I would just caution there on self-selection bias. The community for D2 is going to be comprised mostly of folks not representative of the average players. Take us, for example - as people who are visiting a forum relatively often (or even at all) for an ARPG game which has had over a month since its last release or major cycle update, we’re in the extreme minority of players. Even just the collection of the average opinions of forumgoers at this point via polls, while much much better than nothing at all, is representative of the opinions of far less than 1% of all players, and a very specific niche of those players as well. Which is fine, they’re the ones that keep the community going and it’s not like I’m one of those blaming EHG for listening to them / us (what else are they supposed to do, exactly). But we and they do need to be aware of the self selection bias which can lead to a perception of an opinion or perspective being common when instead it’s just common within the niche we are in. True in all things of course.
Thanks for the correction on Kitava, as indicated I never even got close to that far so I took a stab. Not sure if they have an achievement then for campaign end, but regardless it’d be even less than that 23% for sure. Not that it’s anything unique to POE, the entire point of BG3 is to finish the campaign and experience the story, that’s the whole draw and it’s the game of the year unanimously for 2023. Yet only 21% of players actually finished the game.
I am well aware of it. I have interacted with plenty of very casual players. For example, when me and a friend were in a clan in PoE we had a 3rd mutual friend that would sometimes come to play. We already knew what would happen but during 2-3 days we would be boosting him and playing alongside him and then he would just disappear. Then he would come back 6 months or a year later and it would happen all over again.
So I have also had plenty of contact with very casual players over the years. Even plenty of people I didn’t know previously in D2, since I tend to help random people in ARPGs (in fact, that was how I got into the clan, by offering a campaign rush on a whim to a stranger that just wanted to trade ).
Also, it should be noted that most of the more polemic discussions in these forums are about things that have no impact on those players. Changing CoF/MG is something they won’t likely notice. Even if you were to remove them completely, they wouldn’t notice. These are endgame systems discussions, so they’re naturally targetted to us, the minority.
EDIT: This is not to say that I can’t be wrong. Obviously I’ve had varied interaction with many different players over the years, but I’m still prone to perception bias.
However, regarding LE, I feel like I’m more informed because I check the forums regularly, which I’ve never done for any other game, so I’m fairly aware of players’ stances/opinions. This includes a core group of supporters that mostly like the way things are now and don’t want drastic changes and also a core group of… I actually don’t know what to call them. They’re also supporters in their way (with a few exceptions that think it’s all terrible), but they want more drastic changes to some systems.
And I’m also fairly aware of the devs stances/opinions.
Ultimately, my position regarding all these things (factions, RNG, respecs, etc) is basically the same: whichever changes (or non-changes) EHG makes will appeal to some and piss off others, so it’s all about who they want playing their game.
I’m fine with any decision they make. Even if they decide to turn this game into something I don’t enjoy. I’ll be sad to leave, but I won’t blame the devs/players either way.
Look at games which actually allow to acquire BiS gear easily and then correlate it.
Obviously in LE, PoE or Torchlight Infinite those notions won’t be there… because they situation doesn’t happen commonly.
Take the examples from games like D3 or Chronicon, games which have very little progression towards BiS. The general reason why people quit there is ‘I don’t have anything left to do’… which is fine! It’s ‘played out’.
Absolutely! An hour… 5 hours… 10 hours… but it’s the exact same situation as people find in Minecraft creative mode. It just ends there… it has no mental ‘meaning’ which is valued enough to afford going on.
For a live-service game that’s not a state which the devs should easily allow, it’s detrimental for their long-term health. Which is the reason why we commonly don’t see it.
Actually it’s completely common and seen basically everywhere. It’s just not ‘on the face’ like in LE all too often and also better balanced.
The words ‘balancing’ and ‘EHG’ just go badly together.
Yep, so?
‘Casual players’ invest up to 40 hours a league into the game, not more. Obviously they can’t get to the finish line. Saying anything more then 40 hours for being ‘casual’ is vastly beyond being ‘casual’ already.
To balance the game for 40 hours of time in itself would mean that you can’t invest more then 200 of time into it before being ‘god-tier’ equipped as the scaling would simply lead to that direction, luck being taken out of the equation there.
And 200 hours? That’s very… very little.
Seeing as LE - as any diablo-clone game - needs to cater both to ‘single character players’ as well as the ‘variety players’ at the same time it would take the first segment of long-term core audience right out of the gate, and that is a guarantee to fail as a product on the modern market for longevity, you can’t afford to remove those highly invested players as otherwise you’ll only have the short-term engaged people left.
Those though word on ‘the fad of the day’ and hence are generally a risky endeavor to focus on.
Also those are less likely to be ‘whales’ which invest high amounts of money into the game, the more time invested the more likely that someone will want to collect ‘everything’ there is.
It’s been seen in the market since over a decade, both in PC games as well as mobile games (which have caused whole studies to crop up around the subject, leading to the turnover optimization of the mobile market and hence low quality).
