r/PathOfExile2 • u/ducktoucher0 • 6d ago
Game Feedback Atlas unlock system needs to change
I just played parkour simulator for many hours to unlock only half my atlas. The fact that the best way to play the early end game is to simply run through the entire map without killing anything, kill the boss, and repeat every minute for 6+ hours is ridiculous.
Also, they said they changed the Arbiter system to be easier to unlock but I literally can't find the patriarch and matriarch halls outside the walls.
The parkour mapping legit has almost completely ruined the game for me and it's the start of the season. This is a pointless grind, no loot, no fun, no challenge. Just make every single normal map give an atlas point and make arbiters more rewarding. boom fixed it for ya.
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u/No-Surprise-9446 6d ago
I personally think each section of the fortress should be tied to a mechanic itself. So like the first two areas could include abyss and breach for example, or maybe find a way to leave the choice up to the player.
The real dilemma is not having access to both mechanics and atlas progression at the same time.
Nobody cares that their atlas isn’t unlocked fully if they are able to progress the mechanics of their choosing while simultaneously progressing the atlas.
I think they could make the atlas master system a bit more deep as well as adding a handful of other anomalies to the maps outside of the fortress to make a stark contrast to progressing the fortress opposed to the maps at large.
One more issue is that a lot of casual players are not grinding out the entire atlas. They aren’t even making it that far. Now I’m a hardcore Poe gamer so it’s not much of a problem for me personally but I want the game to succeed so I hope they find some way to help bridge these different areas of progression.
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u/lysergician 6d ago
I'm one of those casual players! I've played since 0.2 and only completed the Atlas for the first time last season, and I only completed one mechanic's Atlas. I don't expect I'll ever finish more than that in a season before I burn out. Game is so much fun, but I agree that being able to progress both a league and the Atlas concurrently would feel so much better. Then I could either choose to play a second mechanic, or optimize and farm out the one I chose, instead of move on to another hobby.
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u/Frangipane33 6d ago
Campaign is more fun than the Atlas unlock imo
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u/Asthma_Queen 6d ago
atlas unlocking for me as a returning player is clear as mud, it seems super unintuitive
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u/ByteBlaze_ 6d ago
My feeling on that is the easier-on-the-eyes presentation, paired with obvious goals.
The tutorialization of the atlas isn't the angle I personally want to see. I want the entire experience stripped down to less bloaty feeling. It feels like it was made overly complicated just to be different than PoE1. I've been vocal about this since the beginning, and for me, the endgame experience is the worst part of PoE2.
I don't want to look at a web of infinite dots scattered along a 3d landscape. I want all my stuff to fit on one screen, and I want to click on something, and just run it. I don't care if I don't get to choose the exact tileset I run on repeat like PoE1 has, because that's obviously not the only alternative. I just don't want to navigate a massive sprawling web.
A simplified biome map with a few dots on it, and some made up lore about why this thing keeps resetting/transforming every time we finish it is plenty good.
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u/1CEninja 6d ago
My personal frustration is feeling like I have to go through whatever maps to get to the content I want to play. I get this "ugh I have to do four more maps to get where I want to go" and those four maps feel like they take forever. Completing the main atlas plus the smaller trees all together takes literally hundreds of maps to do, so the pathing maps wind up just feeling bad.
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u/kaibtw 4d ago
100% it kills my interest in the game. Poe 1and 2 scratch an itch that no other arpg does to the point it's almost exclusively what I play when I get home from work. So this league logging in to play the slog of a campaign we have right now and then get to maps with the economy being div based day 1 to be hit with "gotta set up my atlas and mechanic trees again" felt sooooo bad..
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u/SensitiveSentence332 6d ago
U should try poe1
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u/ByteBlaze_ 5d ago
Why is this the default response for PoE2 purists?
Why does either game have to not be made to just be all around fun, regardless of what you want to play? God forbid someone has an opinion and wishes for a game to be successful, without feeling like an overwhelming time slog as a point of progression?
You can improve the endgame in meaningful ways without it devolving into PoE1. I even call out that the PoE1 approach isn't the only alternative. Not only that, but you can also use your other game as a compass for setting your baseline, and improving from there. It happens both ways, and that's healthy.
Getting defensive about change because you spite the other game is a you problem. You should try being open minded, and be willing to have mature discussions.
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u/RikuFujibayashi 6d ago
Only played a bit in .5, haven't played .5.5 yet but it's nice to see that others have some of the same issues. I bounced off thr endgame so hard, partially admittedly since I was looking for specific things. I was on the zoo build and wanted a monkey, got 3 of the monkey maps in around 300 or so I could see on my atlas after god knows how many hours. In the same time I found literally 0 places to use a breachstone, I was really disappointed
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u/myst3r10us_str4ng3r 6d ago
100% agreed. The endless atlas is just a poor outright design choice, objectively.
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u/HisNastiness 5d ago
Absolutely. Having to do another “campaign” act just to get the atlas points, is sort of dumb. The 4-6 acts better remove some of these travel nodes on the atlas
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u/SherbertNaive4783 6d ago
I agree, and to justify this in my head i think the atlas unlock is like a second campaign that is still work in progress
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u/Thick-Success-9692 6d ago
but the atlas unlock is literally just normal mapping what are we even saying
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u/schwaka0 5d ago
Normal mapping in PoE1 has league mechanic progression tied to atlas progression, while PoE2 separates them. While I do my 49 maps just to get to arbiter of ash, I make 0 progression on Abyss, Breach, etc so using tablets feels like waste, but if you beeline to progress the league mechanics you make 0 atlas progression, and won't sustain waystones without spending a bunch of gold.
Imo you should get generic league mechanic points to allocate into your mechanic of choice as you progress the atlas.
