Loot needs a nerf

Last week, I posted that I thought loot was fine. I am not a strong / experienced player (made it to 49 on Templar in POE1 like 10 years ago) and had just started POE2 in March, but I had found myself finding sufficient currency and loot over the duration of the patch and had seen others loudly protesting that they were not receiving any, so I wanted to offer my two cents. After playing for 1 more week, I mean to double down on my position. Indeed, I think loot and currency are actually way too strong in this game. I have come to believe that those who disagree have either been unlucky or lack strategic thinking, which this game demands, I have been finding, in ways that most ARPGs do not.


As a result, in this post I will not only explain why I think loot is too strong, what is working well in POE2, what is not working well in POE2, and recommendations for a path forward, but I will also offer genuine advice to those who are struggling (one of POE2's biggest problems is that it is as a game fairly hostile to learning, it all seems to have to happen outside of the game's mechanisms).


First, for those who are shouting that there is no loot, look at this haul:
https://imgur.com/a/KbxOhU7

This was from one map. In total, it came out to about 270 exalts. That's about 2 divine from one map. This is fairly typical for me with proper planning. Look at the mods on the map and where it sits on the atlas (4 tower overlap!).

https://imgur.com/a/csJxgI2
https://imgur.com/a/Q11w00L

Tips for getting 2 divs per map
- Play with others. I'm guessing most folks are not playing with others. When reading responses to folks, I realized that maybe the experience of playing with my brother throughout the campaign was anomalous to the experience of most. More players means harder campaign, but more loot. We always had enough regals and exalts as a result. Find folks to play with in the campaign and maps, POE2 rewards this and it costs you nothing, just the ability to clear slightly harder content.
- Add rarity on your gear. My gear is not perfect, it has 57% rarity. But that makes a difference given with how rarity works.
- Towers are OP. Abuse them. In 0.1 we had one tablet per tower, and we tried to find 5 to 6 adjacent towers. Now we have 3 tablets per tower, juiced 2x with a T15, and we're finding 3-4 towers bunched together. That's a 4X IMPROVEMENT in towers. If you are not leveraging that MASSIVE loot improvement mechanic, you may be complaining when actually loot is OVERWHELMING in this game. Each of your tablets should be adding quantity of items, you'll want irradiates on every map with rituals to maximize your chances of finding omens, and you should use ritual maps that make omens more likely to appear. It isn't rocket science. Do this and you will have FIERCELY juiced maps around the towers.
- You have to run good maps. Good maps have rarity of items (must have mod) and quantity of items. Leverage sinistral omens to improve your maps (ie, will have fewer bad mods since all the good mods are on prefixes).
- A great middle game route is to use the unique maps. Whenever I have a 3-4 cluster, I'm always running the delirium unique map. It's just so good with that density and it makes up for its value by 100-200x with the splinters / high tier distilled emotions that drop. For its cheap price (a few chaos), I don't understand how players are not using this strategy. Sure, you get better tablets on your own eventually, but some of the uniques are easy to acquire, cheap, consistent, strong currency creators.

I bought the pilfering ring earlier today just to keep track of what I get when playing. Here it is after about 6 hours of play time (frankly, this is bewilderingly a lot more than even when I was expecting).
https://imgur.com/a/f40TwJH

Moral of the story? Loot and currency are WILD in this patch. If that isn't your experience, you're not clearing fast enough or not thinking deeply enough about the game - and it's not your fault, as GGG is very weak in teaching this element anywhere in the game and is an element I'd recommend they improve fast. Want a better experience? Just follow this recipe and will be collecting nearly 600 breach splinters on your maps (like above), frustrated at the quantity and inefficiency of collecting all this loot in no time. I genuinely do not think loot is weak and this game has other problems that GGG should focus above what is fundamentally a skill issue.

