I had an idea for improving endgame revolving around towers.

It is quite a different direction than where it seems things are going but it would give the average player a much clearer sense of direction in the endgame.

Towers use just 1 tablet and tablets are much more rare but non corrupted towers always drop one, the rarity/number of mods on the waystone used on a tower affects the tower's "quality scaling rate,"(more on that later) the quality of the tablet and the number and tiers of the veiled mods on the tablet dropped by the tower beacon, yes, tablet crafting, using the veiled mod system from poe1 you are learning the precursor language, the tablets are instruction devices for the teraforming towers this fits lore and player experience. Tablet quality means you can yank a tablet from a tower for a cost to quality which will scale its affixes down. Quality should be scaled based on tier and number of mods on a waystone wherever a tablet drops

The goal is to guarantee rewards to player power or econ on doing a fixed ammount of content. Towers will be placed evenly about the atlas such that fewer than 10-15% of maps are out of a tower's radius and no radii overlap naturally. The goals is to do all maps in radius of the tower and then from the atlas click on the tower map to open a window for a choice of rewards. First choice is increasing the radius of the tower, if you do this upon completing the new radius size you can still access the other choices but no longer increase this tower's radius. Second choice is a new additional veiled mod on the tablet meaning you could get a tablet that dropped at like 127% quality because you did the tower as a hyper juiced t16 then make that rare and now it loses 10% quality from being removed but gains a seventh mod that you select from a choice of three. Option 3 is a crystallization of power which is three choices in itself. Either a skill gem upgrade, a random lineage support or a precursor influenced non-unique diamond jewel. I'm actually fond of just making this crystallization of power a single currency item that can be used on a gem like a vaal orb but it won't corrupt it or prevent the use of other crystallization of power but the quality and level upgrades will be limited to an additional +1 level and 10% quality and it could also upgrade the level of the gem by one per crystalization up to level 20 meaning it would take 4 crystallization of power to max out a level 19 skill taking it to level 20 with +1 level and a total of 30% quality and you could still corrupt it for more quality or an additional level. The crystallization of power as itemized currency would add a random precursor implicit to a jewel giving it a valuable chase stat like additional flat crit("1-2 to crit") or #% life or #% player size or #% defenses. Using this itemized crystallization of power would act like a chance orb on a support gem changing it to a random lineage support that requires the same stat.

As to tablet crafting the affixes would influence content and benefits with tablets now producing potential downsides or increased difficulty or simply having a high crafting cost, a cheap mod to get rituals in the tower radius would only cost a couple of ritual splinters to craft, implying that the mod was scribed with splinters influencing the tablet. A more expensive mod for getting multiple breaches would cost many splinters, a breach ring or any breach unique, and a greater exalt. A low tier quantity mod would cost maybe 5 or 10 ex while a high tier quant mod would cost a div or six. The crafting menu would be built into the tower window in the atlas and the map. I also think it could be a good idea to let players make boss areas of tower maps their hideous and let them craft tablets from the tower beacon in these bases, unlike these hideous by defeating an empowered tower boss.

"Quality scaling rate?" You ask. As you do more maps in the tower radius a temporary quality modifier is applied to the tablet by the tower as "more quality" these breakpoints for increasing the "more quality" buff will be scaled based on how challenging the initial tower waystone was, a tier 1 waystone with 4 mods may get 5% more quality after doing 50% of maps in tower radius but a t16 with 12 mods may get something like 5% more quality on tablet per additional 6% of maps in radius completed where a 6 mod t15 will probably get about 3 breakpoints at 25%, 50%, and 75% of maps in radius completed each giving ~10% more quality to tablet. This is an effect applied by a tower so if you remove a tablet the more quality buff is also removed from the tablet this would also be a good way of scaling extra content.

Anomaly bosses, citadels, endgame bosses, corrupted towers, nexuses and unique maps should all drop broken tablets which will teach you a mod you can craft onto tablets, preferably this would be somewhat themed, xesht teaches breach mods, olroth teaches expedition mods, anomaly and unique maps have a high chance to teach unique mods which would require the unique broken tablet itself as crafting material to craft the mod, citadels and arbiter always teach a t1 mod.

This system gaurantees endgame progression; if you have hit a wall in currency or character power this a is a certain step toward improvement, no second guessing no complext tutorial needed, player guides can just tell players to complete all maps in a towers radius if they get stuck in endgame. Crystallization of power should probably be account locked if it is itemized though because the whole game would revolve around farming them for profit if it weren't.

Early, middle, or late endgame, all have something for them in this system. Late endgame would be trying to get perfect tablet crafts and get multiple tower radii expanded into other towers to overlap for optimal farming, middle endgame players would be getting their main skills maxed out to 20/+1/30% and trying to roll lineage supports and godtier jewels, early endgame would be trying to hit level 20 on all their skill gems and upgrading the best jewels they can afford.

I was going to post this right before the 3.1 announcement but decided to sleep on it and awoke to the 3.1 announcement, I've decided to post it anyway as I genuinely think this would be a better system, though other players feedback might indicate the rest of the community won't like my ideas all that much.

I think towers were a good idea that needed work and throwing that away because it got a bit too annoying in a previous iteration would be a waste, having to manage a stable of dozens of tablets without a tablet stash is annoying having to buy many many tablets over trade is annoying, having to be stressed about not dying to keep your investments from going underwater when you know you need to retool your build to make it more viable is annoying, hunting for optimal overlaps instead of just grinding is anoying, better/more experienced players driving hyper-inflation by juicing so hard is annoying.

Doing all maps in radius would be annoying too if the reward weren't worth the time investment.

I know guarantees of power are somewhat antithetical to Chris Wilson's ethos in developing poe1's endgame but I think this will have a positive impact on player retention as people press from early endgame to ubers.