Try to give us a design that implements both CoF and MG at the same time without giving a vast advantage to those who decide to do trade in contrast to those who don’t.
You say you can set it up, I highly doubt it.
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Ok, here goes then, there’ll be a few design errors for sure which need to be ironed out, but it’s about the basis, and it’s just one I’m thinking up as I go along, hence errors are guaranteed to occur, a proper design-stage is pointing out any issues and finding solutions accordingly to iron them out after all.
We got MG and CoF.
MG is based on trading, hence all things related to trade will be modified, nothing else.
CoF is based on item drop-rate and quality, hence all things related to that will be modified, nothing else.
MG has the following basic principles to followe:
- Inflation resistant setup
- Arriving at market equilibrium over time
- No possibility of Limit-breaking
- Opportunity for all stages of progress
- Access restriction (as this is a ongoing design philosophy but not mandatory, just flavor)
CoF has the following basic principles to followe:
- Only adding extra drops, never adjusting existing ones (which will become important as we progress)
- Allowing targeting drops to alleviate RNG (to allow individual progress in a meaningful pace, this is broken up in all areas but I’m too lazy to write them out, in the core mechanic example you can choose which to improve.)
The premise of both Factions is to have 1 ‘core mechanic’ based around Favor and 1 ‘auxiliary mechanic’ based around a consumable which is has faction exclusive usage.
The core mechanic activates the base functionality. The auxiliary mechanic can be used at any time.
Mechanics can be activated with a checkbox before entering any echo, cost scaling with corruption level, return does as well. Cost scales slightly negative related to return (incentive to raise corruption higher).
The MG core mechanic activates a taxation reduction for buying items. This starts ridiculously high and reduces with usage. In our example we take the maximum value as 500% tax on top of the base price of a item and 50% tax as the minimum value on top of the base price. (instead of 1k it costs 6k, instead of 1k it costs 1,5k currency, as example).
The CoF core mechanic activates the item drop increase. Unlike the static scaling price of MG though this system has a secondary system on top, which relates to choice. Affecting specific aspects of drops adds a multiplier to price. Want to affect uniques? Multiplier, exalted? Multiplier, Idols? Multiplier. This allows target-farming and during progression it allows multi-use in a permanent manner.
Core mechanics cannot be activated simultanously. Either you reduce taxation or you increase item drops. Which already provides a choice.
As a extra: Any drop from the CoF core mechanic is ‘cannot be traded’ tagged. Only base drops are tradeable, ever. CoF is the personal progress, MG is the group-progress. Flavor, not mandation.
MG auxiliary mechanic is the caravan. The caravan has the choice-function of the CoF core mechanic. Favor cost for currency return. More options increase the time it takes to finish and/or risk of failure, mitigation options cost extra, all once again multiplicative to enforce choice and focus. Long-lasting risky caravans with high return? Sure! Reliable short-term caravans with lower yield? Sure!
CoF auxiliary mechanic is the prophecies. Poprhecies don’t scale. Hence inverted with the MG mechanic for variety. They are solely based on the investment level when they trigger, hence making it important to plan accordingly.
Faction Ranks are designed to improve functionality or add extra functionality.
MG Ranks provide extra options at the caravans for stronger ability to choose long-term and short-term profit, scaling the rewards. Also reducing the multiplicative cost potentially, or things like partial payouts during the progress, so a failure happening doesn’t remove all rewards but only a portion, depending on when it happens.
CoF ranks unlock extra options for the core CoF mechanic, unlocking extra options to scale loot drops for yourself. Initially only exalted, idols and uniques are affected, as you progress you can include sealed affixes, primordial affixes, experimental affixes and allowing things to combine together for further progression.
Faction tags: Removed, no need for em.
Market fluidity: The current ‘only saleable once’ method is nice on paper but detrimental for a market. Crafters cannot work, hence reflux into the market is removed entirely. That’s detrimental, items from base-drops have to keep their value forever for the community, CoF items only personally. Difference in focus.
Instead of ‘trade once and then tag’ my solution is to provide a time limit on re-trade for items. If you list something you cannot re-list or even remove a item after 2 minutes of listing it. They’re locked for… let’s say 6 hours. If you buy a item that item is locked from trade for 24 hours.
This avoids short-term market strategies like price-fixing. They’re based on quick turnover rates before the market equilibrium reinstates itself.
Limit breaking: The currency of MG comes in several stages, magnitude of 1 million. Copper to silver to gold to platinum for example. Even if barely anyone will ever trade in Gold it exists as a safety gap, and platinum above to ensure longevity for decades without any needed change. Low end-trade happens in copper, mid-tier to end-tier in silver, Gold for top-tier items only, Platinum for a potential once-in-a-lifetime trade opportunity like a 3 LP red ring or a 4 LP red ring as examples.
Market limitation: Listing slot limit. We can start with 100, more is not needed, everything else will only move into ‘flooding’ territory anyway. Enforces primary income to be rare drops, allows mid-tier income through a portion being allocated to swifter turnover and regular reduction in price but without beign endlessly busy to handle the market and making it the primary income place.
Edit: Forgot Access restricion!
That one is handled via the ranks as well. Items get applied a ‘power level’. As you progress your ranks the maximum possible ‘power level’ is accessible for buying. A rare item with FP and close to 4 T5 is valued nearly as high as a item with 4T5, exalted are valued higher then rares, uniques have a value based on rarity and LP and so on and so forth.
This ensures you cannot buy a boss unique early on but you can buy a exalted item which went bad and isn’t overly powerful early on. Natural gradual itemization progression.
Also power-level can apply to minimum price set, the higher the power the higher the mandated price, ensuring guaranteed income, just lower turnover rate. And it ensures shortcuts cannot be taken in progression. Resources to buy won’t be available to a person starting off unless they get a lucky powerful drop they sell, and even then rank is a hindrance for maximum obtainable power level.
Such a system has surely a few flaws but I went along to think it up while I wrote, so that’s literally a full design happening while writing. And I personally think it’s already more cohesive, expandable and solid then the current one.
Nothing in this negates the advantage of those who deal in trade, even if they don’t specialize in MG.
There is no alternative to trading in your scenario, as supplementing CoF drops with trade will be superior to pure CoF.
You need to gain something exclusive as a dedicated non-trader over someone who trades, or the decision not to trade comes with an objective sacrifice. That is an interference that only leaves the illusion of player choice.
The whole idea behind the item factions, as I grasp it, was to give offline and non-trade players (not necessarily SSF, since you can still play in a party with your friends, if online) a place of comfort. Your suggestion scraps that premise.
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It definitely does, which part does cause the lack of negation here?
You got the base drops which are a reduced amount of drops compared to the 0.9 drop-rate (I forgot the percentile, I think it was 60% from the former rate to make up for it, it was somehwere mentioned and I forgot where, too long ago) and you got the bonus from CoF.
That’s where you can adjust. The point for the CoF system is that it allows massive RNG reduction for specialized areas if you focus on them, which is the thing which makes MG (trade) so powerful, to take in the unneeded stuff from other people and hence increasing the rate of items available for yourself by magnitudes comparably to the normal situation.
This has to be alleviated by CoF.
It all results in expected amount of time needed to achieve any goal there. This is possible through the power level system of items for trade as they mandate a minimum price. To acquire the resources to have this price available you need time.
Let’s say to acquire a ‘Aaron’s Will’ - which is a ‘very rare’ item the balancing is adjusted to enforce a minimal price-tag which is relative in effort to acquire comparatively to the combined method of focusing on uniques, prophecies and RoA. It got a 1.59% chance to appear, which means for every 4 ‘The Kestrel’ you’ll commonly see 1 ‘Aaron’s Will’. Or in different terms every 63 unique body armors will cause you to drop a single one of those.
