Betrayal Core potential/suggestion (long-ish)

This is cribbed from a reply I made on the PoE subreddit, but I figured it was worth posting here. I've stuck with Betrayal for longer than any prior league I can remember and my only major frustrations (outside of the MM fight, which has already been beaten to death so doesn't need repeating) have been with mechanics largely unrelated to Betrayal itself. Post follows.
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The more I think about it the more problems I see with full Betrayal integration. Biggest ones I keep landing on are content creep and whatever space in the game the new league will occupy. I don't think GGG wants a WoW-like mess of a million different systems all overwhelming new players, and even though I think Betrayal is a lot of fun to tinker with it's very complicated. Shrines, Tormented Spirits, Strongboxes, these all make reasonable sense when you bump into them. Bestiary makes decent sense after a moment. Delve and Incursion are still a bit confusing to new players, but not overly so. Betrayal is something that you often need to pause and think about even after you get a handle on it. My current thoughts are that if it goes core, the board gets axed or greatly streamlined.

I've put forward a decent number of off the wall thoughts on possible implementations in other posts, so I guess here's another one that might work better (sort of in line with the Bestiary streamlining - no nets, auto-cap, one recipe per red beast, based Einhar). This is kinda lengthy, sorry:

Preface: The strongholds of each Syndicate branch currently reflect the mechanics of their lead-up encounters in some way. This works well and makes the below somewhat more feasible (but, realistically, only if it's what GGG has intended for at least three weeks now and been able to code around while working on the new league.)

Transport has transportation trains running across it, Fortification has walls to break and turrets, Research has mob jar clusters and soul totems, Intervention has black fog ambushes. So... nix the normal encounters, and roll it into safehouses. When Jun is encountered it's either at the entrance to a dedicated side-area (like Abyssal Depths) or with the option to open six portals after talking. . Each safehouse run gets four break points along the way. For Transport, the caravan tracks are longer and the map itself becomes more zig-zaggy, with the player encountering each caravan at its starting point. First breakpoint has a syndicate member and the chance to stop their caravan by defeating them. They offer two bargain options. The next three have two syndicate members minimum. Interrogation is never an option here, but execution (except for the last remaining member) is. Executing someone at 2 ensures they won't show up at 3 or 4, executing someone at 3 ensures they won't show up at 4, and executing someone at 4 removes them from the safehouse fight at the end. Each execution increases the rank of that member as well as the safehouse leader (who starts at rank 1) and any previously executed members, except in situations where the leader steps in to assist and is not executed (which promotes another member to leadership following existing rules.) The bargain options that remove them from the syndicate adds a different member to any remaining encounters (or explicitly sub a specific member from another branch in); trust/rival associations add possible combatants to the number of members that can show up but do not replace the active branch members in encounters. Whiffing on one of the four just fails to give some or any rewards, depending on who you dropped before failing. Not nabbing a member of the branch removes them from the final encounter. Anyone still standing from a different branch when you fail to stop that caravan immediately teleports away, and branch members attempt to flee normally. The actual safehouse fight at the end is everyone you've fought and powered up through execution for that branch as well as the leader (minus anyone executed at the final encounter - resurrection does take a little while, after all) with rewards as they are now and the benefit to mastermind intel after clearing the safehouse itself set at one point per rank of each member fought in the safehouse with two points per rank of the leader. Max gain with trust/rival adds is a fully stocked safehouse; five rooms at rank 3, and 4x3+6=18 intel. 14-17 is more likely, but it can still be maximised. Safehouse leader also gives a second option that moves them to lead another branch, costing you the 2-6 mastermind intel they would have provided depending on their rank but letting you focus farm certain members across branches.

Fortification has similar breakpoints at four barricades. Map would need to be slightly expanded and turrets turned off in a radius around cleared doors after the associated sub-encounter. Fortification sub-encounters don't fail in the same way as Transport but can more easily drop a player and cost them a portal (if SC); no Fortification members that show up will ever flee, but trust/rivalry adds will try to run once all Fortification members are down. Otherwise same as Transport.

