I left a piece of feedback in the discord but I figured in the forums it may get some more traction as well so below I will paste it. TL;DR I love progressing through the whole game and playing a new char, however with the randomized nature of getting quest echos it might take a long time or just not if I hit all the 3% chances. This makes me not engaged in the middle of the endgame “story”. I would love fixed quest echo amount even if it is a grind.
After getting to the reign of dragons timeline on multiple characters now I would like to address some thoughts about the current monoliths. Granted it’s still being changed every few patches I still think my feedback will be relevant on the current implementation of the monoliths. As it now stands after x amount of monoliths there is a % chance the quest echo will spawn. Getting to the empowered timelines is a big part of the core end-game progression and a good thing to progress towards after the campaign. However everytime I reach around reign of dragons I just don’t feel engaged enough anymore with progressing becuase the quest echos are not reliably triggered.
I have around 15 characters in the timelines at various progress and I really enjoying just progressing over and over again but the fact that quest echos are rng really makes me less engaged the moment I hit the lvl 80/85 timelines. I would be fine with a system that I can reliably count on to judge where I am and how far I am away from the empowered timelines. Right now that judgement is unreliable and can take me a short time (Proccing missions on 3% chance) or a hella long time not doing anything other than just run through the maps without caring for anything just wanting to progress. Again, I would still enjoy a long path to get to quest echos, just let me be able to accurately judge how many monos I need to speedrun to get there.
Let me add to that I think penalizing deaths is absolutely fine, the set back is feelable and feels punishing. However setting back to a low % chance to get the quest echo again just feels like an unfair kick in the balls (Coming from a tarkov player which is a game that loves to punish).
I personally think it wouldn’t need a fixed amount to find the quest echo. The annoying thing is if you die while doing the quest echo and having to find it back again. But the finding keeps the feeling of looking through different time lines to find the one you are looking for. The more time lines you dig through the bigger the chance that you find the one you need. But once you find the timeline you are looking for then you should keep the option to do that quest echo since you found it already. Even if you die it should just keep on being 1 of the options you could pick.
This won’t solve your grief, but there are two things to keep in mind that keep me sane when I have an awful string of bad luck getting Quest Echoes to pop:
The counter tracks the number of echoes completed; not the number since the last Quest Echo. That’s important because it means it’s only really the third quest Echo that takes extra time. If the first echo takes ages to proc, the second and third should come (relatively) faster. I’ve had occasion where my luck was so bad, the third quest popped immediately after finishing the second. I’ve also failed the quest, been sent back four echoes and immediately popped the quest again.
The mods you get between the second and third Quest Echoes are insane and scale up the amount of loot fast.
I also try not to stress about progress too much. In a way, Mono is self-balancing. If you die, take the opportunity in the echoes you have to repeat to look for upgrades on your gear before trying again.
while i’m not so experienced in monolith, my issue about Monolith progression is thats death/crash/etc is way too punishing.
you lose progression of 3-4 rifts, but you lose just one modifier. It should not be that, i think it should remove all these modifiers that were activated with these lost rifts.
On very late timelines, this can be insanely punishing. 2-3 of these and it’s basically back to timeline reset.
Lost progression is already quite a punish. i mean if i bail/crash/die, i already lose at least 15 minutes of rift progress.
first, the game is still beta. crashes still happen. i do get that strange sound bug on some specific maps, where when i swawn in, my game immediately freezes and back to desktop i go. The crash is still lost progress.
I know, it’s sound related, as i play with USB headset (Steelseries) and as soon as a i chance windows output to something else (my monitor sound for example, even tho i don’t use it), no more crashes.
I see what you’re saying about removeing mods from 4 lost echoes and frankly, I’m surprised this ISN’T how it’s done. YES, I 110% agree and hope it’s changed next patch. 90’s can be brutal, but getting to 90’s is too much for average player as it is, and death punishment is too much
