Endgame mapping is underwhelming by design - longpost

Hello GGG Team!

I have over 4000hrs in POE1 and as of writing I have 362 hours played in Path of Exile 2 EA.

Overall I have thoroughly enjoyed POE2 even though it is Early access and content is lacking. You did a great job and exceeded my expectations on the quality of the game. However my "excitement graph" has been a linear downhill since I reached maps. While this may have been expected in EA, it was due to different reasons than lack of content or non-interactive endgame progression. So I want to give feedback about my dissatisfaction with Atlas, Waystones and Biomes. I feel these concepts have design flaws that make endgame feel underwhelming regardless of how much content is available, and will continue to do so until their design is improved.

<rant>
Atlas is literally endless and contains many surprises!

That sounded great on paper. But since nothing scales with distance from the starting point, except that citadels start appearing at some point, the whole 'endlessness'.. ends there. You are forced to work the atlas to get Citadels but there is no, what should I call that? "intent" in the atlas exploration. It does not matter if you go far or wide, in a straight line or circular, the mapping experience is absolutely the same 10 nodes away from the starting point as well as 300 nodes away from the starting point. There be no dragons! The only thing that scales is the UI loading bugs and difficulty navigating said UI.

So while "endless" atlas looks super exciting at first, I soon learned that it was incredibly shallow as exploring it did not affect mapping experience by 1 bit.

Biomes

Biomes are supposed to control what kind of map layouts can appear. But the biomes themselves are so small, as small as one map node sometimes, that in any point of atlas, you have all possible biomes in a single screen TWICE. In a chain of 5 connected map nodes there can be literally 5 different biomes. So there is no feeling of "navigation" between biomes, and you never really pay attention to them because they are too small and have little to no effect on your maps. The whole atlas then feels like a single biome named "Mud" since everything is mashed together randomly in a quick succession, and makes no noticeable difference. Oh and there is literally one keystone that is supposed to interact with biomes. "Supposed to" because how would I know? The biomes are so small it doesn't seem worth specializing in any particular biome, as you will not be able to target it reliably.

Waystones

Waystones affect the Tier and instance modifiers of the map. And add delirium via instilling. That's it.


So while endless atlas and biomes looked cool on first glance, both turn out to be shallow and more or less useless when it comes to day-to-day mapping. Waystones provide very limited control as you cannot affect the layout, and precursor tablets let you semi-deterministically add mechanics. The whole atlas experience could be sufficiently replaced with a "automapper map device" from settlers, and the mapping experience would be literally the same.

* It looks good but actually does nothing
* too limited control over mapping experience

These two combined create an underwhelming mapping experience for many leagues to come.

</rant>

Some ideas about what kind of changes I would like to see:

* Atlas needs to have scaling based on distance from starting point. There have to be dragons and the further away from starting point, the bigger the dragons must be. I think this is absolutely essential to making atlas not feel shallow.

* Biomes need to be much bigger and possible to specialize in. As a player I would like to explore atlas in search for a "good" biome to setup my farming plot. If that involved travelling through a couple screens of Ice or Sand biome, so be it. But there has to be "intent" in Atlas exploration and farming plot setup. Kind of same interaction as there was in Delve when farming for Corroded fossils - you would fast forward through biomes to look for Sulphuric caverns, and then exhaust all nodes in your favorite biome.


* Waystones should control layout instead of Tier. That would also breathe more life into Atlas exploration if T15 maps started, lets say, in 200 nodes away from starting point. T16 in 500 and so on. Maybe there could be "Linear Waystone" "Maze Waystone" "Unique Waystone" etc that would decide the exact map at random.

* Together with the point above, it would be absolute bonkers if your favorite map layout could be visually altered depending on what Biome you opened it in. Like if opening a Decay map in "Water" biome gave a map looking like some swamp caves, but opening it in "Ice" biome it would look like frozen caves.


So yeah, I think mapping experience is very dull right now and no matter how much cool classes, skills or league mechanics you will add, it will not fix the root problem that is shallow and lifeless atlas.

I really hope you will address this as I love the game and wanna play it more, but this endgame experience is really not fun.

+1 to that.. compared to the campaign, the endgame is overwelmingly underwelming.. the death pennalty is extreme and frustrating, and added to the "infinite, yet shallow" map, th entire atlas experience is depressing..

I´ve got 3 chars up to endgame.. why? because its far more fun to play from teh start, all the way to endgame, then the poor execution of the endgame itself.. might as well just create a few more untill the atlas updates.

+1