Temple Feedback from a Temple Addict

Hey, I don't normally make or post stuff like this but to say that I have been obsessed with temple for the past few weeks would be beyond an understatement. I love this mechanic and think it's one of the best mechanics GGG has ever made. I have sunk 100's of hours into both running temple and staring at github planners planning out temples trying to solve the puzzle of the "best" temple. While I do love this mechanic, I think it has some glaring but easily fixable issues that if fixed would make it a truly amazing league mechanic for not just juicers but also more casual players. I have spent an ungodly amount of time thinking over the feedback and suggestions below and didn't really plan on posting it anywhere because honestly, I doubt anyone cares or that this post is going to actually lead to GGG changing anything but w/e I guess lol.

General Feedback:

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Temple Access:

I'll blunt here, when this mechanic goes core the crystals for temple access need to be tradeable. I'm not saying this just because I hate mapping and want to sit in the temple all day but because for people that do not enjoy temple once it goes core they will have literally zero reason to interact with the mechanic in maps if the crystals aren't tradable.

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Constructs:

These NEED to wake up faster. My suggestion would be that when you trigger the first construct in your temple to wake up it "alerts" all the other constructs in the temple so they also wake up.

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Room Reward Interactables:

Please allow these to be ctrl clicked so that they can be triggered to drop their item without having to open the menu and click take.

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Room Effects and Medallions:

So right now with the current combination of room effects and what rooms drop what medallions if you want to juice up the temple you are pretty much pigeonholed into going rare humanoids. This is because a series of compounding choices are pushing you to this outcome. Firstly, the only room that has a high chance to drop Juataloti's Medallions (Locks) are "Spymasters" which not only spawn the most humanoids but are connected to the room that spawns the second most humanoids "Legion Barracks". Juataloti's Medallions are REQUIRED for maintaining a juiced temple meaning any endgame temple has to make a chain of these. On top of this "Legion Barracks" also have "Increased number of rare monsters" as their room effect, making it so that any temple that wants to focus on rares needs to make this room anyway. Even more egregious is the fact that "Armoury" the room most central to all temple chains as it connects to "Garrison", "Smithy", and "Alchemy Lab" for some reason has "Increased effect of humanoids" instead of a more general effect. These things alone make it so your basically forced into rare humanoids but as if that's not already enough there isn't enough support for setups like constructs or unique monsters. For constructs it's the overly restrictive limitations on both what rooms Golem Works can connect to and your ability to easily power rooms with generators. Unique monsters on the other hand simple do not have enough support currently from room effects.

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Generators, Power and Paths:

Now that all rooms can connect to Reward Rooms, Architect, and Atziri the only thing paths are really supposed to be used for is allowing power to travel through them. I think power only being able to travel along paths and not through connected rooms is extremely restrictive and one of the main reasons (other than their bonuses) that powered rooms like Golem Works and Synth Flesh weren't used before the addition of diminishing returns. In the current state of the temple paths are in my opinion completely unneeded and in fact detrimental to the temple for both new players learning the temple and also people trying to make fully built out juiced temples. Paths consistently pop up as half of the available options for rooms to place when opening the temple. For new players this means they see less early room rewards like regal and exalt bench's leading them to think the mechanic is unrewarding and empty as well as delaying their ability to learn what rooms connect to each other purely because they do not even see most of the rooms that exist. For people that already know how the temple works and are trying to make a specific planned juiced temple this can lead to hours and hours of making 0 progress purely because of not only being unlucky with the room options shown to you but because such a large amount of the rooms you get shown are paths which you will never use in any scenario. I truly believe GGG should consider entirely removing path rooms from the temple.

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Aspirational Content and Loot:

I have absolutely 0 problem with the loot in temple being nerfed, what I do have a problem with is the possibility of nerfing the difficulty of fully juiced temples. The PoE 2 endgame really lacks any sort of challenging content for characters with mirrors and mirrors of gear. When GGG added the diminishing returns to the temple and swapped the bonuses of Spymasters and Golem Works I believe I heard the intent of this was to nerf the loot not only because it was insane but also because it was causing server issues. I do not care about loot being nerfed however this change made temple DRASTICALLY easier as the rares lost 10's of millions of HP, once again pushing people into dropping damage and defenses for speed. If anything, I would like fully built temples to be able to be juiced difficulty wise to be even harder than before the addition of the diminishing returns and the swapping of the bonuses of Spymasters and Golem Works. The game really needs aspirational content like this that makes you want to sink 100's of hours into a character's gear.

