EndGame Proposal

Orael

EndGame Proposal

A proposal to adjust endgame mechanics to make them more worthwhile, more engaging and overall more fun. We want to lower the gap between Ascendants and Demigods as well as leave goals to achieve for those that hit endgame, should they choose to keep going but nothing so strong that they feel they need to keep going.

Demipowers and weights

RP Powers

Separate the following powers from the weight system. These powers will have an initial essence cost to purchase and another cost to change but will not cost any weight.

• CustomShout
• CustomZap
• CustomLook
• ChoiceShout
• ChoiceZap
• ChoiceEnter
• ChoiceLook
• ChoiceTeleport
• Typecast
• Masquerade
• Sparkler

Custom Powers will cost 4 million essence each time you activate/change

Choice Powers will cost 200k essence each time you activate/change one.

Typecast, Masquerade, and sparkler will have the same costs.

Other Powers

Open up all the powers to allow everyone to choose from. No more 'Ascendant' only powers. True Ascendants will still get their domoth powers inherently and Sealbearers will be allowed to choose one power weight-free still. Additionally, we will adjust the weights from 50/100/150 to 50/75/100 to close the gap. Accompanying this change in weight allowance will be a review and weight/essence cost adjustment of the remaining powers

* Wondercrystals will be permanently purchasable at 50 million apiece.

DemipowerReview

More Engaging Endgame

Remove the essence cap and instead allow players to use essence to purchase levels. Starting at 50mil, each level will scale up 10mil. Every 5 levels will grant one 'perk' point for the demigod to choose from a list. These powers should be nothing crazy but noticeable. Allow a player to reset perk points for an essence cost - like 25 million.

• Omniscience (drains personal essence) - 2 points
• Permanence - will not lose your current level.
• Ability to transfer demigod essence
  • Start with a 25% loss on transfer and additional perks reduce that by 2.5%?
• 0.5% crit bonus (cap at 10 perks - 5%)
• 5 extra weight (cap at 10 perks - extra 50 weight)
• ability to choose\unlock a restricted race (nagasith/sileni/gnome/fink) - 2 points
• A 3/16 universal damage buff at the cost of a -3/-16 universal resistance debuff - 2 points
• A 3/16 univeral resistance buff at the cost of a -3/-16 universal damage debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 health regen buff at the cost of a -3/-16 mana regen debuff and a -3/-16 ego regen debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 mana regen buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health regen debuff and a -3/-16 mana regen debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 egoregen buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health regen debuff and a -3/-16 mana regen debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 health buff at the cost of a -3/-16 mana debuff and a -3/-16 ego debuff - - 2 points
• A 4/16 mana buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health debuff and a -3/-16 ego debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 ego buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health debuff and a -3/-16 mana debuff - 2 points
• • More ideas for perks are welcome.

Anti-Grinder option

Introduce a passive essence gain mechanic. As you become older and wiser you gain essence over time. Players will gain essence for non-idle time playing in the game at a rate of 100,000 essence/hour of playtime. It'll be awarded on the new game year. This number comes out to ~100 million essence over the course of an RL year playing at a rate of ~3 hours a day (3 hours a day would be 333 days)


Let us know your thoughts and feelings. We do have more content in the works as well in addition to this proposal, but that must remain a secret for now!

Shango

Nil, just removing the Essence Cap would be awesome on its own.

Feoragan

Orael said:

Separate the following powers from the weight system. These powers will have an initial essence cost to purchase and another cost to change but will not cost any weight.

Awesome.

• Ability to transfer demigod essence
• Start with a 25% loss on transfer and additional perks reduce that by 2.5%?

Hand of the Demigod might need a buff here, or maybe make it the perk to reduce the loss.

• ability to choose\unlock a restricted race (nagasith/sileni/gnome/fink) - 2 points

What would this mean for curios that allow this do? People with those curios spent a long time/a lot of effort to gather and complete those.

• A 3/16 universal damage buff at the cost of a -3/-16 universal resistance debuff - 2 points
• A 3/16 univeral resistance buff at the cost of a -3/-16 universal damage debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 health regen buff at the cost of a -3/-16 mana regen debuff and a -3/-16 ego regen debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 mana regen buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health regen debuff and a -3/-16 mana regen debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 egoregen buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health regen debuff and a -3/-16 mana regen debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 health buff at the cost of a -3/-16 mana debuff and a -3/-16 ego debuff - - 2 points
• A 4/16 mana buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health debuff and a -3/-16 ego debuff - 2 points
• A 4/16 ego buff at the cost of a -3/-16 health debuff and a -3/-16 mana debuff - 2 points

Just because these operate in the bodyscan system... But hey, the downsides make this somewhere in the realm of acceptable. 

