CoF Prophecy UI/UX Rework & Faction Window Sort/Search

Feedback and Suggestions
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CoF Prophecy UI/UX Rework

Problem

Acquiring several prophecies in the Observatory that meet your specific requirements can be quite an arduous task in its current form, potentially taking upwards of 10+ minutes to fill out your roster of 48 prophecies (depending on how strict you are with your requirements). The process of rerolling through dozens upon dozens of prophecies to find those that you want can wear on you and over time can become something you dread having to do.

What if you could select the prophecies you want more quickly and efficiently, allowing you to get back to doing what the game excels at and that’s letting you kill monsters to obtain exciting loot? I hope to provide a solution that does just this.

Potential Solution

Firstly, the lenses will be baked into the UI rather than purchasables at the faction vendor. This removes the clunkiness of having to purchase lenses that you may or may not use one time and then discard or place in your stash for later, taking up valuable stash space. I envision most of these lenses will unlock as you progress through the faction ranks, as EHG deems fit.

You click on each of the lens slots to display the options available to them, provided they’ve been unlocked. My solution consists of 4 lens slots; Item, Rarity, Content, and Uses. However, I also provide of an iteration that consists of 5 lenses for even further player agency over the content they choose to engage with.

More than one lens can be selected in each lens slot allowing for multiple Items, Rarities, Content, and Uses to be used when populating the prophecies that appear. If no lenses are selected in a lens slot then it defaults to all unlocked lenses in that slot being selected. There’d have to be error detection done, likely at time of clicking Reroll, to verify if any results exist for the combination of lenses selected. Also, lens slots with a large array of lenses, like the Item lens slot of the Eos telescope with its 15 weapon options, will likely need to be displayed in 2 or three rows to comfortably fit on-screen.

Item

You select each item slot you’d like to be given prophecy options for., providing prophecies for only those selected. This telescope provides options for Helmet, Body Armor, Belt, Gloves, and Boots.

Rarity

You select the rarity of the item prophecies that appear. The Arctus (armor), Eos (weapons), and Mesembria (accessories) telescopes all provide Rare, Exalted, Set, and Unique as rarity options. The Dysis (idols and consumables) telescope differs from these telescopes and would require different Rarity options, which I discuss later.

A fifth option, Weaver’s Will, could also appear here. This would further reduce the amount of unwanted options that could populate the prophecies window, if the player didn’t want to see these items. It also makes it easier to find prophecies of this type for those that do.

Content

You select the content you want to play. While I’ve added all options that currently exist in-game, which include Campaign, Arena, Dungeon, Non-Monolith Events, Monolith, and Low Corruption Monolith Events, I’d prefer if a fifth lens option was available for “Events” that dynamically populated based on the content selected. The reason for this is because you’re now selecting the content you do want to play rather than the content that you don’t.

For example, if the Monolith lens was selected in the Content lens slot then the Events lens slot would populate with all events that could appear within the Monolith. So you could conceivably choose Exiled Mage, Champion, and Nemesis lenses if you only wished to complete prophecies with these events in the Monolith.

This would allow EHG to do away with the “Obscuring Lens of Time”, which removes prophecies from having Monolith events, and the “Obscuring Lens of Corruption”, which removes high corruption events in the Monolith, as their effects could be rolled into the Events lens slot. So the final options for the Content lens slot would be Campaign, Arena, Dungeon, and Monolith in this scenario, which would be preferable in my opinion. However, I realize this requires more work to implement and does give the player a lot of power in choosing the content that they wish to interact with.

In my view these are good things but considering the current system contains several layers of friction that purposely encumber the players ability to obtain the prophecies they truly want, I imagine such a paradigm shift may not be desired. But if players are going to spend the time regardless to get the result they want should that time not be spent having fun rather than standing in town clicking on menus ad nauseam? I’d say yes.

Uses

The “Refracting Lens of Rhyme”, which doubles the uses of a prophecy, would be removed and integrated into its own lens slot that allows the player to select options for 1, 2, 4, 6, or 8 uses of a single prophecy.

