0.4 Feedback

Dear readers,

My feedback philosophy revolves around tackling every small thing that should be improved, especially since these small things are seldomly being discussed by most people since they first focus on the big topics (such as the new mechanic or balance). If you take these small things into consideration, many people in the player base will surely greatly appreciate it and see that you have a precise perception of the game's in-depth issues.


- Movement Speed / Mobility / Walking & Zone Sizes.
There are very clear reasons why people are gravitating towards the fastest builds. I almost quit playing the game altogether in 0.1 because of this as well until I discovered the Tempest Flurry Attribute Stacker. In a game where you become a demi-god that kills some the most powerful entities in the world, it feels awful to be stuck at +45% MS (as a Ranger!!) or awkwardly bump into terrain 24/7 while sprinting. You don't want to trivialize encounters with too much MS, yet the game revolves around becoming strong enough to trivialize encounters and it already does so. The game feels like I'm wading through waist-high water and I noticed how many times when I pick up a speed shrine, there's a sigh of relief coming from me IRL, as if some kind of baggage fell off from me.
Solutions:
a) I've played PoE1 and wouldn't want mobility that extreme. But I think the time is ripe to at least try out using mobility skills as valid, low-entry mobility options, say by making Blink not cost spirit and make Leap Slam faster.
b) Boots should have implicit movement speed, like belts do with charms.
c) Increase player MS altogether somehow. Just adding 20% flat to everybody wouldn't hurt.
( d) General action speed is very low, especially in the beginning of the game. Feels clunky and unsatisfying and like I'm wading through water. All actions should feel *clean*)
e) If you don't want to increase MS, at least make the zones smaller, both in campaign and endgame. There's way too much walking and boring downtime.


- Sprint.
- It still feels very clunky and unpleasant to use. When you bump into something or stop sprinting it puts you into an awkward animation. It's anything but smooth and it honestly think I'm more agile IRL.
- Getting hit with a single hit while sprinting should not get you heavy stunned, it's extremely punishing. Adjusting it like you're on a rhoa or a bit weaker than that would be much more appropriate (building up a visible stun meter). Not even in Dark Souls 1 are you being punished anywhere this hard for getting hit while sprinting, which is a notoriously difficult game that also wants to emphasize meaningful combat. Maybe this should make you rethink this design decisions. (I really think everybody would cheer up seeing this being improved)
- turn speed is too low. It feels like driving a truck. Your character becomes a kind of demi-god in the endgame, yet a real-life human probably has better mobility in that regard. Crazy.
- disattach sprint from rolling! There should at least be an option to bind it onto a seperate key
- using Blink feels quite bad due to entering the sprint animation so easily

- Game Difficulty.
The camapign is simply too difficult. I've got 1000+ hours in PoE2, I'm a soulslike veteran, played SSBM on a high level for years and please let me tell you: your game is too hard. I played Poisonburst PF with my very best efforts and died about 100 times in campaign, often getting one-shot by bosses despite my best efforts of minmaxing gear with my given resources at league start (basically SSF).
In the case of Mighty Silverfist I get it and accept it as its "thing"/gimmick and it's kinda funny in that case. Here's a list of things that are unacceptably hard.
- Act 1 mobs are too many and sometimes too quick, especially the wolves. I had a friend who was interested in the game, picked up monk and kept getting kicked around by 200% MS wolves while he could barely find time to attack and when he did, he did almost no damage. He did not pick up the game again.
- Generally speaking, the campaign is too hard. It really feels like a game for hardcore gamers ONLY. I do like hardcore games, but putting the bar so high is definitely repelling a lot of people. The bosses soak so much damage and some builds just feel too weak (bow builds in my experience)
- Trials of Sekhema Honour Damage. Generally a very stressful concept. Lasting punishment for most minor mistakes, especially with RNG of afflictions mixed into it. I have no feeling of power fantasy at all playing this and losing any honour in stage 3 or 4 of a run makes me want to log out.

