You get reputation when you earn the favour and then again when you spend it. The amount of reputation you gain is the same for getting it and for spending it. I think someone said it’s 1 favour for 2 reputation, so each favour you get will earn you 4 reputation (2 for getting it, 2 for spending it).
EDIT: Seems you edited to say the same thing as I said at the same time 
Lol ya i did. I had to look it up quick make sure i was giving correct info
Lapse of mind, it’s too late to write posts here clearly… that’s a personal facepalm.
Still, only half-speed though, not all too optimal. Double the time investment makes for a fairly glaring difference in effort after all.
I will use this thread because I face the same problem. My first char is member of CoF and climbing up ranks is so fast as I excepted. My second char (lvl 71) is member in MG and it seems that I remain in rank 5. I sold items at the bazar, most of them for 0 money, and bought items as well (from 0 to x money). But my progress indicator stays constantly - or moves extremly slowly to right my eyes can’t follow.
Do I something wrong? I read from people that selling and buying items catapults them from level 5 to 7. So I must do something wrong…
Any tips?
I’m gonna try and consolidate my reply instead of talking 15 parallel points through quotes
Again, kinda going personal here. The last sentence also reeks a bit of the “it’s obvious if you think about it” QAnon-level of argumentation. If you can’t have an honest discussion without resorting to insulting the other side, I’m gonna assume you don’t trust your own argument to stand on its own.
I asked your opinion and gave a first step as to what I think you might be wanting.
Clearly, as you have written here, you think certain ranks need to have their items split up and spread better across the ranks. That is actually something they could do without a complete overhaul. Which means they could do it in 1.1 and not somewhere in a year or 2. A complete overhaul would most likely entail an overhaul of the entire faction system, so that would bring them heaps of other issues to fix as well. If they can fix it in the current system, that’s probably the best solution at this time.
Fallacy. MG Rank is a permanent gain, not an on-use like keys
When I was trying to get the Soulfire Bastion belt & Scythe for my Warlock, I was also trying to get Burning Avarice. I ran out of keys twice before I got them. It happens. In fact, I’m pretty sure I have more craft-worthy LP items in my stash than Temporal Sanctum key, so if it was worth it to me to craft these things, keys would also be the limiting factor. Unfortunately, these items are not in my MG stash and therefor I don’t need to craft to progress my played builds.
So in your analogy, the key would be more like the favor cost, as it’s on use and gathered while engaging in the other parts of the game. Is the “cost” of running the dungeon to craft something equal to the value of the item every time? No, it’s not, because the min dungeon Tier level only ranks on item level, not amount of LP or drop rate.
Neither actually. A strawman would entail that I accuse you of advocating said point. It’s my argument that limiting acquisition through Favor is detrimental to a trade economy in the game.
As for hyperbole: If Favor becomes the de facto limiting factor in acquisition, gold no longer matters for pricing, right? And if gold doesn’t matter, then there is no value in wasting Favor to gain gold through selling, that would directly reduce your rate of acquisition. This essentially kills all supply, (because there is 0 reason to sell anything if you still want better gear) and thus back to point #7 from your earlier post. Nothing if that is hyperbolic, just the most probable consequence. It also doesn’t stop Favor from being volatile instead, because the current volatility of gold is due to player pricing and you indirectly want to tie Favor to player agency.
So EHG needs to recreate the supply side. Either this is done artificially (as per my argument), or it’s done by giving you part of the Favor cost, which inevitably leads to market rush & currency-focused play styles, something they don’t seem to be in favor of for Last Epoch.Not to mention inflation is gonna make pricing worse over time, because the community as a whole is getting tons of Favor and not enough of it will be siphoned off at the top end. <Insert witty “tax the rich” analogy here>
In order for supply to be player-driven, there needs to be a currency transfer. Favor is not the right choice for this, because then we’re back to PoE economy where people gear by farming currency / community valued items. That means gold. If gold is too abundant, EHG can reduce the overall gain (and compensate CoF directly to balance it out, or otherwise adjust numbers like Arbor Vault costs, stash prices,…) without needing a complete faction overhaul. Gold already has a baseline value btw, but as you can see in the current market, it is irrelevant once inflation kicks in. But if you’ld up the baseline, you’ld artificially limit supply, because if the community value of the item is below it, nobody is gonna try and sell it. (As per your 1LP 40k favor example from before) This leads to meta-only builds, because it actually becomes harder to try something new rather than have access to cheap non-meta items.
So again, let’s assume you get perfect access progression through Rep and tie Favor cost to gold cost:
You could remove the listing cost, but that solves nothing for your rank progression. Until I can reliably farm Arbor, I have no need for selling items. Going to the Bazaar is a waste of time there. Once enough people have Rank 10 (and are actively playing) then Arbor becomes a useless thing yet again, because I was only using the sales to help others level, not to actually gather more resources/currency myself.
