MG RMT vs CoF RNG

General
1

(I’m only coming here because this is the only place I can hope for a developer answer or to find sensible people)

As many of the players, I’m too coming from other ARPG’s like Diablo 2,3,4, PoE or many others. All these games have the same problem in trading items:

RMT, Botting and Third Party sites.

This is a plague that has infested gaming since D2JSP and other sites like it. RMT and Third Parties are ruining economy for the average player and basically for the 99% of every game’s palyerbase by hyperinflating prices and making in game currency making obsolete and useless and makes people relying only on RNG in order to trade instead of stable farming and stable income with chances of extra profit, which would be the best, most optimal gameplay experience for every kind of player… Be casual, hardcore trader, a dad gamer, streamers or IT workers being AFK in home-office, while grinding their game.

Well, this vision is understandably dead and not possible with an open trading system, which I still think should be kept, because some players just like it more and prefer to play this way. I don’t mind that, I want people to find their preferred style.

But sine this is the world we live in, we have to accept that RMT and other kind of cheating exists that makes open markets worse for the overwhelming majority of the players.

This is where Circle of Fortune is just genious on my oppinion. Nobody in the century came up with a system that seperates open trading from increased “magic find”. It’s such a simple yet elegant solution, my brain aches thinking why nobody else could come up with this idea.

I can trade with friends, while having increased solo gearing aswell. It’s my deream come true with Solo Self Found players combined! Everybody wins, except…

CoF seems to hurt progression compared to MG players zooming to end game and beyond. CoF just does not have the tool to compete with targeting items in MG. There is no stronger tool than literally being able to chose the exact items you want. Even with inflation MG is just so much superior, anyone who experienced MG will suffer in the CoF progression because of it’s pacing. It also hurts players like me who just wants to avoid this whole situation of funding other people’s actual livelíhood and cheaters, or just prefers palying the whole game in order to progress rather than spamming a dungeon for a lucky LP drop to sell over and over.

The current problem, IMO, with CoF is the too many layers of RNG:

  1. Item needs to drop
  2. Item needs LP
  3. Need good exalted
  4. Need to slam right stats

MG does elliminate the first 2 factors at will, thus making the progression exponencially (potentionally even more) faster and easier, thus making me feel punished for not wanting to participate in said things. Like… it really feels bad right now.

Coming up with the best solutions will not be easy, but I’m hoping for HARD BUFFS for CoF. This game has the potential to bring in everyone who thinks like me or who plays SSF. Even Traders could not complain about CoF buffs, since it does not effect them the other way around.

I know EHG intends to make MG and CoF balanced in pace, and I just want to highlight how important this really is for some players.

D2 (and many other game’s) trading has always been controversial and people either learned to accept and abuse it or hate it for a good reason and this.

This system made me excited for the game. This is the reason I hopped in and staying for the item and skill systems.

I want to see double, quadruple buffs to Circle of Fortune. I need better target farming. I need it.

I hope I can reach developers here, because reddit and it’s users will bring down anyone with such ideas and preferences.

I’m very hopeful for this game and I’ll paly it as long as I see the passion and this direction.

Much love!

1 Like
2

Welcome to the Forum. That’s a really impassioned post, and I can appreciate it.

I agree that it’s wonderful that they actually came up with a system to coexist with MG and hopefully be equal. I also agree that it’s not quite as equal as I think they had hoped it would be and they have been trying to work on that.

I think that they are still brainstorming it to try and find a way to balance them out, even though I think they’ve done a great start I think it could be better. Maybe making CoF give the chance to remove some of the RNG would make it feel better.

I have no desire to ever play MG even though I think the MG players do have a bit of an edge when it comes to getting exactly what they want. That is just not my way of playing and I’m content to play without it regardless.

EDIT: Don’t get me wrong, I think RNG absolutely still needs to be involved, just some possible mitigation of some of the RNG for CoF would be great.

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RNG definitely should still remain the main part of the game, but we should have a tool to mitigate it, just as much as MG has. If it’s better target farming or new crafting options, I’m fine with both.

Even just being able to remove the exact stat I don’t want on an item would make life SO MUCH easier. That would literally quadruple the useful exalteds we could slam on 2LP items.

Having drastically more chance to get LP would also be good enough.

Being able to chose slammed stats.

Leaving boss items unbuffed, but other items getting better Profecy options would keep boss grind on table, havong something to still grind for all the time, while passively building up stats over time. Either way, passive income or targeting needs to be adressed. Or even both.