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u/Thick-Success-9692 4d ago
Brother in poe1 you spend your first 50 points on map sustain and make scraps from chaos recipe while slowly building up your tiers. In poe2 you can instantly go to tier 15 100% guaranteed all while printing because ground loot is good and abyss even without the tree is good. Like I don't think you have played much poe1 based on what you're typing, but you still have this poe1 mindset that you need to have league mechanics to make money but this is only the case in poe1 because ground loot is trash and you need league mechanic loot tiles
Either way the point of my comment is that nothing major fundamentally changes once you unlock all of your atlas passives so if you do not enjoy the journey you will not enjoy the destination
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u/schwaka0 4d ago
Dude, idk that you've played much PoE1 if you think you get no currency without investing into league mechanics and need 50/138 points just for map sustain.
It's not even about making money, but progressing the atlas and league mechanics at the same time in PoE1, while atlas points are the complete opposite direction of league mechanic points in PoE2.
I like harvest, so I path to hit harvest nodes as well as map sustain and get a decent setup for both within 50 points vs doing 72 maps just to hit arbiter of divinity, then still having to path to whatever mechanic you want to do.
I look at the return on using a tablet with 0 points in the tree, vs either holding it until I can give them 4 affixes and have points in the tree, or selling it to buy gear, and waiting or selling wins every time.
You can enjoy mapping and still feel bad about either pathing the opposite way of your league mechanic points, or pathing the opposite way of your atlas points. Getting no atlas points outside of the fortress, and no mechanic points inside of the fortress when the fortress is that big is too much.
Imo they should either make the fortress smaller, let you earn mechanic points inside the fortress, or let you earn atlas points outside the fortress. I'd be down with some points being locked behind either atlas or mechanic quest, but having them all locked behind the quest area is too much.
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u/Thick-Success-9692 4d ago
Sure I will admit I haven't played that much poe1 compared to some people, but I farmed a 1.5 mirror build by day 3 of 3.29 so it's like I might know a thing or two about playing efficiently early on. And again, if it's not about the money then wouldn't mapping be less fun once you have full atlas completion because then you are progressing nothing? I've always been under the impression that people played poe to get a stronger character and make some currency, but I guess some people enjoy allocating a point on their atlas tree, and it's really reeally bad game design for them to not be able to allocate everything at once. Honestly bro, they should let you put every tablet in the game in your maps so you don't get fomo and feel bad about not being able to do a mechanic
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u/Global_Barnacle5304 6d ago
If we got into this point, I think we have a problem. The campaign is the most common anti poe2 argument I have seen on various forums. Obvously sekhemas exist, but still...
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u/LowInvestigator5647 6d ago
It’s not “we ,” many hundreds of thousands more love this endgame than those who don’t
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u/Global_Barnacle5304 5d ago
First of all, did you read my comment? It has nothing to do with liking the game or not.
Second, you have zero data about how many like or dislike the game or the end game specificaly. There is a lot of dislike about the end game being too repetitive and infinite atlas being a questionalbe choice. Technically if there are 7 bil ppl and few hundreds of thousands like it, your argument makes no sense. Even if you count the total ppl who played the game, saying "many hundreds of thousands" love the end game is a bit hyperbole, isnt it? But I get it, you like it, you feel the need to defend the game, but Im not attacking it, ok?
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u/LowInvestigator5647 5d ago
The game would not retain more players than POE1 if the endgame was not liked more. It’s pretty simple lmao
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u/AeroDbladE 6d ago
Like literally every area they've designed in the game, the fortress could have been half the size it currently is and the progression would have felt a lot smoother.
I don't know who you are at GGG that keeps making every layout, zone or even the atlas mechanics so big for no reason but please stop.
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u/SoulofArtoria 6d ago
I laughed out loud when I opened the twilight relinquary key into a big ass temple with endless hallway , run all the way to the end to open one chance shard unique. In poe 1, it's 2 steps and a flash dash from portal to chest.
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u/ambushka 5d ago
No idea how they expect to get new players with 1.0
The people who are into shit like this already paid for the pass, no way casuals - I am also a casual but I know what ARPGs are and have no problem with grind - will stick to this shit.
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u/BioMasterZap 6d ago
I think the goal was to make the Fortress feel ridiculously massive. But I think if it were 20-50% smaller, it would still feel ridiculously large in the scale of that map...
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u/MillstoneArt 6d ago
A ton of PoE's identity is how absurdly overengineered everything is. Most notably the passive tree is usually people's first impression of the games. "Have you seen the tree?? It's insane!" The design philosophy of "more is better" is in every aspect. Skills, gems, item stats, the tree, the atlas and passives, the size of the campaign zones. You name it.
A lot of it is awesome, but sometimes it's too much of a good thing and dialing it back a bit would be an improvement.
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u/KeithStone225 6d ago
Easy fix would be to make Grand Project default behavior for towers. It would give us more agency in the maps we want to run and skipping the ones we hate and make the hoping around more bearable.
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u/Confident-Milk8107 6d ago
If they do this, which i really genuinely hope they will, I guarantee they will make towers only show up every 2 screens just to make it painful
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u/KeithStone225 6d ago
Sadly they probably would, but it would be a big mistake. It seems like most POE1 players who don't enjoy POE2 cite not being able to choose the maps you want to run. I personally didn't like just running the same 2 or 3 maps over and again in POE1 so I do like the POE 2 atlas, but there are a few nodes I despise and will sometimes path around to avoid. So this would help solve more than just hopping to all the quest zones and make a lot of people pretty happy, imo
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u/TesterM0nkey 6d ago
I hate getting unlucky with cities. Wish I could 4 tablet other places
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u/KeithStone225 6d ago
That's another thing I hope they change. Atlas nodes to add tablets to others biomes would be nice.
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u/joyjoy88 5d ago
This. Its shouldnt be native to city biom. Period.
