One Portal Per Map is Fine - EA Feedback After 350 Hours

I’m sharing my feedback with the understanding that this is a new game, so I’ve avoided direct comparisons to Path of Exile 1.
I currently have somewhere above 350 hours played in Standard with two endgame characters:
- Level 92 Infernalist Minions for bossing
- Level 95 Deadeye Crossbow for blasting

I’ve completed most of the endgame content except for the Simulacrum:
- Arbiter: 6/8
- Map Boss: 10/10
- Expedition: 6/8
- Delirium: 0/8
- Breach: 8/8
- Ritual: 8/8
- Maps: 30/30
- Trial of the Sekhemas: farming frequently
- Trial of Chaos: completed the Trialmaster once


Campaign
10/10 – A solid story with fantastic bosses and a smooth experience overall. I’m genuinely excited for Acts 4-6 to be released.

Atlas
I love the new Atlas design. The visual feedback on progression, despite its infinite nature, is incredibly satisfying. Completing a tower and unlocking new possibilities feels rewarding. I’ve found myself in a “just one more node” loop, similar to the "one more round" in Civilization games.

Suggestions for improvement:

- I'm pretty sure more unique maps are on the way. But it would be also nice to have more random non-combat encounters (for example a simple idea could be a campaign-style vendor for some gold sink).
- Improve UI visibility for completed towers with active tablets and their radius (likely a bug).
- Enhance movement and management within the Atlas. Some ideas include a top-down view, bookmarks, or a minimap.
- The biomes could be bigger - I would love a full screen of snow maps. More usage of the biomes would also be great (like the node Local Knowledge).
Not necessary, but it would be helpful to have written information indicating which biome a map belongs to.
- There’s already a decent roster of maps, but it feels like some appear too frequently while others are very rare (for every 50 Blooming Fields, there’s only 1 Ravine map).


Mapping
I appreciate the inability to farm a specific map, as it encourages variety. However, more maps with well-designed layouts would be welcome.

- Lost Towers: These feel like a chore and could be better utilized for engaging mechanics or rewards.
- One Portal per Map: I feel like this is fine. From my experience, the punishment is not that bad, and it prevents you from going back into the same map with dangerous mods to die five more times. Although I cannot imagine how this stands with new players who are used to plowing through the campaign with deaths and attempting the same approach in maps.


Pinnacle Bosses
- Having no pause on bosses is good.
- Logging out during a boss fight should have the same repercussions as death.
- One portal on bosses is rough for a first timer, since there is no other way to learn the mechanics beforehand. Map bosses (and King in the Mists) are fine because players get to learn them during the campaign. The idea to have less portals with the increasing difficulty of the encounters (on Atlas) sounds very good.


Endgame Mechanics
- Ritual: Small passageways can feel restrictive—larger radii would improve these encounters. Adding more Ritual-specific rewards like ritual-only uniques, ritual-only gear, and ritual precursor tablets in the favor system would enhance replayability.
- Breach: The density is overwhelming, resulting in cluttered visuals and excessive loot.
- Delirium: Mirrors blocking pathways and the charging mobs feel frustrating.
- Expedition: Mechanic is solid as is, as are the Logbooks. However, the vendor system feels like a chore in the endgame and is largely ignored—though it’s likely much more useful in SSF.
- Trial of Sekhemas: Very good, very enjoyable farming. More interesting boons/afflictions are welcome.
- Trial of Chaos: I haven’t truly farmed it yet, having done just one Trialmaster. The corrupted loot on every stage is pretty useless—maybe not having every piece of gear corrupted would be better? Currently, we just pick the negative mod that is the easiest for us. If each modifier choice also provided different item rewards, it would probably be more engaging. Additionally, having more varied modifiers would be a great improvement.

Crafting
Crafting feels rudimentary, which is fine for a vanilla launch. I'm sure we'll get more deterministic crafting in the future.
It would be nice to have a way to remove runes from gear—either for free, for gold, or via a new crafting currency.


Loot
In my opinion there’s too much loot in T15+ maps. I wonder how it would feel without the initial buff at the start of the EA.

