I welcomed the introduction of the bonus stability mechanic to motivate players to kill mobs. But this effects only characters that are early in monolith progression or farming for a blessing. Players after a certain LP unique, exalted, or idols still face no downsides when objective rushing to get to the loot pinata asap. Which imo is contrary to the genre gameplay.
So an idea i had popping up in my head lately was following:
remove the loot pinata of the specific rewards at the ‘echo of a world’ reward room and give (rare) enemies inside the echo a drop chance for the chosen reward type.
positive consequences:
rewards still scale with corruption and now also with quantity of enemies killed
motivation to clear echoes of valuable reward types
shift efficient playstyle for loot farming from objective rushing an echo to killing mobs that drop the rewards
The pinata as you call it, is why we chose an echo path for those specific rewards… I am not sure that I would want to be “forced” to try and kill all mobs in an echo to “find” that reward…
So, on the one hand - yes, if I wanted to go for max stability then the pinata reward from a mob drop in the echo would be fine… but I would prefer the option to rush through the map if I didnt want additional stability points but just wanted the random unique or exalted item drop at the end.
Now, if the pinata could have more than one drop by being moved into the echo - i.e. you could get the reward multiple times, then hell yes, I would clear every time regardless… OR maybe if the pinata in the echo of a world could have multiple drops if you maxed the optional stability… then I would also clear…
Hmm… true, didnt think of that… if it was just a drop in an echo it would potentially mean you could get the reward without actually completing the echo.
lets say the player choses an exalted dagger reward for the next echo, idea was that now mobs have an additional chance to drop an exalted dagger, not the whole loot pinata
but that’s up to ehg how they think it would be best. I just want that slaying mobs feels rewarding.
than mobs lose the additional drop chance for that reward if you reenter/ rerun the echo.
My problem is that in the current scenario if you fail the mono you loose the reward while from your suggestion you’d be “getting” the reward while you’re in the mono whether you kill the boss or die/fail.
if you portal out of a uncompleted echo you dont lose the reward.
So you could farm exalted daggers and not clear the objective, portal out and then go farm some more.
Honestly I think we have enough incentive to kill enemies now. Hell most of my uniques drop from normal monsters, I get 2-3 uniques an echo why would I need to farm unique echos unless im REALLY target farming.
There is a point where you remove the point of even having the objective because now the play is to just kill monsters so why have a boss/objective at all?
Currently ill be honest, the only reason some builds are even playable is because LE offers the player a choice, you can rush objectives very fast, or delete packs to get more out of a given echo.
if the reward structure shifts from being a choice to being optimally all about farming every monster then you remove all the interesting builds who have poor clear but strong single target from being played.
reward objectives (echo boss/ spires) either could get a multiplier to the reward drop chance or the rewards for completing an echo gets shifted more towards stability gain and less to loot.
So we would get:
objective rushing → stability, which implys mono pregrsseion, quest echo boss rushing etc
slaying mobs → loot
no because the reward drop chance would be lost in that case, i’m aware that this could come with problems. losing the reward drop chance when RL does RL things and one needs to portal out would feel really bad. Instead of resetting the state of the echo it could be saved for later completion (just some simple data like percentage of mobs killed/ x of y spires destroyed etc).
thats a good point, when the expected gameplay loop is to slay monsters to get loot there is no need to tie loot drops to objectives . As i mentioned in my response to Llama, those objectives could then be used to reward meta progression like stability etc.
I’m aware that my suggestion would shift the meta to clear speed for item farming and honestly i think thats better for the game than the current, in my perception, movespeed meta. If there are issues with some builds, archetypes or skills thats something EHG should balance/ adjust.
Right now if you movespeed meta to objectives you get pretty donkey loot.
The best ways to farm exalted currently is to do one of the the dungeons mostly soulfire bastion because it requires no resource other then keys. And where do keys come from? monsters and mono bosses, which again after you hit 200~ corruption and are deep in a web its way more advantageous to clear mobs to finish a boss cycle in like 5-7 echos then it is to rush and need 15.
I think that unless you are trying to get a specific item, like lets say you want mourning frost boots and dont have a pair, rushing “unique boot” and “unique” echos is probably a good play.
But if you are farming for LP uniques, then killing monsters is well worth your time, at even midling corruption like 200 you get so many uniques simply by killing monsters, while the unique reward echos are few and far between.
Objective rushing is currently imo weaker then if your build simply kills things while moving like with warpath or has really fast easy self clearing like auto cast abilities or things that chain on death like spirit plague etc.
But builds like vengence dont have an option to get good op clearing like that are those builds just supposed to suck even worse?
I really just dont get this push to make AoE projectile builds be the be all end all of the game…
