Map System is Stupid

The map/atlas system in POE2 is essentially a reimagined downgrade from POE1. It's certainly more creative but has some clear limitations.

Here are the primary issues I've noticed:

1. You cannot directly control what maps you wish to do. You can try to avoid the F-tier maps and steer towards the good ones but eventually you'll just get stuck. You cannot favorite maps or make certain maps more likely to appear over others.

2. Many users have had mixed experiences on the likelihood of finding a citadel. From my personal experience, it seems to be very rare and sporadic where you could go for a very long time without finding even one. By the time you actually find all three, you could easily afford to just purchase all the fragments yourself.

3. Considering the vast amount of area you can over in the atlas, did you ever consider giving players the ability to zoom out to a much greater distance? I would need to be able to zoom out 100x more to even see where I started at this point. Conversely, having the zoom-in feature is fairly worthless within such a vast area.

4. The "Lost Tower" nodes only exist as a trivial rock-in-shoe to players and is more of a disruption to running an actual map. Either add some added rewards to this node or just make it auto-complete when a player encounters it.

5. The atlas skill point tree is completely ridiculous. Most of the entire tree consists of nodes that are fairly pathetic and not even close to being worth the number of points taken. I currently expend all my points just to get increased map drops of higher tiers/quantity.

The additional points such as for (as one example) "Ritual" set the bar fairly high requiring you to enter end game bosses like Crux of Nothingness (currently valued at over 6 divine price just to attempt once) for a 2 skill point reward leading to a crap node.


Of course, the game is still in an "Early Access" state but these are just some topics I've come across while playing.

I just leveled an alt and was going to try a different atlas setup but it seems they are shared across the account.
what the hell is that i wanted to test a different setup to compare not have to respec one or the other

boggles my mind the choices they make

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

i agree. they removed an extensively tested system and introduced very randomized content under the guise of 'infinite' - its not infinite, its just a very cumbersome UI that is PITA to navigate.

Congratulations on seeing through this illusion. The mapping system is essentially an overlay which forces the player to spend more time setting up interaction with less desirable content.

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ScavengeBR#7569 wrote:

The map/atlas system in POE2 is essentially a reimagined downgrade from POE1. It's certainly more creative but has some clear limitations.

yeah it has a lot of limitations that I consider pretty significant. I made a thread with a suggestion the other day.

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1. instead of conjoined/linear pathing between nodes have completion of a node expand a radius around it that allows access to all nodes within it (or something to this effect).

this gives some necessary agency back to the player in regards to the layouts they run and how they run maps... you could (tactically) decide to run but not complete a map (for the purposes of a strategy that doesn't involve leveraging all of the rares/packs) and not have it hinder you like it currently can.

requiring completion of every map like it currently does makes niche/hyper focused mapping strategies impossible?

instead we're all running maps exactly the same way, which obviously creates a bias towards clear speed, magic find etc.

hopefully GGG recognize all it's problems.

Every single player in PoE 2 has a different end game Atlas. This in my opinion was a terrible idea. Making end game completely RNG. In 200 hours I have seen 1 citadel, after the patch. No more or on my atlas, none. It's why I uninstalled again.

its the common thing in poe2 that they replaced freedom with gating and restrictions.
its not just the maps, its the same with gems or crafting. every part of the game is toned down, restricted or random in poe2.
where in poe1 the player controls his endgame, in poe2 the endgame controls the player.

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Pl4t1numX#4325 wrote:

its the common thing in poe2 that they replaced freedom with gating and restrictions.
its not just the maps, its the same with gems or crafting. every part of the game is toned down, restricted or random in poe2.
where in poe1 the player controls his endgame, in poe2 the endgame controls the player.

I can give them the benefit of the doubt that all of this was highly rushed, but there's so many holes in it that I would like to know they're on it, you know?

their recent interview didn't do it for me.

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Dak01#7115 wrote:

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Pl4t1numX#4325 wrote:

its the common thing in poe2 that they replaced freedom with gating and restrictions.
its not just the maps, its the same with gems or crafting. every part of the game is toned down, restricted or random in poe2.
where in poe1 the player controls his endgame, in poe2 the endgame controls the player.

I can give them the benefit of the doubt that all of this was highly rushed, but there's so many holes in it that I would like to know they're on it, you know?

their recent interview didn't do it for me.

all these restrictions arent a rushed miss, they are intended and they are, at least for me, restricting and randomizing the fun out of the game.

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HeroEvermore#0498 wrote:

Every single player in PoE 2 has a different end game Atlas. This in my opinion was a terrible idea. Making end game completely RNG. In 200 hours I have seen 1 citadel, after the patch. No more or on my atlas, none. It's why I uninstalled again.

That seems...odd.

Are you not seeing the beams shining through the fog that indicate a citadel?

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Mordgier#6997 wrote:

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HeroEvermore#0498 wrote:

Every single player in PoE 2 has a different end game Atlas. This in my opinion was a terrible idea. Making end game completely RNG. In 200 hours I have seen 1 citadel, after the patch. No more or on my atlas, none. It's why I uninstalled again.

That seems...odd.

Are you not seeing the beams shining through the fog that indicate a citadel?

it shouldnt be that somebody gets 20 citadels because he is lucky and another person 0 because he isnt. not in an economy game where everybody should have the same baseline.