To the first part:
Why is it insulting?
You probably didn’t need that line of thought in the types of problem solving throughout your life… so why would you see it right away? You’re probably excelling at other lines of solving issues instead.
But after seeing it it seems fairly obvious, right? Doesn’t mean that the thought coming up is something which is likely though.
We can hope, it would at least alleviate the current situation. In-depth changes will need to be done but alas that - as you mentioned - takes a lot of time.
As for the example with keys and Sanctum:
Yeah, true, a fallacy. Though I’ll argue why nonetheless it’s a viable point despite it not being 100% equivalent.
By the time you start acquiring LP items + the relevant exalted items you’ll have far more keys then you’ll need to use on them. Which means keys are always available.
Unlike Rank it has the option to run out though, but it’s unlikely and also fairly likely you’ve then messed around with the system randomly rather then using it in a targeted manner for getting great outcomes for your builds.
But in terms of uniques from the bosses… yeah, you’ll run out of keys, that’s a given. As well if you craft every possible LP item in your stash rather then those you actively need for your current builds.
Branching out into separate builds for the same mastery can make it happen, I’ll definitely give you that point, which might be a fairly realistic situation for someone which experiments around a lot in the same mastery and hence needs a large variety of uniques.
The whole equivalency doesn’t work when put under more scrutiny it seems, so it’s not a very good one.
It would. If you create a double-layered mechanic surrounding favor.
The first layer being a minimal favor cost, hence a ‘floor’. We have that already, it’s just fairly low. Commonly a character needs to buy vastly less items then someone interacting with the market will provide it in an ARPG like LE.
The enforced listing participation (since it offers more possible upsides then random gambling through gold acquisition) causes the items input into the market to outpace normal rates though. Some people only buy from a market, others only sell to a market. With this system those only buying though need to either wait long or list items to get to the stage. A partial issue why ‘0’ gold listings even exist, for them the item is ‘worthless’ and hence usually no effort would be exerted to list it… but now it is, leading to supply abundance at the beginning.
The second layer on top of that is favor cost rising with gold cost beyond a point. This means that high valued items have a automated favor cost attached to disallow too little interaction with the game itself rather then the market.
Now, in the current situation it would actually lead to a problem with favor. But that is because the listing also costs favor, hence making situations where you outpace your gold acquisition compared to favor acquisition very unlikely.
If you remove the listing favor cost it solves itself though. Instead a limited listing amount Why? Because rare expensive drops can happen unrelated to time investment. That’s the ‘lucky drop’ which goes beyond normative rates since the economy exists for such reasons.
The end result is that even if you get the gold too quickly through luck you still need to input a minimal amount of time to acquire powerful items.
Also it automatically causes RMT to become harder since high gold prices mean high time investment to acquire it, making gold-shifting between characters far harder.
And as another effect it can allow both gold and favor to outpace each other independently in different situations, hence not causing any to become arbitrary for the functionality but instead function for different aspects of the system.
With appropriate adjustments the supply side (item acquisition rates and types) don’t need to be interacted with at all.
Such systems already exist and are proven to function in reality, that’s why I’m recommending it since smaller scale economical systems work with it for longer times and don’t fall apart (which is surprisingly hard).
As for the player-driven aspect for currency transfer:
Yes, that’s called fluidity on the market, which is currently hampered in LE.
Also favor is the perfect choice since it’s a natural and permanent limiter to the possible maximum rate for acquisition through the market.
That method actually is already in the game, inherently in-built, just not with the market. Drop-chances rely on the same basic methodology. They are a natural access limiter. Outside of a game I agree with you that a limiter is negative… though here? Here’s it’s a necessity or something goes out of whack, especially so since we don’t have a natural sink for… well… everything.
The easiest limiter and easiest to manage long-term is by pure time-investment which favor is a very good method to go with.
Gold in comparison is volatile, changes value depending on the time of the cycle and also has only a singular big sink which is so many magnitudes weaker then the economic aspect that even ridiculous inflation won’t make it worthwhile for MG players (Lightless Arbour).
Sure, it has a baseline value… but that value is not fixed and looses meaning when you reach end-game and neither gambling, buying runes or increases stash-size is any matter. It looses all perceived value at that point outside of the economy at that moment and is solely driven by that then.
As to your points:
1.) Yes, which is why I’m saying that favor cost for listing isn’t useful with that, but ‘cost-less’ listing also isn’t great, so a gold-tax deducted after sales is a more viable option and acts as a natural gold sink as well.
2.) unlikely. Different mentality leads to different behavior, hence the chance for that to happen is nigh non-existent.
