This would be a very cool and thematic way to add a difficulty level to the game … Have the option to run the “Corrupted Campaign” which increases monster difficulty. EHG could also add different monster spawns, or visual effects to the environment to enhance the experience and differentiate it from regular campaign - add a bunch of void visuals throughout the campaign environments to show how corrupted it is.
All item types have restriction on area level drops (sometimes overwritten by Nemesis).
I don’t know if they simply use the required level or if they have an internal iLvl.
But you will never see a Divine Girdle belt in campaign, for example. And only by the end will you maybe see an Ivory Ring.
Many of the “higher” bases only drop on the top monos at normal difficulty.
All of them drop in empowered, of course.
It’s based on minimum level, only in content respectively providing said minimum level can it drop.
There is no minimum level non-applicable to even be remotely close to empowered monoliths… and your limit of progressing the affixes of an item are solely dependant on your personal level… and with uniques not even that, only on the base type of the unique.
This means their own rules can be broken. Level 60 item in level 50 environment? Harbinger. Shouldn’t happen but actually can, affixes can be upgraded beyond the point you can use it.
The same should usually align with other content, when a player reaches empowered monoliths they’re commonly level 70-80, mostly leaning towards 80 for newer ones and 70 for experienced players.
So, what should drop? Items aligning with the respective expected power level of a player at that level. What can theoretically drop? 4T7.
Before? Drop-wise, not harbinger mind you… 4 T5.
The point I wanna make is that there’s nothing in-between. The only mechanic after they get introduced is a higher chance to drop some exalted item… but they do never scale. First echo at 100c can provide you with the item you’ll forever wear and never get a single upgrade for, and 1000c can abstain from giving you anything relevant at all for days. There is no ‘progression’ anymore in empowered.
Other games? Torchlight… T1 gives you worse stuff then T8, vastly so. T8 is the end-line, you can invest into that but you’ve already reached the absolute end-line. But you can’t acquire a top item you would get in T8, that’s what makes T8 worthwhile, no matter if the speed is slower or faster to clear it.
The same goes for PoE (1 and 2), items in T1 maps will be vastly worse then those in T16, in LE? It’s the same, just the prevalence being different.
And that is in my eyes a major design mistake. From LE.
you can play POE2
I only play Solo Self Found and CoF…
I think I see your point… instead of higher corruption simply giving you more uniques (with the same chances), you’d like higher corruption to increase LP-rolls, or maybe even make high LP items exclusive to higher corruption… to create greater incentive for players to take on the challenge, rather than optimize for “net farm speed” in easier zones. Is that what you’re saying?
Seems fair to me…
Though I just want to point out that the combat challenge IS there… now we’re talking about incentives.
Something in this direction, yes.
1.1 had incentive, there was no option to bypass increasing corruption as higher corruption correlated directly with better loot.
In 1.2 this simply changed with the focus on loot lizards. And while it’s a really fun playstyle it doesn’t incentivize you moving up, quite the contrary.
What would counteract it is a baseline increase in loot for MG and a modifier for weaver tree drops for CoF to counteract that.
The major issue in power difference between both factions comes from the exalted changing ranks, and that’s Rank 4, Rank 7 and Rank 8 in combination.
The realistically achievable upper end for MG during a Cycle (if it were 4 months) is 1 T7 and 1 T6 items with a sealed affix (T5 would be extremely lucky there) because of champions… as a really really lucky drop. In comparison for CoF the upper limit is 2 T7 or even 1 T6 2 T7 potentially with enough luck.
The amount of exalted dropping for CoF on higher corruption is ridiculous actually, resulting in a vastly higher top-end by far. MG actually pays 50+ mil for a T6 + T7 item and 500mil to 1B for a 2 T7 item should one actually be available for a change… that’s the price of top-tier boss-drops with 2 LP… a red ring costs that much.
Combined with the functionality issues of MG I’m actually leaning towards changing to CoF and giving the game a negative review if EHG doesn’t fix it in 1.3 finally, because it’s becoming ridiculous how messed up MG is. You start far to easily off and then you get to the end of the road in seconds as basically nothing is available. 2 LP Wraithlord’s Harbour? Yeah, costs a bit… but no worries, even in MG I dropped that several times by now, I’m very sure in COF I would’ve a 3 or even 4 LP by now.
