MG and CoF progression is boring

Feedback and Suggestions
61

Sure.
Access needs to be there for the people which came back for the cycle though.

Now lets take a common ARPG player which isn’t a ‘die hard player’. How much time do they have?
Work, maybe family, other responsibilities.
1-2 hours a day maybe?
So we have 90 days of time.
That relates to (at best) 180 hours of play-time hence, more realistically let’s say 120 since that might be more in line.
Will you reach Tier 10 in 120 hours?
No… you won’t. Not without being specifically efficient to achieve it.

So the current state is that the common player can’t even reach that stage, not to speak of actually acquiring anything from there.
Even getting to Tier 8 is harsh, and that’s when the ‘decent’ items are available, sure, ridiculous 3-4LP chase items as well, but I’m speaking about a… 1-2 LP one, they can’t be bought before!
That’s close to the end of their overall 3 month play-time if they solely focus on this game for the whole time.

So why use a cycle where the main point is providing a fresh economy if that’s a goner? Leaderboards? We don’t have any competitive scene here yet. It’s unlikely to even form currently since you’re ridiculously limited as well as several of the skill nodes are simply broken or wrong with their effects leading to 60k ward characters for example.

Oh? You did?
I tested a few buys and didn’t gain anything.

Might be limited to my character (bug) or an overall bug in displaying, or a bug that it’s not always given. Since I didn’t get any.

Ah well, add it to the lost of broken stuff simply :rofl:

You loose the option to engage in trade → SSF

Too early, bad decision.

Locking out the uniques which need LP to be viable. Also bad decision.

Locking out people from the acquisition despite being at the progression stage and having the funds, causing a artificial influence in the market which causes supply/demand chain to be interrupted and hence adjust prices in a negative way.

Nope, not always. But yes, 99% of the time.

So we have a deterministic way rather then a coin-flip situation. A market does nothing else then to even the likelyhood through the application of big number rules in a looter ARPG.

62

Just tried right there again, and got the rep. The only place I could see it was where you press Y and it shows how much rep you need for the next rank. Memorised that number and then bought a crappy idol using 800 favour. The number to next rank dropped by 1600 (I had to press Y again to see it).

Also if it helps, listing an item is enough to spend favour and gain 2x rep. It doesn’t have to sell. So you can list/unlist/list/unlist the same single item all day long and spend all ur rep. Do it with something like an LP unique weapon, and you are spending 2000+ favour per listing. It’s very quick.

The grind comes from earning the favour in the first place. As far as I know you only get favour by killing stuff. It takes a LONG time to get from 7 to 8. I am still not there.

63

You, I know how it’s intended to work, just had several outliers which didn’t make sense.
I guess the system is still bugged.

But for gaining, one interesting thing is: It’s directly tied to experience gain. So those experience nodes nobody takes unless pushing clearly for 100? Very very valuable suddenly, for CoF more so since they can each double.

64

And yet you can still party up with other people. Odd.

65

Yes, it nonetheless engages in a playstyle which is more SSF then community-based.

After all that’s the decision for the faction you make.

The whole system is a huge big conundrum of stuff made to work together which inherently can’t properly do so.

Group play is another factor. First… it averts the downsides of CoF completely given both are in CoF. Which is iffy by design, after all… you can’t even use the items you drop through the mechanic on some of your own characters… but you can give them to other accounts? It’s odd.

Same with getting the ‘good’ essences there to trade, that seems to be a bit odd in terms of acquisition rate. But that’s another topic.

Also if two friends play together and have different factions then their whole experience is by design one absolute mess. The party gifting system suddenly fails in a spectacular way as the chance for items to be dropped… which can be traded… but nonetheless not be used despite earning them comes up.

The whole system is build with enormous amount of lack of forethought or negligence to it. There’s so many friction points that it falls apart and enforces very specific playstyles and forethought on part of the player which leads to frustrating situations left and right.