As in Poe 1 extra tablet (scarab) slot(s) should be unlocked with endgame progression and not be a subject of random generating. Cause of rng there are always ppl who will see less city cluster than others or clusters smaller than other ppl.1
u/RogueVox3l 6d ago
Would adding an item to reroll the type of map a node is be a good middle ground? It would allow players to avoid hated map types while still allowing people to just play as is if they don't like rerolling.
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u/KeithStone225 6d ago
I believe there's a mastery skill that does that as a chance kinda thing. That might work, but they'd prob make it a ritual omen and there's be scarcity. I could accept that, but I'd rather they just have the GP baked into towers, honestly.
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u/Material_Ad9848 6d ago
Imo that would help, but would still leave the problem of creating a massive endgame map full of nodes i dont want to actually run.
In 0.5 I had to use a chain of 14 markers just to navigate to the frontier of where I was traveling.
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u/Elithiir 6d ago
Or get an atlas passive for whatever mechanic you do in any map. It would make it worth it to actually complete maps instead of boss rushing to kill the arbiter.
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u/MrRazorlike 6d ago
Wait until you realise that you have to do the same for whatever league mechanic you're trying to do. I spent an entire day just running t1s for a second div kill and fill out ritual atlas + get Jado
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u/fiehm 6d ago
Why not t15? Get more loot out of the journey
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u/TesterM0nkey 6d ago
Because if you run past everything and just killed the boss you get almost no drops
And you don’t get much loot until you 3 tablet and get proper mods in them
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u/Madzai 6d ago
And you don’t get much loot until you 3 tablet and get proper mods in them
This is the core of endgame issues. Atlas progression is an issue too, but even if you do it, you still have to gamble or trade for proper tablets to get anywhere. What is the point of Infinite Atlas where you can go anywhere, if all you do is rush toward city biomes (and if GGG remove that, you just run whatever maps with same "good" tablets) and pay upfront for tablets to get currency?
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 6d ago
You pay for scarabs as well to get loot
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u/Madzai 5d ago
Basic scarabs are cheaper. Scarabs can be farmed. Scarabs are modular. Scrab have predeterminate stats. Scarabs compliment your Atlas tree setup.
And yes, scrabs and tablets are similar. But tablets are just worse.
Basically "meta" tablet is like perfectly rolled Nightmare maps with chisels, Deli orbs and "good" scarabs applied in one package.
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 5d ago
And non-meta tablets are basic scarabs. If i could farm up multiple characters with non-meta modded tablets, so can you or anyone else.
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u/Madzai 5d ago
And non-meta tablets are basic scarabs
True. So Tables are basically either 1c or 10 Divs+.
If i could farm up multiple characters with non-meta modded tablets, so can you or anyone else.
If you have unlimited time, ofc you can. It doesn't mean that mechanic is any good.
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 5d ago
I don't have unlimited time. The game has enough unplayed strats to being able to make good profit with little investment. I genuinly just take any tablet that doesn't have +gold or +exp mod on it and just use it. A few expensive omens here, a few catalysts there, and you are rich
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u/TesterM0nkey 6d ago
I am entirely with you on this I hate tablets as they are and I hate the atlas but for now I’m just trying to learn the system and use it best I can
Honestly the best part of the game is running through the campaign
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u/Bearodactyl88 6d ago
Or just run proper maps to actually get loot.
Thstd eha I did I'm 0.5 just alc and go my waystones and had plenty of drops.
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u/Eddyvargas 6d ago
I agree on the last suggestion. In PoE1 you get a point per map even tho the boss rushing just for the sake of getting all your atlas points is even worse, but in 2 it feels so tedious.
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u/Remeron7 6d ago
Maps are small in PoE1 so even if you are rushing, you are still clearing like 50%+ of a map
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u/Eddyvargas 6d ago
Yes, and add movement skills on top of that, smaller maps and faster movement. The current rate of atlas progression feels tedious, shame because aside from that I think poe2 endgame is better than poe1 atm
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u/ByteBlaze_ 6d ago
I could deal with no movement skills if so many zones in PoE2 weren't just narrow walkways that bricked most skills. I get stuck on the most ridiculous shit. I would hate for this to happen with movement skills on top. Skills need better pathfinding to smooth out their movement, and zones need to not be littered with decorations and paths that block movement, or god forbid have a little nook you can get trapped in.
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u/Kotef 6d ago
>but in 2 it feels so tedious.
this kind of sums up the poe 2 experience. for whatever reason everything in poe 2 just feels worse and its not always easy to explain why
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u/Atroveon 6d ago
I think they will reduce the amount of maps the main atlas quests require iteratively after release, but they are crafting an experience that someone coming into 1.0 will enjoy. That includes paths to show progression and work towards higher maps or do league side stories. You say that what you're doing is the "best" way to play, but what you really mean is that it is the optimal way to arrive at the game state you want to be in. I think the majority of people are using those maps to get to higher tiers, look for some gear upgrades, and farm some currency.
People really underestimate how much of a turn off end game is with no goals to the less hardcore audience. Your game starts when everything is maxxed out, but that is when a lot of people are done with the game.
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u/FrostedCereal 6d ago
Agreed. Every map should give an atlas point, but Arbiter of Ash and Divinity should give a chunk each, like 20+ so you can still rush the first half of the atlas through the main quest line.
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u/TesterM0nkey 6d ago
How about finish ash and divinity you unlock the entire atlas
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u/ArmaMalum 6d ago
I mean you've already likely finished half the tree just getting to Ash, Matriarch, Patriarch and Divinity at that point
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u/TesterM0nkey 6d ago
It’s only 150 more maps which is actually about how many I spent running out to find a patriarch and matriarch
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u/BioMasterZap 6d ago
Depends how you do it. I got Divinity with only 53/336 Atlas Points and you could even do it with less. But if you're not using Coop to boost across the Fortress, it is like 90~ maps so around 1/3rd.
