Long feedback on act 1-3 zones/layouts after leveling multiple characters.

To preface I've made 7 characters, 4 are in endgame, 2 in act 3 and 1 is new. There are many zones in the campaign that feel decent to go through even on repeat characters and others that feel terrible to go through every time past the first run through and I wanted to highlight that so I'm basically going to go through all the zones trying to list good or bad things with them, it's going to be a long post.

Act 1
Clearfell honestly a great zone, big indicator to where the burrow is, audible voice lines indicating you getting close to the ice witch and the way out being on the opposite side of the zone from the start

Grelwood Too big, no indicators I've noticed of where the points of interest are outside grim tangle having a couple shrooms in very close proximity of it, you basically need to full clear the zone and find/activate all waypoints for grelwood, red vale and grim tangle (by going into said zones, activating the points and coming back to continue the grelwood clear) because otherwise you risk grelwood timing out while clearing red vale and needing to refind everything.

Red Vale Again too big with only 3 things to find and no zone indicators to help find them easier. End up full clearing it a lot trying to find the pillars or their checkpoints.

Grim tangle/all of Cemetery Decent maps overall, can get a bit lost in the cemetery looking for the tombs but not too bad. Only real issue is the checkpoint for the boss needs to be moved outside the gate you need to open since the fasted way back there after clearing both tombs is checkpointing in the tomb to their start and waypoint teleporting back to the cemetery waypoint since it's next to the gate.

Hunting Grounds Pretty rough, huge zone with a core optional boss and 2 zones you once again need to go into them and grab their waypoints when you come across them, and the zone has again no real indicators for finding the PoI outside stumbling upon them.

Freythorn Also quite bad, the rituals can either be clustered on top of each other or spread throughout the zone, completely rng on how long the zone takes to navigate and again no indicators to help find the rituals. Could be shrunk by 50% and not lose much.

All of Ogham, farm to manor Great zones, PoI aren't hard to find and they are easy to navigate through.

Act 2
Outskirts Fine

Quarry/Mine Relatively fine, have had horrible checkpoint generation in the mine with 3 being just off screen from each other all leading to a dead end with nothing in it. (also that scripted box you find in quarry is still empty)

Traitor Pass Feel like it's a bit too long but overall fine, maybe bit too many dead ends.

Halani Gate Good zone

Mastadon Badlands Kind of a worthless zone, it's really big with nothing worthwhile in it and is almost a clone of bone pits, doesn't need to exist imo

Bone pit Zone needs better indicators for finding the boss and multiple checkpoints are completely random with nothing near them or in dead ends. Also wish finding the relics wasn't as rng feeling since the hyena clan are dotted around the zone.

Keth Needs better indicator for finding the optional boss, along with the rng relic drop (though snakes being the main enemy type there kind of negates it) Not a fan of the looted tomb existing with a checkpoint. Past that the zone feels fine to go through.

Lost City/Buried Shrine Honestly too big/long for what little is actually worthwhile in them. Lost city being like the badlands with not needing to exist since it's basically a clone of the shrine zone design wise (honestly badlands and bone pit should be combined as well as lost city and buried shrine, with how big the zones are you could probably fit all their random not worth doing on alt character PoI in without much hassle.

Valley of titans/Grotto Decent zones, only issue is that box that's supposed to spawn in grotto not spawning.

Deshar Needs better indicators to find the corpse with the letter (like rhoa tracks you can follow leading to it since her mount is found where you enter) but otherwise fine to navigate. The double rare fight dropping a basic 1 floor sanctum trial is worthless though (same with any quest that rewards that or basic 4 floor ultimatums).

Path of mourning/spire Honestly fine, Mourning while like badlands and lost city feels different enough from spires that it doesn't feel as bad to run through. Would like better indicators for finding the deshret sisters shrine though.

Dreadnought 1/2 Like these zones, relatively fast to get through and mob dense, no wandering around trying to find stuff.

Act 3
Marsh Bit big but easy enough to navigate if all you want is to reach the encampment.