- Bosses.
- Too hard. They leave too little margin for error while they (esp. in campaign) generally have too much HP and can take forever. You could easily cut off like 20% of their HP and still have a memorable and challenging fight.
- Bosses should have much less or no phases of invulnerability (especially while they are allowed to attack you). They're simply RIGHT THERE yet your weapon magically turns into a wet noodle all of a sudden? Feels quite like unfair BS, is bad for immersion and creates more tedium.
- Bosses that waste your time. Very big for me. The Crowbell could also just have 2 phases; the act 4 final boss talks SO MUCH and EVERY TIME despite having heard it on multiple retries AND has three phases; the mermaid fight is VERY annoying for having multiple phases that make her invulnerable and most punishing if you lack DPS. I plead to you to look into this
- Bosses like Prince Azmadi kept one-shotting me from off-screen while I barely had any DPS. Winning against him kinda came down to luck after like 15 sweaty attempts.
- The Trials of Sekhema twin bosses from Stage 2 can attack you after they died with projectiles coming form the edge of the arena
- Abyssal rares that cast lightning storms on you -> visual clarity is lacking while the damage is huge

- Arbiter of Ash.
I only fought him on easy difficulty, but it almost took me an hour and it also basically came down to luck. I have the following issues:
1. The circles on the ground that you have to get into are too many. And maybe they also shouldn't oneshot the vast majority of builds.
2. He keeps attacking me with big AoEs while I'm in the circle and I literally can't do anything but watch myself die. Not even Dark Souls 1 was that unfair.
3. You sometimes have to run across the stage to get into the circle and he meanwhile attacks and moves into you, interrupts your sprint (and you obviously die). Is this some Kaizo-level of unfairness.
4. Invulnerablity during his Fire Storm, his other oneshot gimmick
5. I despise these oneshots. They appear way too often, too.
6. In his second phase he sometimes slams down from above and there is no indication for it whatsoever. Comes down to luck, it seems.

- Group Play.
- Rarity/Quantity of loot drops should stay the same regardless of the amount of players in vicinity. It should scale directly with amount of players in map. The way it is now it makes playing together annoying since you always have to see where everyone is and make them play together whilst people like to play the way they want to. If the maps are already harder when playing together, the loot should behave the same way.
- Not being able to revive others in endgame sucks a lot. Imagine playing together, juiced maps with 0 revives. Someone dies suddenly and has to sit around forever while others now have to wrap up the map ASAP. Not fun.
- add an option for a sound effect on receiving a message from group chat, just like for private messages.


- Inventory management improvements.
We should not be dependend on things like regex and other external tools. A lot of tedium to be found here.
a) Implement the same advanced search options from the trade site into the stash, it would be a huge help since you have to scan so much loot that it gets nauseating. I end up filling my stashes with so much decent loot but I can't look at all of that piece by piece. It costs a lot of time and energy and you're not actually playing the game, but applying your filters manually
b) key + click combination that forces an item from inventory to go into the opened stash tab regardless of affinity (if it's an appropriate stash tab type). This way you could manage things such as well-rolled tablets and juiced waystones better to place them into a different place quickly instead of dumping them between the heaps of worse tablets/waystones
c) stash tab affinity for all kinds of equipment, specific and more general ones i.e. boots, quivers, but also off-hands and two-handed weapons and so on


Incursion / Vaal Temple
- current temple farming with extreme juice caused a massive inflation (as of 31th Dec 25), this should not happen again
- mobs should attack you more aggressively while you're in the rooms instead of the player having to search single white mobs. Hard to describe the feeling of being extremely powerful, but you're stuck in this rooms trying to find a single white monster. This is a very big point for me and also applies to strongboxes and Ritual
- rooms have too many nooks and crannies, small objects and so on that characters love to get stuck in, bump into or for monsters to hide
- Too little player agency while trying to build the temple. I'd love to sacrifice and protect as many rooms as possible, so you actually build it the way you want to. Right now building your temple feels like two steps forward and 1-2 steps back when closing it. It takes so long! And getting crucial rooms deleted makes me just want to Alt+F4.
- farming crystals should maybe be removed altogether? Maybe turn it into a droppable currency?
- not nearly enough checkpoints
- building up a temple takes a ridiculous amount of time and effort while there is quite little payoff for a long time

