Shrines/altars , an alternate way to experience your PoE past normal.

So i thought after reading Charans suggestion currently in GD, i would make a thread of my own personal idea to improve the current story line past normal difficulty. Charan makes a compelling argument

Leveling past normal can be considered dull and repetitive, since the only real challenge is increased numerical value's, with no alternative to this approach.

(Charan feel free to pm me if i got it wrong and smack me in the head!)

Let me start by saying, i promote his idea 100%, giving players an option to not need to run the classical story line 3x in repetition to get to the "hidden" endgame is desired and will most likely yield good result's in player retention.

However in my personal experience, i think a lot can be done without introducing low level maps to combat this , and an option is presented to have the same story flow while not only relying on increased numerical value's.

So here is my proposed suggestion to combat the current repetition presented in the game.

Phase A :

Every player would be presented with an altar/shrine past normal, the shrine in itself is harmless and will do nothing if remaining empty. It would have 4 item slots just like the map device.

Phase B :

Unique monsters now have a 5% chance to drop an "icon" of there deity, only unique monsters have this chance giving a sort of "hunt" element when you encounter them. This would also encourage unique monster farming at lower levels.

Phase C :

Every deity has 4 map modifiers listed on it. They are not consumed upon use, and only serve to alter the story line content. Only 1 of the deity modifiers is applied to the next instance you create, they are random and every new instance created while the deity is inside the shrine has a RNG based deity modifier on it.

Phase D :

The shrine has 4 slots in it, meaning every new instance created can yield 4 modifiers on it from a list of 16 modifiers. In compensation for the modifiers a % increased experience can be added to the zone, it should be a low % in order to discourage high zone farming over endgame maps once reached.( i must note this could serve as a balance issue and this should be balanced carefully) A solution to this could be to not allow docks mercilles and any zone beyond that to benefit from the shrine, since at that time you have unlocked endgame maps. The need for the shrine's should be gone at this point, and be replaced by maps.

Conclusion :

Basically this would keep the current progression of the game, and alter instances just like inside a race. The story line would still be appreciated and needed to be played true. But players could decide to challenge themselves when desired and boredom starts to settle in.
Deity's are non consumables and can be kept in the stash for future characters, meaning there is no currency sink related to it, just another gaming experience.(currency would remain intact to enjoy the map system/craft system once reached and desired)

I can already see people brag defeating a merciless brutu's with fleet affix pre-maps etc xD.

Not sure if the community would appreciate this suggestion, and i hope to get some opinions around this concept. I feel a lot can be done in the current system to combat dullness, and GGG should not fear experimenting with there options.

Peace
-Boem-

I really like this idea.

A previous suggestion here for improving interest in redoing quests was perma-leagues with race mods, but that ran into the problem of splitting the playerbase / stash even further if done as leagues so wasn't really an option. This gets around that nicely.

There are a few issues with your setup - The biggest one is it would lead to people repeatedly creating new instances, which costs the player nothing but is a waste of server resources, in order to get the random mods they want. If that is going to happen (and it would) you may as well save the server and give them the choice.

I think it would fit PoEs flavour more to have icons follow the same base item and rarity system as the rest of the game. So you could fill your altar (almost d2 charm style) with items like a blue "Humming Coral Icon of Darting" which would add 5% monster lightning damage, 5% monster life, and 20% monster projectile speed. And good luck to those (un)lucky enough to find the unique BLAMT icon.