Endgame is a complete waste of time.

[DISCRETE]

Current endgame is a complete waste of time for MOST players with the atrocious balance of punishment and reward.

At first its new and enticing with how many nodes are on the map and how expansive it looks. However once you start to get into it a bit more and climb up way stone tier's, it doesn't compensate the player nearly as much as it should in every regard imaginable.

Drop's are borderline non existent with how scarce higher currency drops already are, so you have to invest your currency into your way stones to increase the odds. What do you get for spending the scarce limited currency you have in your inventory? Increase regal shard drops.... oh and a lot more way stone drops that are , on average , at least 5 tiers lower than the way stone you currently are on. That is an utterly garbage game design even in early access. I cannot take "it's in early access for a reason" as an excuse for the state they left it in for the players to experience. ( Metaphor ) You cannot give someone under cooked , under seasoned chicken and ask them how they can improve on the taste. ITS NOT READY FOR CONSUMPTION. It's almost as if they didn't play it themselves and come to the clear conclusion that this is extremely bad.

The death penalty is so punishing I can't believe it made it into Early Access in general. Who thought it was a good Idea? The amount of time it will take you to clear and complete an entire zone gains the players so little for the time they spent yet they can lose all that progress and more with a single death. We all know its early access yet they restrict players for dying in mapping as if they spent time polishing it. There is already so much imbalance in the game and yet I get punished for it? It's my fault as the player for dying to a randomly generated rare mob with 3+ modifiers that has 3x my movement speed ? What is even the point of the dodge roll if you let things like that exist in the game? I can clear 2 map points and lose the same amount of exp i gained from them with a single death?

I can't express enough how inexcusable the current imbalance that is in the endgame. They could have easily left it out of the early access because it is genuinely that bad. Game design and philosophy should be centered around fun and engagement and GGG left that out completely in their excuse of this "endgame".

[Retsubty]

Welcome to the club lol

[['w']]

I look for 1-3 towers, place breach tables into them, look for an wide open map, distilled rare maps, run them, activate the breach. Should do it on boss maps.

sometimes the drops aren't so bad

else I always regal my maps, but I also play very slow and clear the whole map.

so far I had 4? divine drops and mostly 1 exalt per map. sometimes even multiple maps drop of the same tier, dew times even none.

get movement boots 30% and perhaps a movement skill

at the moment I've also increased the stats of rare mobs by +2 and took the node which increases magic packs, and duplicates rare mobs

[DarkFenix]

I think you're being a bit overly melodramatic about it. It's definitely not ready for release, but not ready for consumption? No, not even close to that bad.

Rather, aren't you glad we're consuming it in this state and giving our feedback? Otherwise we'd likely have seen this kind of balance at 1.0 release. Imaging what a fustercluck that would have been.

I'm not so concerned about the death penalty personally, yes it's harsh, but the idea is that if you're dying enough to really suffer from it, your build and/or gear is severely lacking and you should retreat and rebuild.

The scarcity of loot on the other hand... that's bad. The loot is supposed to be the payoff for our work, the catharsis that makes the effort worth it. But it's just not there. We complete a map and we get, what, an inventory full of trash blues/yellows, maybe one exalted orb, a few superior items if we're lucky, enough waystones to sustain hopefully. It's completely unsatisfying.

[Sixgun]

I just finished cruel and am taking a break until they patch the masochistic endgame "mechanics".

[thestile]

The end-game is for people who like to be whipped, stepped on by high heels 👠

So I've heard, I'm not there yet.

[Piggy]

Dont play it then.

[Sweetrollthief]

the original concept was to completely lock out a map node on death. Hard to imagine how out of touch they are on the end game.

[['w']]

Finished map (no breach) expedition and delirium, f* up dilirium at start, 2 distilled ire, 1 splinter, currency ~2.5 exalted. map drops:7,10,11,2x12,2x13

[Panthaz89]

Originally posted by DarkFenix:

I think you're being a bit overly melodramatic about it. It's definitely not ready for release, but not ready for consumption? No, not even close to that bad.

Rather, aren't you glad we're consuming it in this state and giving our feedback? Otherwise we'd likely have seen this kind of balance at 1.0 release. Imaging what a fustercluck that would have been.

I'm not so concerned about the death penalty personally, yes it's harsh, but the idea is that if you're dying enough to really suffer from it, your build and/or gear is severely lacking and you should retreat and rebuild.

The scarcity of loot on the other hand... that's bad. The loot is supposed to be the payoff for our work, the catharsis that makes the effort worth it. But it's just not there. We complete a map and we get, what, an inventory full of trash blues/yellows, maybe one exalted orb, a few superior items if we're lucky, enough waystones to sustain hopefully. It's completely unsatisfying.

