Borrowing from D3:RoS... Adventure Mode

Recently I went back over toe D3:RoS as a break from PoE.

The reason was really simple:

I just got through Cruel Malachai on my ranger, I was running my alts through and I just had enough of the story.

I did not feel motivated to do anything in PoE because to progress I had to do the story. At end game you have things like maps to do.

Pre end game you have to run the story 3 times over.

I jumped over to D3 and did not feel like doing its story, so instead I went to Adventure Mode.


For those who do not know, Adventure Mode is a game mode where all waypoints in all acts are active.

You can freely move between acts, no need to do them in sequence or do any story missions.

You can go do Nephalem Rifts which are similar to the maps we run at end game (only Greater Rifts where the real farming is done waits till level 70 in D3) and there are also bounties to do.

Each act having 5 bounties, and completing the bounties gave you a cache chest at the end that you can open for crafting mats, money, crafting plans, and loot sometimes pops out.

I would like to see this brought over to PoE.

It would be simple:

When you make the character you hit a check-box (sorta like the pvp only checkbox) and your character enters in with all vendor gems available to them, all waypoints active, and all maps have the monster levels set to your character level when the instance is generated.

You can go pick up bounty quests from NPCs in the act towns. For instance, Tarkleig could send you out to go deal with an Exile that has been harassing them, or Elreon could ask you to go join him on a certain map so they can purify the relic there.

Maybe Nessa needs you to go collect some flasks for her from the corpses of exiles who tried to risk it but died.

Greust could send you out to go deal with this large beast scaring away the game he has been hunting.

Just some examples.

The general idea would be that for those tired of running the story could make alts that do not have to run the story. They could just go farm wherever they feel like it, in any difficulty.

Difficulties however are one thing that would need some incentives attached to them.

The simple way to do it would be that higher difficulties have an EXP and Drop Quantity and Rarity boost attached.

It would be quite something to go and be running merciless from level 1.

I can see the value of the suggestion, but it could only be applicable in the permanent leagues where the veneer of competitive play doesn't exist, and challenges are not part of the design philosophy (at least in the current state of affairs).

I think GGG would probably consider it unnecessary due to the ingrained nature of content rushing and twinking. They've invested considerable effort into a tier of unique items build around this premise, as well ensuring that the story completion is linear enough to allow for easy re-running.

Personally, I'd be more likely to become a denizen of Standard if I could avoid the repetitive nature of re-rolling. I'm happy enough to put up with it in the Challenge Leagues because its one of the sacrifices you make to enjoy a fresh and emerging economy, and so that challenges can be "organic" to the gameplay.

Maybe that is a concern? Developing the permanent leagues into an alternative that is attractive to a wider span of the playerbase could be at odds with their perception of maintaining a healthy and longterm cycle of supporters?

Anyways - it begs further investigation and conversation. I am a little concerned though that we're pitching (as a community) quite a lot of thoughts and feedback that may end up homogenising the POE experience to be more inline with other offerings. We're seeing threads about improving map drops, creating more consistent gear progression systems, that Boem thread about void leagues and the one about D3 items...

Individually they may add a significant dollop of fun and potential to the game, but taken together - do they work towards removing the unique identity that is Path of Exile? Does it widen the niche to the point where its no longer a niche? And as more and more people become denizens of Wraeclast, does the canyon have to keep widening to keep them happy and content?

OH MY GOD IT'S A SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENT! What have I done? I'm sorry. I didn't realise what I was typing until it was finished.

Maelström of Chaos type end game wasn't/isn't economically stimulating.Maps are.

"

Temper wrote:

Maelström of Chaos type end game wasn't/isn't economically stimulating.Maps are.

Not everyone cares about the economy...i play solo self found and i would like to see other end game content than maps.

Infinite dungeon(see endless ledge), adventure mode sounds OK to(though free loot is a nono for a rewards...maybe a strong box)

"

lagwin1980 wrote:

"

Temper wrote:

Maelström of Chaos type end game wasn't/isn't economically stimulating.Maps are.

Not everyone cares about the economy...i play solo self found and i would like to see other end game content than maps.

Infinite dungeon(see endless ledge), adventure mode sounds OK to(though free loot is a nono for a rewards...maybe a strong box)

Preaching to the choir brother ....

Unfortunately it makes little difference as it's the developers design choice to make any content that is out of the mundane "worth a price" in currency,it is an economically based game after all and we're constantly reminded of that.

Having certain content available to all and sundry will only serve to bust bubbles.Bubbles which the game is aimed at as the main target audience.

=)

"

nait2k4 wrote:

I can see the value of the suggestion, but it could only be applicable in the permanent leagues where the veneer of competitive play doesn't exist, and challenges are not part of the design philosophy (at least in the current state of affairs).

I think GGG would probably consider it unnecessary due to the ingrained nature of content rushing and twinking. They've invested considerable effort into a tier of unique items build around this premise, as well ensuring that the story completion is linear enough to allow for easy re-running.

Personally, I'd be more likely to become a denizen of Standard if I could avoid the repetitive nature of re-rolling. I'm happy enough to put up with it in the Challenge Leagues because its one of the sacrifices you make to enjoy a fresh and emerging economy, and so that challenges can be "organic" to the gameplay.

