Thanks for the update etc!
NGL - the corrupted item example looked really average haha, you didn’t have a really good one to showcase a great outcome? 
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Yap. FrozenSentinel posted a vid about how undesirable item corrupting could be with revealed + n - results
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Yep, that’s a good video, it explains what I wanna try to say decently well.
Since we already have LP the corruption mechanic is borderline useless. We gotta see it it regards to how many times we have a realistic use-case for a potential upgrade.
The baseline hence is ‘we aren’t allowed to use our existing equipment’ and ‘we aren’t allowed to use a item which is already a upgrade but have to switch gear’.
That’s the normal behavior without gamble junkies, the gamba mentality is not the common thing to have and people generally regret falling into the corruption route with actual upgrades or worse of the actual gear.
So, the big point now is… how often do we get roughly ‘the same’ outcome as a item drop?
99% of the time it’s either worse… or better. And significantly so even.
A 1 LP legendary is significantly worse then a 2 LP legendary. And that’s commonly even worse then a 3 LP.
Which for uniques doesn’t leave many actual use-cases.
Freshly upgraded from 1 LP to 2 LP to use the former one for potentially evening out the results or slightly overtaking them? Ok…
Re-acquired for example a 2 LP which has the same rough affix outcome as the one already worn? Ok…
Wait a second… it’s over, all reliable use-cases shown for uniques given our limitation 
So everything else is just overall gamba with extreme risk and low reward comparably as the chance for a ‘brick’ is higher then a useful upgrade, even with extra outcome options.
So that leaves exalteds… yeah… good luck getting a ‘similar’ item or one roughly at the same power as the one you’re wearing for one of the rare slots where we don’t use a unique item.
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Yeah, I do agree with him that it doesn’t feel like there’s much of a use case since you can “recycle” your failed legendary attempts/low LP uniques. What I did find interesting was his comment right at the end that instead of the item being made worse by either the legendary effects being wiped or their rolls being made worse, he’d rather the item get a negative modifier instead & then he’d be willing to give it a go on the gear he’s using. Even giving more damage taken as an example!!
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potentially, though we haven’t seen all the possible ‘outcome types’ yet seemingly. So that might be available as one.
Seems like EHG is trying to give simply variety, which… baseline great! Nothing against that! Kudos!
The issue is - once again - timing Great idea, wrong time. And not worthwhile for such a long waiting time if it relates solely to the mechanic. We had the same issue happening Season 1 with a focus on bosses rather then content polish and baseline enhancement as Season 2 brought.
For now we have Season 1 - mid. Works because of Nemesis to a degree, but underwhelming. Season 2 - hit. That one was good. And season 3 - flop. Could’ve been good but is utterly underwhelming mechanically, not fleshed out. Season 4 will be ‘mid’ again I expect, this time mechanic nice… but timing wrong
There’s potential this time at least, if EHG works on their core itemization itself, substantially. Otherwise it could potentially become a good mechanic in… 2-3 years maybe when content density provides more viable options to have it as a use-case.
The saving grace could be if they allow idols to be corrupted, those don’t have the sheer magnitude of variety despite the enchantments and hence could create more situations where a re-enchant is less enticing then a corruption try. But we haven’t seen if idols will be possible to be affected yet… so that’s open. Without em it’ll not be a successful seasonal mechanic, only a good core one.
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Yeah, that’s fair. I think armour/weapons just have too much other stuff you need to do before you get to the point where you’d want to corrupt. If LP didn’t exist then it’d just be PoE’s corruption without the possibility to brick the unique into a rare (so I disagree with Frozen that the worst fail state makes the unique unuseable, you can still use it, it’s just not as good as a legendary with useful affixes).
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-20% Bow speed! Why? Why why do you insist on nerfing Acolyte Minions every chance you get?
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I’ve mathed it out, it’s still a buff, but it’s a ‘bad buff’.
Practically stronger, but it means also that killing several mobs rushing at you will feel absolutely awful comparable to before.
Speed has always been a change which does provide much much more then a simple numerical difference.
It’s not a good change in my eyes. If they needed to adjust it to bring it into balance then a simple change of damage effectiveness would’ve done the whole job as well, 110% instead of 130% for example. That’s it, all that was needed.
Exactly, that’s the core issue.
The demands for those items to be an upgrade are already beyond the comfortable scale for end-game. This doesn’t solve the existing issue, it exaggerates it. Not good.
Yes, they would’ve do introduce the downgrade to rare/exalted in that case, making it impossible to craft and not possible to use for legendary creation as well. The ‘hard brick’ basically.
It does though.
Unless you wanna tell me ‘loosing all FP from a potential craft keeps the item usable’.
‘Usable’ is defined in our case not by ‘I can put it on and play with it’ as that would keep 100% of items ‘usable’ unless it changes class restrictions.
And if we would create a item which is actually ‘unusable’ then we could simply ‘poof’ it as well, much like PoE does it with the double corruption for example.
