hopefully devs haven’t been misled by the many complaints of echoes monotony on Forum and Reddit. but just in case, look at POE1/2 (mainly) and D4 as a comparison.
POE1/2:
- maps are largely worthless on its own. nobody runs plain maps. maps are just a vehicle to deliver league content.
- specific maps are chosen only due to specific characteristics: layout, mob density, or map-specific drops. most don’t actually care otherwise about what’s naturally in the map.
- for the minority who run maps for its own sake, they still demand means to maximise the map natural inhabitants and all they really care about are the possibility of interesting drops (i.e., rare currency orbs) in the core drop pool.
D4:
- idk. i don’t play this shit. but if twitch is to be believed, the actual dungeon or dungeon layout doesn’t matter at all, only how convenient it is to finish to access loot. fun is measured in the ratio of reward value to time to completion, not dungeon mechanics.
the lessons as applicable to LE is that talk about how boring it is to run echos and scale corruption are pure distractions.
the trash in this market segment care only about “dings”, as shown by how POE2 trash engage with the vaal temple.
the more “dings” per hour, the more “fun”, even if objectively nothing else about echoes or corruption changes.
each trashbag wants a different “delivery mechanism” for “dings”, even if its just an illusion of choice under a trade system as all mechanisms amount to roughly equal “ding value” per hour and all mechanisms are basically just “kill enemies in a circle”.
LE is better served with a mass expansion of the number of “delivery mechanisms” for “dings” than any other possible revamp of the echoes system. the trashbags of this market segment don’t actually care at all about how the echoes system is really structured.