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Hi and this is gonna be mixed, as it ends with my having quit playing POE, unless of course this issue is fixed.

I've loved the game, following the story, made a Ranger, Witch, Shadow, and just last night a Templar.

My ranger is level 42, yeah I am no elite player or any of that, just an old gamer (from the days of Ultima I on the Apple II).

For me your game has been a welcome surprise. I wrote what I could in another thread about how the disconnects were in towns, and you guys appear to have fixed that issue rather quickly (compared to many "professional" game companies who have pre-release bugs that still haven't been fixed 4 years later). Yeah, I am impressed and have enjoyed my week playing POE... Until today.

Today I was playing in a team, and something that it seems game coders/designers are unable to address remains a problem in POE.

I joined a group for Scepter of God and to kill Dominus. Yeah, I am only playing on normal mode like many a noob like myself, but it was brutal nonetheless once we got to Dominus and he transforms into that creature. One hit me regularly, died 3 times after that, not once before.

But here is where the problem is, game after game, design after design, and I believe it's either an oversight or some coder can't figure it out because it is so prevalent (or designed this way out of some afk'r safeguard thinking is another possibility). The boss can one hit almost, if not, the entire team. Sure we have portals to reserve our spot and come back after we die, but here's the problem: If we hit the resurrect button and the boss dies while we're in town we get no credit.

Now, I ask you, it's a team right? We spent some period of time, be it 30 minutes or an hour killing everything, climbing the tower, etc., we use a number of teleport scrolls, and then, because the game designers want to have the boss with a super power beyond our abilities to survive it, we die, ending up in town and then don't get credit for the boss's death if the rest of the team kills the boss. Do you see the lack of continuity to this, especially when you did code in a "resurrect" button that acknowledges we are part of the team?

Now, I know this can be abused by afk'rs and exploitive Bozos, but if the cheating of some is gonna deny me getting my rightful credit for completing the mission, and credit me for having done damage to the boss until I died, then I see the whole questing in teams as worthless to do, and this mechanism as designed always able to rip me off and not give me credit in any quest if I team. Sure, I could get disconnected or some other haphazard thing happen, however, these are unforseen, haven't a plan to them at all. Games are designed, they have rules, that's what makes them a game, and with that comes the simple rule: You complete the quest you get credit. That I wasn't on the roof top at the very moment of Dominus death is meaningless when you give him the ability to kill me in one hit. It's like it is designed to make sure I fail even when I actually was an active contributor to the team and we succeeded as a team. Yeah, I am pretty mad about this, and yes, enough to uninstall and quit playing.

If this is fixed in some future patch that will help, but honestly, I want credot for completing the Scepter of God quest so I can move on to the next part of the game, which I understand is playing POE in a more difficult mode. To me, games should no longer be played if the company won't go to the trouble of making sure every team member gets credit for finishing the quest, even if we weren't present at the death of a boss that it took us an hour or more to get to (cumulatively a week of play).

To put it another way, take out the whole experience tree and leveling system for everything if credit won't be applied when earned in quests. It's that simple.

Funny thing is people in global chat told me "no it's not a bug." Well that's fine, was glad to know it isn't, for then it's not a coding error but a game design flaw that has permeated all too many games, and has aided in the lowered standards and quality of games since when 16k of RAM had to be efficiently coded, and the impressions and happiness of players was paramount to companies who were effectively the pioneers of a whole new industry.

Again, you all were real responsive to disconnect issues. You've done well to make a game that puts the player first too; the ability to mix skills etc., is a marvel, especially how you all did it with an ingenious skill point map, beyond any game I've ever seen before.

So now, I hope you can appreciate making a future change to how quest completion is credited that won't lead to people who die just as a boss is killed being denied their rightfully earned credit for completing the quest.


Thank you,


AFSMcG

I am very early into the game, but my early impressions are not great.

Currency items vs gold: There is a reason every one else does gold. I need a full inventory of white items to buy one Town Portal scroll, and there is no way to convert the currency I get from selling items (Identify Scrolls, Transmutation Orbs, etc) into the ones I need to buy items (Whet Stones, Armour Scrap). As such, I have rubbish gear and no reliable way of upgrading. The absurd amounts of gear you need to sell to make even a single currency item, combined with the pitifully small inventory space, exasperate this issue. I am hauling myself back to waypoints every couple of minutes just to get enough for a lousy Town Portal! Why items should vary from 1x3 to 2x8 in size if they are worth the same amount is beyond me too. On average, larger items are worth more in other games (excepting jewels).