UI/UX
- Highlight the last modified mod on items when using currencies like Chaos or Exalted Orbs. For example, a glow effect on the modified text that fades after a few seconds.
- Uncut support gems could have evolving item art to better signal level progression. Some goes for skill/spirit uncut gems.
- The separate UI screen for skill and spirit gems feels unintuitive—though I don’t have a clear solution, it’s worth noting.
- I would love a cast time bar for casting (and similar actions like crossbow reload).
- Holding Alt for item info doesn’t persist when hovering to other items.
- Since we have the possibility to pin tooltips and windows, this could be somehow utilized for game's lore aspects. For example, allowing players to pin an NPC’s dialogue window and listen to it later. Or maybe to even have pinnable dialogue cinematics.


Worth a Mention
- Rarity on chests is fun.
- WASD movement feels really good.
- The pause feature is fantastic—it even enables mid-fight scratches.
- I hate the Prowling Shade mob, plz nerf!



Overall a great game, keep on cooking and we'll keep on playing!

Great feedback. Agree with it all. Would love to see them add a list for active boons/afflictions during the trials.

I'll tell you what's rough:

Losing 5 divines a pop getting oneshot by:

- arbiter oneshot firewave fx not loading
- arbiter chill bug doing laser+oneshot blast at the same time
- getting oneshot eaten in the mist maze because there was a 1mm path through a wall that you didn't see
- getting infinite hand slammed bug on xesht
- finding a citadel after 10 hours and getting invincible or manaburn or other build destroying modifier on the boss because of the bugged atlas keystone
- getting oneshot lasered through ground and 3 screens away by the bugged laser mob


Other than that, sure, what you said.

Playing minions
Playing deadeye
1 portal per map good.
No need to read more.

"

Booyak#0562 wrote:

Playing minions
Playing deadeye
1 portal per map good.
No need to read more.

Right Lol. 1 map is honestly horrible. Not because of skill or get good. To many things outside of the players control. Can you even revive a player in a party? Every single friend from poe1 has already quit so I never got to try it. If not it does not promote party play at all. Poe is one of the few games that punishes players for not getting maxed res also so new players getting destroyed over res. I mean they could really just add another mode for 1 portal for the people that really enjoy it for the 1% out there.

No, it isn't.

Simply put, if I wanted hardcore-like gameplay, then I would play hardcore.

It really is that simple. The devs need to decide who they're designing the game for.

It's fine if they want to attract a really hardcore player base. I'll just play other ARPGs that don't frustrate me out of existence with penalties.

"

MAD_DAN#0389 wrote:

I'll tell you what's rough:

Losing 5 divines a pop getting oneshot by:

- arbiter oneshot firewave fx not loading
- arbiter chill bug doing laser+oneshot blast at the same time
- getting oneshot eaten in the mist maze because there was a 1mm path through a wall that you didn't see
- getting infinite hand slammed bug on xesht
- finding a citadel after 10 hours and getting invincible or manaburn or other build destroying modifier on the boss because of the bugged atlas keystone
- getting oneshot lasered through ground and 3 screens away by the bugged laser mob


Other than that, sure, what you said.

Glad you agree, and yeah, I couldn't agree more that the bug fixes should be the highest priority—which I would think they already have at the top of their list.

"

Orrion300#4027 wrote:

No, it isn't.

Simply put, if I wanted hardcore-like gameplay, then I would play hardcore.

It really is that simple. The devs need to decide who they're designing the game for.

It's fine if they want to attract a really hardcore player base. I'll just play other ARPGs that don't frustrate me out of existence with penalties.

I would argue that there is a great difference between a 5 minute setback (1 death per map) and a 12 hour setback (hardcore). But yeah, at the end it's their decision.

Are you drunk?

+1

Loosing to a pinnacle boss/citadel boss is a 12 hour setback. One attempt per key is dumb. 5 min map loss doesn't bother me much as long as you can sustain maps which is hard at first.

Also there is no way to level past 95 without running T18 maps and burning vaal orbs for a chance to run T18.

Final problem is the crafting system dosent work so you have to trade which is just unrewarding.

Luckily all these issues are easily fixed.