Don’t get me wrong, those mechanics are new, they’re unlikely to be properly balanced, and it’s EHGs first game. So we can turn a blind eye to them… but the lack of research into pre-existing situations of different game systems needs us to be fully blind to accept it, it’s a bit much simply.

As long as they adjust the systems heavily and adapt it to the situation present rather then trying to form a completely new one without giving in when it not works is fine… but that’s something for the future to see.
Currently no matter how you twist and turn it, it feels bad in far far too many situations.

66

Not necessarily. You can play a trade character never in a party or ypu could play a CoF character always in a party, I’d say that the latter character is engaging more with the rest of the community than the former. It probably depends how important trade is to your view of the community. I hardly ever play in a party, does that mean my MG character is particularly community focussed just because it’s capable of trading? To me, playing and chatting with others is where the community/multiplayer side of things occurs with trade being a relatively minor afterthought, especially given the vast majority of trade will occur via the AH interface rather than face to face, such as it is in a game.

All I’m trying to say, poorly no doubt, is that just because one faction gives no benefit to a solo/offline player does not mean it’s more ssf-focussed. I do understand where you’re coming from when you think that MG is for online & CoF is for solo/ssf and while that is true to an extent, it’s also very wrong (according to the devs, who should have a reasonable idea given they implemented the factions).

That’s where you’re flat out wrong. They have spent years bouncing the concept of trade & how to do it with out compromising on how they want the rest of the game to function. They made certain design decisions that you don’t like, but instead of chalking them up to a difference of opinion you ascribe them to either lack of though or incompetence. It’s easy to criticise from the cheap seats when you have nothing at all at stake.

You sure about that? This feels like you’re ascribing well intentioned decisions to incompetence again.

Yeah, I’m sure they’re going to be paying a lot of attention to community feedback as well as any metrics they can think of to improve the factions.

67

Yes

That’s why it’s leaning to it, not being all inclusive.

But I get where you’re overall coming from, understandable.

I can spent years in thinking something up and nonetheless be blindsided.
That’s what happened.

The time invested doesn’t guarantee the quality of the outcome.

Oh, some I simply dislike. The movement between areas, the spread out vendors, how the lenses are worked into the system for CoF, how the system randomizes the prophecy demands and much more.
All flavor, not major issues.

Those I mention here with the friction issues are literally game-breaking for many many people.
Being stuck in a faction with no reasonable way out.
The inability to share loot in a party.
The strangling of the market rather then using supply/demand based systems and offsetting those with inherent costs rather then pure limitations.

Those are glaring and massive problems.

Lack of knowledge is not outright incompetence. But it means their focus for that direction was badly chosen.
It’s either that or they’ve seen the pointers, went along and said ‘We’ll make it anyway!’ and went along with it.
That would be incompetence.
The chance for incompetence is definitely high and there, but not guaranteed. Happens more often then not, everyone is incompetent at times, ‘should’ve known better’ but nonetheless didn’t.

Hopefully so!

68

Really? So to you the Amazon or Ebay interfaces are examples of peak social development or intercourse? If someone is on their MG character & doesn’t chat or play with anyone else but trades from time to time, that’s more of a social contribution (for want of a better term) than someone who is on a CoF character but doing all those things?

Yeah, but it doesn’t mean that you were neglegent, did insufficient research or didn’t put enough effort/thought into it.

And yet to EHG they are the lessor of two evils. If they weren’t we’d more likely have trade closer to PoE’s.

69

Peak?
Don’t misconstrue that. Never said peak… or prime… or major.
But you’re not going ‘solo’ through life then, do you? You’re taking part in an aspect of social interaction, in that case trade, barter… exchange of good.
To exchange good you need someone else to have goods, this makes it so you both create a understanding of value between each other, it’s the same for a customer and a company.

So… yes!

As said, the chances are high since they have examples presented to them. That’s called what the terms mean. You had the ability to realize reliably but didn’t because you stopped the train of thought too early.

