Doryani's Machinarium

I just ran this map for the first time, and I have some constructive criticism that I hope will help you improve it.

1. The map is too easy compared to the difficulty of the only boss that drops it. This is actually the least important criticism, as I do recognize that the map is intended to be traded more often than its reward, given the customizability of that reward. So perhaps this is intended. Still, it seems like a sizeable disconnect to struggle to kill Ahuatotli and then walk through the map he drops with almost zero effort.

2. The map is too short. Way too short. Come on, guys. It takes a good deal of effort to get this map, so at least make it beefy and satisfying to run.

3. The inability to see what each choice actually means for your item reward necessitates alt-tabbing out of the game to look it up. Worse, you have to do it more than once! (Unless you have a great memory.) This is always always ALWAYS bad game design, imo, since it breaks immersion so utterly. Let us see the impact our choices make. At the very least, give us a lore-appropriate hint at what will happen. (This would still require meta research, but at least it would be necessary only once.)

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These three criticisms also reference overall game design principles that I hope you will take into account while designing new content:

1. Balance rewards with risk and difficulty (a perennial criticism on the forums; e.g. map boss experience, or end-game encounter experience).

2. Make content intrinsically rewarding. Don't use extrinsic rewards (= loot) to compensate for substandard content.

3. Use affordances, intuitive design, and (when necessary) explicit in-game hints to minimize the amount of time players need to alt-tab out of the game to see what is what. (Betrayal mechanics are probably the most egregious example of this particular dynamic hurting a gamer's experience.)

Please and thank you.

Agree.

I didn't reach that boss yet in my Delves, but I did buy the map back in Delve League.

It's disappointing.

other than that i makes buying the boots pretty difficult - 9 different variations means that you are pretty lucky to actually find one you need if it doesnt happen to be the 'meta' choice (all lightning)

entire POE itemization is heading into the 'fuzzy' state where all systems and limitations that made it are removed and every item is - in theory - capable of anything. sadly it all falls apart when you actually have to fish for particular item stats. the pool is sooooo dilluted nowadays..