Faction Lock on items and Changing your Faction

General
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Yes, I agree with the statement that the majority of CoF drops are not tagged.

No, I don’t agree with the statement that CoF gets the same amount of non-tagged drops then MG.

If a single item is upgraded rather then a separate one being created then it already is a inequality. It is actually ‘unfair treatment’.
And for such a mechanic any inbalance there is simply not acceptable as a baseline… because it’s the core aspects on which everything builds upon. You can only increase the disparity from then on with every change. More upgrades? Less base drops! It affects the option to change different to MG.

Also, agreed to this:

Every item created through the mechanic of CoF is supposed to be tagged as a CoF item.
A failure to do so is a inproper implementation of a mechanic.

And spoken directly… if you fix a broken mechanic by implementing another broken mechanic counteracting the specific type of brokeness then it’s one of the utterly dumbest situations existing… hilarious… but dumb.
If you’ve seen ‘The Simpsons’ then it’s kinda like the Mr. Burns episode where he checks for illnesses… and the doctor finds out he has so many that they counteract each other. No… he’s not ‘healthy’ as anything would tip him over the edge… it’s still ‘broken’ :rofl:

Please for the love of everything that’s good… lets focus on how mechanics should actually be implemented and not how EHG did the impossible - actually masterpiece luck outcome - of breaking stuff so inherently that by sheer coincidence the end-result is actually working again!

You know… a solid foundation would be nice here as it otherwise always leads ad absurdum :joy:

So to return:

There is no mechanic included in CoF which is supposed to provide a quantitative base-drop increase.
It only has mechanics supposed to drop items ‘affected by CoF’ (Hence tag) or ‘duplicated/created by CoF’ (Hence tag).

If broken stuff changes this outcome or not is not relevant for a healthy game-design direction long-term. Actually broken stuff changing that is a long-term detriment.

If - and that’s kinda the big thing - the mechanics would actually function properly then as a example MG would need… let’s say 10 hours for fixing a build with non-tagged items at the same stage and same drops compared to CoF which would need 13 hours. As an example.
There is a difference. Excluding the case of broken implementations.

Ok… so what stops it to be a play-time based trigger instead? ‘You have to change in the next 4 in-game hours’.
Would be a failsafe and cause this whole mess to simply disappear. ‘poof… gone!’.
Overengineered and badly designed hence.

Ah yes, enforcing the player to take on responsibility for things ‘someone else does’ (another character you have) in a massive antiquated form. Nice for storytelling, idiotic for mechanical design, nothing else.
It’s not only a flimsy premise but also a archaic method of behavior. Which… as said is nice for storytelling but awful to be enforced to go through. People got enough shit RL to handle to include that in their fun-time.

Abhorrent unethical behavior actually.
Do we want that in our games? Outside of storytelling bits… but actually be forced to go through the notions? ‘The mother is a criminal, kill the baby too!’ ya know…
Don’t start with that stuff, it can’t end well as a actual example.

Ok… so… to expand it to the ‘double-change’ example. So you can actually experience both properly and still are afterwards *fixed’ in the spot.

Here goes:
You pick a faction.
You got a 4 hour ‘trial time’ in-game. You see how you like it.
After those 4 hours you have to pick ‘stay’ or ‘switch’. Access to tagged items gone, progress isn’t counted. Or even better… character state from before those 4 hours trial time restored (It’s a test, not a progress)
You try the other side… once more, 4 hours trial. Stuff afterwards gone.
Tried both? Pick!
Want to end prematurely? Lock in!

Done. No way of causing a ‘brick’ or having all the convoluted downsides related to tokens, convoluted systems or anything else.

Current state? Fails entirely to uphold the context it’s created for while also causing secondary issues. Big issue.

Yep, and they also have max rank, 1,5k corruption and they’re so vastly beyond the end-line of intended progression that it is of no matter how they go forward from there anyway.
The solid situation has to happen from Level 1 up to killing Aberroth roughly. A bit beyond for good measure.

And it was answered with a viable one.
Not equivalent example.
You actively loose something with mastery.
15 factions versus 5, 66% ‘content’ lost.

Very simple math, has been provided.

Your turn.
What would you loose in the situation?

Oh? Is your button always greyed out for MG?
You can’t pick it?

And here I thought we all got initially 2 buttons to pick.
Heck… here I thought we both also got the ability to switch between factions in the same way… oh wait! Actually we don’t. Since you might’ve 10 equipped tagged items and I do 2!

