ideas how to make endgame combat more engaging

Hello community.
I would like to share my ideas on how to make the endgame combat more engaging. Feel free to share yours or comment mine.

1) lower mob density
I would like to see the mob density in endgame maps lowered, so the mob density is in practice as high as in act 1 of the campaign. This could mean that most sources of "+ monster quantity" would need to be removed (since the intention is not to have super low monster density that then gets pushed via +monster quantity into act 1 levels). Higher monster densities would be a rare exception, reserved for special content for that like breach. Something like Abyss would be Loot can be adjusted accordingly (I would prefer an adjustment in the direction of higher quality) to keep rewards roughly the same.
This could be seen as a design challenge: How to make combat feel engaging and challenging at this lower monster density - without overhelming the player by quantity: be it quantity of visuals to dodge or monsters to clear in a short time. The lower monster density would solve a lot of current issues like the player being too encouraged to use large AoE clearing skills over combos like fireball + fire bomb that won't feel good anymore at very high monster densities (often complained about as tedious), less screen clutter and there would be more room for tactical gameplay instead of being overhelmed by a large faceless monster mass.

2) monster rework
These are my main ideas how to make each individual combat encounter, consisting typically of 1-4 rares and the mobs sourrounding them, feel more meaningful and engaging:

a) give rare monsters a specific ability
The idea here is that when you see a rare monster, you'll know what it does, because each of the rare monsters would have a specific ability particular to that monster. So there could be rare skeleton mage monster type that always call down a meteor at the player, there could be a rare tanky berserker that always gets increased attack damage when attacking a player uninterrupted and so on.
This improves visual clarity, feels thematic and makes them feel less generic (the actual monster type matters, not just the random rare modifiers). The following ideas also build up onto this.

b) rework monster modifiers to work more like support gems
There can still be generic monster modifiers like we have right now, having a role like increasing the monsters survivability. My idea is to add another type of monster modifiers that work more like support gems: our meteor calling skeleton mage has a "mage type" ability and this ability can be supported by "mage type" monster modifiers. One modifier would let the meteor leave burning ground behind, another modifier would let it echo a 2nd time. Our tanky berserker would get monster modifiers from a different set: e.g. they could give him additional lifesteal or attack speed. This way monsters get meaningful sets of modifiers that fit well together and the main monster ability can be modified in interesting ways.

c) add a single archetype to some rare monsters
An archetype changes a rare monster in a way specific to that archetype and can be recognized by a small icon. Let me give some examples:
"the caster" is a monster whos primarly threat lies in using its active ability against the player, to achieve this he gets an additional modifier and 2 of his modifiers are guranteed to support his ability
"the warrior" is a monster whos primarly threat lies in its more basic attacks that deal high damage while he has also good survivability
"the general" buffs the normal and magic (not rare) monsters around him, this could be by increasing their survivability through large shields or granting them short attack speed and damage buffs
"the leader" is buffed while being sourrounded by normal and magic monsters, e.g. he takes less damage while those still live, can sacrifice them to heal himself etc.
"the summoner" brings new monsters into play as long as he's alive, he could be a necromancer, swarm host or plant summoning druid
"the channeler" has a powerful channel ability (e.g. channeling a hard to dodge meteor shower instead of a single meteor) that can be interrupted, because he needs some time to channel and is vulnerable to any kind of crowd control like stun / freeze during that time
"the growing threat" becomes stronger over time, becoming more of a threat, the longer he is ignored by the player, a variant of this could be "evolution": lets the monster evolve into a more powerful form after a while like growing wings and getting an additional powerful attack pattern
"the tank" has good survivability and an ability (e.g. parry, magical shield) that lets him benefit from absorbing player damage for a short time

A main idea here is to create strong rare monsters that require distinct responses from the player in how to deal with them while also making it recognizeable at a glance what kind of monster archetype one is encountering and therefore what to roughly expect without having to learn 500+ different monsters.

d) Make monsters tanky enough to survive for a while, so that players actually need to engage with them. This is especially important for the rare monsters. The "general" archetype is also intended to help with this - creating encounters were those white / magic monsters pose more of a threat than usual.

e) monster affinity
Some monsters that are fun to encounter together could have a higher chance of appearing together on a map. General archetype monsters could be spawned together with monsters that fit them well. There could be also negative affinity like not to spawn too many monsters creating damaging ground surfaces on maps that already have burning ground.

