Feedback after 2 minutes and 24 seconds....

Dear devs:

Sometimes simplicity makes a game good.

Like I've been saying from the first 10 seconds that I played EA PoE2. The game feels awful to play, it feels clunky. The idea of adding movements into abilities in theory seems good, but it is not! This is tried and tested, it fails every single time!

The idea that every spell or ability needs to have overdesigned animations to emphasize graphic fidelity does not make a good game, it will however destroy a game with massive potential.

Players feel locked into "wasd" because for some reason the mouse movement option feels absolutely horrible. Your character faces in awkward positions when you move, the character won't stop moving if you clicked somewhere and suddenly need to cast a spell or ability. Clunky!

The game is stressful to play. I understand you want to create a harder game, but this game drains the life out of you. After 30 minutes to an hour you do not want to play this game anymore. You cannot focus on anything else when playing this game including something simple like listening to music, because god forbid you miss an audio que > get oneshotted and lose a massive chunk of XP.

Your focus is off, and I mean this constructively.
You are going above and beyond adding new gems, moving stash tabs, fixing maps etc, etc. But none of these factors will make or break the game, as a community we understand this is EA.

The main issue is the base design of the game, I am sorry to tell you this because having dev background myself I understand that this is a major fu*p and not easy to fix.

But moving forward building on a broken skeleton will not yield a successful result.

Fixes that will shift opinion:

- Fix the clunky feel when playing with a mouse. Your base playerbase are not console andies, and I wish I could kick every elitist player and streamer in the damn nuts for suggesting "wasd" should be implemented in this game.

"wasd" is not bad by default, but it is not for everyone, and currently you feel locked into playing a specific style.

I am going to say it straight up, Grim Dawn feels better to play if you look at only movement. That game came out in 2016; they also had an emphasis on slower gameplay, but the character does what the player wants it to do.

The character stops moving when the player wants it to stop moving, it doesn't overshoot by several ft and runs you into fire for no reason which then forces you to roll or die.

[Ascendancy and skill tree's]

The passive skill tree needs some serious work. I counted how many nodes there are on the passive tree that basically give the exact same stats, some of which there where 7+ clusters that do the exact same thing. This heavily ruins the emersion that POE1 did so well with "potentially you could do anything".

The ascendancies seems to be heavily focused, what I mean with this is instead of being an "open design" it appears as if someone sat down and thought "which builds would be cool" and then designed ascendancies based on those ideas. - Massive F*up. There are many ARPG's that also went this route (D4, Last epoch), this makes a player feel heavily limited in what they are able to do, and once again Path of Exile's primary alure has always been "what if".

The current ascendancies forces you into a certain direction to the point where build variety for some of the ascendancies is basically non-existent.

Here is an example: (Path of Exile 1)

I am going to use the ascendancies from version 3.24.0 Path of Exile 1 as reference, because I think phrecia league is showcasing the same rot, but players have not realized yet. (hyper focused ascendancies)

Talent - Duelist ascendancy:
Blood in Eyes
- Attacks have a 50% chance to cause bleeding (meaning you can play with any weapon you want.)
- Attacks maim on hit (again a neutral talent)
- 25% Chance to blind with hits against bleeding enemies (bleed focused but item neutral)
- Enemies maimed by your hits take 10% increased Physical Damage (Again weapon neutral ascendancy node)

With this ascendancy I can damn well run unarmed with a bleed support and it will still function

The majority of the ascendancy tree can be used, and the talents will build on each other or complement each other in some way.

Now let's look at Path of Exile 2:

Example 1:
Warbringer

Ascendancy has a branch specializing in totems.
Ascendancy has a branch that then specializes in hitting enemies yourself
Ascendancy has a branch that specializes in wearing a shield (so ranged totems is not an option I guess)
Ascendancy has a branch specializing in warcries

What the actual f* is happening? It's simply confusing.

What if I want to use a 2h axe with a fire spell to blow enemies up with bleed explosions? If there isn't an ascendancy that fits this idea it won't work.

Game Speed:
The pace of this game is slow to the point where it's infuriating. No quicksilver flask or some nice movement boost, you just need to walk your **s all the way everywhere.

No movement skills, you only have dodge roll which you are forced to use otherwise you get oneshotted.

[The Good?]

The game looks amazing, the sound design is excellent, the spells look great; again... the design direction with the base 'mechanical' systems was a mistake.

I really hope this little section helps.

I think it's the opposite of freedom. The current design patterns for ascendancies forces me too much into a certain playstyle. In PoE 1 I can utilize an ascendancy as part of my build. It doesn't work in PoE 2.