Since Exalts drop more often I wasted a bunch, now I find out it's the new Chaos and decent gear is 1 EX. FML.
IRL friends of friends who have been playing POE1 for years have been arguing that currency/item drop rates are fine, because of their experience and the trade forums are working so well for them. That there are even such a thing as out-of-game trade forums shows that the drop rates are insufficient and GGG is using the crutch of "emergent interaction" or some such bullshit to avoid fixing it. Any time you have to leave the game to get items that make or break gameplay that players rely upon, its bad design in one or more, probably multiple places in your game economy/crafting systems. I was thinking that they were trying to test the white item->magic->rare item-> add affixes path for crafting but the drop rates in the campaign without increased rarity are so parsimonious that its just mind boggling. You are just effectively relying on the power of people who have made it to maps who have what seem like much better or at least adequate currency drop rates to add liquidity and set prices for the whole market. I have had a number of these arguments thrown my way: "I completed the campaign with a mediocre load out, why can't everyone else?" : Any system designed so a top 1% non melee player who knew how to use the trading system but didn't have top level gear because there was no one finished with the campaign yet is anecdata and again poor design. Folks making it work based on the few rares that drop and 10 years playing POE1 is not an example of a working system, quite the contrary. And how does that help SSF folks? What kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape must that be, trying to get through Cruel with just what you find on Merchants and drops.
Game is good to great, and when its done may even best in genre; gameplay is fun and animations are stunning. I still feel like Blizzard/Diablo has the slight edge here but its really an apple and oranges comparison on that front. Blizzard isn't trying to have a Souls-like Diablo game but it just feels a scintilla more responsive to me, engine wise. I replaced my mouse and my keyboard (Razor and Roccat, respectively) just to be sure they weren't getting old.
Now I have concerns that GGG has holes in their design philosophy that they are content to leave broken and do not intend to fix. The more I play, the more I find things with the UI, storage/stash space/inventory that are industry standard but missing in POE2, and when I ask my resident POE1 veterans about it, they can't seem to grok why its even an issue
-no way to tell item rarity without mousing over,
-Items should have level of transparency when placing in stash,
-no auto optimize/empty space removal in stash tabs,
-can't organize tabs via vertical menu on right in stash, among others;
at least I finally found option to always show sockets, which was a maddening search before I discovered it while looking through the options for something else.
TLDR: Game is super good, I hope GGG is fully intent on improving it more still, and resolving/addressing crafting/itemization issues before full launch.
