Party play for maps feels bad

We have loved playing in a party in PoE for the last 10 years. It's never been about increasing drops, more about having fun with your friends.

Party play in PoE 2 has a ton of potential, but really feels bad in the endgame due to design decisions.

1. Only the party leader can open maps. This means if my party leader wants to look up a few things I can't just open a map and blast for a bit. No, we don't want to switch party leaders, it feels annoying.

2. You can't open your own maps while being in a party. We'd often just run a larger map together while blasting a few small maps on the side. PoE2 doesn't allow for it and thus feels bad. I don't want to leave and rejoin the party all the time. The introduction of sticky parties (eg when people log off and on again) has been great QoL to keep parties going, we don't want to disband them just for this.

3. Only having one death per map feels bad in a party. If you die early on (because your ranger got hit) your friends will just have to run the map without you while you do something else. That feels bad.

Other than than, we had an amazing time in the campaign, that was really well done! Beating bosses in a party was a lot easier and enjoyable as well

agreed

Yup, really bad for parties in end game

I totally agree, 3 of us play weekly together and once we got to maps the fun went down. If one of us dies the map run is over, we have to wipe it and take the penalty to keep playing together or make somebody wait.

We are hoping for a way to endgame that doesn't hurt group play. Like original post, this isn't about loot.

Completely agree with these points. The worst is number 3. Whoever decided it would be fun to not allow revives so you have to wait for your friend to finish the map so you can keep playing together, should be fired.

Yep. The endgame is not group friendly and that sucks bigtime. I was excited to see the Atlas map and how crazy the depth was only to find just how anti-social the whole experience is. I hope this gets reworked for people that want to play with other people.

Agree, I recently reached maps. The mapping seems to be way more engaging than before but the fact that you basically only have a singleplayer mode there ruins it for me :(

"

zhaery#0977 wrote:

We have loved playing in a party in PoE....

The party system in PoE2 does not exist. What we have now are just random connections, where players do not cooperate and run around like ants everywhere.

The situation is worsened by the absence of the META system; what GGG offers is not META.



I did not play PoE1 but Diablo 3 had the best multiplayer experience ever created. It was highly enjoyable due to character specialization.

Barbarian Collector/Gathering

Monk Healer

Demon Hunter Buffs Group Damage

etc





Of course, players can save gear in the Wardrobe and switch to Damage Monk, etc.

Diablo 3 was vibrant and exciting, especially in Greater Rifts, where skilled players are essential for achieving high rankings.



I understand that this is a Path of Exile forum, not a Diablo forum, but Diablo III was an excellent game, and GGG has much to learn from it.