The atlas tree feels too flat. Where’s the strategy ?

Hi,
I've generally been enjoying the recent changes to PoE2, the direction looks promising, even if it’ll likely take months (or years) before the game feels fully polished (which is understandable, to some extent).
That said, I’d like to raise a concern regarding the Atlas tree.

Note: What follows is mainly relevant to the experience of Softcore players, which make up the majority of the playerbase. These concerns don't really apply in the same way to SSF players.

Currently, everyone can eventually unlock all Atlas passives tied to various endgame mechanics. On paper, this sounds like a nice QoL feature but long-term, it could lead to some serious economic issues.

In PoE1 (yes, I know PoE2 aims to be "different", but it borrows so heavily from its predecessor that it's still the best point of reference), specialization creates a natural economic ecosystem: some players focus on delirium, others on harvest, others on bossing, etc... each one generates different types of resources, fueling a real supply-and-demand dynamic.

But in PoE2, if everyone can farm the same content just as efficiently, that balance falls apart. Resources become too common, niche strategies lose their value — or don’t exist at all — and trade suffers. We’re already seeing signs of this: some items like breachstones are nearly worthless.

In short: by removing the need to choose what type of content to focus on in endgame, the game’s economy suffers — and with it, the sense of meaningful decision-making.
In trying to be too accessible, the game risks becoming flat and shallow — and personally, that’s not what I enjoy.

What’s your take on this?

I completely agree. That also has a ripple effect on characters because every build needs to be a generalist.

POE1 is a sandbox, you can choose what you want to focus on. You can go into a league start with an idea of what build you want to play and therefore what your early strategy will be and then you can make a second character to focus on something completely different and harder...

In POE2 you just get what you are given and that kinda sucks. It just feels very uninteresting.

+1
i would add that endgame quickly becomes empty and boring.

As soon as all the passive points have been unlocked, there are no real goals to achieve, and it comes really quickly...

As Par1ty said, Unlike Poe1 we don't have the choice of specialising in farming a particular resource according to our desires or market prices, nor do we have the choice of which maps to farm... This makes the endgame random and doesn't encourage you to farm again and again.

I've never said to myself "just one more map before going to sleep".
And that's ultra-frustrating, because it's precisely in the endgame that you're supposed to engage in the activities you enjoy the most...
At the moment, I don't like any of them. In my opinion, the whole endgame system needs to be reviewed, both in terms of content and format.

We're still in the early stages of EA development. The tree and other aspects of the game still need a lot of work, but we'll be able to truly appreciate it when the game is complete and contains years of content.

This current version of the endgame is really only great for the SSF side of things. Having separate trees for each mechanic, in theory, makes it simpler but also makes it extremely generic and bad for a Trade environment. SSF gets to suffer the most for the core part of the loot hunt (ie: crafting/gearing).

Eventually, everyone in trade league reaches that point of having all their trees complete and there's not a lot of variance in what you can do. Everyone ends up with all the existing content fully juiced, throw on some tablets to juice a bit more, and the entire trade player base ends up effectively doing the same thing, injecting the same content-specific items into the market, thus making anything special about each individual type of content, worthless.

This problem was there since launch, but more of the Uniques were much stronger, so it gave people more of a reason to run the side content (to farm for corrupted versions mainly). Breachstones are basically worthless right now given how easy it is to acquire them. Simulacrums, not far off.

As more end-game activities are added, this will dilute the issue a bit, but ultimately having separate trees will inevitably put the trade economy in the same place in the games current state.

A single tree with ability to specialize into a few of the 15+ separate mechanics was the single biggest game-changing features i've seen added to the first game since i really started playing in 2016. Is it maybe better than the current setup? I really don't know for sure since the current end game atlas approaches are different.

Yes they'll get there with the endgame, as these guys are just Masters at creating end-game content. It might be a bumpy ride though.