Jungle ruins Feels bad, needlessly huge zone. An optional boss, waypoint near a needed optional zone and a path to the next zone you feel forced to do after finding the other 2 PoI since infested barrens doesn't have it's waypoint near it's entrance. None of which have any good indicators leading to them.

Infested Barrens Worst offender of needlessly big hub zones. A way point somewhere in the map you need to get so you can come back, 2 zones you also need to find and go into to grab their waypoints before going back into barrens to continue finding the other PoI. Could be shrunk by 50% and be fine. Also needs indicators for finding the doors and waypoint outside searching all the edges.

Azak Bog I hate this zone. It should be shrunk by like 60% or more. 1 real PoI and an optional PoI for some temp bonus stats. No indicators anywhere in this massive zone to help find either thing and no additional checkpoints outside the 2 by the PoI. I have basically full cleared this zone multiple times trying to find the boss and I dread going in it every new character.

Chimeral Wetlands Zone feels small enough that it doesn't feel as droning as barrens or ruins but does still have the issue where you feel forced to stop into the first zone you find to grab its waypoint then come back in to continue exploring. Feel like finding the checkpoint outside the zone should activate the waypoint inside it for zones like these. Would save multiple load screens through the campaign.

Jiquani's zones While finding the PoI are easy finding the soul gems is miserable. Walking around these zones hoping you can hear and pinpoint the core drops isn't fun. There's no real rhyme or reason to where they drop and the zones (especially the sanctum) are way to big for randomly dropped needed quest items. Need a better way to find them other than wandering around big areas trying to hear them drop as I've also full cleared these zones finding the soul cores to move on.

Venomcrypt Fine zone but needs indicators to lead to the quest item in the zone.

Waterways Fine zone but does go a bit too long with sometimes really annoying lever layouts. Also man the lever animations while they look nice feel horrible to do and are also buggy with rubberbanding.

Utzaal(past and drowned city) Bit too big but have set layout generation you can navigate to the PoI outside rng finding the heart in Utzaal past by killing the randomly splotted around big guys. Does feel decent to navigate though once you get the layout.

Rest of Act 3 zones Overall fine, relatively consistent generation you can navigate and they don't take too long after you somewhat know how they're laid out. Though the Alva cutscene at the end of Kopec takes too long, worse than the original waiting on the door to open after beating vaal oversoul thing. I just activate it and tab out for a bit now which isn't fun.

Also more of a unimportant nitpick, you don't need to talk to Alva until needing to go into the drowned city and then once more in kopec. Despite the fact you can avoid talking to her your character will still make all the comments about needing to summon her in barrens/jiquani's areas which is weird.


As an after word purely opinionated here, because of the general speed of the player movement wise in poe2 some of the zones are way too big and have multiple PoI that seemingly have no consistent way of finding them outside just wandering around which isn't fun to do/find past the first run through. It also feels really bad to need to duck in and out of doors in Hub style zones like infested barrens to grab the waypoints of all the connected zones because doing one of those side rooms could take long enough that the hub resets and you need to refind the other door. We only have acts 1-3 right now and I've only made 7 characters and there's already parts of the story/campaign layouts I dread going through. Currently I see poe2's campaign being way more disliked going through it everytime on a new league then poe1's campaign due to poe1 being faster movement wise with both general speed and movement skills and also having smaller and/or more easily navigatible campaign zones.

Also when I say indicators I don't mean like the yellow paint type of thing, I'm talking like poe1 grain gate corpses by doors or Clearfell's burrower trail. In zone details that once you recognize them you can navigate the more sprawling zones easier without it feeling like randomly wandering around a huge zone. There could even be some of these I missed that do help but I've tried looking for them on my alt character run throughs with no luck.

it's easier to give each character significantly more movement speed than to reduce the map size and redesign it.

+1 for allowing all characters to run significantly faster

"

Darosius#3984 wrote:

it's easier to give each character significantly more movement speed than to reduce the map size and redesign it.

+1 for allowing all characters to run significantly faster

While I agree I was thinking GGG wouldn't go for that option all things considered with poe2 so I opted to say reducing zone size for some areas instead.

