An idea for towers and tablets redesign
**Premise:**
This is meant to be constructive criticism. I am not here to rant, nor do I want the game to fail. In fact, quite the opposite. I love Path of Exile and believe it is improving in many ways. However, I still feel that the current endgame system falls short in several important areas. I wanted to share an idea I have been iterating upon with the community and hear what others think. I apologize if a similar idea has already been proposed. I searched and did not find anything quite like this. Also, I do not have much experience with Path of Exile 1, so if I inadvertently propose Poe1 endgame system let me know and I will delete the post.
Lately I have become more and more frustrated with how the endgame loop is designed. In Season 1, I did not fully share the complaints that many players had, but in Season 2 some of the new changes have made the system feel even more frustrating to engage with.
The biggest issue I see is that the system works against itself. In Patch 0.2, exploration became much more important. You now need to quickly move from one corrupted or cleansed area to another to increase your map levels. You are also encouraged to chase unique maps or chase citadels areas by pushing outwards. But despite all that, if you want to run tablets efficiently, you are pushed to stay within one area, ideally one with several overlapping tower radii that you can enhance with tablets. This is the biggest contradiction I currently see with the current system
Also, mechanics spawn randomly within the tower radius which has been a problem since 0.1. To play efficiently, you usually have to clear most of those nodes, even if they are not ones you would normally choose. This is very time-consuming, and to me it creates a feeling of being stuck. I have five days of playtime on my character. I have cleared T2 Orloth, T1 Simulacrum, King of the Mist, and T3 Xesth but I still have not found a single citadel, I only have four points on my boss atlas, and I am missing one unique map to complete the last two points. All of this happens because I cannot just move freely toward those goals unless I ignore towers completely or accept wasting most of the mechanics that get spawned with my tablets. To me, the fact that you cannot efficiently explore and engage with mechanics at the same time is a major design flaw.
**My Proposal, decouple Mechanics from Node Location:**
Here is the idea I would like feedback on. Nodes no longer spawn mechanics. They can still be corrupted or irradiated, but mechanics are not tied to node location anymore. Towers no longer influence an area around them. When you activate a tower, you still insert precursor tablets following the current rules (the more map modifiers the higher the amount of tablets that can be slotted), but instead of buffing nearby maps, you receive counters for the mechanics you selected.
These counters represent how many times you can trigger a mechanic of that type. For example, inserting Breach, Irradiated, and Boss tablets would give you 10 Breach counters, 13 Irradiated counters, and 4 Boss counters. Every time you click on a node, you can choose which of your available counters to activate. The suffixes from the tablet are applied when you use a counter.
**Why I think this would help:**
You can choose where each mechanic appears. For example, Breach never has to appear on Crypt anymore. Instead, you can save it for layouts that make more sense, like Steppe or Savannah. You are free to explore the atlas. Mechanics are no longer tied to a specific radius around your last tower. You can plan your mechanics more deliberately. For instance by saving boss modifiers for maps with corrupted nodes that has a +1 lvl modifier (instead of the current slam and pray). Detouring becomes strategic rather than inefficient. If you find a good group of layouts that suit your mechanics, you can intentionally path toward them.
**Examples**
Example 1:
Your tower gives you: 10 Breach with 7 percent increased quantity 10 Irradiated with 3 percent increased quantity 4 Boss with 15 percent increased quantity of items dropped by bosses (let's assume only one modifiers per tablet for simplicity). You can now run four maps using one two or all three mechanics. If one runs out, such as Breach, you continue with the other two until they run out as well.
Example 2:
You are partway through your progress and still have 1 Breach 2 Irradiated 1 Boss and you then reach another tower. You slot in Delirium, Ritual, and Expedition tablets. Now you have six mechanics available, and you can choose combinations based on the layout. If you want to refresh Breach, you can either use your last Breach counter first or overwrite the old one by inserting a new Breach tablet with a new modifier.
**Balancing and Additional Considerations:**
This way it limits the number of active mechanic counters to six. You cannot stack the same mechanic multiple times. Towers that are close to each other would still be valuable, but in a more flexible and intentional way. One possible problem with the current system is that the best strategy can become running empty nodes with t1 maps until you activate two towers and run 6 mechanics nodes until you run out of counters. To circumvent this you could also consider having only one tower active at a time. Hybrid unique tablets could allow for a tower to slot in more than 3 mechanics, such as Breach plus Delirium, and running a T16 tower map could unlock a fourth slot for instance.
**Why I Think This Works:**
This approach addresses the core contradictions of the current system. It allows exploration and mechanic farming to happen at the same time. It removes the frustrating dependency on overlapping tower radii. It gives players more freedom to plan and execute strategies around layout and mechanics. It also removes some of the map RNG that forces players into unwanted content.
The idea may need refinement, especially around overwriting counters or refreshing towers, or the total numbers of mechanics available at the same time, but I think it has real potential. It increases the strategic layer and agency of the system while removing the parts that feel restrictive and frustrating.
Let me know what you think. I am genuinely curious to hear feedback or suggestions.