Just two together would solve most of our issues and we would still rely a lot on RNG, while having more agency over possible outcomes when we add things together. Possibilities are endless with such a flexible system.

4

100% agree, as a new player CoF sounded like an amazing idea but after 100s of loot explosions filled with trash gear I’ve been feeling a bit down. It’s amazing when you’re starting out but for end game gear, when new upgrades require more specific itens, it’s not that great.

I’ve been thinking about a couple of ideas to improve CoF:

  • For exalted itens, after reaching rank 9 you get access to a special NPC that takes affix shards to improve the chance of an exalted affix. Ex: If I want gear with exalted mana affix I can just keep giving the NPC +mana affix shards, the more I give the higher the chance of dropping gear with exalted mana affix. This way every time I droped itens with +mana I would take it, shatter the item and make progress torwards my goal

  • For uniques I feel like there should be a rank where you have a higher chance of getting uniques with 2+ LP. Maybe you could go to the observatory choose a specific unique and each fulfilled prophecy would improve that specific unique chance of dropping?

1 Like
5

I think we want to avoid mechanics that has an irreversible effect, like spending all your shards of a type. Would make harder to swap builds at will.

The second option is good, but they can just boost LP drops overall to reach the same effect, but boosts higher LP chances, cause let’s be honest. Even with double LP chance from CoF, when an item reaches 1:2000 chance to have 3 or to have literally 1:millions LP it’s virtually nonexistent. MG can and will still buy it.

There are simpler solution and buffs too for Exalteds.

  • Having a glyph or rune to remove a specific stat on an item would literally quadruple useful exalted items IMO. 1LP slams are untouched by this. For 2 LP when you need to remove a stat to replace it with another useful stat, where you would use Rune of Removal to have 1/4 chance to miss and brick the item this works wonders. Even better for 3 and 4 LP items.
  • some kind of toggle for specific exalted stat chance, but it’s not really an elegant solution. But I take it.
  • please no more loot explosion, so just increasing overall exalted numbers are a no-no. I bet some people already have problems while pressing “X” sometimes.
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But that’s the entire point of CoF, that there are ways to mitigate the RNG but not completely get rid of it. CoF has prophecies for specific item slots & the rank bonuses.

That would be rank 8, you get double the chance for LP.

7

Yeah, I get it. This mitigation is just not enough, as I have written paragraphs of it. Rank 8 is not enough, clearly.

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I don’t think RMT is such a huge problem. MG economy was perfectly fine and I enjoyed my progression, until the gold exploit happened. Hopefully next cycle won’t be like the first two.

But I agree, that CoF needs buffs. Item drops are increased significantly, but it doesn’t help a lot, when I play only one build and need specific uniques and exalted affixes. I would like to have a system to prevent specific item drops. For example if I find a unique or exalted affix that I don’t need, I list it in a special window, and it can no longer drop, making chance to drop other things better. Maybe do that only for prophecies, maybe make the block cost increase with each new item listed. But I’m tired of seeing a huge 100+ item explosion with only 0-1 useful items.

2 Likes
9

This is why ARPGs are Loot hunting/trading games. This is why D2 has the best End Game in history. Since End Game is Trading/Loot hunting. You farm to find giga items with value to trade for the setup you need. It’s why we log into D2R still today over 2 decades latter.

I think it’s good that COF exist for the niche SSF crowd that don’t like the End Game of trading. However why does COF have to be this magical new system recreating the wheel?

  • You either are a SSF player or a Trader. COF is for those people that ENJOY RNG.

If you don’t like RNG which I don’t then you participate in the best part of an ARPG and End game which is trading.

It’s never been controvesial. Maybe someone is illogically trying to do that. However that isn’t the case. D2 is a trading game. It’s the best trading game in history and put ARPGs on the map defining the genre.

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The problem is that if you choose COF you are handicapping yourself while also completely taking away “the best part of an ARPG which is trading”. COF shouldn’t be a “no trade” guild. MG should have trading perks and COF should have loot perks. There shouldn’t be a complete “choose one and get NONE of the other” perks.

11

There’s one because the devs made a poll and about half the players didn’t want to trade. At all. Which is why CoF exists. So that players aren’t forced to do so.

If CoF didn’t exist, you’d simply get PoE all over again where players that don’t want to trade, or can’t trade, are up s**t creek without a paddle.

