I often find myself playing past the end game crises – despite them being great points for ending a campaign – because ending a crisis is disconnected from my actions as a player.
I realize that taking down camps and roving enemy bands contributes progress towards the crisis, but I don’t have any indication of how much; and when it ends it’s quite sudden (unless you have the ambition to end it that tells you broadly what the state is).
My proposal/request is that there be a concept of “decisive battles”.
The simplest version of this is just that when you beat the last fight required to push a crisis over the finish line, you get some text telling you you likely broke the enemy and ended the crisis. Just something to inform you that your actions were meaningful.
The slightly more complex version is that when a crisis is nearing the end (“Almost Over”, or maybe “Winning”), a “decisive” contract can spawn where, if you complete it, it will end the crisis. Either then or after the battle, you’d get the same kind of text above, telling you you ended the crsis. This contract can just piggy back on an existing one (hunt an orc warlord, capture a city, or even just destroy a location); I don’t think there’s a need per se to add new _content_, just to give the player a little more insight and control regarding beating a crisis.
If players never take the decisive contract, the crisis will just continue to follow normal, existing rules.