[Feedback] End game has to be reframed

I don’t usually post on forums, but I care a lot about Path of Exile 2 and wanted to share an idea I had, hopefully in a constructive way. If this helps the devs get some insight, cool. If not, toss it to the wind.

The Endgame Problem

I think the core issue with the current endgame is simple: it stops feeling like an adventure and starts feeling like a system. You go through a campaign where Wraeclast feels dangerous, grounded, and full of places that matter. Then the moment it ends, the game shifts and asks you to step outside of that world and interact with a board. That board can be optimized, but optimization is not the same as engagement. It keeps players busy, but it does not give them a reason to care, and that is where the disconnect starts.

The current endgame leans too heavily on randomness as the experience. Running maps, stacking modifiers, and chasing efficiency is not inherently bad, but it only feels rewarding when you look at it over time or compare it to other players. Moment to moment, it does not feel meaningful. It feels like managing a process. That is why people describe it as a chore. It is not because there is nothing to do, but because there is no context behind what you are doing. You are reacting to what the system gives you instead of choosing what you want to pursue. Everything is temporary, and nothing feels like it belongs to the world you just spent hours exploring.

Human beings do not just want inputs and outputs. They want context. They want places to matter. They want to feel like when they return somewhere, there is still something there waiting for them. Right now, the Atlas turns the world into a delivery system for loot. Once that happens, you are no longer exploring Wraeclast, you are servicing a loop. That is the real problem.

How do we fix it?

I think the endgame should live inside the acts instead of replacing them. Each act already has structure, identity, and a variety of layouts. They feel like real places and are essentially natural atlases already. Instead of building a separate system, build on top of those spaces and let them evolve after the campaign.

Take Act 2 as an example. It has a strong identity with the desert, the caravan, the buried paths, the tunnels, and the ruins. That is a perfect foundation. Imagine returning there and hearing that caravans have started disappearing. If you investigate those routes, you eventually uncover a hidden serpent boss hunting them, with its own loot. That gives you a reason to be there. Or sinkholes begin appearing across the desert, not as small events, but as entrances into a deeper underground network that persists and expands. The more you explore, the more it opens up, leading to larger encounters. You are not selecting content, you are uncovering it.

You can take it even further. If the region is suffering from drought, and somewhere there is a creature tied to that, your interaction with it could matter. If you kill it, nothing changes. But if you understand what is happening and let it complete its action, rain begins to fall. The environment changes, new enemies appear, and new bosses emerge. The same place now feels different because of something you chose to do. At the same time, difficulty can scale naturally as players complete these objectives. You are not selecting a higher tier from a menu, you are pushing the world forward by completing actions in the world you naturally gravitate to. IMO, much better than rolling a map and hoping for the best or stacking tower modifiers.

Taking this even further, every act should stand on its own instead of everything collapsing into one abstract endgame system. Each region already has its own identity, so lean into that. Act 2 becomes a living desert frontier of caravans, buried kingdoms, drought, serpents, and underground horrors. Act 1 shifts into a land unraveling after the fall of Count Geonor, with plague, twisted forests, and factions fighting for control. Act 3 dives into flooded ruins and forgotten civilizations where you hunt relics to awaken old gods, with encounters shaped by what you bring into them. Now endgame is not just “more maps,” it is a set of distinct adventures with their own rules, bosses, secrets, and progression, letting players choose where to go based on what kind of experience they want. If one act gets stale or too difficult, you pivot to another, keeping the game fresh without forcing it. Over time this grows naturally as updates expand each region, and when layered with league mechanics, it turns endgame into something far more powerful than a loop. It becomes a world you keep coming back to.

This is what is missing: cause and effect. Players need to feel like they are participating in a world that reacts to them, not just consuming content that resets every run. That is what makes experiences memorable. No one remembers a map because it had good density. People remember discovering something unexpected, unlocking a hidden path, or realizing one event led to something bigger. Repetition from hitting these same areas to uncover content is not an issue either (something I believe I heard was the goal of the the new endgame... to force you into new nodes/maps when your modifiers were cleared). Players will revisit the same places if those places feel grounded and if there is a reason to go back. What gets old is repetition without meaning.