The reason I worry about the endgame experience loss isn't because of me it will be because people close to me will most likely quit because of it. I thought the game would be more appealing to casuals but they kept one of the most ridiculous mechanics that will scare and discourage people from even playing.

[['w']]

Originally posted by Panthaz89:

Originally posted by DarkFenix:

I think you're being a bit overly melodramatic about it. It's definitely not ready for release, but not ready for consumption? No, not even close to that bad.

Rather, aren't you glad we're consuming it in this state and giving our feedback? Otherwise we'd likely have seen this kind of balance at 1.0 release. Imaging what a fustercluck that would have been.

I'm not so concerned about the death penalty personally, yes it's harsh, but the idea is that if you're dying enough to really suffer from it, your build and/or gear is severely lacking and you should retreat and rebuild.

The scarcity of loot on the other hand... that's bad. The loot is supposed to be the payoff for our work, the catharsis that makes the effort worth it. But it's just not there. We complete a map and we get, what, an inventory full of trash blues/yellows, maybe one exalted orb, a few superior items if we're lucky, enough waystones to sustain hopefully. It's completely unsatisfying.

The reason I worry about the endgame experience loss isn't because of me it will be because people close to me will most likely quit because of it.

well I only finished lvl 16 maps in poe1, wasn't clearing maps any faster then now and reached max lvl 92. Not fit for anything above it, dying far too often.

Now with dodge roll, as it is right now, before they will patch it again, you can just roll away from harm, on the other hand movement skills are missing and you are far more limited regarding the number of skills you can have on you.

[ASAAKIRA]

I agree with everything completely
+- 0 endgame content. so beta close, 1-3 acts was perfect

[DISCRETE]

Originally posted by DarkFenix:

I think you're being a bit overly melodramatic about it. It's definitely not ready for release, but not ready for consumption? No, not even close to that bad.

Rather, aren't you glad we're consuming it in this state and giving our feedback? Otherwise we'd likely have seen this kind of balance at 1.0 release. Imaging what a fustercluck that would have been.

I'm not so concerned about the death penalty personally, yes it's harsh, but the idea is that if you're dying enough to really suffer from it, your build and/or gear is severely lacking and you should retreat and rebuild.

The scarcity of loot on the other hand... that's bad. The loot is supposed to be the payoff for our work, the catharsis that makes the effort worth it. But it's just not there. We complete a map and we get, what, an inventory full of trash blues/yellows, maybe one exalted orb, a few superior items if we're lucky, enough waystones to sustain hopefully. It's completely unsatisfying.

it really is that bad I'm afraid and your attempt to justify the death penalties only reinforces my point on it. I have 2.6k life and capped resistances besides chaos which is at 18%(not including charms). I still get completely blitzed after taking the time to ensure I can tank and deal damage from the very things I'm supposed to be able to resist ( on death monster mechanics still one shot players).

[DISCRETE]

Originally posted by w:

I look for 1-3 towers, place breach tables into them, look for an wide open map, distilled rare maps, run them, activate the breach. Should do it on boss maps.

sometimes the drops aren't so bad

else I always regal my maps, but I also play very slow and clear the whole map.

so far I had 4? divine drops and mostly 1 exalt per map. sometimes even multiple maps drop of the same tier, dew times even none.

get movement boots 30% and perhaps a movement skill

at the moment I've also increased the stats of rare mobs by +2 and took the node which increases magic packs, and duplicates rare mobs

All of those things are a borderline requirement for the players . I actually do the things you mentioned by the way. It still doesn't make the game design any less bad . The average person shouldn't and wont go through all that hassle to make the endgame feel like how the game should initially feel like. I shouldn't have to do any of that to enjoy the endgame, and even if i do it doesn't guarantee me any progression because of how death penalizes the player.

[PKNecron]

Originally posted by Sweetrollthief:

the original concept was to completely lock out a map node on death. Hard to imagine how out of touch they are on the end game.

GGG has always focused more on punishing the player, than fun. Everything in the game is a time-sink. Great for the super hardcore players, but really sucks for the normals. Myself, I am taking a step back for a while until things get polished a bit more. Though I do have my doubts GGG will ever make things less punishing. It just isn't the way the devs think.

[prusswan]

I'm past level 74 just starting to do T4 maps when I need gear from T8+ maps (to keep pace with content), and I only found out from gambling. To conserve maps for the quest line I have to grind out the lower tier maps with the knowledge that I won't be able to expect gear upgrades from these maps (other than mats) for quite some time, this kinda killed the motivation for progression together with the waystone scarcity (low tier keys dropping on high maps, increased keystone drop rates don't seem to matter much)