There’s no way to balance gold costs in this game if some players can sell an item for max 500 gold and others can sell them for 100.000s or even more.
There’s no way you can make a balanced economy based around a single currency in this state and the game plain fails in allowing SSF players like they are not missing out for not going trade. Any gold price that would be reasonable for CoF players will always be negligible for MG players.
Please fix, one of the mayor selling points of this game for me was that I didn’t feel like I needed to go trade but that is quickly becoming the opposite…
The real issue is that gold itself is useless in this game so it is subject to a LOT of inflation as nobody takes it out of circulation by spending it on a sink.
If they put enough actually useful gold sinks in the game, then the price of items would go down by a lot.
That will never fix the fact that MG players will always have access to exponentially bigger amounts of gold than CoF players.
No matter what gold sink you add MG players will always be able to exploit it better because they can have access to more gold and have actually the most effective way to earn it.
Even if so, they still have the extra way to earn insane amounts of currency that CoF players simply just don’t have.
There’s no way to balance that with a single currency because a MG player will always have the option to sell some sick drop for hundreds of thousands of gold while CoF players are limited to what? Gold reward monoliths for like 10K each?
What has that to do with gold prices of stuff like stash or any gold sink they might introduce?
Try to add to the conversation, the topic is that a single currency can’t have balanced prices because a portion of the player base has the option to sell 1 idol for like 1 million while SSF players can max get whatever the mono gold reward is.
Target farming and drop rates are not related in any way to the topic and honestly I don’t think they should just invalidate any gold sink the game can have for a portion of the player base.
Stash tab price will change it’s already confirmed don’t forget that somebody need to farm that 1 million gold for that idol I’m COF player and don’t have any gold issues never sold arena keys
Even if they reduce stash price it wouldn’t be balanced because MG players can simply afford more and faster given they are way less limited in how to earn gold having the posibility to sell good items for huge sums.
This isn’t only a problem for stash, but also for any gold sink or simply any gold use the game has or the devs would add in the future.
MG players will always have acces to more gold and thus will always be able to enoy, use or abuse any gold sink or facility in a higher capacity compared to CoF players that are very limited on how much gold they can earn per time spent.
Lightless Arbour is the sink.
But given MG exists that sink has become useless since prices can’t be in line with the acquisition rate there.
The simplest solution would’ve been to at least make a 100% markup on buying items so half the gold is immediately taken out of existence rather then just given someone else.
Which in itself is not a problem, the problem is that CoF players don’t have access to trade.
If you’re not using trading functions in a game you’re inherently limiting yourself, which is fine… but the factions are represented as ‘equal’ to us.
It’s badly designed in that way. It would’ve been better if CoF was just a mechanic and trading also just a mechanic and that’s it, not allowing to sell any items upgraded or acquired through CoF and otherwise it being… well… nothing more then that, balanced accordingly.
Nah, you don’t, gold farming itself is secondary. Or rather… someone knowing how to handle their stall doesn’t, they just need to provide the items with the least favor cost for listing but the highest yield in return. Far mor profitable then any way you could ever personally farm gold.
But basically no chance to acquire absolute high-end items. Speaking about rare 3 LP or 4 LP uniques.
Yes, in a market 99% of people loose and 1% of the people win.
Just make sure you’re the 1%! Takes knowledge and effort.
Yes, which was fine before the market but is bad now.
How the devs failed to take a automated tax into consideration is a bit baffling. They’re 90 people after all, so paying for a person which has expertise in how a market is set up and giving him the data of what is going to be made would at least have given a rudimentary functional system with a in-built gold sink to stop inflation so massively.
Legacy will become a mess I’m sure before long, and cycle will be wonky in terms of economics at best.
I don’t think EHG ever said they were equal. They said they were balanced in terms of aquiring your loot, even though Mike has said before that trade would always probably be superior.
The way I see the factions is that MG is for trading with none of the toxic traits from PoE trade, and CoF is something for people that don’t want trade to have a chance to have loot as well.
In PoE, if you go SSF you’re basically screwed, because you’re very limited. You have the same drop chance as trade players and can’t trade. LE tries to bridge that gap with CoF, so that players that don’t like trade at least have a tool that won’t set them back immensely.
I don’t think the 2 factions can ever be equal, or even really balanced. MG will always be better, as I predicted it would before 1.0 launch. You can give gold farming prophecies for CoF, to address that gap a bit more, but you will never make CoF better than MG for the simple fact that MG can target buy exactly what they need.
What they say and how it’s presented are two different things.
‘Choose, take A or B as a reward for reaching Act 9 of the game’ is a clear-cut equivalency proclamation in the eyes of the player.
