Endgame is garbage in so many ways... suggested fixes

I'll keep this short and sweet, list the issues and a summarized suggestion for a solution.

1. White and blue mobs should never 1-shot the player, this is arguably the most atrocious part of the late-game which, in turn, gives rise to most of the complaints regarding survive-ability and "punishment" frustrations. If you want to "slow down the game" this right here is step #1, even rare mobs should RARELY 1 shot the player.

a) If this means the mobility or defensive stats of white/ blue mobs need to be buffed to increase the chances them hitting the player multiple times, that's fine.


2. Evasion should not leave the player vulnerable to "random" death. This likely ties into point #1, being 1 shot through insane amounts of investment into evasion just shouldn't ever happen vs white and blue mobs.

a) Evasion should have a second "roll" associated with it on-hit called "glancing blow" that allows you to reduce damage on a scale of 20-100% (maybe the high and low ends of this percentage should scale with the player's evasion stat). There should be passives that give "take the higher of 2-3 "glancing blow" rolls.

3. Death in basic maps should not punish the player very hard. There should be some form of currency that can either be slotted into a way-stone or into the map itself that buffs the payouts from the map and increases the punishment from failing in that map. I'll refer to maps not using this currency as a "basic map"

a) In a basic map, the player should lose no more than 30 minutes worth of exp (scale it with character level).

b) Failure to complete a basic map should not wipe bosses/breaches/shrines etc... UNLESS the player had started said objective on their previous attempt.

c) The player should not lose their way-stone outright on failure of a basic map (see 4-d). If I drop 3 exalts and a regal into a basic map... 1 death should not delete that item.

d) Making all maps as punishing as they are makes this game a no-go for so very many players that would otherwise love to hop on for the hour or 2 each night that they have to play games. Currently, after hitting tier 13-15 the game feels completely unplayable for anyone with a job/kids. God forbid you're tired from work, be prepared to get absolutely slapped with punishments until you log off permanently.

e) The the quantity of return portals should be tied to the way-stone. Halting/slowing map progression by resetting the map and returning the way-stone with 1-2 reduced portals from what was remaining would be a solid time-based punishment that doesn't make the semi-casual player feel like potentially hours-worth of investment were entirely wasted. I think people want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here... that would be a massive mistake in my opinion. Keep the 6 portals for loot runs while each death subtracts 1-2 of the player's remaining portals on the way-stone. This would synergize fairly well with the other suggestions listed above.

4. Armor verging on being useless. This has been talked to death and I know others have better suggestions but... here we go.

a) Armor should scale on how much the player is hit for (protects against a larger percentage of damage vs big hits).

b) Armor should both have "push/push resistance" force behind abilities and your own movement.



There is plenty more to add in this list, but it's early access and overall this game is amazing... However, I feel that these 4 issues are going to be the catalyst for your average semi-casual player's most common log-off permanently moments that MUST be addressed within the next couple of weeks. A lot of us semi-casuals are hitting tier 15 with 1 or 2 characters at this point and are realizing how "hardcore" you seem to want your player base to be... I think I speak for many of us semi-casuals in saying... we want a challenging game, we want to be able to progress to 80-90% completion of endgame... but we do not want our limited time wasted because you want to conceptualize value in the "weight of player choices" as meaning "punish the crap out of our player base if they don't run a meta build off of some website while investing 800 hours per season into the game."

Additionally, why are there "banking" areas (such as the hideout) that are combat zones? I've bound abilities to shift and cntrl... and now when i want to 1-click bank, i just leap across the screen, so i don't get to be in my hideout I guess...

Either that or let us rebind 1-click banking/ all actions to new buttons... how does this get overlooked?