The usability is defined by it being in one of 3 positions:
- It is roughly as good as your item but with a different Affix setup, hence focusing on another direction simply.
- It’s better then your item.
- It retains value on the market.
If neither of those happens it’s a ‘bricked item’, it’s trash, garbage, waste of space, throwaway, unusable, worthless.
Ruined items you can no longer equip. This was confirmed in Discord / in chat. I strongly advice against having ruined items as an outcome. Not only highly disincentives players in engaging with the system at all - even more so than a negative roll outcome - it also keeps the failed trashed item in front of their eyes. Who wants to keep a graveyard of failures?
EHG should consider that loosing the ability to corrupt (you can only corrupt once) is also already a loss!!! In reality we are only happy with a small selected number of affixes and they better be in a higher tier too. Any other affix is “meh” at best or not giving very little (+14 Necro Res on none Torment WL) or no (like Minion Health Regen without Minions) benefits. Too little to make up for your loss of “corruption-opportunity”. => Mediocre outcomes are a loss.
Therefore the probability of getting anything really good and exciting tend towards being less likely than winning the lottery twice in all your life (unless positive outcomes are heavily biased towards “good and exciting” outcomes, by looking at your build or what affixes you have on your other items. I doubt EHG would implement something complicated and untangible like that).
Negative outcomes feel exponentially worse. The negativity bias needs to be taken into account with this feature.
Especially when the risk is so high like it is in LE (risk = level of damage + probability of occurrence).
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More rng on top of more rng… you have to love it!
Wait… they made ‘ruined items’ not being possible to be equipped? I thought they only get downgraded similar to the old ‘fractured’ state of a failed craft.
Well… that puts everything into a completely new perspective. Those types of items existing is just utterly nonsensical 
That’s the risk factor of the potentially powerful outcomes, that much is ‘fine’. Should be avoided but as a top-end high-risk situation it’s doable.
That’s how currently PoE’s corruption mechanic works, and why it’s not a problem despite of it.
You generally use it for the uniques there and since unique rolls have commonly not a major impact on base functionality (good rolls just make it that much more enticing) it’s a viable system to reduce the total number in the economy as it provides a outlet with a lot of losses. It causes acquisition difficulty for top-end items to be stable but baseline needed functionality in most cases to be preserved nonetheless.
In LE we already have a overall scarcity of acquisition for good results. Legendary items are basically not listed. Top-end exalted items get hoarded as the chance for acquiring a new great one is extreme. You cannot just go to the market and get a new one.
Obviously it’s showcased with MG, but that also means CoF has the same underlying problems for their acquisition areas, just no direct showcase as a market does it.
That’s actually not fully true.
This is upheld, hence it’s not a ‘loss’ in itself. If we have a high LP legendary it retains value after corruption because of the already successful Affixes on it. This is one of the existing cases which only uphold as a loss for CoF, not universally.
Which the mechanic cannot provide. Corruption needs to be risky and hence offering at best a 50% positive outcome, any more and the system in itself starts to crumble as you cannot scale it with future implementations anymore. It always needs to be at least a coin flip which is even. Leaning towards being a negative one.
Because upgrading it even with a positive outcome means it’s already a win, you won the flip. This causes the mechanic in itself to then be profitable for the player.
The issue is we cannot even get to the position of actually doing the coin flip in the first place.
Negativity bias doesn’t apply heavily if we take the baseline situation needed to exist into consideration. Meaning you gotta have a duplicate basically already, so it cannot remove your progress, it can only create a potential win at least.
But we already have such a mechanic… which is baseline crafting. Hence double-dipping down into the risk factor causes it to become exponentially more risky, corruption mandates removal of the crafting risk itself to sustain viability.
Right? Kinda like EHG doesn’t learn from mistakes
Like removing destroying items through crafting because noone likes it and it is an ass mechanic… oh wait let’s reintroduce it!
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MG doesn’t exist in my SSF universe.
My point is: even a net positive outcome purely from a stat-goes-up-perspective, is not positive for the player’s emotion if the outcome is not actually good or exciting: positive != good or exciting.
Adding T1 Necro Res on 2T7 Nihilis maybe be positive, but it still leaves a bad taste in your mouth, even if you’re a Torment Warlock. It invokes a negative emotion towards the entire system. All corruption systems (including D4’s sanctification) are like that of course, but in LE you also need to calculate the effort to get a 2T7 Nihilis (months of continues play??) and the chance of actually getting something good or exciting.
The second part is next to impossible if you calculate the probabilities of them happening (all possible affixes, all roll-ranges, negative and positive, …), all distributed evenly without bias.
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Yeah, but it doesn’t need to be.
Good is good.
You progressed.
EHG has created a game which has a progression starvation at the top end of the game. I’m talking about the way they set up the exponential reduction in progression rate in a way that unlike other games which uphold a 5-10 hour play-time need for a miniscule itemization progression at the high-end into a 50-100 hour mess.