One aspect of faction change which is important and not upheld is that the cost of changing it when presented needs to be equal for all players at any time given their respective progression state. The only differences are to align it with level… or corruption level unlocked for example (since higher corruption = more XP = more favor), hence scaling in a linear manner to have ‘time’ as the permanent factor attached to it.

Currently the system has no permanence for the cost factor of switching factions. That’s… awful simply spoken.

My example had permanence related to ‘resource cost’. So you’re right though… it wouldn’t hold up if people rush past the 100k stage… and also it wouldn’t be fair to cause someone disliking the system to play for quite a substantial amount of time early on in monoliths to change to their actual wanted faction.

So lets shift over to time-based limitation. How many hours of play-time would you see as a viable option for a change to happen? 5? 10? 100?
Or we can take the trial-period.
Or we can also include a cooldown period - in-game time spent with content being run, to avoid idle players - which is extensive after a switch.

There’s so… so many options available which aren’t related to ‘Now you feel like shit since nothing works’.
And at the core, that’s what the initial ask for the change was in a realistic manner without the ‘I want everything’ aspect.

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I think they should make even harsher penalties for switching specially from CoF to MG.

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Overall harsher penalties? Fine if upholding the premise behind it, a emergency switch.

Uneven treatment? Unacceptable.

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whats “uneven” exactly? because so far there’s no real meta warping method.

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Because some people will only decide after 4h5mins and be bricked. And would leave.
The system is simply designed that the more you play one faction, the more you lose by switching. Switch after a couple of hours? Not much lost. Switch after 100h? You have to invest a lot into recovering what you lose (by preparing before the switch and catching up after it).

Sure, I agree with you. I also don’t agree with the favour loss. Just saying that lore-wise you can justify it. And Eterra is sort of medieval anyway in setting, so it fits.

But yeah, the thing I would get rid of is deleting favour. That just seems overkill.

Again, I agree. I’m just saying it can fit the narrative, especially considering a medieval-like fantasy world.

You mean like the 2 tokens example from before? Pretty much the same thing except you don’t actually have a time limit. You try one, use a token (which cleans the faction tags), you try the other, either lock it in or switch back.
Other than the time limit (for example, people played 10h before the gold dupe and wanted to change), I agree with that. As long as it’s account wide. You don’t need to do it character wide. You’ve tried both. You already know how they work for the next characters. If you “brick” them then, it’s by your choice.

Does it fail? How many people switch factions? I’d say very few. The ones that do actually want to change. So it works for what they want.

Those are the ones more likely to exploit the system as well.
And no, it isn’t only the sweat-lords. You can make 100k-200k per hour at about 400-500 corruption. I know because that’s what I can make at that level.

You will never get 100k favour before reaching empowered monos. So someone that wants to change because they regret their decision will be forced to play for days before they even get a chance to change it. I’m pretty sure that’s worse than simply losing progress.

It’s actually an equivalent example.
“What do you lose if I use mastery respec and you don’t?” doesn’t lead to content loss for me. I still have 15 masteries to use because I don’t use mastery respec. They’re the ones that are using it. So from my point of view (according to them) I’m not losing anything by them using it and not me. Which we both know isn’t true.

Are you doing this on purpose? You have very pointedly in other threads said that offering a non-choice isn’t a choice. You should already know this.
So yes. In my mind, the MG button is greyed out. Much like the mastery respec one is. And I lose something in both cases.

None. Because people have different limits and reasons for not wanting to be in a faction anymore. Maybe you’ve played for 100h in MG but you had a few trades go wrong and you’re pissed. You don’t want to play MG anymore. Should you not be allowed to?

They all lead to the same thing. “I don’t have enough hours yet to change”, “Not enough time has passed yet to change”, “I don’t have enough favour to change”.

The cost of the current system is directly related to how many hours you actually invested in the current faction. The more hours invested, the higher the cost.
If you play 10 minutes with MG and decide you don’t want it, you barely lose anything. If you play 100h and buy all legendaries and triple exalts for your character, then you lose a lot.
Same for CoF.

There is no uneven treatment, though. There are slight differences from one to the other, but overall they both lose about the same.

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If one person is affected differently outside of a quantifyable and fixed measurement.

The current system has this issue, hence why the talks about changing it are so fervent.

For example things which are acceptable would be ‘Everyone has to pay a fixed amount of some resource’ or ‘everyone has to wait a specific amount of time to change again’.
Or things which can be tied to another state which tend to be at least semi-reliable. Like… favor based on corruption level, Gold based in character level and similar measurements.

