Without wishing to pile-on or cover old ground: agree, the new mono needs some work.
Scaling is the biggest issue I see. My decently-geared character can feasibly die to content 25 levels below him. I don’t know how that’s ever going to work for a fresh-faced level 55 running the same content.
The newly-implemented down-scaling of damage vs bosses is way overdone. What’s the point of gearing for extra damage if a formula just decides that you’re not allowed to do damage?
Further to that, the learning curve is brutal. In RPGs, you expect a bit of a training run before you run into a boss that will murder you with mechanics you’ve not seen before and set you back an hour in progression.
As a result of this unfairness, the content seems repetitive, grindy and unrewarding.
With all that, I’m completely convinced that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Lots of little, tiny niggles have added together to make something seem way worse than it actually is. A few tweaks here and there, and we’re back to the level of amazing we’ve come to appreciate
I think most people (probably you included) that are talking how everything is fine are above average player/highly skilled players who is sinking hours in stats menu with calculator in his hand to create awesome build, and I support and envy that. But from your point of view the thing that was a cakewalk for you is a big big problem for average player who just wants to kill some monsters after work for an hour or two. Since 1997 up to this day, there was never such a difficulty spike in any ARPG, not to mention the progress reset which makes the whole issue more visible and frustrating. There was never an issue for me to just have fun with my builds and finish any game for past 20+ years, so I do believe that this issue is not being blown out of proportion, it’s just that the issue is invisible for handful of people who are top tier players in this game or just copy builds online
Making stats perfectly polished to be viable for “stage 1” where your level is almost as twice as high is not acceptable in any game.
I cannot speak for every other person, please be assured I am terribad and I endeavour to embrace the terribad (Just one example: I refuse to seek out Glancing Blow on my gear, because I hate how it’s become mandatory and I don’t think it’s fun as a stat… but that’s a story for another thread entirely).
I don’t think we’re disagreeing on much, though. The current iteration of mono is just “too much of all the things”. Each individual element - the challenge level, the scaling, the progress reset, the time investment, the rewards - is just a notch out of whack.
You could have challenging content that doesn’t punish you as much when you fail. You can have scaling content that doesn’t need a huge time investment just to get started. You can have content that takes significant time investment, provided the rewards are there in the interim.
But all those things being a notch or two off-centre, then combined, has resulted in… well, this thread, basically.
For the purposes of Beta, would it make sense to automatically unlock Monoliths up to the character’s level, so that higher level characters could explore further as they would have if this new system were in place the entire time? This would allow higher level characters to start from the end and work backwards to collect buffs and uniques OR just push forward as the team intended.
Alternatively a ‘Bind on Account’ system would work well insofar as many Beta players have multiple 70-80+ level characters that should not have to grind the 55-65 MOFs to find a challenge.
Thank you for your candid feedback on the Monolith. We have been following along very closely and will be releasing a number of updates closely mirroring what @Trasochi had mentioned above.
We are evaluating other changes as well, like checkpoints, certain boss abilities and difficulty, ensuring that battling through echos remain enjoyable, time investment to get to quest echos and bosses, and more.
As always, we value your feedback immensely and can assure you that your comments are not falling on deaf ears. We will continue monitoring your feedback and making adjustments as needed.
With implementing a checkpoint system please be aware that it must not be abusable to get new rolled map choices. So that people die intentionally to reroll the next echo to get a quest echo.
Just a thought, since not everybody is onboard for checkpoints as far as I am aware. Would it be possible to create optional checkpoints, for example you start the run, and if you want you can try with or without checkpoints, where if you play without you get a bit of a boost like exp and drop rate increase. This way you are rewarding the players who want the game to be risky and harsh, while you leave the less frustrating option for casual players.
This might raise some concerns when it comes to ladder since it gives an unfair advantage for players who use checkpoints, but ladder system could be available only for non checkpoint runs.
I feel like this kind of risk/reward gameplay is fairly adequately covered by the Arena?
More than just Checkpoints, I just want a way to wipe the modifiers I’ve gathered in the run so far. I don’t think I should have to die to reset them (also resetting my Echo count). Yes, I’ll get lesser rewards, but at least I’ll be able to complete the questline. The content is intended to be repeatable; maybe next time I won’t need to reset the mods.
Sounds good, as Checkpoints I’d consider the finished Questechos.
If you have defeated the first Quest echo you’ll automatically start on the first normal echo of the 2nd quest echo circle. If you have finished the 2nd quest echo you will further start on the first echo of the final quest echo line. Once a questecho is finished the chosen modifiers should be reset. The difficulty of the modifiers should increase after ech questecho tho.
I wanted to start a fresh solo char to simulate a new player entering the game to test the difficulty of the new mof, but I’ll delay that till the announced adjustments are made.
Difficulty, especially on bosses in the lower Timelines (55 and 62) has to be looked at very closely, you don’t want to generate frustration for players entering the endgame for the first time, thus the challenge on those timelines shouldn’t be as great as in later timelines, but it shouldn’t feel like endgame has nothing challenging either…
This way you are rewarding the players who want the game to be risky and harsh, while you leave the less frustrating option for casual players.