That’s the rarity.
How long will you need to drop 63 Body Armors? How much of the currency will you get when focusing on the mechanic at top-tier? There you go, you got a value already as a basis to balance around. Now add a multiplier to counter-act the usual RNG outliers, hence around 20-30% and that’s the minimum value of that item.
This enforces that someone in MG will roughly get the item at the same pace as someone in CoF, the difference is just that one works towards it in a gradual but guaranteed way while the other undergoes trials by RNG. Could be the first you drop… could be 10 times longer then the expectation after all.
The multiplier to increase the price beyond the expected rate is to alleviate the aspect that it’s a deterministic occurance, hence causing MG to need a bit of extra effort to achieve the same results long-term (while doing mediocre in terms of sales overall) compared to someone in CoF. Which is fine.
Someone in CoF will hence… let’s say see the item after 10 hours of active farming in end-game… and someone in MG will be able to buy it after 13 hours of farming in end-game.
That’s factually wrong.
The base premise was ‘do you prefer acquisition of items to happen through trade or personal drops’. End of the story.
There is no further distinction made, and anything beyond is nonsensical to work around as it’ll screw over one side of the equation.
Upsides need to be counter-acted, downsides as well. Simple as that, then systems are roughly on the same level.
Which ‘supplementing’? Where is that included? You won’t get rewards for the faction unless you align for the core mechanic. You can even go along and tie the auxiliary mechanic to the fulfilling of echos. You can also enforce the respective currency to use the auxiliary mechanic to only drop when aligned with the respective faction for the run of that echo. Hence any cross-usage would need direct action to be taken.
Also results would becomes substantially slower when multi-factioning, hence trying to get both up… as you loose time which would allow you to get better rewards at higher ranks already and the end-result is solely a difference in style and not in results.
It’s not. It’s just like trying to outsnipe the many snipers/bots in PoE. Given enough tries, you will succeed with a few of them.
But they don’t. We’ve already established, due to the law of big numbers, that more players = more drops.
Well, that now will have a much more nuanced approach. You can’t simply scale it up. Are you able to play in different timezones, for example?
One of the ways I was usually able to outsnipe three voices amulets in PoE often was playing outside of the regular EU/US hours. Around 6AM EU time, a lot less snipers would be around, so I was able to get some.
So if you have a lot of drops, you have strategies that can improve your chances of getting one. If you only have a single drop per season, you don’t really have one. If there’s no drop per season, no one has one.
Except we do get a downside. Trade gets better rates, drop rates are balanced around that. So non-traders get worse drop rates while traders maintain the same experience.
Because, much like people asking for a campaign skip usually don’t want a campaign skip but a simple power boost, people asking to be able to use both MG and CoF don’t actually want to use CoF stuff. They only want better drop rates.
Let’s go to an extreme and imagine If EHG were to finally say they had enough and cave in, allowing all players to access both factions at once, you can definitely know what that announcement would be like because it’s actually very predictable:
-Players can now use MG and CoF simultaneously.
-[some details on how it works simultaneously]
-Global drop rates have been reduced 80% to adjust.
I guess that would make you happy, since that is everything you asked for, which is being able to trade and also use prophecies.
You’d get the exact same drop rate you get now.
Anyone who didn’t like to trade just had a 80% nerf.
So please stop with that “I gain a thing and you don’t lose one” because that is a clear lie.
The only way this would happen is if MG got a drop rate boost and CoF got the same boost. Which, funnily enough, is never mentioned in any post where traders want CoF stuff or better drop rates.
It really isn’t. People still have friends they can play with.
They are not well-off. They’re balanced with traders. Which apparently is something that really really really annoys traders. I guess soon they’ll be asking “Where’s my trader parade”.
You can. But when you do, you’re trying to make things worse.
Your argument is like someone saying “Let’s exterminate all bald people”, someone saying they’re trying to make things worse for bald people and he replying “Whoa. Can we not even have a dialogue about it?”.
So yes, you can have a dialogue about it. But let it be clear that you are trying to make things worse for non-traders by making it better for traders. You’re not trying to give things to both, you’re trying to give it to just one.
You don’t even need to ask. Trade is already the baseline experience. It’s what the game is balanced around. That’s why we had a global drop rate.
CoF is simply a way to get around those drop rates based on the premise that you never trade.
Actually, if you’re going to be introducing something that improves drop rates, there are only 2 options:
-Reduce global drop rates so the general drop rates are the same as they were before (which is, presumably, the way you want the game to be, since you set it up that way).
-Do nothing and it’s just power creep.
So yes, either this suggestion is asking for more power creep to be added, or it requires lowering drop rates.
It does not. Because there is a crucial difference between MG and CoF: MG eliminates RNG, CoF doesn’t.
With MG you see your goal and you just need to get enough currency for it. So you farm for it and you’ll always eventually get there.
With CoF you don’t see your goal, you just farm endlessly hoping the RNG reduction reduces it enough that it will actually drop.
So with MG you’ll always get your item as long as you work for it, with CoF there’s always a chance you will never get it, even if you farm it for 10k hours.
Drops are already balanced around trade. Any change to trade will always reflect in that balance.
That is because the game isn’t balanced around Delve, though. So really a completely different thing.
It actually was not. The premise was “We’re introducing trading to the game, which shifts the drop balance. Therefore, we’re giving non-traders something to offset it”.
The whole system is based on 2 premises:
-Do you want to trade? You get reduced drop rates.
-Do you want better drop rates? You can’t trade.
That is the premise.
It’s included in the fact that if you want to get geared up fast, then you align with MG, get the MG bonuses, get your base gear and especially those items which are very hard to get with CoF.
Then, once you have the base gear sorted and your build is already working, you dedicate yourself exclusively to CoF. You’re a little behind in the CoF currency, but that’s ok because you’re already miles ahead in terms of gearing.
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And other people do the same, hence the ratio stays the same.
And more players which try to get it = drops to player trying to get it stays the same. Ratio…
You can.
And that’s the base premise. If you put extra stuff in it it obviously changes it to a specific situation.
It’s not about a specific situation though, so ‘nah’ simply for trying to implement extras there.
Nowhere stated.
Nowhere implied.
Trade can also be adjusted according to the drop-rates of CoF. It’s a thing which is mandatory for both sides.
So also ‘nah’.
Is this universally true?
No?
Then don’t state it as a universal truth.
I know generalizations tend to well… generally work. But I specifically went into the premise of it not being the general case.
Hence you cannot use the generalization to apply to it.
Maybe reading is not your forte… but that point is specifically tackled, and I made sure to specifically implement that thing repeatedly into my texts for a goddamn reason. So piss off with that argument.
Hence the whole premise further along already breaks apart. Read the damn example to have an example.
It’s utterly moronic what you’re doing here, so stop it.
You’re not a moron, so don’t try to behave like one when it fits your agenda.
The only thing which is a problem here is your insinuation about my intention.
Piss off with that, it’s disgusting.
I knew that argument would come, I waited 
You wanna tell me the resonance system is a decently working system? Go ahead… defend that shit-show of a system.
Where is the fucking balance you talk about? Do you really wanna say ‘MG is equivalent to CoF’ in the current state?
Screw off with that, you’re the problem the game has then in that regard.
The bald people here are the MG people… and you are the guy trying to exterminate them. Sorry to say… maybe a bit of introspection would do you well in relation to the topic we have.
