I wanted to talk about the whole Favor, Reputation and Rank system that people find frustrating, although I completely understand that with this season being relatively new it’s hard to gauge exactly how an economy will shape up and any modifications to it will require a lot of thinking/testing and time from the devs. So this is not a “next patch” suggestion. Next patch maybe they help us a bit with the interface.
My suggestion involves adding a new system/number into the mix that we can call “influence”, while keeping Favor and Reputation in parallel. This “influence” can be represented as a thermometer that gets filled as you do certain activities, with a maximum cap. And drained/spent as you buy items.
That maximum cap can replace the current Rank Requirement for buying completely. Instead of saying “Rank 3: Buy Specific Unique items”, with the Influence system it could say “Rank 3: Influence Cap raised to 1000”
Let’s say you start with 200 influence cap at Rank 1. A rare item will require (and spend) exactly 200 influence, meaning that you can only buy 1 before you have to go out and earn more influence again. Uniques will cost 1000 influence and therefore, you can’t even buy them at rank 1, because your cap isn’t high enough (it doesn’t fit in that thermometer). So the initial idea of the devs is somewhat preserved.
When you get at the appropriate Rank, let’s say you have 1000 influence. Well now you can buy Just One Unique, or 5 Rares (given my example with Rares being 200).
Then you’re influence gets spent and you have to farm more.
- The simplest way to do this is having it tied with how you get Favor, obviously by going out and playing the game you’ll get Favor, Reputation and Influence.
- But maybe we can even get some quests that an NPC could give us, similar to how the CoF Prophecies feel like quests you can pick because you were planning to do that content anyway.
How is this different than gating Uniques/Exalts/etc. behind a Rank if you will be gated behind a max influence cap?
Well because you can make it so that the equivalent of a Rank in the current system will be reached a bit faster in this new system (when it comes to time invested to get there), with the only caveat being that you can’t buy 5 items in one go to fully gear your character when you reach that stage.
Because this was one of the problems → People reach Rank 3 and buy 3-4 Uniques in one go and don’t get that great ARPG feel of switching them up one by one and actually doing content in between each switch. This way, they buy 1 and go out to farm some more influence so they can go back and buy the 2nd Unique they need.
And by the time you play the game, farm more influence, buy more items and repeat this one by one, you will also be earning Favor and Rep. which will get you closer to the next Rank that will boost your cap and offer you upgrades (it’s Rank 8 in the current system). So between the current Rank 3 and Rank 8 you will be doing this rotation and playing with the system.
What do you think?
Obviously these were just random rough numbers as examples. Rigorous testing needed, but I think it solves a lot of problems while giving MG players a more organic feeling of growth and when you finally get to a Rank that unlocks more stuff it will be like mom telling you you can have a toy, but just one for now. You have to make choices if that unique is worth more for you now than 2 Rares + an Idol or however the numbers will be shaping out.
(also posted this on Reddit)