So, as a developer you have either the choice to go into a mediocre return and high-investment product, providing quality over quantity… or you go into the quick people-catching low-quality but fast turnover route.
LE obviously is a quality product, meaning they also need to cater to the ‘stable’ part of their community. This always clashes with catering to ‘the broad audience’ and hence casuals.
To go on an even wider tangent there it’s actually the main reason as to why ‘AAA’ life-services games tend to fail majorly, as well as reviews for ‘AAA’ games have gotten so bad. Those companies focus on initial sales primarily, not caring for longer-term investment if it makes back their initial investment. Which is getting harder since even casual players are becoming more aware of that practice, recieving a low quality product after all.
So the answer is ‘no’, your argument doesn’t hold true, it clashes with the general knowledge of the gaming industry and has proven to be majorly wrong with few exceptions.
Nothing ‘then’ because after that you’re ‘done’. You don’t keep playing a game which doesn’t provide something to aim towards. Without goal there’s no investment and hence no usage.
So, it comes down to ‘personal goals’, which is what diablo-clones thrive with. See it like this, in ‘Minecraft’ you are very quickly safe from anything there is as even a mediocre player. Basic enemies provide no danger, food is never an issue, even beating all the possible content existing is not especially hard. It goes down to ‘personal goals’ once more. Building something nice. Making projects, creating farms for your items.
In diablo-clone games it’s the same. ‘That next upgrade’ is what keeps people going.
Otherwise what stop you from immediately putting your mouse/controller away the second you reach empowered monoliths? Nothing, because nothing ‘new’ content-wise is given, at least not until 1.1.
But people persist to upgrade their characters for personal goals. Hence if you remove the option to get more beyond ‘absolute BiS gear’ then there can’t be a personal goal anymore, hence no incentive.
We already have that.
Your gear functions perfectly and can deal with all content after a good 60 hours of time-investment, no matter the build.
You can kill everything up to at least 300 corruption, you can do all T4 dungeons and beat all Arena bosses. How more ‘complete’ do you want it to be?
Hence everything beyond is ‘aspirational’. ‘Aspirational’ things always come down to personal goals, it’s something which is expected not to be achieved by 100% of the players. Hence… some players won’t achieve it simply for the case that their personal skill is too low or their possible time-investment is too low.
Now you got 2 options.
Lower difficulty.
Lower time-investment.
Difficulty is simply explained. If something is piss-easy then people get bored out of their wits and anyone who has a bit of skill won’t play on since the game never provides any form of challenge.
Time-investment is also easily explained. As said above, if you got nothing to aspire towards then enjoyment for already achieved goals vanishes quickly and you leave as well.
So… pick your poison!
Ok, you try it 5 or 10 times. Now you know. What now?
Same, 5-10 times… and now?
That gets old very quickly. A ‘fresh’ experience is something your mind will crave before long. Sure, if it’s enjoyable you’ll come back, play an hour… and leave again.
Yes, we got 15 options for character specializations. This means a baseline of 15 builds and a few ways to adjust the builds, often with using similar items in different builds.
Now with your ‘ask’ the time-investment to provide a casual with a BiS build is 40 hours.
How many items for other builds which are BiS would need to drop during that? That reduces replay value.
Your second only needs 20 hours, your third 15, your fouth maybe only 10… and by the time you’re at your tenth? You’ll likely already have all of the gear right away.
So we’re talking a sub 1k hour investment for the whole game before it’s ‘played out’.
Not feasable.
Zod Rune.
All that needs to be said.
Years.
So no, factually wrong.
Yes, which is the equivalency of getting a 0 LP unique in LE.
Holds true for LE as well.
What is the difference to LE? I would enjoy an explanation hence.
A ‘non perfect’ version of a non-unique item is a 4 T5 item, that gets you through everything.
A ‘good’ drop is a T6 exalted with the perfect affixes, a ‘fantastic’ one is a T7, and ‘god-like’ is double-exalted with the right ones.
For uniques the drop is 0 LP, ‘decent’ is 1 LP, ‘quite good’ is 2 LP and beyond it gets to fantastic and once again god-like.
So… where does it not hold true currently?
There’s the difference between speaking from a personal perspective and a global perspective.
We as players obviously want BiS items. Duh!
Devs never want to give out BiS items so we play endlessly. Duh!
Both are not realistic. So… games walk along the line in-between. If a game gives out BiS too quickly it removes play-time, and to be fair… if you play a game you should generally enjoy it. So the ‘hunt’ for gear is one aspect of fun. Remove it and you remove that fun.
Never achieving it is also a problem as obviously… if a goal is not possible then it lacks to be a proper goal.
Now it comes down to personal mental management (which 95% of people utterly lack). ‘How much time am I willing to invest into a game?’ and hence ‘Will I be able to achieve my goal in it during that?’. If the answer is ‘no’ then why the actual fuck are you here? Go and pick a game which provides exactly that! In the diablo-clone sub-genre we have a wide variety of games providing a large variety of goalposts. Why chose one which doesn’t align with yours?