Then maybe we could’ve a proper argument instead of the shit-show repeatedly provided.
Examples are given and the answers to the examples are generally ‘nah, won’t work!’ while reading them half-assed through. No counters to what can be improved, no detailed explanation of the parts which work/don’t work. Just a general ‘but it would do xyz!’ **Which friggin part would do that, huh? The whole system? What specifically is the issue?’ Those non-stop poor argumentations just piss people off. They tire them out.
That’s the core problem, notpicking without friggin end on nothingness, saying nothing for posts without end and misconstruing stuff for several further posts to dial down on something which should’ve been a given 40 damn posts later.
Equal opportunity.
Currently not the given as one side has more opportunity.
How to achieve hence equal opportunity? You either take away from one side or give something to one side without doing so for the other.
For fuck’s sake… how else would you do it? It’s uneven… inbalance exists. Some on one side, some on the other. You have to do them individually, there is no ‘one solution fits all problems’ at once since it’s a shit-show beyond end. So take the damn individual solutions and talk about them or screw off plainly spoken. Every damn time when this topic comes.
And that’s the problem you got.
You’re not asking, you’re implying.
Nobody talked about extra stuff.
The only mention was in relation to the core function of CoF in my example, which would take over the current rank functionality. Hence ‘neither/nor’.
MG the same. Nobody talked about getting extra stuff, it’s about properly limiting the severe early upsides while reducing the severe late downsides existing. Hence adapting it to the other side.
It doesn’t matter if you demolish CoF late-game or you improve MG late-game, they need to be even. It also doesn’t matter if you improve CoF early game or demolish MG early game… once again even.
Which seemingly isn’t going in your head despite me talking repeatedly that that is the premise. But your brain is unable to compute there, you always divert to ‘but you only wanna…!’ screw off with that shit unless you wanna be the first person to land on ignore for me. I’ve had it with that dumb crap, have the game sink if you’re so scared that it turns a nudge too far rather then actually fixing stuff, it’s the prime way to achieve that. It’s nothing ‘good’ you’re doing, you’re solely fearmongering without actual arguments by now.
Which is at the basis wrong.
MG equalizes RNG throughout the community, CoF reduces RNG personally through quantity and quality of drops.
MG is not a miracle machine… despite trying to establish it as this wonderful thing which creates items nobody drops out of nothing, or gold out of nothing. As a reminder: it doesn’t. Someone has to get that stuff, it just substantially reduces the barrier as there’s always items which are powerful but someone doesn’t need, hence re-allocating them.
There are limits to such a system as well.
Which seemingly is something you don’t believe to exist, makes any discussion nonsensical.
Which wasn’t the notion of the initial survey, which I’m referring towards.
It included nothing of the sorts, it was solely the core premise ‘wanna rather trade or focus on personal item acquisition?’ that was it.
And here we go again.
Read the damn posts instead of shitting out of your mouth… this exact aspect was included as a core premise of not being allowed to exist, and specifically tackled.
So don’t even imply it, it’s going actively against the notion, but you state it was the notion behind it. That’s apalling.
You have searched so desperately for implications that support your negative arguments that a high school English teacher would be proud. You can claim that implications exist, but they don’t. You seem to want to have your playstyle be some kind of target so that you can be the victim here, but there is nothing here that will harm you, you just don’t like change.
I’ve already addressed this and do not have interest in exchanging more walls of text with you on it, since you have demonstrated that you are entrenched so deeply in your belief that you will invent any scenario to support your belief.
Sure, its some other route for farming and could be considered a drop rate increase, but you are trying to make it seem like it would be on par with prophecies for drop rates, which I explicitly said it should not be.
A strawman is a strawman, regardless of how you try to frame it. Problem solved.
Neither do you, since all they did was do a global drop rate decrease upon faction implementation. If you think that EHG is finely tuning drop rates when the game has bugs that have persisted for multiple seasons, you are deluding yourself. If you think that some very minor target farming ability for MG would somehow destablize this delicate loot ecosystem that exists in your head, you are deluding yourself even harder.
The point isnt that you are just disagreeing, its the hyperbole and false equivalencies that you use to try to make yourself seem correct. There was no point where it was recommended that trade should be mandatory, and you have yet to show how the playstyle you are defending could suffer in any possible way from these suggestions.
Doesn’t even have to be that.
I think it’s simply fear. ‘But my playstyle could be removed!’ which is not at all the topic though. But the brain shuts off when you get defensive, and we can see from the actions directly how the state of the brain there is.
So do you, so I guess that’s ok?
That goes for you just as much.
They have been, you just 
ignore them? Magic wand them away?
Anyway, this is a thoroughly pointless argument, so y’all have fun now.
I’m sure you will try your best to make yourself believe that
‘No u!’ is not a viable argumentation line.
And no, there hasn’t been any specific thing said which relates to the examples at all.
That’s why it’s so annoying.
If that actually were the case we wouldn’t be in this position now, as you should well know personally, because I don’t enjoy being a broken record repeating my comments over… and over… and over inside the same thread… and even through 10 different threads to the same person while being utterly ignored about what I say.
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They don’t. Because the issue is that with less players you get results below the ratio. Until you get to the point where you get none. Whereas when you have more players, you will get results closer to the ratio.
Not only that, but you also have to account for lower and upper limits.
If you have an item that has 1/1000 chance to drop and there are 1000 players in the game, you’ll have a 0.1% chance to get it. If you have 1999 players in the game, there is still only 1 drop and now your chance is 0.05%.
Whereas if you have 100000 players in the game you get 1000 drops and you chance to get one is 0.1%, but if you have 100999 players in the game there are still 1000 drops but your chance to get one is 0.099%, or pretty much the same chance.
So it’s obvious that your chances are always better when there are lots of players and lots of drops than if there are only a few players and 1 drop.
It was heavily implied in the fact that when both factions were introduced, the global drop rates (thus the base drop balance) was nerfed. That is the base drop balance that MG gets. CoF bonuses revolve around that global drop rate to offset them.
Maybe reading isn’t your forte. I did state that it was an example in the extreme.
The point is that MG drop rates are the way they are because that is how EHG wants to balance them.
Same thing for CoF drop rates.
If you add something to improve the drop rates personally for your character, independent of if you are MG or CoF, that will likely be followed by a global drop rate nerf, so that your general drop rate is similar to the current one.
Neither CoF nor MG needs more drop rate. They just need better target farming.
I’m not saying that is your intention. I’m saying that the phrase “I gain a thing and you don’t lose one” isn’t a true one. Because percentually I do lose.
It’s like having 2 people that have 100 bucks each. If you give 1000 bucks to one, the other doesn’t lose a thing, they still have their 100 bucks.
However, they now have less than 10% of the total available money. And since economy works on the total available money, person 1 now has more buying power and person 2 has less.
Is resonances the only way to give them items? If you play with your friend and something drops, you can give it to them right away.
So no, CoF still isn’t SSF only. You can still play with your friends.
You mean in the current state of a low player count in MG? No. If you mean in the state of MG having enough players for a healthy market? Yes.
We’ve already discussed this before. Both have a bottleneck in different places but similar.
There are many issues with both factions, but they are kinda balanced, assuming a healthy playerbase for MG. Even the bad UI choices are kinda balanced, since both have terrible QoL for it.
Am I? Have I defended any nerf to them? Have I, in fact, suggested anything to make them worse? Or to change in any way?
As far as I’m aware all I’ve done in all our discussions is to try to prevent you from boosting traders without providing a similar boost to non-traders.
