New PoE Player Feedback

Hello, big fan of ARPGs and put a lot of time on them since D2. This is my first time ever playing a Path of Exile game, so I thought I would share feedback on my experience without any reference points.

1. Love the game.

2. The Trial of Sekhema's honor system is painful.

3. Multiplayer has three big issues:
3. A: I can't see anything when my team uses all their AoEs. If the game will be based on dodging and visual identifiers, there NEEDS to be a method to reduce ally effects in the settings.
3. B: Campaign leveling discourages multiplayer with the current XP system. Higher level friends do not want to play with lower because there is no benefit and quests/objectives do not carry over. A four-person party was not fun, and we all ended up leveling solo mostly. After we reached end-game, this problem disappeared as there was incentive.
3. C: Getting stuck on your allies or their minions sucks. Really hard. Feels like we are push shoving each other to get through some maps.

4. Player movement/attacks can feel incredibly clunky. Using a charged dash skill and being pointed the opposite direction, teleporting/dashing and getting corner clipped by a bush, invisible terrain height difference that stops your movement/spells, trying to dodge roll in a pack and getting stuck on an invisible corner, walking in a dungeon and suddenly mobs spawn around you, and you are stuck in place for a moment. When the movement works, the game feels spectacular, when it does not, it feels awful.

5. There needs to be a death recap telling me how I died, what from, how long it took, and other data if I will be punished so hard for dying.


Any other feedback would be pedantic, but I am really looking forward to future seasons.

Several month updates...

I started POE for the first time with a group of four. Two had played POE1 and me and another were totally fresh but enjoyed ARPGS.

The other new player quit due to:
1. XP loss felt purposeless
2. Endgame was fun but nothing to chase

2/4 still play, but tend to get pushed into solo endgame content due to the difference in build power and one player does 90% of the map while the others die in a one hit. The crafting system is frustrating for everyone who played, as it is not really a reliable way to scale up strength.

Typical gameplay loop is:

A)
- Gather a bunch of normals from vendors or around maps
- Craft 15-30 items and pray one is better than what you have
- Replace for a minor upgrade but still have your resistance be off
- Try to Vaal your old item and hope it works out
- Somewhat lose power because one RNG roll is a few % off what it was before

B)
- Use expensive orbs on your good gear, but there's no guarantee anything will work out, and you might end up bricking your item/items trying to get an upgrade and set yourself back.


I, personally, feel like when people complain about the loot. It is more due to the above. There are so many variables to balance and the higher level you are, the most costly a misgear is. Working to get an upgrade only to get 1 shot by a Chaos attack because you traded 10% chaos resistance for 15% cold resistance which was also 1 shotting you feels horrible from a gameplay standpoint. Especially when I as a player have 0 control over how the loot was rolled, like if I could select a trade and make a critical choice about it, I would accept the loss more.

I made three characters this season and all made it to 85-94, monk, barb, and huntresses. Some notable observations:

- Melee feels so awful compared to range, it's not even funny.
- Weapon swapping is super fun and excited to see more variety there for all classes
- Pure evasion feels very frustrating to play. You will be fine 90% of the time then die in one hit with no information on how, what, or why. Scaling it up will make it happen less, but not remove the frustration.
- Crit feels insane compared to other damage options. I stopped playing Barb because I couldn't figure out damage scaling nearly as easily as monk and huntresses. I honestly do not know how others could clear some high-level content without crit.

Overall, the game updates in the season greatly improved the casual player experience, but there are still numerous tweaks to make. I look forward to playing next season but that's the end of the new player journey for now.