Summary
Although Grinding Gear Games recently announced a few race events forPath of Exile 2in March, the game won’t get a major update until late March, which is the tentative release window for patch 0.2.0. This is expected to make players start over with a new economy and possibly thefirst-ever League forPath of Exile 2, all while also making changes to the game’s systems in order to improve the gameplay loop. GGG has been teasing some upcoming changes so far, but the full patch notes are nowhere near ready. Among the confirmed changes, one may catch players off guard, and it may not be what the community at large seems to want.
There are many systems still in need of changes big or small in the game, and some of them are in their infancy since they were made specifically forPath of Exile 2, such as the 3D Atlas and the current endgame. For example, an early patch added checkpoints to Maps, more respawn attempts against hard bosses, made Runes replaceable, and other quality-of-life additions that players were vocal about. However, GGG recently confirmed some changes to Towers inPath of Exile 2’s 0.2.0 patch, and they may end up being controversial at best.
Why Path of Exile 2 May Be Shooting Itself in the Foot With Upcoming Changes to Towers
One of the pros of early access is that GGG can develop the game and still make it playable before it fully comes out, and the process can be made even better with player feedback regarding existing systems and prospective ones.Towers inPath of Exile 2are already quite controversial because many players dislike them and would rather see them gone, whereas others would like a different approach to them, the Atlas as a whole, and the act of juicing Maps. In 0.2.0, GGG intends to make Towers able to spawn content like Ritual and Breach as well as bosses, with Towers potentially getting the effects of Tablets used in other Towers.
This may seem like a good change at first glance, as it lets Towers be more enjoyable overall. However, when considering that many players would rather not engage with Towers at all, making them take longer to complete may be a way for GGG to shoot itself in the foot. On top of that,juicing Maps inPath of Exile 2can be extremely tedious and repetitive, as the best way to do it is to run “bad Maps” to make them unable to get the benefits of surrounding Towers and their Tablets.
Instead, this change makes Towers themselves susceptible to Tablets, meaning that players either need to fully clear the path to all Towers in a given area and then use Tablets or they need to take the chance that one slot of their Tablets may be “wasted” on a Tower. This is becausePath of Exile 2already has Map layout problemsthat make some Maps very little rewarding, and while the linearity of Towers is great for clearing them faster, it doesn’t make them good candidates for getting League mechanics and juiced mods.
What Path of Exile 2’s Towers Need in The Future
It would be hard to rework the Atlas entirely or at least remove Towers altogether in this major patch, but at the same time, doubling down on a system that failed to engage players and potentially making it take longer to complete may be a bad idea. There is still the chance thatPath of Exile 2’s next big updategets things right in a way that makes this change to Towers feel ok or even good, but it remains to be seen. As it stands, Towers would need much bigger changes to be worth running, such as applying Tablets to all Maps in their range or becoming much rarer, but providing much bigger bonuses to surrounding Maps. This is all speculation for now, and fans will have to wait and see.