I’m trying to maintain the balance between both. You’re trying to get both trade and better drops. Because all your suggestions always lead to an optimal gameplay of trading then getting better drops.
You mean other than my suggestion of multiclassing the factions? Which is currently the only balanced approach that will give something to traders (by them sacrificing something in the trading department) without taking away from non-traders?
I said that before many times. All your suggestions so far always lead to an optimal “start trading and then switch to drops”. And since that’s a core issue with the system itself, it can’t be improved without changing it to a different system entirely.
They don’t. As discussed before, MG has a harder time getting good exalts, CoF has a harder time getting good uniques. The endpoint (the good legendary based on both a good unique and a good exalt) is roughly balanced.
And if you feel it’s unbalanced, you don’t need super complex systems to allow you to get both at once. All you need is a boost in the global drop rates and a corresponding nerf to the CoF bonuses. There you go, balanced once again.
There’s no need to reinvent the wheel, unless your intention in reinventing the wheel is getting more out of it.
Yes, MG is stronger in some parts, CoF is stronger in others. In the end result, they end up the same.
If you look at the arena leaderboards you’ll see that there’s a reasonably even spread in the top 50 of both factions. That is the best metric we can use to assess whether one faction is stronger or not.
So, to use your own language, just piss off with that.
I did read the post.
If I’m playing a build that has no chance of killing Uby, currently I simply won’t get the item. I’m fine with that.
With your system, however, I would simply play MG until I ranked enough to buy it. Then I would switch to CoF. I would be very far behind in terms of multiplicative drops, but I do have a stronger build that can now farm faster. Maybe it can even kill Uby now.
So in the long term I’m better off starting MG and switching to CoF later. Your system doesn’t prevent that. It simply enforces that I have to do something I hate (trade) for a longer period of time.
Because the bottom line, as I pointed above, is that if you simply want to balance you don’t need to change entire systems and waste months of development time. A simple global drop rate boost and tweaking the CoF ranks will achieve that balance nicely enough.
What both MG and CoF need is a better target farming system. Nothing more. And that doesn’t require traders to get better drop rates or non-traders to trade.
The caravan system would be a nice addition for both in that regard. You send a caravan searching for Ravenous Voids. You have a higher chance of finding them when the caravan resolves the loot drops. Same for an exalted or idol or whatever you want.
It doesn’t need to be exclusive to either faction. Why would you feel the need to add it to just part of the playerbase?
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Will you be able to participate in player-2-player trade (via basar or directly) with your system? Yes, according to your suggestion.
So, you can play with CoF activated, run your echoes to farm gear. You will sell items that aren’t tied to your improved drop rates from aligning to CoF to get currency for the market. Then you can buy gear at some point, as this will still be better than not trading at all.
This isn’t even system design. This is just bullet points what your goals are.
Designing something that actually achieves all your goals without screwups along the way is a much harder endeavour.
And with your system, you screw over anyone who doesn’t want to trade. Or offline players. I actually found I much more enjoy not having to deal with trade at all. It’s a chore for me in PoE and LE, not fun at all.
So I’m glad to have an exclusive-or system.
And we can argue if base drop rates need to be adjusted globally. I’m not against the idea to overhaul how MG works, it certainly needs it from all I read.
I could imagine a background system for MG that checks market engagement rates and power level of offered items in relation to time passed since a season started. If the market is starved for player-driven items of a certain kind, generate items available to be bought. If players list items in that category, remove the auto-generated offers.
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And that I agree with. Though that is below the threshold of where the law of large numbers grips.
The moment it does it leads to market equilibrium, that’s why we see a market as it starts up shifting in price. With Day 1 having vastly different prices then Month 3. Though at a specific point the market equilibrium is reached and displays the actual situation fully.
The design has to happen with a market equilibrium happening in mind, it automatically fails if that cannot be reached as it showcases either a ridiculously high variance in RNG (which is detrimental) or a lack of systems in place to counteract influx of items. (the market gets satiated until it becomes stale).
Yeah, the cummulative amount rises, that is also true, albeit the ratio of influx versus outflux stays the same.
And the result of it changing less as you progress further up in numbers showcases the market equilibrium once more. The higher the number the closer to the true equilibrium.
You’ll also have to respectively think about the situation already being beyond the ‘starting line’. This means our respective change in percentile won’t be 0,05% (which would be the full equilibrium) but at most 0.01% anymore.
This is not a significant chance overall, for you as the user it feels the same. Perception starts to shift gradually when it nears the 1% line, and only miniscule then. So we can ignore it mostly beyond the base example.
The ratio stays nonetheless the same, the cummulative chance shifts though obviously, which is a given with follow-up math of repeated actions as the number of supply/demand shifts.
Then we would need to move into further examples of influx versus outflux of players and hence the ratio overall changing as people at the top stop playing while people from the bottom take up their position. Optimally in the same rate but we know that’s never upholding.
Yes, and that in itself is fine, a given. That was the base premise to ensure equality of opportunity happens, hence that both factions can proceed at roughly the same pace.
In reality though several secondary issues have been introduced and the balance not properly set so the actual situation is not equal.
The goal hence is to create the equal situation as it’s not present.
This warrants change.
Which shape the change specifically takes is not relevant, but denying that it can happen is nonsensical.
The task is to find potential solutions, not blatantly deny the notion that people even try to find a solution - which is a disgusting notion to uphold - and also not to outright wave anything off under a generalized umbrella because you deny the existence of solution-seeking in the first place.
Which… once again… was not talked about.
Can you agree that for example CoF has issues related to boss-drop unique acquisition in comparison to MG?
Do you agree that for example MG has issues related to top-end exalted item provision on the market as it - obviously - lacks the option to have a item upgrade their exalted tier when dropping, leading to extreme disaprity in how item quality is dropped between factions?
I mean… those are clear-cut issues present in the systems, and those issues have to get a solution.
For example increase of drop-quantity of exalted items while removing the drop-rarity of exalted items for CoF is a viable solution. This would force vastly less 2T7 and 3T7 items for CoF to drop, which would bring it closer to the MG rate, hence allowing the market state and the drop-state for CoF to become closer together, hence the acquisition chance being closer to each other.
Same with the reduction of access for boss-uniques of MG, that’s something which need to be reduced, not increased for CoF but reduced for MG as it’s beyond reasonable designed there. This is a clear-cut MG issue while the rarity upgrade is a clear-cut CoF issue.
Those things need to all be weeded out, and nothing has been done by EHG.
Which makes those talks so important… and notions like ‘you all just want easy mode!’ so detrimental, especially when it’s clear-cut that this is not the intention and nigh everything points against it being the case.
Target farming is a increase in drop-rate, just not direct.
If you have for example a 3T7 drop 1 in 100000 times total for exalted items and you add a target-farm ability for those then it drops the timeframe needed down to - for example - 1 to 20000. Which means it’s suddenly 50 times faster.
This is equivalent to a drop-rate increase of 5000% for exalted items for the respective faction.
This already mandates adjustment in the base drop-rate or power-creep is - as was mentioned - a given.
Which is why I’m talking about alternative systems as well as system fixes rather then numerical changes.
Because as you rightfully state… changing numbers solely won’t provide a solution. It’s based on the fundamental systems.
The current situation is that MG starts out with 1000 bucks while CoF starts out with 10.
But CoF gets a interest rate of 200% while MG gets a interest rate of 5%.
It’s disaprity at both stages, and they’re only even at a very very narrow stage as it progresses.
That needs to be fixed.