1 Like
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“POE all over again” you mean the game with 120k people playing right now? Like POE is doing things wrong. As if there’s no middle ground either. The poll is fine and dandy but you won’t poll your way to a good successful game. Good decisions need to be made from the top that are good for the game.

I never saw this poll, I’d be curious to know how many of the people who participated in this poll even played season 2 at all and how many are playing POE right now

13

If you just go by numbers, then PoE is doing things wrong because D4 has more players.

They are. But EHG doesn’t want to make PoE2, GGG is already doing that. They also don’t want to do D3 2.0, that’s already D4.
So what you get is a game that forges its own identity and carves its own niche. And one that cares about what players want, including not ignoring a large portion of their playerbase that doesn’t want to trade at all because to them ARPGs aren’t about trading but about the gameplay.

So yes, if you let CoF trade (which would just lead to an overall nerf to drop rates to start with) some players will like it and join and some won’t and will leave. Likeswise if you keep it this way.
So it’s up to EHG to decide which players they want to appeal to.

A game doesn’t have to have the highest player count to be successful. PoE had lower player count than D3 and it was still better. Because it aimed for a different niche.

Is Team Fortress 2 making bad decisions because they have a lower player base than CS2? Is every single FPS doing bad decision? Or are they simply targetting different players and not in direct competition?

Most studios don’t want to make the game that will sell the most. They just want to make a unique game. And EHG’s purpose from the start has been to make the ARPG they (and other players with a similar mentality) would like to play.
So as long as they can maintain a loyal fanbase, they will do just fine. And are, in fact, doing just fine. They don’t need to turn the game into another just for money.

1 Like
14

And that appears to be the problem here, that CoF does not really mitigate RNG.
It is just a different name for increased Magic Find, both quantity and quality. Just look at the ranks.
So if you are running corruption 300 you get, unlike MG, the loot for corruption 400 (or whatever, I do not know how to quantify that). And that does not really cut it, right?

EHG missed the chance to come up with somthing more fun, more engaging and more rewarding (in terms of getting what you want). And no, I do not believe that prophecies are fun and engaging but more an annoyance.

15

That is RNG mitigation, though. If you want to farm specific boots, not only do you get more drops but you also get better drops. So RNG is mitigated through quantity. Much like MG RNG is mitigated through the quantity of players farming.

No one disputes that MG is better for getting top-end gear. Which is why the most competitive players join MG. That is not the purpose of CoF though. It’s a different playstyle for players that prefer drops.
MG and CoF will never be equivalent. You can’t make that without turning the game into D3 and killing it. They’re not supposed to be equivalent.

If you want to be competitive and have a chance to reach the top of the leaderboards, you can join MG. If you don’t care and just want to have lootsplosions, you join CoF. They’re for different players with different playstyles and goals.

This is just a typical case of wanting to have the cake and eating it too.

16

You absolutely CAN make COF and MG much closer to equivalent than it is right now without making the game into D3 and killing it. Just because you can’t think of of way to do it doesn’t mean it can’t be done.

COF and MG guilds are great ideas no one thought of before in the ARPG genre, they are just not being executed to their full potential right now.

17

You really can’t. Right now, if you join MG, you can get your BiS gear in a few days of farming. To make CoF equivalent, you’d also have to be able to get your BiS gear in a few days of farming. And guess what? That’s D3.

So they can never be equivalent, nor should they be because they target different playstyles. One is deterministic where you just have to farm the game to get exactly what you want, the other is based on RNG mitigation where drops are the main objective. Where getting a good drop gives you a dopamine hit.

18

Ok so the MG player gets all the gear they want in a few days and stops playing. The COF player doesn’t get the gear they need for their build after a few days and stops playing. Also doesn’t come back for the next season. Who’s really winning here?

19

This is where you’re wrong. The CoF players gets the gear they need for their build very easily. They just don’t get the BiS gear. But with CoF it’s easy to get the gear to get your build going and reaching 300c, dungeons, Aberoth, etc.
Which means that they will continue playing because their goals aren’t linked with becoming #1 in the leaderboards or reaching 2k+ corruption.

CoF isn’t for the ultra competitive players. MG is. They’re not equivalent because they target different players and playstyle.

20

Yea I think you’re wrong. The competitive player just HAS to go MG instead of COF. It shouldn’t be a casuals go COF and competitive people have to go MG.

There’s a large playerbase of people who don’t want to sit and spend their day trading but also would like to feel excited when a 4LP ultra rare item drops that has nothing to do with their build or class.