Path of Exile 2’s developers admit that the ending is “too harsh” but stick to their guns because “death itself is what really matters.”
Path of Exile 2’s first major patch of the year arrives later this week, and developer Grinding Gear Games said it will address several common complaints about the game, with more improvements coming in the future. One of the big sticking points for players was the endgame maps, which director Jonathan Rogers said he was aiming to make “more rewarding” through changes to the amount of loot and the number of monsters, as well as the overall feel of the endgame. However, the point is that some of the things people complain about are also the point of the game.
This patch will mean that players will now be able to attack final bosses more than once, and will provide fewer deadly explosions that seemingly kill you out of nowhere. All of these things will be welcomed by players, but the biggest complaint remains the fact that you only get one shot at the endgame maps.
This element of Path of Exile 2 is unforgiving: die and you’ll be kicked off the map, losing experience and any loot you haven’t already claimed. And while you can restart the map on the Atlas, you’ll need a new waystone to enter it, and you’ll lose any modifiers it originally contained. In a way, this makes sense for a game of this nature, a really high-stakes looting challenge where everything can go wrong in an instant. But some people just don’t like spending hours of time on something and losing it all like that.
“We had quite a bit of discussion about whether we wanted to go back to one portal or not,” Rogers says during an interview with streamers Darth Microtransaction and GhazzyTV discussing the patch. “I think what it comes down to is that it just won’t be the same. This whole “death really matters” thing actually matters.
“We were talking about the vertex boss and there was a discussion about, ‘Should we allow portals everywhere, should we allow checkpoints everywhere?’ and we ultimately decided that we really didn’t want to go that route if possible. So first of all, we’re trying to get rid of that top, make sure it has true economic value that you have to preserve: it takes time to get there, and that’s important.”
Rogers says that for a game to work, “you have to have some level of possible failure” and if players were given multiple opportunities, you simply won’t “fail equally… I’m not really a fan, I prefer the whole ” one death.”
As for the experience penalty and whether it’s too harsh, “part of it is that it keeps you in the place where you should be, as if you were dying all the time, which is probably not the case.” ready to continue climbing the power curve,” Rogers says. “But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at it.”
Despite all of the above, GGG’s Mark Roberts admits that the ending right now doesn’t quite hit the sweet spot of risk and reward that the studio wants. “There are too many penalty axes right now,” says Roberts (thanks, Polygon), “so if you die all the time, you won’t get materials and therefore won’t get anywhere… and also the ‘add insult to injury’ thing” (with XP) when you simply don’t level up.
“I think they’re too harsh when they’re all put together and I also think the very beginning of the maps are too hard, I think we should lighten it up a little bit, tone down the intensity a little bit and then increase the difficulty upwards.” Roberts says rare monsters and unusual combinations force players to constantly adjust their tactics, and the number of different combinations means “there’s nothing to carry over from one map to another.”
The developers say they will monitor how the new patch plays out and focus any larger changes on the next league (season), which will bring more significant changes. But it seems that the “one death” principle is here to stay.
“It would be great if you could just spin another card and still be able to create this content,” Rogers says. “But unfortunately we can’t do that because it would open up too many things related to economic abuse where you intentionally fail a map because you want to farm items in the rest of the area. So we’re having a really hard time coming up with a solution because, frankly, I’d rather you could remake the map without having to go through all the hassle that actually being able to restart the map would cause.”
“Personally, I want to keep one portal, adjust the other axes and see how it works,” Roberts finishes, “before I compromise on one portal. But yeah, it’s a little complicated, that’s definitely a case we’ve discussed.” this is a lot of times before (PoE2) we knew that “people are definitely going to complain about this” and we knew, but we didn’t find a solution.”