First of all I would like to say great job on the addition of harbingers, very exciting and well thought out mechanic that makes monoliths a lot more fun. With that being said, I found myself still becoming very bored with monoliths and I have a few suggestions to improve them but first I think it’s important to understand why they become boring. I believe it is because it feels as if the echoes have no connection to the monolith itself, for example the objectives are all from the same pool, the layouts can all be almost exactly the same, etc. On top of that idea there is another issue, it feels as if even in empowered monoliths the rate of which you get “unique boots” for example in spirits of fire is too low. Sometimes you get lucky and get a bunch of target farm nodes and sometimes you just get a bunch of stuff you already have too much of.
Some ways to improve this are:
Add character to the monolith echoes themselves for example:
- Add timeline unique maps and objectives for example in reign of dragons the objective could be to slay a dragon mini-boss at the end where you have to enter a broken down castle to slay it (unique map to that timeline)
- Add timeline unique echos for example in the reign of dragons timeline you could have a corrupted echo with a boss symbol on it and when you enter the echo you have to fight a gauntlet of dragon bosses for 5-10 waves in order to claim a juicy loot pile of items with high tier affixes
- Add ways to modify echoes, a node far away from the center that removes all of a specific type of node (only able to block 1 at a time) for example, you enter the echo with a symbol that indicates it’s a blocking echo, at the end you have the option to choose any of the specific types of echoes to block then it resets your web. There is a connector to the beginning that allows you to undo it and reset. - Or instead of blocking find an echo far from the beginning which allows you to choose a specific reward type that is boosted to 2x as common (just an example could be 1.5x as common or whatever you think is balanced).
- Add as many new layouts as possible whether they are specifically themed to the monolith or not and try to make them different from the campaign. I know this is a big ask and probably takes a lot of time but it will significantly improve the end game because at the moment this is the biggest complaint from all of my friends that I get into the game. They get to level 85ish and quit because they’re so bored of trying to get the uniques they need with LP.
Those are my suggestions I know I’m forgetting some things but I think that is already probably too much feedback from one person. Also, I think with all of the great changes you guys are making to the game you probably already had a lot of these ideas except much more creative and well thought out than my suggestions here. Keep up the great work and I can’t wait to see how the game progresses in the future.