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I don't know what the fuck the update did to gamepad targeting but it's absolutely terrible now. I'm constantly casting spells behind me and it's getting annoying.

 

[Guileless]

My poor sorceress cannot beat the damn wolf.

 

[Rentahamster]

My poor sorceress cannot beat the damn wolf.

See if you can't get a better weapon from the NPC vendors. Make sure you have good cold resistance. Take damage nodes on the skill tree.

 

[Damageinc103]

I don’t care what anyone says.

Losing experience is the worst mechanic in gaming. I *immediately* drop the game.

I love and hate it man……it almost gives just a little bit of that “hardcore” feeling.

 

[Damageinc103]

Trade is probably the biggest pain point for me, but it's just one of many things that could/should be better.

A sequel should be the opportunity for a great reset, do do the good things better, do the bad things better and obviously appeal to a wider player base for growth. The first game can keep being the first game for those who are happy with it or resistant/reluctant to meaningful change. As it is now, in early access, it seems far too much baggage has come over for whatever reason, whether that's to pad things out or because a better solution wasn't apparent or possible in the time frame.

This is what I've seen as someone who didn't play the first game and approached each of the game's facets in a way that made sense to me at the time - not saying I did anything "right" or the way it should be played - just what I did in response to the problems and opportunities the game presented me with:

Trade feels way off in multiple ways.

• Upgrades come far too easily and are therefore never enjoyable in the way they should be by being earned. It's wild. Honestly shocking. The whole point of these games for me is finding good stuff and becoming a bit stronger, growing, really steady but noticeable progress. It's like running an ultra, one step at a time with a formidable even overbearing task ahead, but one I know I can overcome if I keep my head down and work with what I've got. I might not be enjoying every single one of these steps, but unless I take a wrong turn everything I do is progress and that feels good. There are many smaller goals along the way but reaching the final destination, that achievement, feels all that much more sweeter when I arrive. If I fail along the way, I regroup, rethink and go again in the next race/build. Not here. Not in this game. I'm a few hours in to the race, feeling my way in, getting into a nice rhythm, but at the first checkpoint there's a guy selling steroids and amphetamines for pennies. Everyone's about to cheat their way to the next milestone instead of earning it. It feels that dirty - as soon as I engaged with trade as a buyer, everything came too easily and any meaningful and enjoyable gameplay also went out of the window. From steady, careful, engaging play throughout the campaign to zoom and boom auto-battler clicker nonsense.
• The archaic trade implementation hugely favours no-lifers, scammers and PC players in general. It has as much meaningful and welcome person-to-person interaction as a fart in an elevator. It feels hugely out of place.

Items. The whole way items drop and you work with them feels off. Tons of stuff on the ground, so what to do with it all...?

• Hoover it up, teleport to town, scrap it into fractions of currency. Soon gets boring and question why you're even playing.
• Auto-filter it out, just ignore it in favour of stuff that is physically smaller for the inventory and can be exchanged automatically with the nice lady in the hideout. Better efficiency for earning currency, but still... why?
• Manually filter, find good candidates for crafting, spend currency to roll the dice. Never, not once, not ever, resulted in anything better than I could have acquired by pinging someone on an external website and giving them the currency instead. Truly awful.

The whole end game set up with the juddery, broken world map is surely way off what a final product should be offering. Hopefully just 100% placeholder because it's boring, buggy and not compelling whatsoever.

• Doryani wants me to do 10 tier 1 levels. I'm on console. I never played POE1. I have no idea what all these icons mean because I cannot access the tool tips. Let's play and learn...
• Doryani wants me to do 10 tier 2 levels. Didn't see that coming. I know what some of them are now so I can avoid pitfalls and try to make life easier for myself.
• Doryani wants me to.... zzzz.
• Several weeks later... oh I've collected 300 of these things so can make a thing and put it in the thing and go do a... oh, I'm dead. Suppose I better go collect 300 more things and try again. Eff that.

Console experience is a 3rd rate experience. Nowhere near good enough on multiple fronts.

• Inaccessible end game tool tips.
• Inconsistent and conflicting interactions.
• Hugely compromised trade mechanics and effectiveness.
• Bizarre auto-targeting that at times actively knows better about what I intend than I do myself apparently, urging me to spam skill that just delete everything everywhere.
• Huge non-adjustable deadzone on aiming stick that makes playing for someone like myself with restricted mobility in my right thumb especially problematic.

Multiplayer woes

• Heightens issues with lag spikes, rubber-banding etc.
• Similar experience to enduring the very worst examples of unresponsive PS3 games on a first gen LCD panel... move stick, release, wait for character on screen to move in response - not the experience I'm expecting from around £4k worth of TV and console.