If the answer is ‘yes’ but it is vastly below your time investment you’re willing to do? Well… go and enjoy the game until you reach the end-point. Then get the hell out instead of complaining for it to become pushed further back for your own sake. You’ve had your fun, what more do you want?
And then the optimum which barely never happens. A simple ‘yes’. Perfect! Welcome to your dream-game of the genre.
So, you’re at the ‘no’ status. So why are you here? There’s games for you out there. I can recommend Torchlight Infinite, Chronicon, D3, D4… wait, the last one… scratch that one, it’s shit even despite that for different reasons. But the others… take em!
Yes, and they’re a great thing to use if you know how to handle statistics.
To be fair, 80% of layers don’t invest more then 5 hours into a game. So… should we make games solely for those 80%?
Would be senseless, don’t you agree?
Should we only make games for the majority?
What is the denominator for deciding how long people play a game?
Is it too hard? Is it too complex? Is it too easy? Is it too simplistic?
Hence why all that garbage can be thrown overboard. You don’t decide by those, you take them as measurement points for the whole thing. Hence… first you pick a target audience.
You check if games exist for your target audience, which people are your target audience and then make the game accordingly.
We got a great game for ‘endless players’ which is called ‘Path of Exile’, high complexity, long investments up to thousands of hours… well, wanna compete with that?
Nah, forget it.
We also got the same genre with low investment and simplistic mechanics. D3. Wanna compete with that? Would also be dumb.
So what do you do?
Oh? there’s not really something in-between?
Heck yeah! Let’s choose that!
And now lets adjust everything to take less long then PoE but longer then D3, make complexity less daunting then PoE, QoL higher then PoE but everything more complex then D3.
Nice! We got a game, let’s call it ‘Last Epoch’ and send it out!
Oh shit… people gobble it up because we know what the friggin target audience is actually!
That’s what we have here, welcome to LE. It’s not supposed to be PoE and it’s not supposed to be D3, it’s the middle-ground which hasn’t been seen on the market.
D2 is a very highly aged (30+) community which a large portion plays for Nostalgia’s sake, core-audience leftover from the time before.
Much like there’s still a surprisingly vast community with ‘Supreme Commander’ nowadays despite being over 10 years old.
The game was good, hence core-players stayed. You can re-play them nigh endlessly and hence people stay.
Remove the replay-value and you won’t see that. Show me the grand community around ‘Zelda: A Link to the Past’ which was a masterpiece for the time. Outside of Randomizers and speedrunners there is no community. It’s swiftly ‘played out’ and hence over, replay value is purely nostalgia and hence enjoyment… but not in the grand scheme of things.
So any game that can be ‘played out’ is not something which exists beyond 1-2 years, it’s just not a thing.
In 20 years games like D2, PoE, LE, Minecraft, Supreme Commander, CS 1.6 and so on will still be there and played likely… but games like ‘Chronicon’, ‘Ori and the Blind Forest’, ‘Zelda: A Link to the Past’ and so on will be a side-note. Fantastic games… you’ll even enjoy someone who’s never picked it up play it, but you personally won’t re-play it 10 times since there’s no ‘value’ in that. The story is told. Everything available is 100% reached with no option for more outside of speedrunning and modding.
Yes, because those are the ‘invested’ people.
Would you enjoy tourists deciding how your village/city is changed? After all they are there once, for a day… so why not? We should take their points into consideration! Sure, you’ll spend there 1000 times as much… but why should you have more say hence?
Same with games. Long-term players have and always should have more say in the matter of the game. Never ever piss off your core audience or your game fails and the franchise itself also fails.
Internal mentions were about 10% of players which play more then 2 hours have beaten Kitava, hence the campaign.
I don’t know if it holds true, but if we go by that all development focus should go into the campaign. Nonetheless we see development focus going towards more and broader end-game aspects, basically pleasing between 1-5% of players on how it’s changed from league to league.
Why?
Because they’re the core audience. The lifeblood of the game.
The other 95%? Needed to come, take a look, spend some money and then leave again as the majority does. If you try to cater to them the game wouldn’t be the same game and likely just die off.
Agreed, 100%
It hasn’t been done to date.
It’s a new thing only visible in LE.
It sucks.
It needs to go.
Either make it a permanent thing or adjust to allow non-punishing changes. Simple as that.
Problem here is switching needs a different penalty and to not ruin a players equipped gear progression
I do not agree with making faction choice permanent as i said before this gate keeps players that prefer to push as far as they can getting there own loot then switch to trade to finish off there build/s
The penalty already does this after while in late end game
Nobody is gatekeeping you, that isn’t what gatekeeping means, and it doesn’t make your complaint stronger to keep using that term incorrectly as an emotional appeal. Gatekeeping is not a synonym for “Anything that keeps me from getting what I want”.
