This request is more about bringing an additional option to the table, rather then being lazy. Games like this thrive on having more then 1 way to play (even in regards to leveling a character).
If they do it like the current monolith system, this would also be a nice way to show us more of their world building. Maybe show the story from different character’s points of view? Maybe even let us be the ‘bad guy’ while leveling up alts and see things from the undead emperor’s point of view?
I want a way to level without having to play through the entire story, but I don’t think that the leveling journey itself should be trivialized. Nowadays the campaign in loot-driven RPGs almost always feels like a tutorial. The idea that “the game only starts when endgame starts” became self-fulfilling for the genre.
The trick is to make sure that the journey matters. Rushing to endgame is seen as desirable because that’s when we now have all of the skills in our toolbox to address threats, where the loot most people see as valuable starts dropping, and where we expect to actually be challenged. One of the reasons I’m a fan of selectable difficulty from a game’s beginning is that I feel like I can test my skills right from the get-go rather than waiting for things to get more exciting.
I love story and lore and will read everything my first time through, but I don’t like going through the exact same zones in the exact same order talking to the exact same NPCs on my dozenth-plus character, because I’ve already mastered that portion of the game. Optional randomization and difficulty tiers on my journey helps to keep things fresh.
Would love to have the option to go straight to endgame grin with new toons as well.
Some of the arpg now have it already.
Grim dawn has item to unlock highest difficulty together w/ all lower one bonus.
D3 doesn’t require u to play story more than 1, u can go to adventure mode right away.
Wolcen allow you to skip story and go to “City building” mode too.
That said, it’s an OPTIONAL choice, doesn’t mean alt toons can’t go through story and if one desire to do it. Maybe add low lvl monolith?
I would love to see an alternate option to playing through the story on every single character. It’s one of my main gripes with PoE, too.
Maybe add a “leveling” monolith that scales with your character from levels 1-54 since the standard one takes over at level 55? The endgame monolith used to scale before so this wouldn’t even require developing new mechanics.
Adding an alternate option for leveling doesn’t take anything away from folks who want to go through the story each time. It just adds another option, and options are a good thing.
The standard monolith has special rewards(blessings) and boss fights. Having the levelling monolith be entirely non-boss fights would encourage people to run it for farming when they have yet to do the other monoliths. Also if it is going to scale it should not have a cap.
I don’t really see the issue here, especially if the rewards scale to the level of the monsters. Capping the “leveling monolith” would also exclude higher tiers of drops from showing up anyhow.
The reason I mentioned a cap is because of how the standard monolith was remade to have capped tiers. If the devs wanted an infinitely-scaling endgame monolith, they’d have left that in for the endgame instead of changing it to what we have now.
I’m sorry if my points weren’t clear. I was advocating a way to catch new alt characters up to where the current monolith begins, not replace the current endgame with something the devs already took out.
One Idea from my side (dind’t made a deep thinking of it):
-> 1. You have to Progresss and get a “feeling” for the new char.
2. Progression is much faster. (Not running long ways in areas where are nearly no enemies or the enemies are much too weak)
This might be obvious, but I thought I’d mention it: this is related to the respec cost discussion, where the devs’ current standpoint is that it will not be free. Respeccing your character as an alternative for alts I mean. If you could clone your character /create an alt with less time investment than respeccing your previous character, that would encourage folks to do that instead of going the expensive respec route (which, in essence is the same forced repetition of (re)leveling).
Given that respec cost discussion, I expect the devs to be consistent and therefore choose not to give the players an opportunity for easier leveling of alternative characters, but I hope I’m wrong on this count 
Something not being free is not the same as something being expensive. The current passives respec cost is not free but it’s also not expensive (it’s something in the ballpark of 50-100 gold per point you have allocated).
The cost actually scales based on the number of points you have in a node. It costs like 2400 to take a point out of a node that has 10 points in it. The cost to take the last point out of a node is like 50-100. It easily costs 30k+ gold to fully respec a character that is level 70.
I know, hence the “per point allocated” comment. I’m not sure if the cost is based on the total number of passive points allocated on your character (across all of the passive trees) or just the passive tree you’re respecing. It’s been a while since I respeced, but it was something along those lines.
It’s neither. The cost is based on the total points allocated in the specific node you are taking points from. It’s a very strange system that seems to punish mages since they have so many really high point nodes.
I have used it, it tends towards more than 1000 per point in end game to respec.
It’s a bit more complicated than that (& apparently I really wasn’t clear before).
So I tested 4 different passives at various levels of the Paladin passive tree. Light of Rahyeh (right at the top, requires 45 points in Paladin & goes up to 12 points at cap), Holy Precision (requires 30 points in Paladin & goes up to 10 points at cap), Faith Armour (@ 25 points in Paladin & goes up to 8 points) and Prayer (@ 20 points in Paladin & goes up to 10 points at cap).
