I’ve been playing for a few years now, and over time have gradually picked up on two things that I find myself disliking.
The first is that it appears that echoes that include league content subtract non-league content from those echoes. I noticed this because there are some echoes where you cannot fill the stability meter unless you also complete the league content. If that league content wasn’t in the echo one would assume you’d fill the meter by killing the mobs in the echo, so not being able to fill the meter without engaging in the content makes me think that other mobs were removed from the map to slot in the league mechanic. In my opinion league content should add mobs to an echo, but not cause them to be taken away.
On one hand I could see that you might see this as a balance issue, but there are other echo layouts that are so large that clearing them requires killing what feels like 2x as many mobs as are needed to fill the stability meter (not that I’m so much concerned about stability, I’m mainly using that as a handy measuring stick because I’d have no other way to quantify the difference). I don’t think that would be the case if you were so concerned about all echoes having the same number of mobs.
I’d probably engage with the league content anyway, but it does bother me that it feels like I’m being forced to because if I don’t then other things are being taken away from me.
In a similar vein, because of how hard the woven echo imprint nodes have been nerfed I’ve spent 6 points to max out the Warden of the Dead and Fated Nemesis nodes to try to make sure I’m able to engage with that mechanic enough to stay on top of the multiple types of gear I’m trying to upgrade on this current build. Lacking any reason to think otherwise, I presumed the wording of Warden of the Dead to mean that I should expect some echoes to have a Nemesis encounter both in the echo in general, as well as another one inside a Cemetery, should the map include a Cemetery.
What I’m finding though is that whenever I have an echo with a Cemetery there will be a Nemesis encounter inside it, but never one in the rest of the echo outside the Cemetery. This makes me feel like the game is just taking the Nemesis encounter that would’ve spawned in the echo and placing it inside the Cemetery … which again feels a little disingenuous.
I suppose the counterargument is that without those points allocated I wouldn’t be getting a Nemesis encounter in the echo at all, but between the Fated Nemesis and Warden of the Dead nodes both being maxed out it just doesn’t feel right.
Two possible improvements come to mind:
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Have a section of the Weaver Tree that allows us to block out specific league content similar to how we have the small branch that lets us block certain echo rewards. I feel like this should only be done if also updating the echo content such that all echoes have a certain baseline of mobs and then league content adds to that, not subtracts from it.
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Have a section of the Weaver Tree that allows us to select nodes that say, “All echoes will contain X # of league mechanics.”
The second point in conjunction with the first could help players dial in their preferred league content (not 100% deterministically but to some degree). I do see that this might be difficult to argue for right now, as the game only has a few league mechanics so far, but I could see this becoming easier to argue for as the game progresses and more league content is added.
… before I hit submit on this, I read through it again and did some more thinking. I suspect I may know why this is happening. From a game dev point of view, I’ve noticed that each map has a certain number of spawn points, and that the only thing that really changes is what spawns at those spawn points. Even the player character and the echo objectives use these same spawn points, and that’s fine, there’s no issue with that, it’s just that what I’m describing above feels subtractive.
I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I feel like every map should have a certain baseline number of spawn points for enemy mobs that never changes, and that each additional league should add spawn points to that baseline. Then the balance should be around how many “extra” league mechanics get added to each echo. Maybe as the game grows echoes will be limited to only having 3-4 league mechanics per map.
HA - there’s an idea: Maybe in the future you could have an “OOPS ALL MECHANICS” woven echo similar to Vault of the Barnacle King, except all the spawn points are randomly-selected league mechanics.