Gameplay loops

"End game" gameplay loops feel conflicted and lacking -- or perhaps just very unfinished.

The ascended realms seem to function primarily as disposable material gathering gameboards, without any real lasting purpose or structure to them. The process of gathering those materials is largely uniform across all realms, and not overly engaging play-wise -- in swamps, you find clusters of higher level trees/plants and to harvest them you just whack, collect, move on; in forests, its the same; in deserts, its the same. All nodes are essentially gathered the same, and even often look similar with only slight color variances -- with the exception to some rare t5 nodes, which are generally only made unique in look (the process is still "whack with appropriate tool, move on to the next node). For POIs, it's a similar story. You umbrella hop to a POI infestation in a desert realm, it's essentially the same experience umbrella hopping to a POI infestation in a swamp realm or forest realm, or in an antiquarian or hunt realm, ascended or normal. Vaults are a similar story, with only slightly more structure, as there's a definitive 'boss' for players to kill to complete the vault -- however, bosses always follow the same patterns, and the POI events leading up to them are all fairly uniform (and essentially just repeat the same poi mechs found everywhere else, making them feel like "nothing new"). The public vaults are also locked at a low level, quickly becoming too easy once gear levels normalize. So once you're bored of basic POIs, that's that.

Crafting mechanics/gameplay is hampered by the disposable nature of the gameworld boards. Having the ability to set a respite anywhere is nice, and adds some variance to your home realm -- but you're still essentially just building a single, meaningless doll house to store stuff in. There isn't enough going on within the single realm to make crafting much more than a couple structures worthwhile -- and there's little to no incentive to try and build in multiple disposable realms, nor functional mechanics to establish "public" realm buildings with strangers online. So once you've built your home, that's that.

Put slightly differently: when I see disposable 1 time play boards in other games, the structure is more action oriented/purpose driven. Deep Rock Galactic's missions are very similar to each other in terms of look and flow, and the mission "worlds" are meant to be forgotten after you're done. Players continue to play those game boards, because the core gameplay is the draw. The core gameplay for NGs realms/pois is not strong enough currently for it to be a draw -- something like the "walk around and stare at walls looking for red symbols to click" is a bonkers type of mini game to ask gamers to play repeatedly: it's like watching digital paint dry, and I've literally bailed on vaults out of boredom as a result. The "climb up and touch the thing" ones are equally silly, especially with the climbing picks. There's no challenge, there's no sense of achievement, there's no over-arching 'quest' to complete for that gameboard.

Pivoting a bit to the crafting side -- For crafting centric games, they'll usually provide incentive/purpose to continue to build throughout the game and into 'end game'. Valheim for example encourages players to build multiple structures in many different locations, to build mining/material gathering outposts, farming/animal rearing bases for specific renewables, or transport/navigation outposts depending on gamemode; base events/raids also encourage different building designs and defensive structures. Building in NG feels like a footnote in comparison, from a gameplay perspective.

I'm not sure on best steps to resolve, but figured I'd throw it out there for consideration/as feedback. Couple (brief, as I've rambled enough) thoughts:

• Add in realm-wide "quests" that tie POIs together and provide structure to 'some' disposable realms, similar to what's seen in other disposable board type games. I say 'some', as a purpose driven realm would likely not work for a "make my cozy home here", depending how how you handle those purpose driven realms. Eg. a Gloom Realm, where the bound are actively attacking/purging humans. Realmic transmuter gets converted to a bound stronghold, portal into an evacuation outpost, and mechs put in place to have players try and help people evacuate, or to fight off the invasion -- with sub POIs scattered about that contribute to those goals (ex. more defense encounters -- and once complete, you need to escort survivors to the portal, where they'll defend until everyone's ready to flee, at which point progressively increasing waves of bound keep showing up until everyone's out, and players need to defend the retreat).

• Add in chained realms / realm pathways. There's already a lore precedant for it, given the 'watch' questline and the inability to port directly to nightingale. If you made it so that players had to go 'through' a couple realms to get to special destinations, it would encourage more building in other realms -- especially if the challenge of progressing was more protracted (eg. finding a leyline, and constructing your own specialized portal/structure on it to reach a unique realm variant/trigger unique realm events).

You could also tie those two together. Eg. Gloom realm being overrun by Bound -> special event to get NPCs through the portal -> making it through the portal with the NPCs leads you to a realm where the NPCs have a large cluster of Aid POIs, and the new special event is to help them setup a larger walled colony, with a plot of land reserved in case players want to build their own house inside. NPCs that have their structure completed could convert into recruitables, essence traders/shopkeeps, or repeatable daily quest givers. After all the structures are built, after a random delay IRL (days or whatnot), the next time the player enters it may trigger an event where the old bound boss comes through the portal, and you need to defend the colony against a larger assault, if you want to keep it (that would need some telegraphing, as players playing in a group would want to make sure everyone was there for it). Alternatively, if the players died initially while trying to defend the settler's retreat and bailed on the realm for a bit, players may need to reclaim that portal from a bound horde before discovering the fate of the settlers (which may not be so good!).