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Suggested Room Effect and Medallion Drop Changes:
(no numbers, I am not even going to attempt to decide that lol)

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Paths:

Removed

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Generator:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Juataloti's Medallion

Increased Effect of Golem Works

Remove requirement of needing to be connected to a Path.

Let power travel through connected rooms up to 5 tiles away at Generator level 3.

Let Generator Connect to Golem Works and Thaumaturge instead of Thaumaturge and Sacrifice Chamber.

Generator able to power Golem Works, Thaumaturge, Synth Flesh, and Transcendent Barracks for +1.

Generator upgraded by Thaumaturge and Golem Works.

(Example Chain 1: Corruption Chamber>thaumaturge>alchemy>armoury>smithy>Golem>Generator>Golem>smithy>armoury>alchemy>thaumaturge>etc)

(Example Chain 2: Flesh Surgeon>Synth Flesh>Transcendent>Armoury>Alchemy>Thaumaturge>Generator>Thaumaturge>Alchemy>Armoury>etc)

Context for Change:

Scroll up to Generators, Power and Paths Section

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Golem Works:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Advanced Medallions

Increased Construct Monster Effectiveness

Let Golem Works Connect to Generator and Smithy

Maybe add two or three rare constructs to the room if its
next to a Generator so its not just the one unique enemy in the room at Level 3.

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Smithy:

Low Chance at Level 3 to drop Room Medallions

Increased Rare Monster Effectiveness

Context for Change:

This bonus needs to be on a room that can be included in chains
for all types of rare focused temples

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Armoury:

Low Chance at Level 3 to drop Room Medallions

Increased number of Rares Monsters

Context for Change:

This bonus needs to be on a room that can be included in chains for all types of rare focused
temples as well as unique focused temples with my below changes to the effects of both the Flesh
Surgeon and Sacrifice Chambers rooms

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Garrison:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Room Medallions

Increased number of Monster Packs

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Legion Barracks:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Advanced Medallions

Increased Humanoid Monster Effectiveness

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Transcendent Barracks:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Advanced Medallions

Increased Unique Monster Effectiveness

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Commander:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Quipolatl's Medallions

Increased Effect of Garrison, Armoury, and Smithy

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Spymaster:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Juataloti's Medallions

Increased Effect of Legion Barracks

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Synth Flesh:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Juataloti's Medallions

Increased Effect of Transcendent Barracks

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Flesh Surgeon:

No Medallions

Rare monsters have a % chance to spawn as a random unique monster instead

Context for Change:

Currently there isn't really a way consistently add more unique monsters to your temple other than just getting specific rooms to Level 3 which adds a one unique to a random spot in the temple and generally adds another unique to that specific Level 3 room. I feel like this would be the easiest way to add additional support for a unique monster temple setup without adding tons of additional room types as it would let you directly scale increased number of rares and then try to convert them into unique monsters.

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Alchemy Lab:

Low Chance at Level 3 to drop Advanced Medallions

Increased Item Rarity from Monsters (no changes)

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Thaumaturge:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Advanced Medallions

Increased effect of Alchemy Lab and Corruption Chamber (Removed increased effect of Sacrifice Chamber)

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Corruption Chamber:

High Chance at Level 3 to drop Juataloti's Medallions

Chance for Rare Monsters to have +1 Modifier (no changes)

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Sacrifice Chamber:

No Medallions

More monster effectiveness per different type of unique monster occupying the temple when its opened

(Example: You have 3 Quadrilla Sergeants, 2 Royal Sentinels, and 1 Spy master in your temple = 3 Unique Types for Bonus)

Context for Change:

Currently a lot of different rooms add a one or two total uniques to the temple at Level 3 so in rare focused temples its effect would be minor and in brand new temples would do basically nothing. But in unique focused temples where you are trying to fill the temple with rares and then convert them into random unique enemies with Flesh Surgeons this could lead to some insanely juiced up uniques.

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Sealed Vault:

No Medallions

Increased rarity of items from chests per Reward room in the temple

Sealed Vaults can freely connect to each other.
Sealed Vaults can connect to any room if they would not also connect to another Sealed Vault.
Will Destabilize when the vault is opened even if it's part of a chain or had a Juataloti's Medallion used on it.

Context for Change:

I feel like this could support a more casual strategy where you spam kill architect to try and fill your temple with a combination of Sealed Vaults and Reward Rooms then open them all at once. The connection limitation is intended to basically make it so that any room can be an "Entrance" to a vault chain but Sealed Vaults in the chain after the first one will not connect to adjacent rooms.