3.) Which is why favor and rep shouldn’t be tied, why is it even? It makes no sense. You get rep, you get favor… why the extra hoop of spending favor? Lore-wise sure… but mechanically it makes little sense. With ‘1’ hence it becomes viable to interact or abstain from the market at your own volition, only buyer? Only seller? All possible, all fine rather then the current more or less enforced listing process throwing everything out of whack.
4.) Since rep wouldn’t be tied to favor ‘no’. But the usage of Lightless Arbour as a possibility becomes actually viable. Which currently is outside of absolutely extreme situations just nonsense to even do.
5.) Why? If you don’t tie favor usage to sales then this situation doesn’t exist. You’ll instead find people listing items from start to finish.
Removing the listing cost and buying/selling in the bazaar itself shouldn’t do any sort of rank progression. The most fitting things would be to implement the gold taxation and acquire rep based on tax amount (which gives an incentive to price accordingly, higher price means more rep for you, too high means nobody buys, incentive to sell at perceived market price) while also keeping monster killing/quests up as a method of gain.
No ‘leveling others up’ or making any resource ever invalid along the line this way… outside of rep when maxed out but that’s already the case.
Don’t forget to spend your favor. I spammed it on gambling as nothing was affordable to me until I started finding items to sell for high value and began being able to afford some things I wanted. It didn’t seem like it took that long to max level but then again, I didn’t pay attention.
I would say, a lot of time was wasted learning and knowing what is of value. That is something we must learn from being a newbie but I love how there are different choices and ways to get your items needed to progress and scale to higher corruptions.
Because it implies that I’m not open-minded, nor have put in the effort to think about the topic. Assuming you’re not a stalker and know my entire life story, that is essentially starting out the discussion with a “I assume you don’t know anything about this topic”.
Calling something “fairly obvious” also insinuates that the reader in question is incapable of logical thought.
But that’s what gold cost already does right now. You need a minimal interaction with the game to get gold drops and/or items you can sell for gold.
But if, once I’m in endgame, I’m limited by Favor for gear upgrades, I’m still not caring about gold income, because I don’t really need it anymore. I don’t even need drops, for which I only get gold anyway, I just need min/max XP (=Favor) even if that means running Arena till I’m out of keys. There is no incentive for me to sell except to buy more stash tabs so I can reroll to CoF. Atleast in the current system, all item drops award progress to gear acquisition. This is because gold is the limiting factor.
You know what, I actually think you’re right for both factions here. Spending Favor should not give rep, you should just get the full Reputation on XP gain. I get the initial idea of “interaction with the system = rep” but it doesn’t work practically. I think the other reasoning from their side is that people would “save up” and only start spending at Rank 10, especially in CoF, but I don’t think that’s the issue as much as they feared it to be. (Or maybe it can be a 1-5 ratio or something so you still get >80% of Favor from farming, but have that light push to occasionally use it)
Why should an MG player be incentivized to do Arbor? In your system, I have little to gain from selling the items I find there, except to find more of those items. If I’m looking for a boss drop with X LP, Arbor provides 0 extra progress towards that goal compared to straight up XP farming.
Really, pretend I’m an MG player with more gold than Favor and sell me Arbor as gameplay loop!
Again, why would I bother listing items for YOU?
Let’s say we both want the same item from the Bazaar. A 2LP Ravenous Void or something.
In your concept, both of us want to maximize XP gain = Favor, because that’s gonna be the limiting factor. Why, in God Eterra’s green given … also Eterra (
?) should I post more items you could potentially use? I want to farm Favor faster than you can if I want items that are limited in supply. Selling low level stuff will get me the gold part, but selling high level stuff only increases the competition, without actually helping me get to what I want in anyway what-so-ever.
It would be economically beneficial to me to NOT sell items to keep (Favor) prices low.
People need a personal gain or motivation to sell things. Needing gold for their character progress gives them that reason.
As said above, I agree on the buying/selling part. The tax thing I disagree with. Because you’ld just have RMT services willing to buy your 2 billion dirty rag and propel you forwards instantly, or some other kinds of gold bouncing schemes between friends/guilds etc.
We have a high variance in loot drops, hence a high variance in gold income.
Favor income is tied to experience though, which is a baseline that has a low variance.
Gold hence does a worse job for the task compared to favor since you can tie a perceived time-investment to favor but not easily to gold.
Who says you’re limited at favor in the first place? Just because you give it a minimum price doesn’t mean that favor outpaces everything suddenly. That statement simply doesn’t fit.
What it’s supposed to to in he proposed situation is to enforce a minimum time investment and reducing the variance based on sheer luck for the economic part of the game by 100%. We have loot drops for chance based situations… the economy doesn’t need to add another layer to that.