Favor Costs & Rewards

Favor costs and reward amounts would have to be readjusted appropriately as both of the Refracting lenses would be removed, with one (“Refracting Lens of Rhyme”) essentially being built into the system while the other (“Refracting Lens of Wealth”) I feel is less needed with the increase in player agency over the prophecy system. However, it too could be something that’s unlocked through faction rewards and either baked into the system or simply a new checkbox that unlocks in the telescope window alongside the other two options that are already there.

Dysis Telescope

As mentioned earlier, this telescope is unique as the Rarity of its items differ from the others. To solve this I’d separate the telescope into two; one for Idols and the other for Consumables (Affixes, Glyphs, Runes, and Keys). In the Idols telescope I’d have 3 Rarity options:

  1. Normal (or Basic) - consists of the Eterran, Lagonian, and all class specific idols that currently exist.
  2. Weaver - consists of all Weaver versions of the Small, Minor, Humble, and Stout idols.
  3. Unique - consists of all Unique idols.

In the Consumables telescope I’d have 2 Rarity options:

  1. Normal (or Basic) - consists of everything not stated for the Rare lens below.
  2. Rare - consists of all Affixes with red text (i.e. Hybrid Health, class specific affixes, etc), Glyph of Despair, Rune of Weaving, and Rune of Creation. If the Rune of Havoc, Rune of Redemption, or similarly rare items ever make their way into the prophecy pool then they’d also be added to this category.

It’d also be preferable if the icons used to distinguish items like Idols, Glyphs, Runes, etc showcased the actual item in question rather than a generic icon that represented all items of that type. Like if a Rune of Shattering is an option in the pool of prophecies shown then it’d display the Rune of Shattering icon rather than the default icon used for all runes. This would make it far easier to identify if the prophecies displayed were for those that you desired.

Gameplay Example

Lets say you’re still early in your characters progression, looking for a specific Unique helmet, and wish to only do Monolith content with prophecies you can repeat several times. In this example you’d likely select the Helmet lens from the Item lens slot, the Unique items lens for the Rarity lens slot, both the Monolith and Low Corruption Monolith Events lenses from the Content lens slot, and x4, x6, and x8 lenses from the Uses lens slot.

After you’ve made your selections the lens slots will each look like this. Lens slots with multiple selections will display the first lens icon in the list followed by how many additional lenses were selected, which in this case is +1 for the Content lens slot (as 2 were selected) and +2 for the Uses lens slot (as 3 were selected). The only prophecies that now appear are for Unique helmets with varying events that fulfill the selected lens requirements.

Admittedly this solution draws inspiration from this Reddit thread, but I’ve expanded and changed it somewhat. Though, I’d be satisfied to see any solution implemented that solved this problem.

CoF Faction Window Sort & Search

Currently the CoF Prophecies window only shows the prophecy reward icons, which aren’t overly helpful considering several prophecies still share the same icon, with their color being associated with the telescope they were purchased from.

What you don’t know from a glance without hovering over each icon is the content (Campaign, Arena, Dungeon, or MoF) you need to do, the event you need to fulfill, and if there’s a condition attached to it (ex. Corruption 240+ or a certain Arena Champion). What if you could sort, search, or view it as a list to see all of these details? I took inspiration from the MG Bazaar panels for mock-ups I produced that showcase such functionality.

This would allow you to sort prophecies by Event, Condition, Reward, or number Fulfilled. You could also search words like “Heorot” or “Rahyeh” to view all prophecies you have for these specific Monolith bosses.

Overall it’d be very helpful knowing which of my 48 prophecies involve killing Abomination, or an Arena Champion, or Majasa, or provides Rings as a reward, etc. It’d allow me to prioritize where I should farm next more quickly without having to hover over ever prophecy icon and mentally try to organize it in my head.

10 Likes
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It shows you put a lot of thought and effort into this suggestion. I have thought about how a lot of improvement has been needed but never got that much into the detail as you have. Great recommendation, I would like to see how it would work as it looks just like what is needed.

I’d like to see others’ comments too to see if there have been others with ideas that might work well into this same vein.

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Some great ideas here especially that prophecies tab where I had to hover and click to figure out which ones I had to do. Doing that table layout will definitely help.