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Thank you for coming to my autism filled ted talk. That will be all <3

You will hate to hear this but temple will either not go core or go core in a massively nerfed form. It's a currency printer that has destroyed this league's economy entirely. Currently divines are devalueing in comparison to exalts. It's so devalued that Omens cost like 50+ divines. Some of the catalysts go for half a divine a pop. 150 runic splinters cost almost 30 divines. I have never seen that before. That's how completely broken the economy is.

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Slart1bartfast#0332 a écrit :

You will hate to hear this but temple will either not go core or go core in a massively nerfed form. It's a currency printer that has destroyed this league's economy entirely. Currently divines are devalueing in comparison to exalts. It's so devalued that Omens cost like 50+ divines. Some of the catalysts go for half a divine a pop. 150 runic splinters cost almost 30 divines. I have never seen that before. That's how completely broken the economy is.

Just gonna quote the first sentence from the loot section of my post for this one lol "I have absolutely 0 problem with the loot in temple being nerfed"

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KattKills#2062 a écrit :

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Slart1bartfast#0332 a écrit :

You will hate to hear this but temple will either not go core or go core in a massively nerfed form. It's a currency printer that has destroyed this league's economy entirely. Currently divines are devalueing in comparison to exalts. It's so devalued that Omens cost like 50+ divines. Some of the catalysts go for half a divine a pop. 150 runic splinters cost almost 30 divines. I have never seen that before. That's how completely broken the economy is.

Just gonna quote the first sentence from the loot section of my post for this one lol "I have absolutely 0 problem with the loot in temple being nerfed"

I don't think you understand. the temple will go from 50 divs per run to 1-2 divs per run if it goes core.

Pretty much agree with most of what OP wrote.
Well thought out feedback and suggestions.

One thing I'm not sure about is how GGG is supposed to balance the rewards tho. As u can see in previous posts, people are very unhappy with the reward structure of the temple.
Most don't understand how much time it takes to build a temple that gets to a point where it's actually rewarding to do compared to the time investment. On top of that, the difficulty scaling is pretty steep, so u need a very good build at some point or u're stuck/take forever to clear it.

So what should the rewards look like for a fully built temple that probably took 50+ hours to build? 1-2 Divines would be the death of that mechanic. 20+ Divines and people start complaining again.
I honestly don't think GGG can find the right balance and therefor will stop the snake building entirely when it goes core.
It's much easier to balance when u can't stop ur building from ever getting destabilized. The Sacrificial Chamber for example is supposed to be very rare and a one time use only. That would make that Orb extremely expensive aswell, but right now u can basically print it. It's still kinda expensive, but that has different reasons. (it was down to 150ex at some point)

As much as I like the current temple building process I can't find myself being optimistic on GGG keeping it the way it is right now, regardless of rewards.

I probably should have gotten into this more in the main post but I think there are a couple compounding issues here turning temple into a currency printer.

The first is rarity bots and group play, if you go on poeninja and filter by alpha’s howl + gravebinds + andvarius there are almost 3000 characters, some of these rarity bots have 550+ rarity getting applied to every monster killed. They already mentioned in the last QnA they plan on removing rarity from gear but dont know what to replace it with so I'm not super worried about this one in the future.

Second is I think the gear requirements to clear fully built temples right now is far too low. Monster HP does not scale anywhere close enough to be a challenge for well built characters. I’m starting to think the answer to this would be making the increased HP portion of monster effectiveness multiplicative with itself or on an exponentially scaling curve so that at low amounts of monster effectiveness its not that much of an increase to monster life and at high amounts the monsters require insane builds with mirrors and mirrors of gear to kill them. I’m also not sure quant is the best loot bonus for monster effectiveness, maybe something else like culling low tier loot from the loot pool based on the amount of monster effectiveness? Idk just an idea.

Third no punishment for death, i have a heavy suspicion they did this purely because it was the league mechanic this league. I think the easiest way to change this would be to tie the number of revives inside temple to either number of rooms placed, or number of map mods effecting the temple via the medallion, however with the latter one they would probably need to add a way just remove those medallions between runs so people don't get bricked for 10+ runs at a time.

I think the goal when temple goes core should be lowering the time investment for casuals wanting to do more basic strats like reward rooms and atziri rush and drastically increasing the gear requirements to clear fully built temples.