3) balance builds
Currently some builds are way stronger than others. It's not so much of an issue if a build deals 30% more damage, but currently certain form of scaling seem to break the game and lead to incredible high damage numbers.
Maybe set a maximum skill gem level - that would limit player power and allow for more varied gearing (not stacking +skills on every gear piece, but go for different things as well).
Maybe rework "more"-damage modifiers in a way that there is a limit of how many "more" modifiers can be applied to an attack. Lets call this idea "dynamic damage buckets": For a normal attack it could mean that the base damage is multiplied up to 4 times like this: "added damage" (like +% spell damage) * "critical damage" * "lowered resistances" * "conditional damage bonus". If you would get another "more damage multiplier" like a 2nd type of conditional damage, it would still give increased damage, but would be added additively to the multiplier of the "conditional damage bonus" bucket instead of adding a 5th multiplier.
Now what if someone doesn't use a lowered resistances mechanic? Then there is still room for a 4th multiplier, so a 2nd conditional damage effect would work for that attack as multiplier instead of being added to the "conditional damage bonus" bucket.
Expressed in simple terms: the idea here is to limit excessive scaling of stacking too many more damage multipliers while also not forcing the player into fixed damage buckets like Diablo 4 does. Instead damage buckets would be dynamically created depending on which mechanics the player uses (and not uses).

4) rework endgame difficulty scaling
Currently the maps feel too random in their difficulty: some mods that do not effect my build at all while others in their combination lead to very high monster damage that normal player builds can't really deal with. I would like to see a more consistent difficulty here.
On the other hand players can outscale normal T15 maps too soon. Increasing the difficulty further feels like too much effort: gambling for T16s, gambling for challenging modifiers, adding delirious and so on. I whish for a simple way to have a more challenging endgame experience that is not outscaled by gear - like simply adding an even higher tier waystone into the map device without the possible affix values on gear increasing further. I would like the games power curve to end on progressively harder challenges to overcome and not on the player becoming overpowered compared to the content difficulty.

Some ideas might be implented, but "antivision group" would be pissed off so hard...

They should just rework endgame so enemies spawn in groups and not all over the place, like abysses or breaches, and screen clearing/oneshotting every boss without perfect gear should not be a thing, higher tier bossfight should always take 1-2 mins.

After i saw the lich build that they put up on youtube i understood that they gonna make the game poe 1 and i haven't played the game since. I enjoyed 0.3 because the crafting but the abyss spawns are just horrible.

They should slow down the game, and weaken endgame power on some builds. but poe 1 players are againts that they wanna run around oneshotting everything.

At this point poe 2 will lose it's uniqueness and are gonna become poe 1 and only poe 1 players are gonna play it.

Poe 2 should not ideally become poe 1 and poe 1 players should understand that. if they don't like poe 2 they can go back and play poe 1. that is why the 2 games got separated.

+1

I think if GGG can separate bossing from mapping in some regard, so that you can either have juicy bosses or juicy mobs, would reward players that build characters around the blasting style of Fubgun/the witch crossbow video they showed, and players who build for fighting bosses.

Then make bosses too hard to fight if you don't build insane defensive style characters; ie make bosses HP checks not DPS checks. Which is actually similar to how both PoE 1 and Last Epoch play in their end-games. (Yes you can still build Uber-Elder one-shots, I'm aware. But largely relegated to elite loot/standard league)

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

1) lower mob density
I would like to see the mob density in endgame maps lowered, so the mob density is in practice as high as in act 1 of the campaign. This could mean that most sources of "+ monster quantity" would need to be removed (since the intention is not to have super low monster density that then gets pushed via +monster quantity into act 1 levels). Higher monster densities would be a rare exception, reserved for special content for that like breach. Something like Abyss would be Loot can be adjusted accordingly (I would prefer an adjustment in the direction of higher quality) to keep rewards roughly the same.
This could be seen as a design challenge: How to make combat feel engaging and challenging at this lower monster density - without overhelming the player by quantity: be it quantity of visuals to dodge or monsters to clear in a short time. The lower monster density would solve a lot of current issues like the player being too encouraged to use large AoE clearing skills over combos like fireball + fire bomb that won't feel good anymore at very high monster densities (often complained about as tedious), less screen clutter and there would be more room for tactical gameplay instead of being overhelmed by a large faceless monster mass.

