Mark me as seriously impressed. I’m glad you guys came around on the option of giving players the freedom of choice in how to play the game, rather than compromising in a way that would left a sizeable chunk of your player base in the lurch. I was decidedly in the Trade camp and tbh I had lost interest in Last Epoch as a serious ARPG when I heard that Gifting was going to be the extent of trading in the game. My faith was largely restored when EHG put out that wonderfully extensive Trade Survey as I knew then from the structure of the survey that EHG was taking our feedback on the issue very seriously.
But now… With this new Factions system… I’m once again very excited about this game and I think I’m honestly most excited to explore BOTH factions to see which one I actually enjoy the most.
I don’t understand at all. The stuff you get from (the bazaar) being MG would instantly become unusable when you switched and the stuff you found would be more plentiful if you had just started as CoF in the first place.
There is no efficiency gain to be had by switching.
Right, ok – yes. I suppose then I’d need to revise my proposal to have 3 buckets – SSF, Non-trade, and Trade.
In SSF you can’t group and can’t trade – truly solo. In Non-trade and trade you can group together between them but can’t trade between them. And just do the simple item gifting thing for non-trade – they can gift some items but not access the bazaar or outright trade.
This will lead to 3rd party gear boosting services, for sure (in non-trade) – but that will happen no matter what if item gifting is in the game, which everyone seems to agree is a good thing.
Yea, there we go, same page! As soon as we opened up multiplayer, RMT was possible. It’s going to be an ongoing situation to navigate and we have plans to contain it.
Yea, ultra late cycle going real hard, this could be something you try out I guess. I think you’ll find that it won’t work but I’ll be keeping an eye out.
I love this solution and or idea of how to handle this stuff, very excited to participate and help balance in anyway.
I just want to echo that I hope the tag idea is implemented, so as not to fragment the community more than absolutely necessary. When PoE went to SSF and all that, and started balancing away from the trade leagues, it hit hardcore-trade especially hard. I am or was biased because that was my prefered way to play ( infairness trade hardcore and trade standard were the only game modes when the game was created …) so I am hoping that LE always sticks to designing around whatever base mode it is, and then there are special election modes for whatever people want to do, since of course you could ON THE HONOR CODE play SSF inside the normal league if you wanted, since of course SSF is just a self imposed challenge anyways, but if the game was SSF there is no way to trade ever.
Very much looking forward to this, I think this sounds like a really elegant solution, but of course the devil is in the details.
Wow what great plans you have! I am personally will be with CoF but it is good that there’s going to be an option for those who love trading. I liked how you intertwined the Faction system into this.
So as I get it - the droprates for MG will be drastically lower while for CoF they will be higher (or same as now?) ?
That’s not solo/ssf though. None of the above changes what solo/ssf means. Mike even said (several times) that since you can’t trade while solo/ssf that choosing MG for solo/ssf will ge kinda pointless.
I almost feel like you’re not using LE’s useage of solo (ssf) but you mean “a normal character that just isn’t in a party”. That’s not what Solo means in LE.
Yes, but if a player chooses CoF then they get better drop rates with higher ranks, and a player that chooses MG gets faster gear acquisition via trade, so both have different ways to mitigate the lower drop rates depending on how the player prefers to do that (trade or better drop rates).
That’s one way of viewing it. Another is that it should appeal to two fairly broad sets of players (those who wish to trade as well as those who don’t) and the likely small set of players who wish to swap between the two.
Better drops and the ability to target farm stuff more effectively.
But then the ssf players wouldn’t be ssf. The clue is in the name - solo self found.
There needs to be an achievement for this, with another one for doing it in Masochist.
Let me see if I understand the account wide progression:
Example 1:
On the permanent non-cycle environment:
I have an MG Bladedancer with faction level 2
I have a CoF Necromancer with faction level 4.
Cycle 1 starts:
I have an MG Druid with faction level 2.
I create an MG Paladin and continue playing with this character.
Since progression is account wide, by the end of the cycle my Druid has faction level 4 (although I didn’t play him further) and my paladin is level 2 (because he missed the faction progression at the beginning of the cycle?).
Cycle ends and my cycle characters are transferred to the permanent non-cycle environment:
I have an MG Bladedancer with faction level 2 (he does not benefit from cycle faction progression, correct?)
I have a CoF Necromancer with faction level 4
I have an MG Druid with faction level 4
I have an MG Paladin with faction level 2
If i now continue playing with my latest Paladin all my 3 MG characters will progress with their faction level.
Example 2:
On the permanent non-cycle environment:
I have an MG Bladedancer with faction level 2
I have a CoF Necromancer with faction level 4.
Cycle 1 starts:
I have an MG Druid with faction level 2.
I create a CoF Paladin and continue playing with this character and level him to 3.
Cycle ends and my cycle characters are transferred to the permanent non-cycle environment:
I have an MG Bladedancer with faction level 2
I have a CoF Necromancer with faction level 4
I have an MG Druid with faction level 4
I have an MG Paladin with faction level 3
If i now continue playing with my latest Paladin, only my 2 CoF characters will progress with their faction level.
I imagine two exp bars, one for CoF and one for MG for each cycle. You level these bars up by playing as either faction. These bars are shared between all characters for that cycle. Not sure how it’ll interact with the standard cycle however if it adds the experience back at a reduced rate, or just takes whichever bar is higher.
While I’m happy with the addition of the resonance item, I think one thing the factions could have at a higher rank would be to add 2-5 friends that are on your friend list for more than a week or something to have free trade with them, instead of having to find an item to trade items with.
My friends can’t play as much as I do so I normally find good items for them but even with the resonance item i’d still be quite limited to what i can give them. I suppose it depends on how rare that resonance item is.
