A Quick Fix to Path of Exile 2’s Controversial Towers

Towers have been highly controversial in Path of Exile 2’s endgame mapping since the launch of early access, and the core feature hasn’t received a rework in PoE 2’s major 0.3.0 patch.

There have been major improvements to the game overall, but the community has consistently expressed dissatisfaction over Grinding Gear Games’ decision to stick with the towers despite significant backlash with every major patch.

It is one of those features where a clear majority, including the game’s biggest content creators, want it removed or completely reworked. So, what’s wrong with the tower mechanic in the first place, and what could possibly fix it?

What’s Wrong With Path of Exile 2’s Tower Mechanic?

Path of Exile 2’s endgame borrowed a little from its predecessor by having an atlas passive skill tree, but it wasn’t even close to touching PoE 1’s depth. However, to compensate and add complexity to the endgame mapping system, PoE 2 introduced the Tower mechanic, which is played as a separate map but is unique because its main purpose is to buff its surrounding map nodes, increasing difficulty and loot at the same time.

For PoE 1 players, you already have a sense of why it isn’t great, because it adds unnecessary steps before you can blast and feel rewarded at the same time. For players who only played PoE 2, you’ll feel the nuisance only when you try becoming more efficient in the endgame. The more you play, the more you realize there’s something wrong.

See, making running the tower mandatory is one thing, but finding three or four towers overlapping each other before you can feel a sense of reward makes it unrealistic and a bad system overall. You don’t have to do it that way, but you’ll have to work way harder to progress if you don’t. It has seen some changes and buffs over the last few patches, but it really needs a rework more than a fix at this point.

The Temporary Tower Fix

While I have no experience in game design, I do have some ideas from a loyal player’s perspective. The best fix I came up with, that also keeps the tower mechanics in the game, is to change how the tower buffs its surrounding nodes and forego the tablets. The towers should have a reward system that helps players improve all maps when finishing the tower, while still giving an incentive for players to run them.

As a barebones example, finishing ten towers will give a permanent +2% to the quantity of items found on all maps. This preserves the need to finish towers, but does not alienate players from going through other maps or nodes just because a map doesn’t overlap with three or four different towers.

The overall sense of the “tower” overlooking the surroundings is still relevant, as conquering it improves your ability to find loot. However, the whole idea disregards tablets completely, making them useless.

To dig even deeper into the idea, these Precursor tablets have some general “buffs” which are mostly found in prefix rolls, while specific league mechanics are in suffix rolls.

You can integrate these modifiers into specific Tower layouts to make players more excited about finding a specific one. Finding Towers will feel more like an objective towards a bigger goal instead of being an overall nuisance to the endgame.

But I’m curious to hear what you think. If you have a solution or see a flaw in mine, drop a comment below and let’s discuss.