Developer Grinding Gear Games has revealed its plans for the first major update that will be coming to Path of Exile 2. As part of the update, Path of Exile 2 will be getting a host of quality-of-life features, including changes to some of the more challenging aspects of endgame content and more map variety.
In an interview with Twitch streamers Darth Microtransaction and GhazzyTV after the announcement (transcription via PCGamer), director Jonathan Rogers spoke about its decisions with the planned update. This includes how the team will make lethal on-screen effects more visible to players in the chaos of endgame maps. However, Rogers reiterated that the studio still wants deaths in the game to be a notable setback.
One of the topics of this discussion is that players only get one chance to clear a map for every Waystone they use. Breaking from the original Path of Exile, which allowed players six attempts, a single death in a Path of Exile 2’s maps means that players will have to start that map from scratch.
“We did discuss quite a lot about whether we wanted to go back on one portal or not,” said Rogers, referring to the number of portals that open up whenever a player activates a map. “I think it comes down to the fact that it would just not feel the same. The whole ‘death actually mattering’ thing is actually important.”
It is worth noting one of the big changes in the upcoming update is that one of the Pinnacle bosses in the game, The Arbiter of Ash, will allow players six attempts before failing from death. This is because accessing Pinnacle boss fights tends to require tens of hours to get the keys necessary to unlock the fight. A single death essentially undoes all of that progress.
“We were talking about the pinnacle boss, and the discussion came up ‘should we allow portals everywhere, should we be allowing checkpoints everywhere’, and we ultimately decided we really don’t want to go that way if possible,” explained Rogers. “So first of all we try out this pinnacle stuff, make sure it’s something where you have true economic value you have to preserve: It takes time to get there and that matters.”
Rogers also mentioned that “some level of failure” is integral to how Path of Exile 2 was designed, since players won’t “fail in the same way… I’m not really a fan, I much prefer the whole ‘one death’ thing.”
He went on to talk about the XP penalty players face for dying in endgame content, stating that the studio sees the penalty as a way to teach players that they might not be ready to take on the challenges they’re dying to. “But maybe that’s the wrong way of looking at it,” he said.
Further in the interview, developer Mark Roberts also spoke about how the harsh death penalties would be better appreciated if the game’s ratio of risk and reward were more appropriate. Rogers admitted that, in the current state of Path of Exile 2, that balance might be off.
“Right now there are too many penalty axes, so if you’re dying all the time, you’re not gonna get materials, and thus you’re not going to go anywhere… and also an ‘add insult to injury thing [XP penalty] where you’re just not levelling,” said Roberts.
“I think they’re just a bit too severe when combined together, and I also think the very start of maps is just too difficult. I think we should ease into that a little bit, bring that down a bit, then ramp the difficulty up,” he explained.
Rogers also spoke about how the ability to retry maps with fewer penalties would also lead to issues with the in-game economy. Players would start intentionally dying to farm gear and materials that they could then sell to others.
“It would be nice if you could just spin another map and still be able to do that content,” he said. “Unfortunately we can’t do that because it would open up too many economic abuse things, where like you fail the map intentionally because you want to farm the items in the rest of the area. So, it’s very difficult for us to come up with a solution because I really would prefer that, honestly, if you could re-do a map without having all the problems that being able to re-run a map would actually cause.”
Roberts caps off the interview by stating that while the studio was aware that players would complain about a single-death ending their map run, it was prepared. However, it’s yet to find better solutions to the problem.
“But yeah, it’s a bit tricky, it certainly is the case we’ve discussed it so many times before [PoE2] came out that we knew ‘people are definitely gonna complain about this’, and we know, and we haven’t found a solution,” said Roberts.
Path of Exile 2 is currently available on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S. It will be free-to-play when it exits early access. Stay tuned for more details and complete patch notes on this week’s big update.
