling or an Invoker or a Titan they all end up looking IDENTICAL if you use a Quarterstaff?
Moving the thematic choices of the build away from specialist and thematic ascendancies ( especially when they look SOO good in PoE 2 ) and onto the weapon types actually LOWERs build diversity and I'm surprised this was the design intend in how they've approach skill design.
Point? Why can my Spell hit the Bell BUT I can only place it if I have a quarterstaff equipped? Why can't my minions hit it?
I'd love someone to break down this weird shift if the paradigm of build choice as I also think this is a major shift in design intent causing the lack of diversity in the game right now
Unfortunately, I believe that this decision was made because of the ‘great animations’ and an implementation of all skills with their animations for all weapons is not possible from GGG's point of view.
For early access, I can deal with a lot of the issues you raised, but mapping is absolutely horrible.
The Civ-like atlas and tablet system is absolutely horrible and tedious and absolutely takes the wind out of my sails.
I don't want to have to micromanage my mapping experience to actually make maps worth running.
Let me roll my maps, throw in my extra modifiers, and freaking blast.
Instead, I have to run dead maps with no mechanics, try to find tablets worth using, and worry about pathing for citadels and towers.
Plus the idea of "We'll add more tower layouts" doesn't fix the issue at all. Towers suck because the system sucks, not just because the original base layout sucked.
Either way.
3.26 waiting room.
Neve thought about the +levels and you're so right. Great video cut. Lance
about the multiple 6Ls thing versus build diversity, I believe if we have enough skills variety eventually, it would basically mitigate the issue to the point where it's not really an issue on the build diversity front.
Like if we have 3-4 times more skills per wepon type for example.
weapon swaps help with this too imo
Thanks for bravery to talk about the issues you have with the game. My opinions are very similar to yours.
My take on the endgame is making that atlas "endless" has hurt so much more than it helps.
a predetermined atlaswith variation that just resets and rerolls all nodes when you do arbiter of ash or whatever would mean hitting stuff like citadels and hideouts is way less high-roll (currently you could fid 6 in 5 minutes or none in 500 maps), as well as the biome system not working very well in my experience, and preventing inaccessible maps. the biggest thing though, is that i truly don't see any advantage to the procedurally generated atlas, or the fact that T3 waystones can drop in t15s for some reason
The more I play the atlas, the less fun I have. Every fourth map is a layout I don't enjoy, and every second time I explore into the "fog" there's a unconnected/dead node, river, or mountain. Unfortunately that kills the mapping experience for me. Blocking map types would help and heavily reducing the amount of unconnected/dead nodes you can run into would make it so much smoother. I like your explanation of builds being funneled into having the same 6L single target, hadn't thought about it.
Agree with pretty much everything here!
I will continue to enjoy exploring the new things for a while, but it's a struggle to make builds that aren't just the same top choices.
Hopefully over time these aspects can be addressed.
I’d be cool with no scouring if they brought back alterations and the other ways of somewhat deterministic crafting which they probably will in new league mechanics, which I think they left out because they were really confusing to new players, at least in combination with everything else. And then when we want to craft we pick up the bases or even blue bases also, with an orb like scouring but that can only be used on blue/magic items. That would incentivize picking up items on the ground while not fully limiting the amount of rerolls we could do. Also, life not being on the tree limits it as a scalable defensive layer compared to others.
You mentioned it a bit, but I think the real problem of crafting is that the tradeoff to increase the value of gear on the ground is not working. During maps, gear on the ground becomes just as useless as PoE1, so really we've gained nothing by not being able to craft items we need as deterministically as in PoE1. The only option for decent gear is trade. But I trust GGG, this is early access, if there is one game studios that can fix complex problems like that it is GGG.
very much agree on the life node take, unsure about the rest but i respect the opinions
In the current implementation of crafting in Poe 2 I just won't play the game. The crafting system in Poe 1 is what made it my favorite game of all time.
Oh no, whatever will they do. You will have POE 1 6 months leagues at least.
They tied too much power to gem levels, which they can only hold back by introducing the large mana costs or there would be no downside. I brought up the build diversity issue before the release as well. I still think locking skills to specific weapons types is the biggest issue that will plague build diversity going forward.
I think gem levels were supposed to be limited in power by the mana cost increase. Which means the +level stat gives a lot of power but it should also require additional mana investment. Unfortunately right now archmage is what it is so it's just a no brainer to get max levels and mana but with further balancing it could actually become a choice whether you want to invest a lot in gem levels or other stuff.
Yea the problem is that the best methods we have to scale spell damage at the moment also increase mana consumption. In addition to Archmage and Gem Levels there's also trigger Meta Skills which can also do insane single-target damage if you can sustain their mana consumption.
The only damage multipliers that don't cost more mana are critical damage and ailment magnitude. They can be used to make a few off-meta builds with low mana investment work, but they don't scale as strongly as mana builds do.
even with archmage out of the picture, with spells scaling so hard above lvl 20 (exponentially for almost all of them), there is no scenario where stacking levels isn't the best way to scale your damage, even if it means to solve mana. That it is the ONLY way to actually scale spell damage currently (no flat damage outside of archmage, only %increased which rapidly loses value the more you have, the exact opposite to gem levels), obviously makes it that much worse.
My biggest problem with gem level atm is the nessessarity on items. Found a good items and trash it again cause the single mod is missing sux. Lance said it with the excample of his wand search. This mods are no choice and that is what makes them bad (same feelings with rarity/movement speed due the slow base speed) at least for me
The opportunity cost for the 6 links is the fact you can't use the same support twice. But I don't think that it is costly enough
the vision is a joke
wow im glad to see this, i stopped after 2 weeks to play poe2 exactly for those reasons and now someone finally has to balls to speak up and not just say that everything is perfect. Yes the game will get better over time but we need to give them a year or two before it reaches the level of poe1. cant wait to see some crazy poe1 build ideas again!