That is in no way reasonable, acceptable or fair.
And that’s the fundamental aspect which needs to be handled… and that topic has been repeated ad nauseum by now and it’s darn annoying having to repeat the same thing again and again. We were already at this point, can be move into which parts exactly need solutions and how those solutions are supposed to look rather then saying ‘there is none needed as all is fine’?
My friend’s eating his meal, I play a echo, I drop the exact item he needs.
Can I give it to him?
No, I need to have the respective resonance.
Now, if we can only play together once a week for 2 hours we’re screwed, despite using every single moment out timetables align. He plays a ton, I play a ton, but he’s working as a ER driver and I work late shift for example, hence the timeframes barely ever align.
The system is a mess simply.
It wouldn’t even be with a large player count as the issues mostly stay the same and also new ones creep in.
The system is so screwed - and I say that every time like a darn broken record as well - that you cannot even see how it would work in a healthy way as we’re miles beyond any reasonable healthy state.
Inflation without proper removal of resources.
Lack of re-listing options.
Extreme time investment for listing in the first place.
Lack of search functionality.
Endless storage space.
It’s a mess all over.
If MG has a healthy number of players you get a myriad of worthless items which shouldn’t be worthless and a myriad of items which are extremely expensive or outright not listed as they break the limit. Extremely limited amounts of items in the middle.
No. Just no. Not even remotely.
It’s darn insulting to tell the people which are utterly screwed over (and by now I’m only playing CoF and actively see the difference even more clearly, and I have the ‘showcase of when it’s healthy number wise’ as well) that they’re not screwed over.
So obviously people are pissed. It’s obvious that there are severe issues and you’re waving them off with ‘it’s kinda balanced’.
Jack-shit it is. Unless you count ‘broken in all directions at once’ to be ‘balanced’.
Come on… that’s beyond senseless.
Exactly! You did nothing of that!
You stated that MG ‘is fine as is’. Which yes, if someone is in a bad position and you say ‘stay there’ is absolutely in that range!
Nope, fuck off.
Once more.
I’ll tell you that you’re disgusting and apalling every time you say that. Because you are.
So once again… fuck off with that wrong statement.
So, you’re providing that… which has vastly more issues (as you can mix and match the top-end stuff which provides you the best results) compared to one where you have to enforce staying with one but without being kicked in the nuts simply for trying to enjoy the other for a while as it won’t give you any upsides? And then you bash down on the suggestions made by others because you provided a barely feasable system idea without details while not even mentioning the details which directly solve the issues you even provide with your suggestion and stating it’s now causing you to double-dip, which it specifically is supposed to avoid? And then you state that I ‘only want the extra loot’ despite that?
I dunno… you tell me How much circus do you wanna introduce? Is a single clown sufficing or do we need to stop counting as there’s just too many to ever finish?
Ok, so, you’ve clearly got nothing from the suggestion I made.
Go ahead, provide a direct example - with my system idea above - and then I’ll either tell you where you got it utterly wrong or where you found a flaw and try to fix that.
But screw off with those generic vague crap which is all encompassing and utterly useless. You write tons of stuff not applicable as it goes directly counter to the example I made and state it as a given.
And then you’re surprised people get pissed off.
Obviously so!
Thanks!
So exactly what I stated!
Either fundamental fixes or alternative systems needed.
So can we move on from the ‘current system’ which is entirely broken anyway? There’s ton of potential fixes even with the current one which would improve it overall, but nah… since ‘it’s a fundamental part’ then lets not even touch it, ‘fine as is’, right?
Ah.
Ok.
So you wanna tell me that MG has not better opportunities to acquire uniques early on then CoF?
Mhmm… sure… clearly not the case.
And you also wanna tell me that CoF has not a higher achivable ceiling for exalted items compared to MG?
Yeah… also clearly the case.
I guess the system is already perfect! No flaws to be seen! I wonder why everyone is pissed off then at the atrocious state of it. Hrmm… they all must imagine it, everyone finding fault with it.
I know I’m overly sarcastic… but I really can’t take those comments serious anymore.
And don’t come with that crap about ‘the end result is roughly balanced’.
The majority of the power lies with the exalted item. a 2 LP with 2 T7 is stronger then a 3 LP or 4 LP with 1 T7 as you can’t even get the second T7 in any reasonable manner in MG. So that alone is a massive disparity of power.
And then we get the lovely 3T7 items, which are not as rare in CoF as you make it out to be. In 50 hours of play-time at 700C I dropped 4 of them.
In 350 hours of play-time in MG at 700C I dropped… 0.
I also dropped 2 LP 4 items in CoF since the imprint system made the disparity even worse. I have yet to find a single 4 LP unique in MG as stuff doesn’t get willy-nilly LP upgraded wich leads to a deterministic improvement towards 4 LP over time in CoF.
So nah, long-term MG is screwed in all respects by now.
That still won’t change the broken shit which shouldn’t even exist at MG.
That also won’t change the nonsensically extreme punishments for faction switching which have no functionality.
That won’t change the current double-dipping methods available.
If you only got your thumb to measure the size of a whole continent then it’s as good as having nothing.
I see ‘sentinel’ and ‘primalist’ there, primarily sentinel. Makes you start to think something is ‘off’ when the whole leaderboard is nearly a single class… might be more the class having issues rather then the equipment playing a major role, hrmm? Just as a thought experiment there… think why the arena leaderboard looks like it looks, and why it doesn’t matter if you’re CoF or MG to handle the waves.
Might have to do with a very fundamental aspect of the gameplay rather then with equipment. Unless you wanna tell me that for example the character ‘Ziggy’ form ‘Kellen808’ has in any way, shape or form any sort of equipment which neither of the faction players could easily get.
1 LP Monument of protection… couldn’t bother with the 1 in 28 chance for a darn common unique, right? With a 12,82% RoA chance.
Or do you wanna tell me that ‘Hazelroot’ in 3 LP (1 in 69) is in any way hard to acquire? From ‘mfkk3’ with the character ‘MeSmiteU’.
Just took the first 2 random characters. Equipment commonly is ‘decent’ but even I would farm a bit further for some of those.
Come on… use proper examples. But there are not really existing ones… then at least go with ‘we have no proper examples for it’. Because yours clearly is not proper.
Absolutely!
If you play MG actively you can!
If you don’t play MG actively you won’t get it.
What’s the difference to the current situation?
If you don’t align yourself you’ll need 1000 hours as well to achieve it without investing into it, at best.
Power level for items does prevent it.
Since power level is a thing and you need to invest to even have access to higher power level items you would need to rise it significantly. At which time you would also max out CoF already, which means you would’ve already gotten your finished character anyway.
Where exactly does it provide you upsides?
If the fundamental mechanics are broken you need to change entire systems.
And MG is fundamentally broken. CoF is not.
So at least 50% of the factions need a fundamental rework.
Which you wouldn’t be able to unless you align with MG to acquire favor to list items.
Hence you wouldn’t run CoF during that time.
Also you would only be able to list base-drops, not CoF influenced drops as those are tagged to be non-trade.
Then we can also enforce listing of items based on power level of an item. Got a great item? Your own until you unlock access to selling top-end stuff, which needs significant time investment.
As for player 2 player trade… we can already do that. The current Bazaar setup isn’t stopping it.
It’s just a bother and enforces both players to be MG aligned.
You can tell your friend the exact details of the items and they can sort by price and enforce the rolls to be shown exactly, hence your item will appear as the first in the list. List it, say ‘now’, have your friend click, voila, you got your item, 2000 gold. And unless someone is miraculously at this second searching for this type of item with those affixes you’ll have it with 99% guarantee.
