Love the game - great job EHG.
One thing that seems off though is you basically have to max a char before you have enough reputation to even trade simple exalted items. I am lev 90, used a guide to max reputation for the favor I earned and I am just getting to rank 6 - rank 7 is required for exalted items. I think you need to move this up in the tree or just make the grind easier.
Sounds to me like they timed it just right. You get access to trading the top end chase items around the time your character is approaching the maximum level.
And then you find that people are selling 1-2 LP uniques for dirt cheap and wonder how youāre ever going to make gold.
Agreed, iām rank 7, lvl94 and lvl 81 and il be straight about it, i will not grind rep for seasonal content, people complained about rep grinds in Diablo 4, and they changed it because everyone said ānoā so i expect announcement closer to 1.1 regarding rep carrying over to seasonal content, otherwise personally i wonāt be staying long each seasonal content, il just play the new thing and get to 80-85 and be done with it, and iām ex PoE player.
personally not a fan of reputation grinds in any game, unless the grind is reasonable, we need some sort of rep skips like we have with story skips, get it to 10 once, and then offer huge bonuses to rep and skips iām not slaving over 100hours just get to rank 8. currently have over 100hours and im half way to rank 8.
Casuals will never ever be able trade and sell, it take them weeks just get to rank 7 or 8.
since iām no lifing and not even touched grass since launch
Maybe playing 100 hours in 8 days and ānot even touched grass since launchā is the problem here, not the system ?
Weāre 8 days in a league of 3 months. Many people are already almost capped in a faction. That would not surprise me if a few people are already capped in both.
Itās a track that goes across all your characters (within a game mode), once itās full, itās done.
Getting to level 10 in MG is not a pre-requisite to have fun in the game. Or to blast through ALL the content of the game. It just allows you to buy legendaries instead of uniques with LP and doing the fuse yourself (which in my opinion is incredibly more fun).
As I said, maybe playing 100 hours in a week burned you down, no ? Even more so if you tried for some weird reason to get to rank 10 of MG like it was a goal ?
Also, youāre saying that you āgrindā for rep. But itās linked with experience and killing monsters. Youā¦ donāt want to kill monsters anymore ? Isnāt that the whole purpose of the game, blasting enemies ?
Does it remember rep in same season? ie if i change faction back and forth i will keep the rep on both?
Yes, the progress for both factions remains the same when you switch, and is account wide.
Some people say you lose favor when you switch. I will not touch the Merchantās guild, so I canāt verify that.
Most content creators I watched reached lvl 9 MG rank when they hit 100 or even after they hit 100. To me MG offers to little to late while CoF shours me in items as soon as I have my second lense slot.
yeah merch Guild doesnāt offer enough its way too little too late, as you mention they all hit level 100 and they other rank 8 or 9 with over 100hours invested like 130+
I never said it was a pre-required to have fun, so iām not sure where you got that from, no iām not burned down by the game, i just donāt think rep grinding is ideal if it needs be done every seasonal if they wipe all the reputation after 3 months, its a different story if i only have to do it once, blasting down bosses and killing things in Monoās is fun to a point, and as the game grows and expands in content i expect more offerings in end game to expand on, but given that reputation is gatekeeping the economy for trade, causing most of population to not have access to the market properly, the items are are undervalued/overvalued, people trying sell crap ect.
Then its the fact for me personally i donāt enjoy reputational grinds that take over 100hours to do, touching grass or not, too much and that it only caters to most hardcore group of players and i donāt think that benefits anyone, merch guild at moment is in a bad state.
So, i would agree that in its current form, the MG rank system feels out of sorts and screws up the economy. It could use a bit of tweaking. Overall i like the system.
I think we all agree the problem comes in around rank 7-8 (Exalted and Unique Items)
I think one solution would be to allow up to LP1 on all uniques at Rank 6. This would help smooth out the economy issues, and its still a pretty big gamble at 25% to get a legendary with the affix you want. I get that allowing LP on some items can be very strong, but its all or nothing, and i donāt think the nothing option worked well.
COF seems to get LP options at rank 6, so i donāt think it would be game breaking.
Then i would swap Rank 7 (buy all exalted items) with Rank 6 (buy Unique Weapons with LP2-3-4)
Historically speaking, to use POE as the most recent example, the overwhelming majority of a seasonās overall traffic is in the first month. Based on the currently available metrics, it will take the average person most if not more than that period just to be able to fully engage with the trade system. Whether I personally enjoy the grind is irrelevant. Taking this long will be detrimental to the on-going health of the game economy.
Itās honestly the same issue with CoFā¦it just doesnāt feel as painful because the passive loot bonuses are really good especially early on.
On a side noteā¦CoF rank 9ā¦wtf? Drop bonus to what is easily the weakest loot category in the game?
I needed to barely hit level 98 before I got rank 8. The good news is that Merchant Guild grind basically ends at Rank 8. The Circle of Fortune needs Rank 10 for their best unlock.
Iām just here for the cookies.
The comparisons have been done. Sure, CoF will shower you with items, but how much of it will be for the character you are building? CoF is great if you like having many alts. Given that, MG might still be better for alts. You can start an alt and immediately have the tier 9/10 MG to buy what you want to go through the game. Quantity does not equal Quality.
I feel like CoF alts will be the meta for farming glyphs and gold and farming experience even with an MG main.
Even then an CoF main can simply use an MG alt to buy yellow items at rank 1 and shatter them for targeted shards. So there are cross uses on both sides I think.
The one big thing I think MG needs is quests. One of the things that make CoF so fun is the objectives the prophecies give. It gives you a reason to do things other than just āgrindā. Maybe MG could have quest objectives that give bonus favor/reputation.
For the PoE players, something like Heist. You go into the quest and bring back a special item that isnāt usable by the character but can be traded in for rewards.
Yeah, I made a post recently in the suggestions about adding a āWork Orderā board that allows you to fill āContractsāā¦It would be more basic than Prophecies since you wouldnāt have lenses or the targeted item field. But the rewards would mainly be gold, gold buffs, wealth explosions and haste buff for 5 seconds whenever you pick up gold XD.
So I was hunting a helmet and made 38 drop by killing 3 exiled mages on whatever difficulty and had the helmet i wanted 3 times with 2, 3 and 3 LP. I can do the same for every item piece I need and exalted items on demand as well.
I donāt get always what i need but the chances are realy high. On top of it I like the dual exalted stats on exalted items from CoF 7 on what is easiely reachable. Itās a question of taste in the end but as soon as people understand that almost ever 3LP item is worth 1mill+ things will go downhill for many market players from my point of view.
not to speak of the items that are already in the market for billions of gold 
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Just joined the merchants guild. I guess I will find out as I play how bad the grind is lol