Subjective feedback on improving Temples for replay value

Greetings,

while i am generally content with the state of the game, i do find the league mechanic itself underwhelming.

Considering the past drama mostly circulated around the effort/reward spiral and loot brain, i do not think it has enough going for it to make it engaging long term or has reasonable replayability. It feels undercooked. Many of the past complaints of "lot of work to setup" or "time wasted" stems from the simple fact that the gameplay outside of promising big payouts later on is not engaging enough and people only focus on the promise of reward.

My biggest gripe is the fact that it dresses up in the garbs of a roguelite, without having any elements that make such interesting. The core fundamentals and idea behind it are good and there is so so so much potential but as things stand it is too one dimensional.

These are my biggest issues and what i felt could help :

1.

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There is a too big gap between being able to run it (6 maps, if you even find/do it in every map) Early on theres a lot of time between being able to run them, and getting to 60 possible charges takes ages. Several of my friends said "why bother" after looking at it because of this

a. Temple should be runnable every 3 maps / charges.

b. Introduce a droppable, consumeable soul core used as a charge, Rarity similar to Divine Orb. This is mostly to boost new characters and speed up temple building for established players late in league.

c. Alternatively let us charge the temple by sacrificing exalted/chaos/divine orbs depending on amount of tiles placed in the temple. (0-20-40 as breakpoints for them?)

d. Similar to roguelites, there are certain, proven to work, golden rules. One of those is incentivising the feeling of "one more run". The current design is antithetical to this, as it heavily limits it, more so at the start where everybody experiences it.

2.

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Not enough player agency to manipulate the experience beyond medallions (which are good)

a. We should also respect the second golden rule of roguelites, the "chose 1 out of 3" Since we reduce the amount of charges needed to run to 3, we also only get 3 tiles, but each of those tiles can be picked from 3 options. This way temple building is more engaging and fair. If a player needs certain rooms, more paths or doesnt want to run certain rooms, we would have an effective pool of 9 options instead of 6

b. More so, currently players are compelled to always use all 6, and its possible to have long drystreaks of wanted rooms which can make early templebuilding very frustrating.

c. Alternatively there could be "boon" type of medallions that only strengthen the player for the course of 1 temple run, as a very rare drop - thematically being empowered by blood or corruption inside of the temple

3.

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It is not varied enough in room types.

a. We desperately need more room types to make it more varied. While i do not enjoy temple of chaos as content, the best decision would be to grab stages, and adjust them as rooms. This would be fine since the player has the choice to place said rooms or not and would fit thematically.

4.

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The current room types all have the same clear condition (kill mobs/boss)

a. Continuing from 3.a.: Analogue versions of the temple of chaos that would work as temple rooms are:

aa. Escort the hovering stone,
bb. activating 3 switches,
cc. collecting 3 soul cores,
dd. sacrificing monsters on a certain spot,
ee. spawning waves
ff. lastly a gambling room which has two identical levers, one spawns a soulcore reward, and the other just spawns monsters. Or similar 50/50 rooms

5.

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Destroying rooms after clearing temple is not controllable enough

a. Rooms have a higher destruction chance the closer they are to atziri and the further they are from the entrance by amount of tiles. This makes early temple building easier and less punishing. Gives option to build little pockets at the start. Discourages snaking.

6.

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Not enough randomness/variation between runs. Building feels too formulaic, and every run is the same at the upper end

a. Previous destroyed tiles should have a chance to last as blocked path/hindrance for a few runs to change up pathing within the temple. Blocked tiles have a higher destruction chance on succeeding clearing of the temple.

b. Temple currently is 9x9 Tiles. 11x11 would be favourable for better construction opportunities. Diminishing returns would avoid modifier bloat

7.

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The room types do not have interesting enough interactions with each other

a. Rooms should at least interact with 3 other room types each, that provide a more distinct playstyle difference. "Rare" version of the base rooms at very low odds droppable on medallions which offer greater (modifier) multiplier impact.

8.

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The temple feels far too detached from maps and thus the league mechanic influences every day mapping too little. Currently endgame lacks in map content already. There is no real tie back into maps or at least the crystal charging part in maps is far too boring. The loot chest improved it, but it feels like a carrot dangling in front at best. Laziest option.

a. Depending on placed rooms/tiles the temple should have a title or character. If we assume implementing the above points, we have more player expression and choice. Based on how players build the temple according to their choice, the temple would gain a title.

b. Considering we have tiles of the types "kill all monsters", "kill the boss" or "do the room mechanic", we would base the temple character on which room type is used the most. The temple then affects the map by providing more deterministic variation to the map.

aa. Having a majority of "kill boss" tiles increases the odds of the map having random spawns of vaal type bosses or alternatively spawning extra bosses from the vaal ruins. (After the previous one got killed, similar to ezomyte boss stones)

bb. Having a majority of "kill mob" adds more (counting as natural) monsters of vaal type around the crystal or the map in general (working similar to the cleansed map monster addition).

cc. Having a majority of the "mechanic" tile types provides the chance to add a temple of chaos modifier to monsters in a radius of the vaal ruins (working similar to delirium).

9. Technically besides the point but i think the temple should be a good way to farm soul cores too. Lorewise and thematically it should be THE closest source of em

Thanks for reading! I do understand this is a lot, have a good day.

+1


Also the mechanics and odds should be much less obtuse. From personal experience I know that the room drops are heavily influenced by the current state of the temple (specially spymaster drop rate). Also the colapsing mechanic is deeply broken RN. I had a 50 room temple and then by my mistake I made a loop of my main chain. To my surprise ALL my 6 T3 spymaster rooms were sugically sniped. ALL OF THEM. which makes no sense, coz I was left with several dangling rooms that I couldnt ever connect again. The net result was that I went from 50 rooms to 16 rooms, needless to say I just quit the league.

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I had a 50 room temple and then by my mistake I made a loop of my main chain. To my surprise ALL my 6 T3 spymaster rooms were sugically sniped. ALL OF THEM. which makes no sense, coz I was left with several dangling rooms that I couldnt ever connect again.

Very understandable, and i do agree. The fact it feels like there are only 2 ways to build the temple (the right way, and the wrong way) and the overreliance on spymasters, creates a very narrow playstyle and endresult. The moment it collapses, theres no reason to go again, since a player only has the option to do the same thing again once more. Instead of having the option of trying a different approach or build

There just isnt an inherent reason to go again for enjoyment. If reward/loot is not important anymore (as in late in the league) the entire thing becomes pointless immediately.

nvm