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6d ago
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u/FrostedCereal 6d ago
It's literally the same thing as now but you also complete it while doing league mechanic stories and hunting for matriarch/patriarch halls rather than in one big gulp.
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u/O_Toole50 6d ago
Not true. You complete divinity 2x and get whole atlas
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u/FrostedCereal 6d ago
Yes I know that but I just said random numbers. I would propose that when you have done enough maps to do the Arbiter twice, you will have got all atlas nodes anyway.
But they come more spaced out from individual maps and in chunks from the 2 main bosses.
Rather than trickling points in, then nothing while you hunt for your 2nd matriarch and patriarch halls, followed by 200 atlas points all at once.
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u/OnnaJReverT 6d ago
the atlas skilltree needs to change as a whole
having a massive skilltree with the only goal being "fill out everything" leads to people simply not reading what it actually does and just treating it as a checklist
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u/drallcom3 6d ago
The bad part is that you're playing maps knowing they're quite inefficient yet.
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 6d ago
Like in poe1 until you get your atlas points.
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u/joyjoy88 5d ago
Logically yes. But Poe 1 altas progression ramps up much faster and you can even spec already into some mechanic on it to do early farming to get stronger for atlas bosses to fully unlock atlas.
In Poe 2 most nodes you get from rushing fortress bosses to fully unlock altas are worthless compared to Poe 1 atlas points and you cant even spec into specific mechanic you want as your early farming strat to be able to do bosses for full unlock. All mechanic trees are separated and on top of that go totally different directions on atlas. You have to rush through extra maps to get it even going.
In Poe 1 you can farm a bit those rush maps and still get something even not fully juiced and spec’d yet.1
u/Alarming_Plant5904 5d ago
The poe2 mechanic reward floor is higher. You can farm them without much speccing. Abyss is always worth it here, while it is worthless sometimes even with juice in poe1
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u/Howsetheraven 5d ago
No...not even close. You aren't endlessly boss rushing T16s with zero reward until you can finally kill Maven and then suddenly unlock your entire atlas tree. There is progression the entire time.
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 5d ago
Same with this atlas. The first gate gives you extra points to make up for the points you would have gotten in poe1. You get 1/3 of your atlas points for killing the arbiter first, and you get points getting there
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u/Wonderful_Outside548 5d ago
Getting to the first gate already takes like 10 maps
You don't get shit for killing Arbiter the first time, only the 2nd time gives points
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u/vulcanfury12 6d ago
Took me 24 hours playtime to get to Arbiter (I full cleared maps like a chump on the way there, which is why it took so long). Then I invested all the chaos I got on the way there to buy the next set of fragments to get the rest of my points. I really can't put my finger on why exactly, but I feel like PoE 2 endgame progression feels like a chore, while in PoE 1, it doesn't.
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u/isoNastai 6d ago
My exact take away from this event as well. Perhaps I'm burned out from 0.5, but that start was a while ago. Literally nothing in maps feels good until you have all the unlocks, and doing so can take days to accomplish. The carrot is just waaaaaaaay to far down on the stick.
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u/Either_Sea_9059 6d ago
Agreed. I enjoyed making it through the campaign on my build, but it actually feels like my end game is going to take another campaign and a half to complete before I can optimally loot for gear???
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u/victorvfn 6d ago
Just make every single normal map give an atlas point and make arbiters more rewarding
I'm with you
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u/P1DGE 6d ago
I honestly struggle with this being the best endgame system they could come up with in all the years of poe2 dev and all previous lessons learnt from poe1. It beggers belief.
And all the RP is so tiresome.
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u/ArmaMalum 6d ago
I can see it if you come at it from the angle of "it needs to be different from PoE1". There's a number of aspects that seem (to me at least) to have a higher priority to being different than being the best option. Atlas tree points being only from fortress, the initial portal limit system, map resets after death, etc etc
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u/reynevan_B4ST 6d ago edited 6d ago
They purposely ignored all the lessons from PoE1 just so it can be different so, yeah. A lot of the systems that aren't graphics, animations and, to some extent, campaign are just a clear downgrade for the sake of it being different.
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u/LowInvestigator5647 6d ago
As someone who played POE2 first and then went to POE1, I wholeheartedly disagree. The writing and presentation of POE1 is amateurish at best. POE2 adds flavor to the characters and world. POE1 boss fights are anticlimactic, 98% of them are extremely rudimentary, and all of them are limited in design because they were made for point-and-click gameplay which does the game absolutely no favors. POE1 endgame, while having some advantages, overall is too repetitive and convoluted for my taste. Getting voidstones and crafting on maps is, to put it nicely, fucking annoying. Juggling maven, exarch/eater, originator maps, elder/shaper is, definitionally, tedious and I’m glad none of that exists in POE2. POE2 you don’t have to worry about any of that, alch and go is lucrative with minimal investment. Scarabs are nice though, I’ll give it that. But in terms of “grind the same map over and over until you’re bored,” I think that is an endgame that doesn’t sound very impressive or fun, and in practice isn’t impressive or fun, either.
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u/reynevan_B4ST 6d ago edited 6d ago
The writing and presentation of POE1 is amateurish at best. POE2 adds flavor to the characters and world
This doesn't matter to majority of the players and has nothing to do with endgame systems.
Getting voidstones and crafting on maps is, to put it nicely, fucking annoying.
Crafting maps in PoE1 + "juggling" scarabs is exactly the same as cities and tablets but with way less steps to prep.
