The REAL Reason End Game Loop, Currency, Economy and Farming has Issues

General
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This isn’t a short read but with this title how could it be.

While the imprint topic is popular it actually has nothing to do with anything. You could buff/nerf or remove imprints it won’t really fix anything.

Seasonal mechanics, End Game Loop, Currency, and Economy are all closely related. If these are all working together symbiotically then farming FEELS GOOD. You also can choose what and where to farm.

One of LE’s strongest systems actually has a big flaw. This system is loved for it’s simplicity, it’s praised for it’s expanding depth and is a vital core of everything you do in LE overall and involves many seasonal mechanics. Can you guess what it is? CRAFTING

I love crafting in LE. I personally have stated that if it’s not deterministic, then it isn’t crafting and it’s gambling. I love how LE has expanded crafting to Sets, fixed Legendary crafting allowing you to choose 1 T7 affix. Added in the Egg/reforging LP etc.

However…at the very core, the fundamental system crafting is all built on “Forging potential” doesn’t really allow you to SPEND CURRENCY. You have 1,000s of Glyphs, Affix shards, Runes and now they are adding Corruption. However a few clicks of crafting and the RNG gods used up your forging potential and you are done. The craft is over, your currency collects dust and is worthless.

Why does this matter? Well most ARPG games run on “Currency” D2, PoE, you name it. What is LE’s currency? hmmmm… Yup we don’t really have one. There are no divines/chaos orbs like PoE. No SoJ’s or Jah runes that have value like D2. If CURRENCY doesn’t matter the End Game, Economy and Farming loop doesn’t matter. Period!!!

Glyphs, Runes, Corruption Runes this is well LE’s currency and they have no sustained value. They can’t be “traded” and “there is no sink” which means there is no reason to FARM!!! This is why ARPG players jump into LE and it’s a great game and it’s fun to theorycraft builds but then leave 2 weeks latter.

LE suffers from a currency problem, which means the items have no value, there is nothing to chase after and spend endless hours farming. The seasonal mechanics then quickly lose value and there isn’t anything to do.

Okay so how do we fix it??? Well I don’t hate the idea of “Forging potential” it makes a lot of sense and is very simple. The problem is it doesn’t allow you to use currency. There has to be a way to restore forging potential. Allowing you to spend more currency on the craft.

I’d create a “Restoration Rune” new currency :slight_smile: That allows you bring an item back to life to continue to craft. What this does is if you aren’t following let me take you through a process of crafting now.

  • If you used a Rune of removal lose a bunch of forging potential you can keep going, You can now use the Rune of Restoration, then you can add in another affix/ reroll an affix using currency Glyph of Chaos to try to get the one you want. Doesn’t happen. Fine rune of removal again. You can then add in a Set affix and use Rune of Despair to try and seal it. Doesn’t work? Fine, Rune of Removal again.

  • Lets say you finally get the sealed affixes, other affixes where you want, now Rune of refinement to reroll the values of the affixes. Keep going hey out of forging potential another Rune of Restoration. Okay now your affixes are good. Rune of Shaping to reroll the implicit.

This is just one item that removed a ton of currency. We didn’t even talk about legendary crafting either where the item could fail if multiple LP or then corrupting it. Obviously if you corrupt an item a rune of restoration can’t be used. Corruption is used after you spent tons of currency crafting to that point to then chance an even greater result. This make corruption even more valuable.

This is why people farm for endless hours in D2, PoE and other ARPGs. There is currency and it’s valuable. Currency also needs to be tradable which obviously stabilizes the economy. So all Glyphs, Runes, Rift beast parts, Keys needs to be tradable. People will be blowing through currency, then farming the currency “that has value”

This now makes players engage in ALL the seasonal mechanics, they have a reason to keep farming. The End Game loop isn’t boring when there is a reason to do an actual LOOP. You stabilized the economy since there are actual sinks and currency has value.

Finally, you have “Chase items” that took massive amounts of currency to craft and reroll and perfect. This is why games like D2 and PoE have retention and staying power. When someone uses 100’s or 1,000’s of Divines rerolling items, removing and adding affixes over and over because they are obsessed with getting that one of a kind item. The game is healthy.

I feel like LE is honestly almost there. I can feel it but the game needs a few tweaks that brings all of it’s systems together, fixes the End game loop and economy so there is a reason to farm. Then it’s player base will be engaged and you will see player retention skyrocket.

Anyways just a huge LE fan hoping LE some day is mentioned in the same sentence as the best ARPGs and no one questions it. Hope everyone enjoys Season 4.

5 Likes
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I dont hate this, but right now items just simply are too available, everything is too available, except the things that are not.

So like you get a t7 fire damage staff, wow cool, fail a few crafts aw shucks, you are sad, and its annoying that its bricked.

