Strongholds definitely need some incentives. I feel bad when my friends just ignore them.
I always do them for waypoints and variety in experience.
I would not have them automatically unlocked, as they are part of the world and not the campaign. You should make a conscious choice (beside wanting a WP) to unlock them.
I see them as becoming an experience similar to raids (and not the common Legion choice).
I would keep non-waypoint ones as Legion material.
I would make 1 of them raid-worthy:
- 1 conquered stronghold is available as a raid every 3-6 hours, similar to World bosses
- a harder fight that gives you another chance at an uber unique
- a rotation (1 stronghold each day) would then make sense
I would even go further and spawn Non-tormented versions of bosses there, beside the regular ones specific ones.
I would go even further and provide an option to have a Tormented raid, with an obvious tormented boss at the end of the raid for a juicy 5x the loot.
/e Two problems I don’t know how to fix yet is repeated boss runs, to consume all your materials and the clash between material-summoned bosses and the current natural bosses of the strongholds.
/e2 My problems were:
Repeated boss runs meant boss farming with your mats and respawning them as many times as your mats allowed. This clashed with my raid design because the raid is way more limited in availability.
The clash between material-summoned bosses and the current natural bosses was self-explanatory.
Solution:
- Lore bosses that drop uber uniques can stay in their respective existing arenas, even if I have a bone to pick over their current arenas (that’s for another topic). They don’t fit in strongholds because strongholds belong to the world, open adventure.
- the current bosses, after being defeated in a raid, can drop either a resplendent spark or a new consumable that lets you either
- reset all tempering status of an item
- or lets you cancel 1 tempering line and gives you half the number of possible temperings (if 6 is max, then you get 3)
Resetting a tempering regardless of method implies changing code to reapply the masterworking bonus to any tempering regardless of when it is applied (or always apply the masterworking bonus in tempering results)