Anti-Grinder option

Introduce a passive essence gain mechanic. As you become older and wiser you gain essence over time. Players will gain essence for non-idle time playing in the game at a rate of 100,000 essence/hour of playtime. It'll be awarded on the new game year. This number comes out to ~100 million essence over the course of an RL year playing at a rate of ~3 hours a day (3 hours a day would be 333 days)

Awesome, but also, perhaps consider active essence rewards for little things like designing, crafting, trading, RP, etc. Obviously not to comparable levels, but something to encourage people to do stuff.

Initial thoughts, I might have more later.

Shango

Not liking the regen buff-debuff tradeoff though. Won't be making use of that.

Alexandria

I am okay with everything in this. I have no other useful input.

Kalnid

I'm not sure what you mean by permanence, could you elaborate?

I was going to say that as long as you're keeping the vitals stuff inside bodyscan I'm not sure they need to be a net negative, but pushing the cap means that you actually hit a choice there.

What about a movespeed boost, +1/x points?

Adding a second source of limited races besides curios is very nice.

Shango

Also agility buffs...can make that quite expensive but...oh so worth it.

Feoragan

I think more RP/Craft/Utility powers in general would be nice, as always. Maybe get a domoth specialisation power or something based on what you wanna do most: PVP, PVE, Crafting, Grinding, etc.

Stuff like FortunateWindfalls looks potentially problematic maybe, and there's one or two more things there that just say "Eek" a little bit to me.

BeateousWorkings is awesome for crafters, but you could definitely expand on that. Let them colour some things, add a reaction, make things that don't have a scent/taste have scents/taste, even if these are from a predefined list like Choice Powers (and must be unlocked) in that you can submit new flavours/scents for items. A crafter who creates coats that always smell like cookies? Adorable. Being able to pick from a list, say, "I'm making an apron, it's a baker's apron, so I'll make it smell like cookies!" would be so cool.

 When you get something created by someone with this power, you should say "Wow, this was made by someone who is really in touch with their divine spark." Is my idea.

Just, more vanity stuff. Let people customise their class loyals a bit, or jazz up their mounts in special demigod ways or whatever they want. 

I've heard a few times that people wanted custom tells like studs give you. Possibly custom tell colours/say colours/emote colours that aren't too obnoxious.

Custom moves/the ability to create more Choice Move texts for guilds/clans/families/cities etc might be wanted, though they'd probably warrant a hefty cost.

More vanity things!

Aonia

Guilds and cities/communes can already purchase additional demigod enter/exit options via Patron Request.

Zagreus

@Orael

Thunderclap, does it do a rooting check, or bypass rooting?

-3/-16 doesn't make sense since max buff is +/-13. Change to X/13 for consistency.

Endgame: The math seems overly harsh here. 2 perk points is 10 levels is 950million essence, and 4 perk points to get more than one option is 2.9 billion. Yeah, no one's ever getting that.  A decent ratio would be to expect max lifetime rewards at... let's say 2 billion. That's years of work for a serious hunter, unobtainable by most everyone. 

I assume you want people to get 2 points without years of work, and then it being tougher past that. Here's a better layout:

~2 Billion essence yields 20 levels aka 4 Perk points this way. In tandem with this, the crit% is not tweaked optimally I don't think either. Give 0.25% crit per level (capped at 20 levels, not perks, for 5%) and that seems scaled better. Do for weight also.


Edit: I also think multiple sealbearers should get more than one freebie, but not more than 3 total freebies no matter what (maybe 2 is more reasonable here for a non-TA), and they are still more limited by the demi/VA base weights compared to TAs.

Shango

Dropping the values to reach each new perk level may be best, aye...

Ghibli

+1 for adding celerity buffs (maybe with rooting malus?) to add to that list of point buys.

Also, with those buyable buffs / debuffs, are those toggleable or always on and only changeable via resetting?

Also also, this is awesome and has me really excited, so thanks for planning all this.

Dys

Does gaining levels do anything by itself or is it only every fifth level that does something?

I'm guessing +3/+16 increases the cap from +13 which makes the powers useful. I don't know if all buffs are applied first then debuffs but I wonder if you can cancel out some of the -3/-16 by stacking extra buffs.

Aurik

Ixion said:

Endgame: The math seems overly harsh here. 2 perk points is 10 levels (14.75 BILLION) essence. Yeah, no one's ever getting that. 1 perk point at 4.25 billion is similarly insane, no one's getting there probably either. A decent ratio would be to expect max lifetime rewards at... let's say 2 billion. That's years of work for a serious hunter, unobtainable by most everyone. 