But another t7 fire damage staff is gonna show up in literally a few minutes atleast how I farm. So okay cool try again, brick repeat.

Adding in this rune is fine it lets you essentially never brick, you can forever add in more FP until the item is perfect, making double t7 better cause you now have many more chances to make them your perfect item and just more fp to roll values among ranges which is something I never really do as FP is a huge concern.

but would this item be common? if so, it will delete more materials, but also items will be easier to perfect. if they are rare, well we i guess can save them for perfect crazy double t7 items we really wanna perfect. but otherwise, we have 100 billion shards and runes and glyphs so we can still just brick 50 fire damage staves and keep doing it.

My issue is that farming feels too good when its targeted, prophecies and imprints produce far too much items. But if you deleted both imprints and prophecies, farming feels kinda ass.

I wish the drop blessings and CoF offered more targeted but still random drop modifiers. prophecies drop so many items that banking on random drops is pointless. I filter them all out mostly.

I also find its too easy to get my gear to a “Good enough” level, but too hard to get it to that next step. going from 1lp to 2lp is a nice grind, but after that its just… nah farming and slamming 3lp is nightmarishly annoying, and needed for nothing, as I cant do uber on the style of builds I end up playing even with 3lp on everything. I just dont play the meta builds.

So even though they added a pinnacle, currently feels like I go grind up to normal abby then go “uhhh what do i even do”

in poe I grind out challenges as my engagement for a league. or try and farm for a rare item. Here getting a red ring is easy enough, even getting a 1lp one is easy enough.

Tbh i feel like we have too much loot frankly.

if I was to want an item like you are suggesting, id rather them just remove fp, but make glyphs and stuff extremely rare. So that you are hunting the materials to power up your item deterministically and its quest to finish your item. Rather then having infinite materials and just fighting dice rolls.

3 Likes
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This is definitely an accurate statement.

You got the process and that very last part, is important. Something I never really do. Which is another reason why we have to much currency. I agree that a lot is too available but in order to sustain value there needs to be endless currency sinks.

No, it would need to be somewhat rare. Similar to a divine drop in PoE. It’s a form of a “Main currency” in a sense that opens up the game and other currency. Obviously a key part is also these items and all currency is tradeable.

Not really. People will still use them as a standard form of progression on existing gear. It’s going to allow you to craft an upgrade and take another chance. Just like people use Divines on somewhat okay gear and take a chance. Anytime a currency can improve your current situation. It become enticing to use.

You will say hey I got a few Runes or Restoration and a bunch of Glyph’s I can do some crafting right now and improve my build. Which will lead to faster farming… Rinse repeat.

Yea they produce to much in terms of items. The only reason taking it away feels bad is because you are ripping the band aid off and there should of never been a band aid to begin with.

Okay so the main issue here is there is nothing in LE that is extremely valuable or even highly valuable where “IF” you find it. You now have enough currency to fund the build you want.

Where if I’m playing PoE 2 and my Loot filter goes crazy because I found an extremely valuable item that is worth 50 Divines. I can now take my build from good enough to that next step.

Realistically LE also has a loot problem which is part of farming but I didn’t want to make the OP even longer so no one wants to even read it. I only touched on it talking about currency which is a lot of it but also LOOT is just not exciting in LE. Which is also super important reason to farm. You keep farming for that dopamine hit when an awesome item or currency drops.

Another way to go about it. I just initially decided to improve the core existing system instead of removing FP. Thanks for reading my OP and asking some good questions.

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I posted about a rune that restores FP not long ago. I am pro choice.

I feel the roll range of FP used per rune is too high, 1 x 20+ and you’re gone because “most” items drop with 35-45FP.

I said imprint nerfing was shit because from every 50 you might get 5 usable items and then you hit some bad rune rolls and you’ve bricked those. Now you’re gonna get 50% less and of those less they will have less affix’s - anyway moving on.

I definitely feel all of this in my soul. It needs changing. I’ll be good with pretty much any idea that allows more FP to an item a bigger chance to craft it and I feel this is even MORE relevant now with imprint drop rate being sliced and diced.

Add a rune or cut the roll range or increase FP drop by a lot to what nem spits out and have nem spit out higher, don’t care anything. Please.

2 Likes
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I don’t mind the idea. But I also get why “restoring” FP is something EHG is cautious about. With how things currently work (the amount of drops and all) crafting really good stuff will become a lot easier.

I’m still in favour for a change in this direction though. Personally I would go about in another way. While corrupting an item is the last step, I wouldn’t mind mechanics to prepare an item and make it ready for the actual crafting. Let’s call it enchantments. Stuff you can do to an item only if it has not been modified in the forge yet.

