End game changes mega discussion thread/questionnare.

What is Endgame?

(personal definition)
* Stuff done after or just before the end of the storyline (or final boss) of a game.
* The process of gaining levels after you finish leveling to the point required to finish the story of a game.
* Extra challenges - usually more difficult than the final boss, entirely off the beaten path, searched out and confronted as desired to challenge your skill, gear, knowledge of the game.

In PoE, that means to me: Anything after reaching level 70ish, and after beating Merciless Malachi. (I don't consider maps part of the story of the game, so they're all "end game") After that point, it's all optional content that isn't part of the main game.

Atziri, the Labyrinth, Maps, Rigwald and the Council, Beyond's Abaxoth(sp?) are all lumped into this category in my mind. Min-maxing gear and trading also fall outside of the main game for me.

I'd put Racing into a side column of other activities, since you're making completely new characters for these events, they're not at the "end of the game" for a normal character. They're alternate starts or Temporary Mini-leagues, so alternate main games.


Improvements to Endgame, to me, would include:
* Methods to gain levels beyond those provided in the merciless story zones.
Eternal Laboratory Maps are part of this, so improve maps via variety (a method to change the tier of a map?), rewards, difficulty, encounters, etc. (Zana is supposed to be tracking down the source of corruption via the maps. Perhaps create an endgame focused on a progression of maps that reveal a path to a source of corruption in certain areas - nightmare beast babies.)

* Other means to increase character strength apart from levels and gear. (Ascendancy, for one, quest rewards like bandits is another) Perhaps achievements that unlock player and/or account-wide bonuses for completion (like, defeat *insert boss* under certain conditions). Account-wide achievements may be worked on by any player on your account, like slay 10,000 zombies with fire element abilities, which would grant a fire-type bonus to characters on your account.

* Methods to gain equipment that has better stats.
Perhaps narrowing the range of rolls to reduce junk, and the empty feeling of wasting time. The elusive feeling of finding a golden fleck in a river, after sifting through the mud for weeks would be lost, and instead replaced with the feeling of sifting for a day... oh the horror, economy, blah blah. (all I'm seeking here is a gradual lifting of the minimum rolls available on gear that drops - they cap the top, but they never lift the bottom through level progression. This leads to gear drops feeling very underwhelming)

* I'd add Talisman mechanics back into the game. Make the stone circle only appear in one of the act 2 forests, require less Talismans per stage (like 2 or 3 max, starting with blue, no whites - can't craft them anyway!).

* Rare gear drops with "unique" prefixes/affixes, that increase the availability of some forms of build-altering mechanics. (clearly would take some planning, possibly adding some more logic to the distribution of rare's stats on drop, when such a unique mechanic is present.)

Labyrinth style enchants is a method to give better stats on gear that is clearly lacking due to both the challenge to obtain it, and the randomness of the reward. I wouldn't do that content if you paid me.

* Crafting in a few games I've played is actually the best way to get good gear. Here, crafting is not endgame. Here, crafting is either random lotto (currency), or sure-fire, expensive, weak modification of gear (masters). Eternal orbs made crafting feasible, but they're gone now.

Prophesy style upgrades to uniques and other gear could be a major win, if the quests are not so randomly found. Ideally, go seek out prophesy NPC while wearing the gear, and get quest for the gear if it has a quest. (In the main game, maybe she lives in an azmerian cave.)

* Shop recipes are the best form of crafting in the game at the moment. Better than masters, and far better than lotto "currency" crafting. MORE recipes! More results based on quality of ingredients. The craft will succeed even with the lowest quality, but give lowest reward, but will also grant really nice rewards for nice ingredients.




And that's all I'll be sharing today. Long enough, right?

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raics wrote:

Maps
...one-way map randomization would probably be easiest, if a map of certain level drops it can be any map up to that level, so you'd be able to get a T15 tropical island but not a T1 coloseum, your available map roster would increase as you go up the tiers instead of shrinking like now.
On map viability, I don't think all should be equally good or even nearly so, but I don't think we should have a 'major pain in the butt' tier either

Right. That would solve some things, never heard it pitched as one-way randomized though. What would be wrong with a level 1 Colosseum? As a note on viability, I think it's assumed that not 100% of maps will be equally appealing. The cost of diversity, true diversity, is that some maps will be inferior. The problem comes when a map is so bad (Waste Pool) that no one runs it and only trades it up into whatever T8. That's when it becomes the illusion of diversity.

I suspect that they cannot change the terrain generation of certain tile sets without a lot of work. Another fix would be to always put the easiest bosses in the most annoying tile sets, and double down on the boss dropping maps, or higher tier maps. Then our choice becomes Mountain Ledge for ease of play, no back tracking, but some characters might skip the boss (if you made this boss Daresso or something), or Sewer, shit layout, always backtracking, but a consistently easy and rewarding boss experience.

I think I prefer any map can roll any tier, but that would be another approach.

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raics wrote:

Goals
I don't think we have enough if we look at it on 'per character' basis, if your build isn't suited for PvP or farming Uber it will never be able to do it no matter what you do to it so it isn't a goal.

