The Maps situation is really terrible and needs a complete rework

First and foremost, the concept of maps is fun. I love hopping into a map and mowing things down. The roots of a great game are there, but the execution is incredibly bad and makes me want to just walk away from this game for good.

WAYSTONES
Lets start with waystones, because there isnt enough bad things I can say about this system



Mega juiced up waystone + juiced up towers nearby + event node +200+ increase to find rare items found. I shouldve had waystones raining on me in this run right? Nope. 1 drop for the entire run and it was 3 levels below the level I need. 0 tablets. This wouldnt be such a big deal if my entire end game experience wasnt reliant on having a steady supply of stones to keep going. Now I cant play the game because I have no more stones at my level, unless I waste currency buying them off other players. So what do you devs want here? You want me to have to go back 10 levels to start farming baby stones for absolutely no experience, waste hours and hours of my time climbing back to maps of my level so that I can get back to progressing? And what happens if I die?

Solution:
-Have every level of stone available to buy from the vendor at all times
-Make waystones still work the way they do where they add buffs, but make them just an optional buff you can add to a map run, and make all maps completely free to do. This is the common sense solution, and anything else just feels like youre trying to be punishing for no reason


1 death per map has to go

So you brutally punish us with this horrible waystone system, next to no droprate on waystones, and then you add in a 1 and done punishment system on top of that!?!?!?!?!? Oh you died. Maps gone and now you have no stones, so youre only option now is to dump your money into buying level 1 waystones and climbing your way back after countless hours. Oh and you wont get exp for any of your effort, and if you die, were gonna take your xp that you wont even be able to earn back? I dunno at what point that anyone thought this would be fun or acceptable, but its literally game ruining. You guys didnt even do this in POE1. And why even have 6 portals if youre just going to lock us out? Nothing about the implementation of this system makes any sense. Not even being able to res friends inside the map just makes this an atrociously bad unfun system that feels like you hate your customers and want to punish them for playing your game


I also want to pointout that these trash AF dumpster fire systems are just encouraging and helping botters, because youre forcing people to have to keep buying waystones off, guess who, the botters. Youve created an artificial demand for a specific item, and these people are exploiting the demand by making a joke of your game


Poor visual fidelity for spell clutter, on death effects, and grenades

-The number one cause of death in maps seems to be literally not being able to see what the hell is happening. Grenades just rolling under you but you cant see them, bosses casing blood pools under you but theres already fire and other effects going so you literally cant see it at all. Sometimes the screen clutter gets so bad that I feel like im playing Vampire Survivors at the 19 minute mark. This combined with the ridiculously punishing 1 death per map just makes the game incredibly unfun. Especially when youre playing with a group of friends and everyones spamming spells.

Solution:
- add a glowing effect to grenades. Add a glowing effect to blood pools under a player. Add glowing effects to mobs that are about to explode. Do literally anything to make the player aware theyre about to die to something under them


While were on the subject of blood pools under the player, these pools last waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too long. Often times im left just standing there for 10 seconds waiting for the pools to clear. Their time needs to be cut in half. Feels really stupid and time wasting having them just sitting there long after the mobs deaths