I understand that it is probably part of the idea that you spend resources to gain a bonus, and have to spend them again to keep them, but please reconsider the current way it works. I don’t think I’ll use this at all with its’ current functionality.
The current implementation just HEAVILY punishes short play sessions or targeted area farming.
If I just play for a 10-15 minute session here and there? Way too expensive to interact with the system.
For example just farming in a specific area and resetting? It’s way too expensive to interact with the system.
If you crash once in a while? RNG whether you wasted your materials.
It also encourages leaving the game running while not playing it, which I do not appreciate at all.
“Oh I set up the altar, guess I should leave the game running overnight or I’ll lose my materials.”
Yeah I’m also not a fan of the session based altar.
You want to farm some boss MIs? Can’t really make use of this system because investing an Aetherial Missive everytime i restart the game to kill that one boss seems unreasonable.
I like to do shorter runs where I clear some easily accessible totems, kill some MI mobs and reset. This current iteration seems to not be worth for me.
The whole altar thing is already a trade off. You make game significantly harder to get more loot. I dont understand why there needs to be this friction.
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I think its also kind of unfair that if you want Pierce items you use “Royal Jelly” which to me feels infinitely easier to acquire than something like an “Aetherial Missive” for Lightning items.
I would feel even worse if I were playing a pet build and I had to spend Manticore Eye each session.
How else is it gonna work? Everything else is perma turned off once you save and exit like buffs in crucible and SR etc why should this mechanic have some kind of “timer” that keeps ticking while you are outside the game etc
but wasn’t the whole point of ascendant that you could play the campaign at deep SR level?,
if you constantly have to spend resources to keep that up, just because you like to play short sessions, kinda misses that goal IMO.
I know you can activate ascendant mode without the altar, but I’m assuming the actual level of challenge on ascendant mode is dependent on how much stuff you have active at the altar. So without the resources higher challenge level isn’t available to you.
I’m currently talking based on numbers I have seen in playtest stream from rekt, so take it with a grain of salt, but the monster bonuses I saw for each ingredient spent at altar were huge, like maybe ~20 SR levels difference between having spent nothing and having spend all slots.
Yes, but my point is that they are separate mechanics. Even without using the altar, ascendent mode is way harder than ultimate.
This thread was about the cons having the ascension altar buff lasting only for the current game session.
Similarly, waystone for shattered realm lasts one session regardless how many shards you do. Most optimal for loot is to make 2 shards then cash out. But you can in principle just do 1 shard or 69.
So, spent x currency on the ascension altar just to kill one boss in 3 minute session. Worth it or not?
yes, but that doesn’t mean nearly hard enough for any build, for a top 20 build I expect you want to spend the whole altar every time to get the desired challenge level. (otherwise what would that level be for?)
Yeah, exactly this.
This was one of the most exciting features for me, being able to finally see gear with the affixes I use on a character at the cost of making the game harder, and also being able to target the type of content I like.
I do not see how “+50% enemy damage, +150% health” isn’t already a massive cost to using it.
Even more if you actually juice it up properly:
Completely disagree
Maybe it’s just not built for short sessions, just like an xp pot is way to expensive to run a 15 minute leveling session
Would you say those should last as well? Or maybe that skeleton keys should last as long as you don’t die?
You can use an experience potion, kill anything and get the experience without having to reset game session.
If you are trying to target farm an MI that only drops from certain monsters that are finite in a game session, you have to reset your session, going for a longer session isn’t an option because you already killed the monster you are interested in.
If there is literally a single boss that spawns per game session that drops the MI I want than I have to reset game session and respend these rare materials every time.Thats where this system becomes obnixous.
Maybe a good compromise solution would be to keep the altar working as it is but instead you offer cheap components like emeralds, scavenged plating, cracked lodestones etc.
At that point its just a nuisance, you have to teleport to Kurnhold every time you reset session, click on the altar, materials etc etc.
I think the real cost of getting these buffs is the difficulty they provide.
“You get more loot but its harder” should be enough on its own without neding to sacrifice something.
For example going from Normal to Ultimate is the same thing, game becomes harder but you get more loot. You don’t have to spend Manticore Eyes everytime you click on Ultimate in the Main Menu.
