Why 1 Portal is Bad
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I've just listened to the 1 vs 6 portal section of today's interview, and I'm impassioned enough about the topic that I want to argue against the devs' desire to keep 1 portal. In my opinion there are a couple of inherent flaws with 1 portal mapping that dramatically reduce my enjoyment of the endgame.
1. League Mechanics and Tedium Currently, league mechanics (Breach, Ritual, Delirium, Expedition) present a significantly higher threat to the player than standard enemies in maps do. In isolation, this is perfectly sensible given that they offer more rewards and are the road to pinnacle content. However, when combined with the fact that players only get one portal per map, this increase in difficulty introduces a fairly miserable optimization to player behavior. I feel obligated to finish the map before doing these mechanics (except delirium since it cant realistically be saved like the rest), which means that I have to both 1. Remember where the damn things are and 2. Walk all the way back there. I do not enjoy doing this. It is not fun. But it is better than dying to a breach at the start of a map and losing the whole thing. This was never an issue in PoE 1 because if I died to a breach, I took my penalty of -10% experience for overestimating my power and then got to do the rest of the map with tedious back tracking. 2. Stress My desired emotional state for the most part when playing PoE is relaxed. I want to kill mobs, get loot, and enjoy the satisfaction of progression. I don't want to be relaxed 100% of the time, but I do want to be relaxed most of the time. I think PoE 1 accomplishes this very nicely. Most maps that are at your power level, you do successfully without dying at all. Sometimes, you hit a map with sketchy mods or you encounter a particularly strong rare mob, and you get killed. At that moment, the game is telling you it's time to lean forward, dial in, and focus. You have the opportunity to return to the map and try again, this time with your maximum effort. I found this to be a great balance, where you could chill most of the time and the game would warn you before you risked losing the whole map. In PoE 2, there is no warning. No second chance. At every moment, a death will lose you the map. This means that you have to try be dialed in all the time. No relaxing, no chilling. Meaningful consequences are always looming, and I do not enjoy it. If there was even just 1 more portal, I think it would would go a long way to mitigate this problem. The rare random 1-shots would sting a lot less and you could go back to chilling most of the time with the knowledge that you have a back up portal if you make a mistake. 3. Log-Out Macro Gaming I am a softcore player, obviously, since this is a softcore topic. But because of the 1 portal rule in end game, I have been pressured to adopt the classic hardcore tool of exiting the game when I'm in danger. I don't like doing this. It's not fun and it feels cheap. But they built it directly into the game with the pause menu and exiting to character select, and I feel like it would just be stupid of me to not use it. When the punishment for dying is so high, of course I'm going to log out if I'm able to hit escape soon enough. Of course they can just change the game so this doesn't work anymore if they want to address this specific problem, but I feel like the game shouldn't be incentivizing this behavior in the first place. Anyway, that's my rant about 1 portal in end game. I know not everyone feels this way, and if you are someone who isn't bother by these things I'm happy for you. But I am bothered by them and I hope the devs can make some changes to address these problems, one way or another. Last bumped on Jan 12, 2025, 9:15:04 PM
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This game isn’t for you. Go play some AAA games instead.
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Well they have been pretty steadfast about it so its gonna stay.
1 death per map is good. Exiting the game when you are about to die in POE2 does something? Huh weird thought it just paused everything where you were. Anyways, 1 portal is here to stay, they couldnt have been more clear. Balance and changes are coming to the game to help with not dying/surviving though Mash the clean
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" How is this constructive or helpful in this discussion at all? |
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" ^ |
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" You're in every thread about this saying that they are pretty clear and that's not exactly true. Mark mentioned doing away with the 1 portal system is something they're not opposed to doing BEFORE coming up with other potential ways to tackle the issue. Last edited by Cookie_Puss#5958 on Jan 12, 2025, 6:23:57 PM
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" And how exactly will whining about the game being too hard for casuals help? Casuals want to ruin the game and turn GGG into something resembling AAA garbage. They don’t understand that introducing options, like some players having 1 portal while others have 6, won’t help—it will only ruin the game. Those of us who enjoy the challenge of having just 1 portal play because we feel the sense of accomplishment, knowing that everyone is in the same boat. I know that my careful, well-thought-out gameplay brings progress and rewards, while casuals, who rush blindly through the content, crash into a wall and shatter like glass. This is exactly why all AAA games fail - because they cater to casuals, stripping away elements of competition and challenge. |
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All they have to do is remove the mob respawn mechanic entirely. We already got checkpoints now, we need checkpoints in maps as well due to backtracking, but they absolutely need to drop the one-portal bullshit. It is SO demoralizing and frustrating and yes, I do the same thing, I save Breach, Ritual, and Excavation mechs till the map is complete and it's really stupid feeling compelled to do that due to their extremely random difficulty spikes from mech to mech and the increased chance of bullshit oneshots.
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" Like having two game modes that already exist in PoE 1? Hardcore = 1 Portal Standard = 6 Portals " But, play Hardcore - the game mode where One portal is the standard challenge - those of you don't want. The irony! Want challenge, but don't want to play the challenge mode already in the game. Last edited by Fhrek#4437 on Jan 12, 2025, 6:47:52 PM
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" Why would hardcore need one portal. If you die your whole character gets deleted. The whole game is one portal for hardcore characters. Your argument is not good. Go play something else already |
