Idea for a better Atlas system

Many players have complaints about the current endgame. These complaints include:

• Tower juicing: Annoying to have to run maps without rewards to find and activate towers.
• Three towers: Annoying gameplay to have to find areas with three overlapping towers.
• Atlas navigation: Atlas is hard to scroll and grasp. After hundreds of maps individual areas lose their significance - it all looks too samey.

Here is an idea to solve these problems while being pretty compatible with the existing systems: Add a region layer between the world map and the actual maps.



How would this work?

The atlas would look pretty much the same, but each node will be a region, not a map. When you click on a region you get the region view. Inside the region view the nodes are the actual maps you run.

In a nutshell:

• About 20 maps per region
• At the end of the region there is a region boss. Beating that boss marks this region as beat and allows you to see past it and enter all connected regions.
• You can still play the remaining maps in the region even after beating the region for farming purposes.
• And the best thing: You don't juice at the *end* of the area, but at the *beginning*! There will be a tower as the very first map of every region, which allows you to set your tablets for the entire region before going in.

The network of maps inside the region works a bit like a floor in the trial of the Sekhemas.

• Not all maps are connected to all neighbors, so you have to choose an optimal path to get to the end.
• There are no boons or annoying afflictions, just maps you prefer and others you like less.
• Some maps might give better rewards. But you'll always have the choice to pick a Steppe over a Mire if you want to.
• You should always be able to reach the region boss within 7 maps.

Details/Notes

The concept works well with the existing endgame mechanics:

• Regions will be a combination of two biomes, using the typical poe2 biomes like Desert, Forest, Mountain, Grass, etc. The first half of the region being one biome, the second half the other.
• For Citadel regions the second biome will be the corresponding citadel biome like Ezomyte City, Faridun City or Vaal City.
• Regions can be corrupted. In this case the region boss is the corruption boss, and killing it will cleanse the region. This will transform all remaining maps into crystal ones.

Further Notes:

• Tablet power would have to be adjusted, so that we always get 2 towers worth of juice for every region. Currently you get either 0, 1, 2 or 3 towers worth of juice for a map. So having alway 2x juice would be a big net positive.
• With the proposed size of regions the amount of time it takes to find corruption areas and citadels should be pretty much the same as currently. So none of these things would take longer than currently.
• 7-20 maps makes for a good sized play session, making the conquering of a region a nicely enclosed meaningful goal of which you can do one or multiple in an evening.
• This system makes it easy to add some determinism to the start of the endgame to kickstart progress by always placing a citadel region and a corrupted region close to spawn.
• This system makes it easy to add strategy elements to the endgame in the future, such as an enemy AI opponent that takes back regions so that you have to re-conquer them. Or you could add player buffs based on the number and types of regions you control.

TLDR

Nesting map nodes inside region maps makes for a more meaningful and navigable atlas map and is a solution to the "tower juicing problem". The introduction of regions opens up interesting options for strategic gameplay elements to be added to the game.

I completely agree — in the current environment, just dragging the map atlas already feels frustrating. It's easy to imagine how, as playtime increases, the atlas will expand to an almost unimaginable scale. At the same time, bookmarks don’t seem particularly useful. Splitting and modularizing the map system clearly aligns better with modern game design principles.

Sounds like a good idea in principle.

How would you cater for being able to juice more than one tower's worth?

Increase tablet juicing mods?
Three mods per tablet instead of two?
Allow for Rare Tablets with up to four mods per tablet?

How about 1 click drop every useful item in game instead? There should be some serious effort and strategy required to obtain certain things. I like it the way it is. It only needs a search function and passive presets.

It would be a good idea if the maps weren't that super huge.

Also, the grind will get more boring . Not to mention Citadel issues.

The best idea to place a boss in each maps just like POE1 and let the people have fun.


The second issue is that each region is limited to 1 tower . Like come on that mean less drops and loot . The game already have tons of issues with loots.



But I respect the work that has been put into this post, and it is still actually better than the current blind design. At least the proposal in this post has vision.

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SaKRaaN#0012 が発言:

would be good idea if the maps weren't that super huge.

Also the grind will get more boring . Not to mention Citadel issues.

The best idea to place a boss in each maps just like POE1 and let the people have fun.

This was not better. It was stupid. The way it is now is better to make your brain move a bit more, but I guess people don't like exactly that. xD

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EffKayZA#1861 が発言:

Sounds like a good idea in principle.

How would you cater for being able to juice more than one tower's worth?

Increase tablet juicing mods?
Three mods per tablet instead of two?
Allow for Rare Tablets with up to four mods per tablet?

OP addressed this in the Details/Notes section

"

Tablet power would have to be adjusted, so that we always get 2 towers worth of juice for every region. Currently you get either 0, 1, 2 or 3 towers worth of juice for a map. So having alway 2x juice would be a big net positive.

So basically towers would be given more power to get in line with how a two-tower setup would act. It's a good compromise and way to address it IMO, getting 3 or 4 tower setups is rare, hard, and tedious to set up. Normalizing tower power this way would cut a lot of that tedium and make it more straightforward for us to just enjoy playing instead of worrying about finding 3-4 towers before juicing and blasting a few maps.

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EffKayZA#1861 が発言:

Sounds like a good idea in principle.

How would you cater for being able to juice more than one tower's worth?

Increase tablet juicing mods?
Three mods per tablet instead of two?
Allow for Rare Tablets with up to four mods per tablet?

Personally I don't like the idea of having to put so much effort into juicing. So I would design it in a way that every tower offers max juicing.

The easiest way to do this is to either
- make tablets twice as powerful
- or give the tower 6 tablet slots

Either way the end result will be that a tower gives the equivalent of currently two towers to the whole region. That will be more than we currently get on average.

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vestolevs#5239 が発言:

How about 1 click drop every useful item in game instead? There should be some serious effort and strategy required to obtain certain things. I like it the way it is. It only needs a search function and passive presets.

I don't think a "1-click drop every item" game mode would be fun, personally.