I’m going through the individual teasers being given and want to give my overall feedback to them in this thread. There will surely be some hot takes and some down to earth ones intermingled, but since I got a bit of time another ‘big comprehensive’ post is to be expected.
So, starting off with the 7th March reveal, albeit oddly without Mike being there… which makes we wonder about the ‘Mike teaser’ section 
It was clear what the community expected us to work on
Yes, that is very clear-cut and well spoken.
It’s a so called ‘reactive’ update rather then a ‘proactive’ update.
Reactive updates are a necessity to provide a solid foundation of a video game. Unless the majority of reactive updates isn’t handled a product won’t ‘thrive’, it’ll at best ‘do well despite the shortcomings’. Hence those are the most important ones.
Proactive updates on the other hand showcase the creativity of a studio and hence show the customers what can be expected to happen overall.
They’re also differently perceived. While both will cause feedback in terms of quality and of content quantity a reactive one is primarily praised for solid qualitative work. Which is what 1.0 heavily struggled with. So that’ll be a very important aspect to showcase EHG’s ability to actually provide good content that’s respectively fleshed out.
1.1 in contrary was a proactive update, while Aberroth was included the Nemesis mechanic was something nobody asked for… but was a good addition to the game simply which fits with the general direction it is going, showcasing that off well.
In my opinion 1.2 is not enough for the ‘reactive’ side though, 1.3 should also be used to pave the way. Balancing, faction adjustments which are needed, polishing the crafting system more and so on and so forth. Everything which makes it into a ‘solid game’ before focusing on special unique features further which are also direly needed. End-game is ‘ok’ now I would say and can survive a few cycles in that state.
Updates for dungeons
From what I’ve seen up to now… that mark has been entirely missed.
The core issue of dungeons isn’t the length, it’s how badly designed the content inside it is, outside of the bosses and the potential rewards (And for Soulfire Bastion even the rewards).
A dungeon-skip is in my opinion not a proper way to go, also the teased ‘Warden’s Echo’ is solely making dungeons even less valuable to run as you can get their rewards otherwise, not even needing to run them in the first place unless LA outcomes or LP forging is the direct goal.
This is a detrimental direction for the future and something Path of Exile struggled with for a long time before stepping back, showcasing only remnants of it nowadays.
Unique content is supposed to provide unique rewards. Intermingling those rewards into other places lowers their value accordingly and reduces perceived content width. Something LE is already struggling with, expediting it even further.
We're still aiming for those 3-4 months releases for seasons
Good, ‘aiming for’ has been an expectation already.
Nobody is angry if it takes a bit longer for something.
Severely longer is not something the community will see in a positive light though, I hope that lesson has been learned.
And setting up for success is also important. I hope the time was well used to optimize the content pipeline accordingly to achieve that goal optimally with 1.3 already, latest with 1.4 and going forward.
We've already got people working on future content
Good, while new for EHG it’s a basically mandatory aspect.
Better the need to scrap things for future releases and downscale them rather then be heavily outside of the expected release timeframe.
Singular ‘bad’ cycles won’t hurt the game, ‘tardiness’ though does. And it’s named that because it only needs to perceived by customers in the way, there’s usually decent reasons in the background for why stuff happens, but that has little effect for the end result.
Procedural generation
A very good tool going forward.
My personal feedback on that is to keep that as a tool, not as a primary way to release content. Otherwise issues like Starfield, early No Man’s Sky (and still ongoing so to a degree) and similar things come up. Where content seems to be solely ‘generic’ and not enticing.
We are not at the point where we want to rush things out the door. Having things be buggy and broken
That was the 1.0 state of newly implemented content.
Given what we’ve been presented and the ongoing state of that I’ll personally say that only the result of the 1.2 content drop will alleviate those perceptions. And then at a range where it’s ‘beyond expectation’ rather then just ‘enough’ to make up for the former shortcomings… as that will provide time to catch up on the faction content itself which hasn’t been brought into a high-quality state yet, mostly being ‘ok’ to at best ‘good’ currently.
I knew that I could build a team that I knew would constantly listen to player feedback
The respective proper communication for that still isn’t ‘there’. But the goal is good. I hope it becomes reality sometime in the future.
Idol enchantment system
Interesting.
That would’ve been kinda nice to know it exists, it’s a whole system after all, this is trailer quality inclusion.
Leaving such things out of the trailer is actively damaging the perception of how much content will be delivered and how likely a returning player will actually pick up the game again or rather postpone it for sometime else in favor of another game.
Those things need to be shown at least as a note in the future.
Especially given it’s a system which allows a top-rolled item to be ‘perfected’, unless other itemization systems in LE where this feature is not existent yet. It’s a ridiculously important system hence to at least be mentioned in the future trailers if something similar happens.
Woven Echoes: The rewards drop for everyone in a group
This is actually a problem. Yes, otherwise it’s a problem too… but in this case the downsides of allowing a type of content to basically ‘copy’ the overall amount of rewards provided respectively is not a good choice.
It causes the value of the content to be higher for groups, hence making group-play vastly more profitable in comparison to running solo.
This is generally to be avoided as the majority of players are solo players and especially in this genre so, making them ‘miss out’ on the ability to get rewards at the same speed hence.
Champion Affixes
Champion Affixes will be a miniscule progression system from what has been revealed sadly.
Not because they aren’t powerful… or aren’t cool, interesting or whatever.
It’ll be because of availability.
Given only 1 drops from a champion enemy that means all the other underlying RNG layers will affect it.
First of all the affix Tier itself. Low tier is likely not to be taken in the first place.