Stuff like “Enchantment: Forging. Can only be used on an item that has not been crafted on yet. Increases FP by XX to a maximum of YY.” Takes like 100 (or whatever amount) of Runes of Shattering to craft.
Or “Enchantment: Offensive Nature. Can only be used on an item that has not been crafted on yet. Reduces FP cost when forging on offensive affixes and increases the effects of Glyph of Hope when used on offensive affixes.” Takes 500 offensive shards (or whatever amount) to craft.

Stuff like that I wouldn’t mind as well. I think it’s close to EHGs original vision concerning FP and that it strictly limits how much crafting on an item should be possible.

I have been saying that the currency we have (shards, runes) needs to have some additional use for a while now. After like an hour of playtime shards mostly have lost all their value (except a few rare ones) and I think that is a lot of wasted potential.

4 Likes
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Well here’s the thing. Yes and No.

There will now be a path to finally craft really good god tier items. Currently there isn’t one.

I wouldn’t use the word easy as you would need to have all the currency to begin that journey of crafting. It’s not like someone in the campaign will have Runes of Restoration to just start crafting god tier items.

Then if for some reason you were lucky enough to find a Rune of restoration early on you might opt to trade it to people doing massive end game crafts.

So this is creating a form of progression that doesn’t really exist creating a sink and stabilizing the economy for both casuals and seasoned ARPG blasters.

The way I envision it is this new Rune acts like a form of Divine from PoE. The majority of the PoE 2 players base doesn’t have many divines. They find a few in a season and use them to trade to fund builds they casually want to play. (So it’s great for a majority)

While at the same time you now have End game progression where people are using 100’s and 1,000’s of Divines to craft and mirror god tier items then corrupting them.

So it won’t really be easy for most but now a path of progression for both casual and min/max players. Giving ARPG players a reason to farm and stick around. Everyone in the end benefits.

Interesting ideas but do you think this would provide the same result as above?

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Fair. It becomes possible resulting in more ways to aquire good items.

No it wouldn’t. It does make shards and other currency more valuable because it provides a very good use for it. So that is the same.

But it explicitly avoids making an item an infinite canvas for crafting. Not because i think that would be bad for the game (it would have saved me a lot of frustration) but because it is against EHGs design. Mike said so several times on his stream. I guess they don’t want you to find exactly one item of the type you want and never look at another one again because you can just craft on it till it’s perfect. Even if it takes a while. And I can relate to that logic.

My suggestion in front loading all of this keeps the characteristic of finite FP but drastically increases the chances for good outcomes through the use of a big chunk of currency. It makes shard drops (and every other season mechanic currency) valuable again and it also opens up another decision tree. Do I spent all those materials to improve my chances or do I just gamble? Do I wait till I have enough to make it (almost) deterministic even though I would not have enough for the rest of my gear after that?

There is also a lot of finetuning you could do with it as a designer. Type, amount, maybe combinations, season currency, gold, all kind of different currencies could be given more value through a system like that.

And to be honest (though I know that it isn’t an actual argument) I like that LE does stuff differently than PoE. Your idea makes the crafting a lot more like PoEs and I would want to avoid that.

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Okay so then we still have to solve the other issues and I think it’s possible to solve everything in the title overall with this change “IF” implemented correctly.

Well design often changes especially where there is demand and it solves players pain points. I’ve seen a lot of gaming studio’s go from WE ARE NEVER to this is coming out next season.

I thought about this and applied it to PoE 2 where you can infinitely craft on an item and make it perfect. This doesn’t happen you still pick up loot. Of course there are several other factors and PoE is very much gambling.

However there are 2 things with this, if items are valuable players will pick them up no matter what.

Also “Perfect” items isn’t something everyone will have. It’s for the .00001%. To just get 1 perfect item or even attempt it. You won’t have a character with all perfect gear.

The FP system works fine in a sense that it is random, it just lacks a means to do it again. When you introduce Restoration Runes and thus a valuable currency to now utilize and make all existing currency valuable. It solves a lot of problems for new and extreme min/max players.

Making a perfect item is an enormous undertaking removing resources and currency. Now items on the ground have more value. Both in bases to craft on and in affix shards needed to craft.

Oh yea I do too. I play this game and PoE 2. I like some things LE does better however at the same time LE has some very big core issues that PoE/PoE 2 doesn’t have. Which is why retention is so bad and loot is so boring and no reason to farm end game.

I’m not sure if it makes it like PoE since LE has some of the best crafting in any ARPG. However LE has a several loot, farming, currency and end game problem.

I always look forward to playing PoE 2 new season because the loot is so exciting which makes farming exciting. It’s just not exciting to farm in LE or do any of the End game.

PS - ARPG companies steal ideas from each other and iterate on them. I mean Omens are just Breach from PoE. Corrupted items are from PoE. PoE 2 based their end game foundation on the echo type style from LE and improved on it. Goes back and forth. I think that is a good thing because if a system or mechanic is great, then it should be in every game.