Devs have already said the want the difference between 90 and 100 to be marginal the that is a philosophy I think they will keep in mind when designing a lot of aspects of the game.
Oh yeah, typos can make a big difference 
You assumed my position correctly^^
I would much rather have exalted affixes be more powerful individually and keep their frequency as they are currently, because i think T6 drops often enough to get some, even for more casual player, while T7 are really really rare, which i like.
I am not a fan of increasing multiple exalted affix frequency. It should be still possible, but a item with 1 desired exalted affix should be the most realistic expectation player can have, everything over that is pure “god-tier item”
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A game of this type must:
- Sell well, and
- Have a substantial/satisfactory number of players to remain playing it as time goes on.
If you make content that most of the player base can’t negotiate, you run the risk of ending it a “proof of concept” project rather than a viable commercial venture. Players will appreciate risk/reward and effort/reward rations that make the game fun and enjoyable to play.
90% of players will not finish the Atlas in PoE every league. It’s actually really important in a seasonal game to have aspirational content in order to keep the number of players sticking around high. There’s a balance between accessibility and challenge, and right now LE is arguably skewing much more so on the accessibility side.
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Which can also arguably be because were missing 3 endgame systems.
But back to the op. Seems a win win with everybody having increased drop rates for t6 t7 in empowered timelines and increasing empowered difficulty.
Id be happy with that.
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Hey Boardman, I think the observations here are spot on, however your conclusion that they should lock more things behind more grind I disagree with completely.
I want to suggest that you have some investment bias here. You are one of the few people who has invested the (In my opinion, ridiculously high) amount of time to get a character to level 90+. Investment bias would mean that you sort of don’t want that investment of time to be ‘wasted’, so you would resist them making a change in the other direction (say halving the amount of XP needed to reach level 100). Yet this seems to be exactly what your observations suggest.
This, to me shows they have clearly already stretched the character progression too far!
There is absolutely nothing wrong with ‘finishing’ a character in half the time, then using your time to try a new build or play a different game.
This is me! but I can tell you: more powerful items at the cost of more grind, more gating, more hoops to jump through will not make me play the game or support it for longer, it will make me play it less… a lot less. What will make me play it longer? The same thing that makes it good now - the variety and the thoughtful interactions between items, skills, passives, and fight mechanics. Clearer communication of skills and interactions so time spent planning builds is not so frustrating. Balancing existing skills that are useless or so OP that you cannot bring yourself to choose anything else.
TLDR : The ‘tier 28’ or level 90+ journey is already a philosophy of ‘you must work to play our game’ and it doesn’t have to be.
This is the oppisite of what i was trying to suggest. I do not want more locked behind “Grind” I want the excitement of what you experience in the first 33% (first 2 hours) of game to be how the entirety of the game feels until you hit 90+. I want there to constantly be something more to look forward to. In example i would want a skill tree to have 40 levels instead of 20 so that there is more exciting things to try with it for longer to keep people interested.
Again i dont want unfun grinding with locked items. I wanted the exalted drop rate at end game to be buffed so it is more exciting and needs less “Grind for hours and hope” and more "omgawd another exciting item, omgawd another one, omgward another one.
1 of these keeps players longer because its exciting and you dont want to put it down.
Obviously we cant keep the entire playerbase for ever but i think its defintely possible even with so much endgame content missing to slightly tweak what we do have and make it a much more interesting/attention keeping game than it is atm.
Atm it just feels grindy and repeatative.
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This sounds great! My bad, I misinterpreted you originally.
This isn’t the first time @boardman21 suggests to extend the character progression. And I’m with him.
The grind to level 100 is something that doesn’t seem that rewarding currently. That’s because there’s nothing to really get in reward that feels like being worth the time spent.
People may argue that this is “gating content”. But the other way round it’s creating an incentive to play. Give people something worthy to chase for.
The character progression stagnates too early currently.
/signed
I’d also like to see some high level base items like 90+. Even if it’s hard to reach it would give people the incentive to go for it. It would be just time investment. A base at this level doesn’t need to be a perfect roll to be an improvement. While currently gear improvement at this level is largely based on luck to get better affixes/rolls.
I’m curious what legendaries will look like. Will they be gated behind level or high level content?
I hope so. In my opinion level 80+ needs some more content to go for.
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Hey oh!
This better states what I have been tryimg to say.
Incentive is key
Doesnt have to be hard to obtain
Look at WoW. It has attracted millions of players because there is incentive to olay even if its 30 mins a day because even in 30 mins you can progress and be rewarded for doing so
One last example i want to throw out there is Diablo 2.
You dont have to be level 100 in Diablo 2, but there is incentive to be level 100 and invest into to fully max max max a character.
