New System is reward driven instead of purely modifers driven
(starts to get a little bit modifers driven, once the difficulty is very high, but that’s ok, because some rewards are still worth taking the risks)
Player has more control over the “bad modifiers”, he can choose when to do them, since there are always dozens of possible choices for the next echoes
Shade Fight is awesome and has so much longjevity, because of it’s random nature. Every fight feels fresh
Infinite scaling possibility is great and get’s rewarded very nicely
Corruption does not “only” affect direct drops and difficulty, but has a noticeable effect on your control of the echo web, since more rare rewards and special echoes like Vessels and Beacons spawn more frequently
The Bad
Switching from high corruption timeline to a new timeline feels bad, because getting high corruption again takes too long. Some optional catch up mechanic would be cool. (E.g. x% increased corruption gained from defeating shade, based on your highest current corruption in any timeline)
Completing Quest Echoes, Beacons and Vessels should not lower remaining echo modifier count (it’s too easy to let multiple modifiers run out, if you save up those special beacons and quest echoes and do them all in a row, to make Shade and/or Echo Boss very very easy)
Beacons should not reset from completing Vessel Of Memory. They have no value doing again and just make letting modifers run out even easier (because of the point above).
If they don’t get reset, they also could be used as additional “checkpoints/starting point”, when completing the Vessel Of Chaos, because you currently have to start from the Vessel Of Chaos location or the starting point, when finishing it)
Beacons are too common (even on low corruption). This screenshot was not an exception for me
Beacons should not spawn directly adjecent to each other (Reimerh already confirmed in my stream, that this change will come, but i still wanted to mention it here).
Arena Echos are too common
Arena Echoes should be more consitent, some are 12 waves some are 17 waves, the 17 waves ones take too long
Arena Echoes should have a wave counter every 2nd or 3rd wave
Beacons charge status needs to be more prominent (maybe do a pop-up every ~30%)
Corruption “% more health and damage” modifers in the modifers list, when you are inside an echo should stick out (make it purple, like the purple skull in the echo web map)
Shade’s Crystal Overhead Smash telegraph needs to be more clear, it’s very faint black circle.
Moon Spire Telegraph causes major fps drop, when they impact
Wengari Spire initial telegraph is too small (i know they are supposed to be small and become bigger, which is a nice mechanic, but they get lost alot of time when you have too many mobs around
Giant Crabs can completely block alot of spires effects visually
While the list of negatives here is pretty long i cannot emphasize enough how much i like the new system.
It is indeed too easy, but at the higher levels when you are deep into the timeline. Resetting and droppping hard or difficult modifiers (for your build at the time) seems absolutely appropriate when people are entering the mono. However, as you work in deeper the mods simply need to last +1 round more a bit quicker so that they don’t drop off too fast when you are naturally adventuring.
When you have built up a bit of nice corruption you have a good farming zone (for your exact build) and can also go after rewards you like. Because you are not always going straight for the final boss, you spend more time wandering the timeline. This is fantastic and adds great depth! Please don’t make it harder for people just getting into the timelines, but absolutely make it harder when you go deep. 15+ echos in does not feel harder than the first echo and you very rarely (in my experience of a few hundred monos since the patch) have many more mods than when you arrived in the timeline.
Honestly, the variety of action provided with the new system is a huge improvement. It just needs, imo, +1 mod duration to the mods you pick up as you get deeper, and maybe +2 around the fringes where we have more shiny rewards.
What do we think is too long? Everyone has different ideas of how long the game or its parts should take. I think there are a very wide range of opinions which should ideally be all answered as well aa possible to support the different playstyles.
As it stands it is about 1-2 hours to take a first run at the boss, but successive runs quickly go down to an hour when you get some corruption going. If you are experienced in monos at that level for your build you can go into a fresh mono and farm quite a bit of corruption in only an hour.
I assumed people playing for quest/boss completions would take a couple of hours per time line. Seems like a decent length of endgame for a build you wanted to see take on all the bosses at least once. However if it is a build you really want to develop you can build up corruption, farm the rewards and take more blessing runs to optimise your build for the attributes you want to (attributes and specific MF bonuses for gear).
Obviously everyone has their own opinions, but for me a few hours per timeline just to complete them seems correct.
The long term goals also attract me. I like to play many many hours on a build I like, but you need content for that, and a chase goal. Personally I want the long game to take tens of hours, per character, but that is when you are minmaxing or whatever long term goal keeps you intereted in your build even when you 've killed all the bosses at least once.
I’m always worried when I think some suggest, while great for people who play for less time, reduces the longevity of the late game.
