Ideas/thoughts for end game tweaks and improvements

[Heavy]

Hey,

first off, great, very detailed feedback.

I just want to give some thoughts on some of the stuff you mentioned:

No. 1

@Deliya

Stronger themes in the monoliths/echoes.
Currently, I love the story elements built into the monoliths, as it gives a good sense of story building to the world. A great example of this is the timeline story where the Void is slowly wiping out the Empire. This was something I was really intrigued by during the campaign. However, it’s a bit jarring to have one quest mission where Void and Empire enemies are fighting eachother, and the next randomly generated one they’re standing side by side united against me. My suggestion on this is to either limit or tailor the different zones in the end-game to have specific enemy types (for example, in the previously mentioned timeline, Void/Empire enemy types will never spawn together). I also find it a bit weird to fight random animals in the middle of a primarily void or undead map, but that’s just me.

I personally think that the variety in enemies is really good. The types of enemies are very consitent for the story portion and only start to “get weird”, when you are in the monolith, since the Monolith are “random timelines”
There was a simialr thread about this topic a whiel ago.

Enemy Population, Odd enemies where you wouldn't think they would be

Been playing for quite some time now and have been enjoying it, and looking forward to full release and the rest of the story. I have a recommendation on map population for the MoF. I often see enemies where it doesn’t make sense that would be there. I just did a Frozen Forest and it had Sirens, which are water-based mobs. When you have a frozen area, it just doesn’t make sense to have creatures like that or fire creatures. Thank you

2.

@Deliya

I know this has been mentioned, but allowing an option to auto-pickup shards would be amazing. Even better if they also go straight into the forge from my inventory.

There are countless of topics about this topic, here is one of the more recent ones. I am very strongly against this. Since not all QoL is actually beneficial for the gameplay IMO.

Money and Crafting Ingredients should drop directly into stash

Its nothing but busy work for the player having to pick them all up. Just QoL it and have them drop straight to stash. Forge stash for the crafting ingredients.

3.

@Deliya

This is a big one for me, because I play on a TV, not a monitor, and the UI is massive. Item tooltips are sometimes so big that they freak out and jitter all over the place (particularly an issue with some set or unique items that have a lot of affixes on them) when I hit Alt. I don’t know how many other people have this issue, but introducing UI scaling should be fairly easy, coding wise?

I am 99% sure that EHG is working on UI improvements all the time.
Especially ultrawidescreen support and stuff like this will come at some point.
I don’t see why adjustable UI shouldn’t come, but that might come after all base UI changes are in place.

4.

@Deliya

More interesting monolith modifiers.
I would love to see some more interesting modifiers built into the monolith. They just seem a bit bland to me right now, with it primarily being damage/health increases or chance for X buff when hit/on hit/at half health. Something like “increased likelihood of Void enemies”, “Mage enemies have x% increased AOE size”, or “Range enemies now use Multi-shot” would make it a lot more interesting (though some of those may be a bit harder to code than others, admittedly). Even something like “double monsters spawned” would be really fun!

While i really like the foundation of the MoF System i agree 100% that w need more variety of those modifiers, together with some other changes.
I just recently did create a thread, sadly it is already closed =C

How to improve Monolith Of Fate Endgame System [0.7.10c]

So first of all, i want to say, i really like MoF as a core endgame system. It is really fun and very modular, it can so easily be build upon by the devs and i am eager to see what they have in store for us. I want to point out some key things that i really like in the current implementation: “Choose your own difficulty”, you can run various level timelines the high or low you want and can reset at any time if you feel like it’s getting to daunting Progress on each individual timeline ge…

5.