I disagree that it is only casual players who want checkpoints. Many of us who want a challenging game also want them. But we don’t want the challenge to be the same as Arena, where you get one life which can wipe out hours of gameplay on death (or worse, crashing or a bug.)
I think if they were to do ladder monoliths, then that should be similar to Arena where it is scaled to level and tougher than normal monoliths.
I’m not really sure about the suggestions to wipe modifiers. The normal echoes or quests aren’t that unplayable. I ve played on echo 28 with my lvl 71 paladin in the lvl 68 timeline. Besides the bossfight after that the content was doable. Rayeh on the other hand oneshot me after about 1 minute into the fight.
Imho there should be an increasing chance to get a quest echo everytime you finish a normal echo. I had about 12 normal echoes in a row before getting the chance to beat the boss. Don’t know what the chances are for getting a quest echo. But RNG can be an idiot sometimes.
The problem with the current system without a checkpoints is that you quit the playing session with a negative event. You play hours to get to the boss. It’s around 23.30 local time. You have to work tomorrow. You go for the boss that wipes you away like you were just a tiny little bug. You think “WTF!!!” and quit the game. You won’t do another attempt because it would take hours to get back.
Nobody is immune to this. Not even hardcore players.
If I’d get the chance to try again, I would propably do it. Maybe it would also take me an hour to beat the boss at least. But there would be a motivation to play on and if I would be successful at the end I might also try the next area. Next day I would be tired as fuck, but I would be happy. Not frustrated.
This is how you motivate people to forget about time and play your game for hours.
Needing to repeat hours of grind with minimal progression in xp and gear to get beaten a second time… I died 3 times in a row to the first boss. Yeah, when I finally beat him, it was great. But just until I saw my blessing reward (increased gold find or idol drop chance…)# but this is for another topic…
No matter what EHG does to tweak the content, I don’t see a universe with Monolith not having checkpoints…
I have no issues having to play through level 55 content on my level 82 Paladin to get him to relevant content.
My problem with the current Monolith system is I’ve now TWICE got to the Boss with the 4 pillars, i kited him, i killed the pillars, started focusing on him and dodging attacks and get 1 shot and have to start over.
1 Shot at level 82 by a level 55 Boss, while I have 60% Necrotic protection and 850 health. I also have a skill that is SUPPOSED to consume a sigil if I take over 25% damage in one shot… that didn’t seem to help.
So I’ve now played 4 hours of Monolith content and I haven’t progressed AT ALL
Before the patch, I played several hours per day, having a lot of fun.
Now, I’m afraid to do monoliths, knowing that one bug or crash can wipe all progress. Hearing about these bosses that one-shot scares me as well, why would I want to keep playing when I could have a chance to die and wipe that progress again.
Seeing Mox reply to this thread makes me feel better, but still I’m not sure I want to play until the fixes are done. At least not in Mono, maybe I’ll level up some more characters until then.
I think the way of zooming thru the monolith is also a problem. Just spamming teleport till you get to the objective is not really fun. Maybe have a condition on the map before the objective spawns.
The whole boss situation really sucks. I understand that they want to make bosses actually mean something and making players do mechanics but I just feel so weak now… What is the point of making a stronger character if it doesn’t matter for bosses? I thought the whole point of Mono was to take the risk of stacking up a bunch of modifiers for better rewards but also for stronger bosses. This artificial difficulty of making us do no damage to them is not satisfying or fun. I would expect to struggle against a lvl90 boss for example but not a 55 one…
I am a new player and I absolutely hate the new Monoliths. At first I didn’t know what was going on, just saw that my leveling up became much longer (level 62 right now). After realizing I had to beat the time zone to get higher level monoliths, I started to only rush to the end of monolith and skipping all the content.
Comes the boss, the fight was really clunky, especially around the soul vessels which would get my character stuck from time to time… I spent the entire fight running around, to get one-shot when I could finally damage him (playing an abyssal echo FG).
Back to square 1, have to run through all the monoliths again for a chance to beat him this time, meanwhile my character isn’t progressing at all. Right now I will most likely start new characters to explore the other classes, but I sure hope this system is reviewed to actually be fun eventually.
I’m the kind of player that enjoys clearing monoliths, especially if i’m getting some ok xp, level appropriate gear rolls and a fun challenge level. One side effect of this new mono system as a level 95 is that even though there are some cool new maps, I have had to change my style to just speed running past the content.
I’m on my 3rd (and maybe last for a while) try at the 68 boss which has been over 30 monos to clear to get there. As a dev, it was a little sad that I was unable to enjoy the new content because I wanted to spend only an hour doing no reward trash vs 2 hours.
(Just one example: I refuse to seek out Glancing Blow on my gear, because I hate how it’s become mandatory and I don’t think it’s fun as a stat… but that’s a story for another thread entirely).
