Some suggestions for improving CoF

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I decided to switch to CoF for my second character because as someone who can only play maybe 1-2 hours every few days the inflation in MG was outpacing my ability to farm gold. I’ve been enjoying CoF, and the mechanics have some promise, but after what feels like 2 months of playing this second character I’m still only at faction tier 8 and I can probably count the number of uniques I’ve dropped for my build on one hand.

If this was a league start I probably would’ve given up on CoF by now. If I hadn’t been able to build this character without cheap leveling gear from my MG character … ugh. So I’d like to make the following suggestions:

  • Change CoF to have 20 levels, but reduce some of the favor required.
  • Give us 12 lens slots (4 rows, 3 columns).
  • Unlock the first row of lenses at faction level 5, the others at 10/15/20.
  • Add a third type of lens (Regional, Intermediate, Greater).
  • Make the 3 columns each only accept Regional, Intermediate, or Greater lenses.

Then create some new lenses and reclassify existing ones such that:

  • Regional lenses affect what item drops: Weapons, Armor, etc.
  • Intermediate lenses affect details of what drops: LP, Weaver’s Will, Set/Unique/Exalted, quantity, etc.
  • Greater lenses affect critera for the prophecy: Arena, Monos, Dungeon, etc.

Please also consider adding a 5th telescope that will let us purchase prophecies that can affect which blessings we get.

2

Why? What would the additional rank bonuses be?

3

Overall… CoF Rank progression is fine.
Playing 2 months of 1-2 hours means around 90 hours of play-time. That’s more then enough to get to Rank 10, a level 100 character and a decently high corruption level unless you stand around doing nothing most of the time (like I do).

If you can’t get enough uniques… are you actually using the prophecies? That’s your main source of uniques, and massive amounts of them to boot.

What do you mean with 12 lens slots? For each section you mean? We already have that.
How would you mean otherwise? I don’t understand your point there sadly what you want to try to say.

The break-down into types of lenses definitely is useful, the whole system isn’t all that great, a re-imagination of it is definitely fine along the line.

I also don’t get what exactly you mean with the 5th telescope there, the information is far too little to make proper sense of it.

4

He wants to make it easier to get a particular blessing. While I get it, it wouldn’t be used much once you’ve got the desired blessing, but it is an existing system that could be modified to allow one to “target farm” a particular blessing (ignoring getting up to ~200 corruption for the 5th blessing roll/slot).

5

It should be noted that changing blessing has been confirmed for 1.1 by Mike, so prophecies for blessings would lose their usefulness after the first character.

6

Ohhh, makes sense.

So nah, useless since 1.1 is the itemization of blessings anyway.

7

Blessings have always been items (according to Mike).

8

Affix shards and keys are also items according to him, but for some reason you can’t filter them or sell/buy at the bazaar

At the last stream Mike confirmed that the “blessing switching” (whatever it is) is finished and will come next cycle

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9

Well, then Mike is factually wrong.

An item becomes an item not because he wants it but how the mechanics around one work :slight_smile:

Can you equip and un-equip one? No?
Is it a consumable? No?
Can it be stored? No?

It’s currently an ‘unlock’ and not a consumable hence.

Oh, they ARE currently items!
Just makes no sense for them to be that in the first place. It’s a bad design in the current state with the mechanics related around them.

Nice! That what I was looking forward to, finally allowing me not to delete character when I wanna make a new build.

10

I don’t get why not being able to freely change blessings would force you to delete a character for a new build. Respeccing with the wrong blessings is still faster than starting over, especially since you can immediately start farming them to switch.

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11

No, he’s not. They are coded as items & they have their own particular “inventory”. But please, feel free to tell Mike how he’s wrong about how Blessings aren’t coded as items.

12

Just an FYI, there has been talk, hints, debate about blessings for a while now. I cannot remember where I saw it, and I’ve combed some of the update/note threads but couldn’t find it but one thing was said to be getting some attention is the ability to ‘store’ your exact percentage/blessing. So if you find 59% Crit Avoidance, that would remain for you to select from your found ones unless you refarm it for a higher rating. Keep in mind, this was all speculation, I have no idea what the status of it is, and I also would not expect it to be just easy as swapping on the fly. But, all this is to say Blessings and finding blessings and keeping blessings is definitely something they’ve said they’re looking at…it’s iteration just has yet to be known or seen.

13

Yup, Mike’s said that on stream, so if you’re trying to get a better roll, you’ll not get a worse one.

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14

I’ve already mentioned the 5/10/15/20 ones. They could either stretch out the others, and/or add a few new ones

I just got to lvl 99 tonight. I’m doing between 100-200 corruption, mainly because I don’t have the gear yet that will let me go higher. I have a few 1LP items but I’m going to continue stacking exalted items and hope I can get some 2LP drops in the meantime.

I’m getting a good amount. I said I’m not getting the ones I need for my build. For example, when I decided to try this build I bought some 2LP gloves with my MG character and made them legendary for leveling. I’m now lvl 99 and only had 1 other pair of these gloves drop (and that only finally happened this week), and they’re only 1LP, so no better than the ones I have. And if I’d league started this I’d be lvl 99 and only now have them at any LP level.

I mean 12 for each cardinal direction. I don’t know what you mean by “We already have that.” I only have 3 for each cardinal direction, and for me it says the 3rd one unlocks when I get to favor level 9.

I know 12 for each direction sounds like a lot, but breaking them into three separate categories as I described will limit how many you can use. For example, I could potentially buy four lenses for boots, which would give me a 40% buff to find boots, but (a) you wouldn’t be able to apply 4 of those lenses until you unlock all favor tiers - you’d still only get 10%-30% at lower tiers, (b) that’s ALL boots, not just the ones you want, and (c) the LP of those is still going to be restricted by whatever corruption your build can handle.

