400 curruption takes too long to get to.
by the time the player gets to empowered they already know all they need to know about boss patterns
Also most builds will not want to hop into empowered before doing some levelling first anyways
While I agree that grinding through is a slog, I’m not sure I think simply unlocking empowered for future characters is the way to go, personally. I do think there’s a middle ground to be found between what we have now and what is being proposed, though.
Perhaps a % increase in timeline stability per character on the account that has unlocked empowered. This would lessen the grind a little bit more for each successive character you take through monos without entirely skipping something that the devs appear to clearly want you to have to do.
If it was before I stopped playing I would have disagreed with you but coming back and seeing this corruption stuff…I don’t really want to have to try and raise it across every single character, that’s a pain
I don’t know what the middle ground would look like but it would be nice to have something that still let’s me experience the joy of a new kind character, a slight grind but not feel undeserving of jumping straight into empowered monos
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The basic monolith unlocks should be linear, not this multiple path garbage. For the completionist in me I will unlock them all, but for the pure straight run to the end I do much like Raw does
I am right with him on this point. Increasing the stability needed for the quest echoes was an unnecessary time lock.
I would suggest that the number of regular/emp monos be reduced to such content that the mono islands are arranged in the map that they look like they are spiraling down towards the black hole in the middle. Sort of like the reverse of the climb up to get your mastery. Get rid of non act boss mono’s or at least change the monos to be act bosses.
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Right now, the Stash is account wide. Its a separate file on your PC than your character file. So, LE already has the concept of “account-wide” stuff.
So, what you do is this.
Every time a new character completes a specific Mono the 1st time (only the 1st time), you record it in the account-wide file for that Mono.
Example:
- Character 1 completes “Fall of the Outcasts”. It’s set to 1. They can repeat it 100 times, doesn’t matter, its still 1.
- Character 2 completes it. Now its 2. Etc. for each Mono.
Then, whenever any character runs that Mono, they get bonus EXP and Stability (only those two things) equal to the # of times it has been run account-wide, as a %.
i.e. if you have 10 characters that ran it, you get +10% exp and Stability. 70 characters = 70% bonus.
When they eventually do Leagues/Seasons, this can become a League-specific thing (i.e. 5 characters in league complete it, 100 characters outside the league, you only get 5% bonus.)
Why?
EXP: this lets you progress through the monos faster because you’re leveling faster.
Stability: this lets you complete the mono (finish to the end boss) faster as you need less echoes to get there.
Now, I know people also want to grow Corruption faster, but EHG did already introduce one mechanic for that, and I feel that’s separate from this thread, which is more about “not redundantly running non-empowered echoes a lot each new character.”
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I was going to roll a new character, but figured i’d google if they are account bound. I was sad to come across this post showing me its not. I can’t even imagine trying to do all that again…
So what else do you plan on doing while you level from 55 to 100?
What about a “Skip by Trial”? If you can beat a 400 corruption random shade poof you opened up empowered timelines. or something along these lines after you unlocked them with your first toon.
I believe an old saying that applies here is "How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice Practice Practice! So you Should still have to grind to get to empowered Monoliths, but there shoul be some benefit to having made the grind to their multiple times. I thunk EHG has done this a little bit ( not much past 100corrruption myself yet) but I think there should be something that a playercan find at 200+ corruption that will help them along but not neccessarily let them bypass everything straight to empowered.
I still liked the Marvel Heroes system of every level 100 character you have increases global exp gain by 5%. So each alt you make, assuming you level each to 100, gets easier to get to the end. They could just limit the bonus to those characters in the same game mode/league.
In MH it was actually 25% for the first, 15% for the 2nd, 10% for the third char.
Then 5% for each one after that up to a maximum of 200%
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It’s been a long time. 
So are we saying that you just level faster? That wouldn’t necessarily ease up the grind I thought people were talking about (empowered monoliths). It would indirectly make it easier by allowing you to build your character quicker though.
What about a combination of increased exp based on how many 100s you have (in that mode/season etc) and offering the bonus corruption to all characters are catching up to your highest corruption timeline (again, in that mode/season etc)?
Or would that be TOO MUCH catchup?
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Yea, it could be more than just exp since this game uses more than just exp to progress. While having a corruption gain bonus would be nice, I think what would really be needed to speed up the progression to the end game would be a stability/instability gain bonus. That way you could complete timelines faster to open up the Emp Mono faster.
There are thousands of ways to make the catchup easier/faster and so less repetitive and boring. It’s like any other reputation system in any other game and so there are so many examples of how to do it.
In my eyes the problem is not how to implement a mechanic but wether EHG is willing to do it. Are they fine with the current grind? Are they aware actively working on a solution? It depends on their philosophy.
In the current state of the game it feels a bit like they had to stretch the content they have to not be able to rush through. There needs to be content for the player to go through in order to max the character level. The easiest way is to generate infinite scaling content. And to repeat content in higher difficulty.
While the infinite scaling content can be a lifetime decision for the entire existence of the game (a philosophy pillar to base the game on), the repetition of content is propably just a temporarely fix until theres more content created.
Imho if we had a differentiation between normal and empowered that not only revolves around a higher difficulty and better rewards, but adds different mechanics:
- boss mechanics, map mechanics, side content on maps
- or even a different quest echoes with different “story” twists
- different map bosses
- maybe different tilesets, map layouts or even completely new timelines
The empowered timelines don’t feel any different than the normal ones. Nobody could tell the difference besides the modifiers scaling harder. Buts that’s just numbers on a screen and a good build won’t really feel the difference for a long time.
Having an empowered timeline could be an opportunity to introduce new stuff even with “recycling” the most content. Adding new boss skins, map layouts and alter some of the bosses attacks, add new enemy types specifically for empowered, giving them some cool themed abilities.
This all would make the playthrough feel less repetitive. It would not necessarily create the feeling of deja-vu and “why do I have to do it all again”. There should new things be there for the player to discover. New mechanics, new content.
In this case I think we wouldn’t talk about catchup mechanics or account wide progression so much because people would enjoy repeating that content more.
Currently it’s a matter of content recycling because there isn’t enough for the player to do to progress and it starts feeling repetitive very fast. For some people more and sooner, for others less and later (never).
I am just adding my voice to the No side.
If you want to get to empowered mono’s just rush to the last 3 mono’s and complete them; people in the tournaments (VisionGL’s) manage it with new characters by about the end of the second day.
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Totally agree with OP and while they are at it… they can get rid of the multiple timelines per Monolith. Once is enough… thanks. I’m not sure if any are skippable… etc.
And that is probably based on 30-40 hours of game play? Using that logic means yet another quality arpg that base’s character progression on a 70hr per week hardcore gamer/streamer. No thanks. To be clear, I don’t want to zoom to high end game or even be able to reach 500 corruption with a character ever, but there needs to be some balance.
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Yeah I don’t think this needs to happen, I would like to see once you beat a monolith having the option to challenge the boss instead of having to run the monolith a bunch more and do 2 other quests before i can fight him each time for each monolith.
I absolutely agree with OP. For a normal Player with a job and family it takes way waaaay to long to get there and it doesnt get more exciting with each alt char. Its not only going through the Story but also to All normal monoliths and then do ALL the empowered once again and doing each Monolith takes a lot of time onnits own.
If it stays that way I can play one char per season Max as I dont have that much time and it will be too twdious after some time.
That is the same Problem with the Story geind in POE and therefore I stopped playing it completely (POE).