Splitting Act 3 into a "Piety Act" and a "Dominus Act"

The title is fairly explanatory of my intent, but permit me to elaborate:

The "Why"

I personally find Piety to be the "best" and most interesting villain in the game currently. She is far more characterized, and interacts with the player more-so than the others (who exist solely in conversation and indirect influences until you make eye-contact with them). Piety has goals and a drive to complete them, something we get to witness rather than hear about. She even manages to acquire a redemption arc at the tail-end of Act 4 (spoiler alert lol :P), and I was far more unnerved hearing her scream "KILL ME!" during the final boss fight than any form of grotesque creatures/bosses encountered beforehand.

Piety is, in my opinion, deserving of more than a mid-boss role and should be the final boss of Act III.

The "How"

I propose that Act IV's Highgate content be pushed back, allowing Act III's Sarn content to be split into two. Both acts (Act III with Piety and an expanded Act IV leading to Dominus) would take place in Sarn, with the Sarn Encampment being the home-base of both acts (perhaps with unique instances to avoid crowding).

- The new Act III would include everything up to an expanded Lunaris Temple, including the Solaris Temple, The Docks, and an expansion of the Battlefront region (for being a "Battlefront", you don't see much of it. I'd suggest spilling it into multiple areas). This would mean acquiring the Plum for Fairgraves would have to wait until Act IV, but that's alright: it would be similar to opening the path between Acts I and II and returning to Lioneye's for the reward.

- The expanded Act IV would include everything left over of the old Act III, including the Library and Gardens. Obviously that isn't a whole lot, so I'd focus a majority of the new content and areas on this Act. The areas would focus their narrative efforts on accessing the The Sceptre of God, fighting Dominus' forces as the storm over Sarn (the one going on during the boss fight against Dominus) continues to worsen. We would see more of Dominus himself, and the conversations within town would focus more on Dominus and the effect he is having (and has had) on the city and Wraeclast as a whole. This updated Act IV would end as the current Act III does, atop The Sceptre of God.

What This Does

Other than adding new content (which is always a plus), I believe that there would be multiple benefits to expanding this section of the story:

1. Piety gets the spotlight she deserves as a major villain. The current Act III feels like a lead-up to fighting Piety as the Act-ender, and yet right after slaying her you get a "oh, by the way, she ain't the real final boss, so go kill Dominus" mission which comes off kind of flat.

2. Naturally, this provides a lot more time to expand on Dominus, and the characters' (both the NPCs and the player's) relationships with him. The cast of Act III spends so much time focusing on Piety that Dominus is essentially an afterthought (as I literally just described above). By increasing the effort necessary to access The Sceptre of God, and giving Dominus more face-time, he's given more "weight" as a villain: he's supposed to be The Big Bad, so why does he sit on top of the tower doing nothing for the whole game? :/

3. Expanding Sarn into two Acts emphasizes the city's importance. It used to be a *major* location in Wraeclast; the capital of the Empire if my recollection of the lore is correct. Having an additional Act's worth of locations exploring the city and the surrounding area provides the game the chance to showcase how important Sarn used to be, and how far it has fallen.

4. Dialla would have more opportunities to be characterized and utilized. She is, arguably, the most interesting character in the game; at least I feel so. The current Act IV does a fine job illustrating Dialla's past (and, more specifically, her failures), so perhaps the expanded Sarn content would give us a window into Dialla in the here-and-now post-Cataclysm. Highgate is her atonement; let us see more of her guilt, alluding to the content in the Act ahead.

Conclusion

If the rumors I've heard of the future are anything to go by, GGG is intending on expanding Path of Exile's story out to like ten Acts, removing the difficulties and leading a natural progression from 1 to 100 through a single play-through. I think that's a grand and welcome idea (assuming the story is good, and not a slog of "wait, there's more!" by the end). By expanding the content of Act III out into two separate Acts, separating and emphasizing the tales of Piety and Dominus, I believe it would greatly strengthen that section of the story. Piety deserves a stronger spotlight, positioning her as a major obstruction as she should be, and adding more weight onto her passing...at least until she reappears in the bowels of Highgate. Dominus deserves more face-time as a villain, and additional interactions with the player, especially if he is truly the Big Bad he's implied to be.

Thank you to anyone who took the time to read this essay of a post. I welcome feedback, so feel free to reply with suggestions of your own or remarks on this idea for good or ill. I thank you in advance should you decide to do so :)

I like this idea, but I don't know I would like the two areas to overlap. In my opinion the real thing to do here is to separate Sarn into a lower area, which is kind of more working/middle class with the slums and the marketplace leading into the temples (and this is why Izaro fits well here, given the egalitarian meritocracy of the labyrinth's lore). For the new Act IV, you should move up the river to higher ground, and you could have a questline involving exploring Sarn's noble houses, maybe with lore about how Dominus screwed them all over, building to your point about expanding and explaining Dominus' role. Eventually you push into a walled off imperial citadel where you get into the already built 3X content.

