The MoF is a pretty cool endgame system, but it lacks a few things that a lot of players want. First, the difficulty scaling on it is pretty low, causing empowered timelines to not feel much different from regular timelines. Second, there isn’t much player control in what happens, since we’re just picking between two random modifiers. I have an idea that could help with both of these problems and make timelines, and farming in general, more rewarding.
New loot drop: Fate Stones
Fate stones are consumables that can drop in endgame. Fate stones can be placed into a timeline at the beginning of the timeline, and they add a modifier to the timeline for the entirety of that timeline (until the player either kills the final boss or resets the timeline). Fate stones also offer some sort of benefit.
Example
Fate of Rare Fortune: Rare enemies have 100% more health but enemies drop 50% more gold.
Fate stones are almost always more multipliers, meaning they multiply off of any increases. So in this case, if the player were to use the Fate of Rare Fortune, and choose the modifier that increases rare health by 100%, then rares would have 4 times the health they normally have. This makes choosing modifiers more interesting, since the player has to account for what Fate Stones are active in the timeline.
Fate stones could also be used to improve target farming in ways that are not currently possible.
Example
Fate of Imminent Danger: The final timeline boss has 30% more damage but also offers an additional blessing choice.
This fate stone increases the number of blessings choices a player has after killing the boss from 3 to 4, giving the player a greater chance of getting the blessing they want when blessing farming. But the player can have an even better chance if they are willing to push the content further, because there are also Empowered Fate Stones that only drop from the most challenging content:
Example
Fate of Empowered Imminent Danger: The final timeline boss has 100% more damage but also offers two additional blessing choices.
The Fate of Imminent Danger and the Fate of Empowered Imminent Danger can be stacked together to give a total of 6 blessing choices, but they also multiply off of each other, meaning a boss with these Fate Stones will hit incredibly hard, forcing players to be either very careful with their modifier choices, skilled enough to avoid the damage, or tanky enough to handle a very large amount of damage.
I think such a system could create greater longevity of the MoF for each character by making the endgame more challenging for those who wish to push their builds while also allowing players to have more control over their rewards. It also has the benefit of improving loot diversity, since Fate Stones are a consumable drop that players will find exciting.