I still don’t understand why people feel pissed off at those terms. They describe it. But well… actually I do. Because it means you failed, and nobody wants to fail.
Guess what, they did. Now they need to suck it up, stand back up and beat the odds. That’s it.

Comparing a system which solves one of the massive downsides of trade (re-selling/scalping) with one that allows a full free market might seem sensible… but the downsides implemented are in neither in any way shape or form acceptable.

In PoE you could have measures to allow instant trade and not ruin the system. Welcome, LE shows a few bits of that! Like limiting you to only access specific items after acquiring a resource (favor). A proper system would be an inherent power level by the Tier levels of the item (6T1 being ridiculously expensive to acquire for example) and hence limiting acquisition by a time based factor of personal engagement in the game. Because the metric is retention time simply, not making players quit but nonetheless showing a clear-cut accessible goal.
In the meanwhile LE could have a free market which allows players to buy and sell their items when they want, they already have that limiting factor present. They just don’t use it well. Which leads to the prices on the market being anywhere from vastly too low (0 gold uniques) or vastly to high (5 million gold random crap) doing nothing for anyone at all and just cluttering the servers or ruining the baseline price since people didn’t do it for profit but rep.

70

Yeah, I never like using IRL examples or metaphors vis-a-vis games, there’s too much nuance that gets lost or ignored to use it.

Still, it’s a bit depressing that someone could view other players primarily through the lens of their economic contribution to the community. There are many more axes that could & should be used 'cause life is messy.

Or my train of thought went in a different direction to yours because of different experiences (& possibly differing neural structures).

Yes & no. While they didn’t create the most flawless trade/non-trade system ever to exist that becomes the only way to do things because of it’s sublime ability enable people to enjoy the “social interaction” of clicking on a UI to get stuffs easier & quicker trade without being a massive bellend to anyone who didn’t enjoy staring at a UI outside of the game then messaging the entire server population only to be ignored because the douchbags have better things to do than “interact” with the buyer trading.

But they did do a commendable job of coming up with a squaring the circle even if it wasn’t flawless.

I’d be surprised if they ever are. :person_shrugging:

71

When it comes to trade I do!
Otherwise I don’t.
You can after all engage with society in hundreds of thousands of ways, I wouldn’t ever put one above the other since the vast majority is generally needed.

Exactly! That’s competence for the respective job. Everyone has other competences, and that’s good! Necessary even!
Put me in a place where I can organize, crunch numbers, create ways to solve problems and I’ll shine.
Give me a pair of scissors and tell me to style someone’s hair and you’ll have nightmare fuel no matter how often I try it.

As you’ve mentioned… because the train of thought is different.

That’s the indicator of competence and incompetence for any given task.
If I’m incompetent at something I can make up for it by collecting experience, and if my overall behavior fits into it I’ll become competent.
If not I’ll stay incompetent simply.

And well… every single person has far less competences then the other way around, it’s natural.

Yes, I can only agree there!
They didn’t do the worst job. It at least ‘functions’ which is more then others did.

Nonetheless I expected far far more from it since it promised to showcase the solution for ARPG genres in general with the pre-existing conundrum as developers are extremely passive in terms of trade for the genre… or overzealous. Both being bad.

And yeah… the crossed out parts are all too true :rofl:

We can only hope… hope’s the only thing we got :slight_smile:

72

Out of curiosity, where did the “the solution for ARPG genres in general” come from? Devs or content creators with potentially click-bait-y video titles?

73

I mean, they have it already, don’t they?

Put the pieces of trading together.

The basic premise is:
‘A trading system without limitations causes near instant acquisition of items and far too fast progression’
That’s what devs are working with, baselined from the PoE dev team, and they’re right with that! 100%.

So, there need to be some form of limitations to hinter fluidity or access of the market.
You can choose which side to take. If you have knowledge about economy though you’ll always choose a form of access, never the fluidity too badly.
If you do that you skew the supply/demand control mechanisms of a healthy marketplace.
Minimal influence is fluidity is fine as the fallout of that isn’t too visible, too large and it’s a disaster.
LE does that sadly (Access restrictions through the rank-based buying limitation). Unhinges the ability for demand to access the supply.
So obviously the wrong way to do it. It needs to be at any time the same type of hindrance for every type of item.
Or at least close to it or pricing items becomes nigh impossible.