What POE2 Does Well
- The campaign story is excellent. It is memorable. Frankly, it is a work of art. These acts are having a story with the old acts of Diablo 2, iterating on them, improving them, playfully changing elements in them. It feels like a Renaissance Rafael painting of the Madonna that's having a conversation with a Giotto Madonna from centuries earlier. I can't wait for the last acts to be completed.
- Some of the music is some of my favorite music in any video game. The delirium music, slowly plucking an occasional chilling Once Upon a Time in the West western string, is haunting and catchy. It makes me run through the delirium mirror just to hear it every time! The sound effect of the divine orb dropping is GG. One reason why divines HAVE to continue to be scarce is that hearing this sound every hour or two just makes the grind worth it. The sound SOUNDS DIVINE! So much of the music - the Count fight for example - is SO good. Just calling it out.
- The difficulty feels like it's in a better place. The campaign was hard, a real grind, and, the start of maps were hard. The maps gradually became easy. And now every feels difficult except for the T4 pinnacle fights, which even with GG gear I can and do mess up. May be GGG is not happy yet with this progression and difficulty. I think it's the wrong thing to optimize for right now (and was probably a mistake for 0.2), more below in recommendations. I like that the game is challenging. I like that I cannot old-lady-slot-machine my way through the entire game and all the maps (until I got GG gear, and now I mostly can). I love that I can clear extremely quickly and efficiently in end game but that there is always a little brittleness and risk lurking everywhere.
- This is more than just an ARPG. This is a strategy game. POE2 requires planning. it requires strategic thinking. This is partly why I was dismayed about removing permanent ascendancies. I think the change was required because of how much 0.2 changed and how we came into the patch blind (and how difficult the campaign was), but I hope as things stabilize we eventually remove the ascendancy reset. I love the parts of POE2 that demand long term planning. Optimizing when I first get to the atlas to straight line rush toward nexuses and unique maps to get my atlas points up. Leaving towers for when I have higher tier maps that I can do because 99% > 1% and 3 tablets > 1. Selecting the right recipe of tablets to mega juice what I worked hard to find. Selecting the right maps. In the campaign! - where I have to decide if I want attributes or chaos resistance and my build is not at its peak yet. To be honest, I'm not sure if GGG is aware of this as a strength of its game. It often, or at least sometimes, feels like GGG makes decision that hurt our ability to execute on long term strategic thinking (for example, releasing its patch notes right before the new patch released...). If GGG wants this game to be truly great, I'd advise it consider decisions it makes from the lens of not 'this is an ARPG' but 'what would we do to double down on this as a strategic ARPG.' Because that element is making this game a thinking game and so so SO unique. GIVE US MORE IRREVERSIBLE CONSEQUENTIAL CHOICES, PLEASE (but give us the tools to learn or this will just frustrate, more below).

There are other things that are great, but I'm worried the best would get lost in too much noise. That is the stuff that matters.