Despite all that I love the game and have played around 600 hours. Just won't be going back for more any time soon until a lot of that is remedied, but I'll still keep following the progre

There are noobs that are wondering what you are yalking about because they are going yo the trade site now and seing what they want cost 5 divs…..lol.


I fucking hate the trade system in this game…the factvthat people argue for it is laughable.

I disagree with being able to find gear to wear..i always have scrolls on me and as i ho threw the map inpick uo stuff yhat looks like it could be good…if it has a coulme modifiers i like i will ex/vaal it and see what happens…got a few pieces i wear from that and have sold a bunch of shit.

 

[Rentahamster]

Early Access Announcements - State of Early Access Update - Forum - Path of Exile

Path of Exile is a free online-only action RPG under development by Grinding Gear Games in New Zealand.

www.pathofexile.com

We're now 10 weeks into Early Access, and what a wild ride it has been! This has been our largest launch ever and it certainly broke through our expectations, but we are well into Path of Exile 2’s first launch now, so it’s time to take a look at what we have done so far, what remains to solve, and what we are going to be doing next.

Since launch we've released 8 patches and 31 hotfixes, each containing various improvements, bug fixes, and of course incremental improvements to the sound, art, effects and environments.

The changes we have been making fall into a few categories:

Quality of Life Features​

Since launch there have been many things that players have found annoying or time consuming, so we have been trying to address them one by one.

Two of the big ones are the ability to teleport around the map with checkpoints and overwrite items in sockets but there are a lot of smaller ones as well.

We have also been making QOL improving balance changes like reducing the cost of respeccing, making dodge roll get you stuck less often, and making reviving easier in multiplayer.

Improving the Core Experience of Mapping​

The endgame is one of the hardest areas to test in an online game. It takes quite a lot of play to get to the point where you can form an opinion on what is good and what is bad, so having such a large number of players get to the endgame has been incredibly valuable.

To start with, we improved the rewards of endgame substantially by buffing drops from rare monsters and decreased the difficulty at the start of endgame.

We also had a lot of balance adjustments to make within individual maps. We did a full rebalance of all the content that can spawn in maps. Mostly more of everything.

One of the key realisations since launch was how important it is to have more variety in tower maps, so we made it a priority and patched in four more, as well as a better variation on the existing tower map we had.

And we realised that we had way undershot the number of bosses in endgame, so we increased that a lot too, and added a new tablet to allow for adding more of them.

We also added respawning to the endgame pinnacles, checkpoints for travelling in maps, improved strongboxes, and made it a lot easier to find citadels.

There is still a lot more to do to improve the endgame though!

Itemisation Improvements​

Existing unique items got a lot of improvements. We buffed a very large number of them to make them much more exciting to find for low level characters. But we do have a need for a lot more build defining uniques going forward.

Fixing Bad Balance Outliers​

One of the hardest things about game design is that it only takes a mistake in a single number to make a player have a terrible experience.

We made a ton of changes to monsters and bosses to fix one shots, improved telegraphing, buffed minimum item drops to name a few.

We also addressed a lot of difficulty problems in both the Trial of Chaos and the Trial of the Sekhemas.

On the player side of things, we did a big pass to improve the balance of many skills, but there is still a lot more to come.

We did attempt to address some of the more overpowered player skills, but backed off somewhat in order to prevent breaking peoples characters. We initially thought that there would be more tolerance for this kind of thing during Early Access, but we were incorrect! We will save changes like this for larger balance updates.

We are still nerfing things if they are totally egregious though.

Fixing Crashes and Performance Issues​

Crashes have been a major area of focus for the development team since launch. We have fixed hundreds of different crashes, but there are still more to find.

On the server side of things, we have reduced the number of crashes significantly. They should be very rare now.

The client side of things has been a lot harder to deal with. For the most part, crashes in gameplay code have been addressed, but there are some much harder engine crashes that we have yet to find.

The worst of these is a full system freeze that has occurred since Windows 11’s 24H2 update. We still don’t know exactly what caused this problem, but we have deployed a workaround that seems to be preventing the freeze. We are working with Microsoft to find a better long term solution.

The remaining crashes are happening inside the GPU driver, known as “Device removed” errors. We have added a command line switch “--ex-crash-report” which adds extra logging to help us debug this issue at the cost of a small amount of performance. (Once you have crashed a couple of times with this option enabled, you can disable it again, we will have enough reports).

We are working with nVidia to try and come up with a fix for this issue. Switching to Vulkan seems to reduce the number of crashes significantly for some users, so we would suggest trying that if you are crashing often.

The Biggest Problems​

So what are the biggest problems we see with Path of Exile 2 right now? Well, other than the crashes, these are the biggest issues we think we can’t solve without a major update.

• Major balance issues with many player skills / builds, both too high and too low
• Not enough character build options including build defining uniques
• Endgame progression balance is off
• Not enough cool things to find in endgame

And so these are the things that we expect to improve in 0.2.0. In addition, we need to make sure that 0.2.0 has a draw card that will bring back as many players as possible to test the changes that we are making!

