Somehow more feedback, the big topic: ENDGAME.

I'm back with some more feedback as a mercenary who's clearing maps and having fun. Let's get to it.

Bosses, Atlas passives, and an Idea: I've heard this over and over again from reddit, streamers, myself, posts here... bosses are literally top in class, the best content in the game, the best bosses in any aRPG to date. Put bosses in every map! We want to fight the bosses, they are great.

Right now, the main atlas passive tree is lacking options due to too many required nodes on it. If you don't take all the waystone qual/quant/%chance-higher-tier you are severely nerfing your progress and map sustain. These are required nodes leaving little wiggle room to explore the rest of the tree.

So here's a proposal: Bring back the map bonus objective, and make it killing the map boss. Add map boss in every regular map node (not a tower/hideout/zen/unique) instead of every four nodes. Folks who are zoom zoom clearing and don't want to go hard bossing need only kill one boss in each individual map (IE, "decay", "savannah", "slick", etc..). Right now there's not a lot of them but at launch I'm sure we'll have plenty of individual maps to explore and kill the bosses in. To clear the map you just need to kill the rare mobs as usual, to hit the bonus objective you must also kill the boss.

Each specific map type cleared with the bonus objective hit will add to a % increased rarity of waystones, % increased quantity of waystones found, and % chance of waystones dropping at a higher tier stat that can be viewed via a legend icon on the Atlas map or the atlas skill tree. This will allow you to remove these required passives and replace them with more interesting options that can be sought after or we can explore the rest of the atlas tree instead.

The reason for this change is obvious. Much like when you removed life from the passive skill tree, you don't want required nodes on the atlas passive tree! Likewise, you don't want to gate the most fun activity in mapping (bosses) behind pathing through a bunch of dead nodes with no league mechanics and no bosses. We want to have fun. You want us to have fun. So put bosses in all the maps and let us choose the fun we want to have by making them optional.

Onto the leagues: It seems an odd choice that with the intentional slowing down of PoE 2 and the idea that being trapped by monsters is a part of the game that 3/4 of the league mechanics have some degree of monsters spawning in around the player potentially trapping them. Let's go into them in detail.

Delirium: Let's start with the least offensive from the "surrounding the player" angle. I used to love delirium it was always fun in PoE1 and rewarding with cluster jewels that were worth good currency and lots of random rewards. In PoE2 it... it really feels bad guys.

Cluster jewels are gone (obvious in EA this would be a nightmare balancing issue) and in their place they stole oils from my favorite mechanic (blight). The problem is, you start the encounter being slightly surrounded but it's not that bad at least not for merc. From there, the fog expands too fast for the slower paced and more deliberate action in PoE2. Especially with a winding map that twists and turns back into the "out of fog" area. As you kill stuff you watch what appears to be the only reward type, emotions/oils, ("I'm gonna call them oils from now on because it's shorter to type) stack up to 1, 2, 3... and that's it. They never add another reward layer. It seems to always just be oils and that's it. I've never seen a simulacrum splinter drop either. This is just awful. You use the oils primarily to grab a passive notable and then I guess you apply them to maps? I haven't tried that yet because, honestly, unless I'm pathing through delirium I ignore it because I have the passive I want and it just feels unrewarding and poorly paced with the speed of the fog clearing. Bring back multiple reward layers and slow the fog down. Also, why can't you right click to craft with oils from the stash tab, or just craft in the stash tab like you used to with blight?

Breach: Onto the next biggest offender for surrounding the player. As a merc I can deal with it cause I'm loaded with ammo and can prime the area around the fight with long lasting effects, but I've heard a lot of people say they just won't start breaches cause it's a guaranteed death when they are immediately surrounded and overwhelmed. Aside from that, Breach is great. Same old breach, was great in PoE1 and is great in PoE2. I have yet to see a breachstone splinter drop, but eh.. at least other useful league specific things like catalysts drop. No rings yet either.

Ritual: The biggest offender for feeling completely out of place in the slower PoE2 combat it's ritual. You activate it, and not only do enemies spawn right around you to trap you, but ritual specific effects are spawning around you or racing on top of you, and also depending on where the ritual is the terrain is also restricting you. Unlike breach where you can leave the circle if you are having a bad time, here you are stuck. Sometimes there's no room to move as enemies quickly fill the only available space and the walls/totem block the rest. One volatile plant situation in there and it's a "press ESC and leave" situation. I'm sure that's not the gameplay you guys want. It feels like maybe the spawn rate needs to be tuned to PoE2 combat flow speed. You did it with strongboxes, so maybe apply that to ritual as well? Other than that, it's ritual. Ritual is fun and good content. Rewards are fine, for the most part, will discuss more below.

Expedition: Not an offender of surrounding players as we control where the monsters appear and can adjust accordingly. Gameplay wise, it's fine. It's expedition. Explosions and chests and monsters oh my. In terms of rewards, well the vendors are meh. You replaced gamba, a haggle vendor, and a cool crafting option... with 3 vendors that sell different types of stuff. M e h. The logbooks, which have dropped quite commonly for me oddly enough, feel about the same other than they are less rewards because of the meta reward topic below..

META league rewards feedback: Bring back cross league rewards. Expedition and ritual feel less rewarding because we don't see rewards from other leagues popping up. Delirium feels extra awful because there's only one reward layer and it's only ever just delirium oils. Some builds are simply better for some activities, as in PoE1 so in PoE2, and cross league rewards let those who can't run some content reliably get the chance at getting things they need or want from that mechanic anyways.

Let's see delirium gain more reward layers and we can get excited when we see the breach icon down there, or ultimatum. Let's see timeless jewels and breachstone splinters for sale in ritual. I wanna see a log book with loot chest flags for these leagues. This will go a long way to making the rewards part of these leagues that we have feel so much better. Give us reasons to challenge these mechanics outside of bosses that, right now, feel extremely out of reach due to a lack of fragments dropping.

META endgame feedback: Some miscellaneous feedback in regards to end game.
--> Need that map tab back in action as soon as possible.
--> Need a fragment tab.
--> Need the catalyst tab back.
--> Hopefully you guys have some more mapping leagues from the past cooking up for release, perhaps even a totally new and unique mapping activity unrelated to past leagues. More stuff to do is always good and empty maps feel less good.
--> Do something about making the tower maps more interesting.. I dunno. Maybe different "types" of towers? They get very same-y.
--> To date I've yet to see a single "city"/"citidel" to give me keys to access the pinnacle boss. Where are these things?

I know you guys are hard at work on the rest of the content, classes, acts, and fixing bugs and balancing and believe me we appreciate the hard work and care that has already gone into the game. It's shaping up to be the best aRPG possibly of all time.

That's why we're providing feedback that may sound harsh, but now is the time to let you know our perspective on things. You are cooking. Consider these posts of mine feedback on how you can tweak the recipe.

All good points but the most critical issue is how awful Citadels are to find. 30 hours to hopefully find 1 citadel to maybe get 1 of 3 keys to die to the pinnacle boss only to do it all over again is insane.

Good point I'll add that.

Oh, I forgot something Beyond Demons:

Are you guys planning to add back tainted currency or anything specific that's rewarding to beyond demons besides "here's more mobs and they are killable."

Are the unique bosses back? I haven't seen any bosses and any unique rewards tied to beyond at this point. it would be nice if there was a reason to seek them out.