Late Game = PoE1 with less customization, more on death, and worse movement skills

I've been getting disillusioned with late game on my second character. It lacks the qualities that are indicative of replayability.

"

1. Customization:
The atlas is procedurally generated. We must get to towers (without running the layouts we like) so that we can then add mechanics to the layouts we like.

This presents a problem immediately, before you factor in that we have to kill every randomly placed rare in massive layouts.

The biggest problem is, we can't run what we want to without running what we don't for hours! The lategame has always been about customization, and this Last Epoch-like system has been a total regression from mapping in PoE1 in that aspect.

I don't want forced variety. You might think it makes people keep playing, but it's exactly what made me (and many others) quit Last Epoch.

"

2. Exploding Corpses, Periodic Explosions, On-Death Effects
There's more of them than ever, and they are more obnoxious than ever, not only that, but we can't blink away anymore!

In my opinion, this is a terrible oversight. Making blink (a 60 spirit reservation) almost mandatory with all these effects as well as reduced CDR support attached to it, just lowers build diversity and makes the game more boring to theory craft out of the gate.

I've never heard a PoE player IN MY LIFE say "what we need, is more overlapping AoEs that come out after monsters are dead and do more damage than we can get EHP". Nobody likes it. We need it to be clear, and have ways to avoid it, or we need to be able to build around it.

Making monsters damage not overlap might be a good start (since you could probably balance things that aren't doing 5-10x damage randomly).

"

3. Travel Skills Feel Bad
They don't travel around all of the tiny bits of terrain you guys put there for aesthetic. You just bump into walls and monsters like an idiot when you try to use them.

With blink, there's no setting for it to always use your cursor, so if you are using WASD, it will be an omni direction roll that just goes max distance every time.

Every attack travel skill, is outfitted with a base attack time that you can't reduce, but can be increased. A massive oversight. You can't mitigate something lowering the attack speed of your travel skill if you can't increase the attack speed. 1.8 seconds, while chilled is literally years in PoE time in maps.

It feels AWFUL to use the travel skills.

I really hope that we can make Poe2 maps their own thing, and an enjoyable experience. I just think it's really, really hard. You can't have methodical gameplay with a power fantasy. It's really one or the other. You also can't have methodical gameplay in the way end-game (has to) handle difficulty. It's a stat check. It always will be. You clear the screen, or the screen clears you.

I feel like we should just say "people are gonna blast in endgame" and let them blast, instead of railroading them into "methodical gameplay" when there is no method in madness.

bump

I'll admit I liked the old atlas better.

For one you only had to run each map once, each clear provided atlas points, you got a clear sense of progression, it felt more realistic to clear it each season since it was a finite thing with a fixed amount of nodes and there was enough systems to make it possible to run your favorite maps and activities over and over...

Here if feels you're stuck in a gigantic map where there's tons of repeat maps, it semes impossible to clear the entire thing, you have no idea where to go to find the towers and hideouts you need for account progression, the one life thing makes map sustain a pain and you now need to clear ten consecutive maps to get atlas points....

Kinda wish they just gave the old atlas map a cool 3d map at this point heh.

"

Mortiferius#1833 wrote:

I'll admit I liked the old atlas better.

For one you only had to run each map once, each clear provided atlas points, you got a clear sense of progression, it felt more realistic to clear it each season

Here if feels you're stuck in a gigantic map where there's tons of repeat maps

Right there is the problem. We are forced to repeat gameplay we didn't enjoy to begin with, and robbed of our sense of progression and options to customize once we have progressed.

"

AverBeg7#1689 wrote:

I've been getting disillusioned with late game on my second character. It lacks the qualities that are indicative of replayability.

"

1. Customization:
The atlas is procedurally generated. We must get to towers (without running the layouts we like) so that we can then add mechanics to the layouts we like.

This presents a problem immediately, before you factor in that we have to kill every randomly placed rare in massive layouts.

The biggest problem is, we can't run what we want to without running what we don't for hours! The lategame has always been about customization, and this Last Epoch-like system has been a total regression from mapping in PoE1 in that aspect.

I don't want forced variety. You might think it makes people keep playing, but it's exactly what made me (and many others) quit Last Epoch.

"

2. Exploding Corpses, Periodic Explosions, On-Death Effects
There's more of them than ever, and they are more obnoxious than ever, not only that, but we can't blink away anymore!

In my opinion, this is a terrible oversight. Making blink (a 60 spirit reservation) almost mandatory with all these effects as well as reduced CDR support attached to it, just lowers build diversity and makes the game more boring to theory craft out of the gate.

I've never heard a PoE player IN MY LIFE say "what we need, is more overlapping AoEs that come out after monsters are dead and do more damage than we can get EHP". Nobody likes it. We need it to be clear, and have ways to avoid it, or we need to be able to build around it.

Making monsters damage not overlap might be a good start (since you could probably balance things that aren't doing 5-10x damage randomly).

"

3. Travel Skills Feel Bad
They don't travel around all of the tiny bits of terrain you guys put there for aesthetic. You just bump into walls and monsters like an idiot when you try to use them.

