So I played season 7 and the point where I noticed the endgame starts getting repetitive and boring is around paragon 220.
When you reach that stage of the game, everything is about adding in those last few points into your fifth paragon board before it becomes a slog. You are rerolling masterwork gear to get that perfect (or close enough) 12/12 masterwork. All your glyphs in your paragon board are 100/100. Season Pass is completed. Season Journey is completed or close to completion. Only thing left is finding that 1 or 2 mythic uniques for your build to make it pop off hard so you farm Uber Bosses.
Paragon 220+ is where Blizzard needs to add additional aspirational things to do. Add in a separate reward system for continuing to play your game because Paragon points come too slowly to get excited about them and gear upgrades are almost no longer a thing. Something that is tracked by certain number of kills. Something like:
Kill 1 World Boss
Kill 2 Uber Bosses (Ladder bosses)
Complete 2 Dungeons
Open 4 chests in Helltide
Collect 1 cache from Tree of Whispers
Make it a repeatable quest. Once completed, that Gypsy lady from the shop shows you 3 cards facing down and you get to pick 1 for your reward.
Card 1: Materials including boss summoning materials/keys, masterworking materials (lots), and crafting materials.
Card 2: Cosmetics like pets, wings, portals, and armor sets. Thing is the card doesn’t just drop the cosmetic though. It drops a letter detailing how to EARN these items in the game. As long as you have the letter on you, you can go to X location and kill X named enemy and that cosmetic will drop. The harder the named enemy the better. An earned reward feels more special than a freebie.
Card 3: Greater Affix Chaos Cache that contains a random assortment of greater affix legendary armor, weapons, and jewelry. Same chance to drop a unique and mythic unique as open world. A low chance is still a chance. Basically a random loot box. Spin that slot machine to win.
The idea may sound simple but just the idea of continuing to work towards those small incremental rewards will actually keep players engaged in the game longer and trying to work towards something. This isn’t meant to be an endgame piece of content. This is simply meant to keep people interested in working towards short term easily obtainable goals while trying to obtain their long term goals.
Once you get to 200 paragon your mostly geard and the ones left at that point just do pit because it yeilds the highest xp gains.
I looth the pit because of how boring it is like D3 GR. However, since its the most efficient way to level without alternatives pit is the current end game at 220+.
Id like them to find a way to add more end game activities that compete with the pit xp wise.
Pit gets boring though and at some point you do run out of those shards to open up the rift so you got to go back to doing open world stuff at some point. Like you said though, the pit rewards you with the highest exp at that level. What if you get tired of the pit? You get what I’m saying though right?
They had other things to do past 220 but people that can’t make builds for themselves said it was to hard so they limited us to 5 boards and now you just fill the nodes.
This sounds great! I think that adds another 1-2 weeks.
I would ask the question, what can we give our eternal realm players to do?
Endgame for me looks like breaches where it gets tougher the deeper you go to hell and a random boss Belial or Duriel or Elias or Malphas or any story boss could appear the deeper you go.
When I get tierd of the pit the seasons over for me. I wont do the grind to 300 every season. I ended this season at around 270.
This is why they need to diversify end game content to compete with pit. Id even like to see DC compete with pit or even give us ways to jack up nmd for more xp.
? Because there was multiplicative nodes and such you can go into instead of just filling every empty node you see for generic stat bumps. Paragon boards use to be that before the 5 board limit, I’d argue some nodes are stronger then items in this game so it would be a massive reward
Beautiful thing about this system of small rewards is that it can be an evergreen piece of content. Meaning it can definitely be added to eternal for a few more weeks of fun.
Honestly I’d rather have skill mutations than access to more than 5 boards. All more boards did was make you straight beeline to each Glyph node and only rarely taking a legendary node. Personally I like the new system.
I dunno I like more options instead of no options, boards are set for a build so there is very little deviation in builds now, you don’t even have to think about or make a perfect route, just go for the glyphs then fill in the rest. Id welcome a different system like mutations though
I mean mindcages are what I was pretty much hinting at. Honestly I don’t know why they took them out of the game.
I’d like more options myself but not in the board. In the board, every build has its mandatory 3 boards for the build and 2-3 mandatory glyphs. Any more than that is just dps padding.
Instead I’d rather see something change up the endgame like skill mutations. That said until we actually get a more fleshed out character progression and endgame, I’d rather make the leveling process after paragon 220 more enjoyable for longer. To do that you need small easily obtainable goals to work towards in between paragon levels.
100% agree. I think it’s a big underrated part of why people love D2 as well. Each act was it’s own goal and then moving to the next difficulty was the overall goal. It works well as a carrot on a stick. They had something with capstone dungeons but they gave up on it.
They can definitely go this route for further endgame progression instead of skill mutations for sure. Honestly any additional character progression that runs along side paragon grinding sounds good to me. That’s something they would need to add in an expansion however.
In the mean time, they need something in the endgame to keep players engaged in the game. Small incremental goals you can do in 1-2 hours and get a reward. All content rewards you for doing it but is that reward meaningful? Uber bosses for sure. The others are kind of bland.
What if we could mix in some fun with the bland to create a goal that gives you something you care about in the endgame? I think that would create a strong engagement loop to keep players playing longer.