Exiles of Might and Magic (endgame)

Haven't played Settlers of Kalguur but I heard it's very similar to the end game I always wanted. Hopefully, that league was an experiment and preparation for the endgame revamp. Either way, I'll just lay out a rough concept here and I trust the devs will think of something better.



A. Upgradable base of operations:

1. Upgrade a base of operations and build/upgrade supporting buildings (e.g. smithy, black market, lab, beast kennels etc). Find certain building blueprints in the atlas.

2. Recruit NPCs and assign them to various jobs (research, raising beasts, scavenging/missions, blacksmithing, training, etc). Each NPC has certain aptitudes which will enhance their function in various ways. NPCs could require items to be recruited and can act as a sink. Find more NPCs in the atlas.

3. Dedicated passives tree for the base. Passives could range from building function upgrades or revelation of hidden atlas nodes to passive income increases or campaign enhancements.

4. Campaign bonuses for alts through certain buildings and base passives, so that the campaign becomes great again, profitable and most importantly significantly different from prior playthroughs. Could also have an option to skip act 3.

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For example:

- Current NPCs claim to be "researching" splinters. Why not put them in a research lab, give them splinters to research, unlock league boss access though there, generate base passives, and when sufficiently upgraded choose a league item to produce over time as a minor passive player income from that building (e.g. a certain omen or 3 certain catalysts per x turns or day).

- In the same manner, put NPCs to work in a smithy for a small stream of choice for runes/scraps/whetstones/etchers. NPCs with aptitude can have a chance for bonus production/greater grade of items.

- The black market could be an interesting end-game gold sink that sells random items including currency for very large amounts of gold. Buying from there could have map consequences and trigger events.

- The cartographer's hall could enable the banish/favorite maps mechanic from PoE 1, improve fog of war clearing, reveal hidden or distant nodes, create paths, and in general make the Atlas more deterministic.

- The barracks could be a way to recruit or train NPCs for missions (more on this later in the post).

- The beast kennels could be a way to get a companion with desired mods, without constantly respawning at a waypoint. You could provide them with materials for these mods and have them raise the beast over time.

- The exile training hall could provide bonuses for alts and leveling unique item improvements, while a strategy hall could enable you to significantly increase campaign mob density/rares etc, add more league mechanics to it, so that it's profitable on latter runs.




B. Interactive atlas:

1. A useful time mechanic: HoMM mostly uses turns to move NPCs, weeks for resource and unit production, and moon phases and months with various effects during their span (e.g. booming troglodyte population). PoE could use map completions as turns or/and a combination of that with real time counters for certain triggers (like resource acquisition from a conquered mine) and have random effects for its time spans in the same manner.

2. NPCs traversing the atlas and interacting with nodes: Events, travelling NPCs/enemies would breathe some life into the Atlas. These NPCs would move on turn end, and may just traverse the map, occupy a node, or try to reach a certain goal to trigger a change in the atlas. Players need not be the only ones affecting the landscape!

3. Better atlas nodes: The atlas should have various kinds of nodes besides the current same-ish sized maps and most importantly more optional nodes (not obligatory to go through them to progress). These nodes could range from conquerable resource nodes (mines, lumber mills, etc) which could support base building to short arenas with exile/rares back to back fights or advancing monster/army waves survival/defense areas. The gist is more smaller maps, in which you will not necessarily have to do the typical run around, clear the area and kill a boss as fast as possible.

4. Missions: Mission concept is pretty straightforward (probably what has already been done in Kalguur?) - find NPCs, train them, supply their gear, and send them on missions, as a long-term reward mechanism, minor randomly built storyline flavor (reports from their adventure and events that transpired), and as an event contributor for players (as shown in the example). More importantly though, they will create some breathing space for players who might prefer engaging in other activities, acting as proxies for them to e.g. stop NPCs from reaching a goal or conquer a resource node.

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For example:

- Your soldiers have been captured by enemies on a "failed mission" - either save them (visit a small hideout-like map - trains them), offer them as a sacrifice (anoint nearby maps with +1 level), or leave them to their fate (nearby maps have 12 packs of deserters). A choice of a player mission and soldier upgrade or an atlas enhancement.

- A dreadnaught (or another moving object/army e.g. a caravan, exile with an army or a pack of chimeras) appearing and marching through the Atlas, available only for a short period of time/turns. Engaging these would not result in a traditional large-scale map, but in a map that befits each encounter.

- Your soldiers discover dangerous abandoned tunnels in the mine they just conquered. Either let them scavenge the tunnels for loot/resources with the risk of losing some of them, or visit the mine map, clear it and upgrade the mine as a result.

- An army of undead marches towards a trading village node. Letting them reach that node without either engaging them or sending soldiers, would result in the village being destroyed and the surrounding nodes overrun with undead. Again, like the first example, it's a win-win situation for the player, but still a "meaningful" choice, as the player either loses a resource node if the trading village gets destroyed, or temporarily benefits from running the overrun maps.


I think more people should express their favorite concept of an endgame so that we as a community culminate good enough feedback for a great PoE endgame!

That is actually a great idea! This would be an awesome end game Revamp. Here's hoping the team can do something with this!

I've seen a different variation of it, but every time I see it I really enjoy the idea of having an endgame system that's about changing how the campaign plays for subsequent characters.

It's such an excellent and elegant idea for making alts more fun in a new league, instead of the current system where most people will stick to only one character per league.

What a well thought-out and interesting post!
I see a lot of good ideas and suggestions that will definately make the game more intersting and add more depth to endgame.

Devs hire this guy...

In PoE1 we are called Godslayers. I want to be called The Conqueror in PoE2, and I want this to make me feel like a conqueror.

Who the %^&* is playing Necropolis?! Do you wana get kicked out of the house!?

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Xzorn#7046 wrote:

Who the %^&* is playing Necropolis?! Do you wana get kicked out of the house!?

+1

+100000000000

Bump, updated the OP a bit