This is a nice point, and I agree. I made a discharge character (self cast, burning) and it sucks at bosses and lab. Suppose I did 20k damage and that was good enough to do exactly 50% of white mob HP, while bosses took me 120 seconds. I could double my damage, which would effectively double my white mob clear speed (FeelsGoodMan). I also cut my boss kill time in half...and they still take a full minute to kill (FeelsBadMan). So that's what you're talking about here. I could (and did) double that character's effectiveness, but it's still not suited for bosses, and never will be.

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raics wrote:

Races
I've only raced sometimes, not enough by far to provide good feedback on it. Not even sure it's possible to do something that would make me participate more, it's just too different from my regular lackadaisy game pace, I find no enjoyment in rushing and you can't fix that and still call it a race.

That's a refreshingly honest answer. (Relative to the forums as a whole, I'm sure everyone knows you're an honest fellow).

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raics wrote:

PvP
Making a good PvP char takes a lot of time and effort so it's by nature a perma league activity and permas are a balance abomination. I don't think it can ever be actually good, it just isn't possible in a game that is open like this, too much factors to consider, too much dev time would have to be spent on maintaining it in working order.

I had intuitions that aligned with what you've said on both PvP and crafting but haven't really done much of either lately to speak with any authority. Good to hear. Well, not good to hear if you are a PvP/crafting fan, but you know what I mean.

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Aim_Deep wrote:

I just want rifts
4. bring me to 4, a reason to min/max - difficulty is unlimited so every point counts.

Yeah D3 rifts could be...interesting for PoE. The big 'pro' is that it kind of fills the role of asynchronous races. A D3 season is essentially one giant, open, asynchronous competition that lets you push to the highest difficulty at your own pace over months. It's not really a race though (not that it has to be).

The big minus of uncapped progression where the math just keeps getting harder is rewards either have to be non existent, or capped, because of the state of balance in the game among builds. Like Raics said...if you think you feel pressured to play a meta build now, uncapped progression would really shoehorn you into doing one or two things. Then you'd have the same complaints here that Diablo has been plagued with for most of it's seasons: "my class only has one viable build in a game with all these sets and legendaries qqqqqqq". And I say qq but that was and still is totally justified qq.

The min/max thing is interesting. I think we ARE rewarded for min/maxing, but the game does an awful job of showing you how much it's helping you. You can go from level 90 to 93, gain 450 more life, and never ever get any feedback that it has saved your life unless you stop to look at your HP pool in a critical situation and see it dip below 450. Did you have any ideas on how min/maxing could matter more, or feel more rewarding?

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Shagsbeard wrote:

To be fair to Chris, "changing everything you know about" something doesn't really mean that they have to scrap the entire system and start over. They could keep maps but give players a way to select Tier independently of which map they select and that would qualify as "changing everything you know about" it.

Yes, that's very true, but that's also the reason why this subject is so compelling! So suspenseful! Changing everything we know could mean ANYTHING!! :o

edit: to add - it says it will change everything we know about "end-game". That's one of the big focuses of this thread is that end game encompasses more than just maps, so I'm hoping there are positive changes to one or more of these non map topics along with it.

PLZ GGG GIVE US PARAGON LEVELS!!!!!!1

TY

Whatever it is, I expect it to be locked behind 16 layers of RNG, and be so wildly overpowered that 99% of the population can never do it, while the 1% bitch about how easy it is with their multi-Ex FotM exploitative builds, before going back to farming the same maps until the heat death of the universe.

Call me jaded, but "changing everything you know" to me translates to "minor changes that don't effect you because you'll never get that far anyways."

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RandallPOE wrote:

PLZ GGG GIVE US PARAGON LEVELS!!!!!!1

TY

Judging on exiles' personalities, it will be renegade levels xD

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viciousnugget wrote:

What percentage of maps should be viable to run at end game?
If some of the maps with linear layouts were part of the higher tier then people would be more inclined to run those maps and take those risks. Right now if you're backtracking to do a full clear you're slowing way down.

I think other threads have done a good job pointing out this very important point, and seems to be something a lot of people in this thread have keyed in on as well. Generally, linear layouts are fun while backtracking isn't. This could still be viewed as a tuning/reward issue. As you said, time becomes a factor at some point - there is a magic number of exp that a red map could give on average that would make rotations of them (with a good and rich group) the most efficient.

I know Chris also said in the july 4th Q&A (to people's disappointment) that red maps were/are still the best for exp and items. Hopefully we can put this in the category of 'changing in 2.4 so no need to fret too much over it now'.

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viciousnugget wrote:

Do we have enough to do at end game? What do we currently have? Which order would you prioritize these in if you were in Chris' shoes?
I am fairly satisfied with the end game as it is but am not opposed to them adding more. Fortunately I am not in Chris' shoes and don't have to think about how to make this game stick to it's roots while drawing in a wider audience to keep the wheels turning.
What I do a lot is divination card farming, atziri runs, mapping, selling, lab runs, helping guildies, vaaling(ruining) items, play an alt and chatting. I rarely PvP outside of Leo quests. When one activity starts to bore me I find another or play an alt character.