They inherently aren’t
Which already means they’re not.
Yes! And that’s fantastic by intention! Big big kudos to EHG for that. Something for ‘everyone’.
But the limitations and frictions coming along with it are poorly thought out simply. The baseline idea isn’t a bad one, just the execution of it.
By design and your own choice. How it should be.
Which actually makes a mockery to SSF itself, if you go SSF it’s to have that ‘I am alone and only alone’ challenge. So working in that framework should be a given.
You’re actively meant to be at a disadvantage. Could always go without the SSF part after all and just not use the related mechanics. Choosing SSF by design is saying ‘Hey look, I did it all by myself, and that without any chance to have acquired it through other means!’ which once more… CoF makes a bit of a mockery of it.
They don’t need to be equal, just not utterly and completely broken in comparison at any stage of the game.
Early on MG is ridiculously better, mid- to end-game CoF suddenly becomes 100% better, no matter what anyone tries to say, simply because you’re showered in 1-3 LP uniques. Very late game MG becomes suddenly superior again, when all the basic progression is long over though.
That is not true, anymore than choosing SSF/Offline/Non-SSF, or Cycle/Legacy, is a clear-cut equivalency. What is presented is: “You reach this point, now choose which gameplay you like best”. At least in my view.
EDIT: And you can choose which faction you want at the first town, so that’s also not true.
I phrased it wrong. They intended to balance them a bit. They aren’t and will never be, as I pointed out.
That is also not true. Many people go SSF because they don’t want to interact with other people. Maybe because they have social phobias. Also, because many play offline.
If you want the “challenge” you can go SSF and not join a faction.
I also disagree with this. Yes, you are showered with 1-3LP uniques, but MG also has those uniques and they can even buy the exalteds they want for slamming with little effort. CoF still has to farm for those exalteds that have those 3-4 affixes you really want.
Bottom line is that CoF isn’t SSF. CoF is simply a tool so that players that don’t like to trade aren’t hampered in their progress like in PoE. Players can be in CoF and still be online and play with friends, they just don’t interact with trading because they don’t like it or whatever reason. It’s also a tool so that players that can only play offline, for whatever reason, aren’t equally hampered.
CoF exists so that people don’t feel forced to trade if they don’t like it, nothing else. MG will always be superior by its very nature. It just doesn’t suck completely in LE to not trade, as opposed to PoE.
It has nothing to do with challenges.
No, you check extra boxes for that and it tells you ‘You can’t do xyz anymore’
Choosing between factions which dislike each other gives it the notion that they’re generally roughly the same in terms of viability.
But that’s why the choice between them is inherently a bad design-choice anyway.
Why get locked out of trading if you’re not playing SSF? There’s no reason. Why loose all favor when doing stuff for the others? Why the fuck are some stargazing guys and a merchant’s guild even bashing heads in the first place?
A better solution would be to have both present and give different upsides/downsides, not completely locking you out of the other when using a character for a while with one (because you’ll have gear from that faction then which you wouldn’t be able to use).
As an example:
If you aid the merchants you get their favor, which allows you to use their system, hence listing items as well as getting cuts on ‘taxes’ which they take. Make the taxes massive without having them active and lower then with rank, allowing reasonable acquisition of different items more and more the further you go without actively locking you out.
CoF on the other hand it’s the same. gain favor when helping them, don’t allow the ‘mystical mumbo jumbo stuff’ the merchant guild dislikes to be sold through them and that’s it. Base items are still sellable as you would’ve gotten them with MG as well. And you don’t get the upsides of one system while using the other.
Also acquisition through simply playing is something which isn’t a good choice. When picking one of the factions clear-cut goals to make them happier should be there. For example… special materials which you can give the respective faction in return for favor, only being able to drop the materials from the faction you’re aligned with. Takes it out from the experience cycle this way and doesn’t lead to unfair progression paces as CoF has a clear upside with the doubling of exp monolith rewards.
This way not only can you use both factions and switch around as you want… but also you’re hindered respectively in making proper usage of their systems unless dedicating yourself to them.
So… umh… go normal mode and… just don’t interact?
SSF is a challenge mode not more not less.
Turn off the chat then. It’s also available in SSF, so the social phobia aspect is a ridiculous argument there.
I would agree if it otherwise has forced social interactions, but it doesn’t.
Rank 8 availability in MG, so no, it doesn’t have them for you.
Exalteds Rank 7
If you solely look for weapons Rank 5 for exalteds and 6 for uniques. That’s obtainable.
1 Piece of gear alone isn’t the general availability though for gearing.
It’s just a badly balanced system, that’s what it is. Because by the time you reach rank 8 you got at least 5 full tabs with LP items in CoF, if not more.