What POE2 Needs To Improve
- It is impossible to learn within the game. For half the time I've been playing this game, I didn't even know trade was possible. Nothing in the game taught me. It is a CORE mechanic in the league. How is it possible that GGG does not teach this to players who have not been introduced to POE before, like me? Nuts. This lack of teaching also prevents long term strategic planning. For example, I have no idea how many hit points pinnacle bosses have. So I have no estimation if I can do them. Why would I try? The cost of failure is high and the reward for selling their invitations / stones is basically just as high. Why take the risk when not doing so results in a nearly equal reward? Players aren't stupid. GGG is frustrated that not a lot of folks don't try pinnacle fights and it has tried by making them 'cannot fail' for the first go-around. This is treating a symptom and not the root cause. Pinnacles need planning and they need conviction from the player that they are possible. That folks aren't doing them until they one-shot the boss is not a failure of too-much-damage-syndrome, but a failure of permitting long term planning here (and some other issues mentioned below). As another example, I would bet that 90% of the reason folks are complaining loot is bad is because they don't understand the mechanics I outlined above explaining how to generate wealth very consistently and quickly in POE2. GGG does not need to explain the whole bit, but it does need to do more than it does now to teach. And it needs to, IMO, prioritize this above nerfs, buffs, loots changes, etc.
- There are a lack of chase items. I don't even know what the point of end game for me is anymore. My character can do pinnacles but it is not worth the risk. I got the points to juice my maps further, but the stuff they drop means it's just better to sell the stones via Alva, etc. Even with the Arbiter it's close (and why would I ever run T4 arbiter now?) There's no point to the Pinnacles, the maps at the highest level are easy, it's fun to run the maps, but I'm just generating all this currency and asking myself WHAT'S THE POINT? GGG urgently needs to solve this question. Above everything. Maybe there are maps harder than 15. Maybe there are scenarios that are mega harder, low probability of success, but high reward, like more flame relic scenarios. I dunno. This to me is the biggest issue in 0.2. Prioritize end game content mega urgently because it feels vacuous and empty after you get to T15s. It speaks to how fun the gameplay is that I still do maps.
- Finish the campaign The campaign is a strength of the game. Finish that product before you focus on characters and buffs/nerfs. Adjustments are needed. Act 2 Cruel Boss (at least one day 1 of ladder) was way overtuned. Act 3 is way too long. And I don't think it is just a map too long problem. I think it is actually that there are too many maps. It feels like the storyline is too long. It has TOO MUCH CONTENT. THAT is Act 3's problem. I think you have to look really hard and cut 2-3 maps from Act 3, possibly putting them in a later act in the campaign. Or give me a consistent Great Marsh skip and make some of the maps run through maps like the Kuraasts. The act feels like it has 1/3 too many maps (I don't think you can cut that many, but 2-3 should be an acceptable compromise).
- Nerf loot or improve the UX. Do you know how long it takes to pick up 600 breach splinters in a single map? Do you know how many trips are needed to identify dozens (honestly, sometimes possibly hundreds) of rares/unique items in a fully juiced map? I spend more time on this nonsense consistently than I do actually playing. It's a terrible experience. (Maybe restrict the number of trips I can take back to town, like in past patch, as this forces, again, more strategic thinking). My brother suggested I hire the folks in this forum complaining about loot for 50 exalts an hour - guaranteed currency for them! - to just follow me and collect my drops for me, which sounds like an ABSURD solution. But what solution is there? In my opinion, any splinter (delirium, breach, or expedition) should be auto-pickup like gold. I shouldn't have to click. There is SO much loot that, honest to God, if it was straight line nerfed for everyone, I wouldn't be mad. It feels REALLY, REALLY, REALLY strong right now, which unfortunately makes the ground spam and forced clicks, even with an uber strict filter, really feel out of hand right now.
- Improve movement speed. I can't teleport in this game. I can't get or prioritize blink credibly. Through the campaign, I charge and lept and it was fine. It's not in a crowded or possibly dangerous map. I've seen folks suggest that ascendancies should come with a 3-5% movement boost each time. I think that's an excellent idea. One reason why the campaign feels long is because folks don't charge/leap. But the other is that maps are genuinely gigantic, and movement speed is the single largest variable in going through them more quickly. Give us more tools here. It's frustrating from start through endgame.
- Continue to iterate on the spirits and rogues . I was excited about the first spirit in Act1 until it took forever to move and I died waiting for it to do anything. They're too slow and their benefit is too low. Who would prioritize them on the atlast tree? They'd have to be incompetent. If they are a core part of the map experience, they must match or exceed our movement speed. And they must have chase item mechanics (right now, I guess the spirit azmeri does? but I've never seen one and I've played for 200 hours!). Rogues, also, were fun the first time we saw them int eh campaign. It was a proper boss fight. It took forever! We were so excited until we saw that they dropped garbage. Then GGG reduced their HP by 40%. Now in maps I kill them, often don't even know I killed them, and they never drop anything good. Remember that suggestion that end game content is needed urgently? Why not make rogues a part of it? Make them 20-50 times harder, with an enormous high probability to kill you - this should be a PvP duel with someone comparable, battling among hordes of enemies attacking at the same time - but with valuable loot (may be chase items specific per rogue as well) to compensate. May be it's an alterative to just running maps and pinnacle fights.

Anyway, those are my two cents about what's working and what isn't, and what I'd prioritize. I think the folks who say loot and currency are weak have it completely, entirely backward and have not discovered the crazy mechanics that exist in 0.2 that take loot to new heights. There are other problems to fix to make this game great. Finish the campaign. Add content in end game. Double down on the strategy aspects of the game. Give me something to chase for. Forget about the additional characters, more nerfs, more buffs, for now.

you're right about loot bro. I'm like you. Loot is fine. However, I don't think it needs a nerf.

I think PoE1 players want to be spoiled in PoE2. PoE2 is a new IP compared to PoE1.

PoE1 players are going to be so vocal, it's going to ruin PoE2. Mark my words.