Gearing-up: This looks worse than Diablo III, and I am only in Act I/Normal! The concept of splitting gear along str/int/dex lines was great, but with stores effectively useless I am just not getting the gear I need. Perhaps there should be three shops: the healer sells int and int/dex gear, the blacksmith sells str and str/int gear, and a third seller stocks dex and dex/str gear. That way, assuming you can afford them, you are at least likely to see items you can use for sale. Sockets make it even worse. Unlinked sockets seem to be 100% useless in all situations, so their existence boggles the mind. Even if you get linked sockets, unless the colours are right they are still useless to you. I know higher level characters can fix this issue with currency items, but seems a lot of work for something that should not be rigged against the player in the first place.

Active Skills: I love the basic concept of the active skill system, but find it a little slow/unreliable getting the skills you want for your build. A merchant who can exchange skill gems would be really good. Say, three gems of a specific colour for any gem of that same colour. It would improve the early game play a lot, and I assume help players later on with getting the right support gems too.

Passive Skills: The tree is both daunting and exciting at first glance. Now I am actually filling it in, it is not so exciting. Essentially, you just need to pick which nodes are essential for your build, then every other point goes into getting you to those nodes. It seems convoluted for no benefit. I am not sure what, if anything, could be done better, but in actual practice it is not as exiting as it seems. There is only an illusion of customisation. Since some keystones seem all but essential (eg Chaos Inoculation), this illusions is very faded.

Playability: This is a major issue. The desync is absurd in this game. I frequently have to stop still for 30-60 seconds for my actions to register, sometimes stand still for minutes waiting for the game to get back on track, and spam /oos more than the attack button! Even when the desync is manageable, game-play is extremely slow compared to other Diabloesques and the FoV is absurdly small --- max-zoomed-out feels like max-zoomed-in on other games! I have had a lot of headaches with instances timing-out on me too. Die (or lineout and relogin), go back to waypoint, oh have to redo the last area to find my way back to where I was before, which I may now need to restart over because it has also timed out. Again, no idea what, if anything, can be done, but very, very annoying.

Keeping it short:

Good game, a lot more depth and thought put into items and building progressions then XXXXXX III. However...

Bugs:

- Desync makes this game very frustrating to play at times.

- Sudden log outs, and often minutes of progression lost in a "backtrack" are maddening. (This seems to have been fixed, for the most part)

Papercuts of death:

- Gem stacking please?

- Buy back from vendors please? (The item space is so limited you are forced to port a lot)

Design issues:

- Either more options to change passive skills OR more explanation of the total bonuses you are getting thought the in-game skill tree and the web site.

- Why am I seeing items drops 20 to 25 level below the area I am fighting in?

　　- Area bosses need to be more clearly defined graphically. Quite often you will get "100 to zeroed" by a boss that looks similar to the massive pack of minions around it.

- And while we're on the subject, the difference between elite monsters, and monsters with certain affixes and the general difficulty of any given area is absurd. The spikes in this graph need to be flattened a bit.

- Parties are fairly bad for anything but XP grinding. The loot system means the greedy win. Death of a party member at the wrong time means they can't get quest rewards -simply bad all around.



My inital view on this game is that it was released in a far less polished form, but with many, many more expansion options then "other" action RPGs on the market. I expect good things to come.

Issue #1 is desync and bugs. You are going to retain a lot more players by fixing these glaring problems first.

There is too much RNG in Path of Exile! No one wants to spend hours farming chromatics or jewelers or whatever to craft a single item, then use all the things they farmed, not get what they want and have to start all over again. Crafting in this game completely hinges on RNG. I have only been playing this game for a few weeks and I'm already planning on uninstalling the game. RNG is a bad thing in games, not a good thing, and this game has a ton of RNG as it is with item drops, mob stats, etc. Fix the crafting, the one thing that should be able to be controlled, not be dependent on luck. If you do not change the crafting RNG I can guarantee more and more people will quit Path of Exile from frustration.

Why in the world are people who are lvl 17 trying to leave feedback on the passive skill tree and say that its just an illusion of choice? You obviously haven't put any effort into really trying the game yet to leave any such feedback.