(Without derailing this thread, that is why I don’t like most implementations of trading. If I can go buy something I want, or even grind arithmetically until I have the funds to buy it, I lose any interest in long term playing with low percentage chances of getting my upgrade. If my only way to upgrade is a 1% chance per hour, I may well play that happily for days as I love the build I’m doing then. But if I realise I can go and buy the upgrade I just don’t have the heart to grind for hours. I am an odd puppy.)
I meant +1 to what we already have, but not for the first islands, for when you press deeper. I still find them falling off way too fast when I’m exploring and not paying attention to them.
People keep mentioning ‘the rewards’ but where are those so called ‘rewards’ that are anything different to last patch? books of XP? a node that has a few exalted items? im not really seeing it
Modifiers ultimately mean nothing if you are running 200% rarity and only garbage still drops, then you do another level 100 timeline with 15% rarity and a upgrade drops - its still just rng on rng. theres no special rewards to even bother farming Monoliths really. its just PoE’s rng where when you want something it wont drop
The only chase item is that amulet that only Community Testers know about how to spawn it due to having free reign of the game and probably given info by the devs. I have multiple characters who cannot even start Empowered Monoliths anyway
Same, I have put 400 hours into a single character in PoE who was my first level 100 but as time goes on and power creep/game easier/ personal experience grows you cut that down to 250 hours for the entire league including all challenges - LE doesnt have that currently. its even sometimes pointless to even cap your resists
In order to answer the questions here, I need to frame my experience level with the game.
Honestly, I fell in love with LE when I first tried it a few weeks before this recent patch. Then, after attempting my first respec, it was as if a light came on for me. Regardless of how they change the UI’s in the game, I just started having a hard time staying engaged. The payoff just didn’t seems to justify my effort. Felt like I was just grinding against the RNG to craft gear…gear that honestly wasn’t that exciting. And I know this one point I’m about to state has been said by others before me, but the respec hurdles really hurt my view of the game. Putting a barrier/time sink in front of respeccing in the form re-leveling (when you’re already at endgame) and a gold fee (when you’re constantly gambling due to lack luster loot drops), it really took the bloom off the rose. Made me question if this is what I really wanted to spend my free time playing. Even the changes to lessen them further minimized their relevance to me.
IMO, the patch itself did 2 things well: improved the UI for monolith and also the loot filter. I wasn’t as enamored with the other UI changes, since I didn’t notice any material improvements to the functions they supported. In some case (i.e. - passive trees) I feel the new presentation missed a huge opportunity to simplify and better explain respeccing for new players.
I also feel that a lot of LE’s mechanics and its overall premise seem over-engineered, resulting in unnecessary layers of complexity. Beacons, corruption, vessels…lol, I mean seriously, did they leave anything out? I was already having a hard time trying to make sense of the plot before the patch. Full disclosure, I didn’t even pay much attention to it during the campaign. I felt like they went overboard trying to make the premise different., so I never really got into it and just jumped into fighting mobs. I didn’t realize it at the time, but the game-play and builds are the crown jewel with LE, not the loot.
Having spent thousands of hours in PoE, I came to LE thinking it was “PoE-lite”. At first you feel like you’ve found the perfect game, one that trimmed the fat while still retaining the core combat and gameplay mechanics you loved. And of course at first, you think all games should’ve implemented LE’s crafting system - but it shouldn’t revert back to what everything revolves around. If they’re going to keep tacking on layers of complexity to the game, they needs to not only be implemented cleanly and correctly, but also yield a better net benefit than the same thing you were doing before. It’s got to result in more than just grinding maps and trying to power through crafting perfect rolls on gear.
I’ve been having a great time with new system. I also felt the same about the arenas. I like that the arenas are mixed in now with the monos, but when you hit a streak of 4 arenas back to back it can feel very long. And like you said some of them can stretch for a while.
I suppose this will be subjective to everybody depending on what you consider as rewarding. I am genuinely interested in hearing what people would consider a reward that would make them feel like grinding an endgame system would be worth it to them?
Does it have to be something like a mirror of kalandra from poe? Extremely rare, but you know you hit the jackpot if you find it. Or something more like an exalted orb? More common than a mirror, but still rare and valuable.
Personally, from a point of view of someone who has just started doing monoliths and is somewhat new to the game I feel the other way around.
I think it’s too easy to pile on modifiers when you don’t feel very comfortable doing the echoes yet and if you want to experiment with your build a bit and respec you might lock yourself out.
I’m not sure if i’m just missing something, but as far as I can see the echoes get only more difficult as once you do the ones close to start the modifiers on later ones will last for more turns. Doing the shade resets the initial echoes, but also increases the difficulty. There doesn’t seem to be a way to stay at a level that is comfortable for you and farm. So if you decide to respec your build and need to relevel skills and i.e. are capable only doing first lvl 55 echoes, you might be bricked because you no longer are able to get those early ones anymore due to corruption and modifiers piling up?