Seriously thank you for saying what a be been thinking!!!
SSF enjoyer here. SSF in poe2 is hot trash without crafting or any other ways of getting items than rng from the ground. Before that I could farm resources and make item I want (to an extent, i'm not talking about perfect items). Now if i miss certain item slot, i do countless 3 to 1 and pick up all rares and get nothing. Greater essences? I found 4 in 400 hours. I prefer to skip omen part. I'd rather not saying anything.
I know game will grow and get more options with time but it's my feeling for now.
SSF is NOT fun in poe2 period. I'm already playing my poe1 ssf and enjoying it.
For all of Last Epoch's difficulties, they have the most enjoyable and QoL-filled crafting and loot management out there for me.
I think removing all the +%ES nodes from the tree would balance the EHP against mitigations pretty well
Great points across the board, agree pretty much 100% with all these issues. I think another thing I would add to the list of design issues is the damage conversion system not scaling off the original damage type. This leads to a lot less build diversity because it eliminates options for how to scale your damage and shoehorns you into picking the same nodes based on only your final damage type. It also makes damage as extra an awkward scaling vector since it cannot be converted (which is unclear). I also think the current ailment system has design issues as well (scaling off all hit damage).
As for the happy days, we dont have handicapped 6 portal builds in the game anymore as that was the plague that needed to be removed.
3.26 when?
a thing I've thought about a few times, I think they could make something like a scour that fits the vibes of the rest of the crafting system by adding an item that removes one mod and reduces the item's rarity by one tier, and only works if the resulting item would have few enough mods for that tier (so a rare with 3 or fewer mods could become magic as long as it wasn't weird like all prefixes, and a 1 mod magic would become normal)
No need to over complicate it. Adding just plain scours would be an improvement
I feel heavy with you about the build diversity. Seeing every monk build be "Herald plus bell, plus evasion and ES" is really lame to me.
Also sidenote: I hate the damaging ailment change.
I thought it was such a cool and unique way to differentiate from crit and hit based builds. But here AFAIK, your ailment is just an aftereffect (outside of corpseboots)
I havnt got to that part yet but alot of it is the tree itself, I've tried to make whirling assault work and the perfect strike and they just feel like ass with right side tree, you have so many elemental nodes over there going for a none ice strike or flurry build just destroys your dps.
I think that the 6 link issue is bad more because of a lack of skills than a lack opportunity cost. What option does monk have for bossing without bell? Taking away everything being a 6 link doesn't give monk a new option to boss with. Should their strike skills be strong enough to boss without a bell? 6 links can't share supports, and supports don't enable that many new options for builds. I think that we need more options before saying it's specifically 6 links that are the issue for build diversity.
Hi, can you please tell me, I assembled according to your build "Archmage Spark Stormweaver Build Guide", but I encountered a problem with lack of mana, only sparks spend 1000 mana per second, with my regeneration 400. My character is lvl 67.
I wonder if the skill opportunity cost could be fixed by lowering the stat requirements on gear and gems. I could see it making it worse, too. Right now though, since stat requirements are so high I don't see anyone using different weapons on the same build. It could also get fixed by them adding in more gems.
I stopped playing 2 weeks ago because of the bad and boring end game system, i think the atlas system is so bad, you are forced to do things you dont want to do, and if you want to do something you cant. like bossing.
2nd reason i stopped playing was the how limited the "crafting" was. i picked up items for almost a week, and didnt find a single upgrade, was also slamming items, and 1 bad slam could make a usable item unusable.
Hope they change the currency atlas system into some kind of side content like heist or delve, and bring back the old atlas system, its better in every way.
This is such a good video and really puts some of my internal thoughts into words. It's a really nice feeling you get when you feel a certain way about things and someone else comes out and literally says what you have been thinking for weeks.
I hope poe 2 and EA gets more stuff and more changes and gets to the point where it becomes something amazing but still think it needs a LOT of work and honestly the more I play the more I miss playing poe 1 tbh.
I really think there best bet here is to take a lot of resources and move them to poe 1. Continue with the game we have loved for the past 11 years, give us a new great league and continue to constantly update and patch and bring new content to poe 2, get the rest of the game developed and make some big end game changes and other changes and continue to pump out patches and resets for it.
we traded a system where you didn't pick upgrades from the ground and just crafted them for a system where you don't pick up upgrades from the ground and instead just buy them from someone's dump tab
if I wanted all my upgrades to come from the ground, I'd play SSF
how do you think they get in the dump tab you buy from?
It's actually worse because in POE 1, even in SSF, you still mostly craft your own gear since you can farm the materials to craft. The only thing you need to pick up is item bases. You still have a clear goal that you can 100% reach, even in SSF.
@@vgorp3849 lmao, not his brightest moment.
@@vgorp3849 let me be clear: if you check every gear item you pick up from the ground to see if it's an upgrade for yourself before putting it into the dump tab, you're never gonna get your build very far.
@@vgorp3849The problem with your implied argument is that one person's ground loot can't match the sheer quantity and quality of pre-identified, searchable ground loot from 1000s of other players.
I really don't want to write off PoE2, like obviously it will be good at some point in the future, but I am getting really worried about the state of PoE1 while this beta test is running...
Im suprised you like the boss fights , story bosses are awesome but endgame are impossible to balance without making the mechanics really really badly designed, unclear and unfun , + bandaiding every boss with an artifical damage reduction if people kill them too fast , same as poe 1 end game bosses
this is definitely a part due to not being entirely comprehensive, like for example I am not very convinced by the current "difficulty" system with endgame bosses. Bosses in reference here was definitely just thinking in general sense of the various bosses they made not differentiating for example arbiter boss vs fighting geonor in act 1
i agree about the +gem levels, except maybe on amulets but that's just because they are so insanely rare
Totally agree with the gem level opinion i was thinking the same a couple of days ago, it limits your gearing a lot
i remember hearing (or reading) about half a year back that they were planning systeme where u can "salvage" mods from rare to be able later craft them on items - does anyone know what happened to it?