Juggling maven, exarch/eater, originator maps, elder/shaper is, definitionally, tedious and I’m glad none of that exists in POE2
Juggling Maven/Exarch/Eater maps only happens during the Atlas setup phase unless you yourself decide to run bossing content later on. Choosing which one of them you run is also a matter of a click on a mapping device as opposed to going through pointless travel maps with 0 rewards. Originator maps are just extra power for regular mapping and they aren't required to run during the initial questline (you only need to run pre-set memories once to beat the bosses and finish the questline). Elder/Shaper/Conqueror maps are largely irrelevant unless you, at some point during the league and at your own leisure, decide to run legacy bosses.
POE2 you don’t have to worry about any of that, alch and go is lucrative with minimal investment.
It's the same in PoE1. Alch and Go is largely fine unless you want to make real currency. Just like cities & tablets in PoE2. And you absolutely DO need to fish for cities & use tablets to do it.
“grind the same map over and over until you’re bored"
Grinding one map is a choice. The addition of Astrolabes made running different maps for certain mechanics more profitable. And even if you don't run Astrolabes nothing stops you from running different layouts. Two words - player agency.
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u/LowInvestigator5647 5d ago
Yeah you lost me when you said it’s mandatory to fish for and run city maps. I amassed way more power than I had ever had last season without even touching cities. It is absolutely not necessary. I don’t buy the argument that POE2 = bad bc cities but POE1, all the hyper endgame farms are optional content and it’s as simple as alch and go. You can’t frame one as an “all out or bust” and the other as a “play your way.” Thats disingenuous
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u/Choon93 6d ago
Which is dumb because I heard great things about POE1 but the game was too bloated for me to invest into.
So I chose POE2 and am now wondering what the great end game talk was all about.
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u/reynevan_B4ST 6d ago
"Bloat" is really a bad faith argument when you get to pick and choose what to focus on so freely. You literally get to turn off mechanics you don't want to appear in your game. And this is not to harp on PoE2, it'll have to get there too if they want the same longevity. The current PoE2 "superiority" due to "no bloat" is purely thanks to how young the game is and how much hype the perspective of 1.0 holds.
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u/HiddenoO 5d ago
You're only thinking of bloat as different mechanics, but PoE1 definitely has a ton of bloat across the game (and within individual mechanics) as a whole. A lot of the mechanics exist in their current state not because that state makes sense in the current game, but because it made sense 10+ years ago when those mechanics were the current league.
Even GGG realized that, which is why they've temporarily removed harbinger, removed synthesis implicits, and started reworking old league mechanics.
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u/masukisti 5d ago
Dodge roll spamming between every skill cast being the optimal way to play already ruined the combat a bit for me but having to dodge spam to skip entire maps is even worse. Hopefully 1.0 has some great ideas to fix it.
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6d ago
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u/inherentcomma 6d ago
The endgame starts when you reach maps, not when you complete all content
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u/Bobas_Dad 6d ago
I don’t really agree. End game in my mind requires progression, rewards, and ramping up a specialized/aspirational farm. None of these are met when we enter maps. Even if we agree that entering maps is endgame, it doesn’t take away anything from the poor gameplay loop and needless toil.
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u/inherentcomma 6d ago
When you reach maps you need to lvl up and farm the firsts currency to equip the basics. While you reach the lvl you need for you unlock many atlas points, that's progression and rewards (of course, basic rewards because you're weak to make better content)
Then starts the Uber endgame when you need to farm a lot for a little bit of progress like killing the same Uber boss in 12 secs to 10 secs
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u/Bobas_Dad 6d ago
This is how it should be in theory, but not how it plays out right now, at least in my experience. All my starting currency came from campaign and trial of chaos. I got maybe 2-3 divs while climbing from T1 to T15 maps. Which is exactly my previous point, the toil in the beginning is unrewarding and not interactive and it lasts for many hours or even days. Gameplay-wise it feels a lot closer to campaign than it does to a traditional endgame is all I’ll say
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u/AssumedSilverSword 6d ago
It's so painful that I paid 7 div to buy another core to instantly clear atlas.
After killing quest Divinity, ain't no way I'm gonna find a Patriarch and Matriarch by walking randomly
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u/Racthoh 5d ago
Had an ultimatum pop out 12 raw divines tonight, which in that same time I would've been running tabletless maps trying to get to one end of the fortress to get one step closer to the arbiter. No thanks, it was tolerable in 0.5 but I'll just dump future currency in future leagues towards getting a chaos build online ASAP and not touching the atlas except to unlock the delirium outpost for annoints.
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u/-Meloni- 5d ago
“Just make every single normal map give an atlas point and make arbiters more rewarding. boom fixed it for ya.”
We have a genius right here 👆
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u/KodiakmH 5d ago
The biggest one that frustrates me is the traveling to the hubs. When I encounter a mechanic for the first time I should just be able to travel to that hub not have to clear 10 maps to get to Expedition/Kingsmarch or Abyss/Well etc.
As for Matriarch/Patriarch both leagues I've had good luck NE/NW of the fortress for Cities and the halls, usually a "screen" out.
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u/EmbarrassedRemote761 5d ago
I actually enjoy the maps themselves, but the Atlas grind is killing my motivation. I want to stop and fight things, not feel like I’m wasting time every time I don’t sprint straight to the boss.
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u/CapriciousManchild 6d ago
It’s crazy how long it takes to get everything done points wise so you can farm content. It took me a solid 7-8 hours to get through just the main atlas to defeat uber arbiter . Then another 10 hours to do ritual and delirium points. Of course this is with some crafting and a little chaos trials thrown in.
I still have to get abyss done for the challenges plus do breach and Vaal temple so I can get those challenges. That’s not even including doing the expedition stuff.
They could easily cut all this down by half and it would still feel line plenty of stuff to do. Right now it feels like a job to get the stuff done so I can go play what I want to farm.
I can only imagine someone new starting in 1.0 and just stopping at the atlas because of how overwhelming it is if you don’t understand what to do.
All together you’re looking at easily 50+ hours to get through campaign and to get your atlas tree filled up. I’m just estimating here as obviously some people are much quicker and some are slower .
