GGG Dev Jonathan not married to unlimited Atlas. I think its an idea that works, but needs more

Yes, I know its early access.

Let me first give the cliff notes version


Unlimited Atlas can work, but needs these improvements:


1. More content
2. More STORY
3. Make Citadels easier to find.



Breaking it down:

1. MORE CONTENT

This is something the developers already admitted they are working on. Tiered progression for Breach, Expedition, etc. So this is already coming, but we need to have these tiers in place for it to feel good.

Right now, POE 2 has the OPPOSITE problem as POE 1 does - the campaign is more captivating than the end game. A huge part of that is that they have it scaled where it really does feel like that next upgrade is right around the corner, just one more drop away, etc.

In other words, it feels fluid and natural. It doesn't feel like its impossible, but it also doesn't feel like too easy a challenge.

The additional content NEEDS to do this as well, up until about level 90, or when you start tackling additional tiers of the atlas endgame. The grind from 90 up to be able to take on the difficult content SHOULD be where the real challenge of finding the right gear is left totally on your head.

That doesn't mean people should have their hands held until level 90, but I'd argue the game already doesn't hold anyone's hand - it just isn't unnecessarily unfair either. They need to maintain the campaign balance into the endgame once they get the content in.

2. MORE STORY

This is one where some people will agree, and some won't. But here's the thing - the people who won't agree, won't LEAVE the game earlier because of the inclusion of this, but those who do agree will leave the game LATER, improving retention.

Once the content is in place, we need story to drive it. Part of what made POE 1 endgame fun, was the clear stories in the end game that drove us to the pinnacle bosses, be it the Shaper, then the Elder, then the conquerors who pointed to Sirus, then we got Maven but were beckoned by her herald in maps, then we got the Eldrich Horrors as a companion piece and we battled over the atlas - even in league content, we had Jun's story culminating with the mastermind, Heist had the twins as an ongoing story, etc.

The most interesting content was the ones that had a story behind it.

So drive that point home in ALL the endgame content. Give us a STORY reason why we are going into breaches. Why we are confronting rituals at endgame. Finally advance the story in DELIRIUM. And there still is no rhyme or reason why we are fighting the Arbiter of Ash. We need more context.

By giving us a story that will take a little time to complete, it will keep things interesting for those of us who don't just blast maps until we are bored.

And if you are creative enough, you can start to really tie things together - seems to me Chaos as a final boss, allowing everything that happened to cure his boredom, would fit with the theme of POE.

3. MAKE CITADELS EASIER TO FIND.

Self explanatory. Its the # 1 current endgame complaint.

I forgot to provide context myself - apparently Jonathan said he wasn't married to the idea of unlimited atlas in an interview.

ooh tiered breaches etc sound nice, maybe we will get more space for rituals as well... where did you find this info man? was there an interview?

regarding OP the infinite atlas concept will work if they drop the infinite meme (tm), make it more manageable with 'continents' or w/e. right now w/e i log in and want to find a nice map for a build i want to play today is absolute madness and i get dizzy

I heard it was from an interview.

I agree that it needs to be more manageable, but not sure continents are the answer.

I think better search tools plus making citadels poke out of the fog like the precursor towers would go a long way.

unlimited atlas absolutely does not work for me. It's cumbersome, clunky, takes forever to pan from side to side, doesn't load properly, has tons of bugs, and there is just simply no point to holding onto a bunch of useless redundant data about cleared space full of hundreds of screens of maps you've already completed and can't interact with anymore.

The exploration part is fine, but the "infinite" aspect is a cancer that ruins the endgame experience. There's no reason whatsoever that it couldn't be segmented and cleaned up so I'm not having to constantly look at thousands of completed maps that no longer have any benefit of sticking around.