One Death Maps is a monumental failure.

XP on death HAS to go. There's too much screen clutter to make any sense of anything.

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sebzzz#6019 schrieb:

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GnMQDMLmWZ#3336 schrieb:

Not the point of the post buddy but thanks for fulfilling the prophecy that someone will misunderstand someone elses point and say "git gud."

My Witch has an army of 20 skellies that evaporate maps.
My Monk has almost maxed evasion and Heralds just decimate everything in sight.
My Warrior is actually fantastic, tanking hits for days with 780HP regen per second so I barely have to life flask, just reposition and block.

My builds aren't the issue.

If you're getting surrounded and stun locked immediately... hate to break it to you, but your builds ARE the issue in that situation.

No, there are multiple situations in the game where you can become instantaneously completely surrounded and stunlocked to death, and that's not a build or skill issue. Ritual Altars and Breaches are the worst for this. It doesn't happen often, but when it does, you can suddenly feel the weighty limitations of the dodge roll. In general, it should not be possible for 6-7 White mobs and a tiny stick on the ground to get you completely stuck. That's just ass balance/design working in tandem against the player.

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Doomhammer5#4010 schrieb:

XP on death HAS to go. There's too much screen clutter to make any sense of anything.

I'm fine with the XP death penalty. It adds a challenge to grinding to 100.
However, the balance is complete and utter shit. In general. It needs serious work.
Things like Volatile plants are just horrible, growing and releasing the orbs faster than they should under any sensible measure. Certain enemies telegraphs are horrible. Most mages in the game like the Sun Priest are just unfair with homing lasers that last for far too long and even shoot through walls. All these things make the game feel like a roguelike - NOT an ARPG. If these things we re-assessed and balanced to the point where each and every one felt at least like it had some counterplay in most cases, people wouldn't be complaining.

People compare this game to Dark Souls or Elden Ring. That's stupid because in FROMSoft games, where difficulty is high but the reward is learning and overcoming that difficulty, there is no time in the entire franchises history where I died not due to my own stupidity but because a Hasted, Mana-Draining, Regenerating, Periodically Raging, Lightning Storm, Periodic Lightning Aura, Temporal Bubble boss came rushing at me out of nowhere and pushed me backwards into a corner where I couldn't move or use a single ability. That's bullshit.

I quit playing after losing another citadel which was the only path to my next node in the direction I was going, I would probably have to play 50 maps going around the long way to get to that node. I died in the citadel when going through a hallway then getting rush and hit with multiple spells stacked that were impossible to avoid.

This is just an objectively bad design and makes me question their decisions moving forward. There are too many of these boneheaded decisions(like ascendancy locking in early access) that eventually made me throw my hands in the air and say I'm done after 230 hours. Endgame is just a race to clear mobs before getting a cheap 1 shot death which was a complete 180 from the campaign I enjoyed.

I dunno how obtuse people can be. We tell them we are one shot from garbage off screen or when melee you go from evading and no damage to dead instantly because the mechanics of the game make no sense and their response is dont die. I have been killed when there was no animation, no telegraphing of anything. You are walking and then suddenly die. I have been killed from server lag. I have been killed from white mobs getting random crits. Am I supposed to dodge roll white mobs too. My melee char needs to spend the entire game dodge rolling then.

One thing people seem to be forgetting is they set a class like monks to the same hp as a ranger. Yes a melee has the same hp as a ranger. Then their main defense is evasion so anything they dont evade goes through at 100% damage against a char with the same hp as a ranger that cant take any hits. Someone try to make sense of this... you cant.

Random crap will one shot you because the game is not designed to make sense. Its designed to punish you for playing. They dont give you a waystone even if you do well. It might be lower tier or not receive one during a map run. Punishment for doing well too. You cant make sense of this. You would have to be a sadist to enjoy these mechanics as they stand. To each their own but the current state is bonkers

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GnMQDMLmWZ#3336 schrieb:

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Doomhammer5#4010 schrieb:

XP on death HAS to go. There's too much screen clutter to make any sense of anything.

