PoE 2: Season of the Intern Devs

I want to share some honest thoughts about my experience and why, after nearly 700 hours in the game, I’ve decided to step away. This isn’t a rage post—it’s coming from someone who genuinely wanted this game to succeed and even spent money to support it.

Season I – A Promising Start
Season I was a great experience. It had its flaws, sure, but it felt like the game was heading in the right direction. The difficulty was fairly balanced, progression felt rewarding, and I had fun building out my character. I believed in the dev team so much that I purchased the top supporter pack. I wanted to contribute and show that I appreciated the effort.

Season II – A Total Letdown
Season II, however, has been a massive step backward in almost every way.

Balance Issues: The difficulty spikes are wild. Content is either so easy it’s boring, or so punishing it feels like a brick wall. There’s no middle ground. Ritual bosses and certain mechanics are overtuned to the point of being unenjoyable. Some fights are visually chaotic and almost impossible to react to. This isn’t "hard," it’s just badly designed.

Endgame Dropoff: I started Season II with a ton of excitement. Our entire guild logged in. I brought several friends into the game. Within a week? Almost all of them quit. They were either burned out, confused, or frustrated. I tried helping—shared loot, carried them through early content—but the game’s poor progression and lack of onboarding made it a losing battle. Most of them dropped out just as endgame began.

Class Frustrations: Some friends were genuinely angry after trying to play classes they were excited about—only to find that their favorite builds felt clunky, underpowered, or not viable. It’s hard to convince someone to "just have fun with it" when they’re getting deleted in one hit or stuck with gear that doesn't scale well.

Patches and QA – Too Little, Too Late?
I know a patch is coming, and I want to believe it’ll help—but honestly, the damage is done. Many of us have already moved on. A lot of the current problems could’ve been avoided if there were proper quality assurance processes in place.

I strongly urge the team to invest in a better QA department. Right now, it feels like changes are being pushed straight to production with minimal testing. Bug fixes, balance tweaks, and even major content updates arrive half-baked or break things further.

You can’t rely on checklist testers who just follow scripts. You need QA professionals who understand game flow, think critically, and approach testing like players—exploring, breaking things, and questioning the design. A QA team should be trying to poke holes in your systems, not just mark tickets as "verified."

On "Vision" – We Need a Roadmap, Not a Sermon
One of the most frustrating things is the constant talk about "vision." I understand that having long-term goals is important, but as a paying player, I don’t want vague promises—I want clarity.

This is a commercial product. Players are investing their time and money. We deserve transparency around where the game is headed, how feedback is being handled, and what improvements are planned. A proper roadmap would go a long way—show us what’s coming, let us help test, and loop the community in earlier.

This isn’t a nonprofit. Companies aren’t churches, and players aren’t disciples. "Vision" isn’t enough—we need action, accountability, and communication

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Claymore124#7275 написал:

let us help test

I mean, that's literally what they are doing and you just through writing an entire post about how it's unacceptable behavior so I'm not sure where we go from here my guy.

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We Need a Roadmap, Not a Sermon

There's a pretty clear breakdown of their overall plan on the store page telling you what you're planning to add and how long they think it's going to take. Do you want access to their Jira dude? One of the benefits of the EA model is allowing them to continuously reevaluate their priorities and focus resources on areas of greatest opportunity. The only thing a more detailed roadmap is going to accomplish at this point is giving people an excuse to climb up their ass every time they deviate from it even a little bit.

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Kerchunk#7797 написал:

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Claymore124#7275 написал:

let us help test

I mean, that's literally what they are doing and you just through writing an entire post about how it's unacceptable behavior so I'm not sure where we go from here my guy.

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We Need a Roadmap, Not a Sermon

There's a pretty clear breakdown of their overall plan on the store page telling you what you're planning to add and how long they think it's going to take. Do you want access to their Jira dude? One of the benefits of the EA model is allowing them to continuously reevaluate their priorities and focus resources on areas of greatest opportunity. The only thing a more detailed roadmap is going to accomplish at this point is giving people an excuse to climb up their ass every time they deviate from it even a little bit.