Which is an issue by itself, fine if it works in conjunction with the system but not entirely against it Fluid transition and player agency is the thing which should be on the menu. Instead we got limitations, frictions everywhere and hindrances to ever change out from one to the other in absolutely and utterly needless ways.
Then don’t do it. You can’t afford the stuff anyway unless you use the system to list items and sell a decent amount. So it inherently poses no problems. You instead just get more loot right away.
Because in PoE they enforce their balance to include the usage of trading, LE doesn’t. Do you know what’s far more damaging to the whole system? Forced listing of items, swamping the market with stuff despite not thinking anyone would take an interest in it.
Which… we’re forced to do to get rep.
Remove that aspect and suddenly the overabundance becomes far less severe in the first place because people wouldn’t bother picking up utter trash just to overload the Bazaar servers with garbage.
How is that different from collecting favor for whichever faction you’re aligned with, with the exception that instead of getting a constant expected currency, you now have RNG tied to it as well?
This was already removed. As the devs stated, CoF is only meant to help you get gear rewards, not XPs or game-progress ones.
I don’t think we’ll agree on the purpose of Cof, but that’s fine. Different players can view it in different ways.
The way I see it, LE thought: “We need to add trade to the game. What can we add so that people that don’t want to trade aren’t suddenly handicaped or forced to trade?” And they came up with CoF. I don’t think it was never meant to be equal to trade. Just something to improve the experience of non-trader players.
And I don’t think they can ever be non-exclusive. If you’re allowed to have CoF and still trade (even if you limit which items can be sold), then gearing up becomes even more trivial than it already is and we just get D3 again.
Personally, I think we actually need to rebalance them so we don’t get gear as easily as we do now. D3 was boring.
It’s detached from Experience which is directly influenced by the mechanics which causes an inherent inbalance between both system.
Also by the law of large numbers they even out over time, so that’s also not a problem.
But given the doubling issue itself is taken care of (shame, as it’s one less reward which is promised by the mechanic after all) it’s already solved… with a downside.
Exactly! That’s fine! That’s even great!
What’s not great is that it locks you out to return to trade, locks you out of using the baseline drops in trade, causes your character to literally be broken when trying to switch after extended usage and also makes it impossible to even use your own found gear with your own created characters.
So yes!
It shouldn’t be non-exclusive!
But how you design that exclusivity is absolutely and entirely up to you… so coming up with this current iteration is just trying to grab a plumber’s helper to solve an issue and instead reaching right into the middle of the clogged toilet.
That’s why I said that any item either upgraded or directly dropped through CoF should be unable to be traded.
That’s fine, that’s great!
Don’t limit my personal usage though.
And also don’t limit me selling the other stuff dropping alongside it.
Also don’t stop me from trading, hinder me greatly make it not profitable in any way so in the absolute and utter off-chance I’ve played really long already and despite the gold-downsides of CoF acquired a boatload of gold… I can spend it on a single useful item which I never found myself.
You see, that’s how a trading system is handled, enhancing the experience of players, making it not easy to acquire stuff but allowing it nonetheless at any time… given you got the moolah for it!
How is experience directly influenced by the mechanics? As I said, the double XP rewards wasn’t intended and is no longer in the game. So there’s no more imbalance.
Adding RNG to a mechanic (trade) that is meant to counter RNG is never a good idea. The law of large numbers only work for a vast number of players, but statistics also say that if something has a 1 in 10k chance to happen (namely bad RNG that screws someone), it will happen to some people given large enough numbers.
What I meant is that, if you allow suddenly increased drops and you can still buy stuff from the market at the same time, then gearing becomes meaningless. It’s already easy to gear yourself for empowered monos with either system. If you allow both to be used at the same time (getting increased drops but also being able to trade for stuff) then you’ll be done with your gear in a few days and it’s D3 all over again.
What I think needs to happen is to add some way for CoF to make gold like MG does.
But… you can’t. You lack the funds for it.
Let’s say the usage tax of the Marketplace is 90% as a baseline for every single item available, so a 10k item becomes a 100k item through that.
The only way to handle that is to join them and reduce your tax by going up their ranks, until it becomes a… let’s say 10% tax for every type and power level of item available. So 10k only become 11k.
That’s how exclusivity without locking someone out completely works out. Also if you enforce the listing to cost favor ‘as it’s in their warehouse’ so to say it immediately reduces your CoF income should you actually want to put an item up for trade, as during the time needed to gain favor you won’t drop extra items in the first place for yourself.
I’m COF player and don’t have any gold issues never sold arena keys