Concerning cruci vs SR I do want to emphasize that what makes SR more interesting is that you have the luxuary to die and correct the mistake what led you to death. For one it might be more boring, for the other it certainly has a value in increasing knowledge and learning from mistakes (timer and loot left aside)
And yet, you refuse to offer even a single suggestion.
With an infinite amount of time, money, skilled programmers, and an up-to-date engine, anything is possible. Guess what Crate doesnât have?
So many people willing to call Crate a dogshit company. If all of you people spent even a tenth of the energy you use thinking of the wittiest feces terms to refer to the real people who designed these modes into learning Crateâs very accessible modding tools and creating said awesome endgames for everyone to enjoy, everyone would be much better off.
I donât think me or banana ever did, if anything I sympathize with them a lot because they are a small dev that made it because they did something really good.
But doesnât mean I canât say that SR is not a not a fun endgame mod. I also have some suggestions on how to improve it and I voiced it here and also on Discord, no idea how hard they are to implement tho, but I imagine that adding something like Monster Totems that spawn some purple bosses + heroes as mini-events in SR should be doable. Like with extra chest for their completion but extra danger if you fail too (like kills your SR timer and can actually reduce your overall reward).
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Are you ok, brother? Who calls Crate that, point at the culprit! And who are âall of you peopleâ? Some secret Cabal? Cabals are hot these days.
Literally did in the first post, where were you?
Ok, suggestions, off the top of my head (take 147):
.- Add purple bosses to chunks. Why arenât they there?
.- Add more boss variety to 30-35 in general. A lot of campaign bosses you canât even meet. Where is my Krieg?
.- Consider giving bosses back their respective loot to drop in SR. Collecting souls feels anemic and removes the main adrenaline surge of aRPG - droping loot from a tough mob
.- Reduce in size the biggest chunks that have barren spaces to walk over
.- Consider adjusting spawns of the player on some of the map. Some maps spawn a player at the corner of the map and force a long walk towards the action, like Malmouth sewers
.- Randomize the mob behavior as much as possible. Mobs standing still on their spots feels very stale. Is dynamic aggro range possible? So that some enemies would randomly trigger a chain of aggro that pulls a lot of mobs on you and you need to run for your life. Is patrolling behavior possible? Can enemies spawn on top of you? Can chunks have âhuntersâ that seek you out but donât trigger the aggro of adjacent mobs? Etc.
.- Definitely the harder one, but can we actually have different objectives in the chunks instead of âfill the meterâ everywhere?
- Maybe a fort defence? Like Fort Ikon attacked by hordes of mobs and you need to protect smth or just survive for 40 seconds
- Kill one mob/boss in a fortress/end of the labyrinth that is highly guarded
- Complete 5 totems
- Find a key droped from a mob or even an urn and escape before spawning mobs overwhelm you
- Survive mini-crucible
- Avoid mobs altogether (like the larvae on the way to Crate)
- Whatever else is possible with existing mechanics
I can go on for hours. Would it matter? Probably not, as it never did.
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Suggestions but no idea if the engine can do them or they are worth doing:
Allow player agency to add more mutators to the run.
Add more mutators that are not stack sticks in terms of buffs or debuffs. Something like all hero mobs get an additional random hero skill from another random hero. Or evade and any other movement skill is disabled for this run.
Mini events in SR that have risk/reward. Fail to do them, lose time off the clock or add a random additional mutator. Succeed and add a bit more loot to existing chests or materials that donât drop in SR. You could put a mutator in game that adds a random, additional mutator every time you finish a floor and 2 on boss floors. Or somethingâŚ
As @mad_lee and @banana_peel stated, purple named mobs scattered throughout.
Isnât there a screen shot of this in the viewing debuffs while paused thread? Though I seen this nonsense more on SteamâŚbut itâs Steam so itâs usually void of any coherent truth.
Quoted for truth.
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I got overheated at this post; I was attempting to mean âpeople who hurl nasty insults at company employees without bothering to do the minimal effort to see what the employees can even do with the tools possible.â My emotion got the best of me and I posted that without looking earlier in the thread. Sorry for that.
Hereâs what the SR template looks like for the farming route SR 30-31:
It looks like the proxy spawn list is static, meaning that you canât give the larger maps more hero spawns without it also affecting the smaller maps as well.
There are 72 maps to choose from in the item FloorList: taking some of the random do-nothing maps and turning them into more Gazer Prime rooms where youâre aiming to defeat a specific boss and are rewarded with the overwhelming soul is certainly possible.
Hereâs what the Gazer Prime level database looks like:
I donât know how to view specific .lvl files, but Iâm assuming the 4 .lvl files represent the layout and how Gazer Prime is located within each one.
Sorry again for the emotional outburst, but thank you for being more specific so I can dig into the files and see whatâs operating under the SR hood.
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Well, although i appreciate digging into files, the actual question is not what SR is right now, but in what way can it be changed without the programmer dying from overworking.