Research mapgen would need to add four larger discrete "arenas" in the lower areas of the map or be broken into sequential tombs like Burial Chambers, with the encounters spaced out like a small maze similar to the underground labs (if not broken up a la Burial Chambers) that players need to rush through once they hit the edge and start the evidence destruction timer. Otherwise same as Transport.

Intervention is practically unchanged; there are four shadow-cloud encounters that contain syndicate members with the same rules and ratio as Transport. Player death blows it, and all present members escape. Any non-Intervention members left standing after all Intervention members are down attempt to flee as indicated above.

Mastermind fight remains the same, probably.

This condenses the Betrayal experience while retaining the core mechanics and lets Jun show up about 60% as frequently as any other master from Act 9 on. Weighed types of safehouse runs to to never run the same type twice in a row, with, 75%/25% chance to exclude that safehouse from the two encounters that follow.

Additional benefits/changes to flow: With safehouses as discrete encounters that completely replace in-area/map events the difficulty can be set based entirely on level without concern for map mods. This makes tuning easier and reduces the rewards given by members on death to current safehouse levels. It also allows for the maintenance or shuffling of specific members through careful manipulation, and based on the desires of value weighting internally either reshuffles or retains the existing members of a branch after clear (minus the leader.) It also permits some streamlining of the board itself; with only one branch active at a time other branches could potentially be pushed further to the sides , allowing for greater spacing and readability. Because of the mechanics involved in the safehouse runs it becomes more challenging to get a "perfect" Intervention house and farm specific scarabs. Lastly (to my mind at the moment, I'm sure there are other benefits and pitfalls to this) while it involves significant development time and effort to implement an overhaul of this scope it removes the need to refactor the pathing and event trigger code for Transport caravans that currently has issues with some mapgen sets - rampart or jungle island transports starting and failing before they can be reached because of area separation and causeway/moon temple transports failing immediately in most cases because the width of the caravan only allows for single-node track length.

Bump with a request absent the initial post; GGG response would be great but isn't really expected - more curious to know if anyone that's managed to read through all of that has any additional feedback on possible issues with this concept, pitfalls to progression, negative impacts to the play experience, any technical hurdles I might have overlooked, economic fallout that might result, etc. Basically anything that could add to my understanding of how other players might see the nature of the league essentials differently.

You clearly don't play WoW, as your starting comparing is wrong. Wow pretty much removes mechanics and simplify after each expansion, and the current game is in a pretty bad state, with not much to do outside of the core like raids/dungeons, and bgs/arenas, combined with blant/dumped down design in general.

Anyway Betrayal is most likely going to get simplified or altered to make it more understandable, just like bestiary where the nets where removed. The introduction to Betrayal wasn't bad, I though it explained the basics pretty good.

It failed in explaining the effect of the more complex underlying system. What rivalries and trust does for example. They just got to modify or even just remove in completely.

I would just remove the trust/rivalries, and let 3 members always show up, with 3 options to chose from:first 2 are bargain, execute, and jail, with the last guy jail, bargain and 'betrayel bargain' (like removing a guy from the syndacite, replacing the leader, +1 level to their branch - 1 to a different one, etc).

Then just implement it the same way as the other masters. A daily quest, and random change to get one, 3 encounters per map. Add a scarab for gaurenteed spawning and it would feel the same as the other masters.

Simple and easy to understand, with minimal changes.

Your suggestion is kind of hard to read through, but the basic idea of combining the safehouses and turnining betrayal into a self contained event is nice.

I was thiking that it might go like this:
- You encounter a transportantion mission and Jun says that we need to stop them. The transport is defended by a set mobs and three or four syndicate members. The caravan does not move if it is not supported by a betrayal member, so that it does not overly punish tankier and slower builds.
- After you have defeated the syndicate members, you get to choose between two options: get some immediate loot/award OR get a special reward at the end of the safehouse. Opting for the safehouse rewards makes the later parts more difficult. The members have no rank and instead the level of reward depends on the level of the safehouse (rank 1 up to yellow maps, rank two up to red and rank three for red maps.)
- If you manage to stop the caravan, Jun takes an item out of the caravan (some portal stone/map or something) and opens up a set of portals to a syndicate hideout.
- The safehouse starts like the fortification one. You encounter syndicate members as you get further into the fortification. Syndicate members appear individually and teleport away at 50% health. at the end of the fortification, you fight all the four members at once.
- Choose rewards as with the transportation part. Afterwards, Jun open a door inside the safehouse.
- Inside the safehouse, you encounter the research rooms. The research cabins provide loot and intel towards the mastermind encounter. You only get the intel if you manage to open the cabins before they are destroyed. At the end, you encounter four more syndicate members and once again choose between two options.
- Jun opens up a door the final zone of the safehouse.
- The final zone is a large hall (like the current safehouse chamber) where you are continously waylaid by assansins. After you have killed enough of them, four final syndicate members appear. After you defeat them, you get to decide between a reward and jailing (gives MM intelligence.)
- Jun opens up the treasure rooms and you can collect the rewards you had chosed.