So what did LE do? Hinder access, so far so good, right? PoE did that as well with simply not making any automation, hence causing it all to become frustrating. Also hindrance of access.
Does that form of hindrance feel good though?
Nah, never does.
So the method of denied access is meaningful

So we already have:
-It needs to be a type of restriction.
-The type of access restriction decides the quality of the mechanic.

So, now LE did the massively right thing:
They implemented a mechanic limiting general access to the function in a time-based manner
Boom! The whole issue is solved. It’s the same solution as PoE has, causing their market to function… but nonetheless having it automated! you can’t get it wrong from there after all.

But no… the useless further complications beyond that skew the whole economy massively.

So what would be a functional system you ask, as after all we have the whole thing ‘solved’ already ‘Kulze’ says?

Well, it’s actually surprisingly easy by then.
We have the usage limiter, that’s favor. It’s there. The method of usage for it isn’t well done simply.
First of all: Listing itself never is allowed to be time limited. Hence Favor cost for that? Big nono. A cost or ‘tax’ instead? Absolutely! Never allowed to be extremely high. Supply/demand chain would be interrupted.

Buying items:
Here is where it becomes interesting. The buyer side needs to be heavily influenced by any limiting factors, never the seller’s side (too much). The first absolute grand masterstroke of LE was removal of reselling. This is huge. This is a game-changer by itself not to allow it.
Well done LE, kudos. Solving a several decade long issue, even if it’s only possible in a game realistically.
But now they fucked up. Access denied despite funds.
A viably system would’ve for example been to adjust the favor cost entirely on the item price. The higher the price, the higher the favor cost.
Also one option would’ve been to enforce a minimum favor price designed after a hidden ‘power level’ in the background. Meaning a system automatically demanding 'This item with this acquisition rarity realistically will be gained at the stage of xyz after putting the drop-chances in perspective.

All comes down to that, drop-chance in the game.

After simulating how many items of a sort will drop for 1 million players in 100 hours (for example) after killing 5000 mobs of a single type per hour… you get a overall drop-rate for every non-boss item. This means each unique from common to extremely rare, LP included. Every affix in every way.
The only hard thing to do beyond that is decisions for the boss drops.
Success rate and availability.
For dungeons it’s easy, access is key drop rate. Succes rate is a simple multiplier.
For generic bosses it’s a multiplier through mobs per hours, which simulates progression through monoliths. Also with a multiplier for the success rate attached.

You now have your hidden ‘power level’ which demands minimum favor cost for every item possible in the game.

This is the best limiter you can ever have!

Now if you want to use it as a masterstroke 2.0 you’ll also make this mechanic be a gold-sink to counteract inflation and hinder RMT greatly on top of that!
Add massive taxation at long ranks of the mechanic and reduce it by aligning to the faction. Allowing access freely though for everyone.
Here the ranks can come in play.

You have just solved it.
All the mechanics individually are existing for the system.
The hidden seemingly arbitrary number which is ‘power level’ causes to give a simplistic feeling of how good an item is and does aid pricing competency rather then hinder, demand/supply adjust accordingly.
Flooding of the market is no problem ever since it can’t fall below a point, making too early acquisition and hence progress-skipping impossible.
Market access isn’t hindered, you always can access it, you’re solely hindered by your personal funds, never by access.
The whole system stays automated.
Pricing can be freely chosen, even if it costs ‘0’ gold then you won’t have the ‘funds’ (favor’) available to buy it nonetheless without active time-investment into the game.

74

I guess one of the things I’d disagree with is that the favour cost isn’t a tax. It absolutely is! You can’t avoid it & it doesn’t get passed on to the seller.