What you’re doing is called a Motte and Bailey - what you want is not to push as far as you can without trade and then start trading. It is dishonest of you to keep claiming that’s what you want, because you already have it. Nothing is stopping you from joining MG and not using it until you’re ready to finish off your build.
What you actually want is just to abuse all the drop rate benefits of CoF to gear up faster while you build the wealth you need to use MG to get your super endgame gear. You aren’t being gatekept, you just want all the bonuses and none of the drawbacks. That isn’t a valid request. Sorry.
Yes, this is totally true, sadly. Although, in their defense, they’re a new studio and are only now learning how hard it is to balance a complex chaotic system like an RPG. Also in their defense, this is exactly the same thing that happened with PoE.
I expect that over time they’ll get the hang of it and manage to balance better, also like GGG did.
This is not to excuse them. The game being totally unbalanced on so many things right now is definitely their responsibility and they should do better.
It’s just to say that, at least for me, they do get a pass (for some time), especially when they’ve done so many things right (or right-ish), especially communication and transparency to the community.
To me, this has an easy solution:
-The campaign should be made with casuals in mind. So that the casuals that only play 5h actually play 10-20h. They should get an incentive to keep playing the campaign rather than give up halfway through.
-Endgame should be made with “hardcore” players in mind. I put hardcore in quotes because it doesn’t have to be the type of player PoE or D2 caters to. It can be more casual (hopefully never too close to D3, but that is a valid option as well). Anyway, the endgame is clearly balanced towards the minority that sticks around cycle after cycle.
My point was that you can’t have a go at someone for making a claim without any accompanying statistics then … make a claim without any accompanying statistics. We have a word for that.
It’s a fair criticism to be sure. My objection wasn’t that the argument was made without statistics, but rather that to my knowledge no statistics support the position. I see it argued all the time (see Kulze) but no one has ever shown me a data point supporting its validity.
@Kulze, you have a lot of text there espousing your opinion, which there’s nothing wrong with that. But I’m not going to respond to every point you made, it’d take too long. Most of what you write is just your opinion, and while you refer to studies and talk of live service games;
a) Most of the studying you are talking about are referring to how to make a better skinner box, which isn’t a Desirable trait in a game even if it’s effective
b) This isn’t a live service game with a monthly fee associated with it. Even if they could milk folks for every hour possible (which is what you seem to be advocating) there’s no benefit to doing so.
Now BotD was obviously the wrong example to say the least, it’s been a while and I didn’t look up the runewords first. Silence would be a better example. BotD I’ve crafted it, and while it didn’t take years, it certainly took months. Lots of countess runs to say the least.
Which it’s fine if there’s some items like that, which are extremely rare and difficult to come by. I’m not saying LP4 items should be common or anything like that. But there’s a Huge difference between ‘there are items which are not available easily’ and ‘the systems are designed to prevent you from obtaining the gear you are seeking since we fear the moment you have it you’ll quit’, which is what folks seem to be advocating for and which I oppose.
LP0 Uniques have been repeatedly compared to non-optimal versions of BiS items, but that isn’t a fair comparison. After all, non-optimal versions of BiS items typically include all of their affixes, just not perfect versions of them. A Runeword with a suboptimal roll is akin to a LP4 Unique with poor inherents more than it’s equivalent to a LP0 Unique.
And that’s exactly the issue - a Harbinger of Stars is interesting, a “build around” item potentially. But no matter how interesting it may be, it’s not just possible but likely that a 100%+ Increased Damage / Crit Avoidance / Resist belt is just objectively better than the LP0 version, and depending on the gear you may find yourself unable to Afford to use them. My Sorc at one point had 6 slots filled with uniques, they’re admittedly nice for levelling. Currently he just has one, Rares outclassed them all, and we’re not even talking about Exalteds with Sealed Affixes.
To be clear about what I would want to see to significantly lower the time investment to even get something Close to BIS gear for a given build (which is indeed what I would propose), I would want to see Legendaries able to be smashed to create some kind of “legendary essence” which can then be used when crafting future legendaries to select the affixes imbued rather than having them randomly selected. This allows a LP2 Unique to be the thing you actually want it to be after 2 or 3 attempts (depending on how you structure it) and means you know you’re making progress towards it, rather than someone taking on average 6 attempts per piece of gear, potentially much more, without any actual progress getting made in the interim.
Even while crafting the BotD I knew I was getting progress; it wasn’t just “kill Mephisto a million times and hope for the best”, I was constantly cubing up Ums and Mals and Ists dropped into higher runes with a guarantee I’d get there eventually.
And as far as the rest of it, if I’ve crafted even halfway BIS gear (LP2 Uniques or Sealed Affix Exalteds, depending on the slot) and am moving on, which is an entirely valid choice, after less than 100 hours? You say there’s only roughly 15 builds. But Druid alone, you’ve got pure Werebear, pure Spriggan, pure Swarmblade, Werebear / Human, Werebear / Spriggan, Werebear / Swarmblade, etc. etc. etc. And a “standard” Werebear / Spriggan is entirely different from one using Roots of Vithrasil and Silvafrond, where they’re self-rooted in Spriggan form and act like a turret, teleporting to vines or changing back into Werebear to move. And a pure Werebear going physical is entirely different from one going Lightning.
