I just came back to the game after a 1.5‑year break, and the new Atlas and map tree system feels rough. Since Atlas points are tied to your map now, the number of nodes you have to clear ridiculously high. The atlas tree is huge, so the map grind to finish main or side quests has become pretty brutal. I love grinding, but this one gets tedious fast.

From what I can tell there are 2 approaches you can take; run lowbie maps, do the bare minimum to complete the map, and try to sprint through the map to each quest boss as quickly as possible. This is not fun. Exploring side map nodes outside of the beeline to the main quest objective also feels pointless when every quest step is miles away. And yeah, I know you need those nodes for the Atlas tree, but that’s part of the problem…. The sheer number of nodes you have to clear is wild. It feels like a Korean MMO grind.

Has GGG said anything about reducing the number of map nodes for launch? I can’t imagine doing this every league. When the most efficient way to play is to literally not play and complete maps as quickly as possible, that feels like a major flaw in end game mechanics.

BioMasterZap

6 | 10 hours ago

Has GGG said anything about reducing the number of map nodes for launch?

Not directly, but they mentioned endgame looking different in 1.0. For 0.5.5 they changed it so the first Divinity gives 0 points instead of one section of the Fortress and the second Divinity unlocks the entire fortress instead of another section. This kinda fells like a hold-over fix rather than the final balancing, so there probably will be further changes to pacing in 1.0, but we don’t know what that will be ATM.

Personally, I think they at least need to speed up the fortress in 1.0 since the first divinity giving nothing and second giving everything sorta made the pacing feel worse. Like before, you could weigh the time cost of rushing maps for 1 point at a time versus the time (or cost) of rematching divinity. But now, divinity is just clearly the best point value, so any maps you run pre-divinity just feel wasted and you’re encouraged to run as few maps as possible to reach divinity instead of “I’ll clear this section myself and use divinity on this section with fewer completed maps”.

Chaos_Nation

1 | an hour ago

They need to just give 1 atlas point per map (any map) leave the fortress but make it much smaller, and keep the progression locks on the atlas for the Pinnacle bosses (or even better each league mechanic boss completes a lock).

This is a good compromise, atlas progression wherever you go, gotta do some story bosses to keep going past a point. Every map feels good then. Could add like 5 points for doing a tower or something to speed it up

Nobutapang

1 | 19 minutes ago

Make all map give atlas points, every encounter of a mechanic give that specific atlas points.

Lock the stronger Atlas which can be unlocked through the encounter quest line.

This solve the unnecessary traveling to the quest line.

Jaybag92

4 | 11 hours ago

They think adding cool stuff to maps you don’t want to do will make you want to do them. I disagree

evenstar40 [OP]

5 | 11 hours ago

I’d have to agree with your disagreement… It appears the best approach to mapping/atlas’ing is to rush through the main quest line as quickly as possible, then kill arbiter of divinity a 2nd time to just get every atlas point. Ain’t nobody stopping to smell the roses, especially when you STILL have to grind through all the map nodes to get side quests completed.

This is kind of a major flaw in their whole map/atlas system, kinda shocked the game is going to officially release in this state. It feels artificial time-gating by forcing players to trudge through so many maps to get to their desired objectives, then GGG is like, okay you made it this far here’s the rest of your points now go play the game for real this time. Of course people will find workarounds.

Jaybag92

1 | 4 hours ago

I think the way they handled atlas progression in poe1 feels a lot better. It has good off ramps for when players feel done. Each goal completion feels good. I just like it. I know some prefer the infinite atlas but they definitely have room for improvement.

Xilarch

11 | 11 hours ago

You can also kill the arbiter of divinity a second time to get all nodes at once. You still need to go through way too many maps to kill him the first time, but you don’t need to do every single map.

evenstar40 [OP]

2 | 11 hours ago

That’s a nice catch-up, but that’s even more confusing because you go from one extreme grind to just… Here are the rest of your atlas tree points, now fuck off after killing Arbiter of Divinity? It’s like whiplash going from one extreme to another.

Both solutions feel shitty I guess is my point. Has GGG really not come up with a compromise between the two? Like, maybe cut map nodes by 25% and double the number of nodes you get doing quest objectives. I dunno. There’s gotta be a better solution than this.

Zargholl

2 | 11 hours ago

In 0.5 when this system was introduced, each Arbiter kill completed a uhh.. sextant (?) of the fortress, giving you 30-50 points per. Multiple arbiter kills were required to complete the atlas, so you either did maps one by one, utilizing their unique fortress bonuses, or you’d explore outside and look for citadels to be able to fight him again and complete atlas that way. Specifically for 0.5.5 as it’s just an “event” league and there isn’t major new content or balance, they didn’t want to make players go through the full progression and cut down the Arbiter kills required to just one non-quest fight. It’s a bandaid to speed it up just for this league. The full version in 0.5 felt alright and balanced while not being entirely grindy. You got your baseline points from quest kill, went on to get league mechanics unlocked perhaps, and then either farmed while exploring for citadels/halls or boss-rushing for faster completion.

sd_med248

1 | 9 hours ago

I think current is placeholder for 1.0 plans in between

Way too many Map nodes in the way of completing quests