rate the endgame from 1 to 10

It's a difficult answer but.

IF IT WAS POE1

9/10

But this is POE2

so

4/10

Mechanics should be different because the gameplay and playstile should be different.

Less mobs, more difficult, all the portals to get to the end.

Clearly this is my opinion, but POE 2 ENDGAME Should not revolve around meta builds to make it.

6/10

Nerf oneshot builds, aoe oneshot builds. I liked poe 2 in acts but i dont like poe1 endgame at all

Do something with farming bots and trade bots.

I give it a 2.

Alot of the problems are obvious and its realy puzzeling how little efford was made.

- Waystone drops are all over the place. T5 dropping regularly in T15 maps, i understand that not all maps are the highest tier, but the bracket should be reasonable
- Not enough waystones to keep mapping without hitting bosses
- Screens are full of effects, but somehow players are suposed to single out the deadly ones
- Windup times on some enemy effects are so short that you have to be speedy gonzales to evade them
- Many Bosses feel like they are only designed around area denialing as much of the arena as possible with as many effects as possible
- Boss fights are single try and given the number of bosses chances are high that you will see some of them only every other week
- Iam not starting about the hot mess of Pinnacle Boss and mechanic boss rarity. It feels like the challenge is not to kill the boss but to get through the search for its fragments

On top of all that still XP loss.

A complete honest rating from me would be 4.

Many things looks visually good, but maps/areas are very unpractical because the brightness is like a flash bang. In maps there are many areas that looks like grass but actually is some object you can't step on so you have to constantly rely on your map, relying on the looks of the environment don't work.

Game wise..
It's kinda bad. I mean, campaign is technically "cool", but it's a pain in the ass and I don't ever want to do it again. All spells are useless without archmage but that can be balanced I suppose.

Melee sucks because you are completely reliant on dodge-roll but even then it still sucks because you'll die from after-effects, and even if you survive, the melee options are limited to like .. attribute stacker and freeze-invoker.

Ranged is... well, deadeye LA/LR. Not much to say. Very strong, OP as always, same old as in PoE1 but stronger single target.


Game is basically PoE1 but more frustrating campaign, A HELL ALOT less viable builds. Way less things to do and way more frustration.
So yeah, at this point I much rather play PoE1. I'm happily waiting for a new league.

Edit:
I also really don't like
- the new atlas
- The MF
- The (gamba) "crafting"
- Uncut gems dropped as loot instead of quest/vendor
- Skill socket system
- Ascendencies kinda suck apart from very few selected ones
- Lack of mechanics such as harvest, delve, syndicate etc
- Lack of totem skills
- Mana issues
- Attribute issues
- Lack of cool spells
- CoC
- Wardloop-stuff
- and so on

Maps

Maps are fun compared to D4 endgame and POE 1 mapping.
So this i rate 7/10 (need some improvement),

Now, Deaths = losing the map and experience i rate 3/10, we should at least have 3 portals


ASCENDANCY (points 5-6 and 7-8)
i give 1/10. I could do the 5-6 points at lvl 85, after i changed my entire build to a more Meta one.

7-8 points i gave up completely, is literally impossible for me, i might try again when i get 100 divine worth of gear to one shot the boss.

3/10

Would be 8/10 with more than 1 portal (death).

Probably 5/10 for me, I'd rather play another league of PoE1 than the current state of PoE2. A 8/10 as mentioned above if there was more than 1 portal attempt on death.

I will give it a 1/10
I just got to endgame and after 7 maps I quit the game.
The endgame death that resets a map and waste of a waypoint it is becoming a waste of time - not to mention XP loss overkill.
Thinking ahead, all those random events and w/e new interactions you find during a map run are simply not worth the risk of death which goes back to the feeling that I just wasted 5-10 min on nothing.
To understand if an idea/system is good or bad you just exaggerate it to see if it still holds. So why not when you die reset the campaign progress too and maybe all inventory items in softcore. Does that sound stupid ?.. that means that current endgame is an iteration of that stupid.

3/10
Ultimatum/Djinn/Waystones cannot be bought on the currency exchange.
No easy way to target a specific mechanic I want to play.
Atlas tree mechanic nodes require too much effort for very little reward.
Clearing maps is annoying and tedious with little reward.
Citadels are too far away with only one mean of finding them.
One life on citadels is too punishing.
Very few wide open biomes.

3/10

(for now, I'm sure GGG will vastly improve endgame over the year)

What kinda ruins the endgame for me is map design; there are only a handful of maps that I like to play and the rest is a slog, an obstacle that you have to pass through. A visual & mechanical obstacle, with lots of clutter, chokepoints and backtracking.

There are plenty of bad maps in Poe1, but you can at least zoom zoom through them - through doors, upwards and downwards ledges, etc... My highest char in Poe2 is only 85 but I'm already sick of all the Vaal factories, Mires, Backwashes, Caverns, Blooming Fields, Grottos, Auguries... that are in my way to the things I want to play.

Even the 'outdoor' maps are designed as a labyrinth, with obstacles you have to go around and an insane amount of trees that are in your face... It's just tiring. -_-

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Out of the punishing design (XP loss, one portal..), I only mind that the map becomes an empty node if you die and you have to repeat the slog, but now without additional content / loot.

I don't think throwing white T1s into half the nodes I do is a good gameplay experience.

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Also, for a game boasting great boss fights as one of the base pillars of gameplay, there surely aren't enough bosses around to fight. And they are mostly a pushover too - rares are the real danger while mapping.