You can make T15+ builds for like 2 div pretty easy in this game. And that's including your own crafting. People are very greedy rn. They are used to quantity and GGG tried to make a Quality game. Go figure, PoE1 players don't seem to want quality.

I've regal'd 1 div blues more than enough times. People don't pick up blue gear. They don't pick up ilvl80 rares. Quality items are so scarce that anything after level 62 has a chance at being valuable.

I walk around with Augment and Transmute orbs for bases. It takes me 3x longer to do a map than most I see on streams and I end up with far better gear. Shocker...i pick stuff up.

You also have excellent pointers.

Absolutely - the bases and blues are huge. Folks need to use the tools that exist to build wealth, but they don't want to.

"

I walk around with Augment and Transmute orbs for bases. It takes me 3x longer to do a map than most I see on streams and I end up with far better gear. Shocker...i pick stuff up.

You are Alteration spamming with extra steps. In PoE1 that was done in your Hideout.

i will never understand how people can comment on the "music" in games like this when its literally just a single note playing in the background that changes every X seconds.

Loot is garbage. You should not have to buy all of your gear from other players, its ridiculous.

1x divine in ~250 hours so far.

Got 5 exalted from the campaign.

Currently have 3x orbs of chance but I cannot find a single white heavy belt between levels 79-85... its a joke, oh and im still content locked out of final ascendency points by the games RNG at level 85.

"crafting" = finding an item, not crafting it.

They have a really long way to go.

Ok can we at last have separate balance for SSF so that i don't have to worry about threads like this one?!

"

- This is not an ARPG. This is a strategy game. POE2 requires planning. it requires strategic thinking. This is partly why I was dismayed about removing permanent ascendancies. I think the change was required because of how much 0.2 changed and how we came into the patch blind (and how difficult the campaign was), but I hope as things stabilize we eventually remove the ascendancy reset. I love the parts of POE2 that demand long term planning. Optimizing when I first get to the atlas to straight line rush toward nexuses and unique maps to get my atlas points up. Leaving towers for when I have higher tier maps that I can do because 99% > 1% and 3 tablets > 1. Selecting the right recipe of tablets to mega juice what I worked hard to find. Selecting the right maps. In the campaign! - where I have to decide if I want attributes or chaos resistance and my build is not at its peak yet. To be honest, I'm not sure if GGG is aware of this as a strength of its game. It often, or at least sometimes, feels like GGG makes decision that hurt our ability to execute on long term strategic thinking (for example, releasing its patch notes right before the new patch released...). If GGG wants this game to be truly great, I'd advise it consider decisions it makes from the lens of not 'this is an ARPG' but 'what would we do to double down on this as a strategic ARPG.' Because that element is making this game a thinking game and so so SO unique.

My opinion is completely contrary to yours. This is the biggest issue IMO.

Majority of players don't want to come home from a tiring job just to have to write a thesis on a videogame to play it efficiently because of artificially created constraints. Or to have to play a dozen hours of "unwanted content" just to set up the perfect farming region and run a single hour of "wanted content".

People want to boot up the game, run some maps, get some rewards, become slightly stronger and repeat this process every league with a different build.

Balancing a game around the min-maxing outliers is how you basically kill your game and end up with only a handful of "tryhards" playing it.

"

Nachoman#8410 wrote:

i will never understand how people can comment on the "music" in games like this when its literally just a single note playing in the background that changes every X seconds.

Loot is garbage. You should not have to buy all of your gear from other players, its ridiculous.

1x divine in ~250 hours so far.

Got 5 exalted from the campaign.

Currently have 3x orbs of chance but I cannot find a single white heavy belt between levels 79-85... its a joke, oh and im still content locked out of final ascendency points by the games RNG at level 85.

"crafting" = finding an item, not crafting it.

They have a really long way to go.

rep this post pls , we dont need it .


thx so much for your feedback Oczec, was very interesting.

all u gotta do is get 12 good precursors and spend many hours finding and lining up 4 towers! Did you include that time in your calculations ?

"

My brother suggested I hire the folks in this forum complaining about loot for 50 exalts an hour - guaranteed currency for them! - to just follow me and collect my drops for me, which sounds like an ABSURD solution

I would like to apply for this position. What are the hours? And can I instead get paid in chaos orbs?