- Monster improvements.
- Inherent invulnerability. Being forced to interact with monsters inherent mechanics is annoying and tedious, but incentivizing to play around their mechanics is cool (i.e. shields). Say you want to do a Ritual or Strongbox, but you're forced to find a stray monster that is hidden underground. It's a small thing, but it adds up. This searching for single white monsters becomes an especially big issue in the Vaal Temple. It makes you feel like you're overqualified and you didn't sign up for that kind of gameplay. I'm thinking of the ground worms from Act 2 and Prowling Shades from Act 3, Knight-Gaunt from Act 1, Vaal construct monsters (that even attack while invulnerable!!)
-> Perhaps there could be a indicator on the minimap if very few monsters are left or they just count as killed and the encounter is over, if only like 1-2 white mobs are left. Or mobs charge at you more actively (especially in the Vaal Temple). Or just remove their invulnerability altogether.
- Priest of the Sun-like beams. The beam is a quite cool concept, but the range and most importantly the turn speed is too high. I think you got it right with the Abyss rares with their beam skill - it's awesome. They don't have such high turn speed which makes you have to react to it and there's a good amount of margin for counterplay. But: you added another beam monster into the game (from Act 4?) and it also turns too fast, so you have to simply stay out of range until it stops, which is too much.
- Act 1 wolves and other fast mobs are too many and too fast
- Proximal Tangibility is too strong IMO and should maybe have a partial uptime? Or just remove it altogether
- the mana draining lightning ring mod still feels too strong damage-wise and mana drain-wise. If this mod is on a fast enemy, you have almost no counterplay. In Simulacrum, a fast tanky rare mob with this mod is way more dangerous than a double boss situation.
- Shroud Walker is problematic. a) In combination with things such as Magma Barrier, a mob can teleport next to you as the Magma Barrier detonates. No counterplay.
b) Stealing this mod with Headhunter feels like you're playing with a massive rubberband internet connection. I'd rather not have this in the game and part of my gameplay. Very disruptive. Especially running past some mobs and it pulls you back, you run away again and it pulls you back again. Feels really awful.
- abyssal mods stolen by headhunter activate all the time even if no enemies are around.
- Expedition mages cause an AoE attack that is quite badly telegraphed. It should have better visibility and longer wind-up, especially considering its damage.
- Monsters shouldn't bodyblock you before they can be damaged. This strongly applies to spawning Expedition monsters or when monsters crawl out of an Abyssal Pit. You can get completely stuck and die. Not fair.

- Layouts.
- Still too many unpleasant ones. Tight corridors, stairs, nooks, crannies, tight spaces you can't make out, small rooms and doors and plenty dead-ends. Maps like the Derelict Mansion and Jade Isles are some good examples.
- endgame maps and campaign areas are *way too big* on average and take too long to walk through with very little movement speed. Act 1 and 2 have good sizes, but from Act 3 on you walk much more, despite barely having more MS.
- Would be very nice if we could decide which layout to run. Perhaps there could be a item for each layout that you can put into the realmgate, along with a waystone and tablets, and it makes you run a specific layout. Good for player agency and enjoyment. Tradeoff: you are not progressing your atlas by moving somewhere.


- Endgame.
- Juice is too weak. When using a T15 120% IIR waystone, 115% player MF + golden charm and three good, juicy rare tablets, max loot (map effect) atlas tree, the loot feels underwhelming. I feel like it was better last league, but even there there was way too much garbage loot. Having a strong character, but not being able to get better rewards makes me want to quit the league since the payoff for being very strong is not there (esp. compared to PoE1 T16 & Nightmare maps). A very simple solution: drastically reduce the amount of loot (esp. gear), but improve the mods they roll. I've been sifting through incredible amounts of bad equipment. Paired with a lack of crafting, it's been very exhausting. I end up sharpening my loot filter so much, that barely anything drops in a map.

- T16 & T17 maps with high difficulty and reward

- Atlas device has four squares for waystones, but you can only effectively put in one waystones and then run it. What are the other three squares for? It should be one, just like at the realmgate.


UI / UX / QoL / Misc.

- Ange should not be a vendor, so you can use Crtl + Left-click and Alt + Left-click to access both Currency Exchange and her shop. Right now you have to click the shop option manually. We need a key + click-combination to access her shop.

- Currency exchange. The autofill of numbers is very buggy in multiple ways.
- The autofilled amounts of currency are sometimes way off the market price which makes you have to calculate the right amount yourself. Say the ratio is 1:1.7, but after filling out one field, the other gets autofilled with an amount that's equal to 1:1 for no reason. (no, it's not due to the limited amount of items offered for the cheapest price.). Filling in the numbers is also messy: you want to type something in and an automatically filled number pops up right before and you type. Happens very often. I think it happens when both number spaces don't have a fixed number. You fill out one spot and click the other, but in the same moment it pops up a number and you type right inbetween these new numbers instead of a blank spot? Hard to explain, but I am fully convinced there is something wrong and my friends experienced the same thing.

- still no options to scan your Tablets or Waystones for mods such as "at least 30% rarity of items found". Having to scan and evaluate each one manually is, once again, tedious. The search for the keyword "rarity" is crazy useless despite it being one of the most imporant keywords. Especially bad when evaluating tablets.

- more auto-sort options for stash tabs and organic, built-in regex functions.

- Tablets should have their own affinity category because they get mixed with plenty other stuff

- no option to have local chat turned off by default

- still no in-game loot filter. This is very beginner-unfriendly, especially when ground loot is as cluttered with bad equipment as it is now.