So should you come in the possession of lucky drops early you’ll outpace favor income… should you not then you’ll outpace gold income. It’s a variance there simply, so the premise isn’t valid for that unless they screw up the implementation of that.
Well, if they’re hampering their progression in favor of saving up this way I would say… let them? They’ve earned it for the effort.
Because you can already do it, it just takes double the time and leads to the exact same outcome.
That’s not true though.
The premise is based on acquisition, so let’s go with that.
Gold and Favor are both possible limiters.
In the current system gold is the pure limiting factor, favor costs are utterly laughable. investing 1 hour of effort to acquire a 4 LP item? You got to admit that’s a little bit low.
In the proposed system it’s not defined if gold or favor is the limiting factor.
With loot luck favor becomes the limiter, hence allowing the usage of Arbor for extra drops while acquiring favor.
If there’s no loot luck then the gold limiter stands strong and hence functions as well, means a need for more drops and listings.
Arbor has a high chance of dropping exalted items in a big amount, which potentially means keeping up with the gold status you have while also getting more potential bases to craft your LP items. Because good bases not only cost much but often aren’t even available.
Moolah, bills, brass, bacon, dough, bucks, benjamins, dinero, bling… 
Who says you can afford those 2 LP ravenous void in the first place?
And if you can… will they be the only item you ever need? There’s 3 LP and 4 LP above as well as several more item slots on your character that can be outfitted with double T7 exalted items without uniques or otherwise 4 LP uniques at best.
You can even go and use double T7 exalted items after the acquisition of the initial LP 4 item to go full bonkers… unrealistic to ever achieve it… but anyone has the potential to post a single one of those items.
You’ll need funds for that in store and you’ll wanna improve your odds to getting those drops yourself as much as possible at the same time.
The less supply there is the higher the price on the market the higher the needed favor investment for any potential buyer, so… not quite?
I don’t know from where you derived that.
The RMT part gets hampered by the favor cost tied to gold, unlike now, which is a major point for the suggestion.
Can you move gold between people without the market currently actually? I don’t know… and if… why did they do that? That shouldn’t be impossible as it opens a can of worms nobody wants to open.
Assuming we’re in the case where linked Favor scales above the baseline, so items of that value have a direct Favor-Gold ratio in cost. I’ll also be re-using the 2LP Ravenous Void as an insanely rare chase item.
There are 3 potential scenarios here:
Situation 1:
Your solution does absolutely nothing in the economy. Those 2 LP Rav Voids are still gonna go on for 1-2billion gold. Maybe make it slightly slower for the “Wallet Warriors” to buy gear. That’s assuming those guys don’t buy XP farm bots for their accounts and actually force prices up because they’re the only ones that can afford it.
Situation 2:
Only XP farming grants Favor, so anything that doesn’t do that, doesn’t help my progression. Arbor only lets me turn gold into gold, a total waste of time, even interacting with the selling part of the Bazaar is a waste. The best chances to be able to afford that 2LP Rav Void if it ever hits the Bazaar is to be the richest dude on the block and that means having farmed the most XP. Again, as long as I have enough gold to Favor ratio, I don’t care about selling, it in fact helps ‘the competition’ by gearing them.
Situation 3:
I get that once in a lifetime 2LP Ravenous Void drop, and it’s only day 3 of the cycle!
Better sit on it for a few months, because nobody can afford the Favor for the ‘actual value’
This drop gave me 0 realistic gear progression, unless I use it directly.
Even if I were to sell it at some extreme low price point, I myself don’t have the Favor to buy gear for my character and, by the time I have that Favor, I’ll have found & sold some other gear to have the gold anyway. That 2LP Rav Void in the stash … might as well craft it for an alt, because then I don’t need the Favor farm first, right? So that RV never actually hit the economy, and the Bazaar becomes a thumbleweed store. (Because why be MG if the items I can’t farm myself aren’t ever there?)
Effectively, the variance in loot drops lost it’s plus side (good drops I don’t want = can’t convert it to drop I want, because Favor cost), and being on the bad side of luck doesn’t get help as much either, as there is limited incentive for the good luck player to put the item on the Bazaar ASAP.
This is what I meant with the “might as well just place a vendor” part earlier. If I can’t turn some medium-good drops into a super powerful one through trading, but items are just roughly priced/‘gated’ at their drop rarity, then what is the point of actual trade vs the Badge / drop currency system MMOs like WoW or FFXIV have? Get X Favor and Y gold, get item. I can’t sell it for more, because then it’s better for the buyer to farm it themselves, and selling it for less means just get less gold, because as long as Favor/time is your limiting factor, anything below self-farm is gonna be worth it to you.