Community Testers don’t have any additional knowledge that is kept secret from the other community members. If you have questions, feel free to ask on the forums or on the LE discord. But please quit spreading that nonsense!
In theory it may appear like that, but the Shade Echoes closes to the start have a much higher tendency to reduce corruption. You need to go out of you way most of the time to keep increasing your corruption after a few runs. Its very easy (imo) to bring it back down. There are several people on here arguing that the process to increase corruption should be easier.
As for ‘bricking’ a timeline, I’m not sure if in practice it is possible to render a timeline unplayable for a build that is unprepared for it, any more than getting past Lagon for example is a hurdle for many builds (most of mine!). But in a game like this you are never in a tunnel with nowhere else to go. If you can’t kill Lagon then you need to grind and refine until you can (or abandon that build). In this specific example, Lagon is neither bricked nor needs a nerf.
If someone has indeed gotten to their first timeline at 55ish and is having big problems because they rolled some combination of yucky mods for their build then I don’t see how them grinding out a few levels before going at it again is much different to getting temporarily blocked by some boss.
Personally I enjoiy, “you must be this high to ride” checkpoints as they force me to improve. I’m too bloody lazy to do it unless I have to and that’s what creates the feeling of challenge that brings me back to the problem again and again.
@Shrukn While Raw is wrong & wedo have information that the rest of the community doesn’t, it wasn’t given to us by the devs, we had to work it out ourselves & I have no doubt that everybody else will catch up soon enough.
This is true with a grown-up character when you redo some timelines. But with a new character, I like each timeline to have a fresh start, with nothing inherited from the previous ones except the blessings. You wrote “optional” so I agree with you, but I feel it’s really mandatory to have this as an option or at least tied to heroes that already completed the involved timelines.
I agree with most other elements, with the exception of Vessels: I think I still haven’t encounter some. Maybe it’s empowered only? I haven’t played empowered since the patch was released.
On a fresh timeline every single shade will increase you corruption, regardless of how deep it is into the web.
Once you gained corruption the shades that are very close to the center actually will reduce your corruption.
So there is a viable strategy to increase and reduce your corruption to stay at a even level of corruption.
I don’t think you can really lock yourself out.
If you did a mistake and took a especially nasty modifier, that you feel like you can’t comfortably run, you need to take a few echoes very slowly or carefully.
If you did respec or experiment you can always go back to lower timelines.
With my proposed system you would always start a new timeline “fresh”, you only would be able to increase corruption quicker if you want that.
If you don’t want to increase corruption too much in a particular timeline you can always do not so deep shades, that only give minor corruption increase.
What exactly do you disagree with regarding the vessels?
Vessels can always spawn, but their spawn rate is noticeably impacted by both corruption and depth within the echo web
It’s not that I disagree, it’s that I don’t know if I agree because I never found a Vessel.
I only found regular echoes, Beacons and Shades. No Vessel. So I have no opinion about them.
Yes, that would be perfect. As I said, it’s important to keep it optional, but having the possibility to chose between both (normal or faster corruption) would be good.
Hey, I just wanted to clear up a little misconception about the CTs. They don’t get a ton of extra information. We are attempting to get feedback from them that is relevant so the environment needs to be similar to what everyone would experience if we had launched that patch in the state we give it to them.
We answer questions from them with the same detail that we answer the general community. If we tell them something about how a mechanic works, we also tell the community at large.
I don’t really see this as an issue though. It allows players to feel like they’re manipulating the system in a way that improves their chances of successfully progressing further with their character(s). If they want to spend the additional time to set up their echo web in such a way to allow them to progress further with fewer rewards – item rarity & experience gained – then is it such a problem?
With the current system you could argue that players would feel rewarded for learning the mechanics of the echo web and using that knowledge to their advantage if there were one or more modifiers that they wanted to remove before fighting a big boss. In fact, Thyworm has a video detailing ways to reduce the amount of modifiers you have and he clearly likes the system because it gives players more options, in this regard. He also doesn’t even include the beacon or vessel options in that video, so his strategy has room for improvement.
But then i would like to have some extra rewards for not making the boss/shade super easy.
Because both experience and rarity currently does not have any significant impact on bosses.
EDIT: If item rarity would increase the chances of getting the mroe rare Shade Uniques, that would be cool. With that i could live with the system not changing.
But overall i still don’t like it.
A middleground between the two would be:
Vessel and Beacons still reduce modifer counts
But Quest Echoes do not
This would reward discovering the entire echo web and utilizing those special echoes.
But the guaranteed, very easily accessable quest echoes will not help you make your web easier.
Having thrown this into the room, i still would prefer if we change the system to my OP
I was actually going to propose the same thing in my post, but seeing as you did it appears we’ve found a favourable middle ground. This I could certainly live with – if it was changed to this.