Both MG and CoF need to acquire this resource then in the same amount and have to use the same amount.

Since it’s a trial period you wouldn’t loose anything anyway, hence only after a lock-in you’ll be able to actually gather stuff again.
So a enforced choice ‘which do you pick?’ after the 4 hours would be a viable choice.

No bricking hence.

Not upholding though.
Player 1 has great RNG in CoF and drops 5 items he switches out with CoF tag in the first hour. Player 2 drops 1 in 10 hours. Uneven, no permanence.

Player 1 starts early and acquires sought after items and sells them through MG, pays for 6 items in 2 hours. Player 2 starts later and has no valuable drops. He acquires 1 item in 15 hours. Uneven, no permanence.

If your mechanic for the change is not fixated on some form of at least semi-permanence then it’s a bad state. RNG can favor you extremely or screw you over utterly. That feels awful and should be avoided simply.

For example a barely acceptable system is GGG’s respec method with the currency drops. But given it’s a ‘big numbers game’ depending on content reached the overall return is always roughly the same at least.

With equipment this isn’t upholding though since the variance is just too high. Base, Affix mix, rolls, tiers… too many interacting rolls to create any stability, hence making the outcome extremely unstable.

I mean… making the faction character based rather then account based would also fix a lot surely. Opening up another can of worms but then it would at least function as intended there.

The feel of loss is the major issue though since you can at least reliably get rid of the favor in a short timeframe… but reliably building up a non-tagged set of gear which is remotely equivalent to the worn gear? Magnitudes higher then that. And MG would be inadversely affected there especially… since you switch gear less often but each time it has a higher impact compared to CoF where you switch more often but with overall less impact per piece.

Not quite, since the tokens can be used to stay indefinitely there. Hence causing you to switch at optimal points and double-dip currently… or bypass a bottleneck for progression.

As said, tokens themself are not inherently bad, but they need to be properly implemented as to not cause adverse outcomes.

Hence the ‘trial’ which is time limited and also non-permanent.
More complex system to create, function wise though definitely doing the job better.

The point would be the non-permanence state as a major factor. Actually… you could keep it permanently as well in ‘trial state’, wouldn’t change anything. Your character state is saved the second you start it… from then on forward when you ‘lock in’ you’re returned to that state.

Mandates that Gold is not used and whatever resource is used otherwise is character based so to avoid abusing the market (buying out stuff with vast resources and restarting the trial again on another character, repeatedly). It always has to start from ‘0’ for that to avoid it.

Yes it definitely does mechanically.
As for the quantity? Doesn’t really matter, it’s about the mechanical aspect itself after all.

And a good question would be 'How many would switch without the current detriments of ‘item loss’ instead? Solely the one-time changes… not even the jumping around, even if I would prefer that heavily given someone’s mood can change. Not daily… but imagine playing Legacy and after a Cycle’s length you feel the mood to play CoF instead of MG… and the next you’d rather enjoy MG again. There the one-time token could come into effect actually, for Legacy it would make sense… after a new cycle starts to allow a one-time switch, only possible during the timeframe the cycle goes.

Yes, hence why I went over to the scaling costs of some kind… or time-basis. Fixed one isn’t viable, you’re right.

Personal limitations are a challenge basis. It’s not to be taken into consideration.

As mentioned in another topic, our brain is primarily hardwired to take the most effective route (It thinks is the most effective one at least), even if it’s the less fun one. We need to put in extra effort to actively keep us from doing that… the other way around not.

Hence why a ‘don’t use it if you don’t want to’ is never a viable option to create a argument around.

Which is the difference between a mechanic causing a inherent perceived upside. ‘I save 66% time when using mastery respec to experience everything the game has to offer’ versus one which is equivalent or actually incurring a cost (cost, not loss). ‘Oh, I have to pay 20 million gold to try this out but it won’t give me more then what I already do, just in a different way’.

The second is obviously the optimal situation, with the underlying mechanic being absolutely equivalent. To counteract the cost has to be respectively high when it’s a free choice to remove our brain ‘optimizing the fun out of it’ and it hence becoming meta.
The option to choose is great! But only if the choice has inherent weight attached to it as well. ‘Weightless’ choices tend to become detriments.

With mastery I agree, with MG I don’t.
Once more, they’ve distinct ups and downs.
Work needs to be put in to make them work more evenly… which means creating a fluid functioning market to create a visible equilibrium and then adjusting CoF rates accordingly to represent that after, and adjusted per cycle as well to keep up with changes created by new content.