Yes, and if I make 10k favor per evening and you make 5k, any item we both want that is priced 6-7k, I get that same night. (assuming we both started on 0 that day) If we all made 10k per night, then that item would probably be on sale for 10k if not more and I’m potentially slower on progression because you can afford to ‘snipe’ it from me while I’m eating dinner., thus putting me behind you in efficiency.
The cost of items is sorta a reflection of how much time on average you would need to farm it, converted into X currency. I want my conversion to be higher than yours, so I can convert “my” time into more of “your” time. That’s literally why people buy RMT stuff, they have valuable time elsewhere (when compared to e.g. South American gold farmers) and want to convert it through certain currencies. (moolah, bills,… you get the point 
)
The biggest thing I see in this sentence though is that you’re looking at the market as a whole. I’ll point the Prisoner’s Dilemma out again: Individual players need a personal incentive to contribute to the benefit of the group. If you don’t give players a constant reason to sell, then the Bazaar dries up. I think on that point hopefully we can agree.
The issue is that I can only sell for gold (because selling for Favor = flippers & scalpers, etc.) and if I have enough gold to hit the Favor limit, selling becomes useless to me. It could be good for the market or the player base as a whole, sure, but what do I, personally get out of it? In fact, it’s more likely cause inflation, thus literally making me take longer to acquire gear and effectively punish me for ‘giving’ you gear! (because I don’t need the gold from the sale)
If you want me to keep putting items on Bazaar, especially the high end ones, you need to give me a reason to ALWAYS want to sell those things. If I’m at a point where Favor is limiting my gear progression, why would I?
As for the bouncing gold thing: I meant more of a guild or group of friends only trading internally, or buying overpriced items from each other to give themselves extra Rep, in a way to boost themselves similar to XP boosting.
It doesn’t need to be the third possible situation at all actually.
We have a sure shot at getting it right already in the game currently, if you know that then you can’t fail at making a functioning system around it… as long as you don’t diverge from it.
Currently the game ‘expects’ you to reach specific content at a specific level, if they’re not already collecting that data then EHG definitely needs to start doing that, it’s one of the prime ways to adjust a game properly rather then swinging wildly in the dark and hope for the best.
So given that we know the experience needed to arrive at a specific point in the game, advancing through the game we unlock access to more items, to higher affix combinations and so on.
So, the easiest way to guarantee a always functioning system is to see 'how much favor would I gain before arriving at point ‘X’ ’ and then go along and slap a multiplier on that. For example a ‘50%’ modifier.
Imagining we gain 20k favor to reach said content we then would need to use 10k of it to acquire one of those items, which intrinsically makes low-tier garbage basically free of favor usage and high-tier items expensive to acquire for it… but since we massively rise in experience gain as we progress we also gain vastly more access to favor.
Now, uniques, sets, legendaries are also given a multiplier according to their acquisition stage, rarity and LP.
Level 40 common unique? Pffft… costs nothing basically.
Timeline boss-only drop which is rare? Oh, that costs a chunk!
Already we have a baseline existing, we only need to decipher the respective amount of favor which is sensible, this always stays true across the whole board and can fairly easily be tested out, you only need 2-3 people playing a singular character each in a testing environment for a few hours and get the cold and hard data from the overall return this way.
LP also gets a multiplier on top, something simple like x2 for LP 1, x5 for LP 2, x20 for LP 3 and x100 for LP 4… as an example again.
Obviously it doesn’t align with the actual acquisition rate… but that’s not needed, it just needs to provide a clear and distinct rise in base pricing.
Also the whole adjustments aren’t targeted to avoid 1-2 bil items… because that outcome can be fine, it’ll be just more unlikely to happen as it should stabilize the price range overall… which generally is good to happen in a game, not so much in reality.
What it’s supposed to do is to avoid the ‘extreme’ situations currently happening. This entails too early acquisition of specific items as well as having no access to items for a too large timeframe.
Yeah? So?
That’s a natural thing. The one investing more time is the one which gets access to stuff naturally earlier.
Same case now, what’s the difference?
Yes, which is given.
Listing items that are sought-after = profit in gold.
Profit in gold = access to other listed items as well as Arbour if you have vastly too much.
If you want even more incentive you could also implement that 5% of the favor of sold items gets into your account, so you’re motivated to sell on top! But that I wouldn’t recommend since it once again sidesteps acquisition rate limitations.
You inherently have a personal incentive to be part of a economy, and whenever you’re part of one you intrinsically help to upraise someone else. If you want to avoid others acquiring anything then you can’t ever list items, period. Same case now.
Yeah, once more, even top of the top-tier. Obviously you will keep every item you’ll need
What’s the difference to now?
If you don’t need a specific item or want another rare one… you put up the great stuff on the market. If nothing is available on the market for you you probably won’t list it in the first place… or you list it anyway to acquire the funds early and then sit on them until your item is listed.
