0.3 Endgame Feedback

0.3 was an overall great update. Definitely a lot of good things added, but some endgame issues still exist. I usually post one of these when I log a decent amount of endgame hours on the patch, just in case any Devs catch it. Because of that trying to address issues and provide some feedback concisely despite the post length.

1. Tower travel is still tedious. GGG is well aware of this and are working it as a priority for 0.4.

2. Atlas tree passives feel extremely weak. The strongest atlas passives are typically tablet effect/explicit modifiers, specifically the notable "Remnants of Power". This notable having a 20% chance of doubling tablet effect can make a map significantly more rewarding with tower overlap. It feels bad when you do not proc that notable after setting up an area. Everything else on the atlas technically affects your maps, but it doesn't feel as rewarding or difficult like POE1.

3. Map modifiers aren't always tied to better rewards. 0.3 definitely went in the right direction with increasing rarity with modifiers. However you can also roll pack size, waystone drop chance, magic mobs, and rare mobs. If you are trying to have richer maps, a player is typically going to target more rarity or rare mobs. Other modifiers don't affect drops nearly as much, making the map less rewarding despite having similar levels of difficulty.

4. Quantity can only be found on tablets and atlas passives. Quantity and rarity are both required for improving drops. Can this also be tied to the difficulty of a waystone via modifiers? It feels disconnected that a player can run an extremely difficult map and that doesn't always translate to improved drops.

5. The procedural atlas requires a larger zoom out. Once your atlas reaches a certain size having to pan many screens away is unwieldly. There are pins, but that doesn't make the actual process of exploring the map better.

6. Delirium window is inefficient when applying Deli to multiple maps. In POE1 we could apply Deli on the maps directly. Can this be modified when applying Deli to maps?

7. 3:1 in the reforge for tablets is extremely tedious. Can we have a vendor option to do this in mass like POE1?

8. Waystone nodes don't always connect or they jump past nodes that appear they should be connecting to. This happened sometimes in 0.1 and 0.2, but it feels worse in 0.3. Really annoying when you path to a specific node to realize it "leap frogs" the node you want causing you to completely waste time.

9. Expedition still feels like it needs love or rework for Tujen/Rog/Gwen. It feels really empty going to those vendors, especially with the crafting rework w/ abyss and essences. Also can we get an expedition locker back?

10. You cannot push league mechanics nearly enough yet. Hopefully there's more coming to the atlas tree eventually, but right now the league mechanics feel really weak in endgame and you have limited methods of really pushing them further to challenge builds. It would be nice if more challenging atlas passives existed that made mechanics more challenging and rewarding.

11. There are a decent amount of performance issues. I didn't have nvidia crashes/timeouts after swapping to Vulcan. There is a huge FPS drop with abyss that is sound related. I don't technically know why this happens, but changing my channel settings fixed this. Just wanted to report it.

12. Wisps are very slow to empower rares and do not feel very rewarding. I think it would be more exciting if the wisps spawned already in a rare and it could make a burst of wisps of the corresponding color when the player encounters it. Current implementation does not feel right/smooth.

13. Rogue Exiles not only feel too rare, but do not often drop good loot. Not sure whats up with RE's loot tables, but I dont think I've had anything of value drop from them since implementation.

14. Researcher strongboxes are fun, but boxes other than Researcher's have lackluster loot. Maybe they need more currency, or something to make them more exciting. In lategame they aren't even worth opening other than killing the rares they spawn. Also my chance of finding the unique Researcher's box feels lower when I spec into it, which doesn't make sense to me.

15. Abyss omens don't have a home in the Ritual tab. Abyss and other fragments don't really have an appropriate home in tabs. Would love to see a fragment tab or an Abyss tab for the new currencies.

16. Evasion at the end of the acts and start of maps might need to be looked at with the new formula. On league start I think I was around 30-40% eva chance at the end of acts. Having a 70% chance of having no mitigation was tough. Obviously it's really strong when you are invested, but at lower gear lvls it might need to be tweaked slightly. Those late game act boss fights with a ranger than isn't doing a lot of damage is going to be tough w/o some increased evasion chance.

17. In the acts and start of maps resistance runes were extremely rare. It was very difficult fixing resistances from runes. Especially in comparison to POE1's crafting bench being able to hit all resistances.

18. White and magic mob's loot feels like it's so little compared to rares. Rares should definitely drop more loot, but sometimes it feels like white/magic mobs drop literally nothing.

There's other stuff like sprint, balance, movement speed, boss health, crafting power, blah, but I'm sure that all stuff that has been brought up multiple times.

I did love a lot of additions like act 4, lineage gems, "tiered" currency, omens, essences, unique maps, and abyss. I actually enjoyed a lot of new layouts too, which was one of my biggest grievances in 0.1. Overall great patch, but was still exhausted of endgame after 2 weeks from launch. Looking forward to 3.27 content and POE1 async trading. Thanks for the content.