Fine, you enjoy it just by focusing solely on CoF and pushing CoF levels, no problems with it. Other players would want to use both factions at the same time as I described it - it should also be possible. There is absolutely NO conflict of interest in such a case. It’s not a PvP game, and all leadersboards can be separated in 1) CoF only, 2) MG only, 3) CoF+MG. So why not to allow ALL players to enjoy the game in their favorite playstyle? I hope you see the logic here. Basically what you are saying is - “I like SSF and I insist that everyone plays the game exactly as I do”. For me LE lost already a lot of appeal due to all the issues I mentioned above.
Retention time. Progression rate.
2 reasons there actually.
3 Likes
This is an excellent point I forgot to mention - EHG should make trades between friends MUCH MUCH easier, the essences should drop at least 10x more often. Alternatively - depending on the playtime together, at some point “good old friends” should not have ANY barriers to exchange items AT ALL, so basically giving at item to a friend should not require any essence etc. And also the issue with the CoF vs. MG items severely affects the trading between friends indeed, if they are in different item factions.
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This kind of merge is fine, and this is exactly how I think about it as well. The limitations around factions look extremely artificial for a non-PVP game. Everyone should just have fun the way he/she wants it in the game. SSF, trading, whatever - we bought the game to have fun after all, and the level of challenge should be the personal choice, not such an artificial construct.
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Imho the current system rather damages the retention time, because for MG players it limits their progression towards the high corruption and high tiers of arena/dungeons etc., the only workarounds, which I personally would never take is to buy gold on the black market or to use duping exploits etc. And on the other hand for CoF the retention is limited because it takes simply too much time to farm the items you would NEED for a certain build, so many players will give up in frustration. In my case - I was very disappointed with CoF after reaching level 6, so I switched to MG and became for a while much happier, until I got into the dead end with LP1+ item prices for the best builds. So now the only logical continuation of the game fun for me would be to allow using both faction items at the same time. Right now I put LE on hold and will wait until something improves in this regard. Again - the idea behind item factions looked fresh, exciting and cool, but it didn’t stand the reality test properly imho.
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I agree with that, fully even.
EHG implemented both CoF and MG in a bad manner, especially MG is ridiculous at the moment.
CoF has the issue for boss-drop uniques being a joke in the current state, no multiplier given to that is the only diverge in how loot is handled in CoF currently. It doesn’t provide any major bonus that multiplies acquisition by several times compared to exalteds or uniques otherwise.
Also let’s not talk about Rank 9.
For MG the current issues are plenty though… no gold tax for buyers (which is coming though), Uniques not being handled properly, putting common, rare and boss-only drops into Rank 3 is nonsensical and a detriment. Same with the upper ranks of weapons vs. everything else rather then acquisition difficulty overall.
Then we have missing affixes.
Lack of proper searching methods.
The lack of sub-prioritizing affixes (like clicking on one and it sorts by the highest of that sort available)
The miniscule effort needed to actually buy an item in terms of favour for top gear and the comparatively immense costs for some random non-crafted drop.
There’s more still there, but that’s major stuff.
It’s not about combining them which is important, quite the contrary, that would go counter to everything which was intended to be done and hence shouldn’t be done. So that line of argumentation is not viable in the first place, it’s ‘empty talk into the air’.
To solve your issue for proper acquisition further along the road CoF needs to have those boss-drop multipliers available and MG needs simply to be fixed up. It makes going through the game to a decent state viable for both sides then and progression fluid at all stages. Which is the overarching goal of implementing new systems after all.
Also, and that’s a major point… faction tagged items have to go, they’re one of the absolute worst ever systems I saw in any game for itemization. It limits choice of playstyle, does absolutely nothing which a ‘account-bound’ tag wouldn’t do as well but adds extra arbitrary and utterly nonsensical limitations on top.
2 Likes
Yes that’s my major gripe with the current system and why I would welcome a merge.
Well maybe their intentions where well ment but ultimately didn’t work out as expected, hence they should have the courage to say “okay, we tried it, didn’t work, let’s scrap it”. Similar like blizzard suddenly decided to get rid of the AH where people have put in thousands of dollars, they too intended something, it got out of hand and they eventually had to scrap it. You are allowed to reverse a system if it doesn’t work.