We don’t have an exact timeline for 0.2.0, but our overall plan has been to release major content updates for Path of Exile 2 every few months. We will announce it as soon as we can!

 

[Rentahamster]

Upon reading this again, I wonder what data they are basing this opinion on.

We initially thought that there would be more tolerance for this kind of thing during Early Access, but we were incorrect!

Personally, I would have lots of tolerance for that. This is an opt-in early access test run. Change shit. Go nuts.

 

[panda-zebra]

Maybe from weekend warriors who only get a few hours here and there to put in to the game - they'd likely feel they'd never be able to get anywhere before it all got thrown out for something else. Doesn't seem like they'd have much of a voice though.

Maybe the more vocal streamer and influencer types who might feel their content would be going out of date before they'd have a chance to earn their clicks/likes/subs?

Dunno.

Most disappointing thing reading all that is, the end game seems to be exactly what they want for the game rather than just some huge placeholder quickly dumped over from the first game I'd assumed it must be when it doesn't gel well with everything that comes before it. Again, what's the point making a sequel if the content people end up spending all their time with is just more of the same?

 

[DaleinCalgary]

I've been having much more fun since switching to Monk from Warrior. I think the state of the game is okay and if they can use the next year to flesh out the endgame Diablo will be dead.

Renta do we need anything for the guild?

 

[Rentahamster]

I've been having much more fun since switching to Monk from Warrior. I think the state of the game is okay and if they can use the next year to flesh out the endgame Diablo will be dead.

Renta do we need anything for the guild?

Not right now, thanks for checking in! We have a lot of stash space, and no need for new member slots at the moment.

 

[Rentahamster]

The reddit post I made about the topic is getting a lot of comments lol

 

[Doomtrain]

Most disappointing thing reading all that is, the end game seems to be exactly what they want for the game rather than just some huge placeholder quickly dumped over from the first game I'd assumed it must be when it doesn't gel well with everything that comes before it. Again, what's the point making a sequel if the content people end up spending all their time with is just more of the same?

Yeah, they can't fix endgame with small tweaks. It needs a major overhaul. The section about their realization about towers feels telling. Adding more tower maps is a nice band-aid, but it doesn't fix that towers are fundamentally a bad design in the first place.

 

[Rentahamster]

Yeah, they can't fix endgame with small tweaks. It needs a major overhaul. The section about their realization about towers feels telling. Adding more tower maps is a nice band-aid, but it doesn't fix that towers are fundamentally a bad design in the first place.

Agreed. From a theoretical standpoint, the tower mechanic sounds cool, but in practice, it ultimately creates a system where players are min/maxing the process and ending up spending more time doing tedious things they hate instead of doing things that actually entertain them.

 

[Renoir]

To the ones who played POE1 has the uniques always been so... underwhelming.
I found a lot now, ranging from shield to wands. None of them made me go MAN I NEED TO USE THIS!! I CANT BELIEVE THIS DROPPED!!
I remember in wow doing raid after raid to get some of that sweet purple. I remember being in Awe seeing someone walk around town with the Illidan Blades.
Do the item drop get better with the lvl of my tablets? Or is this the game now find as much exalts and go trade for something good.....

 

[winterymint]

Ever since switching to HC ssf I really appreciated the items, whether it's gambling, crafting, drops etc. exalts are still rare at the moment so I'm scavagening every one I find. It's an awesome experience, and you don't feel rushed against the constantly inflating economy. When new league starts I may do SSF initially but will then switch to HC for the adrenaline.

 

[Rentahamster]

 

[DaleinCalgary]

To the ones who played POE1 has the uniques always been so... underwhelming.
I found a lot now, ranging from shield to wands. None of them made me go MAN I NEED TO USE THIS!! I CANT BELIEVE THIS DROPPED!!
I remember in wow doing raid after raid to get some of that sweet purple. I remember being in Awe seeing someone walk around town with the Illidan Blades.
Do the item drop get better with the lvl of my tablets? Or is this the game now find as much exalts and go trade for something good.....

Ive only found one unique that gets use but it is good for all newbie classes. It requires level 6 and gives +45 (I think, cant check with playstation servers down) to all stats I believe but takes 1 away every level you are after 6.

 

[Damageinc103]

I honestly agree with most of the things he says.
But i think they also need to do something with the trade system for this game. Worst trade system ever especially if you are on console.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

Finally made it to the endgame area. Wow this is a change.

 

[amigastar]

Itemisation Improvements​

Existing unique items got a lot of improvements. We buffed a very large number of them to make them much more exciting to find for low level characters. But we do have a need for a lot more build defining uniques going forward.