With blink, there's no setting for it to always use your cursor, so if you are using WASD, it will be an omni direction roll that just goes max distance every time.

Every attack travel skill, is outfitted with a base attack time that you can't reduce, but can be increased. A massive oversight. You can't mitigate something lowering the attack speed of your travel skill if you can't increase the attack speed. 1.8 seconds, while chilled is literally years in PoE time in maps.

It feels AWFUL to use the travel skills.

I really hope that we can make Poe2 maps their own thing, and an enjoyable experience. I just think it's really, really hard. You can't have methodical gameplay with a power fantasy. It's really one or the other. You also can't have methodical gameplay in the way end-game (has to) handle difficulty. It's a stat check. It always will be. You clear the screen, or the screen clears you.

I feel like we should just say "people are gonna blast in endgame" and let them blast, instead of railroading them into "methodical gameplay" when there is no method in madness.

Last Epoch's endgame is miles better than this.

"

Xenus_Paradox#7530 wrote:

Last Epoch's endgame is miles better than this.

You know what mate, you're actually right. It's an insult to Last Epoch to compare the two. PoE2's version of Last Epoch's system is just a copied and worse "forced variety" simulator than theirs.

At least in Last Epoch's system you are clearly working towards something when you are doing forced gameplay you don't like. In PoE2, it feels like you are legitimately just wasting time doing chores you don't want to do.

The whole atlas 'system' feels literally patched on by an intern in 1 afternoon. I cannot fathom how anyone in QA played with this for more than a day and didn't raise any red flags.
I'm hoping this will be a top priority once they get back into development, because at this stage I'd rather have had a finished campaign than this.

The biggest problem - which also plagued synthesis league - is being forced to run crap tilesets in order to get to the ones you actually do want to run. Let's not get into micro managing towers, which I saw coming from a mile away as soon as it was announced, minus the part that you actually have to rush every single one as a low tier map (you didn't see it coming, really?).

Then there is the overall navigation, or rather lack of thereof. This thing might be palatable to a console player, but it is outright insulting to any other actual gamer.

Scarcity of delirium frags compared to breach is a major oversight. Expedition is absolutely useless and might as well be removed from the game in its current state. Ritual does not work, because 2/3rds of maps are corridor simulators (am I playing diablo 4?).
The only 'working' end game mechanic is breach and that is also limited to a handful of maps - there is nothing more infuriating than getting a breach in a 10 mile long corridor, period.

"

arandan#3174 wrote:

The biggest problem - which also plagued synthesis league - is being forced to run crap tilesets in order to get to the ones you actually do want to run.

Yep, completely ruins the replayability of endgame for me.

"

arandan#3174 wrote:

Then there is the overall navigation, or rather lack of thereof. This thing might be palatable to a console player, but it is outright insulting to any other actual gamer.

Why can't we zoom out? The atlas is massive, and even worse, it snaps back to the last map you did instead of what you were looking at when you go to fetch a map after finally finding a layout you want to run.

"

arandan#3174 wrote:

Scarcity of delirium frags compared to breach is a major oversight. Expedition is absolutely useless and might as well be removed from the game in its current state. Ritual does not work, because 2/3rds of maps are corridor simulators (am I playing diablo 4?).

The only 'working' end game mechanic is breach and that is also limited to a handful of maps - there is nothing more infuriating than getting a breach in a 10 mile long corridor, period.

They have actually regressed from PoE1 as it stands. They acted on feedback (in ritual league) to make rituals always spawn in areas with space. They did not implement this in PoE2. They made breaches spawn closer to the center, also not in PoE2.

Delirium is just poorly implemented and unrewarding. They kept the "possessing monsters" mechanic (so half the monsters in your maps turn into worthless deli mobs that are unaffected by map modifiers and never rares) and they made the rewards 10x worse, I am pretty sure valuable Distilled only drop from Delirium bosses, which are extremely rare. The only one I saw spawned in the boss room with the boss, which happened to be the hardest double boss, and they all had auras buffing each other so it just bricked.

Oh let's not even get into them being incapable of implementing lessons already learned in poe1 (are you really gonna make me pick up 50 breach splinters in singles per map again???).

That was my biggest hope for poe2. A developer with vast experience in creating and refining endgame systems should present a functioning one, or not even bother. Why rush this abomination out, instead of focusing on finishing the missing classes?

"

arandan#3174 wrote:

Oh let's not even get into them being incapable of implementing lessons already learned in poe1 (are you really gonna make me pick up 50 breach splinters in singles per map again???).

That was my biggest hope for poe2. A developer with vast experience in creating and refining endgame systems should present a functioning one, or not even bother. Why rush this abomination out, instead of focusing on finishing the missing classes?

While I share your frustrations with them not using their lessons from PoE1 in the endgame immediately, I do think it was a good decision to refine lategame early on.

I am also really looking forward to the new classes and gems. I don't really vibe with staff or mace/hammer as melee. I want swords and daggers. I also really hope they are gonna bring out Assassin. If trapper and trickster make the cut over crit man, I will be real sad.