The whole progression systems need to have a proper and in-depth rework simply. Baseline fine, great for 3 month timeframes… but unless EHG solely wants people to play for 50 hours at max and then leave (a bit more then D3 or D4 but not much) then they need to get their systems properly handled.
I disagree with the notion that there can be any balance between MG and CoF… Because the availability of items in MG changes over the patch. Which point are we balancing for?
Also, the type of content gating you are talking about would only apply to CoF anyway, because in MG you can buy items from content you cant run.
I think it’s better to stick to issues with one of them and how to make it better, not to compare them. Plus, you have access to both (given the item tagging constraints) if you are not playing solo found.
1 Like
1.2 still has better loot (or rather, more higher quality loot) at higher corruption, it’s just that the increase slows down compared to difficulty more.
Does loot from loot lizards not scale with corruption?
Or if loot lizards are the problem, tweak them, rather than put massive changes in for the rest of the game.
If you’re in MG, can’t you just buy the better gear? I thought that was rather the point? Utilise the power of thousands of players potentially finding the gear you need rather than have to live with shitty drops (like you do in PoE).
Yup, but you have to find all of your own gear, so the drops have to be better for CoF. I’m a bit surprised I need to explain this to you.
And here we get back to the “tradelord is pussed off because he’s no longer the golden child so he’s going to throw his toys out of the pram until his natural place in the order of this is reinstated” which has been done to death in that other thread.
2 Likes
I don’t know how it works with lizards. I know that Nemesis drops aren’t affected by corruption. It just affects how often they show up. I’d imagine it’s the same for lizards.
Nope. It’s ‘a guaranteed exalted’. The game doesn’t decide on the specific amount of exalted affixes or if they’re T6 or T7. That seems to be a flat amount based on exalted drop count simply.
Same for uniques, LP chance is not affected beyond area level.
The loot lizards are fun though.
‘Fixing them’ will cause them likely to become a lot less fun. That would - in my eyes - be the wrong direction.
If it doesn’t drop for the community then you can’t buy it. The demand is so massive that supply is basically non-existent in comparison.
MG is still no miracle machine creating things out of thin air, it’s underlying the supply and demand rules.
Also the system shows when things are overrepresented in the game… like minion damage affecting totems, companions and actual summoned one-time minions. So Rogue, primalist and acolyte all have major builds affected by it… causing a single T7 affix to cost 5 million, which is an amount which most people don’t reach easily. Not to speak of going ‘beyond’. After all the grand majority of MG players sell items for roughly 50k per piece… lacking the knowledge and the tedious setup for the loot filter related to MG to find and focus on higher-value items.
It would only be counteracted if the progression time for content would be respectively high (which it isn’t, LE is a very short Hack’N’Slash for a live-service, similar to D3 and D4 in timeframe, a little beyond them currently but not all too much) as well as there existing a respective amount of people interacting with MG. But MG has been so massively neglected that the interaction with it is miniscule in Legacy by now for example.
Example: half a month of the release of 1.2 and in Legacy you can find double-weaver idols (the generic ones) for the possible combinations less then 5 times per combination. Status yesterday.
I personally account for roughly 10% of MG in total of listings. 10% listings… from a single friggin player. How sad is that?
That’s the state of MG.
Yes, it needs to be better… in allowing targeted farming. The methods for CoF should be the enforcing of specific base-types or specific affixes to be more prevalent. Not the baseline increase - and hence active passing - of actual item power.
That’s how it’s done properly to stay in line with MG.
There’s a difference between ‘golden child’ and ‘treated properly’.
People have complained about COF issues as well and they are viable issues. Do I complain that CoF gets to address those? Do I call them ‘entitled’ or ‘golden childs’ hence? No?
So get off your fucking high horse, what you do is actively disgusting, it’s unbecoming of you. You should know by now that I don’t give a single fuck what sort of mechanic one uses, I only give a damn about proper balancing and proper implementation.
CoF prophecy screen is a mess, experimental items have been fixed in a roundabout way. Boss uniques pose an issue still. Exalted for multi-character players are ridiculously OP, for single-character players they’re a downside. So how about addressing that universally so both systems become more fair and equivalent rather then having a dick-measuring content?