EHG created a system which needs a lot of upkeep… but I don’t think they’ve realized that when it was created… nor will the be willing to but the respective effort into it to stand out from the mass of games and instead become something ‘absolutely amazing’ in this aspect. Like ‘Warframe’ was when F2P live-services games still were basically non-existent, still a great game but having lost relevance a bit with their position. They make it nowadays up with sheer content quantity though.

A new product as a live-service has to stand out, doing something ‘especially well’ that others don’t do. EHG went the route of wanting to provide this dual-environment… but they utterly dropped the ball with it instead of focusing heavily on improving the system and providing something otherwise unseen on the market.
The framework is there, it’s hard to copy by established products with their setups not being made for it… so they should lean into it a bit as well.
Sadly not done, understandable with their state but still a shame.

Obviously you should be.
How about it happening when you’ve already played a while and now the market has gotten atrociously bad over time? Basically nothing you pick up anymore being of any value… but upgrades costing tens of millions for you?
Kinda frustrating… might want to play CoF instead! But ah… all my equipment is tagged.

That falls also in the same category.
Hence why I’m so heavy into the ‘all or nothing’ aspect there. Either leaning extremely into it solely being a ‘emergency switch’ for avoiding to brick the character or taking care of misspicks for the first time… or opening it up to allow cross-play while bashing down upsides you would get by jumping around through some means.
In any case it should avoid the feeling of ‘loss’ though. Either by not giving you the feeling of actually ‘getting’ something, hence being solely temporary until completely and entirely fixed… or making it so costly as you progress that the time investment simply wouldn’t pay off, hence a scaling cost.

‘I don’t have a fallback set of equipment so I can change!’

Sadly no, otherwise I wouldn’t argue about it. Without RNG I would agree… but we have RNG.
And for MG also the market state beyond the RNG.

But those cause inherent disparities and they can be ridiculously huge.

In those 10 minutes I used up all my gold I acquired, bought a full set of 4 T5 equipment or close to it… and now I’m full with tagged equipment.
I’ve used up my gold for nothing. I have nothing to show when I switch to CoF and also since my equipment before was bad I sold it since I don’t save up worthless clutter.

I’ve lost quite a lot!

Unless you’re lucky and they drop non-tagged :slight_smile: Then you just switch without any downside. And since you target farm specific uniques personally the chance to acquire them personally and hence without tag is substantialy higher.

Both factions have inherent disaprities that can’t be changed… so the method of limitation between interchanging factions is the easiest one to change instead.

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for me it makes total sense that switching from CoF to MG is more punishing since you can affect the economy even by a slight margin, the other way around does nothing. I feel like you guys are trying so hard for such an small difference that begs the question, why is this an issue in the first place?, every solution given so far is a win just for people that plays both factions.

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Yes, nigh every solution would be a win compared to the current state, a few exceptions there. Luckily the topic has shifted from arguing about the ‘if’ to actually talking about details and what they would cause.

The topic is a bit more complex sadly, you’re 100% right that the effect on the market is extremely dangerous and has to be taken into account.
But it also causes issues for CoF players.

If you can ‘optimize a route’ to bypass as much progression as possible by using both factions (ignoring the MG issue itself) then that means people will play less. They could enjoy the game - and have fun - for 200 hours… but this way? They finish after 100. It’s bad for both the players and the devs.
Players ‘optimize the fun out of it’ worst case.
And devs loose retention time… which is usually money to a degree.

Also as @DJSamhein mentioned it would make it so people feel ‘forced’ to go into a faction they don’t like. Burning themselves out. Sadly people aren’t very good at handling their own motivation, so game-design instead needs to make up for it by ‘guiding’ players accordingly to have as much fun as possible without standing in their own way.

That’s why the talk is there with all the ‘sense of loss’, the ‘forced meta’ and other stuff included. It partially comes from following game design itself and also from experience of playing games a long time while being interested about how they actually function in detail.

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I never asked you what you think about my last post, but let me reply in kind. I think that if you commonly read something and see things that aren’t written there, that’s signs of a delusional disorder.

You could always verify the data by doing a simple discord search, but it seems you couldn’t even do that little research, so I’ll take that as a sign of how much you actually care about the topic.

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That would mean you would always have to level up the ranks for your faction. Not a good solution to me.

I mean, they’re account-bound. So at most you’ll do that twice in the lifetime of the game.