I simply agree with all your points, being a avid poe 1 crafter, I feel there is nothing to learn for this system we have now. The depth is just non-existing, which is sad.
"crafting" is the same for me as day 1 EA as it is now. ID something on the ground and gamble with exalts. GGG is clearly ok with deterministic crafting since they put omens in the game but seems to think that regular players shouldn't be able to interact with that system
I think making orbs of annulment way WAY more common would help a bit. It would give players the opportunity to repeat the early steps of Trans-Aug-Regal-Exalt in the pursuit of solid 4 mod items. i’ve played multiple characters into end game and found so few annuls compared to even divines. Yes it’s more steps than simply alt spamming, bur given the devs general attitude towards design it seems like a reasonable compromise in design vs feel.
The thing about the map layout omg yes its got to the point where with the new towers the swamp tower is such a nice map i just ran it over and over yesterday, you can kill all the rares without finishing it. And ya you miss out on league mechanics but not having to worry about min maxing towers and jist knowing that you can blast a nice layout is so good
So on the last point, should it be less 6 links, or more skill choices so it's not all just one boss skill?
What do you make of the idea that crafting is very weak right now to accomodate the inevitable power-creep down the line? As well as crafting needing to be weak so that dropped loot can be strong.
I think publicly releasing a game in a state nobody wants it to be in-on purpose-with a promise that someday in a distant future it will reach the state everybody wants it to be in is a really weird idea in principle. It's irrational on every possible level.
As for making crafting weak so that dropped loot could be stronger in comparison, sure, you _can_ do that, but then you're substituting a rich and diverse system that contributed to making PoE 1 stand out as the ARPG of the decade in the 2010s for a far more basic system that leaves players with little to no agency. It's a matter of whether the trade-off _really_ has the value you _think_ it has.
This discussion really started back in the D2 LoD days when people were comparing the power levels of ground drop items (fully random) vs. crafted (largely random) vs. runewords (fully deterministic), and even back then the meta was largely revolving around good bases and ~2 pass check mods. That's to say there is no truly right or wrong way to do these systems and different games made different decisions there, but it's always a question of which system you want to define the shape of players' experience at a given level of personal proficiency and character progression.
@@moozooh Interesting, well considered response. Appreciate you sharing it.
@@moozooh they made crafting weak because they dont want to scare the noobs saying poe1 is too hard. Hell, ive seen people saying the current item system in poe2 is already too hard lmao
@@bmpm844 For the record, I completely agree that in many respects, GGG wanted PoE2 to be more beginner-friendly-which also makes sense strategically if they want to bite at the other major ARPG player bases which they couldn't cover with the utter complexity hell of PoE1. But if they really didn't want to scare off noobs, then why make the game as resource-starved and punishing as it is? I've gone permadeath-only in every game that supported that since the 2000s, and PoE2 is scary even for myself because so many things can kill you very quickly and you have so little to rely on for defenses until waaay later in the game when you get your build rolling. In PoE1 I can rush through the campaign as a melee only using the gear I pick up from the ground with an occasional alch or bench craft. In PoE2, as a melee, I felt completely naked during the campaign because everything just shat on me and I could do nothing about it.
This just looks like identity crisis to me. I get that Jonathan likes Dark Souls and he wanted to create something of the kind, but Dark Souls itself is impeccably designed and balanced around the kind of experience Hidetaka Miyazaki wanted it to be, and PoE2 is trying to be several things at the same time which are sometimes orthogonal or antithetical to each other.
You really hit that gamble crafting problem 🎉🎉
I agree with the Gem Level thing. The insane amount of relative power they gave from gem levels is kind of absurd. It's anywhere from 12 - 20% more damage (than the previous) per level. I know we had the same in POE1 but I don't think it was as problematic because there was more power on the tree, gear, and gems. In POE 2, I feel like 95% of your power literally comes from Gem levels alone.
A lot of great points that I experienced but had not distilled into solid conclusions.
****I posted this on another video talking about their dislikes, and it's long, and therefor gets zero engagement, but here are some of my thoughts****
I think there are actually so many problems with this game, that MF becomes an easy one to target. But I don't think it's the games main problem. I am absolutely baffled by the decision to divert so far from the games predecessor, I don't get it.
I'm an average player, and I do get it. I think this is a carry over issue from the original game (of which I have many thousands of hours played) in where the economic structure is not dissimilar to the one currently present in western capitalism. Resources, beget resources. If you're able to play 12 hours a day, especially as a league starts, you'll ramp up quite quickly.
And that's no different in either game BUT - and here's where I think I'm on firmer ground - in PoE 1 I'm able to grind out and get to a place where I want to be. In some leagues with more success than others, but there are many variables, and I honestly think the problem is deeper than MF. So to make this seemingly as long winded as possible;
1) Power, Player power.. Gear seems to be the only way to access player power. The skill tree is stupendously underwhelming, the gem system is simply put; bad. And then your left with gear. When everyone is looking for the same gear, it gets out priced very quickly, and there isn't much you can do about it, which ties into the next two things;
2) Build diversity, and the lack thereof. All the builds are the same lol. Stack this, stack that. Mostly because there is such a lack of player power, the biggest two played builds are mana stackers, and stat stackers. They've gone out of their way to make this game more palatable for new players which is nice. BUT in 'removing' a lot of the complexity, they've watered down a lot of interesting, unique, fun, and POWERFUL builds.