- revealing desecrated modifiers should show the modifier's tier (when pressing Alt)

- add tags to modifiers so you don't have to look it up in the PoE2 database

- Can't search for a weighted sum of implicit stats of waystones on the trade site

- when cutting support gems, the list of your skills on the left should be in the order of the skills menu (the one when you press "G")

- need better options for minimap visibility when expanded

- Visibility of items that can be modified with an item such as an Exalted Orb needs to be clearer. Often I type gibberish into my search bar, so everything greys out and I can work better. Also: jewels with full mods still look as if you can apply an exalted orb, which is simply not correct.

- When opening the waystone stash tab it should always open the tier you had open the last time, not Tier 1 by default. Makes most sense.

- ritual altars should always indicate if they were already done or not on the minimap, not just based on proximity.

- often you can't see visited checkpoints on the (expanded) minimap if you're too far away. It's an important information, though

- would be nice to have access to the tablet and waystone stash tab from the map device (similar to relics when starting a Sekhemas run)

- map device keeps opening on the area last visited, not the last you looked at last. This is should not make it into 1.0 or even 0.5. Should've been gone long ago IMO

- hotkey for mounting rhoa

- can we have a setting to open doors automatically when walking close to them?

- Abysses are not closing and supposed leftover monsters nearby cannot be found at all, so the Abyssal Pit is just bricked (quite sure it's a bug)

- Ange should take currency from the stash and not inventory. I have to fill up the taken currency from my stash every time, even though I always need to have some of it with me for maps

- Playing 0.3 as LA Deadeye on Rhoa with Nova Projectiles was really fun and enjoyable and made me play more and not less. The most fun gameplay is a zen one, not the sweaty micromanagement, permanent power-plays because the latter burn you out fast and is genuinely stressful, can feel like work.

- minimap showing icons of all content - cool idea. On top, it would be good if a map counts as cleared when killing all rare mobs OR the boss. Icons for these two categories should be shown from the beginning. This gives the player the option to specialize more into mapping or bossing and play the game in the way they want to

- Monk is too weak early. Bad starter nodes, too clunky, early quarterstaff skills are weak and weird. I wish Ice Strike could be used with Level 1 Skill Gems.

- Life is very hard to get (especially on the passive tree) it's very hard to get tanky without ES. Many melee builds felt surprisingly squishy. About time that strength characters actually get tanky.

- The most underplayed Ascendancies need big, convincing buffs, as well as the most underplayed skills. Too many skills are too weak and don't scale well

- Minimap should show all icons of extra content after defeating the boss, not after finding all checkpoints. Maybe even show us where the boss is?

- Maybe remove unidentified magic & rare items from the game. This is some massive tedium and filtering them with a ground loot filter would remove a ridiculous amount of work and tedium from me; I would love you eternally for this. I strongly disagree that it would be "double fun" to pick it up and then ID. It's an extremely large amount of tedium. Would be nicer, if the loot that pops up is actually exciting and not another unrewarding to-do

- Trials of Chaos is no fun. Very heavy on RNG with mods and many of them are just annoying to play around. The floors themselves are kinda boring and tedious. Make the enemies harder and the mods more chill. And maybe make the tasks more fun. in Sekhemas the Hourglass Trial can be sped up by killing rare monsters, in ToC you can't. More agency would feel good. Remove the elevators (I beg you.) and the time freezing when entering rooms. Generally, I try to interact with ToC as little as possible.

- Delirium kinda lost its identity and relevance in 0.4. Could use more interesting, exclusive drops besides distilled emotions.

- in Act 2, you often can't see the quest marker properly when looking at the world map.

- in campaign, you're way too dependend on luck to have decent gear. We need MUCH more Essences and general (crafting) currency since most of the crafting is very luck-based as well. Stuff like Alchemy Orbs should be way more common than it is right now. It's crazy how few of them drop.

- less bad mods on gear. Even Tier 4 and 5 roll garbage too often. the weight of bad mods is too big. Too much (high ilvl) gear can roll low tiers too often.

- map sizes in campaign and endgame are too big, especially if player speed is not going to get buffed. 25% map size could still easily get cut off. Causes campaign to take too long, disincentivizes creating new characters and trying out new builds (which is one of PoE's biggest strengths)


General insights.

Generally speaking: Having no agency feels quite bad and is definitely not fun. This is why invulnerable enemies are unpleasant to face or trying to find singular white mobs to finish a ritual. Or being forced to run a certain layout.