Considering Leagues

One thing worth pointing out is that you are already close to this idea with league mechanics. Mechanics like Breach, Expedition, and Ritual create small moments where a map briefly feels like more than just a layout. That part works. The problem is that these systems are layered on top of the game rather than built into it. They are random, temporary, and disconnected. They appear, you interact with them, and then they are gone. They do not belong to the place you found them in, and they do not leave any lasting impact. Because of that, they feel like modifiers to a system instead of something that exists in the world.

What I am describing is not a replacement for those mechanics, but a foundation for them. The acts themselves should have their own built-in adventures that always exist within them. If I go back to a desert region, there should be known problems, secrets, and events tied to that place specifically. The serpent, the sinkholes, the drought and rain cycle. These are not random. They are part of that region. That is the key difference. One is procedural. The other is contextual. One shows up randomly and disappears. The other exists as part of the world and gives you a reason to be there, in the same way that people liked that you could choose your own endgame in PoE1, a good RPG should should allow you to choose your own adventure.

League mechanics can still exist alongside this and add variety and rewards, but they should not be the primary source of context. The world should provide that first. Right now, players interact with whatever shows up. With a system like this, players would choose where to go based on what exists there, and that shift changes the entire feel of the endgame.

It also allows each act to maintain its identity instead of everything collapsing into one system. Each region can offer a different kind of experience, different problems, and different progression. Over time, this creates depth, variety, and even community discovery as players share what they find.

At the end of the day, this is a role playing game. That should not stop when the campaign ends. The goal should not be to give players more things to manage. It should be to give them a reason to go back. Because when the world still matters, players stay... which we all know is an existing puzzle devs are trying to solve. And players that stay, are more likely to open their wallets. Devs get money. Players get an ARPG worth playing nonstop. Everyone wins.

Nice feedback. I'd really like it if we had access to different atlas paths at various stages throughout the game to get players familiar with the system and to give them a bit of a "oh I'm stuck and need gear/xp" relief system. I.e. hitting act2 should give you levels 20 to 45 atlas paths themed around the desert environments, maps, and underground passages.

That's one of the reasons why poe 2 doesn't feel like a truly next gen arpg to me, in other games endgame is basically an afterthought, so to some degree, limitations are to be expected

But poe 2 was made from the ground up by a studio with 10 years of experience in this area, the replayability factor should've been a revolution in the genre, but in reality? It's just more of the same things we've seen before

Every new league acts and zones remains static, not even different weather, time of day, or slightly different outcomes in the story

In maps they try to mix things up a little bit by having monsters like Burrowers spawning in indoor maps like Mausoleom/Tombs for example, i just wish the combinations of maps/monsters were a bit more deliberate and grounded, you wouldn't see this level of randomness in the campaign because it doesn't make much sense after all

I like the endgame imagination painted here.
I'm sure it would be possible to invent endgame mechanics that are more than monsters spawns + rewards, that feel more like being part of a scenario with different outcomes depending on player action while at the same time also having good replayability.

I would rather have increased currency drops before anything else.

From gear on my char i have 160 MF

Running Chaotic rarity maps (100-130 mf )

All 3 tablets always have from 15 mf (each) to 25 (each)

Playing 10-12 hours a day .

This is the loot i got in the past 3 days since i bought Ring mtx.

https://postimg.cc/Btpm8QFF

Running t15-16 maps

"

I would rather have increased currency drops before anything else.

From gear on my char i have 160 MF

Running Chaotic rarity maps (100-130 mf )

All 3 tablets always have from 15 mf (each) to 25 (each)

Playing 10-12 hours a day .

I don’t really disagree with you. If your thing is stacking MF, chasing drops, and building up currency as efficiently as possible, that’s a totally valid way to play. The game should support that.

But putting that as a priority doesn't fix the issue. That playstyle already has a reason to stay... because you're doing it. You're sinking 10-12 hours a day.



There are like 8,000 players on steam right now. Even though Steam isn’t the full picture, it’s still a strong indicator. And I really doubt those numbers suddenly explode just because currency becomes easier to acquire. The people who enjoy farming wealth are already here to stay.