3) A lack of ability to farm // not powerful enough to do so. The atlas passive tree is both backwards, and a joke. So I can't level my gems to become stronger, I've gotten all the levels I can get to put points into underwhelming passives on the tree (which honestly, is a big reason - I believe - that stackers are so prominent. It doesn't feel bad having to take +5 stat passives for 10 fucking levels in a row to get to some upside//downside notable) and I can't farm any gear because the 12 monsters in my map, and the 2 rare mobs didn't drop anything, and I have no passive points to put towards breach (the only thing that matters)
There's so much that needs to be fixed.
-The gem system is both awesome and terrible. Uncut gems, decoupled from gear is great. Just make it so they gain levels, I don't understand this change.
-Make it so you gain passive points on the atlas tree while doing content, instead of after the boss of that content.
-Give six portals per map, or take away exp loss. If I wanted to play hardcore, I would
-Rework the passive skill tree. Make it more interconnected, make it less lackluster.
-Not everything needs to have a positive, and negative effect. I don't get this philosophy.
-Crafting needs to be fixed. I don't even like crafting, in fact I hate it. Every time I've tried it, I end up spending more to make something worse than what I could've traded for. I'm a casual player to be certain, but a good crafting system does two things; It allows the giga-chad-sweaties who play 12 hours a day to make the best items with some level of certainty. Secondly it makes many currency items valued, and therefor gives a nice base for the casuals to farm and trade. The easiest example here in PoE2 is essences. They're actual garbage, and yes those creating the mirror tier items will buy them. BUT in PoE 1. Just crafting avg. gear for the average player, essences are at worst a great start, and therefor the market for them is incredible.
I could go on and on and on and on, but no one will read any of this anyhow. There are actually way more issues than positives in this game, and whilst some people are enjoying it, I'd think it rather healthy to really dissect what is inherently bad about this game, over praising it. We know what's good.
PoE has become my favorite game, over the last 7 or so leagues, really just diving into it, and looking forward to every new league with the most anticipation;
At this point, I honestly think there are so many real, fundamental issues with PoE 2, that I'd really just want a PoE 1 league. Because I honestly don't see these things being changed, and to be frank, it doesn't even appear that people see these as issues.
So whilst I think MF in a vacuum is certainly a problem, I believe if you fix the structure surrounding it, and would be a lot less so, and the game would be much more enjoyable for more people.
I read what you wrote - and i am not in the mood to answer on all the points you made sepperatley. But i think most of the arguments you make are true to a certain extent. But the tone of your wall of text to me sounds as if the game was out for 2 years and 7 Leagues and you still didn´t get the game you wanted in the first place - when it is in early access...and GGG have proven to really care to make a good game. Give it some time! The game is out for 6 weeks or so - with a major holiday in between...they fixed a lot of bugs allready, they did some small balancing allready...they surely have a lot of CONTENT in the pipeline. I start to lose interest myself right now....but i played a shitton of poe2 - and so did many of my friends...and for a 30$ EA Game ist is insanely good - and i expect it to get better :D
Give it some TIME. You will see in a year we will play a totally different beast of a game.
@@mikea.1652 First, thanks for reading, much appreciated!
Second, wall of text? I have paragraphs!
Thirdly to the real point, I understand it's EA, and I'm many thousand hour poe1 player, I know what ggg is capable of, and regardless of weather they produce the game I would personally want or not, I respect them and they listen and are awesome. BUT
My issues with the game are core and fundamental choices, I believe the developers are pretty firm on. They're not tweaks or bug fixes, they're paramount choices, that to me are what make the game much, much, much less fun than PoE 1. I am more than willing to change this stance as they change the game thought, I'm not that myopic ;)
Thanks again for engaging!
I think diverting from PoE1's design choices makes perfect sense from a developer's standpoint because they don't intend to abandon PoE1 development and they _also_ don't want for one of the games to cannibalize the other. This is not an easy situation to find yourself in (I anticipated this would be exactly the case ever since they confirmed the games would be separate from each other), and realistically you _want_ for the two games to have their own identity and playing experience.
The main problem is that some of these decisions are backwards in the sense of running contrary to what made PoE1 more successful in player-retaining mechanics compared to its peers, mainly player agency and decision space. It's not an issue of the lack of content to engage with, it's an issue of feeling shoehorned into engaging with specific design decisions where PoE1 would give players more meaningful choice at any point. I've been playing it since the open beta in 2013 (the functional equivalent to early access), and even back then the game felt more responsive to my choices as a player. Just take a look at the first couple seasons of the build of the week series to see the difference. And it's not like PoE1 back then had more content than PoE2 has now!
@ Yes, I agree with this whole heartedly.
There's also some good discussion to be had around the first portion though.
1) PoE 2 was initially billed as a new expansion to the current game. A lot of people, including myself, continued to buy buy mtx to support GGG and show appreciation for the game. When the tune changed, and it was then announced as a stand alone game, ok fair enough.
Then the game comes out and it's so far removed from it's predecessor that some may feel like the money the spent didn't really accurately portray what they'd been told, or wanted?
2) IF they continue to support PoE 1 in a positive and effort filled way, not just half-assed, then okay, I can be more on board with the idea of PoE 2. It still won't be for me probably, due to their design choices, but I'll still have a live service game to enjoy (though I wish it just had the graphical improvement of poe2.)
but that's a MASSIVE if. They've already walked back the idea that the development of the second game would not hinder the game. Then we got the 8 month league, now, PoE 2 is kind of in a bad spot, and there's LOTS of work to be done. I'm wondering if we go a year now without a new PoE 1 league, and at that point, why bother even allocating resources?
Obviously a lot will unravel as time moves forward. I'm not set in stone on anything, but at this very moment, in this current paradigm, I think PoE 2 is mostly unfun, and PoE 1 seems to be all but abandoned.
Read through the comment and some of the replies. I kinda see the concerns but I disagree with a good chunk. I'll try to engage with what I can and remember. So, apologies if I mis represent/forget things here and there.
