Just some thoughts after 170 hours of 0.20

Preface
I've been playing PoE since beta in 2012, played maybe every other league since then for at least a week or two - not a hardcore player or streamer. The following is just my opinions and suggestions, with rhetorical questions woven in.

0.20 and subsequent micro patches

Do you have alpha testers? We just got 0.20f a few hours ago, and the affinities don't work for the new runes you added. I'm sure you are going to say "that's something we overlooked, and are working towards a fix in the near future." or something to that effect.

Affinities - Why don't precursor tablets just have a home in the Waystone tab we purchased? Now I need a quad tab for my tablets and have to manually search for the fragments I need for bosses. The PoE1 tabs were so well done, what happened? This is not a complicated thing to fix, and yet, here we are.

Vendor outlines showing rarity - why wasn't this implemented to Ritual as well? I'll bet more people are opening Ritual windows than buying from vendors.

Speaking of Ritual... when opening your minimap overlay, if you are X distance from a Ritual site, it shows as a new Ritual, not a completed one. As you get closer, the minimap updates and shows it as Red/Completed. This is just a waste of our time. I'm already running a juiced map with 0 portals and a boss, maybe I don't want to do that ritual with wide open space right away. I'll likely save it, since your mapping algorithm spawns Rituals in the bottom left of an X formation all the time.

So, I want to find the path of least suck to complete the map before backtracking to one that doesn't suck. Here's a suggestion - wherever a Ritual altar spawns, create a circle the size of the King of the Mist's arena in Act 1 around it. I don't personally enjoy running dull maps to dull towers to overlap influence areas, only to have my Ritual spawn in the darkest corner of a wide open map, even on Savannah with buildings blocking everything. This tells me that the design philosophy is punishment.

With Tablets, I can run 3 Rituals in junk spawn areas and get 4-5k favor, and in wide open areas get 4 sites that give me 2k favor. Make it make sense. Since the drops are sparse as it is, when something solid shows up, I should be able to afford it. Maybe consider a rework, where, if you die, and rejoin the ritual you lose 15% of favor. Something. Killing everything that spawns in that circle should always allow you a shot at whatever shows up in the window. The tablet bonuses should enable better chances for better loot to show up.

Breach
My one criticism is that splinters should be vacuumed up like gold is. Because it's a rushed mechanic, it sucks having to backtrack to pick up singular splinters while your buffs fade, shrines expire, etc... Making it so we didn't have to click on clasped hands was a step in the right direction. I think we are all still okay with picking up normal drops that occur, but the splinters should drop. Suggestion - even make it so they can only be vacuumed up while the breach is open, still forces a bit of backtracking, but less click click click.

Expedition
Make the boss encounter standout more. My god this is such a tedious task, but that green skull blends in with everything. Make it exciting.

Delirium
Really love that timer for a game you want to slow down, don't you? Notice how the people with the most currency are the ones using distilled emotions on their maps. The fog sucks, but, it's better than it was. But pair it with with the Jackson Pollock layout of these maps and even 2.5 times faster isn't enough to complete a map with it. Just make maps delirious, or not delirious, whether or not you go through the portal. Stop rushing us through a game you keep saying you want to slow down.

WISPS
LOL
I remember the Ziz interview where he asked if they would be able to keep up with players, and JR said they speed up. Yeah, ok. Just had a fox explode because I turned a corner, launched a fox wisp, and cleared the room and the intended rare died. There were like 8 other rares on the map. Make them fun, like delirium...If I click one, make it zoom the map ahead of me and bloat it's way to the last rare on the map, or even the boss. Then make them more rewarding than introducing different colors to my monitor.

This is just like Delirium, make them exist, or don't. If I click on a wisp, make it zoom-zoom all the way to the intended rare. Give it 300% movement speed and juice it's path. What is a player to do? Just sit back and let mobs eat away at you while this thing SLOGS it's way around?


Trial of Chaos - RNG meets RNG
Why, when I'm running this RNG based map do I have to sit through multiple forced 90 second waves of white mobs? Why does the Trialmaster pause my screen every 3 rooms? Does the Trialmaster not realize I have the ability to pause the game whenever I want? Could the Trialmaster consider giving his speeches while I'm on the elevator, or running 240 yards to the next room?

SSF perspective - I run 10 lvl 80 trials. I get 5 of one, 4 of the other, and one of the last. Awesome! 10 runs x 15 min = 150 min = 2.5 hours for 1 chance at fighting him. (assuming the RNG didn't force me into a parameter that bricks my build) Just make it one key that we need 3 of at the very least. you're forcing a trade economy on us. It's just a forced speed bump.

Bugs
Augury - if there is an Essence rare while a boss is present, the essences won't drop if you click it while the boss is engaged.

General Suggestions
I don't understand why after 15 years this company relies on 3rd parties to do the work for them, but here we are.

If I mouseover a unique item, give me a checkbox to show that I have it stashed in my unique affinity tab.

If I mouseover any item, how have you not integrated this game into awakened trade and such is beyond me. I think you might be taking this community for granted that this level of support will always be there, there are studios learning from your mistakes. When 60% of your players are using the same main skills in EA, it means 60& of us are fighting for the same trades that the other 40% are trying to capitalize off of.

Stun recovery still needs work. The light stun recovery from 0.20f is a start, but heavy stun recovery and heavy stun recovery effects are something worth looking into further IMO. From the hip, I think some sort of intrinsic way of balancing it is better than relying on wind dancer or logging out.

/
This is just my meandering take on things. I've kept notes along the way, and I'm around 150 hours into 0.20 with 2 meta chars. I do like the rapid changes happening, but, I do think it's important to mention there are other issues other than people complaining their 15% rarity char isn't finding divines in t4 maps.

Thanks for reading, thanks for making an awesome game. Thanks in advance for making it even better.

Cheers.

Forgot to add RE: Trial of Chaos:
Keeping a quest tracker to let you know what room you are in (7/10) would be great

I agree with everything here and also want to add that atrocious grinding is just killing my brain. Everything is a gamba with 13% chance of success, very lazy way to make the game play longer. It's just insulting.

Agreed on most points. Still having fun, but it does feel like the game is mired in spaghetti code and it's not even out yet. Generally this is something you'd see with very old games, not clean slates.

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breathe#5814 a écrit :

SSF perspective - I run 10 lvl 80 trials. I get 5 of one, 4 of the other, and one of the last. Awesome! 10 runs x 15 min = 150 min = 2.5 hours for 1 chance at fighting him. (assuming the RNG didn't force me into a parameter that bricks my build) Just make it one key that we need 3 of at the very least. you're forcing a trade economy on us. It's just a forced speed bump.

I agree with everything you said except this one. Last Season i ran 100 Ultimatums and noted down my findings. The fragments really even out at 1/3 with increased number, so i think it is totally fine to have some RNG here. If you are unlucky in the beginning of finding all the same, you will come to a point where you suddenly accumulate a lot of runs.