But the mechanical aspect of it is designed to make you not want to switch factions. It’s meant to just be better than making a new character (and before we start this discussion again, yes, it will always be better than making a new character. At the very least, you could go naked to the first town and run through the campaign but with a full build, so much much faster).

It doesn’t matter. Me and other people that don’t like MG will never use MG. Even if you gave both factions at the same time with no downside, I wouldn’t use it. I don’t want to trade. I like that we were given an alternative to trading and I don’t feel forced to trade to progress, like in PoE.
So yes, the MG button will always be greyed out to me. It’s effectively a non-choice.

The difference is that without a fallback set of equipment I can still switch and play the game. Yes, I’ll have to go back in progress. In an extreme case, I’ll just go naked to rush the campaign and it will still be better than making a new character. I’ll be playing with the new faction already.
Whereas the others will force me to keep playing the faction I don’t like anymore and don’t let me change.

You didn’t because you don’t have favour for anything. You can’t even reach rank 3 in 10 minutes to be allowed to trade those things.

Bottom line (to try and cut this shorter, since this discussion has gone though many ups and downs and through various different topics):
-If you want to remake the current system in a way that you feel like it’s fairer while maintaing it’s emergency fail-state status, I’m all for it. Tokens, trials, whatever. Go for it.
-If you want to remake the current system in a way that allows you to switch when you feel like it (the playstyle of the day), then I will oppose it on moral grounds alone, like I did with mastery respec.

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Yeah, but functionally solid comparatively.

Yeah, that would fail the failsafe option though. a missclick can happen anytime. So it needs to be something to avert that instead, which means character bound and not account bound.

Not quite what I meant.

But for the ‘faster’… yes… but more hassle. That causes a extra obstacle to overcome.

Nono… in that case… it really really does, that’s why I’m focusing so much on it.
It doesn’t matter who will or will not use a mechanic, it only matters when the alternative gives you upsides. Otherwise it’s a limitation without function and hence not needed since it doesn’t remove or reduce anything.

Which is the opposite of the mastery respec… since that actively reduces something.

Very important difference to understand there for the topic.

Fair argument, totally blundered there.

On the contrary though the issues will start to creep up over time, realizing downsides not inherently visible. Then when that happens you feel ‘stuck’. Which isn’t supposed to happen and should be alleviated as well as possible without damaging either side simply.

The current switch-mechanics do that damage, and while more involved and detailed alternatives exist.
The exact best one? Up for discussion absolutely.
Functioning ones? A few.

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You can’t misclick into a faction swap. If you try to leave your current faction and you have faction gear, it simply tells you that you can’t. If you remove all your faction gear and try to switch, then you get the big warning I linked somewhere above.
You have to go out of your way to actually do that.

It’s only more hassle if you want. If you want less hassle (compared to making a new character) just dump your tagged gear in your stash (or vendor it, or drop it on the ground), then go back and refarm it. You can, most likely, still farm monoliths, or at the very least just jump into act 8 or something and farm from there.
Or jump into SB and go gamble some gear.

Whichever way you look at it, the current system, as penalizing as it is, is way faster and easier than simply making a new character.

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Picking a faction which a new character is a thing.
That’s what has to be taken into consideration there.

Otherwise agreed!

It is different from the normal loop, that needs mental effort to do, which is generally a hassle.
You would be surprised how little it takes to remove motivation from people and how hard it is to keep motivation persistent.

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If there’s a trader who love trading but doesn’t like loot drops, why are they playing a game focussed around loot drops? Where do their items come from that allows them to drop magic items out of the code to sell?

Exactly, it was always about keeping traders on their pedestal and not giving them the fomo about other people having nice things to enjoy. You can wrap it up in “freedom of choice” as much as you want, but that’s the core of the issue. People that don’t like trading finally aren’t being fucked over because the drops are balanced around the existence of trade.

Exactly, there’s a second sind that’s been historically treated like the redheaded stepchild and they’re grateful that a developer isn’t treating them like this anymore. Why do you think it’s “disgusting” that they view EHG in a positive light like this? Were GGG not treated like “saviours” when they allowed trading sites to make trading infinitely easier? Was that “disgustimg”?

Well yes, but that’s not entirely the point. The Trader goes into CoF to make it easier to get the BiS items to be able to push their build then they can go back to MG if they like to farm items at a higher corruption (with their BiS gear) for trade.

They did, you can’t have a single mechanic or balance that pleases both trade & non-trade therefore they had to split the two.