Would be nice, wouldn’t it? So can we go past personal shortcomings like thinking ‘I have finally a perceived place and now anything even taking a breath to speak about anything related to it gets shut down immediately just because’? Yes? Good.
Why? Just make it so that their loot drop tables act according to area level/corruption level.
You said it yourself, the loot they’re dropping is too good for the area you’re running, so just make that loot closer to the progression.
You don’t have to change anything else with lizards and they’d still be as fun.
1 Like
What?? Did they change how corruption influence drops from 1.1 to 1.2?
I totally missed that… Can you point that out for me please?
You actively can’t actually. There’s a fixed spawn chance for the types. For example yellow ones don’t drop exalted items, outside of CoF since all created rares can be upgraded… hence they’re in MG 100% worthless at any time.
How do you ‘upgrade’ rares to more? If it aligns with normal drops then they would need to become exalted at times, but they don’t. That’s the point of the lizard being yellow.
Purple and green drop exalted items instead. They’re the rarest ones, with a total chance of less then 7% to appear normally. And since their drop-table already has ‘exalted’ included and exalted is one no matter what… how can you upgrade that hence?
Or the idols from blue ones.
Or the unique or set items from white ones?
The system currently only decides on the core rarity. It either is exalted or not. The specifics of it being exalted are then rolled beyond.
It either is unique or not, the specifics of what unique or the LP is rolled after.
So that’s a problem with the core loot system underneath, you can’t actually adjust the lizards to simply drop as a baseline… unless you solely give them a generic loot pool and then a rarity attached to them… which would make them vastly unenjoyable early on and ridiculously OP beyond 500c.
Edit because of post:
For CoF it upholds still.
For MG not. The point of MG is that item scarcity is high, so exalteds and uniques drop vastly less often simply.
With the loot lizards you can guarantee those drops though instead now. With green lizards being utterly prevalent now via champions and uniques dropping for every single loot lizard with guarantee.
That outpaces all other forms of generation in the game up until 500c or higher maybe. So instead of reaching that with a build struggling even lightly it’s easier to rush 100c hence.
Better bases.
Higher chance for T7 or multiple exalted affixes. Also better bases.
Higher chance to have better rolls.
Higher chance of LP or of getting the rarer ones.
Better rolls and higher chance to get the rarer ones.
Besides, your issue with them was that they gave much better loot than the zone they were in (or was that in another thread?). In which case, what you want to do is limit what can drop early on.
1 Like
Exactly what CoF should actually have instead of increase of affixes 
To target the gear needed rather then dropping those lovely T7 health regeneration/ T7 Mana/ T6 fire damage items on a wand while you’re a ward-based melee char using swords.
Would be better if instead a single T7 on a sword drops. Or the rare T7/T6 combo on a sword. To have a vastly higher chance to drop… a sword and not bows, daggers, spears… whatever.
The majority of idols already have an extremely easy time to roll at the top ranges, outside the large range ones on large idols. Also Idols already are so prevalent that they can actively fill the inventory in a single echo. Happens even in MG, in CoF the 35% chance for doubling causes that to become massive… at least you can let them sit on the ground rather then having to click 8 times to list a single item, with searching increasing that to up to 20+ times often.
More rare uniques would be a ‘lucky’ roll as a possibility, so rolling twice and taking the more rare option. For that the system would need to know which option is the more rare and sought after one though. And as much as I know it picks type, then rarity… which already causes several types to be simply less valuable (a red ring would be preferable to any other base after all) so that already can’t be done, only inside the specific type. Also several types don’t have any rare options.
LP increase is possible, but then what upsides does CoF actually have in terms of common uniques? Loot lizards would actively ensure that MG would get massive upsides there since then it would also be available on the market easily… which was specifically set up in a way CoF has an upside to progress personally. Uniques are really iffy with the LP currently because of that.
No, they simply bypass the loot scarcity of MG, which is a detrimental aspect. I mean… gameplay wise for the feeling great, overall game-health though? Awful.