Oh I did forget about guilds. That is a potential source of end game activity that has still gone unsupported by GGG thus far. I think someone else in the thread mentioned Guild PvP, and I've made a post before about a PvPvE style race league where guilds could pool the efforts of the individuals to score on a leaderboard against other guilds doing the same. Lots of untapped potential in guilds.

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viciousnugget wrote:

P.S. Nice thread, good questions and I hope people don't derail it over differing opinions.

Well it got off to a much better start than I expected, thanks to everyone for that. To be clear there's nothing wrong with differing opinions - if we wanted a circle jerk we'd be on Reddit. I was concerned that just by putting poe.trade, PvP, the Lab, etc in the opening that things could be susceptible to going downhill fast, but folks have been thoughtful and mature. So this is a good example:

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AkuTenshiiZero wrote:

Whatever it is, I expect it to be locked behind 16 layers of RNG, and be so wildly overpowered that 99% of the population can never do it, while the 1% bitch about how easy it is with their multi-Ex FotM exploitative builds, before going back to farming the same maps until the heat death of the universe.

Call me jaded, but "changing everything you know" to me translates to "minor changes that don't effect you because you'll never get that far anyways."

I disagree - I've already said I'm optimistic (and I doubt either of us will change the other's mind on that). So lets talk about an issue. 'expect it to be locked behind 16 layers of RNG'. How much RNG is too much? Because 0 is certainly not enough - the item hunt would be pretty lame if there were no RNG, and you could pick whatever items you wanted off of a shelf in Sarn. Pick something that you think GGG got right in terms of RNG, and something they got wrong, and maybe we can drill in on where the line is.

For me, I'd say they got Master/strongbox/tormented spirits/rogue exiles spawning at a very nice rate - not too many, not too few. Often enough to change the pace of gameplay, but not so often that I feel they are taking the place of me clearing a map.

RNG gone wrong? I think many div cards still aren't quite tuned to where they need to be. In the same way that they make passes on Unique rarity tiers, and which items go where, I'd hope and expect that they change many of the cards drop rates (some up, a few down).

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innervation wrote:

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raics wrote:

Maps
...one-way map randomization would probably be easiest, if a map of certain level drops it can be any map up to that level, so you'd be able to get a T15 tropical island but not a T1 coloseum, your available map roster would increase as you go up the tiers instead of shrinking like now.
On map viability, I don't think all should be equally good or even nearly so, but I don't think we should have a 'major pain in the butt' tier either

Right. That would solve some things, never heard it pitched as one-way randomized though. What would be wrong with a level 1 Colosseum? As a note on viability, I think it's assumed that not 100% of maps will be equally appealing. The cost of diversity, true diversity, is that some maps will be inferior. The problem comes when a map is so bad (Waste Pool) that no one runs it and only trades it up into whatever T8. That's when it becomes the illusion of diversity.

I suspect that they cannot change the terrain generation of certain tile sets without a lot of work. Another fix would be to always put the easiest bosses in the most annoying tile sets, and double down on the boss dropping maps, or higher tier maps. Then our choice becomes Mountain Ledge for ease of play, no back tracking, but some characters might skip the boss (if you made this boss Daresso or something), or Sewer, shit layout, always backtracking, but a consistently easy and rewarding boss experience.

I think I prefer any map can roll any tier, but that would be another approach.

Can't say for sure without bugging their level design office, but I don't think changing the layout is a huge problem. After all, they did it with Terrace and Mine maps and I'm now running both of them sometimes, the layout isn't amazing but it's good enough to avoid pulling your chest hairs and that's what I basically want of all maps. Like I said there, it's very hard to provide a good selection to a player that goes for max efficiency anyway, but for players that don't like running one map back to back five times you just need to make sure it doesn't suck total ass and they will run it.

There are two reasons I suggested one way map scaling. One is it may be a bit overwhelming to a new player if he suddenly has to learn 70-80 layouts and bosses, probably better to expand it gradually for new ones and an experienced player will lodge himself in higher tiers quick enough anyway. The other reason is more personal, as an old fan of arcade games I firmly believe the hardest stuff should be kept for last, a level 68 Ambrius would be an insult to the boss. If you ask me I'd even reshuffle bosses better and probably replace ones that appear multiple times with some invasion or talisman bosses (that splitting elemental one from talisman was pretty damn good).

I remember Chris said something like that when Lightning Coil came out. "...One of the uniques in the next patch will dramatically change how we view mitigation" (Not an exact quote, but in those lines). Well, it kind of did, as it was pretty OP. It got nerfed, but is still the way to go for most evasion builds.

I would like the 2.4 patch to offer something new - BESIDES mapping. An alternative. Choices. But in my mind, every creative idea that might be thought of, gets crushed by the economy. As long as the economy sets the rules, there isn't much fun to look forward to. Whatever comes it needs to be:

A) A currency sink
B) RNG gated on some level

Which really limits the "fun factor" for a lot of players. But I have hopes - as I have for all content patches. But as a player that chooses not to take part in the economy directly, I often "choose my way away from" a lot of content. But hey, that's my choice, so I can't really QQ too much.