That’s how it’s always going, same as always.
Oh, why not? They don’t get any upsides in the system I recommend, if they buy from each other or from other people is irrelevant in that case since neither rank nor favor acquisition are tied to selling/buying.
You would gain rep and favor from experience/quests
You use favor only as a limiter function for acquisition of items.
Gold stays as useful as ever.
They were confident about the launch as well.
Saying a system can’t fail as long as you double down is how gamblers go broke.
And it’s how systems get exploited while the creators scream it’s just a minority.
I can perfectly farm normal monos for arena keys and dungeons and get XP there. Assuming people play a fixed progression path is a dangerous thing. Not just for your system behaviour, but also for player retention. But sure, let’s assume people all follow guides towards empowered monos and +300c
2-3 people for a few hours is absolutely NOT enough data to be accurate. That’s like playing the Monopoly boardgame and saying you have vast data on the real estate market.
This entire part is also just baseline stuff, which they can fix without an overhaul or linking Favor to gold cost.
Except you’re not considering the side effects.
If an early MG player is at 20k Favor (to pick your number) and finds an early drop worth 50k, he can’t actually convert that item into useful gear. Because he can’t use the gold he gets from that to buy anything locked behind the Favor gating mechanism. If he sells it now, he has a ton of gold, but no Favor, exactly as you intended. But we’re assuming the MG system will prevent bad luck as well, so by the time he has 50k Favor, he’ll already have farmed the gold anyway without needing that giant drop. Be it through idols or other drops worth 5k that are more likely to sell to starting players. And well, if drop variance doesn’t matter anymore, because I don’t have the Favor to use the gold, we’re back to the vendor argument to compensate for bad luck only. The biggest part is also, players will not enjoy those big drops, because it doesn’t give them something good.
It also does absolutely nothing for high end items not being around, because that requires people playing high end and is not guaranteed at all through your changes.
Because right now, selling you a 5k item gives me partway to my next item.
If I find enough items I have no use for, but that you can use, then selling it to you IS progress. If I want a 10k item, I can sell 3 5k items and have gold to spare. That helps 5 people. Me, the 3 people I sold to, and the guy I bought from. If it was a 10k Favor cost, selling to you does not help me. And selling that item to me doesn’t help the seller.
Here’s how the majority of players I know think:
I have no inherent incentive to be part of the economy.
I am part of the economy because it’s directly beneficial to me.
If I’m capped at a certain amount of gold progression, selling other items is a waste of time.
I’m not spending time to put items up for sale to help you if the gold doesn’t directly help me.
I am not a charity!
If you think people will trade simply because it’s part of the MG faction, boy, do I have a bridge to sell you!
Either you’re locked in progression behind the Favor cost, or behind the gold cost.
Arbour does nothing but “reroll your gold”, so if I’m limited by Favor, why bother with the gold playloop, I need the XP one!
Ok, let’s assume I got some 2LP Rav Void the first day and sell it to some botting RMT wallet warrior. I now have 2billion gold, enough for basically a full endgame gear set. I now need to only farm XP for the next month to get it all. Fun 
Yes, that’s a hyperbole, but the issue still stands. Once I have more than enough I expect the items to cost, I’m no longer picking up gear I don’t want, even if someone else can use it. Because I have the gold I need, selling it does not help me, I need Favor instead.
That was in response to your “rep from sales” argument.
If I’m at a point where you’re capping my gear progress with Favor, I don’t care about gold. So it does NOT stay as useful, unless you’re somehow letting me buy Favor from the vendor. (RMT will love that one, lol)
Yes, and the second I saw the system I knew it would have major issues going forward.
I just never expected how massive those would be.
Given my high interest in economic setups personally I tend to trust in both my gut feeling as well as the knowledge details I’ve picked up over time there since they usually start to turn out to be true. Someone who’s actually an economics expert though will be able to go vastly further into detail… but it’s fairly obvious that they didn’t have someone with that type of focus after creating their system in place.
Yes, small company and all… but it’s a major system pacing or blocking the way for the future of the game, so it would at least be a good choice to bring someone in for the time at least until it’s properly worked out and at least offers fewer changes to fail.
For variety it is a very dangerous thing.
For a system which needs a baseline though it’s a necessity.
It’s simply the context in which it’s used that has to fit, it doesn’t have to be ‘perfect’ but at least come somewhat close to the actual situation, hence variance around will be automatically excused this way.
In that case? I would say it is actually. Pick 3 of them and say ‘go as far into the game as you can’… provide them a starting point and see the outcome. It won’t vary massively at least.
Which is in that case ‘good enough’.
