1 death maps suck

If the goal of Early access is to get people to try new stuff, you shouldn't penalize people so harshly for trying new things.

1.1) Harsh penalty for dying in a map: These maps are huge and we walk so slow that starting the whole map over after 1 death feels so bad that I just want to quit.
1.2) Harsh penalty for people testing glass cannon builds: Only builds that are both tanky and deal enough damage are viable which is a hard balance to get right in a new game.
1.3) Harsh waystone sustaining penalty: I've been getting on average like 1 waystone drop per map. If you die, it should refund a blank waystone or you should increase waystone drops to at least 3 per map. (I'm in T3 maps and am having trouble sustaining even with very few deaths). You could also make it cheaper to buy waystones from Doryani?
1.4) Harsh Penalty for skipping a rare: All rares should be highlighted on the mini-map, not just the final few. There are times where I need to walk all the way back to the beginning of the map to kill a rare I missed, and we walk so slow that I would rather start a new map(missing completion which feels bad). There are also some rares who are really hard to kill and you might need want to skip one, in which case you can't finish the map.


2.1) Harsh penalty for re-specing a character: My character that I developed by myself was way too glass cannon which was a pain point already addressed above. I spent all of my gold (300k) trying to fix my lvl 70 character and add in some defense.
2.2) Harsh penalty for running out of gold: Now that I'm broke I don't have enough gold to respec and try something new. If I get some gold and then spend it trying something new and it fails, I won't have enough to revert back to my prior state and now my character can't fight to get more gold to respec.

3.1) Harsh Ascendancy area level penalty: In POE 1, each ascendancy has a fixed area level. If you don't find a low area level access key then you will have to do the ascendancy at a higher level than the threshold allows. I was over leveled by like 10 levels for my 3rd ascendancy and I still barely finished. Do I have to get to lvl 90 before I'll be powerful enough to get my 4th ascendancy? Can we not make the area levels fixed?

4.1) Harsh penalty for walking slow: POE2 is way slower in terms of how fast I can get my character to run or attack, but there are so many monsters that attack and run faster than me. It's impossible to run away or even attack them before they hit me. It's hard to dodge knowing the monsters are so fast they'll hit me the second I'm done dodging. It's impossible to avoid getting surrounded. I get surrounded a lot more than I ever did in POE1. There should only be like 5% of monsters that run faster than my base movement speed and those 5% definitely should not run faster than me with my passive tree buffs + the 20% buff on my boots.

5.1) Harsh multiplayer Body blocking Penalty: In playing multiplayer I get stuck in the narrow passages trying to retreat while someone else from the rear is stuck trying to engage. In the campaign this body blocking got really old really fast.

6.1) Harsh penalty using flash grenades: When I use them, I blind not only the monsters, but myself. I still use them when surrounded, but I get surrounded a lot so I can't never see my screen.

Update 1/1/25

-I've made it through T16 maps by using map bosses for map sustain.
-I didn't realize until today that T16 are only available via vaal orbs on T15 maps. That would have been nice to know sooner
-I'm lvl87 and I still don't have my 4th ascendancy
-I have never found a Divine orb. After reading some posts I added 106% rarity to my gear and I now get about 3 exalts per map but still no Divines
-I feel like the currency drops in T11-16 maps are worse than the currency drops in T6-10 maps.
-The economy is broken. 3 exa per map (maps are huge and take a long time) 100 exa for 1 divine. Are you saying we should only find 1 divine orb every 33 maps? My luck has been worse than that.

Survey says...

If there's any piece of advice to take, GGG, on the EA. This is it.

Have you considered not dying. Seems like a lot of people are doing this to fix the skill issue you're experiencing

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hboi#6131 wrote:

Have you considered not dying. Seems like a lot of people are doing this to fix the skill issue you're experiencing

Oh, cool! Is that the trick? Oh man, all of us have been completely in the dark. Thank you for that insightful and so very helpful advice. We'll immediately change up our play styles so we DON'T DIE!

Genius...

GGG, put this guy on the team. Stat. Make him a board director. He could absolutely guide the game with it's current trajectory.

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Faroc#0285 wrote:

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hboi#6131 wrote:

Have you considered not dying. Seems like a lot of people are doing this to fix the skill issue you're experiencing

Oh, cool! Is that the trick? Oh man, all of us have been completely in the dark. Thank you for that insightful and so very helpful advice. We'll immediately change up our play styles so we DON'T DIE!

Genius...

GGG, put this guy on the team. Stat. Make him a board director. He could absolutely guide the game with it's current trajectory.

Hey np man. Happy to solve that skill issue you were having.

we stared 5 friend playing (we all play poe1 on and off for many years)
every one quit after 1 week of mapping lol

game still in baby mode and it's all ok.. gonna take some time for it to grow
What's the chance that poe2 came out more iron out and polish in EA and a year before release then poe1 is today ? that would be impossible
BUT hardcore does not mean hard .

I think the point of it is that there are infinite maps. Dying just means you start over with a new map.

The penalty is that you lose the effects on the map. And so what? You'll get back to them eventually.

That said. I agree wholeheartedly with you. It freakin sucks, it feels bad, and its even worse when you die to some mysterious blast out of no where and go from 100-0 . Or alternatively, you dodge roll into an enemy and get stuck, can no longer move, it throws off your whole flow and you get chipped away by 20 guys that surround you out of nowhere and you die.

Feels bad. Feels really bad.

That, and its really hard to get maps. I just finally broke out of tier1-3 - and have been getting a lot of 5, 6, and 7 maps.

Losing a tier 3/4 at the time without replacing it was infuriating.

The white knights are always like this, I've seen more than enough of them on WoW forums back in BFA and Shadowlands to last me a lifetime, they'll tirelessly and ceaselessly defend anything from the devs (except when devs make changes they don't like then they'll be even more venomous than most casual players can ever be) and force everyone else to 'have fun' aka suffer the same way. Learn to ignore them.

Sooner or later the 1 death bricking your map mechanic has to change, it's just a matter of time.

Think this way: how many people are playing the game and having fun specifically because you can't die in maps? Like, if you have 6 portals instead of just 1, you'd be so unhappy you'd quit the game? 0.

How many players feel negatively about it? Probably a lot. Will this be a factor when players decide to quit the game? Probably a factor for some.

What is PoE2, or 1 for that matter? A free-2-play, season based live service game relying on casuals having fun to buy supporter packs.

There you go then. They'll change it, just wait.