Irenicus' ARPG discussion of Theory and Mod plans.

[Ceno]

Level design should be reflected on the pacing of the game. If you’re moving quickly or have the option to increase the speed of movement then having longer levels/dungeons makes sense.

Moving slower though you can have shorter levels/dungeons/distances so it isn’t as tedious.

I also think having fewer enemies (except low health swarm like enemies that easily get destroyed with bodies flying around) that are a bit more difficult and harder to deal with while also having a higher chance in dropping useful items would be good - more so if running past such enemies to a boss would make that boss fight more difficult.

This is very much the philosophy I’m taking in designing the world of Zenith. Here’s an excerpt from my design document detailing my theory for enemies (sans Nemeses, `cause I have a special plan for them):

[spoiler]

Trash would be your common Undead, for instance.

Infrequents would be somewhat stronger versions of the infrequents we have now.

Heroes are also essentially what we have now.

Unique heroes would be stuff like Ilgorr, the Eternal or Loxmere, the Nightmage, or the Shade of Elnadrin. Ilgorr is considered a boss in the main game but he doesn’t feel like it.

Bosses would be Kilrian, Salazar, or Gutworm sort of enemies.

‘Overlords’ would essentially be Alkamos or Shar’zul.[/spoiler]

I wanted to make the Overworld of Zenith sparsely populated but dotted with tougher, hand-designed enemies to make general quest progression feel like an investment, to make the journey hold greater weight behind it. Also because lore reasons; if I can populate the overworld primarily with named enemies and relate them to each other, I can tell a much greater story of the events that transpired in the area. On the other hand, I wanted to make side-dungeons speedy and quick, though nonetheless difficult, and thus be where the brunt of dense mobpacks are.

---

So you’ve beaten the game, and have gotten max level. What now?

I’ve more or less outlined my intended solution to endgame here:

Do you miss super-rare items?

Personally I’m of a convoluted opinion here. I dislike rarity being capped solely by RNG, that is to say, I don’t think a good implementation of rarity requires rolling dice several billion times.

I’d rather rarity be locked behind a multitude of objectives, all of which are marginally to very difficult for a player to complete. This is why I really, really enjoyed Dahlia’s Super Secret Quest. There were several steps to the quest making players go all across the world to acquire particular items required for the quest’s continuation. My only gripe with the quest was that these items had to be acquired sequentially, creating a sort of linearization of events that make it feel much less like a personal quest and much more like a developer-imposed questline.

In this vein, the crafting of Mythical Relics hit the nail on the head for me…although they’re all rather underwhelming and are more tedious than anything because they rely so much on loot drops.

I really like the way GW2 implemented the new-means to acquire Legendary gear. While there is a hefty amount of RNG involved (particular loot drops and spamming Zomoros to get Clovers), it is essentially a world-spanning quest that players can approach from any angle starting at any time. The main problem with this ‘quest’ is that it can only be completed some developer-defined number of times per character.

To answer OP’s question, yes, I do miss super-rare items. But I don’t miss the implementation of their rarity as we’ve seen so far in ARPGs.

I don’t think endgame should be perpetual, i.e., D3. Because then you never give players a sense of accomplishment and instead just have them continuously incrementing numbers that have absurdly minimal impact on a character. But I do think endgame should be as repeatable as players care to make it, and I would want the journey to endgame to be worth repeating as well.

It’s my philosophy that if there is any content that isn’t fun in a product, then that content may as well be struck from the product, as it serves no meaningful purpose.