To me, your comment is the perfect example why this solution could work.
Those who are happy to play the RNG lottery and love the feeling of drop-based progression can play CoF.
Those who find the RNG deeply frustrating and want more assurance about getting specific upgrades when they want them can rely on the MGs collective multiplicative drop chance.
And resonance helps everyone who plays primarily with people in the same faction (and just plain everyone on standard cycle where you have plenty of time to rank 10 on both).
I am quite curious about how this would shake out. Speaking entirely hypothetically where do you want the factions item acquisitions to stack up? Like if CoF as a faction overall is getting 100 units of measurement items what amount is a good fit for MG? I know its all up in the air. I guess its easy to tell when/if MG is becoming the optimal way to get items but zero and overpowered is a big margin. Hopefully you get my meaning.
Ideally, they would be identical. Obviously that’s not going to happen. We don’t have a specific maximum acceptable difference that we’ve picked out. It’s going to be more “get it as close as we can with these tools”. Then evaluate how close it is and look to feedback. Then decide if we need to add more tools to get it closer or not. If we do want it closer, add the tools, and go back to the start of this process. Repeat until we are happy.
Cant wait for both of these trade/loot systems to be implemented, on top of your official launch.
The Merchants’ Guild seems like a nice alternative between D3 and PoE style of trade, in terms of what you can and cannot do.
Game’s looking to be excellent!
Can’t wait to see how it progresses in future with new skills for each class and items etc…
I still think open trade is far superior than any other system. I started a new character online to play with friends. Went for the Lightning Shuriken BD, because of the new skill talents and in 50 hours of play got Salt the Wound and Red Ring of Atlaria. I did not see a single Fulgurite Shard and I almost gave up on the character. I got hard stuck. Meanwhile my friends got like 5 of them, two of them being 95%+ rolled. Because there are build defining uniques, there should be open trade. And yeah Salt the Wound and especially Red Ring are very rare items, but alas, I did not care when they dropped. This is not a feeling you should have in an ARPG game.
Before you ask, the reason why they couldn’t item gift any of them was 1st, because we don’t play exclusively at the same time and 2nd party play is so buggy and laggy, it’s a turn off.
Good thing they have stated the resonance system will likely make it in before factions. Bad thing for you is the faction system will(very thankfully) not be the open trade you seek.
Action house systems have always been superior to person-person trading. They are easier and faster to use. The only downside is that they are also easier to flip. Funny thing is, it turned out I never needed the damn daggers anyway xD .
My position was “no trade” or “great trade”, as in I would not have accepted a halfway solution
the solution here seems to be a case of player picks between the two extremes(if the system is properly implemented) Where most of the technicalities are there to stop people from trying to take both choices at once.
I do not know exactly how it will end up in practice, I am more excited about the idea of the system and specifics can allways be adjusted.
Amusingly, I think that if CoF is even half as effective as MG by a statistical analysis, a lot of people will FEEL like it is superior, even if it isn’t.
Assuming items of certain rarity would be classified as a certain type, for ex. ravenous void, bastion, salt the wound, etc. , given the option, that you could trade (offer) your Salt The Wound for a “randomly” unique of the same (rarity) class, would you do it?
It really depends. I have red ring on my new online character and by the numbers it has the same rarity as R.Void and higher than Orion’s eye. If I can trade it for one of the two, probably yes. But if in that pool you add Salt the Wound, Aurora and Bastion, then 100% no.
It’s a good idea on paper, but considering you have so many items in the same “pool” of rarity, it’s kind of whatever. Also does the exchange allow you to get LP? Or can you exhcange an item with lots of LP for another one of the same rarity with the same amount of LP? The balance issues are too many, imo.
I’m sorry but thinking about playing offline as well, the trader’s guild make no sense.
Trading should simply be an enabled feature, a faction open to everyone, no matter what (which would make sense lore-wise as well, the more traders, the better trading) and instead the opposite of the circle of fortune should be some sort of crafter’s guild that gives you bonus (or better chances) when crafting.
That would be a better “choose between two opposite approaches” factions as one should relies more on the sheer luck and increasing your luck in finding good items and the other instead on increasing how much control you have over crafting (or getting better at it? crafting T6/7 at high rank? Just throwing ideas).
I think you may be missing the key issues the new system tries to solve:
Having trade in the game without non trading players being gimped by reduced drop rates
not seperate the player base into different game modes depending on their preferences regarding trade
On paper this system hits these goals very well.
Your suggestion regarding a crafting guild sounds goid, too. And there will be plenty of room for additional guilds in the future, I guess.
But the main problem that EHG tries to solve right now is the union of trade fans and SSF players that got divided by the previous plans to not add any trade besides gifting.
Sorry I’ve been jumping in this game rather recently so I may be missing some previous discussions.
So this is basically a way to “remove” SSF mode and simply have everyone in the same “game mode” (let’s say) but choosing in game, per character, what they prefer.
If that’s correct, I understand and appreciate the solution but it still remain quite a “lukewarm” solution on the “trader” aspect as… what is being actually traded? Gold for Items? Affixes?
That would only bring prices up to astronomical prices when enough time has passed and discourage new players from using the system at all as players that play since longer (either longer overall or for the season) will clearly have plenty more gold.
Why anyone would choose a trader guild that is influenced by things like that, instead of going for the one that simply gives you more control over your own experience, without any impact from the other players?
That’s why I was suggesting a “crafter” guild of sort opposed to the “lucky drop” one. That, yes, would give a real “alternative” to how you want to have agency in your own playthrough with that character.
However, I can see the trading being quite a pickle to deal with. After all, trading is still another source of drops, and a deterministic at that (you chose specifically what you want) but how to regulate that, that is a very good question. But imho, it shouldn’t be something that lock you off from something else.
I understand that games like these, especially if it has a GaaS part (the online mode) require to generate engagement with the players to drive them to the microtransaction to compensate for the expenses of the infrastructure but still, this approach take doesn’t really feel good towards the player and should be better thought through.
Which is your opinion & fair enough. In my opinion, giving the player the option to choose whether they want to trade or have better RNG drops (given that those two camps appear to be by far the most common two stances in the argumentative threads) is a quite elegant solution to the “we want to add trade but not nerf the shit out of non-trade players drops” conundrum.
Granted, ssf-ers don’t really get much of a choice, but that’s kinda aelf-inflicted and this way doesn’t fuck them over since they can choose CoF and have better drops (as against better crafting on suckier drops).
Yes, it really is and I think EHG’s idea on paper solves it quite well. We’ll have to see how it works though.