Also, if someone stricktly wants to not participate in the economy, a) they don’t have to and b) there’s always SSF for the pure RNG experience.
If they remove the faction tags, then they need to bind MG items to the buyer, else people will just make a single MG character, then all the rest CoF and buy their items through that one character, and play with the CoF ones in order to get the benefits of both systems.
That’s the issue : the game needs to forbid double-dipping, else the system has utterly failed.
And what you are saying is “trading is the one right way to play the game”, and you are trying to change the implementation to enforce it on everyone.
Absolutely nobody is saying “we want everyone to play SSF”. We simply want SSF to be reasonably viable (not superior, just viable), when compared to trading, and since you don’t like that there’s one bonus that you don’t get, you want to refuse that.
4 Likes
I’ll provide a more simple and coherent method:
Make a singular tag ‘non-tradable’ which has a sign on it. All ‘influenced’ items by either of the two factions gets that sign. You can’t trade it in MG, you can through groups. You can always wear them.
All the problems solved without some major messing about.
Which is not the fault of the core-concept but the implementation of it.
Hence the only viable way is to keep the core concept (which has been proven to be a working method in other games) and adjust the systems building on the concept instead.
Everything else would be massive extra effort and throwing all the work into the gutter for basically no reason when we have a framework that actually works already in place.
Sorry for the double post, as I clicked a new one came in.
Actually no.
They just need to make it not able to be traded, which is the whole goal of that.
Why the usage restriction between characters is there has never made sense. Sure… the reason for it was explained but it’s build on… nothingness.
If you input effort into CoF with one character you won’t be able to sell that stuff, hence it provides no upside for MG.
If you manage to get enough gold with MG you can’t do anything viable with it in CoF either, your stash rises one way or the other by funds available. Lightless Arbour would be tagged and non-tradeable anyway and you also can’t create more tradeable items through CoF in any way.
So why limit the cross-usage of items between factions? It makes no sense as you already never double-dip in any meaningful manner.
Fringe cases? Might exist… to date not a single one has been presented to me as a actual possibility from it though.
That being said, I guess you could imagine an alternative system : separating item acquisition and item use.
You chose one system which you use for item acquisition (which are tagged as they are currently) and one system whose tagged items you can use.
This would allow you to switch between the systems in two steps : first switch item acquisition method, so that you can start acquiring your items, then switch item use when the switch becomes reasonable.
This happened to my crew. My buddy is actually MG like me and was looking for a Paladin item. I saw it and thought I’d just buy it and hand it to him since he just doesn’t play as much as me. Nope. It’s like “fun” has a restraining order against EHG. Not 100% true, but still. We’re taking a break like Xelag mentioned too.
There’s clearly something that’s not clicking with the community. The steam charts don’t lie. LE is bleeding players every day. Although 22k players isn’t anything to necessarily worry about, I’m interested to see where it will settle.
Edit: I got it. This feels like that old DM you used to play D&D with who was afraid of letting the players actually get useful items for fear of them becoming too powerful and thus slowly killing the game. 
2 Likes
So everyone could play CoF and switch do MG for buying, then come back to CoF?
Then MG would be a desert and prices would be even more heavily inflated.
Doesn’t sound like a solution really.
Also, wdym “influenced items by either of the two factions”? And how would the non-tradable tag work? I get an MG influenced item and I can’t sell it in the Bazaar?
You really trying to blow MG down aren’t you?
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Which isn’t though what would happen.
First of, the players switching to MG from CoF for a buy:
Great, let them! If they work up millions of gold through CoF they should be allowed to pay for that singular item they can afford… after inputting tons of effort into reaching far enough to actually be able to buy it in the first place 
Also it gives even more of an incentive for MG players to list items! Which currently is a necessity and not a want at the start, messing with the economy majorly.
If you know even people from CoF sometimes want to grab a single item should they actually go through the effort to be able to afford it then it’s more of an incentive to farm tradeable items in the first place! So more MG involvement overall.
Currently there exist 3 types of non-tradable items.
-MG faction tag. That solely exists from bought items through MG. Stays same.