I've been waiting for such improvement honestly.
How is the current state of the game? I've played it for 8 hours but stopped because of EA, is it better now and worth it to jump back in?

 

[WhamBamThankYouMaam]

I need me some actual macos support for this one.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

I've been waiting for such improvement honestly.
How is the current state of the game? I've played it for 8 hours but stopped because of EA, is it better now and worth it to jump back in?

The initial part of the game is fantastic. Endgame needs work

 

[Rentahamster]

How is the current state of the game? I've played it for 8 hours but stopped because of EA, is it better now and worth it to jump back in?

I think I need to know what you mean by this for me to give constructive advice about how you might like or not like the current state of the game.

 

[amigastar]

I think I need to know what you mean by this for me to give constructive advice about how you might like or not like the current state of the game.

I stopped because the uniques weren't up to par with the usual loot (or thats what i thought, so i'm not sure if it's true)
Also the maps were too big for my taste and i wished the game would be slightly easier. Excuse my ignorance on this points as i don't have much experience with PoE games.

 

[Rentahamster]

I stopped because the uniques weren't up to par with the usual loot (or thats what i thought, so i'm not sure if it's true)
Also the maps were too big for my taste and i wished the game would be slightly easier. Excuse my ignorance on this points as i don't have much experience with PoE games.

The updates to uniques weren't that impactful to the extent that a player like you would really feel some significant change. Most of the changes to uniques that matter, are for endgame builds.

Maps are still big. Checkpoint teleporting system makes them easier to manage.

Game is still hard, but certain quality of life changes makes things relatively "easier", in a sense. If you want the game to be easier, your best bet is to use our guild stash for strong leveling gear.

 

[amigastar]

The updates to uniques weren't that impactful to the extent that a player like you would really feel some significant change. Most of the changes to uniques that matter, are for endgame builds.

Maps are still big. Checkpoint teleporting system makes them easier to manage.

Game is still hard, but certain quality of life changes makes things relatively "easier", in a sense. If you want the game to be easier, your best bet is to use our guild stash for strong leveling gear.

How's the loot in general, i mean thats a pretty important part in ARpgs?

 

[Rentahamster]

How's the loot in general, i mean thats a pretty important part in ARpgs?

Personally, I think the loot is great. The itemization system is very deep and I feel like I'm always learning something new about items/crafting/looting/etc, even 400 hours in.

However, you can only really meaningfully engage with a lot of these deep mechanics after you finish the campaign, since after the campaign you have more resources available to you to participate in high level trading and end-game mechanics.

Compared to Diablo 4, the itemization in PoE2 is much better. In Diablo 4, I always feel like loot is very transitory and oftentimes valueless because of how often I'm replacing it. In PoE2, even lower level items have some use in some circumstances. Affixes matter, of course, but it's up to the player to put all these puzzle pieces together in a creative and effective way to boost your own combat power.

 

[amigastar]

Personally, I think the loot is great. The itemization system is very deep and I feel like I'm always learning something new about items/crafting/looting/etc, even 400 hours in.

However, you can only really meaningfully engage with a lot of these deep mechanics after you finish the campaign, since after the campaign you have more resources available to you to participate in high level trading and end-game mechanics.

Compared to Diablo 4, the itemization in PoE2 is much better. In Diablo 4, I always feel like loot is very transitory and oftentimes valueless because of how often I'm replacing it. In PoE2, even lower level items have some use in some circumstances. Affixes matter, of course, but it's up to the player to put all these puzzle pieces together in a creative and effective way to boost your own combat power.

Alright, thanks for the insight,
Thats what i don't like about Diablo 4 because the loot is so much overdone. PoE2 seems to be more special in that regard.

 

[Rentahamster]

Alright, thanks for the insight,
Thats what i don't like about Diablo 4 because the loot is so much overdone. PoE2 seems to be more special in that regard.

From my personal tastes, I much prefer the itemization in PoE2 than Diablo 4. I also enjoy both games. I haven't played PoE2 for a couple of weeks because I've been testing out the new season of D4.

D4's combat mechanics rely way too much on base weapon damage, just like D3, which I don't really like. PoE2 decouples that a little bit depending on how you deal damage, whether it's through skills that attack with your weapon or skills that deal damage via spells or some other thing. I feel like PoE2's approach encourages diversity in playstyle, which I like.

Whereas the current complaint is that Diablo 4 has too much loot and that my screen is full of garbage that I don't care about, PoE2 doesn't reach that point until mid to late endgame. And PoE2 has a loot filter.

 

[DaleinCalgary]

I stopped because the uniques weren't up to par with the usual loot (or thats what i thought, so i'm not sure if it's true)
Also the maps were too big for my taste and i wished the game would be slightly easier. Excuse my ignorance on this points as i don't have much experience with PoE games.

I have to admit I actually like the size of the huge maps later on.