Based on the players I talk with and watch play the game on Twitch streams it seems to be a pretty common mindset that the most ‘efficient’ use of time when running monolith of fate is to skip most mobs and rush the goal of the echo. This allows you to farm reward caches and stability (and thus boss drops, blessings, etc) much faster.
However the more I play and perform the ritual of “normal monos are only there to run through and get to empowered monoliths” and then continuing to skip mobs in empowered to farm reward caches and bosses the more I start to feel like I’m playing a walking simulator instead of an ARPG.
I have two suggestions that I’d like to propose.
Allow stability gained from a particular echo to scale with the kill completion of an echo in a similar fashion that the chest at the end of an echo does. Base stability may need to be balanced such that an average kill count/percentage would result in roughly the same stability as before. The upside of this would be that clearing mobs in a map, or even going out of your way to full clear an echo, could be an efficient use of player time if they’re looking to have a high stability gain rate for their timelines. Overall this would fix the problem that currently exists in that it feels like a waste of time to actively kill mobs rather than running past them.
This second point is about further rewarding character progressing for players that prefer to complete the campaign. I’d love to see acts 8, 9, and future acts 10, 11, and 12 give a fixed % of stability for all normal monolith of fate timelines. Anywhere from 5-10% per act so that if a character would complete the entire campaign they’d already have ~25% of all normal monolith timelines’ stability requirements met. The main reason I would like to see this change is again that it feels like a waste of time to complete the campaign when you still need to complete all of the normal timelines to get started on empowered timelines to get your empowered blessings etc etc. My daydream would be that a player that decides to complete the campaign and a player that decides to start monolith of fate early would reach empowered timelines at roughly the same time.
For giving some incentive to actually kill mobs already in normal monolith, I really like your suggestions.
But generally speaking I feel like, this is a “player mentality” issue.
The echo rewards can feel very good at times, and thus player feel like these are “the only rewards”, but I think player actually forget, that a big portion of your actual loot comes from random drops, from random mobs.
I think the amount of loot both from the mobs and from the end chest is actually decent already. And I really don’t know why so many players feel like rushing is the best strategy.
If you solely farm for blessings or boss uniques I feel like rushing to the objective to finish individual echoes as soon as possible should always be a choice.
But I would actually prefer buffing rewards from mobs and end chest scaling loot even further, instead of putting some arbitrary scaling on killing mobs additionally.
Killing mobs should always feel worth it and I prefer something that naturally feels good, than putting some numbers behind killing enough monsters, just so player can comprehend their reward/progress (in this case timeline stability).
By makiing killing mobs giving everything (loot and meta progress to a greater system) there will be less different strategies.
If you feel like rushing is the way to go, there is nothing wrong with it, as long as the alternative would have other meaningful rewards in otehr departments.
TLDR:
Putting an arbitrary timeline stability scaling on mob kills will not make it feel better
Killing mobs should always feel worth it, so buffing loot from kilsl and end chest might be better
There should always be different strategies for different goals and tieng all overlying systems to mob kills as well might not be the way to go
I think it’s just kind of a “time thing.”
→ To run through an Empowered Monolith once you need, depending on your build, between 30 and 150 minutes.
Whether it is more effective to just run through and knock 1000 monsters or only half as many monoliths done and also 1000 monsters knocked gives you just the arithmetic, most come sooner or later on it.
Sounds good.
You could also make the monoliths a little more linear or something.
Or you don’t show the monolith targets, if you have to search it’s a bit different again. [Above all it needs more variation where the targets are to be found then].
Only time I rush Monoliths is if I am trying to increase Corruption levels and need the fastest way to find Orobyss islands with +corruption levels… Ways to improve corruption management have been suggested/discussed many times elsewhere so no need to rehash that.
Rest of the time I find its actually more rewarding to clear Monos… The reward chests loot quantities are based on mono clearing. More you clear, the more loot from the chest… Its been like that for a long time… I also find that getting drops during the play is far more valuable as @Heavy mentioned.
Your option 1 (about kill completion) has been suggested before… not specifically linked to stability - so thats a nice idea - get bonus stability if you clear a map/percentage cleared… Problem with this suggestion for me is that you already get huge amounts of stability the further from the starting point you go so stability is not much of a motivator for me.
Hi Heavy, some time ago there was a post which caught some traction about how it takes too long to reach empowered timelines and i think the issues are related. Many players just try to reach empowered asap, because rewards, xp, money etc. there are better. So why should players clear a normal timeline and “waste time”, if they can do the same in empowered. Since normal timeline is just an obstacle in the way to empowered it feels incredibly grindy.
Also you are totally right that random drops are very good. But in empowered many players hunt for the specific unique drops which is why they just rush to objectives. A solution would be to make the targeted unique drops not a reward, but a general increased drop rate of that timeline (so timeline xyz has an increased chance to drop unique amulets), giving further incentive for clears.
The bonus rewards that specify a reward type aren’t the ones that give more loot the more you kill, that’s the chest you get on the top-right of the echo of a world.
That’s fine and all but certain uniques only drop from certain mono bosses and a fair majority of these are centered around the core playstyle of said build. It feels like rushing echoes to refill the stability is the best and most efficient way in this regards.
A lot of chat I also notice people saying how they’ve been farming the same boss not only to get their desired unique, but one that has any amount of LP on it.
I wonder how many incoming players realize that the mono chest is directly tied to the amount of clearing you’ve done? My guess is very few. This concept it not conveyed well during your time in the mono or the echo of a lost world. I am aware that it’s stated in the game guide, but players aren’t going to be aware of it’s presence until they stumble onto the guide and also think to look up monoliths.