To me, the crafting system is still in its early days and as much as I disliked it in the first couple of weeks of EA, some aspects grew on me eventually(still needs a lot of work though). I personally prefer the pick up, ID, keep/drop over the alt spam. I do believe that the answer lies somewhere in there instead of rerolling the same base x amount of times until you get what you want.
I think that the lack of deterministic methods is what makes casual crafting a waste of currency when you can find something cheaper in trade. Once crafting becomes viable, that feeling is going to disappear IMO.
The system is also lacking actual high value bases as well. Something like ilvl86 influenced items in PoE1.
Same as the previous point, build diversity is pretty low right now but that'll solve itself when more items/mods/tree nods and gems (scaling avenues in general) get added and some get balanced. HoWA for example being BiS for pretty much every decent attack build is an obvious sign of imbalance that I'm sure the devs are aware of.
I do think that the ability to farm for content is kind of inconsistent/difficult in some cases but then again, balance issue. Should be better with more updates. Farming for a ritual boss is a good example of an encounter being too rare but a breachstone is pretty fair imo.
I personally hated the 6 portal system in PoE1 and I'm glad it's gone because it felt like a bandaid solution to problems that were unsolvable in that game. Dying was literally more rewarding because you're pushing content you're not supposed to be able to clear. And defences didn't really matter in SC and it was mostly a QoL rather than an important aspect of the game. It made the progression in SC meaningless tbh...
Once the devs get rid of what makes dying unfair, PoE2's 1 portal system will feel good (already does to me with some exceptions). They already are improving on that with the attempts on bosses and such. And no, it's far from being a hardcore mode. I also like the exp loss. There needs to be something to keep your in place when pushing content your character can't handle.
I don't like losing map events though.
Again, the devs are aware that deaths in maps are too punishing and they are looking into how to make it fairer.
All in all, I think I share most of the sentiments around the state of the game. I do think that it's a really good base though. I disagree on these being core problems rather than just balance/lack of content issues.
I agree with all of your bullet points, but I wanted to talk about your take on crafting.
I think we all know the current crafting system sucks because it's all just a different form of "transmute-aug" spam and "anull-exalt" spam and things like that, all of which are essentially different forms of medium/high-risk gambling. I just wanted to also argue that if people want the crafting issue to be tackled, those people should also be aware that not every player is a crafter - myself included. I never liked the crafting system in PoE; I hate that you pretty much need a degree in PoE crafting just to make any of the "item showcase" items by yourself -- none of it is interesting to me, and it's the same way for a lot of other players as well. I'd rather just keep blowing through maps, having a good chance of IDing a decent drop off the ground, sell it to a player that could use it, then use that money to purchase my gear upgrades.
If GGG is to address the crafting issue, then they need to also make item drops in general feel better. This was something they've said in one of their interviews that they would improve upon about how "players will want to pick up a majority of the items off the ground." To me, this was a promise that they would severely reduce the amount of garbage drops (so, no more pressing "ALT" and nearly crashing your game because of the absurd amount of filtered items) and make a push for a "smart loot" system. But this ended up not being the case at all, not even close. There's still a bunch of trash on the ground that you filter out, and they exacerbated the problem by re-introducing "+% Quantity" into the Magic Find affixes.
I don't love the current state of PoE2, but I do love the potential. GGG tried a lot with PoE2 and not everything hit, but I trust them and I know that they will, eventually, make changes that will better the PoE2 experience overall.
i dont think the 9 6l's is a problem, it's just balance issues / lack of skill gems. There's also opportunity cost in the support gems
Sacrificing Poe 1 as fuel for the fire for Poe2, when Poe2 is literally just "the vision" 2.0. its sad.
We've already been through "the vision" constantly and players are consistent and adamant that "the vision" sucks balls. I honestly feel like Jonathan and some of these designers really believe that their company is successful because of their personal belief in this theoretical perfect game design they have, and not because the company became relatively good at listening to his customers instead.
Almost all of the great things about Poe 2 are things that could easily have been done in and for Poe1. In my mind, because of this, Poe2 is a massive failure. But people are going to quote steam chart numbers of a game that was marketed to the tits and basically gets the community of multiple different games all try it out for the first time at once, so I don't get to have a leg to stand on. Other than the fact that poe1 is a massive success and has uniquely been able to hold and grow its player base for a decade **" in large part because it rejected the vision *** that Poe2 is insisting it bases the game around. It's just a disaster waiting to happen or a massive mistake that will eventually get turned around and we wasted 6 years for nothing.
And PO1 one is definitely going to go by the wayside. At every turn they have been quote "forced to make tough decisions" and hamper Poe one in favor of Poe2. This is a massive lie, its pr bullshit that eay too many people fall for. This is a very deliberate choice by them and one they could reverse and weigh their priorities differently at any time they're choosing not to. and they're going to continue to do that. Any of this cope of go back to POE 1? They're obviously still on track blah blah blah. It's just flies in the face of every single thing they've said, and more importantly, every single way they've acted for the last 3 years.
We are in the worst timeline. There is no Doctor strange at GGG headquarters calculating the perfect sequence of events where we sacrifice half of the wreaclast cinematic universe in order to overcome the vision room that is implanted into Jonathan's head and come out victorious with a game that is focused on fun things that the players like as opposed to perfect theoretical gameplay design. RIP.
Scours or Alts wouldnt save this system but if they ever did add them I wonder if they'd be a lot more rare.
Good vid man, I agree with most of the stuff you said.
With more crafting options added over time I don't think this basis is too bad. Omens are super powerful and so are greater essences, once they balance the drop rates of these, late game crafting should feel better. Early game crafting is where it's quite bad, maybe more essences and crafting material drops in the campagin could help. Having runes be replaceable is already a great buff, as long as you can get the currency to make sockets.
