Is Mapping Too Complicated?

Maybe some people like this idk. But I feel like things that don't have a clear right answer are just bad design. The stuff where you can learn is fine. But I was just looking around at what node to travel to on the map device and I'm just thinking to myself.. why does this even exist. You have so much choice on where to go.. but the results of your choices are so ambiguous I genuinely feel like I'm just burning time looking at it. This is never a good thing in any video game.

Even so there is much to appreciate about the game and I'm glad it exists.

At first towards the towers to have a better view. After that towards corruption until you unlock all atlas points granted by it (or sometimes derail towards some unique encounter -> Kalandra's Lake, Essence's map, Monolith and so on, or the new ones since they have interesting drops), after that is just socketing tablets and farming some de-corrupted maps, or going forward until you see a citadel (since they changed/buffed their apparition to be much closer to the starting zone + that they have a form of beam that can be seen from the fog).

That is one of the strategy to travel across the atlas, but it all depends on what you want at the end of the day.

I think the problem is that the atlas can very quickly become too large to keep track of what's going on. Quite often you will scan for a minute or so until you find something, then you leave the atlas to grab a waystone or perhaps a tablet, and when you return you can't remember where you panned the atlas map to and have to search again. I understand that 'pins' exist, but if throwing down a pin is required for basic navigation, I think the system is too cumbersome. Graphically it looks nice, and it's a cool map, but it just doesn't function well in practice.

I would have much preferred an interface similar to Delve in PoE1, with a zoomed-out 2d layout that is easier to navigate.

I think the atlas would also be more interesting if there were "biomes", or some other interesting reason to explore a certain direction beyond seeing a beacon for your next Citadel.

Eh I wouldn't call it complicated.

A bit annoying maybe when later in the patch I have to scroll and scroll until I find area I was interested in.

In general its not much worse than POE1, half of the time POE1 is putting the same map over and over again, with so much shit on your screen you don't even know what you are doing. At least as a newish player, later on it was easier as I leveled up my second character (bear in mind I played POE1 only after release of POE2 and quite liked the game).

However I like the variety of mechanics, from towers to cleanses, corruptions and so on. They just need to make it more streamlined. As in I am not a fan of nodes.

Generate me a map and let me click wherever I want, rather than pathing. You can keep the fog and not allow me to go beyond it until I clear what has been revealed already, but pathing is annoying to me.

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I think the atlas would also be more interesting if there were "biomes", or some other interesting reason to explore a certain direction beyond seeing a beacon for your next Citadel.

Well biomes already exist in the atlas technically. You see mountains, deserts, woods etc. Now to be fair the only thing they do is affect what kind of maps spawn and I would actually be more than happy if there were other things going on with them.

For example: Desert biomes having sandstorms, Water Biomes - floods etc. With extra modifiers to maps or other types of monsters and/or allowing for other interesting map spawns/ bosses to happen in those areas.

Poe2 atlas has done everything worse than poe1.

- Cannot choose map layout (so what if someone wants to run 1000 crimson temples? Make dedicated server for it and save on performance costs lol)
- Cannot have maximum monster level without running low level first and messing with tablets
- Cannot select secondary content per map, tablets blanket everything with same content
- Corrupted maps now mandatory, have to deal with build-bricking mods. Cannot chaos spam maps.
- Layout variety is tiny (sick of Auguries and swamps everywhere)
- World map quickly grows in size to unmanageable and laggy
- No way to reset world map for Standard characters, has anyone thought about it at all?

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enslavedemperor#5410 wrote:

At first towards the towers to have a better view. After that towards corruption until you unlock all atlas points granted by it (or sometimes derail towards some unique encounter -> Kalandra's Lake, Essence's map, Monolith and so on, or the new ones since they have interesting drops), after that is just socketing tablets and farming some de-corrupted maps, or going forward until you see a citadel (since they changed/buffed their apparition to be much closer to the starting zone + that they have a form of beam that can be seen from the fog).

That is one of the strategy to travel across the atlas, but it all depends on what you want at the end of the day.

You know what I actually found this helpful lol. I think maybe i still had a bit of biased from playing it before they reworked it.. I only need one more corruption and looking at the map i see a ton of good nodes that i'm looking forward to clearing so I guess it worked out.