Also think monster quantity needs some changes. Abyss is just too much - no chance for visual clarity. I still think there should be some, big packs - it just feels good to explode some white packs, but I don't need a map full of exploding packs permanently. I think it kinda is like that already, but a solution is also to have more "useless" mobs that come in big packs to satisfy the player in this regard. Like the map with the sarcophagus and the statues - always feels good to do those.

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

2) monster rework
These are my main ideas how to make each individual combat encounter, consisting typically of 1-4 rares and the mobs sourrounding them, feel more meaningful and engaging:

a) give rare monsters a specific ability
The idea here is that when you see a rare monster, you'll know what it does, because each of the rare monsters would have a specific ability particular to that monster. So there could be rare skeleton mage monster type that always call down a meteor at the player, there could be a rare tanky berserker that always gets increased attack damage when attacking a player uninterrupted and so on.
This improves visual clarity, feels thematic and makes them feel less generic (the actual monster type matters, not just the random rare modifiers). The following ideas also build up onto this.

Almost completely with you on that. I think there is a place for random modifiers — as long as you can see them and have counterplay. Stuff like mana siphon is not a bad modifier (not talking about it in combination with way too fast monsters), stuff like that is fine. But I don't see the use of some multiplicative damage scaling or speed modifiers on monsters you don't really see. You don't have time to hover over every rare to check if it's dangerous… (maybe you should have the time tho, again a monster speed problem)

Also, I don't think they need stuff like the tanky berserker to be 1 unique rare, it could be like these 6 monsters can spawn as berserker — then they are bigger and have some red glow. But yes — we need more handcrafted monsters here.

For the part of 1-4 rares + mobs around them, maybe even less would be better. I think reducing the rares, making them harder (skills you need to dodge, mechanics to avoid, more durable) and therefore increasing the loot by a lot would be great.

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

b) rework monster modifiers to work more like support gems
There can still be generic monster modifiers like we have right now, having a role like increasing the monsters survivability. My idea is to add another type of monster modifiers that work more like support gems: our meteor calling skeleton mage has a "mage type" ability and this ability can be supported by "mage type" monster modifiers. One modifier would let the meteor leave burning ground behind, another modifier would let it echo a 2nd time. Our tanky beserker would get monster modifiers from a different set: e.g. they could give him additional lifesteal or attack speed. This way monsters get meaningful sets of modifiers that fit well together and the main monster ability can be modified in interesting ways.

Completely with you on that, also thought modifiers like this would be much better. Like monsters with a slam can get some kind of "brute" mod that makes their slams faster, stronger and a red-blink (unavoidable) ability. Mages that spawn mana leech zones... Idk if it should be just modifiers to their ability tho

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

c) add a single archetype to some rare monsters
An archetype changes a rare monster in a way specific to that archetype and can be recognized by a small icon. Let me give some examples:
"the caster" is a monster whos primarly threat lies in using its active ability against the player, to achieve this he gets an additional modifier and 2 of his modifiers are guranteed to support his ability
"the warrior" is a monster whos primarly threat lies in its more basic attacks that deal high damage while he has also good survivability
"the general" buffs the normal and magic (not rare) monsters around him, this could be by increasing their survivability through large shields or granting them short attack speed and damage buffs
"the leader" is buffed while being sourrounded by normal and magic monsters, e.g. he takes less damage while those still live, can sacrifice them to heal himself etc.
"the summoner" brings new monsters into play as long as he's alive, he could be a necromancer, swarm host or plant summoning druid
"the channeler" has a powerful channel ability (e.g. channeling a hard to dodge meteor shower instead of a single meteor) that can be interrupted, because he needs some time to channel and is vulnerable to any kind of crowd control like stun / freeze during that time
"the growing threat" becomes stronger over time, becoming more of a threat, the longer he is ignored by the player, a variant of this could be "evolution": lets the monster evolve into a more powerful form after a while like growing wings and getting an additional powerful attack pattern
"the tank" has good survivability and an ability (e.g. parry, magical shield) that lets him benefit from absorbing player damage for a short time

A main idea here is to create strong rare monsters that require distinct responses from the player in how to deal with them while also making it recognizeable at a glance what kind of monster archetype one is encountering and therefore what to roughly expect without having to learn 500+ different monsters.