Where are you getting 14.75b essence from? Starting at 50,000,000 essence, going up 10,000,000 per level, I get (50+60+70+80+90+100+110+120+130+140)=950m essence, just shy of 1b for your first two perks. Which I think is still a bit much, but nowhere near the numbers you're quoting?

Xenthos

No thanks to letting multiple seals have more than one freebie power.  This would be even better than TA because you could then just mix & match for the best across an array of options instead of being limited to your own seal's type, picking the highest-weight powers.  Picking 3 50-weight powers would be significantly more than TAs get.  You would actually be better off with multiple seals and Demigod (or Vernal Demigod) since the base weight difference is being squashed.

I do agree with the costs being high though.  What happened to capping at 100mil per level?  Is that gone now, or just left out by accident?

How are you determining "active time" for the passive gain?

The debuff to regen seems harsh.  Make them mutually exclusive (you can buy and toggle them on/off, toggling on takes the perk point, toggling off removes it, only one can be active at a time).  I can't see anyone buying/using anything other than Health generally, but the malus is over the top for something that will take so much effort to attain.

What precisely does permanence do?

To questions about artifacts, curios, etc: If you have those, you wouldn't need to spend the perk points to buy them again I would think.  This is another way of acquiring them for those who want access, though it is a lot of grinding for said access.  The only exception is the Hand, which is purely worse than the suggested power (it has a 50% loss).

I am really surprised by the infinite wondercrystal generation, but I am sure that will please people!

Jolanthe

Hand of the Demigod was an artifact that really should have never been, imo, and this seems like a reasonable move to make away from it. I say this as someone who bought the thing, and only really considered it once I'd expended most of my other interesting goop purchase options.

Far better for essence transference to be a more general thing. Have enough people even bought the Hand for it to be problematic to just refund purchase? Else, probably better to just throw some new function on it.

IMO, it'd be neat if you could use it to "lend" one of your demi-powers to another demigod until the start of the next Lusternian day. You would still be required to keep it active/on/supernumerary, but would not receive the benefit in any way - you beneficiary would instead. This would keep in theme with its object description to some extent and make it interesting/fun, but not a must have in any way.

Orael

Permanence means that you won't lose your level if you hit zero essence. I don't really expect a lot of people use it but you never know.

The costs may be daunting but part of the goal is to continually have stuff to work towards. Right now it'd take 2.9 billion essence to hit level 120. A big goal is to have a system here that those who want to take part in and nobody feels that they -need- to do it. These numbers should give people something to work towards for a long time. 

Perks are intended to be more permanent and not toggled on and off, so the debuffs were there to ensure that there's a trade-off and not a trade-off you can compensate for.

We already have a billion celerity buffs but I'll think about it.

Active time will be determined by you being present doing stuff in the game.

Xenthos

So permanence has no impact to Ascendants then, basically, but would be a nice peace-of-mind for demis?  Interesting safety net at least, losing Demi and all your powers would hurt.

Speaking of that, what happens to all your purchased levels if you lose demi..?

Xenthos

Right now it looks like there are 48 perk points available, with options for more.  You would have to buy 240 levels to get them all.  Level 240 would cost, what, 2.44 billion essence by itself (would this break the essence limit?).

Is there any concern about essence rollover?

Zagreus

Aurik said:

Ixion said:

Endgame: The math seems overly harsh here. 2 perk points is 10 levels (14.75 BILLION) essence. Yeah, no one's ever getting that. 1 perk point at 4.25 billion is similarly insane, no one's getting there probably either. A decent ratio would be to expect max lifetime rewards at... let's say 2 billion. That's years of work for a serious hunter, unobtainable by most everyone. 

Where are you getting 14.75b essence from? Starting at 50,000,000 essence, going up 10,000,000 per level, I get (50+60+70+80+90+100+110+120+130+140)=950m essence, just shy of 1b for your first two perks. Which I think is still a bit much, but nowhere near the numbers you're quoting?

I misworded a bit there, my fault. Edited. The 14.750 Billion is to reach 10 perk points to max out the crits/weight bonuses at level 150 (10 perk points). Having max rewards for crits/weight be that unobtainably high is just silly, which is what I was trying to convey.

Getting 2 perk points = 950 mil
Getting 4 perk points = 2.9 billion (maybe one or two people will ever get this in the rest of the game life. Munsia AFK bashed for years and only then got to 1 billion, so let's be real here, this "goal" is not a goal at all).