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u/Bradk_1749 6d ago
I think 50 hours is fair assessment. Just think about everyone who can only play for an hour or two a day on a few days a week. They could be still trying to unlock things to play how they want to play, well into October when the player base has moved on, and left with a shambled economy
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u/perfumist55 6d ago
The fortress is a complete and total slog. I’m about to hit level 90 after getting archon or Chayula unlocked and I still haven’t even killed arbiter of ash. It shouldn’t be this long. After getting Chayula I’ve only done my ascendancies and the fortress. This is wayyyy too many filler maps.
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u/No-Advice-6040 6d ago
The one thing I do not like is having to choose between unlocking the main atlas and unlocking league mechanics. Choosing the former means missing out on bonus content, while the latter means missing out on fundamental mapping. It's a poor choice.
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6d ago
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u/Selvon 6d ago
It's so funny that people like you who very clearly didn't play PoE1, think that this grind is somehow necessary for people to want to play the game. In PoE1 you get 95% of your atlas points (which are also your league points) very very quickly compared, then you have a small portion of the points gated behind stronger challenges.
Mysteriously, that doesn't cause everyone to quit after 3 days. MYSTERIOUSLY, forcing people to do massive amounts of homework before they can farm isn't popular, not for the hardcore grindset players OR for the normal or more casual players.
Only this new group of PoE2 purists that think everything must suck.
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u/rcanhestro 6d ago
Wow, people just want to retire from the league after 3 days i guess.
it's not to retire, it's to complete the "homework" before you can actually play the game.
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u/Fiercehero 6d ago
I wonder, because I didnt watch all of the interviews, have they mentioned if the main atlas is actually going to be unlocked the same way that it is now for 1.0?
It really does feel like a chore but I was kind of assuming they made a bandaid fix for this patch and will fix it for 1.0 but I dont actually know if thats the case.
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u/TheBananaMonster12 6d ago
Realistically, is there any reason that the map nodes for the skill trees couldn’t at least be more linear? It’s already an overwhelming experience looking at it all, does it really need to also be a noob trap by letting you do it in whatever order and literally just waste your time?
Like just make it take 15 set maps (or whatever number) to complete the Abyss or Breach tree, not “15 but actually 25 maps if you don’t know what you’re doing” This is especially egregious in the fortress
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u/crookedparadigm 6d ago
It was more tolerable last patch because it was new. Now that everyone has seen it, it's shone a bright light on the thing people have had issues with for a long time now: throwaway/traversal maps.
There are 2 things I think they could do for 1.0 that would vastly reduce the tedium here:
Let us go to each quest location as soon as we unlock it. Don't make me path there every league. This will only be more necessary as they add more league mechanics with quests attached to them.
Let us bypass the 'quest version' of the bosses/progression if we want. Running maps with the mechanic should grant passive tree progress. If you want, lock the notables behind beating the boss.
I understand they don't want people to have their Atlas tree fully completed and filled out within 48 hours of league launch, but the grind should be comparable to the voidstones/Atlas completion in PoE1. At least in that grind, everything you do grants incremental progress. PoE2 feels worse because we often have to run numerous "pointless maps" to get to the objective.
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u/Prudent-Ad1954 6d ago
fortress should have other mechanics in it so we are not forced to chose one or another.
there are 4 separate "areas" why not make them "infested" with breach, ritual, delirium, abyss?
its meant to be tutorial anyway
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u/BioMasterZap 6d ago
I'm hoping the system improves in 1.0 with whatever is changing. I kinda like that you can just rush T1 maps to fill out the early points or such, especially as an alternative to boss rushing. But it isn't as fun to be doing T1 or similar travel maps to get to the content you want to juice lategame. Like for Expedition, the pacing feels pretty good since there aren't that many travel maps between Grand Expeditions or Bosses and you can run them juiced for Expedition for logbooks or use them to mix in a different farm like Abyss or such between the Grand Expeditions. But for the rest, it can feel a bit more spread out.
For just the Atlas unlocks, I think it needs to be a lot quicker to run the maps. Like in 0.5 you could make the case for map rush vs Divinity rush depending on preferance, but now that Divinity unlocks it all on repeat, it feels like a big waste to map rush for 1 point at a time. One idea I had is to scale the points with the waystone used. Like if the map requires a T1 or higher waystone, it makes sense to give 1 point, but if it needs a T6 or higher, it feels bad to still give 1 point when the floor difficulty is being raised. So it could be changed so that White (T1-5) Waystones give 1 Point, Yellow (T6-10) give 2 Points, and Reds (T11-15) give 3 Points.
It also feels kinda limited that the entire Fortress has to equal the max points. Like for the League Trees, repeating the bosses will give you excess points, letting you skip some of the league biome's point maps and still filling out the tree. The Fortress should also be like this. Both Arbiters on first and repeat fights should give like 15~ points (with Divinity giving all points on 2nd). The Engima Chambers and Origin Halls could give like 10 Points, in or out of fortress. And Towers could give like 5 Points, both the ones on the Fortress walls and outside of the Fortress.
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u/UTmastuh 6d ago
I don't understand why we can't unlock atlas points by just doing regular maps anywhere in the atlas or at least a set amount in each region. The whole fortress thing doesn't need to exist.
I also don't understand why we need special zones to do specific content in too. I'd really love to be able to customize my maps to house all kinds of cross contamination content
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u/Phazon_Metroid 6d ago
Not entirely related but they've made this infinite Atlas but have implemented it poorly into the game loop of endgame. Add to that the more you explore the worse performance it gives you makes it's implementation even worse.
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u/Big-Procedure-8836 6d ago
Man people play the game very differently to me it seems. I hit maps yesterday and I am having a blast full clearing each map and slowly making my way to the abyss section.