Only thing I don't think is a good idea would be the growing thread. Monsters getting stronger over time seems to punishing for low damage builds. Will probably be terrible to balance aswell. Other than that — some core classes would probably give more visual clarity, maybe even adjust the rare icons to rare-class icons on the map — so you know when some kind of assassin monster is near. (would also add that to the pool, not like a invis oneshot thing, more like a class that can teleport (shroudwalker mod rn), go invis, use traps...)

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

d) Make monsters tanky enough to survive for a while, so that players actually need to engage with them. This is especially important for the rare monsters. The "general" archetype is also intended to help with this - creating encounters were those white / magic monsters pose more of a threat than usual.

Completely agree. Maybe a change for magic monsters would also me due. Like rn they are just white mobs with extra drops... They could also add special mods to those, so they are a thread by themself. One thing I could think of is like that all the remaining pack monsters grow stronger each time you kill one of them and heal (no speed increase, mostly more durable) - if you oneshot the pack, one will still live. The last one then drops some good stuff. (I think there was/is something like this in PoE1?)

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

e) monster affinity
Some monsters that are fun to encounter together could have a higher chance of appearing together on a map. General archetype monsters could be spawned together with monsters that fit them well. There could be also negative affinity like not to spawn too many monsters creating damaging ground surfaces on maps that already have burning ground.

I would guess they already have something like this

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

3) balance builds
Currently some builds are way stronger than others. It's not so much of an issue if a build deals 30% more damage, but currently certain form of scaling seem to break the game and lead to incredible high damage numbers.
Maybe set a maximum skill gem level - that would limit player power and allow for more varied gearing (not stacking +skills on every gear piece, but go for different things as well).
Maybe rework "more"-damage modifiers in a way that there is a limit of how many "more" modifiers can be applied to an attack. Lets call this idea "dynamic damage buckets": For a normal attack it could mean that the base damage is multiplied up to 4 times like this: "added damage" (like +% spell damage) * "critical damage" * "lowered resistances" * "conditional damage bonus". If you would get another "more damage multiplier" like a 2nd type of conditional damage, it would still give increased damage, but would be added additively to the multiplier of the "conditional damage bonus" bucket instead of adding a 5th multiplier.
Now what if someone doesn't use a lowered resistances mechanic? Then there is still room for a 4th multiplier, so a 2nd conditional damage effect would work for that attack as multiplier instead of being added to the "conditional damage bonus" bucket.
Expressed in simple terms: the idea here is to limit excessive scaling of stacking too many more damage multipliers while also not forcing the player into fixed damage buckets like Diablo 4 does. Instead damage buckets would be dynamically created depending on which mechanics the player uses (and not uses).

I think the problem is that there are some sources (Rakiata's and Atalui's for example) that just skyrocket your damage. A support gem is generally like 20-40% more damage, then some unique one is 300%?? Same goes for some uniques and Skill Level on gear. Its just too much a difference... I think it would be much better if support gems had some smaller baseline they are balanced around - like 15% more damage per gem for most. And give out much less spell level, or do something else about it - its just like the most important mod on items damage wise, +7 to cold gems gives comet mor ethan 160% more damage, while added as max roll is 45% and spell damage is 169% (if you have 200% from other sources its 56% effective increase). Curses and shock also seem overtuned...