Great idea, and it would definitely help the game's pacing (especially the longer the game goes) to slow down and start building up more.

I always find myself so annoyed at the end of act 3 that no-one ackowledges you killing Dominus.

I thought the consolidation of Act 2 was entirely necessary, but Act 3 felt like it was the right length, with just a few too many boring gaps. Your idea addresses that quite well, because it gives reason to have more quests in the middle.

The concern is, of course, what would the extra content be? Perhaps we could meet more characters like Siosa, or find other exiles like Clarissa who give us information about Malachai. Perhaps we could visit the mansions of some prominent gemlings on our way to the imperial gardens, and find diaries, biographies, or scratched up paintings telling how people volunteered to be experimented on by the most prestigious thaumaturge that is Malachai.

If this was coupled with an expansion of the areas related to the godless three, there could be some opportunity for foreshadowing with parallels between their domains and those of the aristocrats.

I don't know about you, but I quite like the idea of visiting "The Eternal Estates". Even better would be to see some of the houses converted into churches, giving recognition to the influence Voll had on the city.

The major defect Act III has is how tackled Dominus feels. How to solve it...well...that's another story, although interesting suggestion.

I could imagine expanding current act 3 and 4 into two acts and then streamline level progression and difficulty to advance through those with normal being act 1 and 2, cruel 3 and 4 and merciless act 5 and 6. So you only need to play through the whole story once, but you have more of it.

Act 4 could be easily expanded in the Harvest, giving each of the Godless Three their own (set of) zones, so The Beast becomes act 6.

Piety is a good character and is the boss that gets most character development in the game.

Lots of soundbytes and story so we get to know her quite well.

First, she blocks our path in Act 1
and then we encounter her in the Upper Prison with a lil speech before her vanishing.

She also runs away from us in "Intruders in Black" in Act 2, letting us know what's what in Chamber of Sins.

We then have our first real encounter and battle with her in Act 3 while trying to rescue Tolman in the Crematorium, which leads up to the Huge and Bombastic Battle in Lunaris with her.

And then she finally redeems herself in Act 4 after a very nasty encounter.


Since we get to hear her and see her so often compared to the other bosses, it's easy to see that she feels more of an Act-End Boss than anything else.



Dominus have some good soundbytes and quotes as well, but we should encounter more of him (or read about him) during the game imo.

Dominus, The High Templar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOpGBys5ljw

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鬼殺し wrote:

I'm totally with you and I miss when Piety was the act 3 boss. Descending into three levels of Lunaris was incredibly epic. You went from level 1 as a pristine but occupied temple veneer to level 2 where all the torture went on and then level 3, which was basically the impossibly exaggerated mix of Dante's Inferno and a concentration camp. By the time you made it through those, you were good and ready to put a stop to Piety's madness.

...

This is a roundabout way of saying 'I agree with you, but I don't think there's any point discussing it at this stage.'


PS The graphic novel does a really good job of fleshing out Dialla and Sarn, if you've not given it a gander.

She actually used to be the Act 3 boss? lol I didn't know that. That might explain why it felt that way to me. That also explains why Dominus feels so...tacked on.

It might be too late to discuss, that is true, but I guess my proposal is more of a "hey, if you feel like adding more content, here's a great spot", versus a "this was a mistake; you should fix it." If you get what I mean. Less of a complaint and more hope for the future.

I haven't given the graphic novel a gander 'cause I didn't know it existed heh

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JLacan wrote:

I like this idea, but I don't know I would like the two areas to overlap. In my opinion the real thing to do here is to separate Sarn into a lower area, which is kind of more working/middle class with the slums and the marketplace leading into the temples (and this is why Izaro fits well here, given the egalitarian meritocracy of the labyrinth's lore). For the new Act IV, you should move up the river to higher ground, and you could have a questline involving exploring Sarn's noble houses, maybe with lore about how Dominus screwed them all over, building to your point about expanding and explaining Dominus' role. Eventually you push into a walled off imperial citadel where you get into the already built 3X content.

Great idea, and it would definitely help the game's pacing (especially the longer the game goes) to slow down and start building up more.

I like this idea. An upper Sarn and lower Sarn would better differentiate the two Acts and provide a source of new locations/resources to explore. It also does what I was looking for, which was to expand upon the lore and history of Sarn, given its apparent importance in PoE.

Splitting them as you described makes more sense versus using the same base-location at the Encampment, but I couldn't figure out why there'd be a safe space with friendly characters up there *shrugs* I kind of gave up and said "F it, they use the Sarn Encampment again" lol

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鬼殺し wrote:

As for the graphic novel, it's easily obtained.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1363421

Ah, no wonder: it costs money. This explains why I didn't know about it lol

It's an interesting idea, instead of the next act (né Act 5) being placed subsequent to Act 4, it could essentially be placed somewhere else, such as between Acts 3 and 4.