One Death Maps is a monumental failure.

I'm sorry but it just is.

It might fight the "vision" of whatever some dev of yours has, but it sucks.

90% of the playerbase has it, and no excuse about "death needs to feel weighty" will wash with me, sorry.

I've played games for 30 years. There are literally, 1 million things you could do other than this grossly and obnoxiously overly punishing mechanic - one that is only compounding on top of the brutal and archaic, completely brutal XP loss.

The XP loss is fine. The map being lost is not. Nothing about this is good.

Not to mention: this is early access - you're supposed to be taking our feedback in. The feedback is here. One death maps suck. And for what? This is a "Temporary, thrown together solution" for an endgame because you didn't have enough time to get something robust together to facilitate the endgame experience. Again, that's fine.

But guess what; the hastily thrown together endgame experience, with mobs that are extremely overtuned and way faster than they have any right to be, where white mobs 1 hit you (this should never happen unless you're rocking the worst, most intentionally bad niche build) and things like the volatile orbs (remove these immediately, or slow down the time it takes *plants* to *grow* and release their *damaging fruit* (seriously, plants don't grow this fast, they should not grow this fast, all the purple chaos plant-type things should not have instant cast and fast animations if they also have monumentally meteoric damage. It's one or the other. Sorry, that's literally basic game design 101 for anything outside of a super-hardcore mode.

For reference, I just tried to play a map with my friend. He puts a Tier XV waystone in. Goes to get a glass of water. I enter the map. I take 1 step (literally) and get immediately swarmed by mobs and stunlocked to death. Great. Used to it by now (this balance is honestly atrocious, it is what it is. Fix it please.) Okay great I don't get to play a map with my buddy, but guess what? NEITHER DOES HE. Because all 5 other portals closed, despite us being in a party, and he can't even use any of "his" other 5 portals. Tough luck buddy. Enjoying your One Death Maps yet? You tired of winning, pal?

This sucks. If this is our "Hastily thrown together Early Access endgame" - AND this is Early Access, listen to our Early Access feedback please.
Right now, it feels from the majority of the players that I've talked to, like we're being forced to pay to beta test a game and our feedback might as well not be given, since it's not going to be listened to.

GET RID OF THE ONE DEATH MAPS IN THE NEXT PATCH. That's not hard to do. A couple of lines of code.

They. Just. Do. Not. Work. In. The. Games. Current. Ecosystem. Of. Design.

Period.

If you want One Death Maps to be a design decision that has weight and merit and doesn't frustrate your playerbase into permanently quitting before they even get a chance to play the first league - just bring the One Death Maps back later when you've got the rest of the game designed in a way that facilitates it and makes it feel not as overtly punishing and obnoxiously time wasting.

Seriously. We will forgive you for this. It's once again, Early Access, and needs to be changed.

If you can't change it, throw us a bone. Because this SUCKS.

If you die so often, maybe you should analyze what's wrong with your build/gameplay.

Not the point of the post buddy but thanks for fulfilling the prophecy that someone will misunderstand someone elses point and say "git gud."

My Witch has an army of 20 skellies that evaporate maps.
My Monk has almost maxed evasion and Heralds just decimate everything in sight.
My Warrior is actually fantastic, tanking hits for days with 780HP regen per second so I barely have to life flask, just reposition and block.

My builds aren't the issue.

The point of the post is;
Endgame is half baked. It's full of atrocious crap that invalidates and makes obsolete the design intention of the One Death Map experience.

If I'm supposed to have One Death in my maps, my maps need to feel really, really solid, with very little obnoxious 1HKO crap and janky nonsense that can rob me of that precious single opportunity due to no fault of my own other than the game failing to deliver on its promise (fluid and smooth gameplay).

Right now there's so, so many issues. Until those issues are changed, we need some lenience on the map deaths.

And this can be achieved in a very simple way.

For each portal closed, you lose -10% XP gain and 10% drop rate.
When 6 portals are closed, you can still reset the map with another waystone (which is itself a negative but not as punishing) and if that is done you should only lose;

Breach.
Expedition.
Delirium.

Those are the really "extra" feeling activities right now.
Rituals are very necessary (most of my good gear has come from them and same for my friends.)
Radiation + corruption is just necessary flavour and texture, along with map bosses being pretty much essential when this games built more for "bossing".

Those things should never go away.
Only Breach, Expedition and Delirium should.

This is not a hard concept for anyone who's played a few hundred hours right now to grasp.

90% of the player base like it in 2025. Fact.

It's not a build/skill issue. Many mob/rare affix mechanics are way over-tuned and need toned down. Some are grossly unbalanced.

My biggest issue with death is the node being bricked. Take my waystone for a single death, fine. Want 10% of my exp? Take it. But removing all the modifiers and content on the node just feels like kicking me while I'm down. Especially when I need to clear the node to get to the next one. Now I'm stuck running a map with no content after having just died so the entire map I'm just thinking about the terrible death mechanics with no content to even distract you from it.

I've played a lot of games in my lifetime, however, POE2 has taken the penalty for dying to new extremes. It's far too punishing in its current state.

Oh look the 21,425th post about 1 death per map. I bet you have a lot of valuable feedback that we haven't heard before. I'm sure the devs will hop right on this to cater to your every need.

In the meantime have you tried not dying? A lot of people are using this trick to get around the skill issue you are experiencing

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Agent DBExtreme#8055 wrote:

My biggest issue with death is the node being bricked. Take my waystone for a single death, fine. Want 10% of my exp? Take it. But removing all the modifiers and content on the node just feels like kicking me while I'm down. Especially when I need to clear the node to get to the next one. Now I'm stuck running a map with no content after having just died so the entire map I'm just thinking about the terrible death mechanics with no content to even distract you from it.

+1

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MekeshaMeduro#6854 wrote:

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Agent DBExtreme#8055 wrote:

My biggest issue with death is the node being bricked. Take my waystone for a single death, fine. Want 10% of my exp? Take it. But removing all the modifiers and content on the node just feels like kicking me while I'm down. Especially when I need to clear the node to get to the next one. Now I'm stuck running a map with no content after having just died so the entire map I'm just thinking about the terrible death mechanics with no content to even distract you from it.

+1

I'm kinda on the same page here as well, and in fact if you listened to GGG's interview they actually are as well.

Where they are scratching their heads is at how they can implement it that way without making deliberate death a viable economic scheme, which I do get.