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Actually, you can. It wouldn’t be easy to balance, but you could definitely create a single mechanic that would please both without having to separate them into distinct camps.

For example, you could have a global drop boost that grows over time (maybe based on on XP farmed or whatever). If you trade something, that bonus gets reset.
So for non-traders, that boost will always be much much higher than for people that trade.

It would require balancing and possibly some other tweaks, but it is possible to have a single one that pleases both.

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Method of presentation.
Some people like more rare but meaningful loot… others like to be showered in tons of it.

Ah yes, turning a ‘they should be treated equally’ to a shitty take on ‘but you only want to treat one side better!’.

PLainly spoken to you as well: Piss off with that.
If you can’t read above then you’re simply out of luck, I’m not responsible for your lack of memory retention despite clearly writing over several posts how my stance is, showcasing it’s absolutely about equal treatment.

I mean… if you wrote that before all that was written I could understand it… but by now? Big fail from your side.

I think you lost your ability to comprehend :slight_smile:
Seems very heavily like that.

You’re not a savior for treating a person normally. You’re one for saving people from a shitty position, not from one where they simply weren’t directly included… but one where they were treated actively negatively.

Not the case, not even remotely. That’s why it’s ‘disgusting’, because it victimizes people which are no victims.

You mean the GGG which wanted to exactly avoid those trade sites? Who begrudgingly followed after they saw no way out to remove that aspect from the game anymore after providing an API? Who had to make a site of their own so the scrutiny for providing something and then leaving it in a awful manner was becoming too much?

Kinda low bar for a ‘savior’ :joy:

Oh… so you’re now saying CoF has an upside in getting BiS items, hence MG being a inferior mechanic at that stage?
I dunno… earlier I heard that CoF people would be forced into MG since that would make it easier there.

So, which one is the true one?
Kinda just seems like people are doing a piss-contest there since both are fairly much equivalent, just with some specific disparities at some stages of progression… which would be solved by having a hurdle to change, since it wouldn’t provide said upside anymore as you need more time.

Yes exactly, and that’s where I agree 100%
Unless one is found - would be nice - then it simply can’t happen.

Generally… downsides in systems are side-effects. You choose the system with the least severe side effects sustaining the outcome you want.

If you need negatives in a game then you use them to enhance the positives. Negatives just on their own are just that… negative… without meaning.

Mhhh… not optimal definitely, because if you get better drops and can trade at the same time then abstaining from trade would automatically make it a worse position then not.

So you need to separate it in some way. If you do it with 2 factions (easiest and most distinct setup) or friggin ‘stamps’ to scale loot up for a while while also needing those same stamps to actually trade and hence having to choose is not relevant. They’re 2 opposite mechanics.

Since as you said the balancing would be hard to handle it’s not only vastly easier to completely separate them (which isn’t properly done anyway) but also to showcase that as well as possible to avoid ‘but the poor traders!’ or ‘the poor non-traders!’ while going back into a pissing contest.
Not like we don’t have that enough already…

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Heavily disagree with that. You’re a saviour if you treat a person normally when the vast majority of people treat them as less than normal.

Without wanting to turn this into a political thing, and with the very clear disclaimer that this is not trying to compare both cases, when everyone treats LGBT+ as sub-human, you are a saviour if you treat them normally.

Again, without wanting to turn political and not wanting to make any comparison between them. But EHG were saviours for finally treating non-traders with the same respect as they treat the rest of the players, when every single other game treats them as sub-players that aren’t worth considering.

But non-traders really are victims in all those games. They are given the finger by the studios and aren’t considered “real players”.
I would agree with you if there were games that catered to one or the other. Then you could just say that “this game isn’t for you, it’s for traders. For you there’s game x, y and z”.
But EHG was actually the first one to do this.

No, he’s saying the same thing that you previously said. Namely that each faction has an easier time in getting a specific type of gear and a harder time getting a different specific type of gear.
It’s a cons/pros:
-You want CoF? Then you’ll be getting exalts out the wazoo, but good luck getting those 4LP uniques or that idol you want.
-You want MG? Then you’ll be drowning in idols and 4LP uniques, but good luck making that triple exalt you want.

So the optimal way to play would be to use whichever faction caters to the gear progression you’re currently at.
Which, to someone that won’t ever use trade, means they’re handycapped when they aren’t now.

It wouldn’t. You could build the bonus to 200% and then go trade and get your bonus back to 0%. Then you go back to 200% and sell some more stuff.
In the meantime, the person that didn’t trade is already up to 400% and the trader will never catch up to that.