So circling back, my point is getting a second 2-perk "power" would never happen for anyone essentially, much less 10 to max out crit/weight. If you get omniscience, you're never getting another power pretty much. 

Regarding the x/16 buffs, specifically the health one. Let's just assume that's not a typo and that you get 3% per level from 14-16 like you do from regen buffs from 11-13. You go from 26% maxhp regen every 10 seconds to 35% regen. That's absolutely absurd and game breaking. Most fights do not revolve around mana/ego drains for kills, and some orgs don't even have access to a mana kill at all! 

Using 13/13 vitals as an example:
13/13 regen = 3198 regen every 10s
16/16 regen = 4305 regen (34.6% more than 13/13)
 
Do you really want orgs without mana kills (ego need not be mentioned, much harder to pressure) to have to fight into this absurd level of regen? 

Edit: How about a solution then? Yes... Make all the vitals ones in the 13 max buff system, +3/13 and then drop the maluses down to -1/-13, call it a day. It won't break anything then, at least, I suspect. Certain classes really struggle to get the last few regen to hit 13/13 so this would still be very valuable as 11+ is where the regen really ramps up.

Question: Thunderclap, does it do a rooting check, or bypass rooting?

Xenthos

I mean, I have hunted up over a billion myself without afk bashing.  My cult has half a billion in it (almost all from me dumping essence in), I bought all the wondercrystals, all the ascendant powers, trans'd Veneration multiple times at 120m per pop.  I suspect if you weren't capped / had the ability to buy more things you would have gone past her too.  Most of her afk bashing was solo which is a lot slower, and I am very hopeful that the "other things" being referenced in the first post are more options for us to go do things other than Astral.

That said, you and I have both been playing a very long time, so us having a lot of essence generated is not unexpected and I take your point as a completely valid one, this is just a gentle pushback, not denial.  I am pretty sure neither of us would total up to 2 billion, which I think goes on to validate your overall sentiment.

What would you think about keeping the costs the same, but giving a perk point every 2 or 3 levels instead of 5?

Zagreus

I'd rather not bring in other variables or digressions, but a short reply is those essence/cult numbers presumably includes esteem bombs which we all know are insanely better for essence than bashing, but I get your meaning.

At a complete guess backed up by no data, my lifetime bashing would probably have me at 1-1.5 billion right now after 15+ years of the entire life of the game without a cap/diminishing returns. With the playtime bonus and maybe "other" things coming, that's the compelling factor for why I made a chart with 2 billion as the max goal at the End of Time over there with Chrono and Robo.

Scaling the perk points would achieve the same type of downshift, yes, depending on the increments. If you get a perk point at every 2 levels, here's how that looks.


680M for 4 perk points seems too low IMO, so it seemed much easier to just adjust the formula and then re-do the crit/weight gain rate.

Xenthos

The main thing I am struggling with here is the disconnect between intent ("this is a long-term thing that we don't really expect anyone to ever finish") and the player side of "It doesn't seem like we will ever even make a dent in it."  Suggesting lowering too much makes me think it will get just dismissed, because it runs counter to the goal.  If they are open to rethinking the formula itself, then great.  If not, a point every 2 levels is vastly superior to every 5.

I guess at this point the question is what are they receptive to?  Perk point allocation adjustment or formula rework?

Knowing what's on the table would be helpful.

Zagreus

Sorry for post spam. I tend to dive right into the details.

This endgame review is super hype, and I really appreciate the hard work and time everyone put on it. The powers review looks awesome, and opening up each seal's powers to everyone is a great decision.

I'm really looking forward to dusting off the bashing boots once this drops live.

Pysynne

I do like all the ideas presented here, but I cannot help but think the costs of them make it more of a "This should stop them asking for endgame content cause we can point at the current stuff and say "Nobody is even close to finishing what we already have.""

I am sure this is not the intent, but it feels that way with costs so high that people are looking at RL years to attain. I.E You are looking at least at a RL year of nonstop bashing just to get Omniscience.

I think one thing that should be gauged hard and content for the game should be balanced around is this, not just player burn out - because it will happen in this system, but longevity of the game itself. 

Orael

We can look at the numbers it'll take to level. We're entertaining the idea of removing the essence softcap and letting you bash to your hearts content while we work on the rest of it, using that time to examine more data to make better decisions.

As far as perks - some people don't like the trade-off buff/debuff ones (whether they're too harsh or not worth it etc). If you have more ideas for buffs, whether they be crafting/design related or anything else, feel free to suggest it now. The more choices the better off I think.

Enya

Most of the demipowers themselves seem fine, though weights still feel like they're going to be really painful. Some powers taking up 100% of a demigod's allocation is nuts, even with the ability to buy more points with your leveling points in a limited manner (or paying a bunch of credits). 

