So, as I understand the system better, if you move from CoF to MG, you keep your progression but lose your current favour. However, when you either find an item with CoF or buy and item with MG, they are tagged with the minimum level of that faction needed to equip it.
And, as I discovered, whilst you keep your faction level progression, its level is not counted if its not your current active faction.
This means you can never equip items from both factions at the same time, because only the active one has a ‘level’ as far as items are concerned.
I’m a swapper from CoF. I deleted tabs of tainted loot. I came into MG pretty much naked. What’s worst, I wasted a very good roll on an untainted 2LP Bleeding Heart as I didn’t know the CoF taint contaminates even through the Julra machine.
In other arpg games the “solo self found” and “trading” game modes are separated in 2 different server realms. The faction system allows you to be able to play in the same realm being able to change the game mode freely without having to level another character, being able within certain limits to benefit from both on the same character and also being able to play with your friends that are in another faction. Obviously you cannot introduce into trading items dropped with the benefits of cof faction and vice versa you cannot play in cof items obtained through trading. This means that instead of being forced to have 2 separate characters you must have 2 separated gear sets, one for each faction.
This in my opinion is a very fresh and smart game design.
Swapping factions is not something you’re intended to regularly interact with. Rather it’s a failsafe. If you chose a faction, find that faction really doesn’t match your playstyle, you don’t have to re-start from scratch with a new character, you ‘can’ swap. You’re not intended to go back and forth.
Honestly, while I understand the way you guys designed it to be a choice between the Cycle experience you wanna have, I do personally feel that being able to spec different characters on different factions without it being a detriment to others (and maybe even having two stashes, one for each faction) would make the overall gameplay experience much nicer.
They can, to a limit. Items which the MG character found, not bought can be equipped by the CoF character. And items the CoF character found that were not influenced by the CoF bonuses can be equipped by the MG character. These limitations are to prevent you from taking advantage of both factions at the same time one one character, making this the necessary way to play.
I’m not sure what you mean here. They aren’t detrimental to each other. I understand there’s more stash organization required if that’s what you’re referring to as a detriment? Of course favour is lost from all characters of that faction when you change a character away from it, which is necessary for changing factions to happen - and again isn’t something you’re intended to do except as a failsafe.
What I mean is (and that’s not criticism, that’s just my personal opinion as a fellow designer): having different characters on different factions and being able to have both playstyles up on different characters allows players to try it out and figure out the gameplay experience they want.
Switching around (and of course having to switch gear and all) to try out new builds or just decide to target farm something cool to a character and then changing back doesn’t really feel to my like it should be a problem at all. It just acts another vector of depth to the game for those who choose to engage with it.
Having switching feel like a punishment disincentivizes players to try out a new playstyle and see if that’s better for them.
1.) if you were allowed to keep equipped gear from the other faction when changing, this would demand that you max both factions to get the best of both worlds and keep changing back and forth to optimize gameplay, and would also require a lot of third party guides on what the strategies are regarding it.
2.) If you were allowed to swap very freely, but not keep equipped gear, this would result in needing to be specific factions for specific parts of leveling, again utilizing third party guides for strategies on this.
The idea for the factions is that you chose the faction for you - and you stick with it. Item Factions should not be related to a build, they should be completely based on your preferred method of item acquisition. Trying different builds shouldn’t be related here.
The cost is low enough, particularly early on, that you can try both at minimal cost. For when you have multiple characters, you should already know what each offers. If it’s your second character, and you try the “other” faction, and end up swapping away from it because you don’t like it - then that faction’s favour getting reset doesn’t really matter as you aren’t intending to use it.
I know, which is why I said that you swap gear, I do NOT want you to keep gear from one faction when you switch to another, maybe I wasn’t clear. I agree with you on that point.
On the second point I’m unsure with the level of investment required to each faction right now if that would even be an issue at all.
And yeah, the cost is low pretty early on, but pretty early on is when both factions aren’t really that great, especially because Favor is slow to get early compared to when you’re Lv 95+ blasting Echoes.
I have multiple 100 characters and have no idea what MG offers to be honest because it would be too much trouble to try it out. Would I like to roll a couple of characters and try it out? Absolutely, but I also think that it would be a detriment to the characters I’m already playing, so I won’t ever touch it this cycle. I personally feel like it would be fun to level a faction again and test the MG, but that would make the game over-all less fun until I reach the end of it and might burn me out because of how it’s designed.
Again, I understand your point, and what I said is the system working exactly as it was intended, it’s just my (again) very personal opinion that there wouldn’t really be as much of an issue as it seems to be free (with gear lockouts and having separate favor counts) run different characters simultaneously on different factions.
In fact I think it would be a plus to the experience if you want to play many alts.
And yeah, it might end up to give optimal gameplay experiences if you know when to change factions and all that, but why is that an issue? It’s depth to the game and it does not take away from focusing on just one or the other. It’s the reward you get from leveling two factions on the cycle instead of just one…
It results in what’s called a “burden of optimal play”. This is a scenario we try to remain very vigilant about in which if there’s a method of play which offers significant bonuses over standard, even if it’s unfun, players will feel the need to do it.
eg. if we introduced weapon swapping, there would be a necessary tactic to have a Last Laugh in your swap to cull bosses (or some similar meta) defeating the true purpose of the mechanic. Respeccing on the fly would create a burden of optimal play in changing skills before bosses to go from AoE to single target, or to swap specific resistances for different content. Not fun mechanics, but because they would be the optimal strategy, people would feel the need to do it.
It’s the same thing with swapping factions - having both maxed to get the best of both worlds would be such a significant advantage that players would feel demanded to max both, and keep swapping between them instead of picking the one that matches their playstyle.
I do understand this scenario, especially when it comes to combat/gameplay optimization I know how bad this can be. It’s one of the reasons I dislike the Ward meta so much. But combat is beyond the point.
Look, it took me around 200 hours of gameplay to max out a faction.
Considering I swapped characters after lv 100 I’d say it should take what? 150hrs to max it out?
So how is spending another 150h to max out a second faction “optimal” than just spending 150h farming for stuff? And even if it was optimal, 300hrs is around the time it takes to beat 2 to 5 AAA single players games. I don’t see how much of an issue that would be if you’re requiring that much of a time investment so you can optimize extra alts beyond that.
Especially when it’s a game tied to Cycles/Seasonal resets. People will eventually optimize progression anyway, on PoE we have league starters just to get early gear and currency to build your actual character later/afterwards. In the end it will not matter in a couple of months and the added depth to the game, especially for people who really want to sink their teeth into it, outweighs the fact that new players might progress slower until they learn more about the inner workings of the game in my opinion. That will always be the case anyway regardless of the factions work in the game.
Regardless, I think this is a matter of personal opinion to me and I don’t want to keep you here discussing design intention. I appreciate a lot you taking the time to talk to me. I’m really glad to have a game with devs so invested in it and present.