"

Meril#8494 wrote:

4) rework endgame difficulty scaling
Currently the maps feel too random in their difficulty: some mods that do not effect my build at all while others in their combination lead to very high monster damage that normal player builds can't really deal with. I would like to see a more consistent difficulty here.
On the other hand players can outscale normal T15 maps too soon. Increasing the difficulty further feels like too much effort: gambling for T16s, gambling for challenging modifiers, adding delirious and so on. I whish for a simple way to have a more challenging endgame experience that is not outscaled by gear - like simply adding an even higher tier waystone into the map device without the possible affix values on gear increasing further. I would like the games power curve to end on progressively harder challenges to overcome and not on the player becoming overpowered compared to the content difficulty.

I think the problem rn is that for many builds its "oneshot - or be oneshot". Had moments I didnt even know what I died from. The thing that works best against that is just killing everything before it has time to react ... the opposite of engaging combat. I think just a big rare/magic monster overhaul would already make it much easier to fix the scaling here. Then there could also be mods like "All rares are Warriors, they always hunt in packs of 2" - this would make it more difficult, since there are always 2 rares at once, but no weird damage scaling that makes white mobs suddenly kill you cause they crit with tripple projectiles and 50% damage as extra chaos or smth. (The mod doesnt have to mean double rares on the map - could just round the number to a multiple of 2 and then put them together)

TLDR I agree in general with the OP

I won't comment on the specifics, but I very much agree with the general gist that monster design just needs to be massively overhauled.

The game is designed for more visercal and meaningful combat, and it shows in the boss fights. The early campaign boss fight experience is really good, and a lot of fun.

Their approach to the rest of the game, such as monster design and map design, needs to match that. Combat needs to feel the same when going through a zone or a map as it does during a boss, visceral and meaningful. Play any well designed game focused on meaningful, visceral combat, and you'll see that the experience stays largely consistent when facing smaller enemies and when facing bosses. It's about being careful, staying away from telegraphed attacks, and planning your strikes to land during openings. That's how it is against the very first monster you face, and that's how it is against the final boss of the game.

But that isn't how it is in PoE2. It's only that way for campaign bosses and early zones, but for the rest of the game it's more akin to Vampire Survivors. If they want a game that feels good to play the whole way through, they either need to rework the entire combat system to be about the Vampire Survivors style of speed, or they need to rework their monster design to match the combat system. Because right now they're trying to marry two completely different types of combat systems, and it just doesn't work.

"

MarsAstro#7928 wrote:

I won't comment on the specifics, but I very much agree with the general gist that monster design just needs to be massively overhauled.

The game is designed for more visercal and meaningful combat, and it shows in the boss fights. The early campaign boss fight experience is really good, and a lot of fun.

Their approach to the rest of the game, such as monster design and map design, needs to match that. Combat needs to feel the same when going through a zone or a map as it does during a boss, visceral and meaningful. Play any well designed game focused on meaningful, visceral combat, and you'll see that the experience stays largely consistent when facing smaller enemies and when facing bosses. It's about being careful, staying away from telegraphed attacks, and planning your strikes to land during openings. That's how it is against the very first monster you face, and that's how it is against the final boss of the game.

But that isn't how it is in PoE2. It's only that way for campaign bosses and early zones, but for the rest of the game it's more akin to Vampire Survivors. If they want a game that feels good to play the whole way through, they either need to rework the entire combat system to be about the Vampire Survivors style of speed, or they need to rework their monster design to match the combat system. Because right now they're trying to marry two completely different types of combat systems, and it just doesn't work.

I think you actually can — at least a bit. Make white mobs "explodeable" and blue/magic mobs something to engage with. The worst time for me in PoE2 was when I needed 5 arcs to kill a single white mob in act 2 (partly cause of shit gear). If you have to use a full rotation of whatever you do for white mobs, the game would get exhausting. Also exploding packs is still fun to do, but if you just walk over rares it becomes the endgame is just boring, walking through maps and holding down a button…

+1

Great feedback, love the ideas you've presented here.
I really hope GGG reads these.

The problem I have with reduced mob density is, unless you buff the loot accordingly, nobody is going to like running through act 1 over and over again, especially the endgame.

Secondly, all maps would need to be significantly cut down in size to account for these changes. I strongly doubt most people are going to enjoy running maps where half of it is spent simply walking from one pack to another. We all know how tedious it feels to get through act 3, now imagine if those areas had act 1 density. That's going to be what mapping will feel like.