And those numbers are only pulled out of thin air right away, the reality is even more severe when we compare it directly with each other. This is lenient when we take into consideration invested playtime versus returned results solely based on a timeframe, not on magnitude.
Yeah, but that’s only the case because respectively higher results are available.
This is why PoE has a curated lost of Affixes specifically designed as a outcome for it. There is no ‘I got T10 life’ on it, there is percentile life, there is inc damage… generic commonly with rare and extremely powerful outcomes.
Your gloves which should’ve gotten +1 to a charge but instead got cast speed are ‘fine’ at least. Not what you wanted but a distinct clear-cut upgrade.
Given what we’ve seen with corruption being able to include all affixes possible basically + a special list on top it’s just a shit-show for results. Extreme variance for a mechanic which is used extremely sparsely and hence the chance to get ‘the big hit’ being nigh impossible in reality.
Which makes the whole mechanic feel like crap, it mandates a complete rework of the basis already before it’s even out, and it’s visible already that this will be an issue unless addressed accordingly beforehand.
You’re absolutely right with:
I agree, 100%!
But magnitude matters here, very much so.
It makes the difference between an acceptable risk and instead having to be a major idiot to even try.
The whole system is already half-baked. Much like the beast system is half-baked, or the boss ward is half-baked, or the whole of the MG mechanic being half-baked.
EHG is a company creating half-baked stuff, that should be clear by now, and unless they fix thinking like a player and instead start thinking like actual devs they won’t become a company providing us with great results.
From a immediate player perspective the system seems ‘fine’. Just something which provides a potential upgrade! So worthwhile! Until they fail… and fail… and fail.
As a developer you’re expected to handle those issues beforehand by making solid designs and being very granular about it. You can miss some… that’s normal… but that’s not on the ‘some’ side, that’s the core premise.
It takes weeks to get some end game items, sometimes longer - example say an LP3 world splitter then you take longer finding that perfect zalty to slam, the slam chance is your first brick chance but say you hit it, pow! You’re not likely going to risk corrupting it lol. That’s season ending rage right thuurrrrr!
Maybe corrupting items while doing the campaign and getting a lucky +stat might be fun but otherwise no chance, risk is waaaaaaaaay higher than any reward I’ve seen.
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Yep, during early-game and even potentially mid-game it’s all fine.
But that’s not where LE fails to provide anyway… that is decently filled with content, just got really crap balance.
The mechanic is a clear-cut end-game mechanic, and for that exact area it absolutely fails to provide anything.
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It’s like the Reforge thing that I mentioned before in its own thread. I was burning through Memory Amber until I did the actual math. Is EHG not doing the math?
I believe they think anything positive is a win. They think “14 Necro Res” is a win or player’s would rejoice at “6 Melee Physical Damage if wielding a Sword”.
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With the idols it’s at least still ‘borderline acceptable’, can be nice for longer-term play after all, there it functions still. And below that with a ‘mediocre’ idol you’re doing relatively well.
The corruption mechanic is magnitudes worse, that’s so far off the deep end that nobody sane can defend it.
And you’re absolutely right… EHG does no math, we know that, otherwise we wouldn’t see power differences at the scale of 1000%+ easily between builds still, despite that issue existing since… I think 0.4 even where it became ever more visible.
Even if you had Memory Amber’s to spare - which you don’t - it is still way faster to get the idol you want by drop with prophecies than to roll it from the Reforge.
Yes, it is. But well… depends, you sometimes have amber to spare. I got over 50k left and couldn’t do anything with it as I was lucky to get the right outcomes with no second idol allowing me to re-roll for a better outcome. It happens.
But you’re absolutely right that it’s borderline useless as even for me it’s just a waste of time.
I’ve mentioned time and time again that ‘in-content crafting is detrimental’ and it shows perfectly well.
All crafting should be accessible at your own terms. It can be limited, no issue… but it has to be accessible from the town area.
If I wanna re-roll idols I need to be able to gather up ‘re-rolls’ from the content and then do it outside the content.
This whole topic will always come up again until that’s handled, because even now… with a variety that’s not all too huge it’s already become a major bother and hurts the game. I’ve complained about it shortly after EHG implemented it already in Cycle 2 and since then the same thing upholds and hasn’t gotten a single bit better.
Crafting at the turtle is not fun.
Crafting at the bridge is not fun.
Crafting in the tomb/cemetery is not fun.
Crafting inside the content with a single try to switch Attributes is not fun.
Nothing is fun inside the content, PoE has the same issue with the double-corrupt temples and the labyrinth gems as well, the worst perceived content in the game… and EHG got the grand idea to copy the worst aspects rather then lean into the things people praise to high heavens… every time GGG does itemize stuff to have the option to ‘use it later’ it’s enjoyed… and still they lack to understand why that is and don’t use the same methodology.