Not easy to balance and could use some tweaks, but it certainly would be a single system that would allow trade while still giving non-traders a bonus traders can’t match.

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Which isn’t the case though.

‘We non-traders don’t have a game which focuses on us!’

Wait… what?
Grim Dawn, Victor Fran, Chronicon, Van Hellsing to name a few. Those don’t even have trading inherently included!

Damn… I guess I as a trader am treated clearly unfairly! :rofl:

But for real… there simply wasn’t a game made in the live-service segment to specifically favor them because live-service games want to ensure people focus on the social factor, actually are often forced to do so. Raids in WoW which make it impossible for solo-players to get the top-end equipment for example (Dunno if they changed that) and many other games as well.

There’s a reason for that after all, online games were designed to interact with other people, otherwise you can play single-player or hot-seat… but sadly hot-seat, split-screen, direct connect have been quite heavily phased out nowadays comparatively, the focus is strongly on large games being created with the social aspect available.
Why? Because then people stay for the people, and the game itself doesn’t need to keep their interest non-stop for them to keep enjoying it. Raises retention heavily.

It’s simply not the target audience.

EHG didn’t ‘save’ anyone, they just showed - for the moment - that it’s also viable to make a dual mechanic to pull in more people, especially so since there’s several games out which didn’t go that step and the number of people which want to have a place like that weren’t directly addressed by those other games.

I mean… despite there being massive games out there like Path of Exile 1, 2, Torchlight infinite, Diablo 3, Diablo 4 and even partially Lost Ark… there still is ‘only’ a 50/50 split of the community.

So with all those games competing over the ARPG players… a single game nonetheless caters only for half thier playerbase, a small fraction of the market in total hence. Now imagine all those games also having dual-split systems… it would be a ‘Softcore versus Standard’ situation simply. 10% CoF suddenly and 90% MG.

Nobody ‘saved’ anyone, they just provided a well placed mechanic which wasn’t catering to a minority. Which is very good, hence kudos to EHG for the idea after all.

But victimizing? That’s… disgusting.
If you don’t see the problem with victimizing people despite them not being victims then there is hardly something to help along with causing a proper understanding.

You must live in a really shitty country if that’s the case.
Besides some ‘special people’ or those which have had it ingrained as something inherently negative since their childhood the majority simply doesn’t give a single shit. You do you.

But sure, if you’re yelling and screaming about ‘equality’ of all upsides without ever taking responsibility of the downsides in the same strides then sure… be my guest. Makes you suddenly detested though as that would be unfair.

Kinda like some countries have voting rights for woman but never mandatory military service despite that being the initial reason for the voting rights. Kinda unfair if they don’t have to take over that responsibility for the upside there, right?

Be free to behave in the same way… but don’t expect people to reach out with open arms rather then saying ‘yeah, you’re kinda shit’ then.

Nobody denies that there’s been an inequality, so… it’s supposed to be solved, it’s not a darn revenge trip. Because if you make it one you’ll sooner then later realize you’re actually a minority and suddenly the majority just steamrolls your minority since even those asking actively for actual equality - like me - simply don’t care anymore. Why should I support someone who’s actively working against me after all? Rather then simply wanting a place at the same table?

Sorry… I couldn’t find better examples and it fringed towards political aspects… but it’s a important aspect… and to be fair… those ‘we are better’ topics are political ones, just inside the gaming space. And they suck since everyone wants to simply have their fun, right?

Not being given something which isn’t to be expected as a basis is not creating victims… it’s leaving someone out.

To solve that you include them after realizing.

If that person comes and demands to take over leadership for being ‘wronged’ then that person deserves a kick in the ass :stuck_out_tongue:
Kinda simple.

So when you have to abstain from using CoF you actually have a harder time finding exalted items with 2 T7 (usable combination) or 3 exalted affixes?

And when abstaining from MG you’ll have a harder time getting 3-4 LP items?

Well… I guess then the respective systems simply need to have the respective effort put into them I would say.
So no matter what, if you don’t invest time into MG (instead of bypassing it through gold from CoF) you won’t acquire those items anyway, right?
And if you don’t invest time into CoF you’ll not drop those items either respectively, right?

You always need to invest time after all.
And once more, yes, they are inequal in progression speed. So you hinder switching to alleviate those diapsrities.
If you’re hindered by as much time as would be needed to acquire a similar item in CoF which you could otherwise simply buy in MG then you have no upside and are hence not missing out on anything.
Why would you go MG?
And if you need so much time in MG that you have the resources available to simply buy your 2 T7 exalted item luckily dropping and being listed why would you want to go CoF?