I just got done with normal difficulty, and I raced to these forums to post on how much I love this game at the moment.
I play games to hang out with my friend, since both us of are in the military and different areas. He showed this game to me, but I was very hesitant about it first because I saw a video and it looked like Diablo, and second because it was free.
We started up 2 characters in Nemesis and got them up to about lvl 38, our passive skill trees were so messed up and had no survivability. They ended their demise at that unique trapper right before Dom.
We then did our research and made new characters and brought them back up to par. We were so stressed out right before the big fight and i thought to myself "I don't remember the last time I was scared of a boss fight in any game!"
We finally miraculously beat him after about 20 minutes, and HAD to take a break, since both of us were standing while playing because we were so stressed!
Thank you guys so much for this game and the constant updates! Will be playing a lot more of this game!

So, I like the game enough to reinstall it.

But, as an addendum to my previous post. I am playing to play out the story, 3 times in a row is 3 times in a row (normal, cruel, and merciless). A major problem I see, besides the still unfixed desync, is the unchained Exiles. Please note the desync and issues with Unchained Exiles go hand in hand.

I was in the Caverns dungeon, no hadn't put up a portal, I am playing alone as usual, and here comes this crazy attacking at high speed Unchained Exile, and his skill of choice? Spectral Throw with axes, walls of 5 of them coming at me 3 times in less than 3 seconds.

Now, for me, playing the game is about doing my quest and I had just killed a bunch of mobs and was evaluating my inventory items (since inventories are so small I have to keep portaling to sell stuff. You probably made them small to try to discourage botting, those whispers from unpronounceable names that tell me to go to some website to buy chaos orbs etc. show how well the small inventory (bag) space has failed to keep botting and gaming sweat shops from happening in POE). But as I am looking at what I have to fit as much as I can (so if I disconnect after I teleport I will have as many items as will fit), I am hit by the unchained exile, 3 hits and dead. On my end I ran and was running, getting hit while moving on the screen, but I didn't see anyone near me. Alas, I was desync, probably from the Unchained Exile spamming Spectral Throw. When the resurrect button comes up, I am placed right next to him -- gotta love desync I guess, the new "difficulty" POE game mechanic apparently.

So I go back and kill the Unchained Exile, but those 5 axes being spit at me were far more powerful than my bow could ever be. So while people say "there'll be a patch on Spectral Throw soon," I contend that it appears pretty obvious that someone in the development team could care less if they abuse us by failing to fix the desync and sending some boss at us spamming a well overpowered skill that almost instantly kills us, and, therefore, Grinding Gear Games will never make a change to Spectral Throw.

To be sure, I'd prefer a preferences box to toggle off spawning the Unchained Exiles. I want to do my quests, not deal with surprise attacks that I don't want and didn't ask for. The RPG part of MMORPG should be room enough to appreciate that players want to go through the story, not be interrupted because some coder needs to abuse the players by spawning some nut job whose drops are mostly magic and worthless when we kill them.

Now, I can be bought on this issue, meaning: Make Unchained Exiles drop 10 chaos orbs (or 10 Alchs, 3 Regrets, 5 Fusings, etc. valuable stuff for crafting or barter), not worthless items that I have to use an id scroll for to get anything I can use (like the parts for an Alch orb).

Fusing orbs might not be necessary if they didn't cost 3 jewlers at the vendor...Probably an idea of the same developer who needs to have Unchained Exiles in the game.

Please, for the sake of the game being fun, fix the desync and give me the option (by a check box in Preferences) not to have Unchained Exiles appear in the quests I am doing, or make their drops worth while, or, if possible, do all 3. You chose to make the game free to play, that is no excuse for the desync, nor abusing it by these random spawns. Like you I like gaming too, that doesn't mean, however, my way of gaming is to put myself in situations that I didn't ask for and fighting Unchained Exiles (or anything else for that matter) while desynced is frustrating and taking the fun out of just playing through a quest. The weekend gamers, over time, will find these Unchained Exiles alone a nuisance to their progress (especially because of the Unchained Exile's worthless drops).

It's simple really: Destroy the fun, destroy the reason to play the game. Options in preferences are the key to keeping the game fun for as many players as possible, use them.... After you fix the desync that is destroying the gameplay from cruel on up, thank you.


Please note, as much as I do not like the Unchained Exiles, I am explaining that the game economy will get a big boost if you make these Unchained Exiles drop differently than just a boss, and that this would be a boon for the game economy. If a player doesn't have Chaos Orbs they might turn on the option to take a chance on getting some, as an example that also shows how easily an option toggle would solve this problem... Again, after you fix the desync.