Why would it screw offline players?
They align with CoF always, that’s it.
As for those not wanting to trade.
Why?
Only with significant changes to CoF possible, as CoF works multiplicatively on base-drops it would absolutely snowball that system to high heavens, even more then it already is.
That for example would be a reasonable thing to do. Very very complex system to set up… but would do the job, absolutely so.
That would fix the acquisition issue at least.
The problematic disaprities still need to be tackled, on both faction sides. CoF needs better target farming methods and MG needs a cohesive progression rate through the itemization overall.
Because for guys like me, it’s not really fun. It sounds good on paper, but it actually diminishes my gaming experience to have to deal with trade.
Even considering if an item is worth to place on the market etc requires some mental effort, then listing that stuff, etc. Buying often isn’t so bad, unless it was PoE’s or Warframe’s high-friction system with manual trades.
I hated it in:
- PoE
- LE
- Diablo II
- LOTRO
- Warframe
The only game in which I truly enjoyed trading was Ragnarok Online. Aside from playing dedicated trade sims like The Patrician, that is.
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Yeah, then solely align with CoF, there is no downside for you to do that, and there is no upside to solely switch to MG for a short timeframe as you wouldn’t acquire the necessary favor and funds to buy rare and expensive items, you would need long-term alignment there, so not worthwhile.
I mean… you can also simply switch to MG currently after getting decent drops without a tag, that’s the only thing stopping someone, and currently you actually have a significant upside doing that if you’re lacking in the drop-department. You get Gold after all and favor is a non-issue in the current state… so you can acquire funds from CoF and then shift over at once to MG and get nigh everything at once.
The only change in my system to that regard would be that 1) you got no currency to even buy anything at all, since it’s not based on gold but a exclusive currency 2) you wouldn’t loose access to your equipment, so you can simply farm on as usual 3) you wouldn’t even be able to buy any normally found rare unique, just leveling ones and low-quality rares as you have no ranks yet, making it entirely useless without long-term dedication and acquisition of funds.
So I don’t get why it would suddenly ‘force you to think about trade’ when it provides you no upsides to do it.
I tried to set up the system in a way to make changes time and effort intensive, so you’re not getting any upsides by switching… but you’re also not punished for doing it simply because you wanna switch up your play-style. Currently you’re boxed in when you pick a faction, the longer you stay in MG the less you can switch to CoF as more items will be bought gradually. For CoF you need significant time to allow the switching, but when you do you can ignore the repercussions entirely.
I don’t think the existing situation is in any way decent.
As long as you can sell base-drops that are not related to CoF enhanced drops, you’ll get funds.
If you can’t sell anything that drops while aligning with CoF, then players mostly playing CoF will not contribute anything to the market at all. I don’t see any improvement for the market compared to the current situation.
But if one can sell the non-restricted drops, I will have to be even more considerate about selling items, as this is suddenly my only method of acquiring currency for the marketplace.
In general, if you create all those restrictions, you are still basically in the strict divide between MG and CoF.
All you do is making switching easier later on if you remove the ‘you cannot wear items from the other faction’-restriction.
The optimal strategy will involve trade, though, in some capacity. If you need too much dedication, the more casual players who want to play MG will never achieve anything in the first place.
If I can gear up a char in CoF and then switch to MG, I can crush content so fast that I can outplay a weeks effort of a casual player in a couple of hours, I guess.
Same the other way around. Once you are geared up a bit in MG, you switch and crush CoF in a few hours.
The ‘somewhat optimal’ strategy will require to play both factions. Otherwise you miss out. So there is no real alternative to not play both factions, aside from preventing a mental breakdown in my case.
Yeah, it’s not.
I think some of your ideas are good for MG, but any mingling of CoF and MG is not the solution.
Current gold limit is a major fail that reads like from a bygone era.
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Unless you mean Uby, then no. CoF actually has an easier time getting boss uniques because of the boosts to boss drops.
Only Uby is an issue because you can only get the boss items when you manage to kill the boss.
However, Uby items are not required for any build to function. They’re just a cherry on top for min-maxing, mostly for defense. So I don’t really have an issue with boss drop uniques acquisition and I play exclusively CoF these days.
In fact, if my build requires a unique from a boss, it’s actually pretty easy to get. It’s only the rare global uniques that are an issue for CoF, namely stuff like Aaron’s Will and similar ones (not including red rings or ravenous voids because those are also not required for a build).
I agree that CoF gets exalted gear more easily and that MG gets uniques with high LP more easily.
I don’t agree that there is an extreme disparity between both since the bottleneck for an endgame legendary is at different points but roughly equivalent in the end result, since you actually need a healthy amount of both.
Let’s assume a medium rare unique that will reasonably drop at a 3LP. 4LP is a pipe dream, you might get extremely lucky, but you can’t count on it.
In MG you’ll buy 3 copies with 3LP. You’ll then struggle to get the 3 exalteds for it on average. (because of the 1/3 chance)
In CoF you’ll likely find the exalted gear much more easily. However, you will likely first find a 2LP, which you’ll want to slam. This means you’ll be spending 3 of those exalteds on the slam, only to require 3 more exalteds for when you finally get your 3LP drops.
Different bottlenecks, same end result.
No it doesn’t. The drop rate is still the same. Same quantity, same quality. The only thing that changes is that the time required to chase that one specific item is shortened. Nothing else changes for the other 99.999% of items in the drop pool.
The fact that resonances and friend gifting has issues (which they do) has no relevance on the premise, though. I’m CoF. I can play with my friends. Therefore CoF isn’t currently SSF only.
I can even play with my friends just to stomp bosses for him to help him progress.
So no, no matter how you want to twist it, CoF isn’t SSF only. Not by a long shot.
I also never stated that MG is fine as is. I, in fact, have acknowledged multiple times that both factions have issues.
What I have done is try to show that your solutions have bigger issues, almost all of them for those that don’t want to trade.
You cannot mix and match the top end-stuff, though. If you put 3 into MG, then you can only put 9 into CoF. And we’ve established that ranks would be redone so that the last ones are exponentially better.
So if you multiclass, you lose access to the top-end stuff for both MG and CoF.
None of your suggestions so far have enforced that you need to stay with one. In fact, all of your suggestions are “go with the wind”, “play whichever you feel like at the moment”, with varying degrees of downsides to it. But in no system provided thus far have you enforced “You need to stay with this one and you can’t switch”.
Which is immediately obvious since you’re trying to get rid of the current system that does actually do that.
You misunderstood. I said it’s a core issue with the system you proposed, not the one we currently have.
Already addressed above and, in fact, in several previous posts.
Different bottlenecks for the same item, same end result.
It is balanced, though. Yes, MG can get a 3LP easily and they can get a 1T7 easily. And they will struggle to get 2T7.
CoF can get a 2T7 easily and they will struggle to get a 3LP.
The point is that getting a 3LP+1T7 is easier for MG.
Getting a 2LP+2T7 is easier for CoF.
Getting a 3LP+2T7 is as hard for both. And that is the end result both are chasing.
Then you’re infinitely more lucky than I am, because farming at 900c for almost 100h I had exactly 0. And I didn’t even get that many 2xT7+T6.
You have no current double-dipping methods. That’s why there are such extreme punishments, including the fact that you can’t use gear from one faction with another.
Yes, the latest 2 classes being buffed.
Necro/Lich aren’t as prominent because their buffs were mostly melee/single minion, which isn’t good for arena.
