Endgame feedback

Hi GGG. This feedback is my experience and my thoughts on the endgame, mainly maps.

I fell the endgame is boring and not fun!

I've made a feedback on early maps and still feel the same way. The 1 portal p/map is horrible, and it makes me go for the more broken builds. If it continues, I'll fell that i have little to no room for experimentation in the builds, have to follow the meta.

But after going to the end of maps, I understand that that's not the main problem. Mapping sucks in general and I can't help to compare to Path of Exile 1 mapping system.

My main issues is those that follow:

- Having the objective of maps being killing all rares makes mapping tiresome. And with maps being bigger, it will always lead to backstracking.

- The new system took out player agency from the game. I can't run the maps with the layouts I like. I can't force and farm one mechanic because I can't force it to every map I run for a period of time. I can't farm maps the way I want to farm maps, I'll have to follow some strategy and run maps with layout I find horrible just to get to the ones I like, and luck me if the ones I like have the mechanic I want to play.

I fell that the new mapping system is a better Delve, but not a better mapping system. I didn't like to play Delve from the original game, but with this new system I would play it all the time, but not as the main form of griding, but a alternative to get out of mapping for some time.

What I miss the most is to play the way I want to play. Not follow what's best all the time.

+1

This game has 0 player agency. It's bordering on the level of cookie-cutter builds designed by the devs because for some reason they want you to play in a specific way. Arbitrary "1x support gem copy" limit doesn't help this.

They could have just copied over the atlas from PoE 1 and expanded upon it, ain't no way people will want to play a league every 3 months without a favorite map system. Nobody wants to keep running bad layouts all day lol

My feedback on endgame right now, as a future player that's just watching early access, is the following two points:
* DPS numbers for characters in endgame seem to reach out of balance values (?)
* I notice a similar "symptom" as other ARPGs where endgame characters seem too strong and kill monsters way too fast, rarely getting hit, which means two things : difficulty must then mostly come from one shots, and combat structure becomes extremely simple, just smashing a spell or two, maybe quickly spamming one, resolving a fight against a pack of mobs already. In other words, early game and midgame has better combat structure and higher difficulty than endgame (save for maybe some difficuly spikes at some bosses), which seems definitely not ideal. I believe ideally, endgame should have both better combat structure (highest complexity) and higher difficulty compared to early game and midgame. A character may feel more powerful because they have more fighting tools, while the monsters may feel more aggressive and also have more tools. Of course you can at any point fight weaker monsters to reduce difficulty and use character power to farm stuff, balance in the rewards there should be found.