I’m imagining a 5th telescope and you can buy lenses that will help you get certain blessings. For example a lens that helps you get crit blessings could apply to Crit Strike Multi, Crit Strike Chance, and Crit Strike Avoidance. A lens for Fire blessings could help you get Fire Damage, Fire Resistance, and Shred Fire Resistance. Etc.

As others have said, there are changes planned to let you swap between blessings you’ve already found, but these lenses would help you not only farm them but improve them. I’ve been grinding Reign of Dragons exclusively for the last two weeks and only a few minutes ago did I finally get an All Resistance roll that was better than 15%. I actually got a perfect 20% roll, otherwise I’d still be grinding this going into next week. And this is only the second blessing that I have a good enough roll on that I’m going to consider them done. The other eight are either lvl 50-90, or lvl 100 but such a low roll that I’m going to continue grinding them to improve them. As such, I think it would great to have something that would help us do so.

Correct. That will help too, once I can work my way up to 200 corruption. But that’s only a small benefit, really, and also depends on which mono you’re doing. For example that’s ~10% benefit for Spirits of Fire, but only ~7% benefit for Ending the Storm, if my numbers are right.

15

Ahhh, that’s how you mean it!
Yeah, that’s not bad, smaller increments and more agency on how exactly to set it up is definitely a bonus, can’t complain there.

Yeah, was made clear already in the meanwhile, hence as mentioned: Not needed.
Would be a throwaway thing until 1.1 which is coming in a few weeks already, so not worth the effort since by then blessings will be properly itemized as much as we heard (rather then being unlocks in functionality)

The extra functionality beyond that would hence not only be not needed but actually detrimental for the longevity of the game. Too much determinism is bad, too little as well. This goes towards the ‘too much’ route.

So, for the end:

Overall yeah, some more functionality for CoF is definitely good, especially for lenses, they are rather… lackluster and uninspired.

16

I can agree to disagree on that part, and revisit after the 1.1 changes.

Maybe lackuster due to time limits, and need polishing. I wouldn’t say uninspired. The blessings, constellations, and lenses are a nice take, I think.

17

Now how about we do something real big with lenses?

Reading your post I got the impression that you think lenses affect your regular loot, which they don’t, they only affect prophecies. I might have misread that since no one picked up on it, but thinking about it, I came to the question: what if?

What if lenses (or something similar if they shall remain as prophecy modifiers) would affect our basic drop rates? Like 15% MORE uniques per rank or 20% MORE helmets per rank?

Wouldn’t that hit a flock of birds with a single stone (meaning CoF suggestions of the past week)?

I know we have the blessings of Abomination, Frost Lich and God Hunter, but do they even do anything? Are they calculated as an increase on top of the 4-digit corruption modifier?

18

The idea of the lenses is nice, the whole CoF mechanic itself is also nice.

The content of what gets into it though is part of conceptualization, not the creation aspect. Then you remove parts depending on time constraints. Which is also why I’m extremely displeased with the MG implementation that was simply not thought through rather then being only rushed implemented.

They could’ve done focused lenses with ups and downs, generally functioning ones which convert types of drops into different ones (rather then increasing odds), they could’ve done synergizing effects, they could’ve done…
The ideas are nigh endless, instead we got a system that from the get-go is always limited to ‘extra uses’ and ‘double rewards’ by design combined with either a blocking lens or a lens to increase the odds of specific prophecies.

Why? Because doubling simply is more powerful then anything else, for obvious reasons, and keeping the prophecy active for longer is also extremely powerful as it saves overall on favor. Hence it leaves the third one to either block out content (like Arena) or specify a specific item type one needs. That’s what’s done and any other option is just ‘sub-optimal’ and not a choice of flavor.

Exactly, a far better use of lenses, prophecy lenses and overall lenses to change the type of playstyle one prefers. Obviously with the current content in the game it’ll be a bit lackluster… but improving the content you personally run is something which is always nice.

Especially since it’s the solution for the boss-drop unique issue if handled that way. Wanna have better ones? Put in a lense to give bosses a chance to drop more then one unique per drop-table!

Doing Arena mostly? Put in lenses for the Arena to provide special loot after each 5 waves!

And so on and so forth.

19

No, I’m aware they only influence prophecies. I don’t think it needs to affect global drops because we already know different monos focus on different rewards. What would be good - and it might already be this way, I haven’t confirmed - is that if we get a prophecy with a reward of boots, for example … some of those only say complete a mono, but others tell you a mono in a specific timeline. I think the ones that require a specific mono should be matched to the timelines that drops more of that reward type. So you’d get even more odds of getting the drops you need.

That said, I do like the ones where they don’t demand a specific timeline, because I use these to level my faction levels while grinding for blessings.

So far. I’m okay with them having a smaller, simpler implementation and then rolling out more later. That’s usually healthier for the player base than overdoing it and needing to pull it back.

Good ideas. I’ve been running Soulfire when I need a break from the monos because my build uses the rings and belt the boss drops. I’ve probably done 20-30 runs now, I haven’t gotten any that are better than 1LP. Also had a few runs where I’ve gotten neither, and didn’t even get the set gloves. Just a few rares and magics.

From what I understand my current build can push farther into corruption than my first character, but I’m being hamstrung by not getting the gear that I need for so long now that I’m really tempted to start playing my first character again to grind Soufire tier IV to get some 2LP drops … which I can do, but it’s annoying that RNG is pushing me to do that rather than keep playing the character I’m currently building.

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20

Lenses that increase the chance of finding a prophecy for a said items dont stack

Even with 12 Lens slot this wouldnt work