I'm fine with the XP death penalty. It adds a challenge to grinding to 100.
However, the balance is complete and utter shit. In general. It needs serious work.
Things like Volatile plants are just horrible, growing and releasing the orbs faster than they should under any sensible measure. Certain enemies telegraphs are horrible. Most mages in the game like the Sun Priest are just unfair with homing lasers that last for far too long and even shoot through walls. All these things make the game feel like a roguelike - NOT an ARPG. If these things we re-assessed and balanced to the point where each and every one felt at least like it had some counterplay in most cases, people wouldn't be complaining.

People compare this game to Dark Souls or Elden Ring. That's stupid because in FROMSoft games, where difficulty is high but the reward is learning and overcoming that difficulty, there is no time in the entire franchises history where I died not due to my own stupidity but because a Hasted, Mana-Draining, Regenerating, Periodically Raging, Lightning Storm, Periodic Lightning Aura, Temporal Bubble boss came rushing at me out of nowhere and pushed me backwards into a corner where I couldn't move or use a single ability. That's bullshit.

Maybe i wouldnt mind the XP penalty so much if the balance was better. Maybe you're right.

I'll give it another shot in the next EA league, because its just pissing me off right now. Maybe GGG will do better.

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Crob#2629 schrieb:

I dunno how obtuse people can be. We tell them we are one shot from garbage off screen or when melee you go from evading and no damage to dead instantly because the mechanics of the game make no sense and their response is dont die. I have been killed when there was no animation, no telegraphing of anything. You are walking and then suddenly die. I have been killed from server lag. I have been killed from white mobs getting random crits. Am I supposed to dodge roll white mobs too. My melee char needs to spend the entire game dodge rolling then.

One thing people seem to be forgetting is they set a class like monks to the same hp as a ranger. Yes a melee has the same hp as a ranger. Then their main defense is evasion so anything they dont evade goes through at 100% damage against a char with the same hp as a ranger that cant take any hits. Someone try to make sense of this... you cant.

Random crap will one shot you because the game is not designed to make sense. Its designed to punish you for playing. They dont give you a waystone even if you do well. It might be lower tier or not receive one during a map run. Punishment for doing well too. You cant make sense of this. You would have to be a sadist to enjoy these mechanics as they stand. To each their own but the current state is bonkers

The monk has access to ES as well. If you chose not to invest in a dual layer defense, you will get popped once hits come through evasion. What would you expect? They either miss you or hit you, and if they hit you and you have 1000hp, you are going to feel it.

It feels REALLY BAD when you spend all this time building up an area with towers and mods and being like, ooOOOoo, that's some juicy map right there. You use your best map and hop in. Then take a few steps and fall over to some random crap. There goes the map, the mods, the work you put in and all the hype you had.

This just happened to me and is why I'm posting. I haven't died in many, many maps that had the same mods. My build takes a few attacks to really ramp and build defenses (mechanics that are in the game and intended) and it fucking sucks to just lose it all immediately without even really knowing what went wrong.

I know both delirium bosses health bars were on the screen but I didn;t see them after I died. I also managed to get a blink in cause the portal in was surrounded by rares and crap.

I need an extra portal, I cant just lose all that so easily, it feels so bad. If you don't want to give me an extra portal, let me keep the mods.. or give me a few attempts with the mods... something

Increase learning and engaging with mechanics, stop punishing people when 1shots are so common.



P.S. Give us a death summary please

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booyashaka#2643 schrieb:

It feels REALLY BAD when you spend all this time building up an area with towers and mods and being like, ooOOOoo, that's some juicy map right there. You use your best map and hop in. Then take a few steps and fall over to some random crap. There goes the map, the mods, the work you put in and all the hype you had.

This just happened to me and is why I'm posting. I haven't died in many, many maps that had the same mods. My build takes a few attacks to really ramp and build defenses (mechanics that are in the game and intended) and it fucking sucks to just lose it all immediately without even really knowing what went wrong.

