Bump. After playing a bit of the live 2.0 patch, I want to share my thoughts again on the endgame. Of course, thanks to the devs for all the hard work. There have been numerous changes everywhere and as the focus was not laid on the dimensional labyrinth, I’d like to point out the obvious problems again and give my suggestions in hope they will get heard and maybe implemented in future. First of all, I like that the number of tiers is reduced, that we’re now able to reach 150 lvl and that the T10 map has been reworked. Here’s some of the problems which we still have and my suggestions:
1)
Entrances & map choices: I’m not sure of the reason why entrances are still swarmed with mobs, but it might be because the map is randomly generated and there is no way around it. I would prefer a custom map that guarantees there will be no mobs/bosses at the entrance. Also I think everyone would agree that Jail (T8) map is the worst and needs to be exchanged. In T8 you also have the hardest time guessing where Phoboss would be, which brings us to the next problem..
2)
“The Phoboss problem”: it certainly brings up the adrenaline every time you see this guy’s health bar. He might jump at you without any notice. He often spawns near the entrance, so you might be forced to fight him in a small rectangle, or he might even jump at you when you enter the rift, both of which are totally unfair. Why should this be part of the game? I suggest the following:
- Remove Abyssal Shrine and lock all mini-bosses behind pillars, which can be unlocked only with purify. Add annoying auras/spells to these pillars, so the bosses are still an obstacle even if not engaged. A pillar can be made to summon a random boss or one shown on its tooltip. For example the Phoboss pillar can have its warp skill cooldown increase. In this way Phoboss would no longer jump at you when you enter the rift, but you will need to unlock his pillar anyway if you want the loot.
- Make a differentiation between mini-bosses and corrupted heroes. Corrupted heroes can be walking around freely, so we still have bosses that are not locked. Add corrupted heroes of all classes. Add more interesting mini-boss fights similar to Phoboss, Anomaly, Navigator.
- Last step: add rewarding loot! People would need incentive to unlock the pillars. Take look at the next point.
3)
Loot drops: although it seems that the area drops are better than before, mini-bosses are still not worth killing except for Phoboss and Navigator, because of their guaranteed drops. The rest are simply annoying, take time and drop only signets, which are not worth anything. The anomaly states it should drop sacred uniques, but in fact it sometimes drops rare axes. The only purpose to kill the other bosses is to collect the dream fragments/star charts, but after spending 2 weeks in the labs, even these are not worth anything. The upgrade of the dim key that adds only 2 skills also makes sure people don't strive for it anymore. I suggest the following:
- As a continuation of the dimensional labyrinth, add "mystic riftstone" drops to the mini-bosses. These would open rifts with harder versions of A1/A2/A3/A5 and would only drop from specific group of 2 mini-bosses in labs that are associated with that act. Thus there would always be incentive to kill all mini-bosses.
- Bring back the old diablo clone event, but this time as a whole A4 rift with a special recipe, requiring to collect Dimensional Key and Complete Star Chart to start the event a single time (star charts moved to end-bosses in the A1/A2/A3/A5 rifts). With such an extended endgame, we would also extend the season length.
For more details you can read the first post. Any feedback is welcome & thx for your time.