Maybe that is a concern? Developing the permanent leagues into an alternative that is attractive to a wider span of the playerbase could be at odds with their perception of maintaining a healthy and longterm cycle of supporters?

Anyways - it begs further investigation and conversation. I am a little concerned though that we're pitching (as a community) quite a lot of thoughts and feedback that may end up homogenising the POE experience to be more inline with other offerings. We're seeing threads about improving map drops, creating more consistent gear progression systems, that Boem thread about void leagues and the one about D3 items...

Individually they may add a significant dollop of fun and potential to the game, but taken together - do they work towards removing the unique identity that is Path of Exile? Does it widen the niche to the point where its no longer a niche? And as more and more people become denizens of Wraeclast, does the canyon have to keep widening to keep them happy and content?

OH MY GOD IT'S A SLIPPERY SLOPE ARGUMENT! What have I done? I'm sorry. I didn't realise what I was typing until it was finished.

Honestly, the current ingrained nature of content rushing is due to their being 0 alternatives to the main story until endgame.

You play through 3 times, get to endgame, farm, and when you find some lower level uniques you throw them at alts so they can blitz through the story so that you have another build at endgame to play with.

If this mode was in challenge league as well it just means that they blitz through normal difficulty on one character, then proceed to switch to grinding what they want. How they want, with any character they want, at whatever level they are.

As a returning self-found soloer the economy is something I do not care about. I do challenge leagues in order to play the new content there.

Warbands was interesting, the warbands themselves broke up the monotony of running the map. The forsaken masters were nice because they broke up the monotony of the map. The tormented spirits were nice because they broke up the monotony of the map. The corrupted zones were nice for the same repeated reason.

But after running through normal for the umpteenth time because I was trying to find a build I had fun with I am sick and tired of having to constantly run the story and would like something else I can do between starting a new character, and end game maps.


Which is the main reason behind this suggestion. Everyone seems to focus on the endgame, as if the endgame is the only thing that matters.

I want to see more mid-game content. I want to see more alternative ways to play. I want to play the story when I feel like playing the story, but have the option of not playing the story when I do not want to play the story.

I want to see unique drop rates buffed so I do not have cases where I take 4-5 characters from twilight strand to malachai before I see my first self-found unique. I want to see those build enabling uniques so I can try to make my own builds with them. But they are not the focus of this suggestion.

And the whole slippery slope argument you provided? I thought the unique niche for PoE was not that we run through the story 3 times per character. It was that this game allows for a massive amount of character builds, that you could customize how you fight in whatever way you want if you are willing to put the effort in.

I do not see providing an alternative to the story, even though the idea was put in first by a competing game, as something that hurts the unique niche that PoE has.

"

TankHunter678 wrote:

<snip>

Don't mind me, I'm not disagreeing with the idea - I quite like it. I'm just trying to picture how it would fit into my current perception of GGG's design goals, as well as the perception of a vocal part of the player base as to the future direction of the game.

How would you see it working within the challenge leagues, and what impacts do you think it would have on the structure and nature of the challenges themselves?

"

CharanJaydemyr wrote:

A while ago, I suggested that GGG find a way to simply unlock mapping as an alternate leveling stream after we finish Normal.

GGG's implicit response was corrupted zones.

I still think mapping as an alternative for leveling past normal would be bloody amazing, and much closer to the dungeon map system of Torchlight 1.

...I dropped the matter but now and then, I allow myself to dream such things.

That could be great alternative way how level up character.

I for instance am dreaming of infinite map levels where I could progress towards increasing difficulty. Current system feels like GGG is afraid of people reaching top maps/level too quickly, therefore droprates are extremely low. Leading into people farming extremely easy mid tier maps with insanely overleveled character.

I'm forced to run 75 maps while I was running 77+ pre 2.0. This feels really bad.

"

nait2k4 wrote:

"

TankHunter678 wrote:

<snip>

Don't mind me, I'm not disagreeing with the idea - I quite like it. I'm just trying to picture how it would fit into my current perception of GGG's design goals, as well as the perception of a vocal part of the player base as to the future direction of the game.

How would you see it working within the challenge leagues, and what impacts do you think it would have on the structure and nature of the challenges themselves?

All the challenges looking at the current leagues are of the type...

Kill x rare types
Kill x Warband members
Corrupt x Jewels
Redeem x sets of Divination Cards
Complete x vendor recipes
Identify a unique of x character
Full Clear x maps
Kill monsters in x types of Tempests
Reach level x with any combination of 3 different player classes

All of which you would do at end game. When you have the necessary zones unlocked, at the appropriate level for you to start seeing the related item drop/enemy spawn.

Within an Adventure Mode setup people could target farm for those challenges as they level from the get go. Rather then wait till they hit endgame after having gotten the story out of the way 3 times.

Hell with an Adventure Mode they could even go and make a challenge for killing bosses within certain level ranges in a certain order if they wanted to.

But the structure of the challenges we get, which barely vary from league to league, they have no compatibility issues with Adventure Mode.

I'd say a random descent could be handy to get to the end game. It should be harder than Cruel and the beginning of Merciless (given you have the same area level). I don't know, infinite corrupted areas with bosses every four floors? Invasion applied liberally? It could unlock the areas in the main game if you go down enough.