-CoF faction tag. That currently is a mess. Upgraded uniques through LP count as tagged. Items created through the mechanic count as tagged. So far so good… upgraded ones? Don’t always count as tagged though! That needs to change.
-Non affected CoF dropped items are tagges ad ‘unable to trade’. Period. No faction tag.
The change would solely be to summarize it to a singular type.
First off… all somehow influenced items through CoF should be tagged, no matter how they got changed by it. Duplicated, upgraded, no matter.
Secondly, the MG and CoF faction tag simply have to go and be summarized as ‘cannot be traded’ with a specific easily visible symbol, no matter how that came to be.
Third, the limitations for item usage need to go after that.
Fourth, MG Ranks should directly influence taxation for you as a buyer. It’s something which is coming anyway, Ranks causing you to pay less would be a major reason to invest heavily into it at any time thoguh.
Fifth, the base drops which weren’t in any way influenced by a mechanic (MG has none doing that) shouldn’t be unable to be traded ever. So even a CoF player could theoretically (but unlikely) find a MG viable item and after switching list it. And with point four it becomes viable and not detrimental.
That would be a viable faction system which doesn’t hinder the experience majorly, allowing free exchange between those faction items for your personal usage as well as in party-play (which already hinders the trade of valuable items to a large degree and hence stays balanced).
Only in your mind. In reality, it would definitely be abused. Especially, a secondary MG character would be able to sell non-CoF items found by CoF characters, then acquire MG items and give them to CoF characters.
Your “solution” doesn’t work.
First of all, that’s how it happens in every other game relying on faction systems already.
The current situation is something utterly unseen… the alternatives aren’t though.
First off… it means more influx into MG, which relies on adjusted favor costs for acquisition (because let’s face it, a non-scaling favor cost solely based on item type is nonsensical in the first place). Hence without time-investment into MG directly you would only be able to list, never buy.
Which is the first hurdle.
The second one is the natural market supply versus demand aspect. A good chunk of people doesn’t want to rely on a market for buying or selling in the first place, those already fall out of the whole issue itself. Also with increased supply it becomes less viable to list, not worth the effort in the first place.
The third thing is that while a MG player would drop 10 tradable exalted items a CoF player has a good chunk of those somehow upgraded. Hence they fall out of the ability to be sold. Currently unmarked (for whatever reason) they would not be so afterwards.
So that reduces extra influx heavily as well.
For uniques it’s actually an outright 50% chance for a LP upgrade.
And last but not least… worst-case if it’s still not something which is wanted to be risked then the base-drop selling aspect from CoF can simply be let out, permanently marking all dropped items while using CoF instead… which currently is the case for trading anyway.
Doesn’t affect all the other points mentioned, which are the main ones.
I’m really happy with the split between MG and CoF. In many games people who play online and trade have a significant advantage over those who don’t; in Last Epoch, thanks to CoF players who do not trade have a very good edge.
3 Likes
Useless words, just to got more weight to what you are writing? Yes, I see. I cant read this crying after 2, so:
- Tab prices are smooth enough. I play about month (not from start) not every day. 500kk+ let to don’t think about 220k or some of this. Just use trade.
- On the same reason - you don’t need mule. And i dont care even about 80+ lvl characters - it’s easy done after 2 evenings after work.
I think you played 35 years in Tetris.
No, I am not saying “trading is the one right way to play the game”, I made clearly a different statement, which you seemed to overlook - “Everyone should just have fun the way he/she wants it in the game. SSF, trading, whatever - we bought the game to have fun after all, and the level of challenge should be the personal choice, not such an artificial construct.”. And if it’s about leaderboards, bragging and showing off - the leaderboards (if there will be any, currently I just see only the arena leaderboard) can be easily separated for different categories of players. So what’s the problem with this approach?
What does this “edge” mean for you? How do you compare yourself with the others? Do you do any PVP battles, where you lose against better equipped ones? Do you see yourself in the lower end of a leaderboard and it means a lot for you? Why the heck should it bother at all, which systems are being used or not used by which players? I don’t see ANY point in such a debate at all. I could argue for example that if you don’t go the route of making a hardcore SSF character, you are a “cheater” and this should be absolutely prohibited by all means of the absolute gaming justice. I hope you see my point as this entire discussion would lead to a complete nonsense.