Too much setting up in endgame

I stopped playing poe1 when I got to the point I was good enough to super juice every map, because juicing is too much set up before you can actually play for real.

Poe2 is not that much but I feel new stuff is coming which will make it like that too. RIGHT NOW it is already too much set up. We need to do 20 maps with random waystones, to get to towers and to get to citadels. I just constantly do not have interesting maps to run and I need to spend hours traveling to get to a citadel and placing tablets in every tower in range and only then I can really play a map that matters.

Please cut the setting up by a lot, let us chain bosses and juiced maps.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

agree, the extend of the set up in this game is not part of the game play loop. if i wanted to optimize/strategize and be setting stuff up i would be playing a different game. here it feels like a chore

The entire game is about setting up and strategizing, from planning a build to juicing maps. The actual mapping could be automatic for all i care.

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

agree, the extend of the set up in this game is not part of the game play loop. if i wanted to optimize/strategize and be setting stuff up i would be playing a different game. here it feels like a chore

The entire game is about setting up and strategizing, from planning a build to juicing maps. The actual mapping could be automatic for all i care.

Add a setup that allows you to force certain areas via the towers. Or the towers/waystones have modifiers, explicit or implicit, to effect the area. Like reduced area size, reduced distance from area to area, and/or certain areas are completed already.

Your build and gear and your strategies you set up continuously and improve upon them over time and you continue to use that set up indefinitely. Running empty maps to get to towers and citadels is just chore, and once you do it you only get a handful of real maps to run.

I'm all in for huge setups and progressions like a huge atlas tree, stuff to unlock that is then enabled for every map, tablets influencing your next X many maps instead of a range, buffs to specific layouts (do something that then gives you delirium in every X layout, then something else to get breach in every Y layout, etc).

There can be a lot of actual strategizing and setting up that actually lasts and you reiterate, change, rethink, and is actually a strategy and a setup rather than the current run a bunch of meaningless maps and that's not even a choice only to run 5 juiced maps or 1 juiced citadel.

So run trials. They take ZERO time to set up, you need ZERO magic find, and the two most expensive items drop from the bosses.

I hate mapping. Its such a massive waste of time when you can just drop in a trial map and go.

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

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AintCare#6513 wrote:

agree, the extend of the set up in this game is not part of the game play loop. if i wanted to optimize/strategize and be setting stuff up i would be playing a different game. here it feels like a chore

The entire game is about setting up and strategizing, from planning a build to juicing maps. The actual mapping could be automatic for all i care.

nope, this is not part of the game play loop. you strategize once, you build your char once, and these things have a clear goal and are rewarding. to strategize your grind, with sub-optimal grind just so you can do it again few maps later is not challanging nor rewarding. its a chore and none of the game mechanics interact with it, because this is not a tycoon/sim/strategy game. the amount of hustle is too great for how shallow the results are to put it bluntly

No, you strategize all the time. You're constantly improving your build, constantly looking for items that could improve your build, you're figuring out ways to improve your atlas tree, and there will be more and more of that over the years. PoE is literally a tycoon/sim/strategy of ARPG world, just look at settlers lmao.

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LaiTash#6276 wrote:

No, you strategize all the time. You're constantly improving your build, constantly looking for items that could improve your build, you're figuring out ways to improve your atlas tree, and there will be more and more of that over the years. PoE is literally a tycoon/sim/strategy of ARPG world, just look at settlers lmao.

And that's all fine, except running empty maps is not part of that

+1

Get rid of towers. Give us scarabs.

All nodes should connect with all neighboring nodes.

Nothing worse than seeing the citadel is blocked by a tiny mountain and having to go 15 maps around just to find it.

In general I think I liked POE1 endgame better. The atlas was much much better. and you could run any map you wanted with orbs.

The tower seldom effects the maps you want it to effect. Like someone else said, scarabs were better, like I bought the map tab and the fragments tab...

A lot of the issues come from many of the maps just aren't good to play. The actual maps in Poe1 were much better overall.

Maybe the premise of poe2 was "kite a bunch of monsters around narrow corridors with a ranged weapon.". But endgame POE is always going to be about blasting mobs and blasting a boss.

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PKCoiloversPL#2586 wrote:

+1

Get rid of towers. Give us scarabs.

Scarabs are worse IMO because they're per map. I do not want to play poe1 having to manage my stocks of 4 different scarabs I'm constantly needing to purchase, etc. Tablets are more interesting and more involved I just do not like running several bad maps to get to them, that's all.

Solutions are easy: fix nodes are very often not connected and sometimes they show the line but you can't go anyway (bug). Allow skipping to two or three nodes away (could be a passive skill or a quest reward even). Possibly allow running the tower immediately once it is in range, with no need to run 5+ maps to get there.

And just please GGG keep the amount of set up in mind for future content, try to go towards stuff we set up few times, iterate over a long time, and make use of said set up for a long time.. Instead of things that take a lot to set up but reward you for half an hour.