Ideas to improve - Construtive criticism!

First I want to preface that I love a challenge and that is why I have gravitated to Poe2. It takes time to progress and really working at it. But, what we need to make that worth it is agency, progression and rewards.

I want a thread that may deal with some of those issues and provide ideas to fix the major and minor issues. This is to help the developers to understand what the community sees as the issues, both large and small. This is to create a better game and experience for most! You can not please everyone.

There is a lot of things to discuss here such as the current state of currency drops in end game, class balance, gem slots, defenses, player agency, end game mechanics etc... I hold no malice to GGG because this IS early access. I want them to succeed and I want a great game to play. I think this patch was a giant step backward, my opinion! It made strides forward but broke a ton of things that were working imo. I feel they went off track and need to right the train and get back on track.

The patches to 2.0 so far helped but there needs more done and right now because I am the type of person willing to stick things out and grind through it. I am however near my limit with the state of currency drops currently. I have reviewed as many strategies as I can find on the internet and while that has been helping I still haven't had a divine drop in over a week and I am not able to make improvements to my character because of it so I can push even harder content.

I am currently doing 15 maps and fairly juiced even though I have to be really picky about the suffixes I take and I still get one shot enough to make leveling very time consuming. I have 0 divs and have only gotten 5 in total with hundreds of hours played already. Below this initial post I will highlight some of the issues and some ideas to fix and some of my insights into Dawn of the Hunt. My current direction is to start a whole new campaign with the same character type and build to test that I was getting divs before I started mapping and stopped when I started mapping. I am not kidding I have gotten 0 divs since I started mapping and running very high rarity, qty, rare monster maps at level 15 maps. Anyway that is why I am making this post and being vocal. So this can improve.

Moving on with it then...

First issue I want to address is the currency drop rate. I may be just being unlucky this round but as stated above I have only had 5 divs drop and none since I started mapping. I am good with the game being hard but this has me a place where I can not progress my character and it is getting really frustrating. I can not get a div to drop to buy better gear or solve a problem. Or use a div to convert to exalts which are not dropping enough to do mass crafting. As a result my stash tabs are nearly all full and I have a lot!!! I can not work on any equipment upgrades to even sell on the market. Sustain is just not there.

So if this is where they want loot? We need a way to get more currency drops. Strongboxes have been decent at this for lower level currencies. That is fine but could be better with more higher end currencies.

Maybe make a mechanic out of chests for currency drops? You already have waystones with increases to chest mechanics so that is at least all ready there and would totally make sense. Currency from treasure chests. This would help fill out endgame and give yet another way to target farm. Maybe make this a place where you can get gems as well. That is another issues for the next post.

I think the whole drop chance was broken with this patch and needs fixed.

Gems:

Ok first if this is the way instead of a crafting bench which could be just fine it needs to be able to solve those problems and be more interesting. Several things of note. Resists/Single stats are a joke. You give up really great defensive or offensive stats or even utility for a mear 14 to a single resist when a piece of gear can roll 35 or more regularly. Ressists for greater should be at least, AT LEAST 25 and probably 30 or more so we can have more agency in gear. I feel I get gear locked due in most to resistances.

Stats are the same exact problem and solution should be the same with much increased stats for greater gems.

I know you are probably worried about stat stackers so maybe make certain stats only available on certain pieces such as str on gloves, int on helmet, and dex on boots with chest able to have either and any or something like that.

We need more interesting runes as well, maybe have some unique ones that have special abilities that you can not get elsewhere or something interesting and exciting. Loot needs to have those, NO WAY, I just got ___.

I also feel that life and mana for a greater should be 100. They are just so underwhelming at the current state.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-forum/2213

Uniques:

Ok, so on this play through I got a lot of Uniques and absolutely none I would use or have used. I also was so unlucky that I did not ever get one of the ones I needed for my build and could never afford to buy because I could not get currency to drop enough. Please do a pass on Uniques to make them better. Some have such mediocre abilities and the fact you lose stats compared to what how many you can get on regular equipment that it just a hard pass on 99% of them because of what you can lose. I want to be excited to get some uniques and I do not get that at all. More like well I can salvage that at least, is my most common thought.

Sure there should be some duds but there are way too many duds imo. Almost any Unique, there are a few exceptions, can be replaced by high end regular gear at the highest level of play. Yea, the balance to make them desired sometimes and not overpowered to where everyone plays that unique is not easy. Maybe just tie it into a particular skill. I don't know though. Maybe make it element specific, attack type specific or defense type specific. Which already is in many of the items.

Maybe there could be a way of destroying x amount of uniques will give you a choice of a unique from a certain pool. It is so hard to play a build at end game if you were unlucky to not be able to get it or afford it.

Thanks for the link!

