rate the endgame from 1 to 10

As someone who can play games 2-5 hours per day (40 years old, family, career, social life, etc)...

POE1 endgame: 4.5/10
POE2 endgame: 6/10



Pulling out all of the POE1 leagues you can do in POE1 and just ranking the atlas, mapping experience, stones, spawning bosses, the boss fights themselves, item & character progression, mechanics...

POE1 endgame is extremely monotonous as is POE2. The atlas in POE2, IMO, is far better than POE1. I enjoy the landscape, graphical nature of it, the ever expanding essence of it. I do not like losing the map itself to one death or weird mechanic. Id rather get my map back in white/normal form. This makes map sustain, an issue in poe1 and poe2, much better.

But in the end, if you really look at it in simplest terms, its boring as was poe1. As is last epochs and D4s. No endgame really has the wow factor for me and not sure what or If ARPG games can do about it.

Honestly, after the slog of campaign we must endure, I have little drive to get into endgame for much longer. If I spent 15-25+ hours on campaign, I dont know if I can do 50 hours or more in endgame on a single character before getting bored and re-rolling or quitting.

poe1 endgame:

-clear and easy to understand atlas progression
-massive atlas tree for customization, switchable
-can run exactly the map i want as long as i want
-can have exactly the content i want in every map
-can juice every map further with scarabs, fragments etc.
-unique maps
-if bored by mapping, go delve or heist

poe2 endgame:

-bland questline for progress
-bland and small atlas tree where waystone quant is mandatory, nothing special in it, seperating the mechanic trees was a terrible decision
-cant run the map i want, have to run the map the atlas throws to my feet in order to sometimes maybe reach a map i want, most have terrible layouts
-cant have the content i want in maps i want cause its random on what maps i get something
-no scarabs, no fragments, only boring tablets in horrible towers
-lack of unique maps, found not a single one to this point
-if bored by mapping, go on mapping

2/10, 1 point for visuals 1 point for good combat

2.5/10

Dying on maps made me feel like ripping my hair out. I'm playing games like that to make progress, not lose progress. Combined with the cheap deaths that happen here and then and the horrible waystone sustain, the result is that it's extremely easy and boring 99% out of the time, and you have to be lucky to even get your waystone back and not be forced to do even easier content afterwards. And of course you have to be extremely careful while one-shotting everything because if you suddenly die to some offscreen chaos projectiles, you lose hours of progress. This simply isn't any fun to me, and I thought that pseudo-masochistic/adrenaline junkie gameplay like that is what hardcore mode is for, so no idea why that's forced on everyone.

The campaign is a 10/10 for me (aside of the Trials which are a solid 1/10, but as a one-time thing it's bearable, even if the game is better off without them), so it's a massive disappointment to see the endgame basically turn it into a completely different game by throwing away difficulty and replacing it with boredom and anxiety.

3.26 / 10

Waiting 3.26 PoE1 League to maybe have some fun

I'll start with a 10 and...
-1 for keystone scarcity
-1 for low tier keystones in high tiers (getting most tier 5-10 in tier 15 rather than 11-15)
-1 for Doryani useless shop
-1 for having only 1 try per map (this should be a -5, is by far the worst thing)
-1 for loosing node bonuses after death
-1 for low spawn rate of citadels
-1 for not retry of citadels (one citadel, one try, just kill me)
-1 for currency drops being horrible (chaos orbs, annulment orbs... seems non existant)
-1 for ritual, delirium... passive trees, it is imposible to improve those until you complete far goals. I can live with it, but I prefer how POE 1 does.

soo...a 1, basically I like the visual desing of the atlas, it's pretty, and how you travel across the nodes, unlocking towers and improve the nodes in range. Is more dinamic and entertaining than the POE 1 has.

I'll rate it as 1 as well.
I will compare many things to poe 1. No, it doesn't have to be like poe 1, or I want it to be a copy of it before someone jumps on it. Just comparing it.
From someone who plays casually, but a lot. 151 hour play time, 1 character 70 , 1 character 87

-Endlessly expanding atlas is a mess, hard to view, hard to follow, poe 1 atlas was much tidier
- Most map are a claustrophobic maze, with horrible layout
- Killing and hunting down rares on maps are just bad, without the bonus node barely anything distinguish maps from each other. No I will not say poe 1 map bosses were iconic but still it makes them more memorable than the Xth general rare on x layout.
- Rare markers should be up from the start, not just show up at later.
- One portal per map is something I find pointless and punishing with no challenge factor at all. With my build I played exactly the same as I would play in poe 1, it did not make me more careful, nor felt any challenge out of it, it changed nothing.
-PoE 1 atlas completion felt like a much better progression system where I felt I worked toward something, here it's just an endless pointless grind.
-loot was awful, I bought a few items on trade, nothing cost more than 1-3 exa, I never found a single item that was even the slightest upgrade be it a rare or unique item. It's not a quantity problem, but a quality problem. Who cares if 50 items drop like in poe 1 or 5 if 100% of them are bad.
-The game wants to be slower, yet immediately 2 of the endgame mechanics namely breach and delirium are time based and go fast kill fast. Which completely goes against that idea. Want a slower game? Get rid of every single time based mechanic.
-Did all map quests from tier 1 to tier 15 for the atlas points, did 4 floor trial, 10/10 utlimatum with end boss, not even once I saw a single citadel on the map. Scarce content is not challenging, it's annoying. Add 1 portal to that and you get something that is utter garbage.

i rate it paid alfa/borderline scam out of 10.

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Lyvri#1227 wrote:

4/10

It was good to around T11, but after that nothing really changed and all mechanics became boring. I'm currently on T16 maps and it's quite boring after you hit it. In Poe 1 now i would do maps with deli layers, here they are bugged and spawn less monsters.

Breach: 8/10 After killing 4x breach lord breaches are really profitable but forcing us to play non stop other map layouts feels bad. I miss beach.
Expedition: 1/10 Really?? Give me back my Gwennen and Tujen!
Delirium: 2/10 Feels bugged, goes where it pleases, does not let some monster "spawn".
Ritual: 6/10 Boss entry is too rare. Sometimes spawn in shitty places or spawn so small packs of mobs that does not let you start it.
Bosses: 10/10 for quality but there should be boss in every map (or 1 every 2 maps) and they are too squishy. Even on area lvl 82 with mob hp mod on map they are dying in matter of seconds.

In my opinion we should get quest entry on every boss to get 2 points in each atlas tree.


Flickering away

Imagine if bosses were actually hard to kill. With 1 death = cya - build diversity would be even worse than it is atm. 99% players copied twitch builds anyway but there are still some people who play game on their own, rather than copying build from their social media idols.

But if bosses were harder,those people who do not play meta,wouldnt even be playing maps , you know,the only endgame...

0/10. horrible gameplay, horrible goals, horrible punishment, horrible mechanics, horrible overlay. literal 0/10

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0/10. horrible gameplay, horrible goals, horrible punishment, horrible mechanics, horrible overlay. literal 0/10

horrible ascendancy trials, horrible loots, horrible craft, horrible rng.