I agree, im actually obsessed with level ups/passives etc in these games, gear to me is good to chase but the passive power for me is what I want - I actually really like the XP curve in LE as im simply used to mega grinds for levels (I used to play old school Maple Story as well) plus you dont lose XP on death but at the same time its a decent road to 100 - I have no level 100 character in LE - highest is 92
If I can transfer all my gear to another character who is 20-30 levels lower and they are comparatively as powerful…i dont like that. I want a character who is higher level to be simply way stronger
This has gone off track as it was about gear but I thought about adding the ‘unique passive’ and there could be a system where at 70/80/90 etc you unlock some challenge in End of Time and if you complete it you get the reward - maybe you cannot complete it at 70, you may have to come back at 75 or even 79 but this gives another reason to grind/push etc - like the Labyrinth Ascendancy in PoE but nowhere near as horrible
Some players might not like that again being gated behind a boss etc but currently we do have this anyway with blessings and its a fair system
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Yeah its the same as PoE, generally your build can be ‘done’ by 90-93 and most people dont do higher due to XP loss and you have to make a choice - give up on this character and reroll a new one or invest into a massive grind - however level 100 characters have this edge eeking out slightly more passives at end game compared with very good gear as usually people who grind to 100 invest heavily and the 92 vs 100 become worlds apart
boardman you have mentioned lowering/raising the Skill specializations numbers to give more access but what about if EHG add some blessings for skills you can maybe only get at ‘xx content’ ie you have the option to fight an even stronger monolith boss and you get a unique reward to skill specialization - maybe 1 extra wolf, Aura of Decay area/less dmg taken or Warpath gets the free Rahyeh rune (the pull) etc this also makes characters more unique going down more specific paths
I would like to see those but IMO I think those fit better on idols
I also hate blessings. There not unique at all. Just stat fluffers. Im ok with the drop rate ones but the rest need to be replaced with something far more incentivizing
An example of some directions they could go would be passive abilities (like mastery bonuses) that are unique.
Or things such as:
Beating empowered bosses give extra idol slots
Beating timelines allow you to place an item in a forge and reroll all its value
Beating a empowered boss opens a forge and allows reroll of stats on a unique
Beating bosses for the first time gives you an attribute point that you can place on any attribute giving you +1 strength or whatever you choose
Idk so many options for something unique
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I agree, I like your ideas for character milestones more options the better for character development - I like Idols but think they need a rework for some, Ballista idol vs Detonating Arrow idol for example
I actually really like the blessing system as it fills holes but you can also remove them later for something else - I actually get a bit disappointed when I hit the lvl 100 blessing I want on the first try with a nice roll as it feels I have no reason to do that mono again
Unrewarding is simply unrewarding. It does not necessitate difficulty.
PoE, being a FREE to play microtransactions-dependent game, is designed with trade and grind in mind. I remember doing Delve runs to finally find a six-link recipe, only to see that it needed 1500 linking orbs and I had accumulated 400 in the first two weeks. Just not worth my time. I spent a few hundred hours in SSF and did fine; just not something I plan on continuing.
I too don’t like the ridiculous amounts of mats required to craft in PoE. It’s unnecessary tedium that takes away from the core game loop. That doesn’t mean there can’t be other ways to allow for “chase” items, or top ends to builds that require very substantive grinding for those who wish to invest the time and effort into the build. But having those mechanics doesn’t mean a game has to close itself off from players who want to play more casually.
I have to admit that I like farming mechanics of some sort.
For example farming faction reputation:
- Equip an item that enables you to collect faction points, 1 point for a killed enemy
- Implement achievements that boost your faction points e.g. collect x amount of faction points in a certain mino timeline and kill the boss grants 1500 FP
- Implement vendors that sell Faction based Uniques (make it several tiers so you get higher quality gear when you have a higher faction reputation level) and special idols with stats you can’t find by looting
- Create a faction gambler that enables you to gamble specific affixes, theme based. A cold theme based faction of frost mages could have a gambler that guarantees at least 1 affix of a certain type (cold themed)
- melee / cold damage
- freeze rate multi
- chill
- frostbite
- cold resistance
…
- implement crafting receipts where you have to gather a certain amount if special shards (maybe also faction based crafting mats that just drop with the faction token equipped) to have a certain outcome when you craft on a white base item
I could go on and on. This is all a mix of stuff MMORPGs or other loot games (Warframe/The Division) do.
What I like with that kind if mechanic is that it takes some rng out of the game and replaces it with just a kind of xp bar. Every minute you play is invested to get closer to a certain goal like getting lvl 3 with a faction to get a certain item. It’s working towards a certain goal and it feels satisfying if you reach your goal after days/weeks of playing towards that goal.
I don’t want to change the looting experience in LE. This is more about offering people different ways to progress their characters. I’d like to see something like this in the future as an additional system. With factions you can add so much stuff and additional content without the need to actually extend the storyline or else. Just put new items in the faction pool with every cycle, remove old ones and make them legacy items, and you have people chasing that stuff.
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While arpgs are known for the RNG, I +1 this. Creating such systems where players have incentive and are rewarded or working towards something whether they play 5 mins a week or 12 hours a day needs to be implemented in the future. It creates a better gaming experience for everyone involved.
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There’s always the opportunity to scale the amount of rng with these systems, too.
So if you have reached a needed amount of faction points, you need to offer certain items to level up. Could be unique items of any tier, from Humming Bee to Shattered Lance Set. Or Exalted items with 1-3 specific stats with a specific min tier.
This would involve rng farming in that process. So many possibilities 
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