If it’ll be worthwhile at a low tier then it needs to have good affixes otherwise to consider even making it into a decent item.
Then we also have the crafting result to turn out well.
And then we need to have it on a base that instead of using a unique item with some stats would not outperform the champion affix itself with decent rolls on a bad base.
That’s a very very hefty layer of acquisition which will make them hard to acquire reliably. Unlike experimental affixes (which are already a increased difficulty layer to achieve) they’re not as prevalent that one can just push them onto a specific item willy-nilly with a glyph after all. It’ll be similar in availability hence like Delve-affix in PoE 1.
‘Would be really great to have but I have no way to acquire it properly’
I think that’ll heavily de-value this system compared to what it could be in content depth overall for the game going forward. But that’s only what I think will happen.
Uber Aberroth will have 2 new uniques you can only acquire there, unlike you're MG... but that's not the same.
Yep, not the same.
I’ll use it nonetheless despite it being not the same, but with the same outcome at least, if not the same feeling of how I acquisitioned it
Set shards
Hrmm… it might become a decent system, depending on the affixes available. I’ll abstain from saying it’s a good or bad system until I’ve seen the list, because it primarily comes down to that after all.
Overall a promising mechanic though and highly dependant on how it’ll be executed.
Also it’ll need a visual feedback of some kind to showcase that it can’t be used for Legendary crafting, since it’s basically the first item type which won’t have that ability.
Albeit… it does nothing for the set items themselves, this way they’ll basically become ‘crafting fodder’ for a new mechanic instead of being directly useful. Keeping my argumentation I’ve sometimes had about ‘the concept of fixed sets in the game is a very fun but not very feasable one’.
It’s also not a new innovative mechanic for anyone curious, it’s fairly common to attach set bonuses to specific crafting mechanics, where the initial idea of sets has become used in a modern way. The same thing which LE goes for now… hence a positive direction, catching up to modern implementations kinda
Woven Offerings
Yeah, simply good mechanic it seems.
Decent thought process.
Decently thought out ups- and downsides.
Simple mechanic.
Also simply enhancing the gameplay options, so good.
Rune additions
Weavers Rune is a nice one, decent.
Rune of Havoc is potentially powerful, sadly limited by the leftover FP after a single try… but an actually good rune which will increase the value of exalted items with a non-optimal T7 that’s still useful though massively.
The counterside is that depending on the availability of those it might make the amount of exalted mods more important then the specific affixes they roll on, hence reducing the time needed for itemization and progression potentially in a substantial way. Though that’s a balancing act to ‘get it right’. Overall good chances for it to be a good addition.
Rune of Redemption on the other hand is kinda useless. Yeah… could potentially re-roll a bad T7 into a good T7… yeah, you could potentially create a great item with it… but the variety in Affixes together with their rarity makes it basically not rewarding to try, especially given that the other 3 Affixes need to be finished by that point, hence a ‘I have leftover FP available’ craft since it’s likely also the rarest crafting materials in availability. Loads of busywork for a little chance of return. But… not bad. Overall still positive… but very ‘eh’.
Mastery respec
Sorry Ziz… they’re not That was the initial point of them. They’re rather the dual-classes of GD which are fixed for a reason.
Overall awful addition, no matter the cost.
Reduction in content quantity simply. Replay value of the game being lowered a lot. Together with the potential quicker reaching of the end-point with the new runes this could lead to a generally shorter experience of the game in totality. Which is already rather short currently.
It is sadly not ‘healthy for the game’. At least not in the current state. LE is still rather far away where we could ignore identity for the sake of accessibility, I would argue around 2-3 years away before it would’ve been warranted.
Very premature implementation.
Auto-moving of shards
Finally! Damn friggin finally!
Portal Charm
Awful addition as well. The dungeon is being skipped because the quality of content is sub-par.
If that’s a viable solution then just delete the dungeons and make it solely the boss-fights only. They have no functionality which would be worthwhile currently. Actually… for the campaign skip it would even ease up that part a bit further this way.
Or fix the dungeons, which would be the preferred method, making it actually good content rather then… well… whatever the current state is.
14. March interview actually with Mike!
I got to say… I only have one thing to repeat, it’s ater all a focus on class balance and rework. I don’t care so much about that besides ‘keep balance going, finish implementing the missing things and expand on it’, my personal focus is on game-mechanics directly, the stuff supporting the classes.
I’ll leave that to someone else hence.
We got good stuff coming, it's worth to get excited for
Agreed, which is why the trailer presentation needs a bit more work for 1.3, it’s clearly been a bit ‘undersold’, which is a shame. Sure, safe route but also the one which doesn’t get people as excited.
21. March teasers
The weaver tree looks interesting overall. Seemingly a few unique mechanics there.
Overall likely good, I’ll keep the exact feedback for the release of that though. Without the entirety or any ‘weird’ nodes which need special comments I can’t say much there.
As for the gif… yes, it’s very much a effect-mess! Good to see nothing
The saving of dropped items on the ground is… interesting? I think that’ll rather cause a detriment for the future rather then being good. In my eyes items should only be ‘safe’ after picking them up, until then being only a ‘potential existence that’s just visible’… but that’s flavor simply I would say, no major game-changing effect.
28. March
Warden’s Echo: Absolutely awful mechanic, hence absolutely awful node in my eyes.
Fated Nemesis: Interesting, nice for farming. Definitely a good one.
The timeline corruption showing is also a very very good thing.
Now we only need to have the symbols for the item category specialization available and it would be a comprehensive display of all majorly necessary information!
Well… and that’s it for the summary of my thoughts there.