I honeslty started to play this game seriously like 1 month ago, I do enjoy the game I really do, I love the art, I love the lore, I love the music, I love seeing so many pple in any hub, it feels alive, but, I truly believe that the passive skill tree is just a gimmick, probably 90% of the present nodes are worthless, I do not like either the fact that classes aren't classes but simple skins of you played character.

I guess it would be too much to ask you the revamp the whole system and make proper, well done, skills trees for each classes, each with their own abilities.

Still, PoE is the best modern arpg I've come to play.

I've been playing around 2 weeks and the game has really high potential! In the beginning, it got me hooked the way Diablo 2 got me hooked so many years ago (that's actually the reason I started to play it - everyone talking how it almost exactly captures the feeling of D2).

My playtime story...
Normal difficulty was very enjoyable - not too hard, but not too easy too. Exploring the options, skills, passives was interesting. Than you get to the end of act 3 and see what's going on..

I started playing a Witch and the first time I tried building a summoner. You know, lot's of summons, low risk, you just hang back and your minions do all the fighting. The only problem is that rare mobs and act bosses pretty much 1 hit all your summons, especially in the end of act 3. After dying a couple of times on Dominus normal, trying to fight him alone, I left the game for a few days, just out of frustration. Came back, got into a group, killed him. Than cruel...

The first 2 acts on cruel were good, not incredibly hard, but definitely a challenge. One has to be careful and progress slowly, as not to die a lot. Act bosses are pretty much impossible to fight alone, so a group is mandatory. Than you get to act 3 and start getting almost killed by just encountering groups of blues or bigger mobs. Those hero type mobs, that spawn from time to time around some maps ALWAYS get your shields and health low from just one attack. Died 3 times fighting a jumping maniac, just because he moves and attacks 3 times as fast as me. Okay, no big deal. Progress even more slowly and carefully. Do some grinding in the docks, just to over level a little, so maybe it will be easier.. Nope, 7 levels ahead of mobs I encounter a rare giant skeleton in the library, that has health regen almost as fast as my damage output. I should note that I've switched to a cold crit build now and have a very nice dps. After running around and fighting him for almost 20 minutes, what do I get? Jack sh*t. Not even one rare drop. Anyway, continuing on, trying to do the "A Swig of Hope" quest, I get into the maze. Going around, killing mobs incredibly slow, I get ambushed by a group of blue devourers, plus the unique one that spawns there, and directly die. No chance to run, no chance to fight. After one hour and around 7-8 deaths later, I finally kill them all and continue on my way to the plum, just to find another unique (or was it rare) devourer, that again just 1 hits me. After a couple more minutes dodging and hitting, I finally kill him and the rest on the mobs, get the plum, port to the docks to finish the quest, just to be 1 hit by a hero archer the moment I moved from the waypoint. At this point I just ragequitted.


Software problems...
Dat desync. I've died countless times just from being ported in groups of mobs or bosses, or getting them ported on me. Although my ping never goes above 50ms, rarely get spikes (only after loading), this happens more than I've ever seen in the worst online games.

Awfully slow command execution. Not sure exactly how the game handles commands, like movement, casts, etc., but it needs a LOT of improvement. The game either does too much commands or doesn't do anything at all. I can't remember how many times I tried to move and my character just stood there. Can't remember how many times I wanted to move after a cast and instead got 2-3 more casts, or wanted to cast, but instead moved. Which brings me to the next problem...

Model boxes. In the beginning of the game, you know, when you have simple weapon attack bound on LMB, seems pretty logical. Until you encounter your first big group or double group of mobs. If you click anywhere near a mob, instead of moving you attack. If you click right on top of a mob, instead of attacking, you move. WAT?

Physics. (or how the hell do my skills work?) Around 50% of the time, instead of dealing damage, I just run around, trying to find the perfect angle and position, from which my spells would actually do something. Half of the time I'm just casting an AoE spell and watching how only 2-4 mobs take damage. How about the other 20-30? Move... Cast from there. Kill 2-3. Move. Cast again. 2-3. Yeah...

Oh, you thought your spells would hit through open spaces, like doors? Nope. Unless you stand right in front of the door in exactly the right amount of distance from it. But you see how the animation of the skill is actually traveling trough the space? Well, that doesn't mean that it should damage the mob, which it hits. It's just for graphics, you know... Standing too close to a wall? Well, let me take all hits from that skill, so your casting just brings up visuals and no damage at all.

