Reviving in Maps - continuity of expectation with solution ideas

TLDR: While I recognize an inherent challenge in balancing solo and party play benefits, my friends and I very strongly want to have reviving in maps as a mechanic as well as to preserve the continuity of story and expectation from the campaign.

Single death maps are tough but an acceptable challenge because it slows you down and makes you more methodical. However, if you die and a party member is still alive in a map, and you introduce a revive mechanic for the campaign then reason dictates that you SHOULD somehow be allowed to be revived. How it's achieved and at what cost is a solution that I'm confident that GGG can do and I implore them to pursue.

Let's get into it....
I'd like to begin this by saying that I really like the revive mechanic in the campaign. It makes playing with friends ways more interesting than someone just hopping back through a portal. I'm also a fan of the difficulty of the revives - it requires strategy and timing. I'm fine with the mechanic as is (duration, hit resets, all of it).

Upon finishing the campaign my friends and I were really excited to party together and play maps together. However, we quickly found out that if you die in a map, the revive mechanic that was present in the campaign does not work in maps. Somehow, even though my friends and I had all failed maps by dying while trying them solo, we didn't expect that to be the case when partying. We were completely caught off guard by the inability to revive each other. We were quite vocal about how disappointed we were in this.

We were disappointed and upset because there was no explanation anywhere in the game that revives wouldn't work. The continuity of the message and language that the game had been teaching us was abruptly severed and it was quite shocking. At a bare minimum, some sort of message or even better, a LORE reason for not allowing the revives so that people know this going into maps without looking at out of game information would be helpful.

Now, I get that there are reasons for not allowing limitless revives in a map. That said, I think that POE2 has something really special going with the revive mechanic that truly promotes a new angle of party play and I would really like to see some sort of implementation for this.

Idea 1
The most obvious thing we came up with when thinking about it is that if the map owner/starter dies, then even if revived they get no credit for the map, just like they normally wouldn't get the clear. But this doesn't work entirely because if you clear it, you should clear it. I don't have the mechanic or reason as to why you wouldn't get credit if you get a clear after being revived but perhaps something tied to corruption or your players soul in some way could explain it. A reason is certainly discoverable.

Idea 2
Reviving a party member burns a portal. So if you go in with 2 friends, then you have a max of 3 revives assuming you didn't use any other portals. However, I don't think burning 2 portals for a revive works because if you are playing as a group of 5 then you get 0 revives and the whole point of thinking through how to make revives tangible and fair is that the party play potential for poe2 is super exciting and fun. I would really like to see the devs lean into this and see if they can find a solution.

Idea 3
So, if portal burning isn't an option then what about tying revives to a currency - and not a super cheap currency. Something that is at least 1-2 exalts worth. Perhaps it's a "joker" or "yin/yang" currency. The grander idea is to have reviving have a tangible cost to it to offset the benefit of being able to be revived.

Some 'costs' could be less rarity for items found in the map, increased monster difficulty on the next map, less currency drops for the next map you open. Another idea would be to scale the cost of a revive. Starts with an alchemy, 2nd revive is an exalt, 3rd is 2 exalts, then 4 exalts, etc. Essentially players can choose to blow their hard earned currency in exchange for an opportunity to continue party play.

You could even take it to the point where you can try to craft revive tokens with various boons/costs as well as scaling.

Anyway, these are some ideas I wanted to offer up along with the feedback so I'm not just a closed chain complaint. Please work on finding a way to allow reviving in maps.

Adopt the Honor system from Trials - when someone dies everyone in the party loses a portal (or separate life system) then everyone fails upon hitting 0.

Parties should succeed or fail together. The shared pool keeps it balanced against solo.

Two birds, one stone solution as increasing the # of lives will address people's concerns with solo maps as well.

+1 to revive in endgame, not just maps, No special rules, Just add the revive to the endgame, we lost exp already and we can't leave and come back in the damage is done.

I'm here to play with other people not leave them behind and sit in my hideout alone for another 10 years.

GGG can always add (no revive) hardmode content with better loot and everyone gets their bread and butter.

Same thing happen to me and my mate

We were mapping, I died and he could not revive me....we were shocked, to say the least.

I liked your Idea 3, however, currency is scarce as it is. Specially if you are SSF.

I did create two posts about this already, but my posts just got sucked into the "bump" system of the forum and thrown all the way down in the list -- Had no feedback from anyone.....


Taking your Idea 3, I would suggest an actual whole new currency for party revives.

The currency would be obtainable within the maps themselves. Given the size of the maps, there could be a "Revive Checkpoint" of sorts, the checkpoint would be deactivated initially. Once a player is registered as downed, the checkpoint would light up and be available for interaction. This could be guarded by mobs that the surviving player would need to defeat in order to drop the New Currency. Then, the surviving player would interact with the Checkpoint, spending the currency in order to revive the downed teammate.

Or, just make the orbs a random drop that players would then carry along into the maps. By clicking the downed player, the currency is consumed from the inventory and the player is revived.

Whatever it is...something must be done.

There is a great opportunity to incentivise party play with POE2.

Also, console players can Couch Co-Op, it makes no sense at all that people can't revive each other.

thanks
sSs

Honestly in general I think the one attempt maps is a silly system in the first place. I also think most of the co-op design elements that were put in place (No ability to ressurrect at checkpoint, can't even click the option during boss fights and are forced to wait until either the boss dies or your friend gets a lucky revive, and not being able to revive at all during maps) are all the result of this mediumcore design philosophy they went with, which in my opinion, doesn't really fit in the first place. But it really hampers co-op and makes it much less enjoyable tbh.

eh... for real... WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT...

Well now I'm really disappointed, that really does feel off considering it's in the whole campaign...

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Ashgan9#6435 wrote:

eh... for real... WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT...

Well now I'm really disappointed, that really does feel off considering it's in the whole campaign...

Yeah it was quite a shocker on top of the other sideaffects of dying in endgame content.

I Completely agree and support the idea of revivnig in Maps.

While me and my friends played PoE 1 mostly solo, in the last 10 leagues we might've had a single one where we grouped for a bit.

Playing the Campaign in PoE 2 with a friend, adjusting our skills to synergize with each other we were delighted to see that we could revive another when we fell, rather then being instantly put back to the checkpoint.

Then we got into maps and it all fell apart, one died, the other couldn't do shit about it. You leave the map, you can't even reenter. Gotta sit around and wait for you buddy to either finish the map, die as well or leave cause he's bored.

Imho, dying in map should not grant the clear completion, preferably for the one who died only. If you want to be harsh then no one gets a clear as long as a single party member died, but for the love of god just change turn it on again.

Could also disable rezzing while in combat, so no perma rezzing during boss fights. Save the boss for last and if one dies he's done, but during map clearing rezzing should be available.

I would suggest doing it like Monster Hunter. In Monster Hunter, if you're hunting solo you get 3 revives then you fail. If you're hunting in a group, you still get three revives then you fail, but the revives are SHARED. So you're highly motivated to not die, and the team succeeds or fails together, but you don't fail just because someone made one mistake. It feels bad to have to choose between failing on purpose, because my friend made a mistake, or leave them twiddling their thumbs waiting for me to finish a map without them.

the whole thing about not being able to revive is that...
it's party play...
what does your dead party member do if they die? they just stay on the ground look at their dead corpse and wait till you finish the map?
not even a spectate mode.

like u want to be in a party you won't leave them there.
but then the other one feels pressure to finish the map faster or straight up just abandon it so you can go and do another map instead.