Feedback on the Phrecia Idol System

I remember when the Atlas Skill Tree first came and it was a shining beacon in the game overshadowed by the absolute cesspool that is called trade.

The Idol system in Phrecia brings in trades back in a way, that you back in the day had to do four times per atlas area, but in a worse state. Now you're looking at 15+ trades you have to complete in order to get a strategy running at any sort of efficiency.

Two days ago I clocked 53 minutes of trading for the idols I needed to get my current atlas strategy running. That's 53 soul crushing minutes of people not responding, responding with random bullshit like "sry wrong price" and raising up the price of the listing and all the other classic trade tropes. Multiple time during this I was wishing I'd just have the Atlas tree so I could respec freely.

PoE is such a diverse game when it comes to mechanics you can run and monsters you can kill that a player like me wants to change things up often. I'm currently content with the idol setup I have, but currently if there would be some sort of cosmic force compelling me to swap my strategy, I'd rather just open up another game than spend another hour looking at listings and trying hopelessly to message people to trade.

I seriously hope you will not be introducing this system or anything like this anywhere else. Or if you are, please for the love Kiwi birds or whatever, at least let these idols be crafted.

Yeap idols are horrible because of trade being horrible.
Everyone hates trade at this point but if you dont want to run "random bullshit go" setup you are forced to go trading for them.
Its all about player agency. People hate not having agency of content they encounter and people hate not having agency on the purchasing side of trade. They combined the two for the perfect disaster.

yeah. worst content in many years. i left the league because of it

HATE IT.

I love the Last Epoch system...I think POE1's crafting system/ knowing that a 5 mod item is better than a 6 mod system fills the equivalent param niche...top off resists for me usually.

I think this is a hard "baby with the bath water" because...LE systems are good, and they don't have a comparable atlas tree as a big shortcoming. That triple setting tree was a crown jewel of Poe1 and the complexity of endgame.

I can see ... adding the idols to the atlas....points unlock squares, as a fun path. On the nose 1:1 to passive tree jewels.

Getting a ton trade....piddly 5c tho ...