Slog, friction, tedium. The game often has elements of being a slog or being too much of a hardcore game for "real gamers". Making it more fun and less punishing, but still challenging across the board would be amazing. I really wish there was more mobility in the game. I have no idea how you could conclude after last league that people were moving too fast. Options such as Rhoa had a huge advantage in that regard and people WANT to move fast. Making the zones smaller would be a good solution.
People don't play for the tedium, nor for endless inventory management. They want to play, have a proper challenge and be rewarded accordingly.

"

The camapign is simply too difficult. (...)
Rarity/Quantity of loot drops should stay the same regardless of the amount of players in vicinity(...)
- Bosses. - Too hard.

Campaign is too easy, bosses are too easy. You want to kill party play completely. What are you talking about brother?

"

- Getting hit with a single hit while sprinting should not get you heavy stunned, it's extremely punishing.

Sprint was introduced solely as a response to necessity of backtracking or moving around a cleared map. Not to sprint between the packs. You are using it wrong and getting punished by its design for it.

I read the rest and when you are not wrong, you are wishing for something that is either not gonna happen or working against another system (like your inventory improvements cutting the stashes Merch entirely, which is an income for company, so you can safely assume it stays).

-1

Saw campaign is too hard in the post somewhere …and yea, safe to say just no

"

Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

-1

Saw campaign is too hard in the post somewhere …and yea, safe to say just no

After 1k+ hrs of poe2 gametime. Is this even possible?

I agree with most of the post. Monster feedback. +1

Man, you absolutely nailed exactly how I've been feeling about 0.4. It’s easy to get distracted by the big flashy mechanics, but it’s these "small things" and daily friction that actually burn you out.

Here are my thoughts on your points:

Mobility & Sprinting: The "wading through waist-high water" analogy is painfully accurate. I don't want PoE1 zoom-zoom either, but getting heavy-stunned out of a sprint by a random stray hit feels terrible. Decoupling sprint from the roll button and giving us a separate keybind is my #1 most wanted feature right now.

Campaign & Boss Friction: Act 1 wolves are basically a filter for new players at this point, which is sad because the game gets so much better later. Completely agree on boss invulnerability phases—if a boss is on my screen and attacking me, I should be able to damage it. The Arbiter of Ash one-shots feel more like trial-and-error memory games than ARPG combat.

The "Last White Mob" Tedium: You hit the nail on the head with Vaal Temple and Ritual. There is nothing worse than having a god-tier build but being forced to play hide-and-seek with one burrowed worm or a single white mob stuck behind a pebble just to finish an encounter. They desperately need to add a proxy-kill or aggressive aggro for the last 5% of mobs in a room.

Loot & UI/QoL: The stash and inventory management is practically a second job right now. We need stash affinities for Tablets and Waystones, and built-in regex for the search bar is long overdue. Also, totally agree on Ange—having to manually click her shop option instead of just using a modifier-click is a small annoyance that adds up after the 500th time. And identifying hundreds of garbage high-ilvl rares just feels bad.

Great write-up. I really hope GGG sees this because fixing even half of these friction points would make the moment-to-moment gameplay feel incredibly smooth.

"

2836742981#3689 wrote:

Man, you absolutely nailed exactly how I've been feeling about 0.4. It’s easy to get distracted by the big flashy mechanics, but it’s these "small things" and daily friction that actually burn you out.

Thanks king, I really appreciate your kind words. Good to see that like-minded people are out there and that we can all agree on some real no-brainer things ^^

-1 for this post from me.

- Sprint single-handedly fixed all movement speed problems and backtracking in this game.

- Campaign is too easy. Apart from few mechanics (that you can avoid!) none of the bosses during campaign really pose a threat. You can take as many hits to your face as you want, just not all in small window.

- Bosses are a big selling point for this game and they should not be targetdummies. I will say that in the current endgame patch 0.4 bosses are not rewarding enough, but that most likely will change when patch 0.5 hits.

- Arbiter of Ash fight has almost no randomness. Before I killed it in hardcore this league, I practised it in softcore for 30-40min by slowly taking the fight and seeing all mechanics and testing everything out. After that practise, I realized that all the whining about "arbiter being a bullshit fight" just meant that those players weren't really good or didn't know how to do arbiter mechanics.

- For group play just removing "Gravebind" gloves from the game would be enough at this time. But based on what GGG has said, they want to remove rarity from equipment in the future, so that would fix those gloves at the same time for group play.

- Monster changes... everytime i hear about act1 wolves being too fast and dangerous, I just sigh... cant take a post too serious at that point. I also like how abyss rares are actually a challenge, before you get godlygear.