[Megathread] Path of Exile

[Dezerte]

The transition from campaign to maps has been very smooth to me, difficulty-wise. I've been able to keep progressing the tiers without running out of maps so far (currently at tier 5).

[Edge-]

Today I learnt that if you die at any point during the ascendance trial you have to restart from the beginning..That's annoying

Just wait until maps...if you die in a map the map poofs. And if you die on a boss, you gotta run a bunch more maps until you get to the next one.

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So additional charm slots are a belt affix, and +2 is locked behind a minimum ilvl of 82.

They need to do something about that, bad, that's just nonsense. I figured it'd scale with player level to a point - advanced/expert belts dropping at higher levels with 1-2 extra slots respectively.

I get it, EA and all, but it feels like they literally designed every system and then spent weeks working out how to add as much friction to them and how to make them as pointless tedious and punishing as possible roflmao.

This is gonna be a very interesting 6+ months.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/PathOfExile...hat_gives_you/

And FYI. I'm not sure if there's a way to check which side quests you've done, but I almost assuredly missed this 10% lightning buff from A2. I think I got the cold/fire ones from A1/3 at least.

I appreciate the map icons to help let players know if there are bosses or other side-missions that provide rewards, but they really need some work/improvement.

[Illuminance]

You do realize it's early access right?

GGG is misleading players with the phrase "early access." WoW was marketed with paid early access and it granted the full version of the TWW expansion. If I search "early access" on steam, the first results that show up are games like Palworld, which could be considered whole and tuned products. The industry has repeatedly used the term early access to refer to a finished, or at least mostly finished, game.

PoE 2 in its current state is not early access - it's a closed beta test. I heard, last minute, that half the campaign was missing, which was fine. What I didn't hear was that half the classes, skills, and items are missing. What's much worse is that what is in the game is a horribly tuned mess, and the developers are more interested in immediately nerfing any advantages players find (creating more frustration) rather than alleviating any of the pain points they have.

[Cyclone Jack]

They need 6 months to 1 year of test the gold economy? In a game that will revolve around 3 month leagues?

No this is absurd. You could just as easily tune the game around the existing builds and gems you're adding in during the free respec period (let's say the next 3 months) and then when you're not doing these absurd wide sweeping changes add in the respec cost. And they'd still have plenty of time (3 months AT LEAST) to test the 3 month cycle of gold economy

The economy needs to be checked constantly, especially as they make changes to it. We've already seen them adjust crafting orb drop rates as well as yellow drops from bosses. As such, they need to monitor how that affects the economy, as well as character progression (they are tied together). If they adjust gold drops or respec costs, they'll need to keep monitoring the economy. This is why drops started low and have been increased in the 1st few patches, because its always easier to increase than to decrease. Yes, I agree that it sucks, but it is what it is.

Right now, it seems they are focused on the overall gameplay loop, getting drop rates dialed in a bit, and tackling the outlier abilities that trivialize the content so that builds are spread out. Everything that has been nerfed will be looked at again, almost guaranteed, but they need to get those outliers taken out early before they can really start working on overall balance.

We just need to keep in mind that this is version 0.1.0, not 1.0.0. There are going to be many, many more sweeping changes throughout the beta process, and if someone is not prepared for that, then it might be best for them to wait until release.

[kranur]

I don't understand why you get to hide behind early access and yet early access isn't enough of a reason to allow free respects.

You people are trying to have it both ways. Additionally the developer is showing their hand, sweeping nerfs don't need to happen on day 4 when some things just flat out do not work at all and so many other issues need to be addressed. They're showing their hand in the way and speed with which they release nerfs vs fixes to the actual game.

Because again, if it's early access it's not like cast on X needs to be nerfed RIGHT NOW over literally everything. Because as you say, it's early access.

You're also so casual about it being ok to waste peoples time. If you charge money to a customer, wasting their time should be the last thing on your mind. Or do you enjoy having your time wasted? You are de-facto saying you're completely ok with it

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I also keep submitting feedback and I try to have anything I send to them be as neutral as possible so it doesn't come across as an attack, I just want this game to be better than it is. And I hope that it can be

Don't boil everything together. I'm not a pro absurd respec costs. No free respecs even in EA is fine tho because in many examples people won't differentiate EA from release and it will set expectations. I do strongly believe that respeccing should be a lot easier to do, at least a few times.