Totally agree on the +levels, too easy to get, gives substantial damage, but at the same time makes skills cost insane amounts of mana. Would rather see scaling changes so mana cost doesn't ramp so drastically and the damage benefit wasn't as big. It's really wierd using lower level skills because you don't want a higher mana cost and have so much +skill levels already.
Endgame feels okay, but easy to get burnt out and there is a lack of skills and combinations to explore which such outliers that we have now. Didn't really consider the 9x6L problem, but all I know is that I don't like swapping gems when I get to a boss.
Excited for their future plans, I don't want to play PoE 1 personally at this point even when it gets a new league.
Maybe scours return but can only remove all prefixes OR all suffixes on an item, and once you use it on an item you cant use it again. Its a 1 time per item thing.
So there's 2 types of scours.
Prefix removal or suffix removal.
And once you use one of them on an item, you cant use the other OR use the type you used on the item again.
I kind of like no life on tree, but to compensate there should be way more life on gear. To comfortably reach 4-5k life.
This, or they could make a EB version but for life.
Also a bit insulting that blood mage has life cost added for orbs and life overflow but grim feast has no cost.
I never felt like I was making a mistake or forced clicking a life node
Right now i would like proper statement from GGG what endgame speed is supposed to be . From 1 hand there is interview with mark where he says that ppl looking at endgame videos should be able to understand what is going on and then there are current breaches + temporalis + fill screen heralds
I'd say T1-T110's are going to slow down quite a bit. I don't think they are willing to do what it would take to slow down late game.
Double standard, GGG say mandatories thing are bad yet when question about it on boots everything is fine, rarity everything's fine.
(now i don't think rarity is has much of a problem that everyone make it but i think it's a fundamental design flaw bare minimum would be to release content where it's "impossible" to rarity)
Point I most agree on: Crafting, especially no scouring orb. To me crafting is me working on a single item, changing/adjusting it constantly through multiple steps until I get the result I want. The way it is right now, 1. I am forced to craft on new base if the craft went south, which makes it feel more like gambling than crafting, 2. Not enough varieties (not much of an issue since I'm sure they'll add more in the future)
Point I'm not sure of: The 6L skill system. I think builds end up being limited by the support gems as there are not that many of them and we can only use 1 of every type. The problem right now IMO is just that skill balance is so off that it feels like there are no options, as choosing the weaker option is just a waste. I do see your point though, and maybe it'll feel better in the future when there are more skill options in the future.
The mapping system is a huge downgrade from Poe1
I agree with the item drop lottery, it is like i understand that there is no other way in the game to just spend x amount of hours for an decent item to drop, and that x amount of hour can be any number. You dont really feel like you are going toward a better item, but just collecting currency to mindlessly click on a semi ok item and hope for the best. Item crafting shouldnt literally be just click gambling. Also i feel they should buff rune ele resist on armor. 12% is barely anything, i am playing ssf and i finally capped my res at tier 14 map lol
You can have interesting loot without removing crafting
Synth bases, fractures, quality above 20%, etc, all already do that in PoE 1, they just have to lean on that
You touched on a major issue with POE1's crafting as well being that drops on the ground become useless. And once again we can point out Last Epoch's crafting which not only has exceptional crafting from the ground up but also combines exalted affixes, which are drop only, to ensure your drops are worthwhile because those exalted items form the "base" to craft with at high end. That's before we go into legendary potential and smashing rares and uniques together so you don't have to try and try and juggle power levels between the two rarities since you can effectively use both.
I never really thought about it that way, but the infinite 6 link being limiting is a very fair take. Indeed, since you have no limits, every build can fit the "best" skill in their build. Maybe things will change with more skills but having skills being specific to ONE weapon also accentuate the problem.
If staves and maces would share their skills, then melee builds would at least choose between bell and hammer. I really dislike how melee skills are tied to only 1 weapon type.
we need more skills that can be used with different weapons
The design of 1 portal for juiced maps, is why I rage quit 9 time. Now I am off for much time- I won't get back untill 6 portals, it is literally like some type of hardcore
1 portal is fine, its not great, but its fine. just dont play glass cannons
I have a few items waiting to be whittling'd so i can make thsoe 10-20 ex items potentially into 1-20 Div items... Nobody and i repeat nobody and their mother cares about accuracy on their necklace or armour or evasion even... Idk why GGG chooses to die on a hill of wasted chaos and exalted orbs about crafting.
You are totally right about crafting, most of the poe1 community feels the same. Still, whatever they do, i *hate* it when I have to study 2-3-4 hours to understand how a mechanism works and then bring spreadsheets and overcomplicate stuff. Like recombinators are too complex imho, cemetary was faaar too complex etc.
By the way, they had mentioned that you would have to use different skill for different minions / cases, but i havent found that to be true. You now have to use even less skills than on poe1.
About the endgame, something's not right. The "I will focus on X activity and build for it" is not possible now and you are forced to do everything which is not appealing.
Having to do maps (especially after you died) without anything on them feels terrible too and it's not that they are 2mins of your time.
Moreover, the fact that in order to level delirium / breach you need to farm 300 splinters enabling you to farm better and then do that over and over sucks. I did that only after I felt my build was fine and I wouldnt need to sell those for gear.
Finally, map bosses are so well done, that I feel they should not die before having done most of their abilities. At the moment, the least amount of threat is map bosses in a map!
Life nodes on tree were fine. You didn’t have to path out of your way for them.
I agree on all points except the 6 link opportunity cost argument. I think there is a build diversity issue, but I don't think it's because every skill is 6 linkable and needs opportunity cost. We have opportunity cost in other forms for those links (limited support gem count, weapon restricted skills, builder/spender setups, etc).
