An alternative design to Towers and Tablets

With Season 2, the endgame loop has started to feel more frustrating to me. In Season 1, I didn’t share much of the criticism, but the changes in 0.2 have amplified some core issues.

The main problem I see is that the system works against itself. Patch 0.2 makes atlas exploration more important: you need to move through corrupted and cleansed zones to raise map levels, chase unique maps, and like in 0.1 find citadels. But at the same time, if you want to run tablets efficiently, you're encouraged to stay locked in one area, preferably where multiple tower radii overlap.

Moreover, mechanics still spawn randomly inside tower zones, a pain point since 0.1. If you want value from your tablets, you often need to clear all those random maps even ones you wouldn’t normally run. This is slow, repetitive, and makes the game feel restrictive. For context, I’ve got five days of play on my current character. I’ve cleared T2 Orloth, T1 Simulacrum, T1 King of the Mist, and T3 Xesth but I still haven’t seen a single citadel nor it's nowhere visible in the fog. I only have four boss atlas points, and I’m missing one unique map for my final two points. That’s all because I can't explore freely without abandoning tablet mechanics, which feels like a major design flaw.

Proposal: Decouple Mechanics from Node Locations

My idea is simple, separate mechanics from specific node locations.

Nodes can still be corrupted or irradiated, but mechanics no longer spawn on them directly.

Towers no longer affect a surrounding area.

When you activate a tower by running its map, you slot in precursor tablets as usual. Instead of empowering local nodes, you now receive mechanic counters based on those tablets.

These counters represent how many times you can activate each mechanic. For example, if you insert Breach, Irradiated, and Boss tablets in a tower, you get 10 Breach counters, 13 Irradiated, and 4 Boss counters (or any number depending on the tablet itself). When you click on a node to insert a map, you choose which of your available counters to activate. The suffixes from the tablets are applied when you use the mechanic to which they are tied.

This way you gain full control over where mechanics appear. No more Breach in Crypt, you can save it for Steppe or Savannah. You are also now free to explore the atlas without losing value from your tablets. You can plan mechanics strategically, like saving boss modifiers for corrupted +1 level nodes which now rarely spawn. Detours become conscious choices, not inefficient ones. If you find layouts that suit your mechanics, you can intentionally path toward them or stay longer in an area than otherwise needed. A few examples on how it could work:

Example 1:
You activate a tower with the following tablets:

10 Breach (7% quantity + random suffix)

10 Irradiated (3% quantity + random suffix)

4 Boss (15% quantity to boss drops + random suffix)

You can now apply these mechanics across multiple maps, in any combination. If Breach or another mechanic runs out, you continue using the remaining counters.

Example 2:
You reach another tower and you still have a few counters left (for instance 1 Breach, 2 Irradiated, 1 Boss). You insert Delirium, Ritual, and Expedition tablets, which adds 3 more counters types to your storage. You can now choose from six mechanics, activating them as needed. You can also decide to refresh a mechanic like Breach by either using the last counter on a random node or overwriting the existing tablet with a new one.

This way you limit the number of active mechanics to six. Counters for the same mechanic cannot stack so you cannot accumulate insane amounts of tablet modifiers. Close tower clusters still offer strong value, but now through strategic choice rather than forced routing.

One concern is the possibility of players running low-level empty maps just to reach multiple towers, then popping all mechanics at once. To limit this, you could allow only one tower to be active at a time forcing the max number of mechanics per node to be 3. Unique hybrid tablets could also unlock bonus slots like a Deli/Breach tablet which would give you an extra mechanics to select. Alternatively a t16 map slotted into a tower could grand a fourth tablet slot and so on. There are ways where ultimately you could put all six mechanics in a node and the map. They can be scaled in a way that only in late endgame can be achieved.

This system solves several of the current endgame issues. First of all it aligns exploration with efficient farming. It removes reliance on overlapping towers. It lets players choose layouts that make mechanics shine. It reduces RNG that forces players into content they don’t enjoy.

There are still some details to fine-tune, like refreshing counters or overwriting modifiers, but overall I think this structure preserves strategic depth while removing the most frustrating constraints of the current system.

Let me know what you think. I would really appreciate feedback, whether it's support, criticism, or alternative suggestions.
Last bumped16 июн. 2025 г., 12:44:13

Пожаловаться на запись форума

Пожаловаться на учетную запись:

Тип жалобы

Дополнительная информация