This template was not found with the tablets of testimony. The devs made FoA, they made SR. Surely there has to be some possibility to change this template, or make another with alterations, in a way to enable at least some other objectives?
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Maybe for you, but for me SR is about stress testing builds and my piloting skills. The loot helps, but SRâs randomness really helpâs show a buildâs weaknesses or how bad my brain is that day 
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This +1
That would actually spice up SR very nicely. Though I tend to see Shattered Bosses more often, simply because I have the time free to put a couple of hours into SR and if speed running will quit and restart if I die in SR30-31 to stupid mistakes. But yeah, this would help with some of the annoyances in SR that happen when a nemesis doesnât spawn as well.
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Since weâre talking about ideas for improving SR, hereâs my suggestion. Why not add a bit of story to SR? Why are we free to explore the SR maps without any obstacles? What if, after reaching the 30th shard, someone appears and warns us that theyâve been watching us for a long time, and if we venture deeper into SR, weâll face real problems. This âsomeoneâ could be an Uber boss or even multiple bosses. And weâll be going down lower in SR and weâll meet them in the form of resistance. And this will be really end game content for the most resilient builds.
For these bosses, you can add new arenas and make the bosses unique. Give them a story, who are they, and where did they come from in SR? Could it be that Mazaan, the Keeper of Portals, is hiding something from us?
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imho the fairly obvious story would be related to what shattered those realms in the first place. Even a couple lore notes dropped by the existing shattered bosses / in the specific shattered rooms would work well for me.
But then Iâm starving for more GD lore soâŚ
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I know. I just want moar :x
Based, respect!
Also, more story is never bad, even if itâs told thru âforgotten diary pagesâ
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Same, but thatâs about all itâs good for, and even then itâs not perfect for it, because of the mutators and random layouts.
I think an âendgameâ content should provide more than just a stress-test environment and the same tier of loot you get anywhere else, without any incentive to return once you got what you came for.
I think the people who bother to make a forum account and create builds for the community to enjoy donât think that Crate = bad. Else they wouldnât still be here.
The reason I donât usually suggest any changes for SR is, that it would amount to a complete overhaul, where the only things left standing would be âPortal opens at the start and loot from chests at the endâ.
Which would amount to enough work to justify another DLC. 
What Iâd change:
1) Flavor:
SR throws all the great lore and flavor out of the window in favor of ârandomnessâ.
Monsters are mixed wildly, youâll see Grobles standing next to giant demons on Aether-terraformed ground.
And then, the Grobles start healing the demons.
It destroys any immersion and instantly makes it clear that this is just a gamified content mill.
PoE has curated levels where a âvolcano mapâ is filled with âfire monstersâ, as youâd expect.
Diablo gets around the issue, because everything is a Demon of some kind.
Last Epoch seems to run into the same trap, but monsters there are not alive long enough to matter.
What Iâd change, is to pool monsters thematically and match them to areas and environments, where they fit in.
And create versions of regular monsters that only appear in the Shattered Realm, like âBurning Korvan Armorâ for fire maps etc.
2) Areas:
Almost all the arenas in SR are just regular maps with the normal exits sealed off.
Even the special arenas are tweaked excerpts, taken from the base game.
Randomized maps seem to be impossible with the aged tech.
But at the very least it should be possible, to not serve the same areas that the player has already digested 3 times (or more).
3) Loot:
Now we run into a problem.
Loot is basically flat in GD, meaning when you have reached âMythicalâ gear you will only find more âMythicalâ gear.
By the time you can comfortably farm SR, you might still look for a few set pieces and youâll pick up the BPs for the movement runes, but then your character is pretty much done.
Going from farming SR 26/27 to higher shards, once you have a âTop 100 Buildâ, doesnât make
sense, because you canât get upgrades anymore.
You finally have the build to beat the content and now you no longer need anything from it.
The only upgrades are better rares, which you can more effectively target farm in the regular (non-shattered) realm.
The actual chase items are locked in skeleton-key dungeons, which are trivial content by comparison.
Imo PoE does that part perfectly, where a âmap itemâ is essentially a âkeyâ and so while running through a map you are constantly looking for âkeysâ to higher level content.
And that higher level unlocks progressively better loot and unique âkeysâ to special encounters.
But GD doesnât have progressively tiered loot after Mythical (yet).
And there are no âspecial keysâ to look for.
It would be interesting if there were âcursed skeleton keysâ that you can use to unlock massively upscaled versions of regular dungeons.
And special resources to spend on upgrading gear in some way, for example taking faction items to a âMythicalâ level with randomized bonuses or âShatteringâ legendary gear, akin to Vaal orbs in PoE.
4) Structure:
The structure of the Shattered Realm is bad. There, I said it.
Itâs by nature a repetitive content cycle (all endgame is).
But SR makes you run through 3 areas, which is already repetitive, to the fight 3-4 bosses which are repetitions from the base game.
And then, before you get to the loot, you have to repeat the entire thing once more.