To me, the problem with the diversity is the limited number of options so solve those problems, and a lot of it being trying to remove the clunk of multi-skill setup, and aim for triggering/automation in order to have one-button play. The skills do not feel like they mesh together well. Each one feels like an independent skill with a single input, and a single output. There is some mechanical overlap among some of them, but there's no fluidity to them. You cannot chain 2 attacks together and preserve your momentum. You cannot single target with mostly 1 skill alone. Everything does tie back into a single skill for that archetype (this is the one part of the video I agree on) to boost your damage enough to feel good for single target. But it doesn't feel like a true "combo", it feels like "dropping a supplementary object" into the fight to wail on in order to multi hit a boss.
A lot of this is due to the way the game is still largely a keyboard/mouse game, and having the animations for skills still be fairly independent. If we had the ability for skills to chain into other abilities more fluidly, and not have mechanics that are so bad independently and too good when using the "DPS boost button" it would likely feel better.
What I envision for this is for example, a staff attack that lunges you into a target, and staggers normal monsters in an aoe, then you use another attack that leaps you over the rare monster, and slams behind them causing a shockwave under their feet, and a secondary shockwave that resonates outwards. Chaining of abilities into combo strings plays well into ARPG fantasy, while still being able to feel "mighty" because its an ARPG and not a fighter/brawler game. That said, if they lean into this too hard, it could start to feel like a Batman game. This maybe is something that should be implemented on a per-archetype basis, but I still think string-comboing abilities could work as a caster. I just can't specifically think of a way to do this that doesn't feel like desecrate/DD, ED/Contagion, etc.
The point I'm (probably poorly) trying to hammer down here is that the multi-skill system they are trying to pitch doesn't feel good to use. The lack of fluidity between skills makes us creep closer to one button playstyles (or trying to) in order to leverage the damage and bypass the clunk. If it didn't feel so bad/clunky to string different things together, there would be less incentive to minimize the amount of inputs, and thus more variety in the skill choices. I also think this is why builds are compelled into specific build styles, as those are not just the strongest ways to play, but also the most optimal ways to play. How can I get the most out of the least?
On top of that, some skills just feel terrible/awkward to use. They offer one really cool aspect, but the skill just executes in a terrible/disappointing way that immediately turns someone off of it. Also, strikes having to heavy stun for "melee splash" is terrible. That needs to be changed. Make the splash larger on a heavy stun, but give it a baseline innate splash range that doesn't require targets to be heavy stunned. Strikes still lag behind in PoE2 as they did in PoE1 simply because AoE is always king. Why would I want to use a skill that has mobbing related mechanics tagged onto it, but attacks like it's a single target ability?
I think its great to try new things and thats what Poe 2 does. They had a really good system in Poe1 that was very much ahead of every other ARPG, and they wanted to try change. If omens were so common the cost dropped down to 1-2divs instead of 7-13divs, then i think things may change as the omens are very useful, they are just too rare. But for that to happen you would have to increase the droprate by alot. At least 500% more common
Add 1 scouring per tower run? Would give towers more use and access to some more actual crafts
I feel like their goal of ground loot being valuable is better achieved in poe1. I would rather have an inventory filled with fractured bases than these new tier 5 rares.
To me, this is the best feedback video I have seen so far - for one simple reason: You point out problems you see (or feel - that's valid too!) without immediately providing solutions. There is no "oh, it would be so easy to do X" or "why don't you just do y" in this video. This is - and I'm saying this as a former developer and product owner / product manager - the best input you can get.
Well done, Lance!
I completely agree with your points-the crafting system was explained very effectively.
While it's clear what GGG aims to achieve, the cost of the current system doesn't justify the rewards. Although I'm not at the same endgame level as you, it still feels like the system falls short of accomplishing its goals. Personally, I found crafting with 5,000 Alteration Orbs incredibly tedious and monotonous, so I understand their perspective. However, it's an unrealistic expectation for the average player.
What GGG needs is a streamlined solution, like a blacksmith NPC in the hideout. This blacksmith could replicate the functionality that many players achieve through automation scripts: spamming Alteration Orbs until a desired modifier appears. The NPC could handle tasks such as crafting specific modifiers or ensuring 5- or 6-linked items, making the process more accessible and less frustrating for players.
That said, I don't think the critique of PoE2's crafting system has gone far enough. Path of Exile 1 is the best crafting system in any game-ever! The system may have an excessive number of splinters, fragments, and similar components, its depth and flexibility are unparalleled. My expectation into POE2 was GGG would avoid overcomplicating the system, and focus on simplifying what already works exceptionally well without compromising its core appeal. I do see that, for example: I dont see 100 different types of essences. But I also, some of the appeal is gone as well.
I wish I could use the trade filter tools on my own inventory.
I dont have the fond nostalgia for scour/alch that people seem to have discovered. Crafting definitely needs more currency options, especially something like harvest, but returning to scour/alch serms like a big step backward to me. Life/ES on tree definitely needs a full rework.
The thing that drives me most insane about POE2 is all the stuff we were promised that got removed for more annoying systems. Like they promised we'd use jewellers to gamble up sockets and it could never go down; instead we got a fixed system of tiered jewellers orbs that you HAVE to go through. We were told gems could drop with sockets on them; uncut gems cannot get bonus sockets (which is so stupid and easy to fix). We were promised a more interesting skill tree but with so many nodes having negatives and so many build types having no nodes (thorns, wands, etc) build diversity feels like it's at an all time low. Part of this certainly is balance is way off, but I feel the tree compounds this issue.
Yes 5 years ago you were told things that have since changed. You should be shocked.
I am fine with no scours but alterations should be in the game, it would still make bases valuable but it would give so many options
A base is worth nothing atm u throw a transmute at them and thrash dem then. Maybe someone remember the old day with itl 86 elder astral plates. This was a good time. But i got a little out of hand in poe1.
