This will be a SUPER LONG post , you have been warned.
Before I start keep in mind this is how I see the story/design/end game etc.
I will explain what I like in a ARPG/what i dislike in LE and that is by NO MEAN how
the game should be design , everyone have different opinions ,what I like most people
might find anoing or what I hate some people might like and so on.
I used to be a “no-lifer” playing POE 12-16 h daily on new league starts.
I consider now myself a semi-casual (new job , new baby , no free time essentially ) but might not even be casual compared with other game types because i played LE for more then 3 weeks since i purchase it around 3-4 h daily and 6-10 in weekends when i had free time.
Same amount as the working hours i put at my job so i don’t think it can be called casual at this point.
*First impressions *
Performance is really bad , I barely get 42 fps on low settings while my gpu is 100% usage and max temp , I’m even afraid I will damage it in a time when an upgrade is impossible due to cryto currency raising the gpu’s prices to unreal values.
Meanwhile my processor is at 2-6% usage same as RAM.
Some areas/mobs look quite good but feels like there is no immersion ,it looks like
someone took some random assets and made the acts/mobs ,while they do look better then I expected it feels too generic and "lack of soul ".
The story:is there even a story ? i did campaign 2 times I cant remember 1 NPC or quest or areas/bosses .The only boss I remember is the Huge crab because I died 100 times on first run.
That being said I care less about how a game looks/story feels .I play this type of game for progression and loot .
The good part is i wasn’t so hyped to play a game this badly when i had free time in a long long time.
General game design :
This is a tough one because I have really mixed feelings about a lot of decisions.
Skills having their own trees it feels refreshing and cool way to customize your playstyle
I would like to see way more skills 4 skills per class is really underwhelming and doesn’t leave much room for build diversity.
Passive skills while some have really good interactions/synergys/mechanics like triggering stuff ,the echo thing on void knight ,there are way to many generic stuff like pure crit chance pure stats and life/mana.
It gives a false feeling of “choice” because if you go lighting build you will pick lighting damage not cold or if you are going critical build you will pick critical nodes etc.
Would love to see more cool interactions and keep the raw stats/power on gear.
Crafting : Oh boy oh boy ,this feel so good and so BAD at the same time.
I need 3 additional pages to talk more in detail what i dislike/doesnt make sense to me
but on short is it feels more bad in general then good like 75/25% and current state wont do it for me .
Item affixes : Again feels refreshing to see new stats types and general stats like INT/STR etc actually feels good for once in a APRG, they feel really balanced .
Boss design : Overall feels really good ,good telegraphed skills ,but most especially the Shade drops feel underwhelming.
END GAME :
I know there are more end game system planed so my feedback is on the current state of the end game.
I just started empowered monoliths , i think i finished 2 but i start to see the things that i don’t like and already feel burned that’s why i made this post , as i don’t think i will play more in the current game state.
I never liked infinite scaling content as it gives me no reason to invest into a build when i know it will eventually do no damage or just die because it gets too tough NO MATTER how much min-max it has.
Arena seems fine for this and for people who like pushing builds/ladders .1 infinite scaling game mechanic is ENOUGH .
Echo modifiers seems INSANELY overturned as they can stack ,and it is so LAZY and boring way of making content harder.
Corruption already gives mobs hp/damage why there are so many damage/hp modifiers on echoes.
Most modifiers do the same CORE thing gives mores more hp and more damage:
Critical strike avoidance/all resistances/increased damage and hp etc.
Cool and interesting modifiers : Armour shred on hit ,regenerate while not damaged (this is really hard on bosses ) ailments chill/shock/slow etc.
Not only its boring but some stacking mods gives mobs way to spiking damage like critical chance.And i think mobs damage stats need a review as i did some echoes with 2-3 damage mods and critical and got 1 shot in each one while my build has max res around 29% armour and like 2k+ EHP playing a mana before life build.
Then decided to do an echo reset and went for a Shade and had exact same echo modifiers except some slow on hit and facetank every boss mechanic.
When a white mob 1 shots you and a boss does nothing close to that damage its a big sign something is not balanced right.
I think game needs a more smooth difficulty scaling because some of the echo modifiers make no sense : for example 2 modifiers with damage and hp/damage makes then do DOUBLE damage this means exactly the same as you have 50%HP as before.
What is the point to use mechanics like the 5-25% less damage taken items/skills when mobs do double and more damage ?
I think corruption should be the ONLY mechanic that give mods extra hp and damage and make echoes do interesting things like ailments/armour shred or design new cool mechanics.
Current state feels so weird you either take no damage or get 1 shot ,this is what i hate with a passion in POE and seems its the same problem here.
Exalted items and loot in general :
Way way to many items drop , i had to tweek my loot filted more then 20 times because to much crap drops. and it was a strict end game one in the first place keep that in mind.
When i started empowered monoliths i was so excited to see i had like 5 nodes with contains X exalted items.
Was so disappointed because i did not find 1 usable item ,i understand some mods have different weight(drop rates ) but this is NOT FUN as i swear all my items had stun chance or other unusable stat atm.
Double and + exalted items drop rate is way to low .
I asked some people who played INSANE amount of hours like Boardman and Lizzard on stream if they ever seen a triple exalted items , both NEVER dropped 1.
While i understand triple and quadtriple exalted items should be something super rare
the chances of them to be actually good is close to zero.
There are currently 375 affiex ignoring idols so lets calculate how many different mods combination an item can have :
n!/(n-r)! where n= number of affixes and r=number of mods an item can have that is 4 affixes atm
*n!/(n-r)! =19460529000 * THAT is 20 BILLION outcomes, number is way smaller due to some mods being exclusive to some items types but you get the idea .
The chances to get a insane triple/quad exalted item is close to ZERO.
That is a super underwhelming feeling .
People might counter argument you don’t need perfect items because you only need 1 good mod and just CRAFT them.
Well crafting feels really bad atm .
It feels well balanced when leveling crafting random crap for upgrades BUT feels extremely bad to ruin that tier 7 exalted item when you just put 1 mod on it and it shatters at 92% success rate.
End game grind is way to slow and unrewarding atm.
The fact that you need to run different monoliths so many times to get your desired blessing and even when you get it the rolls makes a huge impact , so farming it again and again its just too much burning out.
The biggest disappointment is when i found out you need to redo this on every new build you wanna try.
This is the most anti-reroll new builds mechanics that i ever saw .
There are no chase items and exalt drop rate/crafting feels bad atm.
If there will be seasons/leagues in the future and the game has the current drop rate and balance around how much grind is to get blessings NO WAY i will play more than 1 build , its too much time-consuming.
Every people i know including myself play up to 1-2 months at most in new leagues before burn out/taking a break /playing other games.
Taking that in consideration some of the balance makes no sense to me and even MORE if the devs expect us to play more then 1 build per season.
Even if you play 16h+ daily i don’t see any chance to min-max a build in 1-2 months with how grindy it is.
Games shouldn’t be balanced around casuals but balancing stuff around playing nonstop is even worse.
I did REALLY enjoyed playing so far , i honestly didn’t have this much fun since the old D2 days.
But the end game grind is too long and unrewarding for me to enjoy past this point atm.
I will keep my eyes on future updates as this is my last hope for ARPG’s to be great again as i lost all hope with POE (same problem over-grind not rewarding/loot is useless).
TL.DR:
I really enjoyed the game till empowered monoliths when i realized is way to much grind for me and crafting is underwhelming and not fun.
To quote a big streamer : Games used to make us want to waste our time , now they just waste our time
I still have high hopes for the game as the core is good just needs major work to be a really great game.