It still matters if you want to get good gear to get to the top. If one was clearly superior, then everyone would use that one, since it’s a competitive environment.
That has likely more to do that most people didn’t play this season for long. If you look at 1.2 arena, not only do you have way more variety (and, strangely enough, even though it was the big buff to Pally and VK, there are barely any in the top), but you actually see that the top is actually dominated by MG.
So when you’re trying to actually push arena to the limit (meaning 2k+ waves), it seems it’s easier with MG than with CoF.
The difference to the current situation is that if I align with MG and then raise in rank until I can buy a 1LP Shattered worlds, for example, if I decide to switch back to CoF I can’t use the Shattered Worlds. Which means that, as a CoF player, I have absolutely zero incentive to start trading first.
Whereas in your system I actually have an incentive to trade to get that Shattered Worlds and then switch, because I won’t lose it. Thus, the optimal play would be to join MG until you get the items you couldn’t ever get for yourself with CoF, and switch once you do.
How does it prevent that? All it does is force me to spend more time trading. But once I do have the item, nothing is stopping me from switching to CoF and keeping it.
Which is superior to being CoF all the time and never having it.
Except I wouldn’t have the Uby items with CoF ever. If I play a build that I find fun and can’t kill Uby, staying CoF from the start means I will never get those uniques, whereas with your system, if I start MG until I get it and then switch to CoF I will.
It’s even worse for legacy, because you’ll soon have max rank in both and every new season you’ll be incentivized to switch back to MG to get the new shiny stuff, especially boss-exclusive ones for bosses you can’t kill, and then go back again to CoF.
EDIT: If you only wanted to actually fix the MG/CoF issues, then you wouldn’t keep insisting on letting you keep the MG items when switching to CoF. Because that is literally what causes the optimal play of going trade then CoF.
You could provide solutions for MG that don’t involve switching to CoF and you could provide solutions for CoF that don’t involve switching to MG. But the fact that you insist on keeping the traded items when switching will always lead to double-dipping and the optimal strategy of switching.
That’s why I added the power scaling.
You’re right that acquisition of funds would be easier this way… though it’s already fundamentally harder.
Currently you acquire funds by not even having MG active in any capacity, doing nothing for it. You just get gold. That’s obviously not good.
With the power level system though there at least can be a enforced listing limit as well, so when you start off you can neither buy nor sell good items, this would also slow down the filling of the market substantially I imagine, hence changing the price adjustment accordingly, while the acquisition limit is also better handled then it currently is (no more uberroth unique at Rank 3).
It’s to be taken in conjunction with the other stuff.
First off the exclusive currency, that’s already a improvement.
Secondly we have the very high taxation.
Thirdly we have the listing limit.
Fourth we also have the varied currency denominations to raise the bar substantially higher then we currently have it.
Fifth is also the power level, enforcing gradual progression and enforcing minimum pricing.
Each singular doesn’t fix all the stuff. In conjunction I think most issues are handled though.
Which is only relevant if you even want to align with MG though. If you stay solely CoF then that’s not meaningful anyway, is it?
And with the resell ability and re-listing ability (without extra favor cost) we would instead have a time-based lock-mechanic to avoid the downsides otherwise coming with it.
This has a twofold meaning. First fluidity of the market which significantly lowers the playercount needed to ensure market equilibrium is reached. Secondly the vast majority of annoyance related to pricing being gone, you can re-price as it adjust without basically investing every day several trips worth of favor solely to adjust to the market situation.
More regular price changes means you reach the ‘real value’ quicker after all.
And with the list limit and lower price limit through power level you enforce value to be retained.
Yeah, which is not supposed to intermingle after all, I agree with that aspect.
It does remove the detrimental downsides though… like loss of already achieved rewards because of the faction tags. Loss of favor account-wide for no damn reason (this is the most idiotic mechanic I’ve seen ever in any sizeable game actually, there is no comparison still for something as dumb) or the loss of prophecies already paid for. They’re just ‘on hold’.
Also it would allow better scaleability and inclusion of mechanics to expand the system. The current ones intermingle too much and cause issues. Inconsistencies are aplenty still and double-dipping has to stop.
What’s the issue with that?
Why shouldn’t someone max both factions?
It provides no distinct upsides.
With proper target farming mechanics for CoF and proper progression for MG the issues related to switching - like substantially easier access to a sub-category of items - just falls away.
At that time the limitation looses meaning anyway.
It’s then a limitation without function.
And it’s a choice without necessity instead.
I would argue that would be the potential optimal outcome, you can… but you don’t need… and you’re not urged because stuff provides significant upsides.
Allows the most freedom with the least limitations after all. Only CoF? Fine! You’re as quick/slow as MG, just a matter of flavor… which was the initial premise to be fulfilled after all, wasn’t it? Providing both sides with a enjoyable mechanic. So they need to be as even as possible.
They already don’t.
You get basically peanuts unless you know what exactly you can sell and what exactly goes quicker then every 2 weeks for a single item of value.
Otherwise you sell myriads of ‘10k’ items non-stop which take significant time and you could also just run a echo and get the Gold directly nearly as fast.
The people having 100+ mil are not even a single percent of the total population. And that’s a single higher-end exalted item… not even top-tier, those are 500+ mil at times, 2T7 and not even a finished craft often. Depending on base and on Affix combination at least.
Isn’t it by that time a non-issue though?
What upside would you get from doing that? Outside of completionist or more variety options for playstyle? You’re not supposed to get more rewards by either faction as a optimal end-result after all.
Yeah, it would be the optimal end-solution if properly set up, but we’re so far away that people have a hard time even mentally grasping that this option theoretically exists.
Yeah, and here we see the problem clearly.
The basis is not quite clear there for you:
The premise of the factions initially was to be as equivalent as possible. Pure flavor.
It was not expected to get it down perfectly.
But what we have is the quality equivalent of reaching the utopian outcome as if you give a middle-schooler the task to build a perfectly executed cupboard with fitted drawers as his first handywork project and without introducing any techniques beforehand. It just is beyond atrocious… but somehow it it not breaking apart at a glance, it holds, it’s just broken left and right.
So the goal for any thought experiment and suggestion is to get the state to the equilibrium between both factins. Removing any reasoning to switch besides preferred playstyle as there is no difference between reward or time investment. Which - as said - is utopian, but nearing it as close as possible is the goal.
As for the boss unique examples… first off, I can acquire in MG ‘immortal vise’ without killing Uberroth. That alone shouldn’t be possible, which in itself is a problem, I should’ve needed to finish the respective content to even unlock the option to get it. The trade system in LE is meant to alleviate individual RNG and instead push it onto the community aspect.
The meaning of CoF is to reduce individual RNG by increasing item drop-rate in several ways.
That’s the core premise, and neither is supposed to ‘skip’ personal progression of content.
First and foremost.
Secondly, if we only look at the pricing it’s also not even remotely equivalent.
A 0 LP immortal Vise costs 250k currently on Legacy, that is nothing. The reward from the pinnacle boss shouldn’t cost below 10 mil, enforced, rising with LP.
1 LP is currently 10 mil, second one 17 mil. since it’s 1 in 8 then at least 75 mil should be the minimum (I know, 80 would be the actual one, but reducing it a bit is fine)… and so on.
In comparison in CoF you have to actually handle the content and then do it repeatedly.
Uberroth cannot be farmed easily, it needs a significant setup time for access. Currently 2 LP immortal vices are actually available, the cheapest for 650 mil. That’s commonly 236 tries with a 50% chance to get it by then. That’s a good 600-700 hours of farming.