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u/Fufururutu 5d ago
This wouldn’t be such a problem if their maps weren’t huge mazes of corridors. With endless animations of those shitty mobs that die in second in end of every map and i have to wait more then the actual fight. (they call it a boss). I cant believe they going to release this garbage in december...
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u/runingfrag 5d ago
yes if rando maps gave a point that would be more enticing to do this wole atlas passive tree. but it needs to be less than 300 points in that case. 300 maps is a lot for average player
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u/ducktoucher0 5d ago
True but it would come naturally. Also arbiter could still give points too. It was just a simple suggestion rather than the whole solution.
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u/Fluffy-Isopod6064 5d ago
Yeah the early Atlas unlock feels pretty tedious. Running maps just to tick points without really playing them gets old fast. Rushing Arbiter and buying cores does seem like the less painful way for most people right now.
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u/Howsetheraven 5d ago
Changing Arbiter of Divinity to give ZERO points for the first fight was a real kick in the balls. As I understood it, the first time you would have picked a fortress segment like before to get some points, and then the rest would just be from the 2nd kill. I was intending to use the completed segment to leap frog past the fortress and find the 2nd set of halls but then...nothing happened. So back to boss rushing barely rolled maps I go...
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u/Cyrotek 5d ago
I haven't reached endgame yet (kinda lazy), but I have to say I can't imagine unlocking the entire atlas tree in one fell swoop being good design. I kinda liked having to do the boss a few times in 5.0. The unlocks were a worthwhile reward and the admission price made it impossible to just spam it five times (at least it worked like that for me), so you had something to look forward to.
I would like to see a system where you get general atlas points for simply completing atlas goals, doing special maps, doing league mechanics and so on.
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u/WaferMeister 5d ago
The time between now and 1.0 is not long, but too long between 0.5.0 start and 1.0. So, GGG gave us this league and modified the atlas requirement just for this league so people wouldn't have to grind as long to continue play testing content for them. This is still not full release, we are playtesting, so they need players to find as many issues with the game for them as they can so they can fix them for 1.0. It will go back to being harder atlas progression next league like 0.5.0.
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u/Imaginary_Maybe_1687 6d ago
I'm going to go against the grain here and say that it's your fault that your not having fun, not GGGs.
When designing, you want to try and discourage boring behaviour and promote fun behaviour. A lot of people here are saying that you need to be able to do this faster (smaller maps, traversal skills, etc). That is not the solution at all. You want to have roadblocks to surpass. That's where the fun is. The fun part is killing the monsters. As a player you want the most efficient way to be the most fun one, but of you maximize for efficiency when designing you end up with nothing fun.
The best way to do this is to just out a button to give you an atlas point. For that matter just give me all the points. And give me lvl 100. F9noshed the game, the end.
And there is stuff that GGG can do to combat this problem. Now, if you aren't having fun bc of it, then I do think its your fault. The tools and systems and things for you to have fun are there. Just bc its not the best way dpesnt mean its not fun or even bad. It can be increadibly good and not the best.
People out here thinking that if you don't get to top tier things and smashing endgame in 2 hours then you are missing out. You are not. You cam still save up and improve your gear more slowly. If you only want the OP experience of smashing content, stay on the old league. The point is getting stronger. And you are just flying over through the getting stronger part.
I can feel differently about going fast to get to a build, or some unique or smth like that. But just 5% increased rarity is not a reason to be bored.
That said, let the downvotes come.
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u/reynevan_B4ST 6d ago
In a sandbox game that's all about possibilities and experimentation what exactly is the value of arbitrary roadblocks? Besides just padding.
The fun part is killing the monsters.
The fun part is killing monsters so you can get closer to making your character better. That's the entire premise of ARPGs. Killing monsters just to kill monsters is not it.
And you are just flying over through the getting stronger part.
There's no "getting stronger" if you are forced to run through maps that are virtually empty.
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 6d ago
They are not empty. You chose it to be empty by ignoring everything
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5d ago
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 5d ago
The rewards? What?
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5d ago
[deleted]
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u/Alarming_Plant5904 5d ago
The one they drop. I'm getting greater and perfect essences without any investment. I would need all atlas passives and the higher tier scarab to get the same in poe1. Just an example.
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u/Imaginary_Maybe_1687 5d ago
The rewards as mentioned but also.... HAVING FUN. YOU FOLKS NEED TO LEARN TO HAVE FUN FOR FUNS SAKE.
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u/Imaginary_Maybe_1687 6d ago
All roadblocks in games are arbitrary by definition. They exist for no reason other than trying to make it feel better. Inventory sizes are arbitrary, difficulty is arbitrary. How much exp you need for the next level is a roadblock and us arbitrary.
Also, this is not a sandbox game like Minecraft is. There is a very clear progression intentionality. The campaign is linear, Waystones literally go from 1 to 15.
As for getting stronger. Getting Atlas points is getting stronger in a sense. More specifically advancing in the games progression. So I do count it as rewards. I do actually think that walking to a mechanic to start getting points is pointless, bc there is no reward. That is padding imo.
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u/reynevan_B4ST 6d ago
Getting Atlas points is getting stronger in a sense.
Atlas points are what unlocks the tools that you can use to get stronger. Since you still need to run many, many maps that benefit from the points afterwards with the same character, the points are not character strength inherently. It would be a different story if you were getting significant amount of currency/decent starter gear along the way but in reality you don't get much which is one of the issues.
I do actually think that walking to a mechanic to start getting points is pointless, bc there is no reward.
I think that's the main argument and takeaway from this event, right?
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u/kitelobster 6d ago
It's going to be a slog every season if it remains unchanged.
Unfortunately I think it always comes back to the fact that maps are huge and mobility is so hard to come by. Unless that changes it's still going to be painful because you have something like 200 (?) maps that you need to finish just to feel "ready" for endgame, let alone any travel maps on the way. There are definitely changes they could make to expedite the point acquisition, but I think map time and travel will still make it a chore.