There is repetition upon repetition upon repetition here.
All while a meaningless timer is ticking away in the corner.
When I first played SR (years ago), the timer actually made me think that the game mode was an endurance test where you have to see how far you can go to get more loot.
Then, when I figured out, how it actually worked, my thought was âOh this is so dumb.â
My approach to restructuring would be:
- the timer is much shorter (like 2 minutes, lower shards having a more generous timer, higher shards being brutally short)
- You enter the new unique area and battle monsters to increase the timer
- kill streaks give a small bonus, killing a hero or boss gives a small bonus, killing a Nemesis gives a larger bonus.
- If the timer runs out, a portal opens to your loot room
- If you slay enough monsters before the timer runs out:
- a portal opens to the boss arena, where you fight a uniquely altered boss or a fitting combination of bosses (for example GravaâThul with a band of juiced-up, cthonified gargoyles. Or Cronley plus Fabius plus Rutnick all banded together. You get the idea.)
- if you defeat the boss, you get a large bonus to your loot pool (like an extra chest) and then you get the option to continue for greater loot
- in the new area, the timer resets, but gets shorter each time.
- Shrines as they currently are donât really do much, Iâd change them to a âmore risk, more rewardâ style mechanic.
- Not sure how feasible that is within the engine, but letâs say it opens a portal immediately to another area but adds two more area modifiers, adds +5 to the monster level and gives you an extra chest after the next boss.
- an extra mechanic could be that you choose between different portals, leading to different areas to add a different type of reward chest
- for example one type of chest only drops set items, another only crafting materials, another only MIs, another only iron bits
- This way you get more and more agency over your loot pool, the longer the run goes on.
Anyway, just some ideas, not sure if they are actually good.
In the end itâs FoA endgame Iâm waiting for, not a dreamt-up fix to SR.
5 Likes
iâve suggested before to atleast add the shattered boss versions to Celestial stone encounters (still sorta campaign bosses repeat but with a twist of lime)
timer used to be much lower on release as i recall, and people complained the everliving out of how âunfairâ it was, despite you still being able to clear within the originalâŚ5? min it was set to then (with xy kill bonus)
i honestly donât understand the shrine change, while they might have been seen as boring stat boosts before, tehy might have been potentially useful,
lasting 30?secs or whatever brief moment it is now, iâm not even thinking about going to a shrine to activate it because the detour takes longer than the bonus lasts anyway
Could as well changed it to a Scion totem 
i donât think they sound that bad, just different than vanilla mode 
I think part of the problem is that Shattered Realm is the best place for farming so many disparate things: legendary items, MIs, blueprints, iron bits, manticore eyes - basically everything in the game except dungeon MIs and Kaisan amulets. It would be hard for any rinse-and-repeat game mode to remain interesting when players are encouraged to focus on it to such an extent.
So, I think that SR should be less of a one-stop shop. It would be interesting, for example, if there were an incentive in FoA to farm Nemesis MIs in Ascendant Mode in the campaign, either because they had been flat out removed from SR or because you had a better chance to get good affixes that way. Hopefully Ascendant dungeons will also have rewards (and challenges) that you canât get in any other way. And I assume that the unique loot from Tempest Totems will not be available in SR.
In that situation I think it will be much easier to enjoy SR, even if itâs largely the same as now, because it wonât be THE endgame activity.
Btw, I am curious to know if Ascendant Mode is going to affect the difficulty of SR itself, and if tiers that people take for granted now will become impossibly hard. I kind of hope so.
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I certainly hope that FoA brings both a new endgame and an overhaul of SR. FG did release 7 years ago (it shocked me how long it has been), so Iâm hoping the long time break has led to some new ideas of interesting quest-like challenges and less âroaming already explored maps with no sense of purposeâ that it currently is. Until we can see the FoA files for ourselves, Iâm only running on theory.
The way SR is currently structured in the files that Iâve seen, there doesnât look to be a way to parse the logic âif map = Malmouth, insert Atherial proxies onlyâ so that the mobs fit the atmosphere without making it a handcrafted level akin to the Cthonic room.
Iâm absolutely in favor of more handcrafted levels as opposed to procedurally generated levels, but it also clashes with the â3 normal levels leads to 1 boss levelâ design since SR is choosing from 1 of 72 floors without a sense of rhyme and reason. Considering there are already new mechanics like overhauled Nemeses and new Tempest Totems, I have to assume some of these features will be present in SR as well.
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Tempest Totems? What are those? Did I miss something?
Game Engine Tiem:
Itâs not impossible, it was just that the engine was never built to use them. Besides, randomisation isnât something thatâs easy to pull off, because it needs to be constrained to prevent potentially bullshit outcomes. Which means here it not only takes work to add it, but also more to get it to generate maps without issues. And I suspect Crateâs looked at the cost/benefit of doing so and decided itâs not worth it.
And frankly, I donât think itâs needed really for SR, as thereâs far easier lower hanging fruit they could go for.