I started in Dawn of the Hunt (the post-nerf era, so have no reference to how it was before). Currently at the end of Act 2 and loving the game -- EXCEPT --

I hope they bring back a proper labrynth for ascendency. Forbidden Sanctum was my least favourite part of POE1 and really should be an optional side mechanic only -- keep it for farming a special type of currency maybe.

i propose constructively that <1div builds should not be allowed to sustain t15 maps. to play t15, 10 div builds would be required.

campaign should be made easier and if not, just faster.

by the time normies finish the campaign, they'd be too worn out to go beyond. difficulty should be progressive.

pros would finish the campaign fast irregardless.

these are my gripes and my suggestions

1. Loot and Crafting
Getting loot still feels underwhelming in Path of Exile 2. I'm currently running Tier 6 maps, and at this point, it feels almost impossible to find meaningful upgrades. I really wish the crafting system offered more control.

Harvest had great deterministic crafting, and I also enjoyed fossil crafting in Delve. Could we not have more reliable ways to create strong gear? Right now, it feels like we’re forced to either rely on extreme luck or use trade – which often isn’t ideal, especially since traders don’t respond 9 times out of 10.

What about those of us playing solo self-found? We’re left with no real options other than praying for RNG miracles or getting lucky with a few decent mods.
can we also have the tiers reversed so we know what tier the highest is or have lets say 10T/12T could also work. at least we would know then what tier the mod can have maximum and if its worth it

2. Nerfs and Buffs
I really hope that balancing changes – both nerfs and buffs – can happen more regularly, even mid-league.

Waiting until the next major patch to see any changes can hurt the game over time. There’s only so much pre-release testing that can be done, and frankly, it felt like a lot of the 2.0 balance updates weren’t fully tested.

Would it be possible to introduce a "PTR weekend" or something similar in a seperate server, where new changes can be tested in advance? This way, adjustments can be made before going live and potentially harming the overall experience. I think this would benefit both the players and the development team.

3. Temporal Chains Modifier (Waystones)
Getting to endgame feels great – but being slowed down in maps feels terrible. Temporal Chains is, in my opinion, the worst modifier in the game.

Maps are already big, and this mod just makes them feel like a tedious slog. It seriously hurts my enjoyment. When the map ends and I return to normal speed, it’s honestly a relief.

Could this be changed or removed entirely? Maybe replace it with something more interactive – like enemies casting a tether or string you need to break. That would be more engaging without constantly slowing down the player’s movement.

4. Atlas Tree and Unlocking Mechanics
The Atlas Tree feels a bit punishing early on. It takes a long time to engage with mechanics like Breach or Expedition, and getting your first two points into them can feel like a huge grind.

Why not reward players with two passive points the first time they encounter a mechanic? Or at least lower the cost to unlock early on. I’ve played over 200 hours and still haven’t managed to invest points into several endgame mechanics.

For example, needing 300 Breach Splinters just to see a boss for the first time feels excessive. Why not make the first encounter cheaper, and then scale it up later?

That way, players can actually engage with the content, progress their tree, and feel like they’re making progress on there atlass tree

5. Campaign Maps and Traversal
Hear me out: what if the campaign had fixed map layouts instead of randomized ones?

This would speed up the campaign significantly for players who’ve gone through it many times. You could still keep things interesting by having random events, bosses, and quests spawn at different preset points – but the core layout would stay consistent.

This would help players learn the paths and avoid getting lost. Some areas (especially in Act 3) already had to be shortened due to navigation issues. Making maps consistent would mean the first playthrough is still full of exploration, but future runs would be smoother and more efficient.
you could still do it so that u change it per season to keep it fresh

I leveled up another amazon and at level 87 with this one and 92 with the first. My main and only stat to focus on for this run through was rarity on gear! That said, I only have 45ish on all my resists because of this strategy. My second focus is pure stats so I can equip gear and skills.

I just went through attempting to craft about 1000 items to get a resistance upgrade. I did not! In fact I managed 1 and only 1 crafted upgrade. It was a pair of gloves with high tier lightning and physical additive damage roll, upper mid critical damage, high roll on rarity, high life leech for physical and a mid 400 accuracy rating. So I lost any resists at all. All in all one of the best items I ever crafted.

We need more control over at least getting resists. The whole point of me taking about 8 hours of straight crafting was to get an improvement to resists. I even with through about 400 rings buying them from the vendor, reforging, buying them from expedition crafters, leveling up briefly to get a reset on vendors. OMG, between the stat requirements for the build and needing a 20 roll of any stat + trying to get a all resist roll and needing some sort of damage mod I had no upgrade at all and went through all my gold and currency to craft with. So I am at the point where I need to map again to rebuild and hope and pray for something good.

I managed to get tangletongue this go around but no other useful uniques at all. It is still miserable to try to get anything really going. I have a better spear by far that I still can not equip due to stat requirements on strength. If I give up other stats it breaks some other part of my build, I need the levels just to sink points into strength so I can equip it. its a 12k increase in dps if I can equip it. I will still be a glass cannon but what a cannon. At that point I think I can start pushing tier 16 maps and citidels and end game content IF I can solve the resists issue. That still has to happen!