I also thought about the idea of the prophecy spending on merchant there. Barely ever use it since the rolls aren’t great. Even when I’m rank 12 I can’t really even roll a T7 affix, let alone get exotics or uniques. Can the rarity of those vendor at COF be increased the higher your ranking? Do other people even use that vendor to gamble points for COF at all?

Can I sell dropped items with COF rank to the vendor for points?

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The vendor (both for CoF and MG) can’t really be too good. Otherwise it will replace the mechanic itself, especially for CoF.

Since both compete for the same currency. If vendor gambling was pretty good, then people wouldn’t spend favour with prophecies and would instead spend it all on gambling. If it’s not that good, then you spend it all on prophecies and ignore gambling.

I believe gambling is only there to help you for early game if you need a better weapon or something (much like the normal gambling vendor). It would be very hard to balance it in a way that it can compete with prophecies but not overshadow it or be overshadowed by it.
Especially because both vendors (CoF and MG) would need to provide the same output as well.

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I respectfully disagree that gambling is to help with early game if talking just COF or MG. When you start a new season (not an alt), what level are you when you reach the COF or MG? 40 something? 50 something? That wouldn’t be early game at all and more so mid game. At that point, you’d be in monoliths already.

I noticed the vendor at the monoliths start having some decent items the higher level corruption I go, so I just wanted the vendor (I’m talking about COF/MG) to find use other than literally going in and buying lenses.

just to edit this, I also have to be COF 5 to buy anything at the vendor.

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I don’t disagree with you, but as I said, it’s not easy to balance the CoF vendor because it uses favour. It’s either too weak and you’ll never waste favour in it when you could spend it on prophecies, or it’s strong enough that you’ll never spend favour on prophecies and instead just gamble all the favour.

Yes, on your first alt you reach CoF in act 9 when you’re already level 40. Which used to be the limit the NPC gambler in towns had. So it likely just continues from there. Unless it has the same limit.

I honestly don’t even know why they put a gambler there, since it doesn’t make much sense for CoF. It’s fine for MG because you’re likely to end up with lots of extra favour you won’t use. I suppose they did it for the symmetry.

It would be nice if it was balanced in such a way as making is sort of equivalent to prophecies, so you could choose one or the other. But that would still mean that you would prefer to use the gambler. You wouldn’t have to fight, you wouldn’t have to decide what to take in a lootsplosion, you always have your chest around so you can store things and you can simply sell whatever you gambled that isn’t worth it.

Ultimately, since both use favour, I don’t think you can make it useful without overshadowing prophecies.

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I am agree with lense system, when you choose lense which you want to use. It’s fine. But not the results you want, 4 unique helmet prophecies for locations you want? No, please. May be “drop item here” button too? This is prophecy, it’s random thing with a little correction from player and you supposed to search for what you want. Not to find it immediatly! Now it’s like this: “- Man, stars on my side today and Mars with Venus in correct position. Let’s roll prophecies and find what I want”. But you want: “- Hmm, I need helmet. Wait a minute, need few clicks in CoF to get 500+ pcs”.

Can’t see problem with prophecies display. Well, I am not playing to much to have like many many prophecies, but why you need to know where are they? First: you know it when you get it., Second: If you get all prophecies like random locations, not 2-3 boss spots or something and whant some farm optimization the question is why you choose not optimized way at first. Third: take some spots, clear it, roll again. To bad we can’t spend like all favor to roll 100+ prophecies on “kill lagon” and get 1000+ items from lagun. Well, we can but how we supposed to bring them into stash? We can’t. So you pick like few prophecies on boss and clear them, take again.

If you choose first hard way and take many many different places. Just choose few and clear them. When you doing that you occasionally clear another. After that choose next. Well, idea of filtering is not bad and not harmfull to anything :smiley:

But again in proportion of 100k favor farm time and time to spend on prophecies roll. The first one is much more bigger agree? Idk, 10 hours for 100k favor and 20 minutes to roll them, it’s fine.

About gambling faction or not merchants: they are purely for early-mid campaign progression of new players. The bases are limited and costs to much, better to spend time for anything else inlvolved killing monsters.