Map layouts/tilesets

I'm closing in on a burnout already...

I'm an endgame player, and that's where I 'like' to spend most of my time, pushing hard and rewarding content. And while the acts are very solid and nicely designed, the endgame is lacking.

What I dislike the most about the endgame, are the map layouts. They LOOK nice, don't get me wrong, but from a gameplay/mechanical point of view, some of them suck (in lack of a better word). Every single time I have to (yes, sometimes you have to) run a Mire/Augury/Forge/Vaal Factory/Decay/Grotto or whatever, I can HEAR my motivation to play just being drained out of my body.

I get it; it's Early Access, the game isn't finished and we'll probably get a lot of new maps and more variation based on the tilesets from the upcoming act 4-6. And that is nice and all, but will they have the same layouts/pathing that we have now? And while a lot can change during EA, I just keep asking myself (sometimes out loud); "why did you design them like this in the first place? What does it add to the game? Why did you CHOOSE to make them like this?"

You have this information from PoE 1; how many players favored the Cells map? Dungeon map? Mineral fucking Pools map?

We either need more "good layouts", less "bad layouts" or more agency over what to run/ways to change/favor maps. I can guarantee you that running the tilesets we want to run over and over again will make us play more, and being 'forced' to play a lot of different tilesets we don't like will make us play less. I can't see myself returning every league to run Mire maps.

This is SUCH a good game with HUGE potential. Don't throw that away by forcing players into boring map layouts with a lot of back tracking.

TLDR: Map layouts = bad. Player agency = good.

And if someone disagrees here; good, I like people disagreeing in a discussion forum, but maybe you can tell me what it adds to the game and how it is positive for retention and longevity. We CAN have diversity of GOOD layouts.

I feel exactly the same. The campaign is awesome and I don't mind the slow paced gameplay & map design there, because you mostly run a zone only once. But the endgame is quite exhausting, mostly because of map layouts / sizes / backtracking for missed rares.

In general I like the concept of the new atlas, but we need more agency on what we play and / or less bad maps. There's nothing more tiring than seeing the location you want to go to, but there's a few Mires & Grottos in your way there. Even worse when those are empty nodes, without bosses on them.

I like diversity and in PoE 1 I couldn't grind the same map for very long - always had to change what I'm playing from time to time. But in PoE 2 at least half of the common maps right now are odious and I wouldn't play them more than once per gaming session, or even league, if I had the choice.

I'd rather play Dungeon & Cells in PoE 1, than Grottos & Caverns in PoE 2, simply because in PoE 1 you can use movement skills to pass through things, jump down ledges, etc..

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Maps need to have less collision clutter, less visual clutter (eg. trees) and less narrow chokepoints. They need to be smaller and / or less maze like. No-one wants to trot around winding tunnels in hunt for the last burrowed rare pack.

I don't mind if there are a few really 'bad' maps like Mire, but those need to be really rare on the Atlas.

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I understand that this is only the first selection of maps and there are many more to come, increasing diversity, but I don't like the direction of such labyrinthine and cluttered map design.

Not to mention that doing Breach, Expedition, Ritual... in such cluttered & narrow layouts feels really bad.