Valid criticisms all around, this is what I know so far in regards to them:
This is a great game, just started playing it and have gone through my typical alt-itis.
Some criticisms though that I hope will be addressed soon:
1) dependence on +life/+resist/+armor makes passive selection too rigid
I agree that there is a dependency on Life, Resists and Armor choices. But to me, this is a logical necessity for any role playing game, when it comes to survivability how else would you progress?There has been a lot of talk about skill point allocation is too restrictive, forcing you to invest in life nodes. I disagree with this completely, if you believe the above to be true and you recognize the fact that you earn 100 skill points in the process of leveling up to 80 you are given an incredible amount flexibility but you are still bound by the fundamental rule that if you don't invest in health - then you wont have any, and you will die, and it will suck.
I believe however that there needs to be more keystones that drastically change how someone plays the game.
2) non-intuitive game mechanics (which support gems affect which skill gems, hidden vendor recipes, etc.)
There could be more tool tips, once you get off the beach for the first time, you never see another tool tip, but a lot of the mechanics are complex and tooltips would not help much. Definitely room for improvement.
3) player avatars ... please let me wear pants! also, some customization of gender/face/clothing would be nice (I'd pay good $ for this)
The devs have been really open about this, a lot of the armor models are being reworked, some of the lower level armors will remain pantsless lmfao, but all of the late game armors will be remeshed and pants will be modeled on to them.
4) trade-based economy needs better item acquisition systems
There will never be an official interface, but the unofficial interface for trading at the moment is: PoE Goods - for some reason the ability to link URLs is not working at the moment, the URL for PoE Goods is
poe.xyz.is
5) more variety in skill types (channeled spells, non-splash AoE, direct damage curses, charge-up and combo'd melee attacks, etc.)
Weekly content rollout begins next Wednesday, 3 uniques and at least 1 new skill every week (i've heard however that the first couple of weeks will include more than 1 additional skill)
6) temporary player buffs should be re-worked, frenzy/endurance/power charge skills are too limiting to be incorporated into most builds
Included in the upcoming skills are new ways to obtain charges, I agree at the moment power charges are hard to obtain (only obtainable through power siphon), but frenzy and endurance charges have multiple possible routes they can go.
I also wish uniques were removed from the game. You can't support an RNG-based item economy with these competing items.
Come on now, uniques are precisely that - they are unique.They are designed with one main principle in mind, they will never be better than the best rares. They allow unique mods for items which they normally cannot obtain which translates into more unique builds which is exactly what you were arguing against in your first point.
Uniques aren't even incredibly rare Idk how many hours I have played since open beta began, id ballpark it around 100-150, and I have found four unique boots, four unique gloves, two unique shields, two unique helmets, two unique amulets, two unique bows, one unique dagger and one unique sword. 18 total.
Why do you log on and off constantly when you are farming the Ledge. I know you mentioned it before and I thought it was about saving portal scrolls, but that was not it. I can not figure out what you are doing.
