The biggest issue with the endgame is NOT that it is TOO punishing, it's that...

+1

Not being able to retry the "fun, but harder" content is obviously the least fun way to punish players for losing. This is definitely something that developers should be looking at.

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Redthorne82#3177 wrote:

I guess I just hold onto the "we pivoted to endgame and did it in 3 months" harder than most. Like, it's a miracle the endgame EXISTS if it was only done in 3 months. I assume things like the atlas will be barely recognizable in a year. PoE1 completely overhauled it's atlas multiple times...no reason PoE2 won't do the same.

That said, totally valid, I guess I just assumed that the "endgame is barebones" included fixing things like that.

I get it's EA but what is EA for if not exactly for this kind of feedback? If it gets changed later, great! But if everyone tells them it is perfect it won't get changed. Luckily there are a lot of criticisms coming out, so I'm sure they'll improve endgame, but I think the "it's punishing! give 6 portals, no exp loss please!" criticism is missing the bigger issue, which is why I made this post.

Whether or not 1 portal and X% exp (whatever it is) is the right balance or not, is something for GGG to decide and tweak and I think they'll figure out the right balance over time. But this idea that you should, even temporary, lose access to fun aspects of the game is far more troublesome in my mind.

I might even go so far as to say that the people who are complaining about number of portals and exp loss actually don't realise that that is not what is making them frustrated with the game. They are frustrated by something, for sure, and portals and the exp bar are the easiest thing to point to. I think this idea that the punishment = remove fun from the maps is harder to notice and articulate and potentially would solve the issue for a lot of those players currently frustrated with the endgame.

Tbh I was surprised about the XP loss criticisms since that was in PoE1 and it's not like you NEED to hit max level. Most builds are complete enough by 80-90. So I would be surprised if anyone had all their issues solved by just removing the XP loss...

Also I just want to clarify that while I do think GGG needs to strike the right balance with portals, EXP lost, currency lost, and time preparing the content lost -- all of that is exactly that: balancing. Balancing numbers is just what GGG is going to have to figure out over time and what is appropriate for their game. Obviously it can be too much, or too little, and that will depend on the game and is much more an iterative process of optimisation to just tweak it until you get it right.

So while I think there might be issues there, it's ultimately not a glaring flaw. It's just something that needs to be tweaked over time in an EA game.

The additional punishment of being forced to run a bunch of empty boring maps is just, fundamentally, a bad idea to put in your game that you want people to enjoy. Not because it takes time (which is a reasonable thing to lose upon failure), but because you're forced to temporarily play a boring version of the game (which is really just bonkers game design).

In PoE1 you might chaos up a map and die too many times and lose it. That loses you exp, currency, AND time. That's fine. If you die 6 times on Maven, that loses you a lot of time in building up the orb to get the shards or whatever. But you know what happens after these losses? You just go back to doing more fun maps full of mechanics. Maybe Maven fights are a bit more fun (depends on the person), but you're not exactly going from fun to completely featureless boring maps.

In PoE2 if you die on a map, the mechanics disappear leaving you with a dead boring node. If you die on citadels, yeah it takes time to get back there, but unlike Maven a lot of that time is spent on mindlessly boring busywork empty maps so you can progress out far enough in the atlas to find another citadel (either a lot of empty maps, or spending a lot of time on towers + some empty maps to make the maps less empty).

There is just a categorical difference between the issues of "is the time sacrificed too much or not enough?" and "you have to play the game mode we purposely made boring now :smile:". The former is fixable with some tweaks, but the latter problem really needs to be addressed in the fundamental mechanics of how the atlas works.

"

You're still missing the point and I never suggested being able to skip nodes? Am I being trolled lol?

I'm saying the game as currently designed literally removes fun things from the maps as a way of punishing you, i.e. it makes the game less fun -> more boring. I'm not arguing about whether they're punishing the right kinds of failures. I'm saying the punishment that they do decide to give you is to lock you in the boring cube for a while and that is dumb af.

+1

I stopped playing poe-2 and I recommend that everyone who thinks like this do so, because it's boring, it's tedious, because it focuses on punishing us and not making us have a good time, and because there are a million games out there.