Not all taxes are % based. The Gibraltan employer’s payroll “social insurance” tax is a flat £221 per employee, while the UK equivalent (National Insurance) is ~13.8%.

The current favour cost even scales in the same way as your suggested tax, albeit in a much less granular fashion.

Another concern I would have is that if you could buy any item rarity you wanted at any point (if you could afford it, obviously), what trade-related stuff would you unlock with MG ranks?

@EHG_Mike

75

Should’ve been more clear and said ‘Gold-tax’ I guess.

The current ranks give you clean and pure access to items, they don’t do more or less.
A fairly boring and limiting system since it has hard access limits after all.

So instead of providing the access you should have it, at all time. The upside for aligning with the market is taxation excemption.
Heck… they’re traders! They wanna make money, so taking a cut is normal.

My suggestion for trading is that baseline everyone has access to the mechanic at all times, same with CoF, it just depends on which they align with at any current time to gain favor and gain their specific perks. So you can’t go out working on buying an item in the market and get extra drops while doing it.
That’s the whole reason why they’ve been split after all… not doubling down on profit. Welcome! We already have the favor system for that since you otherwise can’t use the system in the first place.

In a market with fluid price ranges a fixed baseline cost doesn’t affect it.
Favor though has to be the primary thing affecting access to it for gear besides your funds.
Why?
So you can’t trade your way through the whole system and shortcut it.
So you can’t access LP 4 items when reaching level 80 reasonably.
So you aren’t stopped from buying a 1 LP Kestrel at level 70.

It brings it all more in line with the overall progression and doesn’t allow you to shave down on time overall. You’re limited by play-time itself and not only by loot RNG. A market is there to ease the RNG for players and make it more deterministic… so make it more deterministic without breaking the system.

76

I’m Just here to say, as of recent patch (1.0.2.1), CoF feels Bad. I’m not sure what the major issue was, but nerfing whatever they did feels like I get a lot less. I get less than 1k favor from an Xp echo now, and when looking at prophecies that cost 17k for a 1Lp item, I nearly shit myself laughing.

First off, when I get loads of trash 2lp items from prophecies that cost 2-4k, why would I ever consider the 12K 1Lp Unique? Let alone run 20+ echos for it?
Second, Lenses are trash. Even with one more slot, I would probably just be blocking more content. I just want to run Monos, so most of my favor goes to rerolling away Rare/Exalts since my lens are only used to block. I feel like the only thing I’m target farming, is a good roll.

IMO, the devs were hasty and took an “easy” approach. They nerfed a system that already needed a buff to some degree. More so, a rehaul. It was already boring grinding favor, rerolling for uniques, not its worse.

77

Wow that`s literally worthless, except you are one of those who want th perf rolled 4LP unique chest which drops like never…

78

Actually you can get 24 per prophecy per kill. Given you’re rank 10 CoF.

Which makes finding a LP 3 piece surprisingly viable and a LP 4 actually a realistic endeavor.
And any LP 4 is a massive upgrade after all to some characters.

79

It should just be a realistic target without the guild to begin with,… especially if the endgame is pretty much non existent,… but since the Game wants by force to keep their SSF bias alive, the whole thing is rigged.

80

So… the premise I hear out from your comment is:
‘It takes too long for me and I want it quicker. I expect to drop those items during my personal playtime’.
Which is a stable ‘no’ in answer from a huuuuge part of the community as well as surely from the devs.

CoF already boosts you up massively… and it’s clearly meant for people playing without using the economy.
Wanting the same top-end ability to drop items as aquisition through MG is senseless as it would trivialize the whole game to a hefty degree.

If you’re not fine with drop-rates overall then the game simply isn’t for you. There’s other ARPGs out there which have a different rate. D3 is much quicker, D4 outside of the impossible to get chase uniques also. If you want to acquire items slower then go to PoE.
LE is fine exactly where it is and a good chunk of people are here specifically because it feels the best for them.

There is not a singular reason to cater to those wanting it solely quicker for the sake of pace or slower for the sake of pace.