Endgame vs. levelling

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The whole expansion was an interesting experiment in two fronts: horizontal/vertical progression and prolonging leveling in the hopes of make it more rich.

The Ascendancy class addition was thought as a way to add more flavor to classes. Thing is, they went against what made things like Keystones more interesting in character building; keystones, ideally, offer power at a cost, so they are neutral, or at least require some thought to make a character more powerful. That's a way of horizontal player progression.

Meanwhile, Ascendancy classes offer straight buffs most of the time. The less broken classes offer "on kill" bonuses while the most broken offer permanent buffs like permafortify. In that sense, you cannot completely categorize the addition as horizontal or vertical. It's not necessarily a bad thing (I mean, a buff to build around EV/ES or Dodge is a great thing actually), but probably requires more balance. The power creep is real, some sobering nerfs are needed to not trivialize existing content.

The labyrinth and trials were less well received for many reasons (there is a ton of threads about that, so no that interested on talking about that), for this thread is interesting to note that it made leveling long.

Now there are reasons to go to Hedge Maze, Catacombs and other areas thanks to trials, thing is that people still want to rush to the endgame, so it's an obstacle in that path annoying them. I particularly don't mind, but I actually enjoy doing all that. For those who not, it's a waste of time.

The labyrinth itself asks you (at least at the apropiate level) to pass a somewhat unforgiving difficulty spike, adding to the overall leveling effort. If you enjoy it, it's one of the best improvements on leveling we've seen in a while, else, it's the biggest obstacle to completing a character and playing the endgame. Ignoring whether the labyrinth should be as mandatory (to be exact: optimal, so shut up grammar nazis), there is so much effort people will want to put playing an unfinished character. Honestly, I still favor adding more effort, non linearity, long levels, and stress to leveling, in exchange for not repeating multiple playthroughs. That means, GGG should make effort preserving changes to leveling.

As an hybrid endgame/leveling activity, it falls short in both fronts. Probably too much for leveling as thing are currently (three playthroughs) and too little for the endgame (you can kill most things easily, beyond some point, so the only threat left are traps, and given how you can cheese them, it's not a well designed grind as maps themselves...it doesn't help that the rewards after getting the AC points are enchants that are distributed very sparsely). A higher level labyrinth, and/or one with better item drops, with harder to trivialize enemies would be nice, modeled as the Apex of Sacrifice aproximately (low level, still challenging...well, maybe it was in the past, power creep is bananas).

In that sense, I still think the same than when I wrote this thread one year ago. People still wonder why GGG hasn't added anything to the endgame, while GGG has added so much stuff to do...while being impossible to put all that stuff only at high levels for economy reasons.