Totally get where you're coming from, and I’m not against the Early Access model or community involvement at all. My issue isn’t with the idea of players helping to test—it’s that it currently feels like we’re the only line of testing before things go live. That’s not the same thing as structured QA with proper staging validation and critical test coverage. There’s a difference between “we’ll gather feedback from players and iterate” versus “we’ll let players discover what’s broken because we didn’t catch it ourselves.”

As for the roadmap—yeah, I saw the high-level outline on the store page. It's vague and doesn’t address actual problem areas or what's actively being worked on. I’m not asking for their Jira, but transparency doesn’t mean spoon-feeding us every task either. It means communicating priorities, acknowledging known issues, and showing where feedback is landing. Even just a regular dev blog that connects player feedback to upcoming patches would do wonders.

People aren't climbing up the devs' backs because there's a roadmap—they’re doing it because they’re in the dark. A clear, flexible roadmap doesn’t have to be a cage—it can be a compass.

I’m with you on this one.

There’s a difference between Early Access and Early Excuse. Getting feedback from players is great, but when every patch feels like it’s being tested live by the community, it starts to look like internal QA is either missing or not doing enough.

About the roadmap, what’s on the store page doesn’t really cut it. It reads more like a pitch or a rough outline than an actual development plan. I don’t think anyone’s asking for a full dev diary or access to every ticket. But something that shows what’s being worked on, what’s been deprioritized, and how player feedback is being applied would really help.

Most of us aren’t upset that things are changing. We’re frustrated because the changes feel directionless. Some structure would go a long way in rebuilding trust.

Kudos for a rational response. I probably came in a little hot.

I do think there's more wisdom and experience behind some of what they're doing than they're being given credit for. Some of the features they're experimenting with are never going to make it into the final product, so it can end up being a major waste of resources if they spend a ton of time perfecting these when they make the decision to cut them based on a "rough draft" version.

It's essentially the "fail fast" model of product development and it can be very cost/time effective when done right. I think they might be overestimating their audiences patience for it, especially since they haven't exactly made it clear that they're using it. But I would say the frequency and volume of hotfixes speaks for itself.

Honestly at some point it also just comes down to a matter of trust. After what this team has done in the past I'm pretty much along for the ride roadmap or no. Worst case scenario they disappoint me in the end but they've earned the opportunity to let me down at this point.

I agree.

Early Access doesn’t mean skipping proper QA. Too many bugs and balance issues are making it to live, and players shouldn’t be the first line of defense.

The roadmap is too vague. Some insight into what’s actively being worked on would help set expectations and show that feedback is being heard.

Also, please improve patch notes. Give us actual numbers and reasoning, not just “balance tweaks.” It makes a big difference.

Same here, I’m on the same page.

It’s hard to stay invested when every update feels like a gamble.
QA needs to catch these things before they hit live.

And yeah, a roadmap’s great—but without communication, it’s just marketing. At least give us regular updates or dev posts explaining what’s being worked on and why certain things changed. Even small check-ins would help a lot.

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Kerchunk#7797 написал:

Honestly at some point it also just comes down to a matter of trust. After what this team has done in the past I'm pretty much along for the ride roadmap or no. Worst case scenario they disappoint me in the end but they've earned the opportunity to let me down at this point.

Pretty bold statement especially seeing as this is essentially a new team, having a new studio director.

There's a lot of bad press out there right now and considering gaming sites very rarely say negative things about even crappy games it's not a good sign

no roadmap pls !!! They will push out content bec of that sh*t,like 0.2 patch.

I think most of us aren’t asking for a rigid roadmap with deadlines—we’re asking for visibility.

What’s frustrating isn’t that things are changing, it’s that we often don’t know why they’re changing, or what the devs are prioritizing next. That creates uncertainty, and it wears people down over time. Regular comms—not polished PR pieces, just honest updates—would make a big difference. Even if priorities shift, at least we’d feel looped in.

Same with QA. Nobody’s expecting perfection, especially in Early Access. But right now it feels like the bar for pre-release validation is way too low. Some of these bugs and tuning issues aren’t edge cases—they’re front and center. A few more hands (or better internal processes) could really help reduce the load on the community and rebuild trust.