There are probably 15 interesting builds to try for Druid alone. Maybe more. Across all 15 masteries, there are hundreds. And sure, they’ll often use overlapping items. But because they have different stat priorities and needs, a LP2 Silvafrond geared up for that turret Werebear / Spriggan is likely to have totally different affixes attached than a LP2 Silvafrond for a highly mobile cold maelstrom stacking Spriggan / Swarmblade.
So I pretty wildly disagree with the idea that if someone can get the items to get even a LP2 imperfect inherents imperfect affix rolls version of the BIS gear for their build in less than 100 hours they would “play out” every build in the game in under 1000 hours.
And even if that were true, where’s the chase? For folks who are serious about their build, and want it to be perfect, we’re not discussing increasing the drop rate of LP4s here. Getting a perfect inherent LP4, how many hours will that take? Times the number of gear slots, and you’re telling me that because someone can explore a build “as it’s meant to be” in a relatively short time, the true gearhead like you who is only playing for the next upgrade won’t have a better version of that gear to pursue? I don’t buy it.
And finally, let me say this - the game doesn’t make money off folks playing 10,000 hours. It makes money off of sales (mostly to casuals as we both agree), including sales of additional content; expansions, cosmetics, you name it. The ideal for a game like this is that when players leave, they do so with a good taste in their mouth, so that when they release something else folks can buy, they go back for more.
Which is more likely to leave a positive taste in someone’s mouth?
The player who got their version of BIS items for a build, didn’t feel like making a different character, didn’t feel like grinding for “perfection”, and didn’t feel like doing boss runs, arena runs, or other endgame content anymore, where the game is “played out”?
The player who “bricked” their 7th LP2 unique in a row for a single build and rage quit, being unable to obtain the items they felt they needed for their build?
Folks feeling like they are ‘done’ with a game is fine. They’ll come back when there’s more to do. Folks hating the game for, in their eyes, being obnoxiously punishing to obtain the desired character state is less fine. I can probably find 100 threads complaining of things to the effect of the latter in this game. No one is asking for perfect things to be common or for there to be no “chase” items, at least that I’ve seen. But many folks are asking for it to be easier, and yes, have a lower time investment (and just as importantly a more consistent one) to be able to actually Use the build they want to use, and have it not feel like it’s totally gimped because the items they’re using are worse than the generic exalteds they smashed while trying to get the gear they were after.
Runewords don’t really equate to uniques in LE. The only thing that is similar is PoE. A 0LP unique is the same as a regular max-link unique in PoE. A 4LP unique is the same as a max-link/double corrupt/max quality/enchanted unique. And I’m not even talking about perfect rolls.
In either of those cases, you can expect to see a handful in each cycle. Although, to be fair, it’s actually easier to get a 4LP BiS in LE. You just need the 4LP and the exalt and you are guaranteed to get the desired outcome. In PoE you need to hit max quality, then hit the proper enchant, then hit the proper double corrupt.
D2 doesn’t really equate because you don’t have improved versions of the same thing. In fact, until LE came up with the legendary system, PoE was the only ARPG (that I’m aware of) that did this.
As clearly demonstrated by D3, both will leave a negative impression on different types of players.
As I said before, if you lower the difficulty for getting BiS gear, the ones that are happy with the grind will leave. If you maintain the difficulty, the rage quitters will leave.
Wherever you draw the difficulty line in getting gear, players will leave. So it’s up to EHG to decide which players they want to stay.
Yes, and nonetheless it’s the ‘101’ of marketing. And without that all you do is throw stones into the dark and hope it hits something to let you know there’s even something there.
LE was made by avid diablo-clone players for avid diablo-clone players. They weren’t happy with the games out and hence made their own version of it.
It’s not hard to provide a proper product to a specific target audience when you’re the dev and also the same target audience at the same time. Don’t need much research there to know what you want after all… you’re part of the group.
Monetization model is nothing important for the whole topic.
So yes, LE stays afloat through shelf-price + upcoming microtransactions instead of monthly fees.
It’s still a live-service game, no matter how much it’s said otherwise.
Hence to function it needs to work inside the confines of a live-action game. Try to treat it as a single-player game or a co-op game and you’re out of business in a year, simple as that.
Why? Servers cost money. Personal to support the hardware costs money. Coding needs personal and network code is a ‘fucking bitch’ to say it mildly and hence needs a lot of money.
So overall… a live-service game costs a shit-ton more money then a equivalent Single-Player Game does. No way around it.
So, to take that into perspective.
The first argument is not true. Just because runewords work that way doesn’t mean that everything needs to be a direct copy.
