Boss focused league idea: Replicant League

TLDR: A league that lets you build up an augmented boss that when you kill drops loot from a loot table you selected.

In map league mechanic:
In each zone you encounter a map device that has 6 open portals. The portals all look different and you choose one to enter a mini boss. The type of portal will determine what kind of power the boss you are facing will have. A fire portal will be fire augmented, a poison portal will be poison augmented, etc. There would be anywhere from 10-15 different augmentations possible. You only get one chance on a mini-boss.

The mini-boss is one of 5-8 possible; 2 or 3 phase bosses with NO adds between phases (sorta like yellow/red elder guardians). These will each be able to be augmented with the portal you choose so there would be variety to the fights.

When you defeat the boss a map device opens with 6 new portals each with a reward type. Chaos orb=currency, breach hand = breach league, etc. You pick one and are ported back to your place in the map.

After encountering and defeating 6 of these mini-bosses you will receive a Replica Emblem (item level of the average completed replica bosses) that stores the portal and reward choice syou made.

End-game league mechanic:
You put the Replica Emblem into your map device to open portals to the end-game style boss. This boss can take one of 5-6 forms and will be augmented by all 6 augments and have multiple phases with 1 add phase. In my mind this will be Uber-Elder length (3-5 minutes with increasing penalty for taking too long). When you defeat the replicant boss it will drop loot from a weight loot table modified by all the reward selections you made from the previous mini-bosses. This loot table will be extremely favorable compared to general drop making efficient boss killing more rewarding than fast mapping.

You can choose to put more than one replica emblem into the device and 2+ bosses will occupy the fight and each will share reward/augments from the others.

Other league items:
Replica Fragments - fragments that increase end-game replica encounter health/damage/regen/monster level/quantity that can be slotted in with the replica encounter. These can range from mundane likee sacrifice fragments and go all creative like, “Replicant will drop shaper unique items. Area contains additional shaper.”

Pros:
1) This rewards boss killing potential in maps and in the end game system. Single target damage will lead to better rewards than fast area clear. This is all about that single target DPS and survivability because the enemy will definitely get a chance to hit you.
2) The fact that a replica emblem is dropped means that you can trade the mechanic if you don’t have a really good boss killer. Also you won’t be compelled to run the boss as soon as you have it (my biggest issue with Alva’s temple or betrayal safe house). You can build up many dozens of bosses and then do them in a single go.
3) The mechanic allows you to build a reward structure you want and a boss you want. If you are reflect immune maybe you’d augment for reflect. If you do all elemental damage maybe you would select for a high physical resist boss. On the reward side, if for example you are trying to target Kaom’s Heart could select Unique/Unique/Unique/Strength/Armour/Armour as the reward nodes if they are offered.
4) Boss fights reward skill over gear compared to other parts of poe and this league puts the emphasis there. Great gear can’t save you as much as getting out of the way of telegraphed attacks.

Cons:
1) Forces the meta. The same issue with the speed clear metas but this time in the other direction.
2) Some people obviously don’t like bossing and prefer zoom zoom mass murder. This will not be for them. I think one of the reason’s legion felt good was that what you were doing for mapping quickly already worked for legion.

Love to hear your thoughts (despite knowing 90% of the comments will be just internet tough guy nonsense)

I think this sounds extremely fun. I love the idea of a bossing league. It seems like it would be less grindy to get to the real endgame stuff too, and less repetitive with all the little variations.

Didn't read because 1) it'll never happen and 2) PoE is aimed at the crowd that play speed meta and want the game to be full of nothing but lootboxes, sorry I meant mobs. Bosses are a small detail in contemporary PoE.

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Didn't read because 1) it'll never happen and 2) PoE is aimed at the crowd that play speed meta and want the game to be full of nothing but lootboxes, sorry I meant mobs. Bosses are a small detail in contemporary PoE.

People want to do what is most rewarding. Fast = rewarding so it seems like people want fast. My thesis is that if you change was is rewarding people will interact with it. Can't add a boss league that has crap drops....they literally have to be better per unit time than maps.

Betrayal was not a clear-speed league and people enjoyed how rewarding it was. There was no other way to make items have white sockets, no easy way to get full stacks of good div cards, no way to get 28 quality on gear. That was great reward design.

While I like that idea of a pseudo-customizable boss after so many maps I feel like GGG would never implement something like that as a league mechanic because it goes against the general flow of the game, and they have something similar in the Doryani's Machinarium unique map.

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jtggm1985 wrote:

While I like that idea of a pseudo-customizable boss after so many maps I feel like GGG would never implement something like that as a league mechanic because it goes against the general flow of the game, and they have something similar in the Doryani's Machinarium unique map.

Spoiler

off topic but I'd like a boss rush map personally that has several arenas in sequence going from act bosses to shaper to league bosses.

Doryani's Machinarium is much rarer and also much more basic than this. And even this is just an outline, they can potentially give us a lot of different boss fight variations using such a system with enough options.

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Anonymous1749704 wrote:

Didn't read because 1) it'll never happen and 2) PoE is aimed at the crowd that play speed meta and want the game to be full of nothing but lootboxes, sorry I meant mobs. Bosses are a small detail in contemporary PoE.

"it'll never happen" - gee, how insightful. As for 2), it never fails to amuse me how people, in so contexts and on so many topics, underestimate the scale of human diversity, usually without even any proof provided. PoE is played by tens of thousands of people. You think they all like the same thing?

If Synthesis was 'build-your-own-map', this is build-your-own-boss? I like it. I wouldn't theme it around the different damage types in the game, however - Doryani's Machinarium already does that to an extent but, more than that, there just aren't enough of them to sustain sufficient variety. For a league like this to work and keep people's interest, it'll need scores of boss fight mechanic options, leading to at least hundreds of different versions of the bosses (5-6 is way too few). That's possible, but only if you don't make it about if they do, say, a lightning nova or fire nova attack. Make each boss feel like its own unique thing!

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junyamint wrote:

TLDR: A league that lets you build up an augmented boss that when you kill drops loot from a loot table you selected.

In theory that sounds like a fun league but I highly doubt GGG would be capable of designing good boss fights (especially that many).

I mean, how many of the boss fights in acts/maps are actually good? I really like the Shaper and regular Elder fights, but the vast majority are either boring, tedious, too "one-shotty", a visual clusterfuck or any combination of those.

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Anonymous1749704 wrote:

Bosses are a small detail in contemporary PoE.

That's because the loot and XP you get are either abysmal and/or it takes way too long to even get to the boss. Also, most of those fights aren't good.

This is one of the most interesting league ideas, thanks for presenting it!

I'd personally love to experience this, and see an increase in just boss-killing orientated builds, and shift the meta.

I do think you've got the right idea with boss fights being similar in length to Uber Elder, and try to encourage the mass playerbase to engage with challenging boss content as oppose to just Glacier/Burial Chambers farming.