Feedback about Citadel

I won’t talk about the "One portal map subject" here, as many threads are already debating it. But here’s my story.

I’ve been mapping for three days in a row now. I found 2 Iron Citadels on the first day. Due to my lack of skill, gear, luck, etc., I failed twice. And now, after two days of intensive mapping, I haven’t seen a single Citadel. I feel like a kid lost in a supermarket, but with only self-checkout machines and no one to ask where my mom is.

I think something to help players find Citadels is missing. Maybe making Citadels unique and tradable as maps? Or adding a pointer showing the direction to the nearest one? I don’t know, but it’s really frustrating, and praising the Toucan doesn’t seem to be enough in this situation.

Am I the only one in this situation?

I’m not complaining about the difficulty here; I simply can’t even play the game. Why create content if you’re not allowed to reach it, except by luck?

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Pwato#2038 wrote:

I won’t talk about the "One portal map subject" here, as many threads are already debating it. But here’s my story.

I’ve been mapping for three days in a row now. I found 2 Iron Citadels on the first day. Due to my lack of skill, gear, luck, etc., I failed twice. And now, after two days of intensive mapping, I haven’t seen a single Citadel. I feel like a kid lost in a supermarket, but with only self-checkout machines and no one to ask where my mom is.

I think something to help players find Citadels is missing. Maybe making Citadels unique and tradable as maps? Or adding a pointer showing the direction to the nearest one? I don’t know, but it’s really frustrating, and praising the Toucan doesn’t seem to be enough in this situation.

Am I the only one in this situation?

I’m not complaining about the difficulty here; I simply can’t even play the game. Why create content if you’re not allowed to reach it, except by luck?

I like the tone of your post. But I would like to see you suggest a possible solution.

I will say that RNG into desirable areas is common in many video games. Are you proposing you should be able to access any content at any time ?

"

Pwato#2038 wrote:

I like the tone of your post. But I would like to see you suggest a possible solution.

I will say that RNG into desirable areas is common in many video games. Are you proposing you should be able to access any content at any time ?

To be honest, I’m just a player, not a game designer, and I don’t think I have the perfect solution to this problem. However, I was thinking about a pin that shows you the nearest Citadels (like the skull pointing to the Burning Monolith), just to give you an indication of which direction you should progress in.

For example, the Temple of Chaos is great. You need an item to enter, and the challenge is there. If you fail, you can still try again if you have a key (which you can buy on the trade).

But here, I’m just running map after map with no indication other than the quest log telling me, "Travel to the Copper Citadel." (I guess I should have played more "Where's Waldo?" when I was younger.) Doing this for two days in a row without anything telling me I’m heading in the right direction is pretty frustrating.

i am lvl, 90 ..did tons of maps..died 400 times. Found only 3 citadels that i only picked up the green quest item for boss point tree - and dropped no keys for some reason. I failed one...killed 2 bosses , one that i had complete still says fail. No key drops. They so buggy. And seriosly i pathed so much, this new map system is so dog shit. You cant zoom out, u slide the map all over the place. Rly frustratiing. Can we have an option to remove background from map navigation? literaly cant see shit. Last epoch had it better and i didnt even like that one

I'm level 90 and have been grinding T15s for days now. Have not seen 1 citadel.

Yeah, I've been farming t15 maps for hours on end for days and have only just found 1 of each citadel now. It get's really demotivating spending so long just pathing to towers to look for citadels instead of actually juicing maps with league mechanics because doing so feels like you're wasting time not looking for citadels.
I think a solution would be some sort of soft pity system, increasing the chance to spawn a citadel in the next fog of war revealed for each section of the atlas without one. Another idea would be having map nodes containing "clues", which could reveal or mark certain points of interest in the fog of war. I'm not sure completely how the clue system would work, but to make it scale with league mechanics/map difficulty would incentivize actually juicing up atlas nodes and farming them for the high risk high reward instead of mindlessly travelling non-juiced, lower tier maps throughout the atlas for citadels.

I really enjoy juicing up maps and will probably just do that, save up currency and just outright buy key pieces instead to access the monolith. Other than that, I have actually enjoyed the endgame a lot more than I thought I would!

Level 90 and haven't seen a single Citadel yet, so I agree that this system needs some attention.
A marker to the closest Citadel seems logical, but I'd go further and add markers for all three types of Citadels at once.

If you finish one type, you get a marker for the next one of the same type and so on.

There's just no point in having the player wander through the atlas blindly, until they stumble upon a Citadel by accident, considering that you are supposed to do these multiple times.

I feel very demotivated to keep going at this point - it's not enjoyable.

Lvl 93, 66.8% movement speed, I rarely see enemies before they are dead(Even rares) and don't stop. After around 120 hours I've found 3 Citadels.

First Citadel I purposefully ran the most juiced map I had saved up for the occasion, didn't realize it was one attempt. So still haven't unlocked all the keys.

I have explored so much of the map the fog of war is buggy, I completely focus on visibility to find more citadels I am not staying around tower juicing one area.

I have hit a wall in doing end game content. The game was great up until around 50 maps after that nothing happens. Only late game content I've been able to do is one breachstone.

I am beyond frustrated by the citadels now. I have only found one each of the stone and iron and failed both due to one shot mechanics that are not well telegraphed and are very hard to avoid. I have found multiple copper and have failed 2 and completed one. The one shot stuff in these fights feel very bad due to the fact you can't use a new waystone to try again on these maps. It would be one thing if you either had unlimited attempts or could at least keep trying with new maps til you succeeded but with how hard these are to find and a boss and atlas points locked behind it this is not a fun feature.

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Inquisitor_Tyr#2394 wrote:

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Pwato#2038 wrote:

I won’t talk about the "One portal map subject" here, as many threads are already debating it. But here’s my story.

I’ve been mapping for three days in a row now. I found 2 Iron Citadels on the first day. Due to my lack of skill, gear, luck, etc., I failed twice. And now, after two days of intensive mapping, I haven’t seen a single Citadel. I feel like a kid lost in a supermarket, but with only self-checkout machines and no one to ask where my mom is.

I think something to help players find Citadels is missing. Maybe making Citadels unique and tradable as maps? Or adding a pointer showing the direction to the nearest one? I don’t know, but it’s really frustrating, and praising the Toucan doesn’t seem to be enough in this situation.

Am I the only one in this situation?

I’m not complaining about the difficulty here; I simply can’t even play the game. Why create content if you’re not allowed to reach it, except by luck?

I like the tone of your post. But I would like to see you suggest a possible solution.

I will say that RNG into desirable areas is common in many video games. Are you proposing you should be able to access any content at any time ?

It is the opinion of a group of my guild yesterday that citadels should stay as a node but the fragments should be replaced with chase uniques.
The fragments, t16 maps (vaaling a waystone should do what it does to items, not be the add or remove a level it is on waystones) if it’s a map tier it should be a waystone drop, all unique maps (except Untainted Paradise for obvious reasons) should become part of the regular loot pool. We have then the option to find fragment maps (maybe make them 3 new unique maps and part of the aforementioned regular loot pool) and either run them ourselves or sell them like Guardian/Elderslayer maps in PoE1.