A ‘non-optimal’ BiS offers less power then a ‘optimal BiS’ item. The base stays the same. Hence if you drop the best baseline item in D2, all affixes there the highest rolls, the sockets at 6, ethereal even to increase the possible roll-range… and then you slap random runes without rhyme and reason inside it’s garbage.
That’s the equivalency of LP, your base item is great but you didn’t get the best out of it.
The equivalency of a ‘bad roll’ for a runeword is when you get a perfect item and the LP chance picks one of the less desirable affixes.
That’s a proper equivalency.
So no, it functions similar, your base item is better then before in 100% of the cases unless you use a sub-optimal exalted item.
Yes, that’s the power disparity between high and low outcomes simply.
A ‘decent’ item with a good runeword that has fantastic rolls is still utterly inferior to a great base item with mediocre or bad rolls.
So it’s similar to LP once more. Every factor plays into it, the base (unique item) provides the majority of the power level. The LP provides the potential and the exalted item provides the possible rolls. You have a lot more agency over that system then D2’s runeword system has actually since you have full control over each of those aspects.
Got a 4 LP item? Good! Now onward to a ridiculous exalted item! The outcome is 100% guaranteed, no low-roll.
3 LP? A fantastic outcome guaranteed! Far stronger then any item in the game could otherwise ever be.
2 LP? Fantastic top-tier item even with sub-optimal rolls.
1 LP? You should get the right roll onto it to make it able to content with anything above.
That’s the variance there.
The +1 Meteor alone is an upside that a generic affix usually has a hard time to make up for.
Also a 1 LP version is very easy to get (common unique), a 2 LP version also very easy… hence ‘high value’ starts at a 3 LP version, since it’s common.
So yes, that item is fantastic in the current state for a meteor build.
I’ll gladly take it over any perfected exalted item by the time it has 2 LP, and a perfected exalted item? That’s hard to get, you’ll see it much much later. Base farming simply like in D2.
So a fairly bad example.
Yes, common uniques without LP are less viable then a rare (not even exalted) well rolled item.
A 2 LP version of the same item will be likely to provide more upsides - and is fairly common - when you try to slap even a sub-optimal affix collection on that as long as 2 ‘useful’ ones for your build happen to land on it. For chest/helmet at least 1 rare affix at T5 in the end. Which is fairly easy to achieve.
And that’s not even talking about BiS uniques which outperform them by miles with 1 LP often.
Only possible with a ‘fail state’ for it, unless you want the LP-rate to drop significantly. Progression speed already is extreme in comparison to competition. That would solely make it faster.
Don’t get me wrong, any sort of RNG system in my eyes should’ve a deterministic slow-paced system at the side to make sure to cut off extreme cases of ‘unlucky’ at the cost of less overall progression rate.
You just have to take that into consideration and be ‘fine’ with it first, there is no argument to be made to create something easing things ‘on top’ of already existing things when they’re already baseline too quick to achieve.
The issue is the RNG, take the RNG out to a degree for a hit in overall speed and it becomes fine.
15 specs, not builds. Currently the only hindrance for having 1 spec for all builds are blessings. Blessing will be itemized in the future though and hence fall away.
This way you can store all gear for all possible builds on 1 character and respec with miniscule time-loss (10 minutes roughly) to achieve the build as far as you have ever taken it.
That’s not ‘BiS’ on how you talked about though.
If 2 LP items aren’t the issue (which is absolutely an achievable goal, even for boss-drops) then what’s the issue actually existing?
Is the cut-off line 2 LP rare boss uniques with the perfect affixes? Below? Above?
For now I imagined it to be above as a ‘BiS’, which is a notion that’s nonsensical because it inherently is built in that range to enforce high time investment.
If it’s below… then it’s also nonsensical since we have that already, but the direction can change according to circumstances.
I know, not the perfect things, very RNG heavy… but a given with the current amount of content as it doesn’t allow for vastly more complexity. For that we would need more in-game content available and more crafting options, hence specialized bases which are rare, extra options to improve exalted items. Alternate bases like the influences in PoE, mechanics for changing unique items into alternate versions with different stats (to allow a higher variety of builds) or anything of the sorts.
We don’t have that… yet. If we have that it becomes a thing, until then not though.
Common unique? Rare unique? Boss rare unique?
LP 4 is fairly decent to get, every 100 hours of play-time in CoF you’ll likely see one at higher corruptions, often even less.
The exalted for it? A bit harder, would say 250 hours for a fantastic fitting one with the right outcomes, solely singular T7 with all the right affixes, not chest/helmet slot.
A rare unique? LP 3 is the limit there usually in that time.
rare boss unique? LP 2 in that time, LP 3 is a ‘wow’ item, hopefully addressed with CoF adjustments in 1.1 as boss-drops seem to be an oversight.
Given the numbers? Around 10000 hours for a single character. Which is a high number. Lower then in PoE definitely (as there’s BiS items which nobody managed to even craft yet because of the sheer cost of them).