@Deliya

More set/unique variety.
One thing that I’ve noticed in this game is that 95% of real end-game builds rely almost entirely on crafted items. I have not once found a unique item or set item that made me go “Wow, I’d like to try a build around that”, because odds are that I can probably craft an item better than that. Case and point, on my lvl 86 VK Rive melee build, I have the Forgotten Knight sword/amulet, and tried it on the dummy. Full buffs, I did 3K DPS LESS than with my T13 Deicide sword and T14 Jade Amulet. Those aren’t even that high (two items that are top of my replacement list). I would like to have SOME sense of excitement around these items, but as is all they mean is a $500 vendor item, mostly. Either that, or something interesting to do with uniques/sets, such as shattering them for a chance at a very rare affix. Not sure, but itemization at end-game is pretty much craft or nothing, and having played POE, Grim Dawn and a bunch of other ARPGs, I do miss impactful unique/set items a bit. Honestly, Idols are a lot more impactful to build variety than unique/set items are (these are a move in the right direction, IMO).

I would of course love more, more and even more uniques/sets, i think.
But for your particular example of the Forgotten Knight Set, i think you missed the entire point of the set. The sword is not as strong as a crafted sword, bit there is Flat Void Spell Damage on it, which is UNIQUE to swords.
This is build defining. The whole set revolves around a bruiser/spellcaster playstyle.

On top of that there are plenty of other uniques/sets that are totally endgame worthy.
But LE definitely revolved more around crafted rare and exalted items, but that’s a designchoice.
You are supposed to have like 1, 2 maybe maximum 3 unique/set items.

6.

@Deliya

More detailed Skill summaries.
I’m a min-maxer. I’ll admit that. Right now one of the things that is a bit frustrating is that I need to do a ton of math on the side to figure out what my actual, for example, crit/crit multi or ignite/bleed chance is with a specific skill. I have the basic stats on my character, but there’s no way for me to know exactly how my skills, such as Shield Throw or Wandering Spirits, for example, are impacted or increased by the nodes I take in that skill. For anyone doing theorycrafting it’s a bit of an exercise in mathematics because there’s no built in summary. Something where I can see the skill specific crit, crit multi, ailment, etc chances would be absolutely amazing. I know the DPS on the tooltip is coming, but I also hope that this will be included somehow. The more details the better!

As you said, the tooltip dps is just around the corner and the devs did confirm, that they have plenty mroe plans with this system. It’s just a matter of time and i am sure we will get all the detailed informations, probably in the character sheet or in a new extra window.

7.

@Deliya

More exciting monolith goals.
I have to say, there are some types of monolith goals that just bore me. Prime example of this is the “Cleanse the forge” or “Spire” types. They are absolutely no challenge. The spires deal no damage (literally none of my characters have ever been in any danger from them), and their AOE size is tiny so they’re very easy to side-step anyway. These encounter types need to be reworked in some way, IMO. Maybe the spires are guarded by a boss of some kind? Or have an extra large spawn of enemies around them? Maybe they fling different spell types based on their damage type throughout the map (Imperial spire casts raise dead, hungering spirits, or flame spire casts fireball, meteor, etc). Similarly, the forges are just dull. They spawn a few weak enemies, then poof it’s gone. Something needs to spice it up a bit. The only thing that the forges do is block movement and range skills, so the encounter is a little more annoying for the 5-10 seconds that they last, depending on class. Maybe the forge spits out elemental spells based on their type, or they spawn a boss at the end (not just a rare enemy type), or do something other than a mini-arena. Anyway, just my 2 cents on this one.

In my MoF thread i posted on your point No. 4 i also made suggestions for more objectives.
And i know that some of the devs observed that thread, so i am sure we will eventually get some new stuff to the MoF System.
The system is so modular, they can just add new stuff without changing the base system.

8.

@Deliya

Arena.
Honestly, Arena is a bit boring. I couldn’t get enough of Grim Dawn’s crucible (essentially an arena). I played it tons. It had a lot of interesting modifiers, bosses that are exclusive to it, etc. Even just including a boss in the arena every 10 levels would make it more interesting. Imagine running into Lagon at Wave 100! As is it pretty much entails endless waives of the same enemies over and over, which gets really dull eventually, even if they do get harder.

Absolutely agree, i despise arena.
I want some of the other, not yet disclosed endgame modes before an arena overhaul, but arena is basically no playworthy content for me at this point.