Feedback

Things that need to change before full release at the latest:

1. Netcode, servers or whatever is causing constant desyncs no matter how good your connection is.

2. Whatever code is making monsters and bosses block you and push you around as if their boxes are much bigger than the ones used to hit them. It is the worst feeling timing your dodge roll perfectly just to be blocked, pushed around randomly anyway, where visually you could only conclude you should easily get out of the way. or getting blocked by 1 or 2 small monsters, making you just dodge roll in place.

All movement types (mouse, wasd, controller) should have the ability of "pathfinding" in the direction requested by the player without having to wiggle the controls around in hopes of finding the pixel that will allow to go around the monster or obstacle.

Any monster that is visually jumping in the air or is flying should not have any collision with the player while dodge rolling.

3. Defenses.

Armor equation is a joke, only good on very high investment. I am afraid you have painted yourselves into a corner with this one, I cannot see a sensible solution.

ES is too strong compared to life, imo mostly because we get about half too little life from levels or other bonuses.

Evasion is king, specially combined with 3k+ ES and ghost dance. For me, with the issues under 1. and 2. and the way the juiced end game is, the only playable defenses.

4. Visual clarity.

Why do half the tilesets have to be some grey or brown mess with the monsters and their abilities being the same color? I am trying to play the game, not strain my eyes. Delirium is the worst offender here tho.

Some skills absolutely need either completely new, clearer and more transparent visuals or at the very least a transparency slider.

5. Classes other than ranger and huntress having access to movement speed/movement penalty nodes.

This is really the most incomprehensible thing to me in terms of design... 1 class running at twice the speed of all the others while also having the most comfy mechanics, screen wide clear, best defenses and easiest bossing.

6. Runes

It was said that "early" runes were there to fix resistance/stat problems, but they are barely addressing that issue, imo they are just a bad excuse to not give us the ability to change one resistance into another like we have in PoE1.

The movement speed runes need to go away or at the very least limited to 1, replaced by movement speed implicit on boots.

Same goes for attack speed on gloves. Limit it to 1 and give us skill speed implicits.

7. Mana costs.

Mostly an issue for spell casters. A situation where I run out of mana despite perfectly using a "increased recovery, 7 charges per use" latest mana flask should happen exactly 0 times during campaign no matter how little mana or mana regen investment I have and how I am scaling my spells.

8. UI needs to be completely reworked, made much more clear and customizable, preferably broken down into basic elements that can be resized, dragged around and adjusted in other ways.

9. Performance. Having a 9800x3d struggle on 1080p@60fps should be reserved for UE5 slop.

Half the player and monster skills are way too graphically intricate and detailed. This is all good if you are trying to make a cinematic video, but for normal gameplay it is completely unnecessary, 4x reduction in detail and complexity would not even be noticeable, it is only causing issues for any1 with anything less than the best PC possible and even with the best it doesn't run as it should.

10. AoE scaling. Almost forgot about that one... this one is a real head-scratcher...

Currently area of effect increase nodes and gems are not increasing the radius as any reasonable person would conclude, specially considering how much #% increase they are giving, but they actually increase the square area, meaning they are increasing the radius by the square root of the stated increase. The problem is worsened by the game rounding the radius down in 0.1m increments. For me this has a simple solution of making AoE increases affect the radius instead, but alternatively you could provide an ingame explanation of the mechanic and increase the amount of #% the nodes and gems give.

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In conclusion, I wish that in 0.4 or at full release at the latest there will be another class/archetype I can enjoy besides lightning arrow/rod unkillable speed god amazon/deadeye. I have tried to enjoy others in 0.1, 0.2, 0.3 with little to no success despite trying pretty hard.

i did a couple of practice runs last 2 days and somehow buggy movement, desync and geonor bugs seem even worse than i remember. i wish we get atleast a noticable improvement in 0.4, cuz this is horrible.

Don't think I agree with the UI needing a 'complete' rework; though there are some quality of life changes I wouldn't mind seeing added to the UI.

And the monster detail, I suppose they could implement a LoD slider in the graphics settings, so long as they don't destroy all that detail for everyone who wants to retain it.

Aside from those minor things, these all seem like well reasoned practical changes.

You seem thoughtful. I wonder how you feel about the 'lower level' game design aspects. What do you think of the gameplay, particularly in the endgame, in terms of AoE screen clearing versus methodical, tactical combat?

I think I have a sense what side of that question you will fall down on, but I want to ask anyway. =)

To be honest one of the greatest gripes I have with the UI is the top bars getting in the way of me seeing important things happening and the out of the way, barely noticeable stun bar. The other outdated and rigid aspects of it, I can live with.

Sadly I believe the overdetail/performance issues cannot be solved by LoD alone, some things are simply too complex, like frost wall for example. I hope I am wrong and it is possible to solve with a selectable detail. I for one find it hard to believe anyone would like to retain this level of detail over the game running at stable 60 fps, pretty much everyone I talk with, no matter how modern their PC, says they put everything to lowest possible and if possible would put it much lower if that would make it run better. It is an ARPG after all...

I have a sense you will be a little bit surprised by this, but I would prefer slower, more engaging combat, but the way the terrain and monsters are even before speed and damage mods, I don't see it as possible to ever get right in PoE2.

And of course I am never gonna torture myself with a build that clears 10x slower than a "meta" build. I have tried many such builds, but it is just not enjoyable when for example you step through a narrow passage in order to be able to start killing enemies and they instantly overwhelm, stun, freeze and kill you, I do not want to bait them out of the room and kite back 1 by 1. I would much rather just play a build that can start killing them before they get the chance.

Also, with breach, ritual, abyss, expedition in the game... playing a build that cannot AoE clear is impossible.