I’m talking about a 4 LP item with a 4 LP exalted disregarding rolls as a large portion of uniques have a low roll range.
The high roll-range ones are equivalent to a perfect ‘ventor’s gamble’ in PoE, good luck! Nobody got one to date.
Also take into consideration how many people already have such an item in their storage, now.
We just don’t see them as we have no ‘item copy’ function like the Mirror of Kalandra in PoE. I guarantee though that there’s a few ‘god-tier’ items out for nigh every single unique already.
It does, microtransactions.
It’s not implemented yet.
It’s coming.
They announced it.
It’s the basis of a live-service game after initial shelf-price sales to keep the business even running.
So yes, they do. The longer someone invests time into a product the more likely they are to also invest money. It’s a direct correlation which is upheld in every business sector.
As you named it ‘cosmetics’… which are not ‘content’ but ‘vanity’.
And people love ‘vanity’.
1 leaves a better taste in you as a singular individual. You can talk about this ‘great game’ that was out for a year before closing shop to everyone in 5 years.
2 for the option to alleviate those issues with adjustments (as mentioned above) in the future while people can actually get into the game, play it and enjoy the core-style of it because ‘there’s still something to do left’.
So pick your choice, those are the presented ones from your side.
If it still exists, sure.
How to make sure it exists though if revenue decreases because retention-time is low which directly corelates with revenue?
You can also find a ridiculously huge threat complaining about the lack of gender-choice in this same forum, which has had more traction then any of those mentioned topics.
So by that notion does that mean it would make more sense to drop everything the devs do and focus on that first and foremost?
Is it something helping the longevity of the game or something which just eases miniscule aspects which have nothing to do with the gameplay itself?
Are those things more important?
I would say if we go by ‘how many people have mentioned it’ then the direction of game development will go utterly awry.
Mechanics are the alpha and the omega of a mechanical game like LE. Neither are graphics, nor vanity, nor story, nor… well… anything else besides the pure mechanical aspects first and foremost.
So, mechanical aspects are amount of content, balancing, progression design. Your topic is the third.
Content is currently priority 1, balancing priority 2 and progression design priority 3 since it ‘functions’ with hiccups but at least functions.
So yes, as mentioned… it needs to be looked over but not at the cost of other things important. As mentioned, alleviating RNG issues is not a problem, actually good. But not the main reason for longevity of the product in the current state.
So back to the factions… that is a major longevity issue.
I have a big problem with making it a permanent thing as the 24h peak today was 4,411 players from wich I would guess at least 3/4 are COF!
MG is player count dependent so mid to high rarity items just aren’t on the market anymore, or only the ones way overpriced remain.
Other than this, even selling low rarity items(like T7s) is really slow or they just don’t sell at all because the players who would buy them are the ones excited to make new characters and their numbers are even lower.
Being MG right now is almost like being factionless
Now, allowing faction swapping I think would make most players switch to COF in these conditions.
Idk if all players being in the same faction is a good thing, that’s why I proposed instead to give all player acces to both(after they grind the ranks separately) through:
making items dropped as COF, but NOT affected by prophecies and/or rank benefits,tradeable
commune favor well from wich you can choose to spend it on either faction in any share you want (100/0, 30/70, 55/45 etc)
If this really is deemed as “double dipping” (even though everything is still based on favor/time investment and the loot dropped has nothing to do with the faction benefits) or unacceptable for purists who want everybody to be locked from trading (even though the people that would also use MG would spend favor for it and have less remaining for prophecies), then I guess all players being able to transfer to COF after the middle point of a cycle is okay.
Masteries were brought up as an example of a permanent choice, but getting another level 100 with all passive points, idol slots and higher blessings takes 15-25 hours. A far cry from the 500+ hours put into my character’s gear so it’s not a punishment on the same scale.
Welp, if it doesn’t get changed, Im gonna get the gold blessing and spend the gold dropped from mobs in Lightless Arbor
But for that to take into consideration we need to know the reasons it happens.
I would say there’s 3 major points.
There’s not enough content in the game, you’re simply ‘done’ with what’s provided fairly quickly, even a casual can easily finish everything LE has to offer in a month… but they’re supposed to be able to stay 3 months with their casual time-investment. That’s 2/3rd too low.
Then we have the accumulated MG problems. People quitting out early of it because they can’t access the gear they need. Quitting the game as mentioned above and also simply quitting the faction since their turnover for items is becoming less and less.
And last but not least… with the lowering numbers of people using MG the influx of new high-end gear can’t stay up to achieve a market equilibrium of some kind where value and supply are close to the exact point they actually are, keeping a disparity there. Which devolves the whole system back to basically playing solo as you mentioned.
That’s important for the suggestions after all:
No, too many players in CoF would be the death of the market simply. All in MG wouldn’t be an issue, but that doesn’t happen anyway.