Forced party. I've already mentioned how I rather play alone, but that is impossible, since act bosses, starting from act 3 normal, are impossible to beat alone. This means, you're forced to do it in a party. It's not a big deal.. or at least it shouldn't be, until..

Party ping. Remember how I said I never get ping above 50ms playing solo? Well, than why does the ping jump to 300ms++ when in party? The moment I leave the party, ping immediately drops to 40.

Weather effects. In most areas I run the game at a minimum of 60fps, no problem. In areas where there is rain or fog, the fps halves, falling even below 30fps sometimes. In some places it does it in the whole area (like the Imperial Gardens or the Hedge Maze), in others just in certain points (like in the Docks). Simple weather effects like rain and fog shouldn't cause this much strain on the performance. They desperately need optimization.


Gameplay balance...
Act bosses should be possible to be killed solo on all difficulties, by not only pro or hardcore gamers. As the mechanics probably allow it, it is rather a very unpleasant experience trying to do it on Cruel difficulty, don't even want to think about Merciless. That doesn't mean they should be relatively easy. Just not 1 hit you.

Rare and Unique mobs shouldn't be able to have some buffs together (at least on cruel). Last yellow I encountered had Curse Immunity, Health Regen, Quick, Bonus Fire Damage, Shields. This pretty much means, as my cold crit build, that I cannot kill this mob. He takes all my shields in just one hit, and 90% of my health with another (700 shields, ~850 health), can't curse him to lower damage. Can't outrun him, can't curse him to slow him down. Got his shields down? Gotta get mine up, oh! His are also up! Health regen?...

Health regen on boss type mobs. Around the end of act 3 cruel, rares with health regen buff regenerate their health almost as fast as my dps, which makes fighting them a long and tedious hit-and-run festival.

Item drops. I don't know how the game calculates drops, but since starting cruel difficulty I haven't found any better rares, that the ones I'm using since normal. And the ones I'm using are all crafted from whites.

Orbs. Since crafting is totally random, the orb drop rate is absolutely ridiculous. I've been farming the Docks for 3 hours and got only 3 chromatic orbs (trying to change my crafted gloves' sockets), which resulted in even worse socket colors. So 3 more hours for 3 more tries? This needs either a boost in orb drops or a system, which is more expensive, but 100% sure. For example: using 2 chromatic orbs to change the color of just 1 socket, but you can choose the color of the socket. Or using 2 exalted orbs to add 1 opt to your rare, but you can choose the opt (the numeric values are still random).


Options...
Chat size should be changeable. On a 1920x1080 resolution, it takes more than 1/3 of the screen. Text size should be editable as well - the current one is too big for my taste.

Disable sound should be in sound options. Although I'm using -ns, one should be able to mute and unmute sound completely in game, instead of having to restart the game and change parameters every time. Or at least have a master volume slider.

Corner map should be zoomable. Also, some kind of a frame would be nice, so it fits in with the rest of the UI. Example:

Auto level gems. While I know the reasoning behind why some might say this is not a good idea, I would really like having this feature in the options (off by default), so you don't have to manually accept the level of the gem every time you're in a fight or wait after the fight and loose xp for the gem.

Skill bindings. A few more keys for skills would be really appreciated. I mean, only 8? Come on, 2-3 more won't hurt anyone.. Only my curses and auras are 7.

Remember passive skill tree position, so we don't have to scroll it every time we open it.

Always show mob models above items' names. When fighting big groups and getting a ton of item drops it can get a little frustrating, not being able to see the mobs, because items' names just pile on top of them.

Always make items transparent, if in front of the camera. Trees in the jungles, cranes on the docks, rocks in the caves - a lot of these things can obstruct the vision of your character and surroundings when they get in the way of the camera and you have no idea what's going on behind them, until you move.

Being able to equip or unequip items, while selling window is open. While not being able to change your equips, while trade sell window is open, is some kind of protection against selling your gear by mistake, I do think that just flagging the gear as unsellable should be better. Every time I want to switch my gear while that window is open, I have to close it, switch it, than open it again...

Auto-sort inventory/stash buttons. This is a great way to focus the player on the gameplay instead of having to manually rearrange his stuff.


These are just a few bothers and ideas, which I think would make the game a lot more enjoyable and playable, if addressed correctly. Although a big chunk of my post might've sounded a little hostile, in the beginning, I do think the game is really great and can get even greater! I really like the feel and atmosphere, so I hope these things get fixed in the near future!