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GGG is misleading players with the phrase "early access." WoW was marketed with paid early access and it granted the full version of the TWW expansion. If I search "early access" on steam, the first results that show up are games like Palworld, which could be considered whole and tuned products. The industry has repeatedly used the term early access to refer to a finished, or at least mostly finished, game.

PoE 2 in its current state is not early access - it's a closed beta test. I heard, last minute, that half the campaign was missing, which was fine. What I didn't hear was that half the classes, skills, and items are missing. What's much worse is that what is in the game is a horribly tuned mess, and the developers are more interested in immediately nerfing any advantages players find (creating more frustration) rather than alleviating any of the pain points they have.

Early acess is a misleading term indeed, but even as the steam description says it's game in an unfinished state, obviouly some are more finished than others. Not sure for what purpose was early access first used, to rip people off fpr a few days of access before release or to denote an in developmeny game.

[Edge-]

GGG is misleading players with the phrase "early access." WoW was marketed with paid early access and it granted the full version of the TWW expansion. If I search "early access" on steam, the first results that show up are games like Palworld, which could be considered whole and tuned products. The industry has repeatedly used the term early access to refer to a finished, or at least mostly finished, game.

PoE 2 in its current state is not early access - it's a closed beta test. I heard, last minute, that half the campaign was missing, which was fine. What I didn't hear was that half the classes, skills, and items are missing. What's much worse is that what is in the game is a horribly tuned mess, and the developers are more interested in immediately nerfing any advantages players find (creating more frustration) rather than alleviating any of the pain points they have.

There's "early access" of a few days, and "Early Access" which is when developers release an incomplete version of their game for broader testing/feedback and, often, to generate additional revenue to fund its completion.

GGG have been clear this is "Early Access" and an incomplete game, hence missing half the campaign, classes, weapons, and gems. Literally all of this information was publicly available. For example - https://store.steampowered.com/app/2...th_of_Exile_2/

The Early Access section includes quite a few of those limitations explicitly for a quick check (6 months+ of testing, 3 more acts being added, 6 more classes being added, lots of skill gems etc.).

On the tuning, again - it's Early Access and it shipped literally one week ago. Timing is bad since the holidays are coming up, but this isn't a "Launched product". This is very much a very polished beta for a game still being completed.

[Gaidax]

Honestly the passive tree is bigger, but less meaningful. The gameplay is slower the skills incredibly less varied, and cookie cutter builds incredibly more common. Crafting has been gutted.

GOOD.

I used to play PoE1 here and there in some leagues but last few years I did not even spit on it because there was just WAY too much daunting shit there with systems and crafting overload.

I'm very happy with PoE2 precisely because it brings the sanity back and removes a huge chunk of what amounted to ten years of bloat.

Eventually as the years go by, this bloat will inevitably creep back up, but at least for the next 2-3 years there will be a saner experience where you actually get to play the game more and sit in the damned trees, gear and storage UI less.

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And for people who miss PoE1, I got great news - it's still there in all of its nonsense glory. Knock yourselves out.

[Khaza-R]

GGG is misleading players with the phrase "early access." WoW was marketed with paid early access and it granted the full version of the TWW expansion. If I search "early access" on steam, the first results that show up are games like Palworld, which could be considered whole and tuned products. The industry has repeatedly used the term early access to refer to a finished, or at least mostly finished, game.

PoE 2 in its current state is not early access - it's a closed beta test. I heard, last minute, that half the campaign was missing, which was fine. What I didn't hear was that half the classes, skills, and items are missing. What's much worse is that what is in the game is a horribly tuned mess, and the developers are more interested in immediately nerfing any advantages players find (creating more frustration) rather than alleviating any of the pain points they have.

BG3 had early access. It was only to lvl 5. Act 1 of the story and only 6 of the classes.

Reality is there's no hard definition of what EA entails. So buyer beware indeed.

