I had an idea regarding grinding Monolith for Blessings and/or Unique Items.
When we start a Timeline (when you choose you want to play the normal or empowered variant), we can choose to skip X Number of echoes and start at a relatively high echo count already.
Possible restriction:
Cost a large amount of Gold
Only avaialble, when we completed the timeline on the difficulty we want to skip, at least once already
Just to give you some numbers (which are of course subject to change).
We could pay 100000 Gold to skip to Echo No. 10.
This would act as a gold sink for players that want to farm blessings/uniques very fast, but comes with a huge price.
Also the âonly partâ we would skip, would be the somewhat boring/tedious part. I always hate the first few echoes on a already very established character, because itâs just boring and impose no threat to my character.
The only thing that would need a solution are the active modifers.
After using the skipping option there needs to be a system that instantly puts at least 2-3 active modifers on your timeline, otherwise even the Echo No. 10 would be fairly easy.
Maybe the game gives you a total pool of 5-6 modifers and you need to at least chose 2-3 of them.
I think additional gold sinks, that are âoptionalâ (you are not forced to use this system) are desperatly needed, especially, once we get an economy with MP/Online play.
(If EHG still has gold as main currency in mind for the economy)
That may be a bit difficult to balance.
And how do you manage the echo quests? Would you also allow to skip a quest?
I understand the point, but I feel rather reluctant to this.
No you still would need to play the quest echoes, the first one could basically instantly spawn already.
Maybe it could also be, so that you instantly get the first quest echo guaranteed.
Also why do you think this is difficulty to balance?
Just to make it clear. I donât want a âcheap wayâ to skip some grind.
I solely want to skip the very boring and easy part in exchange for gold.
Playing the first few echoes always is incredibly boring to me. Because the loot is not yet good enough to justify clearing and the mobs impose no threat at all.
Maybe I was wrong saying âdifficultâ. I meant in terms of modifiers. The game will have to evaluate how many modifiers we need and add them to the difficulty. But on the normal way, we chose at each echo between two modifiers. Here, we would not have one modifier imposed, but the game would impose the result multiple choices. This may result in a bunch of very difficult modifiers, and as a result could make the timeline even longer or at least painful.
I do like the idea, but I fear it would be difficult to tune it correctly.
I agree, that this part can be difficult.
But even if it would be slightly more difficult, that the âusualy methodâ, would that be a bad thing?
The whole point for this system is for people that want to min-max blessings or farm specific uniques.
Most likely you already have a very well established char before doing that.
Thatâs why i also suggested, this is only an option if you already cleared a given timeline at least once.
Good idea for me.Low level echoes=no exp/no loot/no challenge basically,on an endgame char is just a waste of time.Plus,as Heavy says,if gold will be the only way to trade,this will help to keep at bay the âinflationâ in a long term view.
As I understand it, the number of echoes required to trigger a story mode quest is random (expressed in terms of a percentage based on number of completed echoes). In that regard, it would be difficult to craft a system whereby paying to skip echoes guarantees the time savings you are looking for and may just add another excuse for people to complain about the RNG associated with the MoF system.
If the ultimate goal is to shorten the time it takes to farm a particular Monolith, then I would suggest that once you beat a particular Monolith the game shortens the number of prerequisite echoes before story modes trigger for that particular Monolith.
If youâre looking to add a gold sink option, then I think the better path would be to allow you to buy buffs that last the duration of the Monolith, but are disabled for the boss fight or upon death. If the concern with that option is that people would pay to farm faster, then make the buff a movement speed only buff so that it limits the direct power increase.
I think this is a problem in the current game that will very likely wouldnât an issue in the future with more monolith updates.
Right now we have very limited inactions in monolith. We have normal maps and 1 main echo quest. I imagine in the future we will have more interactions when doing monoliths where every time you reset and did it again it, would be a very unique experience and journey that it wouldnât feel repetitive at all. We could easily have more quest chains, treasure rooms, hidden bosses, challenge maps etc. Some of these events could also scale with your level and be changed with every league we get. It would highly incentive us wanting to redo monolith echoes instead of trying to solve the problem where they get dull and we need an option to skip.
I donât know, if they âsimplyâ added a button under each choice that deducted X gold then incremented the timeline counter by 1 & rerolled the timeline choices (as if youâd completed the previous monolith), would that not work?
Letâs say youâre on Echo #15. Your counter says you have a 5% chance to trigger that story quest upon completing 15 echoes. Rather than run it, you pay 10,000 gold. But, the story doesnât trigger. Instead, it now says you have a 12% chance to trigger the story quest upon completing 16 echoes. So, you pay another 10,000 gold, but the story doesnât trigger.
If Monoliths are changed such that the story triggers predictably after X echoes based on the particular story and Monolith, this system could work. But, with an RNG system, it will seem like wasted gold, even if you probably would have had to run the echo (and not get the story) anyway.
Quest echoes do have a minimum echo count they need to have a chance of spawning and with each echo the chance from that point gets bigger and bigger.
But that would not be an issue for my suggestions.
Example:
The Black Sun Timeline:
1st Quest Echo start appearing at Echo Count 4 and reaches itâs maximum chance to appear on Echo Count 7 (50%).
The 2nd Quest Echo could appear at Echo Count 8 and reaches itâs maximum at Echo Count 14
With my suggestion you would start at Echo Count 10 for example (numbers are obviously subject to change).
So on the very first echo you already have 50% chance to instantly get the first Quest Echo.
Even if you donât instantly encounter the quest echo you still paid for 10 Echoes progress already, which tremendously shortens the time to complete the first timeline, even if you still need to do the quest echoes.
My suggestion also only should work, when you freshly start a new timeline.
This is a completely different idea and would be not interesting for me personally.
I just want a way to skip the âboring/easyâ part of monolith timelines.
Those are the first few echoes.
As i explained above, it already works in the current system.
Even if you boost your initial Echo Count way above the first and second quest echo, you will basically almost immediately get them, which is fine.
Also completing a quest echo counts as an additional echo count.
In fact, even in the current system you sometimes have so bad luck in spawning quest echoes, that you could get the first quest echo on such a late echo count, that you could already spawn the 2nd quest echo.
Yeah, youâd be paying X gold to not have to run the echo.
I disagree, youâre paying gold to save time (not have to run an easy monolith). If a player might view the gold as âwastedâ then they could/should/etc just run the echo.
@Llama8 I understand the concept and what youâre looking to accomplish. Iâm just saying based on the number of threads complaining about item fractures when the listed percentage is 75%+ or the threads complaining about power rolls on blessings, this is going to create another point of contention that highlights the RNG of the Monolith system. I wouldnât be opposed to this system being implemented, Iâm just highlighting a pitfall based on the communityâs feelings about unfulfilling results of spent resources.
Even if you are unlucky and you start the timeline with echo count 10 and need anotehr 3-4 echeos to spawn the first quest echo, you still making progress.
You literally just paying to skip a set number of echoes.
