Towers were completely fine, the community was wrong

Dang, this is the perfect example of the players not knowing what they want, the Atlas was fine, and GGG did a good job

So, now instead of being able to have the maps juiced by 9 or even 12 different tablets, having great visibility of what content is on the map, what leagues are in the map, and being able to juice 99% of maps in a tower area.
Now we can only put 3 tablets per map, the content is random, and in most cases, gonna be lower than we currently have.

The Atlas was fine, towers were great and a clear goal and destination to go to, it needed strategy, planning, and thought. Now we only have mindless "put map here, complete it, keep going forward".

You had to look for a tower, plan your route to said tower, see what content was on the maps on the way to it, plan ahead of it, think of what you're going to juice on the remaining maps, what content you wanted on them, what rarity, quantity, or density you wanted on the maps.

Towers added and engaging, challenging, and fun experience to the endgame, now its literally just "put the map in and keep going".

PoE 2 endgame was different, innovative, interactive, and it required thought. Now it will be straight up worse, and it's because GGG tried to make us happy.

It vexes me to see ALL comments are people being positive about the change, unaware that they just lost a core mechanic that enriched the endgame experience.
This is the perfect example of give someone what they NEED, not what they WANT.

You're doing great GGG, I appreciate you're listening to us, but this wasn't it.
Hopefully 0.4 addresses the lack of engaging interactivity with the Atlas due to the loss of LITERALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF THE ENDGAME.

I appreciate the work GGG, you're doing great
(Also please fix some of the optimization lol, when 3 Abysses open accidentally at the same time my fps tanks)

Great change IMO, keep it up GGG. Thanks a lot for giving us the mid-patch update. It was a chore to look in the fog for towers then be disappointed when there was no layouts between them or more towers to join in. Cheers

Bro, just no.

Wtf is fun about "planning" towers? This isn't chess or checkers. You literally just waste time crossing the atlas in unrewarding maps until you finally happen to get blessed by the RNG God with a 3 tower area that isn't just 50% water.

It was abysmally bad.

And they'll further adjust the system in 0.4. right now I'm just happy that I don't have to care about towers anymore. It's so much better especially for people with less time.

The community wasn't wrong. The community just didn't agree with your personal preferences.

This game is fundamentally still a hack-and-slash, not a strategy or simulation game. So it's only natural that not a lot of players enjoy spending time considering and solving for an optimal pathing through a map.

Imagine if the devs of a Civilization game had made people manually do every battle by controlling their military units like an action game, whacking at enemy units in the battlefield; it would be engaging, challenging, and maybe fun, but it would be considered stupid design for a Civilization game.

Towers aren't as bad as that analogy but it absolutely is making players spend too much time and effort doing something that most people do not look for in a hack-and-slash game.

"

staytuned2k#6008 wrote:

Bro, just no.

Wtf is fun about "planning" towers? This isn't chess or checkers. You literally just waste time crossing the atlas in unrewarding maps until you finally happen to get blessed by the RNG God with a 3 tower area that isn't just 50% water.

It was abysmally bad.

And they'll further adjust the system in 0.4. right now I'm just happy that I don't have to care about towers anymore. It's so much better especially for people with less time.

That is fair, in some cases having empty tracks of maps without juice and mechanics was not good, but in 80% of the time most maps were in range of 2 towers. Already traversing most maps with 6 tablets and good item quant and League modifiers.

I understand the experience differs from person to person, maybe some are unluckier and only have very few towers. In that case the changes are somewhat good.

Finding a 3 tower setup was rewarding and a great goal to aim at.

I totally agree. Most people just want everything to be handed to them on a silver plate. Going from an engaging mechanic to a really boring one is not development in my opinion. We are just back to scarabs of PoE1. It is not completely bad but the current system is much nice IMO. The towers were bad in 0.1 but now they are totally fine. It is sad to see the changes going into a more passive direction.

Also the Atlas will be less fun to explore now without the symbols. And i also liked it a lot more that you could know what to find instead of random content.

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kumogakure#7381 wrote:

The community wasn't wrong. The community just didn't agree with your personal preferences.

This game is fundamentally still a hack-and-slash, not a strategy or simulation game. So it's only natural that not a lot of players enjoy spending time considering and solving for an optimal pathing through a map.

Imagine if the devs of a Civilization game had made people manually do every battle by controlling their military units like an action game, whacking at enemy units in the battlefield; it would be engaging, challenging, and maybe fun, but it would be considered stupid design for a Civilization game.

Towers aren't as bad as that analogy but it absolutely is making players spend too much time and effort doing something that most people do not look for in a hack-and-slash game.

I see where you're coming from, and it's fair, most people like the PoE1 approach to the endgame where it is just "put the map in, finish it, hope you get good loot"

I guess most people like to put in the map and zoom through it with their screen clearing builds and get a dopamine rush when they saw a Divine or a Perfect Chaos drop

I personally think PoE2 Atlas is more engaging and fun by a mile ahead of PoE1, I liked the engaging planning experience from it and I thought it's innovative and better than PoE1
But if people find enjoyment on just versing through the Atlas "not wasting time on towers" it's fair, they got the changes they wanted in the end

The atlas still exists. It is literally only the way it interacts with precursors that changes. It makes the content you prefer to run better, and that's all.

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FipsDieGrille#2655 wrote:

I totally agree. Most people just want everything to be handed to them on a silver plate. Going from an engaging mechanic to a really boring one is not development in my opinion. We are just back to scarabs of PoE1. It is not completely bad but the current system is much nice IMO. The towers were bad in 0.1 but now they are totally fine. It is sad to see the changes going into a more passive direction.

Also the Atlas will be less fun to explore now without the symbols. And i also liked it a lot more that you could know what to find instead of random content.

Exactly what I was thinking about, the Atlas was fun to look at, and engaging.
It is delayed gratification, you ENGAGE the mechanic, play with it, plan it, and then reap the rewards.

In my opinion, it was more fun and entertaining.

I'm pretty impartial to the change.

Didn't hate towers, didn't love them either. They were ok.

"The community" largely seemed to HATE them though. That not being your personal opinion doesn't make them incorrect lol.

"Oh you like pepperoni pizza?!? WRONG!"

???