If we take solely Gold from farming content we would get around 1 mil/h anyway… so you basically get it from not attempting it but only farming normal content anyway… which is not a good state to happen.
This should be higher, the second lowest priced for 1 bil one is a actual decent expected price range to be equivalent to the effort expended.
And for a normal player also in the possible range to farm up in that timeframe a CoF player would need to acquire it, roughly.
The CoF player has a upside that it’s not 1 in 236 but 1 in 118 (uniques are twice as likely to have LP through the rank). This suffices to make it rather even.
The issue is that MG has such a low drop-rate of those things that there doesn’t exist a 3 LP one. It’s possible to get one as CoF… unlikely but still in the realm of possibility. 1 in 15162 tries, which means a 0,006595% chance. Which is ridiculously low… but overall achievable theoretically.
In MG it’s a impossibility basically. Not only is the acquisition rate so low that nigh nobody will ever see it… but those few are so valuable they’re beyond the market limit. Hence they won’t appear. And if one should appear anyway then it’s gone in a moment.
This is a general issue for boss uniques with any sort of value.
Then instead we have items like ‘Woven Flesh’ for example, a 50% drop-rate from a timeline boss.
In MG it costs 1 mil. That’s laughable, 26 tries for that with a 50% drop-chance? Hence 1 in 52 total tries and it’s only 1 mil? That’s supposed to be a bit higher, 2-3 to be equivalent to CoF. Both factions can reasonably farm it but someone playing MG will have a significantly easier time then someone in CoF.
That’s not supposed to happen.
Which is why my proposal of the power level system is there.
Unlike other games of the genre LE has a dual-faction system which is based on playstyle choice, hence it’s demanded to be as even a spossible. Since player-set prices are not reliable to ensure upholding this a system-enforced one is mandatory basically.
Same with content being finished before allowing to even buy something.
Doesn’t matter for the topic.
Yes, and that shouldn’t be the case.
Period.
That’s the end of the line, it’s not acceptable to have the disparity exist.
And the disparity is very visible, and in some cases extreme even.
The percentile is different though.
You get uniques on CoF when using the game mechanics like prophecies, Nemesis and imprint decently fine by now. And since LP chance is affected from imprints it allows upgrading of basic uniques very easily.
So even in that regard CoF wins again, the common uniques which are not limited to not be imprinted are upgraded over time quicker then MG can get them even in the market at times, depending on item. Exsanquinous for example is sought after… hence expensive.
That’s why my suggestion is to enforce a minimum pricing, so you won’t get a 4 LP item for 50k (yes, there are a few which are that cheap) and instead for a reliable price representing acquisition difficulty in CoF.
And that’s why I would want to see the removal of the exalted tier upgrade chance from CoF overall, which is a reduction of the ceiling possible to be achieved, but sadly only by one faction. It allows the upgrade to exalted still… but not T6 to T7 hence. This would bring the systems roughly in line to each other.
Then only the access issues from MG need to be handled and it’s fairly much ‘decent’. And at last only the market issues for it to non-stop break basically at the lower end and top-end and we’re golden even with inflation happening for the moment.
And that’s why I suggested the insanely high taxation, to enforce high removal of currency even without usage of any extra mechanic… albeit a auxiliary mechanic would also work decently.
And last but not least we got the issue of Gold double-dipping existing, which is why I mention the exclusive currency.
Yeah, which provides a equivalency to another situation.
Hence ‘it’s the same as’ which was the example.
It’s of no meaning how the time is reduced, the rate of acquisition is hieghtened and hence that’s power creep by design.
It has for the premise of group play being a viable and enjoyable option though.
It’s the same premise as ‘if another system instead of the campaign exists which is faster and more powerful you can just choose to play campaign anyway, right?’. And we both know this is not how it goes.
This example goes both ways after all, here we have a significant reduction in usability rather then a increase. This makes it barely viable as group-play is often wrought in frustration at several avenues.
Which makes the majority of players choose not to play with friends, LE has primarily become a solo-game because of the lack of community based aspects of any sort.
Sure, it’s not SSF only, but it’s as much not that as you’re not forced to use a superior mechanic when a inferior is available. People take the path of least resistance… so they have a high chance to play something else then LE with friends as LE is clunky for group play.
So you pick the most impactful 3 of MG and the 9 most impactful from CoF. That’s severe double-dipping as it doesn’t even happen now potentially. Very hard to manage.
Possible to do but with EHGs track record it’ll be a disaster 
It just doesn’t need to have any upsides and we’re golden.
Anything further is and always will be unnecessary.
Detriments for switching are only mandatory when you would get upsides, which is to be avoided in the first place and the base premise of my examples hence. They might still be needed on top, but comparatively to the current ones they would be peanuts. Anything beyond is bad design simply.
Yes, obviously I try to do that, because I deem the current system too severe punishment wise.
Unnecessarily so.
The only reason it needs it is because the current mechanics are a mess.
But only need a 2 LP for extremely powerful outcomes as well.
And they have double the drop-chance for higher LP as LP chance is upgraded to twice the amount.
I have 1 2T7+1T6 in MG in 350 hours… 1.
‘Not that many’. It’s a major issue that you get more then 5 in 350 hours already when you got more then 1 in 100 hours.
Play CoF until you have 500 mil Gold.
Switch to MG and buy out your full setup immediately.
You can do that anytime. No issue to do it.
Oh, and around 50% of your exalteds from CoF will be functionally usable with the MG bought items too! Or 50% of your uniques!
No double-dipping at all, nah… none visible.
Oh come on… if you wanna provide the premise of ‘competition’ then you cannot provide it together with ‘didn’t play long’ and make a point.
Mututally exclusive. To get to the top you need to invest effort, and there it wasn’t even necessary. Hence MG vs. CoF wouldn’t make a major difference either.
Hence not a good point to make.
In another situation I would agree… but we don’t have that situation and hence no visibility for it.
Yes, and what exactly is the reason for already acquired rewards from effort and time investment to be taken away?
It’s the biggest dog-shit design on the gaming market currently.
Nothing comes close to this, other games have failed for less then this awful disaster.
And why would you do that if the needed effort is similar for both?
Care to explain? Because that’s the premise I go from, which is very clear-cut in my posts. I want the factions to feel equivalent. So talking about the outcome not having them being equivalent (or close to) is talking into the void. You make a nothing-burger argument by design.
Lack of acquisition ability early on.
Mandated price which enforces equivalency of effort related to CoF, so you could do CoF as well simply.
Enforced finishing of content before you could even buy the stuff dropping in that content.
Reasonable limits to make factions even.
And if you can only buy it when you’ve killed Uby once in MG then you wouldn’t have it there either
Which is a missing limitation I pointed out several times in several threads, and it always comes up because I forget about it as it’s one of the topmost systems and all the other stuff is baseline comparatively.
Those are all good for MG, but not for the MG/CoF interplay.
You could still have exclusive item factions with no interconnections.
Agreed. While I think the item restrictions are somewhat reasonable, the favour loss is not, especially since I had different characters in different factions and then later decided to switch one character from MG to CoF.
Usually, double dipping with different strategies provides advantages over a singular focus if you can achieve the best in both aspects somewhat easily. And if it isn’t easy for a seasoned player, even most casual players will never experience what MG has to offer (not that it does, right now, with all the limits in place of what one can buy at which point).
It’s not for high-optimization gear setups that some people want to achieve.
It’s ‘easy’ for me to get to a point where I can crush through faction ranks quickly, it’s not easy to get nice 2T7 or 3T7 items.