PoE needs a clear and interesting lore for the bosses of the game.

Now it's a complete mess. New players do not understand who all these bosses are, who to kill first, who depends on whom. Where to get fragments. And in general don’t fully understand the game’s lore and bosses. I have been playing PoE for 4 years now, but when I first entered the game I did not understand who the Shaper and Uber guards were, what they gave, how to get into the Sirus and who needed to be killed. Nowhere has it been written about it. We need a clear lore, who appeared when, who is more important than whom. Well, you understand what I mean. Preferably everything in pictures and with a clear structure.
Sorry for the picture, I just sketched my idea.

It's a hit or miss just like in rl. You either had the chance to experience everything of the content while it was new or you just miss it cause you started the game later.

I think the game does a good job to explain the lore of the PAST content as some sort of memory. Kirak adds a little bit of text here and there while small lore messages on maps/ voice lines so the rest.

The game pretty much leads you to the current lore with every Maven/Envoy encounter. They give you access to eater/exarch and both fights are the most recent lore/story content.

Every other boss is already dead with the current version of the game and not really part of the lore anymore. So it's basically optional content cause there's no order in which way you have to kill any of the bosses.

In 10+ years I've never had the faintest idea what the story is about :(

Started to get cloudy after Dominus imo.

I find the lore to be decent, eventhough I dislike multi dimensions and aliens as its such a cheap way to make anything possible and can easily alter existing lore. However the storytelling and how the lore is fed to us is very lackluster. I shouldnt have to go read every item description or watch a youtube video about it to get a vague idea of whats going on.

As for the atlas and endgame progression its a mess for sure. Working our way to the center of the atlas and defeating shaper still made some sense and even I could follow.

I enjoyed back when we had Shaper trying to prevent us from making mistakes all the while influenced by the claws (tentacles) of Elders madness, but everything since just feels tacked on to add new layers of difficulty.

I get that they want the game to expand and grow, but adding new bosses on top of new bosses really wrecks the cohesiveness of the greater world and the interplay between the NPCs.

PoE endgame lore is a hot mess. Its really really bad, objectively.

Basically Zana has it right in terms of endgame scope:

"Exile please! Do something!"

I do agree that particularly past Part 1 in the narrative, the PoE story gets rocky, and gets worse every act. Not necessarily in it's structure or core narrative, or themes, but it (much like the mechanics of the game) are really bad at communicating to the player.

I will say, most of these lore bits exist (in and out of game), or more speifically -did- exist, which is the biggest issue with rolling in major parts of past leagues without keeping them as an intact part of the game. The Shaper had a big story with tons of dialogue from Zana and journals as well. The same is true of Siris and his cadre. The Maven and the Eldritch where written more 'smartly' in minds of future cuts, in that they are kept intentally vague, hints sprinkled through the lore via item discriptions and designs, and it works well for their lovecraftian ideals (As your chart will likely have another step along the 'Exarh and Eater' lines, because those two are not the ultimate threats of their respective faction (which would be their 'leaders', the Tangle and the Cleasning Fire, though both might be more 'concept' than 'being').

Things like Synthisis has a great narrative to it, that modern PoE completely threw in the basement, despite the mechanics and the boss still existing, removing any emotional need for the encounter.

Even as soon as the First Part of the story, Domionius feels a little flat as you have several run ins with Peity, a lot of the NPC's have bits of her background, and you encounter her several times where you fight or she thwarts you in some way, you have a personal history with her by the time you fight her. With the High Templar, you AND MOST have heard his voice without knowing the speaker in the character intro, and vaguely know he is Peity's boss, but have never had a personal interaction with him. The difference between "Show, don't tell" between the two Part One antagonists is strikingly different, with Peity being a very good example of Show, while blue face being a badly 'Tell'. The narrative really dosn't build him up, it doesn't talk about how he could kill a dozen men via his Vaal gauntlets, or his mind set or direct motive. The narrative is very "Great job! Peity is dead, well, clean up her boss while you're at it" It needed a better bridge into Act 5 as well, a quest or two added post Peity's death to hint at Dominus summoning of otherworldy forces at the scepter of god, and hinting at their origin at highgate would bridge them.

Similarly, the return to Oriath is somewhat self contained, if fairly loose story telling, but still largely works, and I lack a clear cut way to fix its problems without starting over. I do agree including the old narrative elements from the past entities still used as bosses would be great, structuring most as a fanning out from a central point (i.e arranging it so Siris is not a boss 'before' Maven, just a boss beside her), while whatever boss set is the 'current' central thruline get center stage in introduction, while the player needs to do some hunting to get the reset rolling (to help combat the flood of information you'd otherwise get).

For the time, looking the bosses up on Wiki, most DO have some lore and reason, Siris and friends killed the Elder (or at least, tried), and Zana trapped them there, fearing insanity.

Lore and story have been meh since Zana left IMO. I feel like they don't wanna reveal or advance things too much before POE "2", but because that project is taking longer than they probably wanted we're now stuck in some perpetual filler episode.

Hopefully we'll get something concrete about the future direction at ExileCon tho, including better boss lore.

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PANTHEONE wrote:

Now it's a complete mess. New players do not understand who all these bosses are, who to kill first, who depends on whom. Where to get fragments. And in general don’t fully understand the game’s lore and bosses. I have been playing PoE for 4 years now, but when I first entered the game I did not understand who the Shaper and Uber guards were, what they gave, how to get into the Sirus and who needed to be killed. Nowhere has it been written about it. We need a clear lore, who appeared when, who is more important than whom. Well, you understand what I mean. Preferably everything in pictures and with a clear structure.
Sorry for the picture, I just sketched my idea.

isn't it part of poe to figure things out by your self or by googling? same as for finding out what the story/lore is of this game? besides that it's an arpg it doesn't need lore to begin with but that's just my opinion all an arpg needs in my eyes is grinding for loot and become stronger and beat up stronger baddies.