[Fencers]

So additional charm slots are a belt affix, and +2 is locked behind a minimum ilvl of 82.

It should not even be a rollable affix.

I reject the design decision in all games where a stat is exclusive or semi-exclusive to an item if it is not implicat to the item.

Why would anyone want boots.without movespeed? Why would you ever want a belt without more charm slots? Etc.

Non-implict and non-bsse unfixed affixes make every other affix stat less desirable.

Sure, we could potentially corrupt such an item in POE2; but this is a risk without any upside. It's not like you can vaal boots or belt and get a compared affix that has the same utility.

Move speed is KING in POE2. If your boots are less than 35%, you will die and the mounting penalties of such negate all your gains.

That is contradictory game design. Not very good, IMO.

[Specialka]

Just going to vent some frustration here. It's crazy how an otherwise good game can feel so bad to play at times.

I started with a minion witch. As someone who played necromancer in half of all the PoE leagues, I was expecting something similar. PoE 2 minions have no durability, do very little damage (at least for awhile), and the new revival mechanic is awful. One of them gets destroyed and starts a 6 second timer, then as it's about to hit 0, the enemy kills another, resetting the timer, one after another. I quit the character when I got to Lachlann when I watched him one-shot my entire health-specced miniature army in the first 1/2 second of the fight. Later, I came back to play SRS, which exists in the elementalist tree and not occult and was not at all apparent to me when I was playing. The character is functional now at level 40, but it feels like there is a limited number of spells and builds you can use to make minions remotely effective.

My next character was a chaos witch. ED/contagion synergy was great, at first. But then when you have to fight a rare or boss, it's multiple minutes of putting up the chaos DoT effects and hoping the thing will die, while sniping it with whatever non-chaos (i.e. non-buffed) spells you can fit in while the whole area is running at you at 60 miles per hour. The chaos witch is great at large, dense packs, and absolutely horrible single target. Unlike other builds (ranger, frost sorc, melee, etc., or the combined focus of minions), there's no ability to nuke a single target at all, at least for the first 40 levels.

Then, I made the mistake of trying to level a frost sorc. Probably spent about 10 hours leveling the character only for the CoF/CoC synergy to be nerfed the same night. I'm lucky that I have an abundance of free time now, but this would especially not be a fun experience for anyone playing with a busier schedule.

"Just make a good build" is terrible advice at the moment when you might as well be playing Minesweeper. Unless you are copying a proven build, or have an elaborate Microsoft Excel setup, you stand to waste a tremendous amount of time on what are ultimately bad (or incomplete) design decisions from GGG.

The game's pacing is tuned in such a way that I feel like I need to go almost entirely into damage nodes, limiting build diversity. I'd rather the boss fight take 1 minute than 10, and I still need to learn the mechanics either way.

Anyway, PoE 2 has potential, and I enjoy certain aspects of the game - the scenery, the voice acting, the soundtrack, the boss fights. The actual gameplay, though, has been very hit-or-miss, with a lot of misses.

Seems to me you are looking for an op build.

[Fencers]

The industry has repeatedly used the term early access to refer to a finished, or at least mostly finished, game.

I have maybe 2 or 3 dozen EA games in my steam library that are nowhere near finished and have been in EA for years.

EA doesn't have any standard definition.

PoE 2 in its current state is not early access - it's a closed beta test.

Which they said it was beforehand on their live streams.

Johnathan specifically said the marketing team wouldn't allow GGG to call it a beta because that term is not commonly used as much as Early Access. However, he and Mark both said in their official platforms that this currently is a beta.

I heard, last minute, that half the campaign was missing, which was fine. What I didn't hear was that half the classes, skills, and items are missing. What's much worse is that what is in the game is a horribly tuned mess, and the developers are more interested in immediately nerfing any advantages players find (creating more frustration) rather than alleviating any of the pain points they have.

They also openly stated that they are months away from all the classes and features being in the game; 6-8 months at the least.

On their live streams, website, and YouTube channels GGG have said the endgame is the least tested portion of the game and the balance tuning for the game overall will be in-progress.