I know both delirium bosses health bars were on the screen but I didn;t see them after I died. I also managed to get a blink in cause the portal in was surrounded by rares and crap.

I need an extra portal, I cant just lose all that so easily, it feels so bad. If you don't want to give me an extra portal, let me keep the mods.. or give me a few attempts with the mods... something

Increase learning and engaging with mechanics, stop punishing people when 1shots are so common.



P.S. Give us a death summary please

I hear you dude. I just worked my way back up to a map that had Expedition, Breach, Ritual and Coalesced Corruption and died because I thought a pack of enemies was dead, got asked something by my brother which caused me to lapse concentration for 0.1 seconds and a White enemy I couldn't see because of the dog shit visual clutter in this game SOMEHOW 1 hit me from 6k e-hp + 1500 regular hp, despite me having 75% elemental resist and 56% chaos resist.

Absolutely fucking horrible. No game should ever make people this mad or punish you so heavily within 0.1 seconds of losing concentration, something that could happen due to noises in real life or any other number of things that regular normal people have to deal with. This is fucking unacceptable design.

Edit: by the way, is this 0.1 seconds and your dead a "feature" of the "design vision" we're supposed to be "getting a glimpse of"? Because it's ass. Like- I want to see you play your own game on livestream using anything other than the most metaslave, screenclearing build. I want to see a dev play a warrior with armor nodes on the talent tree, on a Tier XV map, on livetream, and then tell me this is okay. It's fkn not. This is BAD. You have a game with BAD PROBLEMS stopping it from being a GOOD GAME.

If you don't listen to your community on this extremely serious issue, your GOOD GAME with BAD PROBLEMS is just going to be a dead game like Path of Exile 1.

Maybe the devs just aren't competent enough to handle a hugely successful IPO. I would be dismayed if niche is all this game is ever supposed to be. It has such great potential.

While I understand your frustration with One Death Maps, I believe the criticism misses the point of the core design philosophy and mechanics that make the game unique. Let me explain why these mechanics, including the controversial aspects, are not as arbitrary or misguided as they might seem.

Firstly, respecting the Core Game Mechanics

The "vision" you reference is not just some arbitrary decision—it reflects the developers' intent to create a meaningful, challenging experience where every action, including death, has weight. Removing One Death Maps would fundamentally undermine this principle. The idea isn’t to punish players for the sake of punishment but to force strategic thinking, adaptability, and mastery of the game’s mechanics.

The "brutal" XP loss and One Death Maps work in tandem to make success genuinely rewarding. Without mechanics like these, the stakes would be significantly lower, reducing the tension and satisfaction that come from overcoming difficult challenges. These systems are designed to push players to improve and engage deeply with the mechanics, not just brute force their way through the content.

Secondly, early Access Is a Collaborative Process

Yes, this is Early Access, and player feedback is valuable. But Early Access is also a time for developers to experiment and refine their vision. Listening to feedback doesn't mean catering to every criticism or abandoning a core design philosophy. The current system may feel harsh now, but this doesn’t mean it’s inherently flawed—it just means there’s room for tuning.

Rather than scrapping One Death Maps entirely, the feedback should focus on balancing issues, like mob overtuning, difficulty scaling, or improving party mechanics. These adjustments can make the system feel fairer while preserving its core intent.

Thirdly, challenge vs. accessibility

You mentioned 30 years of gaming experience and referred to "basic game design 101." But challenging design doesn't equate to bad design, and accessibility doesn’t mean removing all obstacles. One Death Maps are intentionally punishing to encourage careful preparation and strategy. If the mechanics feel overwhelming now, it’s likely a reflection of balance issues that will evolve as the game continues to develop, not a reason to scrap a unique feature altogether.

Yes, frustrating moments like losing access to a map after a single death can be aggravating, but the system encourages players to consider their build choices, resistances, and strategy. This isn't meant to be a game where success comes easily—it's meant to challenge players in ways that are both mechanical and psychological.

TLDR: One death maps are very appropriate for the target audience that is likely to stick around for over a decade (similar to POE 1).