The progression in LE is based on your faction after all, and MG gets a substantial upside for lizards compared to CoF, to a degree which is laughable even. Many items already were only valuable at 3 LP (2 LP costing ‘0’ often) and the prevalence of drops increasing by… basically 200-300% for uniques will cause that to rise even more. That’s kinda unfair towards CoF since it means that yes… MG is superior in terms of uniques, which are very very often the base for a vast majority of builds to even use exalteds on.
Sure, a champion exalted would be more valuable, but those are miracles in MG anyway while in CoF they get upgraded surprisingly regularly.
It does, items have reroll chance, the rarer ones have higher reroll chance.
That doesn’t matter. All that matters is how rare it is. If the most sought after is common, it will already drop a lot anyway.
CoF ranks also affect lizard drops.
The whole point is that there are easier ways to tweak lizards with the current systems in place than to just revamp/touch up every other system.
Weren’t you just complaining that good loot is too rare in MG?
I honestly don’t understand you, sometimes. On the one hand you complain that there is no good way to get rare gear in MG because of supply and demand. Then you have a system that increases the supply and say that it’s bad?
Not mutually exclusive, that’s the point.
In comparison to CoF the overall quality of loot is too low, that’s a problem.
In comparison to CoF MG in 1.2 has too much quantity of loot though.
Overall CoF and MG should only cause a difference in the chance to acquire a specific item personall, not the quality of the loot provided.
That’s achieved by targeting system, not by numerical increase of drops of a specific type… it’s to narrow in what should drop in that exact category. That’s the detriment I see currently in the system popping up, something I talked around and never could put my finger quite on the exact cause before, finally being more visible.
The mechanics of the weaver tree showcase that well. We got the imprinted items, right? Those drops though with abyssmal FP values, 2… 8… 10… rather then the 30-50 we usually see. That’s clearly catered towards target-farming issues for CoF after all, which was the primary downside, right?
EHG fixed a issue which was mentioned repeatedly - exalted drops being unfitting for your build - visible in CoF and their core-mechanic addresses that.
A big ‘oof’ I have to say. A core mechanic is not supposed to fix a faction, the mechanics inside said faction should work long-term as a stand-alone method that’s scaling into the future with new implementations. But… it doesn’t as we can see through that example.
So that’s why:
I say the base systems are the ones in need of fixing.
Will your solution solve it? Absolutely!! But it still leaves it open for the future to introduce new issues in the same area.
Why all the bandaids? Don’t we have enough of them already?
Campaign feels like a slog since there absolutely no challenge of any kind → dungeon skips.
Mastery is too early situated and has no ‘trial time’ in the game to ensure you’ve picked the right one → mastery respec.
Dungeon content feels utterly boring since the stages before the boss are extremely badly designed → dungeon charms.
You see where this is going? It’s starting to look like a messy patchwork rather then a polished game. 1.2 solved so… so many issues, but only for 1.2. The game is in a good state overall… but in 1.3? Less likely… 1.4? Even less.
How often do we expect EHG to rework their systems and make bandaids upon bandaids upon bandaids rather then a solid comprehensive functioning system which allows easy scaling for content? It’s one of the reasons why their releases take so long after all. There’s a myriad of issues present and they need to work around all of them to get a great feeling product out.
Do you think that’ll decrease or increase over time if they’re not addressed and nipped in the bud?
I personally think it’ll only increase, and if not handled early it’ll come back to bite them, cause frustratrion for us players and indefinitely if never handled the death of the game if a single competitor which isn’t producing mediocre garbage like Blizzard comes along which provides a ARPG for low- to mid- time-investment that’s got potential depth but not too much.
“Meaningful” is starting to sound like a curseword for me. Makes me cringe.
While the points made by OP are fair, I disagree. I’ve never had as much fun with an ARPG and even though the game is not perfect, it really works for me. This coming from someone with 2k+ hours in the game.
1 Like
For me it sounds funny because it states, that by default, combat is meaningless in ARPGs (which I agree with). Like, in the genre where most of the time you are fighting monsters, it’s totally acceptable that this fighting doesn’t require any attention, only waiting when loot will drop. Basically, ARPGs are casino simulators.
Nobody would ask for the meaningful combat in some other genre, because wouldn’t make sense to have it otherwise.
Use the Cursed Veteran boots, that’s the high difficulty mode 