What if a progress bar appeared at the top of the screen or near the XP bar while the player was in an echo? The bar fills as you kill generic enemies, or maybe specific special mobs that have to be targeted/hunted down. At certain points on the bar is a little reward icon that, when reached, grants a bonus of some kind: extra echo chest treasure, gold, stability, a bonus shrine appearing in the next mono, whatever. The player could hover over each to get a tooltip explanation.
The main goal here would be to make it very obvious to the player “Killing mobs in the monolith can be worth your time. You have an option other than making a beeline towards the quest marker.”
I’d love to see more incentives to clear the echo mobs. More “magic find” in the chest and echo reward per %mobs cleared or something.
But if we’re doing this, I’d also love to have a mob counter like (I hate to say the P word) maps in PoE. Show me how many I have remaining, please.
Using the MoF to level alts, and get all passive points and idol slots, would be fantastic. Perhaps require an account to reach empowered monos first? Then it’s unlocked for your account, in the same way that Adventure Mode and Rifts are in D3.
Or a merchant that you could buy tokens from, to unlock per character, the way they have it in Grim Dawn. Unlock all the waypoints, idols, and passives.
I haven’t seen it lately, but it used to be in the loading screen tips. I think the big issue now is it’s more efficient to get less loot faster, than it is to get better loot longer, because the end chest really isn’t that great. There are some maps I’ll full clear depending on the mob type.
I love giant crabs, especially twinned ones. And I always full clear the Bloodworks, because that’s my favorite map layout. And the end chest is really never different than skipping all the trash. Give players a (good, better) reason to do it.
What if there was an occasional big incentive to delay going directly to the quest objective, just to shake things up? Example:
There is a 25% chance on arriving in an echo that the game will alert the player that “A Time-lost enemy walks this world.” Killing the enemy quadruples the chest reward, but the enemy has to be hunted down, or is distinguished on the minimap via a red quest marker. It’s obvious that this is an optional objective, but when the player beats them their echo chest has an impressive golden glow to let them know it has been infused with extra goodies.
If I can rush throughmonoliths and kill bosses and shades in a small time frame I’ll always rush. When I get to a point when my clear speed suffers I go for new equip and kill more enemys.
I’m at a point with one of my toons where I get a usefull item (for my minmax taste) every 20-30 hours that benefits my build propably. Clearing fast or killing every enemy in a monolith isn’t changing everything about the I need to get an item so I rush from start to finish to get the bossdrops.
It must be a BIG bonus to make me change my ways because right now it feels kinda useless to kill the enemys instead of getting the objective done.
I really don’t think the reward scaling matches time invested right now. I’ve tried it before, just to experiment - and I think in many cases you can barely tell the difference in rewards between a rushed Echo and a full cleared Echo.
I think adjustments need to be made there first.
What I would really, really like to see is some kind of Checkpoint system. So normally, we get one reward egg - I would like to keep that, and then add 2 more, one for 50% of mobs cleared, and a third for 75% mobs cleared - with some kind of progress bar in the quest tracker.
That would encourage me to clear a lot more.
Also, another barrier is modifiers. Right now, it feels like there are two classes of modifiers - modifiers you steamroll, and then modifiers that are just straight annoying like Glancing Blow and enemies take reduced damage at High Health.
In those cases I’m just rushing anyway to get those out of my mod pool.
I think eventually some kind of rework to modifiers would be needed too, because that’s another thing often pushing players to just get out and get it done quickly.
I guess thirdly, enemy composition is another barrier to full-clearing.
When I get a map full of Diamond Matrons, or so many Ice Goliaths or Profane Flesh that I can’t see my character - just, No. I’m getting out of there ASAP. The enemy composition in Echoes can feel really ‘off’ sometimes. I’m going to rush out of those so I can do my next worms and spiders only Echo in peace.
While not a bad idea, one that could be improved upon, that would just lead players to: Point A-time-lost enemy-> echo objective. Now, if you were to clear either all of the mobs, or a % of mobs before that enemy appeared, that could give incentive to clear, as long as the reward is worth the players’ time.
For a while it does feel better until ive done it a lot and then iam looking forward to more juicy loot. Especially since my character grows after finding loot.
Beside that i think its partly the players problem and partly the problem of the system.
It doesnt have a random generated map. This makes the system getting stale quicker for certain players (me atleast).
Not enough variety of special events which could occur. This could be small ones like getting a random chance in your map system of dropping a special mini boss or a secret pathway. Getting a chance of getting a special tileset were the monsters do more damage and a few special mobs spawn in the area with a higher chance of dropping a unique with legendary potential with a max of 1/2 (so bosses etc still get there farm importancy).
Wolcen did many things wrong but what i liked was having a chance of encountering a special dungeon with a merchant that would sell special gear which was only obtainable at that merchant. Those were the extra exciting moments of breaking the standard procedures in the endgame system.
I think this is what the LE system is still missing. I do have the feeling with the beacons that theyve added btw! I hope they add more of these things to keep the monolith more interesting.
Its not worth it in my opinion, iam a type of guy who loves to fully complete every map.
In POE i still do sometimes despite knowing its not effective most of the time.
In LE i hoped with the extra loot it would be more rewarding but in my opinion its not. The extra loot drops are nice but most of the time the type of loot is not worth it (on my end atleast).
So in my opinion its more rewarding to rush so you get to clear faster and get to higher corruption faster. Or to kill faster to get faster to higher lvl monoliths and farm there.
Agreed and no random chances of popping of special events/monsters or something which might keep players in the map to search for it. Which might reward the extra time you spent in the map.