Just for the upsides there to be limited between the factions.

It’s the same as taking 2 generic mechanics… one provides unique items more and one exalted items more and you need to invest time in them to get that stuff together… and someone comes and says ‘But if you can use both one after another then it’s unfair for those only wanting to use 1!’

What a absolute load of bullcrap. It’s solely limiting content width for the sole sake of fearing someone could get anything at all in a quicker manner… because if you don’t like it then why does someone else dare to like it?

Hence the limitations of switching between factions. Not the punishment.
Hindering, not punishing.

As if I’m talking rocket science here… surprising how hard the concept seems to be to understand. Like trying to explain a airplane to a tribe while they try to explain proven herbal remedies.

So you mean a inherently exclusive system?

Like we have now?

Just less well presented and easily able to become a ‘noob trap’?

Gotcha… just what I’m talking against for a reason.

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None of those are seasonal multiplayer ARPGs. In seasonal ARPGs, non-traders got the shaft all the way back since D2.
Not to mention that, other than GD, none of those can be considered top in their genre.

That’s like saying that non-traders have more games for them because the Resident Evil series has no trade.
If you’re going to compare, compare with similar things.

Yes, and that’s fair. But it still treats a portion of the playerbase and “sub-players” that don’t matter.

They did, though. Because the other games know that a significant portion of the 50% that don’t want to trade will still trade if they’re being forced to it.
So they force non-traders to comform to their norm.

EHG decided that these players aren’t “sub-players” but players like all others. They gave them the same respect and legitimacy that all other games only gave to traders.

So yes, when you have a portion of the community being treated as “inferior” and someone comes up and says “They’re not inferior, they’re equals”, they are a saviour to the ones that were treated as “inferiors” all these years.

Victimizing is a harsh and loaded word. Non-traders aren’t victims. They were just neglected for over 20 years. And EHG paid attention to them. Which still makes them saviours in their eyes.

You must live in a utopia if that’s not the case. Even though their standing is much much improved in recent years, they are still discriminated heavily by large portions of the population.
And it was way worse even as recently as 20 years ago.

But lets not go into the political rabbit hole. It’s not a good place to discuss these things.

Yes. And you could improve both to be a little easier, but you shouldn’t improve them to the point where they’re as easy in either. Because that removes the challenge.

Right now, they’re kinda equivalent because each has a hurdle to overcome, it just at different points in the gear progression.

First off, gold is much easier to get in MG, so I don’t know where you get that.

Second, both require time investment to get to the same place. It’s just that MG needs to grind more for one type of gear and CoF needs to grind more for another. But in the end, it’s the same thing.

Sure. Except that this is easier said than done, especially as each next step in the gear progression requires much longer than the previous one.

Because those drops are rare enough that their price will go up and everyone and their mother will be competing with you for them. So odds are you won’t get them, even if you have the resources, unless you’re lucky enough to be the one to see that listing in the first place.

It’s not inherently exclusive, though. You use the exact same system whether you trade or not. You just get different bonuses from your actions.

Anyway, it was just an example on how you could achieve this with a single system, rather than 2 exclusive ones.

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But you do. Plainly spoken. As has been said many times, you want to preferentially benefit trade-loving players by giving them more options than trade-hating players.

Then be honest & say that you just want to fuck over the trade-hating players.

If you enjoy trade, yes.

Like the shitty position of having shitty drops because that’s how the drops had to be balanced because unrestricted trade was a thing? Or do you refuse to accept that that was ever a thing in PoE.

Just like the trade-loving players who want to also get the prophecies & loot benefits of CoF while also being able to trade. FOMO doesn’t make them a victim.

If they wanted to avoid that then why didn’t they not allow said sites to not use the API? They had options.

I believe that Mike has mentioned that particular scenario, yes. While saying that MG would be more effective to get good-but-not-BiS items more quickly.

To get the good-but-not-BiS items more quickly, yes.

I know you don’t skim posts, so I’ll let you go over my post history to figure out what I said. But I’ve agreed with Mike about the generally more optimal flow.

Yeah, pretty much.

Oh, so non-traders should fuck off back to stick to the offline games where they’re supposed to belong? Gotcha.

Yes, that was the “saving” non-traders by treating them like valid players in an online game.

I believe that was a metaphor. Or he was remembering the 80s/90s/etc.

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