I especially picked that work beforehand so it solely serves as a check if the baseline is half-decently functional or deviates vastly from the expectations. It allows for a surprisingly large amount of deviation from the absolute medium amount… so you don’t need to come close at all.
I get the point.
A 50k favor item would relate to some form of LP item or a rare boss drop unique
Now let’s compare the situations from current to suggestion:
In the current state (unless rare boss-drop which shouldn’t be available at Rank 3) we need to achieve at least Rank 7
In the suggestion you need 50k favor and are fine.
This is ignoring gold cost, just baseline favor.
Which is quicker? Reaching Rank 7 or 50k total favor?
It reduces the variance, doesn’t remove it though.
Also, imagining gold to favor is a 10:1 ratio. Hence 500k gold means 50k favor.
Which will you get faster through normal farming means?
It’s the 50k favor, plentyfold.
So it already enforced market listings to reach that in time, just not enforced listings for nonsensical reasons as it is now the case.
Actually it does to a degree, at least if the expectation of higher market usage holds true.
Higher usage means more listings and more sales, more fluidity hence. This causes margins to drop, this causes income to be more stable, neither extremely lucky nor utterly worthless.
So with more people using the market the chance for someone to list an item to actually derive profit from that is also higher.
And if you want to make sure that items are at least listed with a high chance for at least a gold price floor then you only need to implement a different UI setup. Have the listing show a ‘quick-list’ button which aligns to minimum favor cost and the respective gold price. One-click listing. Suddenly you’ll get tons of listings at that exact price and very few below… and especially good items will still be listed higher.
Leading the players to influence the economy isn’t inherently bad, but it’s dangerous at least.
If you sell a 5k item at rank 4 and your next item is locked beyond Rank 8… no.
That’s the current state, the argument holds only true for having already unlocked the progression to that state.
In the suggestion that rank situation is non-existing after all, hence you don’t need rank 8… you need favor and gold and that’s it.
By the time you reach the proclaimed level of needing loads of gold for an item you’ll likely have a good chunk of favor already since you don’t need to ‘waste’ it on worthless garbage to list over and over while the market is sated with them.
Because many people don’t think in the way of optimizing the favor income, favor comes by killing stuff, so for example rushing the dungeon while having a positive outcome on the side provides favor while having a useful time.
Monoliths for example would give vastly more favor, true… but don’t provide the possibly high-valued drops which the massive loot explosion Arbour can provide.
Sure, there still won’t be a ton of people doing it regularly… but it’s more likely then now since currently there is never even an inkling of incentive to even do it a single time outside of boss-drop uniques.
Necessity though to a degree.
Imagine this actually happens, the RMT guy actually puts the massive effort into making costly bots that can get banned easily to shift gold in such measures it warrants the 50-100 times increased need of favor and hence time compared to now, so 50-100 times more farming for 1 transaction.
That’s the first limiter.
Then you get the gold actually through some means, really really early. You can outfit your whole character!
Well, the chance that your gear is there in the first place is nigh non-existent.
Then if it should be there, great! You buy it, you outfit your character.
Well shit… you’re done with the game, the next upgrade is probably 250 play hours away now!
That’s where the vast majority of people quit
Hence slowing that down and enforcing 20-30 play-hours of active farming to actually acquire their stuff is more sensible, allows for another nice drop while you still need to outfit your character, closing that gap a lot already.
Makes a few more people actually stay rather then those which’ll leave with a goal in front of their nose that’s not ‘too far’ off.
Light arbor favors MG more just like many other places favor CoF more. Everything is just RnG, its up to the player to choices to choose how they play, what they play, where they play, etc. They both strong have it’s pros and cons but CoF is double dipping with the resources gold/runes/shards/etc. that kills the economy more than its already at.
RMT will always be in any game with trading. We have to deal with it but since it shouldn’t affect us as this isn’t really competitive, that shouldn’t be as huge of a problem. There are many games with RMT actually affecting many factors for P2W but grows strong because the game can offer something that overides that small P2W player base.
It is a ridiculous hard challenge for sure but I think living with them is better then trying to ruin something else tha tworks… Now it makes me wonder, would a old fashion trading mechanic help in such scenarios?
Sure, manual trading comes with a bunch of negative things but I feel like it helps with the RMT… They cannot make nearly as much transactions vs an automated system… It will also probably be a lot easier to pinpoint the big sellers, maybe sending spies. Just a thought.
As an engineer with a small background (and interest) in economics, but more importantly into systems overall, I see what issue you’re trying to fix, but my gut tells me you’re trying push in the opposite direction.
Also, the only game I know that needs an economy expert is EVE online, because that game has trading as a core gameplay feature. Blizzard, GGG, etc. don’t have someone around like that, because once the system is designed, that’s it, just a system.