I really don't like the difficulty and annoyance of the campaign, i can run through PoE 1 campaign on even a really bad self made build and still get through it relatively quickly, but PoE 2 campaign felt like a slog especially on league start and does not make me excited to run it every league let alone for multiple characters, twink gear or not.
hard disagree on the 6link thing, those skills need investment to be the best single target, the oppurinity cost is the skill tree needed to support those skills, which yeah you can use the weapon swap for them, BUT THATS THE CHOICE YOU MAKE, its not free at all to add those skills
To your point on crafting, I am conflicted. I seriously believe that the core of an ARPG is finding an item on the ground, and identifying it to see if it's an upgrade or not. PoE1 largely negated this because even though I'm a relative noob ( only 2K hours), I simply never, ever, gave a shit about any item that dropped on the floor unless it was a Fracture or influenced. If it was a sought after base, I'd also pick it up. I didn't care about drops because I knew eventually I'd just be able to cobble together somethinf better than anything that can drop using one of the many gacha 'crafting' systems in the game. This, to me, is a problem because I believe the design ethos of the whole genre is "kill monsters, get loot, lather, rinse, repeat". All the systems in PoE1 largely negate this and it devolves into the player really only caring about currency drops. Engaging with this system on the high end eventually became reserved for those who could get that currency the fastest while also having an encyclopedic knowledge of how everything interacted.
On the other hand, I think PoE2 has leaned a little too far in the other direction, and there needs to be some sort of middle ground. In general, I believe on average you ID better loot in this game than in PoE1, but there can be long stretches without upgrades or a clear path to one. This leads to the same problem PoE1 had but with a different root cause, you just end up caring about currency so you can eventually trade of the item you do want. I genuinely believe making Omens far more common would really alleviate this issue because as it is right now, they basically dont exist as you rightly said.
Also, I do believe this game will build to a certain level of complexity. You have to remember that a part of the early access goal is to onboard new players who wanted to try the franchise without being burdened by all the excess bloat that PoE1 had accrued over the last ten years. Launching the game with overly complicated crafting is another way to push newer players away, and I genuinely believe retention will be easier if these systems are introduced gradually over time rather than all at once. They also iterated on the 0.1.1 stream that more systems ARE coming.
I trust the process. Whether you bothered reading all this or not, hope you have a good day.
I agree with everything.
Thank you for posting those, your opportunity cost section is something I’ve been posting about on X and people are losing their minds calling me a hater. I just want build variety and diversity 😂. But nope 🙂↔️. They don’t understand that’s one of the reason why Poe is such a unique game 😅and they don’t have this in poe2
I think as far as gem scaling goes, the levels are only really needed because there are very very few sources of flat damage anywhere. HoWa is top tier because it adds flat damage.
agree with all you said. +levels is just a feels bad most of the time. You'll either have an awesome wand with no + levels and its trash, or a + levels wand with all the rest of the mods that is still trash but better than an amazing one that has no good mods. I think it's ok to keep it as is, just make the scaling of gems less steep, make the first few levels impactful and the later ones not so much. So you can choose where to get the first few + to spell levels.
Crafting I feel like eventually it'll be better, with more options, also possibly a balance thing. I like the idea of loot on the ground being meaningful. I think that could be a good difference between PoE 1 and 2, the Chaos / Scour difference.
i hate it that you have to put HotG on every mace build on a weapon swap instead of trying to make your main skill do all content. It feels like i just have to play what clears best in set 1 (anything + Herald) and what does the most damage in set 2 (HotG + dmg ailment) and im not beeing rewarded for building a wellrounded character around a certain skill.
Another washed up poe1 streamer hating on our perfect Diablo-like game. Just play poe1 and never touch POE2 again. /s
:)))))
Yeah! Go play 3.26 since it’s readily available!
the gem system still rubs me the wrong way. i don't like the amount of slots i "waste" on spirit gems on my monk, i don't like uncut gems at all (maybe quest rewards only uncut, everything else normal gem drops), gem drops are extremely underwhelming. why not drop skill gems with x sockets and quality instead of uncut gems? just weird
I personally fall into the side of preferring the new endgame, I do hope they change the objective of mapping in some way so that we don't have to have pointless back tracking for single rares (even with checkpoints, when you only find one at the start and end of a map and miss one in the middle its stupid) but I personally find the most boring part of poe1 is the endgame mapping where I am basically stuck re-running the same map with the same layout over and over again because it is both the easiest way to setup a load of maps to run at once as well as probably the most efficient map for what ever atlas strategy I'm currently doing.
Exploring the atlas is quite enjoyable from a general RPG sense of seeing new zones and finding the different bosses to fight, I think we just need more control over being able to avoid some of the worst maps, whether that's from being able to stop certain ones from spawning (like the opposite of favoured maps in poe1) or from giving better options for moving along the atlas (E.G more possible routes from each map so that you aren't forced to path through a bad map and making similar maps likely to chain in a biome so at least when you find one you're likely to run at least 5-10 in a row maybe)
The opportunity cost of Hammer of the Gods is the support gems. If I play a mace strike / Boneshatter build, any support gem I put in HotG is one I can't use in the other two skills. The issue here is that HotG is still very effective with a few niche support gems.
Im pretty much done until they add more classes and more melee weapons, I just cant get behind spells and bows unfortunately. Crossbow is ok with the shotgun skills but those need some major buffs. Waiting for daggers, axes and swords.
THANK YOU, only one i saw mention the mana costs being ridiculous.
i decided to do cold sorc, and im forced to invest into mana as much as an archmage would just to afford using my skills.
right now, i'm refusing to use archmage, but i acknowledge that doing a sorc/caster without archmage is an objectively wrong decision.
regarding your 6l opportunity cost issue, i kinda disagree with you, having multiple full power skills where each skill is useful in some situations while others are useful in different ones is waaay better than having 1 skill that you optimize and base your entire build around, right now there is just 1 skill for these different situations but that can be remedied once GGG adds in more skills to the game.
Having builds be based around archetypes is way better than having them based around specific skills.
You forgot the most important crafting system in the game: chance orbing sapphire rings and stellar amulets