Changing between choices in a choice power should continue to be free. A full repurchase of the power is way way WAY too much. 

I think I'm with Pysynne on this in that I don't really get what the underlying goal is of the leveling changes. Demis can spend 50mil (so, TWICE as much as aegis!) to start out purchasing a secondary resource that they can then use to buy... demipowers. Why not just add those powers as weightless demipowers in the essence shop? Not only that, but this mechanic is presented as "more engaging" but it's... more bashing, and only rewards players after extraordinary amounts of time poured in for 90% of players. There are already a bunch of those, and opening up ascendant powers is a whole new vista of "this'll take you months of RL effort or big investments to optimize bashing and assemble big groups" goals. It fills the exact same niche of purchasable powers that cost essence. 

What I would do is scrap the portion of extra leveling relating to purchasing the levels by expending essence on them. There's no point in having a second whole mechanic that uses the exact same purchasing currency as demipowers already do. The idea of continuing to level as you gain essence for perk powers is neat. Giving some reward to people who want to bash on forever is good and fine. Having levels as a competitive ranking for those who want to continue to see their numbers increase and to compete with one another also makes a lot more sense than going based on the amount of essence you happen to have on hand. 

Just have demigods continue to accrue xp and essence. Keep some measure essence diminishing returns, and let levels continue to go up based on it doesn't make sense that an Ascendant with a full 100 weight of powers but 100 essence is a lower power rank than a newly minted demigod with 1 million essence. At certain milestones have players just GET additional levels without having to spend down essence at all. 

These levels would provide perk points as noted, but because you're not purchasing them by spending essence like you would spend in the demishop these powers actually have a reason to not just sit in the demishop as weightless powers! 

It also makes a lot of sense to me to provide a mix of static powers at milestones along the way of these extra levels. Just how every level pre-demigod gives the character a mix of static bonuses in the form of vitals increases and racial powers at specific landmarks; as well as choice bonuses in the form of lessons, credits, and wondercrystals. Scaling some of the scalar benefits suggested like crits to your level, or mixing through limited versions of the newly weightless demishop powers (and similar) would work. Echoing some of the thematic notes of Veneration would also work well for that. 

As far as specific perks go:

• Omniscience (drains personal essence) - Cool
• Permanence - scrap entirely. Make death loss xp go away 100% for everyone, instead of backdooring with Death karma blessing. It's outdated design.
• Ability to transfer demigod essence - Fine cool good
• 0.5% crit bonus (cap at 10 perks - 5%) - This should either be automatic or (ideally) just not exist. Crit buffs already screw up competitive bashing events which have many credits on the line, more of these and more and more divide between the tippy top of bashing and everyone else can ONLY be bad, even if economics mechanics are FINALLY made not based on how fast you can bash. If it's a choice in a bashing based perk system it's the hilariously obvious early choice for several early picks because of how much it can impact speed, even after being nerfed.
• 5 extra weight (cap at 10 perks - extra 50 weight) - Should just go up automatically based on levels. 
• ability to choose\unlock a restricted race (nagasith/sileni/gnome/fink) - Neat.
• ALL the vitals/regen swaps - Nope. Do not do these, they seem awful to play around and utterly un-interactive. Nix. 
  

Zagreus

Just copying here some ideas I had from discord, maybe they will inspire some other ideas...

* +1 celerity per perk point free
* Once you hit 1 perk point, you get a critical hit clover, with the option to recharge it for essence

* 2 perk points- choose permanent karma blessing for free, BUT you can only have zero (or one?) other karma blessing at any time.

* 2 perk points- reduce the domoth stage 2 time by 50% (still factors in other modifiers of Seals/VA/TA), remove essence drain in domoths, +50% # of days you hold a domoth.

* 2 perk points - double your crit/weight gain amount earned thus far

* 5 perk points- buy TA and flip the middle finger to Kethuru. Not a joke.

* 2 perk points- Access to Hype as heck secluded bashing area

* 2 perk point- remove all personal archpower requirements

* 1 perk point- special beast bashing attack, +100% damage. (Coal/peppermint are +33%, for reference) damage type able to change on command

Ghibli

* 3 perk points - get your demigod+ racial perk (same as pendant) as you are very much now becoming demigod+

Shango

Here's an idea either to replace or in addition to the regen stuff...+vitals perks, max of 10 (so as to not replace or step all over artifact runes). Some gimmicky regen bit isn't even needed then...

Orael

In the initial thread asking for ideas, we had each level giving a small amount of vitals and people didn't like that, so it was removed for this iteration.