As for your “levelling data”:
Depending on whether or not I have early access to a build enabler or good skill synergies, I can push significantly harder through normal monos than others. A strong build I generally rush stability with to complete the timeline. A slower build or one that needs more gear I may pick echo rewards over stability. And then I sometimes just level a character without having a pre-planned build and actively farm in normals for XP / gear for this thing I want to see work or not.
And that is all the same player. 2-3 people wouldn’t even cover that spread accurately.
That said, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard for EHG to track what level people complete normal monolith.
Who says I need Rank 7?
I could be looking for high-rolled Bee Idols, or some other rare Unique which requires very low Rank. Even a perfect T24 could be a big upgrade for someone and that’s Rank 1.
And the answer to that last question is literally 1 value in the game EHG could fiddle with.
Sure, more people playing (and selling) means more stable market.
But none of what you suggested actually makes people at the high end play more.
In fact, if they are the point Favor locks them in gear acquisition, then each possible upgrade costs them fixed amounts of time, while simply farming can get them to get lucky and boost their ‘progress’ to the next item forwards. If it’s a calculable 57h of gameplay until the next upgrade, then people quit, you say so yourself. But if there is alteast the chance to get the item, some people will still stay. More importantly, getting any lucky drop helps today, in your suggestion it doesn’t. I’m guaranteed to see 0 updates through MG until I farm for those 57h. So, why not CoF? (Or a vendor faction? Where prices are always perfectly stable!)
As for Arbor:
It actually provides an “expected value” in the current system.
Because there is a direct conversion of gold into X amount of loot (with variance).
So within reason, there is a limit as to how high prices can currently go. You already see plenty of folks run Arbor for items to resell, because as long as you have the keys and sell your loot for more than you invested, it’s a net profit to run it.
Your argumentation to the entire suggestion seems to come down to:
I want progress to have more consistent gear progress. That means (somewhat) fixed effort per upgrade, based on the value EHG initially places on it. I also want more reliable supply of high end items.
That’s exactly what a vendor faction would give you.
CoF is there for people who want their own stash and sort of let RNG decide what builds they can push forwards more than others.
MG is there for people who want to be able to convert RNG or their special farming trick into something useful for the build they play, regardless of what that is.
Vendors United would give you guaranteed items for a predetermined farmable currency. IT also doesn’t rely on other people finding the drops first.
Both current factions rely on RNG to progress. The intent behind your suggestion seems to be counter to those concepts.
Rank 1 grants more Runes & Shards (not gold)
Rank 2 grants more RoA, yes, but those have reduced LP chance, so you’re only really using those to try and get your build enabler, similar to what Rank 3 is for MG, imho.
Prophecies grant Shards & Runes for Favor, but you can’t really pick which Shards you get, so again, feels balanced vs the Bazaar search function.
The point was that if you get Favor from selling, you can RMT yourself favor directly without touching a single mob.
Currently, that is impossible, so Favor RMT is non-existent outside of the XP botting.
As for old school trade … You’ld just have RMT set up a item shop on their own sites and sell you items like that. It was a common thing to see in D2. D3 tried the “legalise & tax” route with RMAH, but that eventually had some legal issues for them. Not to mention they had people in poorer nations literally making it their job because the servers weren’t region-locked.
He’s slacking. I was rank 8 by 90s.
You’re doing it wrong. 
I’ve been min-maxing ~20 Alts for 3000 hours before 1.0 dropped. And with the gold I had amassed, I got more upgrades for my Alts in 1 week of MG than in 3000 of playing the game. It was ludicrous.
However, I would say that MG is not that useful unless you are very rich. I had 150 million when 1.0 dropped, so for me (playing legacy) MG was the best choice and always will be.
Nitpick: You don’t need any gold to level MG rep. Listing an item is all you need to do (or use the favour gambler if you prefer, you might get something awesome).
So when you have massed a LOT of favour, find an item in your bank that costs as much favour as possible to list, and then just list/unlist/list/unlist until your favour is all spent. Takes minutes.
I know that. I said you need plenty of gold to buy and a speed farming build for favour. They’re separate things.
Most pre 1.0 players usually have large amounts of gold. So for legacy, where they probably already also have a working high level speed farmer, you could probably rank up to 10 in a few days of grinding and then spend your millions on the high LP stuff.
Well your text that I quoted was in answer to whether it was possible to level rep that fast, so it absolutely reads as you were saying you needed plenty gold to earn rep fast, whether you meant that or not.
See what I mean?
No, what I meant is that you needed a farmer for the favour farming and you needed to already have a lot of gold in order to buy the high value stuff in the Bazaar after just a few days. Otherwise you’d also need to farm the gold, which would add a few more days to achieve the goal.