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Bebehercio#4402 wrote:

+1

I stopped playing poe-2 and I recommend that everyone who thinks like this do so, because it's boring, it's tedious, because it focuses on punishing us and not making us have a good time, and because there are a million games out there.

If you're suffering that much you shouldn't feel that you *need* to play the game, especially as it is EA right now. You don't need to play any game that is unfun! Come back later when it's improved and see if the game is for you.

POE 2 isn't going to be for everyone. The same goes for POE 1, LE, D4, D3 etc.... I absolutely love the contrasting game play differences between POE 1 and POE 2.

In POE 1, I generally make glass cannons (very high DPS, minimal defensive layers) due to the fact I have 6 portals as my primary defensive layer.

In POE 2, I spend a solid amount of time ensuring I have a multi-layered defensive strategy on all my characters. When I die, I review my NVIDIA instant replay and try to get an understanding of how I died (this can be done by anyone on PC and it takes 2 minutes). The next thing I do is open the skill tree and start to analyse - is there anyway I could of prevented this outcome (both from a skill, build or mechanic POV).

This game will not respect your time, if you don't first show it the respect it deserves (this game is complex, and it will only get drastically more complex). I am not going to go as far to say it isn't casual friendly, because I don't want to categorise players, but let me say this, this is the first game I have played where I use nearly every resource under the sun (POE2DB, YouTube, AI etc..) to properly learn the mechanics of damage and defensive layers.

You OBVIOUSLY do not have to go this far, but if you don't do any research and are dying on consecutive maps (even 15-20% of the maps you run), you are not following the mechanics of the game.

TLDR - I love the complexity and the thought that one death maps invokes in your build journey. It makes you respect the game and mechanics, and in return, it will show you that it does indeed respect your time. This game will not be for everyone.

"

Magoraz#6258 wrote:

POE 2 isn't going to be for everyone. The same goes for POE 1, LE, D4, D3 etc.... I absolutely love the contrasting game play differences between POE 1 and POE 2.

In POE 1, I generally make glass cannons (very high DPS, minimal defensive layers) due to the fact I have 6 portals as my primary defensive layer.

In POE 2, I spend a solid amount of time ensuring I have a multi-layered defensive strategy on all my characters. When I die, I review my NVIDIA instant replay and try to get an understanding of how I died (this can be done by anyone on PC and it takes 2 minutes). The next thing I do is open the skill tree and start to analyse - is there anyway I could of prevented this outcome (both from a skill, build or mechanic POV).

This game will not respect your time, if you don't first show it the respect it deserves (this game is complex, and it will only get drastically more complex). I am not going to go as far to say it isn't casual friendly, because I don't want to categorise players, but let me say this, this is the first game I have played where I use the ChatGPT 4-O to properly learn the mechanics of damage and defensive layers.

You OBVIOUSLY do not have to go this far, but if you don't do any research and are dying on consecutive maps (even 15-20% of the maps you run), you are not following the mechanics of the game.

TLDR - I love the complexity and the thought that one death maps invokes in your build journey. It makes you respect the game and mechanics, and in return, it will show you that it does indeed respect your time. This game will not be for everyone.

Wow, cool story bro. Also, irrelevant to everything I said.

Oh... I think this is the simplicity you wanted:

You stated - you are forced to play a boring version of the game.

My Answer - due to this potential punishment, I get gud and play the game using the appropriate mechanics. Due to this, I rarely die and I rarely get this punishment you speak of (on any of my builds).

"

Magoraz#6258 wrote:

Oh... I think this is the simplicity you wanted:

You stated - you are forced to play a boring version of the game.

My Answer - due to this potential punishment, I get gud and play the game using the appropriate mechanics.

So only playing a boring version of the game would motivate you to get good, not, y'know, the fun of being good, the currency time and exp lost? Delete your account? Not enough. It has to specifically be forcing you to be bored and only that would make you get good? If true I'm very glad to say no serious game dev would cater to you as player, not even GGG -- what they've done here clearly isn't intentional and I look forward to the game becoming fun when they figure how to to do this better in the future.

does not bother me much i got a few node that i left, i've run a few unenchanted map case i wanted to path this way but mostly i don't die that much. But i guess node could keep the bonus from towers so the map keep a lil juice, you can also slam some delirium.