Respeccing points in Light of Rahyeh became cheaper ny 280 gold for each point respec’d, so if you have 12 points in the passive the first point respeced (ie, going down from 12 points to 11) will cost 3,360 gold, the next point respeced will cost 3,080 (going down to 10 points in the skill) & the cost reduces by 280 gold each point.
Holy Precision works the same but will only cost 240 gold per point already invested to respec. So if you’re respecing from the cap of 10 points, the first point will cost 2,400 taking you down to 9 points, then the next respec will cost 2,220, then 1,980, etc.
Faith Armour costs 200 gold per point invested to respec, so respeccing from the full 8 points will cost 1,600 for the first point (taking you down to 7), respeccing down to 6 points will then cost 1,400, then 1,200 for the next point, etc.
Prayer, you guessed it, 180 gold per point already invested. So respeccing from the cap of 10 will cost 1,800 for the first point (taking you down to 9 points), then 1,620 to respec from 9 points to 8, then 1,440, etc.
What I wasn’t aware of (thanks for getting me to have a look into it), was that the per-point respec costs increase at 20 gold per tier of the skill. So the first tier of passives (the ones at the bottom requiring 0 points in a mastery) will cost 100 gold per point invested so respeccing down from 8 to 7 will cost 800 gold, going from 7 to 6 will cost 700 gold, etc.
The next tier of passives (requiring 5 points in the mastery tree) will cost 120 gold per point invested to respec, so respecing from 6 points to 5 will cost 720, going from 5 to 4 will cost 600, etc
Base classes, however, cost somewhat less. A passive that requires 20 points in the base class costs 50 gold to respec per point invested & the base class respec costs increase at only 10 gold per tier. So a passive that requires 0 point in the base class will only cost 10 gold per point invested, a passive that requires 5 points in the base class require 20 gold per point invested, etc.
So as it turns out, reality was a mix of what we thought.
Lazy? Nope iam not lazy at all. I just want to have fun. And having to level a character trough a story line everytime again is just boring for me. I experienced this in POE and many other rpgs and iam sick of it.
Agreed. I actually really loved the story of Wolcen. I think the story is nice aswell but the way Wolcen presented it really sucked me into it. I would love to play it again. To bad that game sucks in many other ways however.
I think Last epoch starts to late with being interesting story wise. So iam really worried about having to level trough the story over and over again. So i guess i quit again like i did now after leveling 1 character.
I really would love to explore other characters in endgame but doing the story again is a big yikes to me. It takes to long and while it was fun the first time its not diablo 2 good. And like you say its self-fulfilling prophecy.
I have to wait for far to long before it gets interesting.
I kind of like the direction of sanctum breach not really making too many bones about a particular “primary story” and really just focusing on many divergent paths to take after a quick intro the world you play through. I think the foundation is actually already in place and strongly supported thematically with LE that if they wanted to (and think they should) condense the primary story into more of a worldbuilding and short origin story and focus on the game being more choose your own adventure end game systems and stories that present a good variety of well done self-contained timelines in the multiverseque context that appears to be setup. This way you end up with tight worldbuilding setup story which could then be skipped on alternative characters after first completion and drop the player at say level 19 in End of Time with a lot of variety regarding whether they want to do monolith, some other altternative timeline systems (like the imperial timeline,) to level up, arena, etc.
I think for now just giving alt characters level 19 and all idol slots unlocked, some weak baby monolith zones, would be a decent start.
While I genuinely like some of the ideas thrown out here, I do think it’s a little odd to dislike playing the main story over so much. Let’s face it, you are still doing the same thing whether it’s in the MoF or the story; in fact I’d argue it’s a faster flow to run through the story instead of resetting for new monoliths. Are you really in that much of a hurry to get to the repetitive endgame grinding? I’m guessing the percentage of time you spend in the main quest is really small compared to what it takes to get to lvl 100.
The only “rush” I’d say is to get to the class specialization phase, so I do like the idea of skipping to lvl 19-20 or whatever. Maybe you can do that for each core class, so basically you end up needing to do the main quest 5 times? With a few uniques and twink gear, it can go really quickly.
If you skip useless sidezones and only go for the objectives and the passive points the story is done pretty fast untill you enter the snow chapter. There you need to stack some protections to have a real good time but untill then the game is a walk in the park if you play an alt with all the crating mats at hand.
I think you might even level faster through the story then through MoF. Btw did some streamers do some kind of race to the end of the current story? I think it might be pretty intresting to see how long it takes for some veterans with all the crafting mats at hand to go from 0 to the end of the story.