A big zone ain't bad if it'a ain't also empty and monotonous. And as far as normal mode campaign goes, most big zones are both empty, rewards wise - with all those checkpoints next to empty white chests or empty blue chests and monotonous.

I would like to see a few more assets thrown into these giant maps that would break the monotony a bit. Maybe more PoIs (seeing how most of them aren't worth the wear and tear on the shoes anyway)?

As for indicators... I don't know. I'm tempted to think you want a clear path to your exits and PoIs because you don't really enjoy the exploration part either due to its somewhat monotonous nature or the unrewarding experience (I know, I know, just stack 5000% magic find and it will become rewarding).

I didn't bother to progress past normal difficulty yet, but if maps are as big as ppl say they are, then having the story zones large makes for an easy transition into the meat of the game, so from that angle I'm also thinking map sizes are fine and the experience can be improved if one gets to do more than just whack 1000 monsters per map for their loot that sells for 100 gold or less (one can only be bothered to disenchant so much without currency recpies at vendors).

Buuut, yeah, since they've all but neutered our traversal capabilities (very strong Ruthless vibes there), with no blinks, no leaps and every pot on the way stopping us dead in our tracks, movement speed rolls on boots could be an implicit, maybe, that scales with ilvl or something?

Nice feedback!

Some zones are way too big and it is just Acts 1-3, imagine when they launch Acts 4-6... the campaign will be a slog to replay every season or even to role an alt.


Reduce the map tiles and make the objectives less RNG would be the better long term solutions, but hardly GGG will go for it. Give characters more movement speed it is.

"

himenoinu#2580 wrote:

As for indicators... I don't know. I'm tempted to think you want a clear path to your exits and PoIs because you don't really enjoy the exploration part either due to its somewhat monotonous nature or the unrewarding experience (I know, I know, just stack 5000% magic find and it will become rewarding).

I didn't bother to progress past normal difficulty yet, but if maps are as big as ppl say they are, then having the story zones large makes for an easy transition into the meat of the game, so from that angle I'm also thinking map sizes are fine and the experience can be improved if one gets to do more than just whack 1000 monsters per map for their loot that sells for 100 gold or less (one can only be bothered to disenchant so much without currency recpies at vendors).

Indicators don't need to be a full line path. The corpses in grain gate in poe1 are only by doors of buildings and indicate you can find the next zone transfer by going through those buildings but it's also a detail a lot of players don't notice. Just having things dotted around that at least indicate which direction is right for the important PoI would help a lot.

That said the exploration is worthless just like in poe1 is the thing. I enjoyed going around looking at and for stuff on the first run through. After that just like poe1 there's not really a point in exploring, almost every side PoI in the zones that doesn't give passives or perma stat boosts are worthless and you can't really fix that with this being an economy focused game (can't make worthwhile drops since it'd impact the economy). And wandering around a huge zone looking for the 1-3 things worth finding when there's nothing in these massive areas to point you in the right direction so all you can do is hope you luckily come across it fast is miserable. Just like poe 1 the campaign when you level alts is basically just a time gate of main and side quests to complete before you can get to mapping except some of these zones are purely tedious and unfun to navigate to an extreme degree which really shines as you make and run more characters through it. You ran through and stopped in act 3 on 1 character and felt some issues, if you complete that run and then do the same on a couple more characters (with my current amount I've experienced acts 1-3 a total of 10 times with cruel just being the same thing again) the issues paint themselves out more and more. Exploring is only fun when there's something possibly new and worthwhile to find but once everythings been seen and you know what's worth doing the exploring turns into tediously walking through zones bigger than they need to be in a game with slower traversal.

And the mapping system has it's own issues but it's not like the campaign's issues, and the issues with the campaign don't at all translate into the issues the mapping has imo. Like most maps just feel like the bad layout ones in poe1 that most people wouldn't bother running except now you're kinda forced to along with needing to keep moving outward trying to find worthwhile locations on your per account rng delve atlas that you can complete once then move on to try and find more. Man I hate that system too but I wanted to focus on the campaign since I've experienced it a decent chunk of times now.

Wanted to bump this since GGG are back from their break for possible visibility.