I've been playing Path of Exile II for a few months now and while overall I am enjoying the game, there are some things about it that I find very very frustrating. I finally got my monk that I rolled to the end game and I found that for whatever reason he was quite squishy. I kind of expected him to be a bit more durable like the monk in Diablo III, but that isn't the case at all.
I decided to jump back over to the Ranger that I rolled shortly after I created my monk. That's where the first big problem came. I don't know if it is just something with the early access, but to get a new character to the end game area, you have to run them through the full campaign first.
I want to take a second before I continue to apologize. I'm going to make a lot of comparisons to Diablo III in this post, it's not because I think D3 is better, but it is what I am familiar with, so it is hard not to compare the two games. If I had played Diablo IV I would probably be comparing it to that.
So anyway, unlike D3 where once you get one character through the campaign you can pretty much run any new character through endgame content, that isn't the case with Path of Exile II. It's not that I am asking for a free level up, but being able to skip all the other stuff would be awesome.
Which leads me to another issue. Right now there are only three acts. I think eventually there are going to be something like six acts, but there are also two difficulty levels of each act. That means once you run through acts 1 through 3, you then have to do the same acts all over again in "cruel" difficulty.
The problem is, nothing changes between the two things, it's the exact same content with the exact same quests. It gets a bit lame after a while. I thought about rolling another different class, but I don't think I want to have to go through all three acts twice again.
Once you do get to the endgame, things don't open up quite as much as you might think. Sure, they have a lot of different areas to explore, but it's basically the same stuff you have seen before. In fact, you can go back and play acts, but instead of it being open, you have to go through all of the cinematics again. For example, there is an area in act 3 where halfway through the map you have to sit through a cinematic and fight a boss.
I feel like once you get through that area once and make it to the end game that area should just be wide open. They can even leave the boss there, but don't make me have to sit through the whole cutscene again.
The "Atlas" area of the game is kind of cool. It has different maps with different affixes to each one. For example you probably can't read it in the photo above, but the map I am hovering over has 22% increased magic monsters and an additional 11% chance to have a "strongbox". You need waystones to access maps and waystones come in a a range of levels from 1 to 15 or something like that.
Additionally, just as regular items can have rarities with different affixes to them, waystones can as well. You might get a rare waystone that has an increased chance of more waystones dropping for you, as well as a bunch of buffs and debuffs that will be applied to you when you attempt the map.
Again, you probably can't read it, but for example, the image above shows that this Tier 2 Waystone I am hovering over gives you +85% increased chance of a waystone dropping, 28% increased experience, monsters have 50 to 59 percent increased ailment threshold, and they also have 50 to 59 percent stun threshold.
In addition to that, you might be able to see there are towers in the atlas area. If you complete the towers, you can place items at the top of the tower to "influence" other maps in the radius of the tower. As you can imagine there are about a million (don't quote me on that) different combinations of modifiers that you can put on maps between towers, the map itself, and your waystones.
As you start to complete more maps, you also get access to an atlas skill tree which allows you to add even more permanent modifiers to your maps. It's a pretty robust system and I like that.
What I don't like is the fact that if you die, you lose pretty much everything when you are running a map. Anything you have already picked up stays in your inventory, but anything on the ground is gone. Any modifiers that once existed on the map are gone including special bosses or other special events inside the map. You still have to run the map again, but after that point the only way you can modify it is with the affixes on whatever waystone you use.
I can't tell you the number of times I have gotten all the way through a map and have just one boss left and then I suddenly die. Sometimes because I am too over confident and other times because the mechanics of the game just feel broken.
For example, take a look at this shot from a session I was playing the other day. Look at all that loot left on the ground. I have read online that in Path of Exile I you actually had six chances to complete a map before it got wiped. That seems much more reasonable to me. At the very least give us two or three chances. That just makes a lot of sense.
The problem is even though my Ranger isn't quite as squishy as my monk, I still die a lot. The other thing I forgot to mention is if you die in a map, you lose like 10% of your experience. I have seen countless posts on the PoE2 subreddit that I am subscribed to where people can't get past level 80 because every time they make progress in a map they die an it takes them back down to zero experience towards level 81.
I haven't gotten to that point yet, but leveling is definitely a lot harder now that I am having a difficult time running through tier 4 and 5 maps. Sure, I can go back and run tier 1 and 2 maps, but the experience you gain from them barely moves your bar on the bottom of the screen. I have used some recommended builds that I found online and it is amazing the kind of synergy you can have with different skills as you start to combine them.
They really put a lot of time and thought into that. If you go back and read my last post about PoE2 and look at just how complex the skill tree is, you will see what I mean. It's pretty intense. As you progress in the game, you also eventually unlock ascendancy points. Those allow you to upgrade your character into one of two different specializations. For example a Ranger can become a Deadeye Ranger or a Pathfinder Ranger. Likewise monks can either be an Invoker Monk or an Acolyte Monk. As you can imagine there are many different combinations available with not even half the character classes having been released yet.
Gameplay for the most part has been relatively stable for me. I have had a couple of times when I got disconnected in the middle of a boss fight or map (not cool), and there have been a handful of times that the game felt laggy. You can't really see it, but there is a stats overlay you can enable that shows up in the upper right of the screen. This gives me info like the latency on my network connection, CPU, GPU, and storage performance and other things like that.
It's pretty nice to have a little snapshot of what is going on while you are playing the game.
I look forward to seeing how Grinding Gears Games expands on the game in the future. As I said before, it seems like at least once a week they have different updates that are getting applied to the game.
Other than that, I just need to keep grinding away and Get Gud!
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Sounds like EQ1, but with that you lose ur gear too if you can't get back to ur corpse. Hardcore.. but terrifying too. Diablo I found far too easy, and with easy I get bored. I tried POE1 and also got bored quickly.
In this one you at least get to keep your gear, so that is good.
I had no idea that you are a gamer. I have played some diablo game but it never really hooked me like for example The Witcher games, Mass Effect games or Dragon Age Origins. So perhaps this game is not the best choice for me...Especially considering that I still have not played Divinity original sin 2 or Baldur's Gate 3. Those two should keep me occupied till the Witcher 4/ Witcher 1 remake/ Mafia 4...And then I will be playing them for who knows how many times...😛
Witcher 3 was a fun game. I didn't play all the extra stuff, but I did most of the original game. All of the running back and forth got a bit tedious after a while, but I enjoyed the game. I have heard really good things about Baulder's Gate 3. I played a lot of Diablo 3, so PoE2 seemed like a natural fit for me. I'm kind of curious about the newest Civ game that just came out too.
For me Witcher 3 is perfect game. And expansions are just as good as base game.
The only thing I didn't like about it was there were so many buttons to have to remember. Other than that, it was pretty cool. Some of the quests seemed repetitive too, but that is pretty much any game these days.
I’ve not played but it looks like a game I could get into. I have heard a lot about it and watch a few streamers but I’m already spread too thin and need to finish up some of my other games (fallout 4 and FfX 16) before I step onto another one.
Fallout 4 was a fun game. I played it off and on at work for a while until I completed one of the scenarios. PoE2 has definitely consumed more of my time than I thought it would.
The updated PS5 version is super fun I’m pretty much working my way through all the DLCs right now.
It's interesting the renewed interest it got after the show came out.