Suggestion: Roaming Boss Nodes on the Atlas who stay active (and level up) if you fail

I agree with the devs that “Death should matter,” but we want revenge! Losing a boss node feels like getting robbed of redemption by a single failure.

I propose that endgame bosses remain active on the map after a failed attempt. Instead of disappearing, they could move to a different node and level up. This would add an extra layer of challenge, make gameplay more dynamic and rewarding, and fuel players’ headcanon (like a budget Nemesis system from those Mordor games crossed with Super Mario 3).

This way, players get a fair shot at retrying the encounters that actually matter—because let’s be real, no one’s clamoring for a second attempt at an Expedition node. At the same time, the full brunt of "Death Mattering” is still intact. Personally, I think this solution would silence the critics of the "Lose Yourself" mechanic (ie you only get one shot) because they’d be too busy chasing down the boss that did them dirty.

I thought maybe this would spark some sort of convo but looks like it's just going to be another lost thread.

Anyway if you do happen to stumble upon this, what are your thoughts? did I miss the mark? do the people complaining about the one life mechanics also want to repeat failed Expedition maps too?

Personally I only care to retry the boss nodes on failure and if instead of vanishing, the exact same boss just moved to a different node and set up shop there while getting themselves a bit of a power boost I would be exited to follow them and have my revenge. Rather than my current response of "well that was a waste of time, should i call it a night?"

The idea has some potential. More boss fights is always good for this game. If it was implemented then the devs would have to be careful not to accidentally have some sort of counter-intuitive farming strat surrounding it though. For example, if the boss level increased then the item levels of the drops would increase. This would reward players to fail or expire the map just to juice drop levels the next time they encountered the boss.

There is a problem with this idea.

In general, when you come up with a game mechanic, especially in PoE, you MUST map out ways that mechanic can be abused/broken by the players because if it can, it will.

The negative consequence of your idea is that the optimal play would be to intentionally lose to low level bosses to 'level them up' to the point that their drops are meaningful. This would feel awful in practice.

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LVSviral#3689 wrote:

The idea has some potential. More boss fights is always good for this game. If it was implemented then the devs would have to be careful not to accidentally have some sort of counter-intuitive farming strat surrounding it though. For example, if the boss level increased then the item levels of the drops would increase. This would reward players to fail or expire the map just to juice drop levels the next time they encountered the boss.

They would definitely have to take balance into consideration. But if everything else remains the same, purposely failing a boss run to juice up the Boss for an eventual success would still trigger the current penalties of failing a map so there's a very palpable cost to attempting that. I think it would be kind of neat to see if a new farming strat pops up as a result. if it does, and is OP AF I'd imagine they would just issue a level cap to bosses.

I like this idea. It would be interesting to see the bosses move from node to node like every other time you run a map or something. I'm not sure about the level up thing, but if you fail a map with a boss, that boss should just move to a nearby map.

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fouquet#0993 wrote:

There is a problem with this idea.

In general, when you come up with a game mechanic, especially in PoE, you MUST map out ways that mechanic can be abused/broken by the players because if it can, it will.

The negative consequence of your idea is that the optimal play would be to intentionally lose to low level bosses to 'level them up' to the point that their drops are meaningful. This would feel awful in practice.

Could make it so the boss doesn't level up or remain active unless you initiate a fight with them in the map (preventing people from dying immediately to mob to level up boss. or try and move it to a more favorable map type) The time to get to the boss and trigger it , plus the penalty to dying in a map should be enough to deter people from making it a meta strat, but also a cap on how much the bosses can be leveled up would be a simple enough solution should that not be enough.

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CycloneJack#6077 wrote:

I like this idea. It would be interesting to see the bosses move from node to node like every other time you run a map or something. I'm not sure about the level up thing, but if you fail a map with a boss, that boss should just move to a nearby map.

Yeah the leveling up could be a potential pain point, and maybe worth dropping if its exploit potential is too high, or people get stuck with an unbeatable boss that ends up blocking their progress. But I like the idea of them getting just a little bit stronger when they defeat you, if done right it would make them feel like a real counterpart to the players.