So, you fight a total of 16 syndicate members and get 0-16 saheouse rewards, which means that the encounter has to be relatively rare. Not like once in a 100 hours-rare though. A daily mission would be too much, but maybe once every three-four days.

In addition, they should get rid of all the fog clutter and rebalance the rewards so that we would have less obvious choices (maybe the best rewards could be limited to the mastermind encounter.) They could also have all mobs possibly drop veiled items and allow Jun to unveil them inside the safehouses.

Would give players meaningnful choices and make the whole syndicate thing make more sense.

Anyways, I'm not holding my breath that GGG would rework it that much.

if it gets as dumbed down as bestiary (the whole point of nets was to NOT burst it down and be strategic about your damage output), then Id simply prefer to not have betrayal in the core game.

the problem of betrayal going core is that a lot of people are so used to mapping killing trash and not dying while watching tv, that keeping a mechanic that can always kill them (since most of these people are running glass) without opting-in first, that these people will be furious if it persists.

I think your suggestion is going the other way, complicating things. I like it, but GGG tends to simplify and streamline, not otherwise.

so again, I think Im fine with them not being core and letting them out in mayhem, maybe even slightly buffed from where they are now. they are mostly (few offenders with specific items aside) a joke now to most builds with any sort of defined defenses.

The suggestion (which I don't honestly expect to be the direction GGG takes it, it was more an exercise in gaming out ways to potentially maintain the essence of the league in a broader sense while fitting it into a less overwhelming package to players - and the technical hell that would entail) was less about dumbing it down and more about streamlining the encounters themselves, not the underlying meat of the league mechanics. I know it's a dense read and a little confusing; I used to do a lot of tech documentation and I've sometimes got problems stepping back fully from that. The general thrust though is that the complexity remains intact for players who would want to engage with and manipulate it while remaining lightweight to basically everyone else as what would amount to moderately sized (but quick) boss rushes with loot at the end. It lands as a counterpoint to Incursion, with the RNG heavy setup and and lengthy payoff there contrasting against the thoughtful front-end and rapid payoff here.

As for the WoW comparison, I was more referring to the rep juggling questlines in mostly-dead gameplay areas and all the different paths to spec out gear and stats with upgrades still being sort-of-present in the game. Especially with WoW's "skip to the good bits" level bumps just dumping players into a sea of possible upgrades from various past expansions and patches before they've even had a chance to get comfortable with their skills or sort out what attributes make gear good. Even with all of the trimming Blizzard has done (and continues to do with each iteration) it's a massive heap of possibilities that can't help but confuse. PoE is a complex game, but the complexities largely follow a small set of branching patterns that unfold more or less smoothly. Keeping that more instead of less is really important, as a number of past dev interviews have shown. It's appreciated but raises all kinds of questions when thinking about the integration of a beast like Betrayal.

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cephalocidal wrote:

was less about dumbing it down and more about streamlining

what is exactly the difference between dumbing down and streamlining ?

since you refer to bestiary going core as "no nets, auto-cap, one recipe per red beast" as example to streamlining.... when no nets effectively dumb down the mechanic from 'do enough damage to net a beast yet dont completely kill it off so it can be dangerous against you' to a simple 'do enough damage to kill it'....which basically defeats the whole purpose.

making something idiot-proof that cant be failed (bestiary in its current iteration) that used to be fail-able, is the definition of 'dumbing down'. idiot proof stuff. shit that I cant stand in programming or gaming.