If a company has the communication out there, they can't force you to consume it. I understand if you miss it or don't keep up, but it was there to look over beforehand.

[Specialka]

I'm not entirely sure it will get better.

They're so hell bent on forcing players to go so fucking slowly that you could count each blade of grass and are happy as clams to nerf anything that even looks fun.

The whole design philosophy of this game is fundamentally flawed if John remains in charge with this mindset.

The moment to moment gameplay is alright at first but ends up becoming just as repetitive as PoE1 but..slower

Seems to me that the game design of poe 2 is not meant for you, not flawed.

[Volatilis]

I felt my sodium level rise when I died to last boss of an ascendary trail because I had such rough debuff choices. You know what I did? Went out and leveled more so I could be stronger for the debuffs. I feel like a lot of gamers now never want to problem solve just cry and ask for changes

[Edge-]

I felt my sodium level rise when I died to last boss of an ascendary trail because I had such rough debuff choices. You know what I did? Went out and leveled more so I could be stronger for the debuffs. I feel like a lot of gamers now never want to problem solve just cry and ask for changes

The trials are shit, lol. Needing to be hilariously overleveled to hope you can just power through the bullshit is not great.

[NightZero88]

I felt my sodium level rise when I died to last boss of an ascendary trail because I had such rough debuff choices. You know what I did? Went out and leveled more so I could be stronger for the debuffs. I feel like a lot of gamers now never want to problem solve just cry and ask for changes

The issue here is that leveling doesn't increase your power. For example, I am level 52. I went back to help my buddy with Count in Act 1 normal which is a level 15 zone. I died because mobs hit me just as hard as they did at level 15 but I certainly didn't get any XP or gear for that matter for helping because the zone was so low.

[Edge-]

The issue here is that leveling doesn't increase your power. For example, I am level 52. I went back to help my buddy with Count in Act 1 normal which is a level 15 zone. I died because mobs hit me just as hard as they did at level 15 but I certainly didn't get any XP or gear for that matter for helping because the zone was so low.

Oh it very much does. Even without getting upgrades or juicy passive nodes having some levels on enemies does seem to offer power/protection.

I think the game has level scaling by default or something and you need to disable, because I defo went back to the first sanctum when I was way overleveled - just to farm a few runs for relics - and it was trivially easy.

[NightZero88]

Oh it very much does. Even without getting upgrades or juicy passive nodes having some levels on enemies does seem to offer power/protection.

I think the game has level scaling by default or something and you need to disable, because I defo went back to the first sanctum when I was way overleveled - just to farm a few runs for relics - and it was trivially easy.

Holy cow you're right, this is actually an option. Neat that this is an option but should be stated someplace. It says it only applies in parties though so it shouldn't have impacted your solo game.

[Edge-]

Holy cow you're right, this is actually an option. Why is this an option?! It says it only applies in parties though so it shouldn't have impacted your solo game.

It didn't impact me. I was just noting that, separately, levels do matter quite a bit. Much more than in PoE1 IMO.

[Mamut]

The trials are shit, lol. Needing to be hilariously overleveled to hope you can just power through the bullshit is not great.

But you don't need to overlevel it. I did it on my second try without problem and in my first attempt I lost at 20% hp boss because of my mistake. People don't read what choices do (50% more HP? more attack/cast speed? why not, Im so awesome!) rush forward and when they fail they blame the game.

Theres a ton of things to balance but when I read some comments not even double facepalm is enough.

[Edge-]

But you don't need to overlevel it. I did it on my second try without problem and in my first attempt I lost at 20% hp boss because of my mistake. People don't read what choices do (50% more HP? more attack/cast speed? why not, Im so awesome!) rush forward and when they fail they blame the game.

Theres a ton of things to balance but when I read some comments not even double facepalm is enough.

Which trial? A huge amount depends on class/build, and also RNG. Both have so many possible ways to brick builds, especially ultimatum. Sanctum gives you a bit more control on picking your route to try to avoid more debuffs, but ultimatum is just straight ass and you can get a room that gives you more or less 3 build/run-bricking debuff choices.