If you combine the system the whole thing tips over and becomes simply ‘more easy’ which isn’t good. Proper distinctions need to be there. The specific downsides (-30% loot compared to 0.9 for MG, no trading for CoF) are there specifically so to make their respective upsides even function.
So that’s simply not a viable voice without severe changes overall.
Hence 1) is a double-dipping mechanic which denies the baseline thought-process of the downsides.
And 2) Makes the distinctions between the factions useless. Outside of a 1-time investment you get the benefits of both at the same time to a degree. That’s once again… double-dipping.
As mentioned often double-dipping isn’t allowed to happen in any manner period. So the moment it happens it needs to be adjusted until the system doesn’t allow that anymore. In the case of your solution we’re talking about a further reduction of loot by 40-60% for everyone to keep the game functioning.
And yes, I wrote that number in mind with your fairly benign bits of suggestions in mind, we would see even higher reductions if merging them in more aspects would be suggested.
Yes, it is. You don’t get a downside from CoF anymore, hence you double-tip into the sole meaningful benefit of MG, which is ‘items can be traded’, hence why items dropped while in CoF are never able to be traded. Gold is the limiting factor for buying power, not favor, if you can create large amounts of gold in CoF then it gets far more benefits then MG does. Which is bad.
Which also goes to the favor aspect. If you’re in MG you suddenly can store up favor for prophecies… which plainly spoken would be dumb. Why would anyone ever be in MG with more then a single character or a fully decked out character?
When I can use your second argument I would immediately leave only a single character in MG, farm up solely through CoF and then regularly sell surplus through MG. This would give me assets to then buy a full outfit for a new character without any effort, basically skipping the whole progression for free of a full-scaled finished build without putting extra effort in compared to now. The cost for listing the high-value items is basically non-existent.
That’s fairly massive.
100 takes around 40 hours of play-time.
Then we’re talking about mediocre end-game gear for quite a large portion of builds.
And that takes into consideration making full usage of either CoF or MG.
In your suggestions you put in those 40 hours and after 20 more while you upgrade as normal you get a free 30-40 hours of effort in gear presented for free (since you would use CoF and that scales in usability with higher corruption, more fitting prophecies.)
That’s a net bonus, it has nothing to do with adjustments and reworking, it’s just ‘giving us more then we have now’ and that’s already beyond senseless with the progression rate in LE through low amounts of content.
Which is why I’m generally pushing for the reworks that have meaning. Making MG useful at any stage of the game, not broken like early on and non-functional right after. Also making CoF’s small pit-falls sorted out.
Then it functions.
Currently it does not for many reasons, mostly MG reasons.
I don’t know why you’re bothering to lie when all I have to do is quote your own words back to you to disprove it.
You want to be able to run CoF and keep the gear you gained - which you gained through the advantages of CoF - when you switch to MG to finish off your character. All you actually want is to be able to enjoy the benefits of both factions without having to suffer any of the drawbacks. You literally said so yourself.
You can’t benefit from both benefits at the same time which is the whole point.
Choosing the right play-style you enjoy at any time on the other hand is a part of player agency.
Also the basis of the argument only takes into consideration the current utterly broken state without a singular though on fixing the existing issues at which the faction-switching itself would offer no down- or upsides but be a simple choice of play-style.
Agreed, but the solution to this doesn’t have to be “this can’t be done because of these reasons”.
It can also be “these things would also have to be done togheter so that there is no abusable mechanics” like : adjusting favor cost per listed item*(so that you actually get less prophecies)*, using favor as the main MG currency (so that you can’t farm gold in COF),
My point was that it can be way easier to max all non gear related progression on a new character, after you have already made one because of twink items and player experince , while gear can take up to hundreds of hours to make again.
Also how about the “punishing” aspect of faction changing would be limiting it thourgh time like you could swap factions only 7 days after your last swap, instead of the current ones(unequipable gear etc…)
Absolutely!
But as mentioned, combining them means adjusting the prices vastly.
This means your common prophecy will be in the hallmark of 10k+ rather then the current prices.
Baseline drop-rate of items would need to be reduced nonetheless, and to a vast degree.
I think you don’t quite understand the sheer power of a combination of both systems in such a way.
That’s one option definitely, but one I wouldn’t enjoy to see at all.
It treats players differently depending on real-life time after all. People which play little have basically free choice to switch around. People who play a ton will have to wait.
Solutions which solely rely on in-game situations are what I would personally heavily prefer.
Hence once more, the whole situation solves itself by removing Gold as the currency used in MG + scaling favor costs for increasing prices.
No gold-usage means no double-dipping, scaling favor costs means you need to invest the relevant amount of time into the faction itself to profit from it.
I’ve actually put the MG+CoF discussion into a overview in a mega-post here:
It has the whole list of issues people mentioned - and are reasonable - in it + one example-solution which I’ve picked for the reason of it being the one upholding ‘free market values’ the most. Hence making sure demand/supply is not affected which causes prices to reach a natural equilibrium over a short amount of time.
).