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I used to do a lot of tech documentation and I've sometimes got problems stepping back fully from that.

I do a lot of tech documentation reviews since I feed them the initial documentation and then have them struggle in terminology until we decide on the most user-friendly syntax. So it's not really confusing.

I just completely misread your post, which is my problem of course and I do apologize.

I re-read it again carefully and now I just don't like the idea at all (sorry, no hard feelings). The whole point of transportation+intervention+fortification IMO is to inherit map mods on the same map and be surprising/unpredictable. When you confine them into a safehouse, it becomes a boring recycled mechanic.

Intervention NEEDS to be scary at random moment on a regular map, otherwise what's the point ?

its like putting invasion mobs back in the day into one long-ish area. cool ? sure. defeats the point of 'invasion' where these mobs can be anywhere on regualr map and make you shit your pants when they appear ? absolutely

The difference between dumbing down and streamlining has to do (to my mind at least, open to disagreement here) with thecore intent of the mechanic. With Bestiary the nets were a way to - in theory, if not practice - force player decisions when deciding what to snag. The ability to fail by accidentally killing a targeted beast was another point of thoughtfulness for the players to juggle, but the scaling of damage and beast health turned into a secondary and unintended gameplay "feature" where the gap between detonating a beast on sight and not having the raw damage output to reliably drop it became unmanageably slim for many players. It also hampered creativity, as certain skills became much less usable if a player was attempting to engage with the league mechanics and capture beasts in higher level maps. The ability to accidentally spend valuable beasts on unintended recipies was less an issue of player ignorance than it was an issue of flawed UI design, and the changes made to beastcrafting/capture for Betrayal reflect this. I consider it streamlined rather than dumbed down because the core concept of the mechanic - capturing beasts and then sacrificing them - is intact. The thoughtfulness in how to target and drop beasts (supported by nets) did get scrapped, but it didn't really work as intended in the original league. The thoughtfulness is still there, but it's different now; do you choose to target the beasts directly, or do you delay that in favour of pathing through the map with the benefit of a support NPC? The second option isn't really a no-brainer, since efficiency-focused players who want beasts aren't going to put as much value on the Einhar safety net (ha) as they will on rapid returns. The risks associated with hunting still exist as well, albeit in a different location. For players not steamrolling content with incredibly solid builds there's a risk in actually crafting with beasts snagged at the highest tier of content they can endure, since even without the map mods propping them up a rumble at the blood altar will occur without Einhar's support buffs.

It's a matter of perspective; my theorycrafted implementation of Betrayal mechanics retains what I view as the core of the league - manipulation of the syndicate to control rewards - just in a much tighter package that doesn't interfere directly with future league content. I do agree on the point of Interventions being most interesting and effective when they hit a player unawares; the problem I ran into when thinking about how to include it in a way that isn't unpleasantly disruptive to play is how much space it takes up in the gameplay experience itself. Having to do cleanup after getting the syndicate members to their knees (for any type of encounter, not just incursions) works well enough as a way to encourage thoughtfulness of play now, but I can see it being vexing in the extreme if it's happening on top of a future league mechanic that also calls for higher situational awareness. Something is definitely lost by moving the ambushes off to a side area, but it protects whatever comes next and allows it to remain the focus of the league. Ultimately, giving Interventions special treatment in a way that isn't disruptive to gameplay in an unintended way limits the nature of any future league content occurring alongside it in ways GGG might not want to be constrained by. Giving all types of syndicate encounters the same level of care is another possibility, but a very resource-intensive one that magnifies that risk.

Edit: I'm totally cool with you hating the idea. More fruitful conversation is an unqualified plus, and I'd much rather have that than people just agreeing with me.

Last bump; anyone who wants to chime in and keep the discussion rolling feel welcome to chime in.

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grepman wrote:

if it gets as dumbed down as bestiary (the whole point of nets was to NOT burst it down and be strategic about your damage output), then Id simply prefer to not have betrayal in the core game.

Lol. Lets take a game designed around optimizing and force you to do less damage for certain encounters. I guess taking half of your gem links out when you saw a beast you wanted was good fun. We should make more things like that.

Let me read this dude's idea at any rate, he's active with reddit so I'd love to crucify the shit out of him for sport.