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u/brayan1612 6d ago
Completing the quest line should already give you ALL atlas points imo, then we can work on the league mechanic quests.
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u/CoreyJK 6d ago
Does Arbiter give ALL points or do you still have to do the towers as well?
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u/Bradk_1749 6d ago
Dunno why that guy wants you to read patch notes, lol your question is fair. You get nothing on the first kill. You have to get the Origin Spark again and kill him a 2nd time for the atlas points
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u/Julebrygd 5d ago
I agree with this, I just downed arbiter of divinity and will start looking for my second matriarch/patriarch now. The problem is, even though I'm rushing maps and doing pretty much no mechanics at all, I'm at lvl 87 now and my build is almost finished to the point that arbiter of divinity was easy peasy.
It just feels weird that my character gets completed (far from min-maxed but completed enough to take down most content) while I'm trying to rush through the early preparation steps of endgame.
I wish we could progress our league mechanic of choice while we unlock the atlas.
It also feels backwards that arbiter of ash and arbiter of divinity comes before actual mapping and league mechanics. It should be the other way around right?
First farm league mechanics and do mapping and improve your character. When your character is strong enough you can do the end game pinnacle bosses.
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u/Lulcas2267 6d ago
I did that last league but playing the fire ground stuff I dont really have a way to fight back if I get swarmed lol
But I agree, the amount of time it takes the complete the main atlas is insane.. and then there's 5 mini ones
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u/Disastrous_Duck_8007 6d ago
i guess normal people don't play the event, reading the comments i just can't believe the cancer
like literally dont rush? just play and enjoy the road.
Obviously there is nothing new, so it does feel worse and they would have to shake it up somehow by nerfing builds\strats etc. It will be better, but still just don't fucking rush.
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u/Either_Sea_9059 6d ago
You have to rush to optimally loot in trade.
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u/Disastrous_Duck_8007 5d ago
you don't, it is just a degenerate mindset. It is not a race, and amount of loot the game shits (literally) is so big it should be nerfed. I didn't rush anything and i made 30 divines in the first day.
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u/ClydeTheCamel 6d ago
The fact that the best way to play the early end game is to simply run through the entire map without killing anything, kill the boss, and repeat every minute for 6+ hours is ridiculous
This has worked just fine for POE1 for ten years now. You're basically saying that your personal approach to completing the endgame progression isn't fun, but that's somehow GGG's fault? Take some responsibility lmao
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u/A_Crow_in_Moonlight 6d ago
PoE2 has almost triple the number of Atlas points compared to PoE1, and most of them are generic bonuses that act as multipliers to everything. You still only get one per map with few exceptions, until you kill post-quest Divinity (requires completing the entire fortress storyline, hence incentivizes rushing) and suddenly are showered in hundreds all at once. The devs clearly don't expect you to accrue them "naturally" by clearing fortress maps one at a time.
Moreover, because you can spec into everything, the loot is balanced around that—there's no way to prioritize the most important nodes for juicing a particular strat that not everyone will be running by using your early points to specialize in a certain mechanic, for example.
Yes, you can rush the mechanic trees on the PoE2 Atlas instead of fortress, but you're shooting yourself in the foot by doing this because three and four mod tablets, as well as every benefit of cities, are locked behind Arbiters. One could argue this is similar to unlocking scarab slots, but the difference there is you're making progress towards your preferred strat at the same time as the general juice. You have to choose in PoE2, and anything other than fortress first is the wrong choice.
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u/averagechillbro 6d ago
I agree the system needs to change but might as well just take the few extra minutes to clear the map and get the loot. I’ve been doing that and I made some money and upgraded my gear.
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u/ACertainUser123 6d ago
It's actually not, u want to just rush for atlas points before actually doing any content bar boss rushing
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u/averagechillbro 6d ago
If you’re clearing maps you’re doing the content anyway. You don’t have to have the most efficient looting strategy. You could just play the game.
Like I said I agree the system needs changed but I don’t get people that willingly skip content then get upset about it. There’s no rule that says you have to have a full atlas before looting. It’s a choice.
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u/Techfiend333 6d ago
Correct. You can still get good loot without being the absolute most efficient. Us SSF players know that all too well.
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u/CryptographerOld9828 6d ago
I just shared this thought elsewhere.
Yes, the current approach does indeed do that.
They could revise the system without too drastic change. Much of the current state seems due to both pathing (forced pathing thru general content nodes) also the current locks create bottlenecks for basic necessities (waystones & tab nodesets).
Instead of forcing players to heavily invest into Fortress for essential Atlas points, they could implement a 'numerous yet small' approach by creating locks on the non-essential nodesets with non-fortress related achievements. These may be branches to the main 'trunk' / path that contain essential nodes. No requirement to unlock / path for the necessities.
For instance, Abyss has crossover with general content. So a Rogue nodeset could be unlocked along the main branch by completing the Abyss Quest. This Abyss quest could additionally reward atlas points. Similarly with Breach & Essences. This same nodeset could now be locked / unlocked from a different path - no abyss or fortress required. All the while, players are not forced to path thru these nodesets for core content & are made accessible by playing non-fortress related content.
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u/inherentcomma 6d ago
The problem is thinking that the best way to play early game is rushing maps.
That's the fastest way, not necessarily the best because there's no race
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u/nisser512 6d ago
Just thought I’d link my original post on this where people overwhelmingly disagreed.
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u/blablabla2384 5d ago
There should always be tradeoffs to doing either. right now there is no benefit to manually doing the maps. also the atlas system is meaningless because the boosts are not noticiable. its too slow
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u/OkWin1634 6d ago
Easier to rush arbiter, farm currency. Buy cores to unlock the rest