First up, I play CoF and am very unlikely to change anytime soon. But from what I hear and see from other people:
It seems the goal with ranking of the two guilds is to make it in a similar pace, so that is stays ‘fair’. The thing is: As a CoF player, I benefit more or less directly, even at low ranks, and it just gets better. I can just play normally, buy a prophecy from time to time, and that’s it, nothing annoying.
In the merchant’s guild, you basically only benefit at lot at really high ranks, and they take way too long time to achieve. There needs to be a players economy, and then the prices of items should gatekeep the really good items, not the rank grind. Grinding rank by selling items, that you otherwise would not care to sell at all also doesn’t really serve a purpose, and is just annoying.
As a CoF player, I would not mind at all if you make things more enjoyable for MG players, without improving anything on CoF (since that is already good). So please don’t think too much about fairness, just make it an enjoyable experience for all players. It think that should be changed rather soon, otherwise people get too frustrated with MG, loose interest, and then the game might never develop a healthy economy. I understand it takes a bit, and I can understand that this feature didn’t come out perfectly at launch, but now is the time to adjust it.
It think that should be changed rather soon, otherwise people get too frustrated with MG, loose interest, and then the game might never develop a healthy economy. I understand it takes a bit, and I can understand that this feature didn’t come out perfectly at launch, but now is the time to adjust it.
I can confirm that. At lvl 94 and not even able to buy all kind of exalted items from the bazaar. The search and filter functions lack essential features. The bazaar goes down too often, rendering the faction useless. And these are just a few of the many problems in my opinion.
Without the option to trade with other players, I wouldn’t have bought the game at all. But sadly, as it is now, there’s not much to enjoy about this part of the game.
Very Early Game Rank 1 - This spiked my characters power even before I finished the campaign. I was also able to buy items specifically to get the rare shards I wanted and essentially was way overgeared for monoliths.
Early Game Rank 4 - I overkilled the requirements for empowered monoliths long before I unlocked them due to how powerful being able to target buy 0 LP uniques for my build and being able to complete WEEKS or MONTHS of Idol progress in mere MINUTES.
Mid Game - I was able to sell anything because I only need rank 1 to sell ANYTHING. So selling crafted items or selling T7 exalted affixes didn’t matter.
Late Game Rank 5-6 - I was able to get an optimal exalted weapon. At rank 6 I was able to slam a 3 affix legendary weapon for cheap (like 2-3 mill).
Very Late Game Rank 7 - I was able to complete my non-unique slots with the most optimal exalted pieces I could craft.
Rank 8 The End - The MG rank grind basically ends at Rank 8 because you can just make your own legendaries. You need to basically be Level 98 before you’ve amassed the Reputation to get this.
Other very important things to understand
Yes, the drop rates aren’t anywhere near CoF. But as CoF you are farming for your build and the build of your alts or friends. As MG you are farming for the build of hundreds of thousands of players at the same time, thus almost any item that drops can be useful.
Almost all the good items are in Rank 1-4 for MG, so this idea of Rank 8 or nothing is absurd on its face. You can gear out to body Empowered Monoliths comfortably by the time you hit rank 4.
The best items are in rank 5-8 for MG, but you underestimate what this even means. Even with all the farming augments from CoF rank 10, the MG players will be MONTHS ahead of the CoF player based on the fact that hundreds of thousands of players are farming the game versus one enhanced player farming the game.
The biggest roadblock to MG is understanding how MG works. The stuff I listed just here scratches the surface, its even more insane when you get into the methods of selling that make things work.
The second biggest roadblock to MG is obtaining favor and very carefully spending it as it is precious. People keep throwing away their favor listing things for 0 gold without realizing they need to spend their favor on buying and selling things that progress them.
It would be nice for Merchants to have more “Merchant” related things while they are farming. Such as ways to improve gold farms with contracts (instead of prophecies) and having an exchange to trade gold for favor with other players. I have a suggestion thread on that actually. Although I believe lenses and boosting prophecies should be a CoF exclusive thing since MG “boosts their contracts” by simply using the auction house.
