I’ve recently started a new SSF character on Veteran, and completely explored every corner of the map, completed every quest, and killed every single enemy at least once.
By the end of it, Devil’s Crossing still hasn’t reached Honored reputation. Which means I can’t even go to Hargate unless I:
Repeat farm areas (which makes no sense in Veteran)
Start taking bounties (which are not fun)
The result? I started the game on Elite until I got to Honored, and only then could I go one difficulty back to Veteran to actually complete the Hargate quest (and the follow-up quest when you reach Malmouth).
I know, I know… I’m a hopeless completionist. But I’m not the only one.
I find it a bit silly that the character’s very first home town is harder to gain rep for than other factions. I’m not even aiming for Revered! It would be nice if we could just reach Honored a little easier with Devil’s Crossing.
Of course this is related to another problem: having more areas with Cronley’s members to kill. But creating new areas is a LOT more work than to boost the faction’s reputation gain.
Yeah, Darius and his glorified crew are really a big problem.
I agree with just granting DC quests a flat increase in faction rep. But, also request Crate to consider addressing some issues with the Cronley faction.
Yes, DC needs something like 25% more rep in the early stages. Some of the Act 1 quests give very little rep and could reasonably be boosted. Another option could be to unlock the Homestead food quest at Respected rather than Honoured, as that gives a ton of rep with DC. Of course, it would leave Homestead without an Honoured-only quest, which all other factions have.
This makes me wonder, does Homestead even have a Respected rep quest? IIRC, all the factions have 1 quest at both Respected and Honored rep.
EDIT:
No fucking shot, I never noticed this but the allied factions only have quests at Honored rep. Several factions lack Friendly-rep quests and some even lack Respected-rep quests.
I am already counting that quest in the OP. Even with that huge reputation boost from that quest, you can’t reach Honored with DC without repeating areas (or transferring merits ofc)
Hmm. You’re right. So really the earlier DC quests need to give more rep. The quest to kill Viloth is a prime example as it is somewhat dangerous, saves everyone in DC from dying of thirst, and currently gives (iirc) a measly 150 rep.
With mandates it feels totally fine to me. Without mandates, well, the first time is always rough. I don’t think it particularly needs changing since mandates are intended to be used for most people playing multiple builds.
It’d help if bounties were a bit improved.
That being said, a bit more juice to the campaign quest repn rewards would be nice. Rn it feels like you have to pause your campaign progress quite a bit on non mandate characters if you want to grind rep for the honored faction gear.
Right, my point is the game isn’t really balanced around SSF players. The intent is that it is slower the first time, and then most players will use mandates.
I’m just giving my opinion. I do agree that it’d be nice to hit honor sooner though, because I’ve usually leveled and geared past the honored gear by the time I hit it on my SSF runs.
I think the game is balanced for both speed-levelling and SSF. One is quick and streamlined, the other is slower and has a lot of niggles and hurdles. That’s not a problem - the niggles and hurdles are the whole point.
Certainly, no one wants the SSF experience to be radically quicker and easier. That would defeat the purpose. However, there are some points where it could be better tuned and I think DC rep is one of them.
Uh, that’s fair. Like certainly they added a lot to make the game SSF friendly. My point is more that the assumption is the majority of players will not limit themselves to SSF so stuff that affects both SSF and not-SSF I think are typically designed around not-SSF, like rep gain.
None of this is to say it couldn’t use a bump. Rep grind is probably my least favorite grind in the game. The people using Mandates clearly want it to be faster too lol.
What do you think about just improving the bounty rewards and consistency as an alternative? I made a thread about it. My problem with bounties is many of them feel barely worth it as opposed to just speedrunning an area for kills, and some of them are flat-out not worth the time.
That depends on how you define the “majority of players”. If you go purely on statistics, and check the steam achievements to see how many players even beat the Loghorrean (currently 27.8%), then the majority are brand new players that didn’t use mandates.
And when it comes to reputation progression, there’s no difference between a brand new player and an SSF player. And in that sense, the game is balanced for newcomers, of course it has to be; it’s in Crate’s best interest, otherwise everyone would quit even earlier and ask for a refund
Improving bounties would be nice but it’s beside the point. Requiring bounties to unlock main faction quests doesn’t make much sense imo. The baseline DC reputation gain is still too low.
Just take Malmouth resistance as a counter-example:
By the exact time you reach the Crown Hill rift, boom Respected reputation, Blackiron Docks quest unlocked.
By the exact time you slay the Shaper of flesh, boom Honored reputation, High Council quest unlocked.
This is without mandates and with zero bounties. Crate streamlined the reputation gain for Malmouth perfectly! If only Devil’s Crossing got the same treatment.
As someone who just levels character after character, I can agree with the original point. Devil’s crossing just simply lags behind all the other factions by a significant margin. I’ve never really bothered raising any fuss about it, but it would be nice to have it grow a bit more with the available quests, if simply to make use of the faction equipment at the relevant level.
Relevant conversation from yesterday. Personally I would’ve been fine if Cronley’s Hideout scaled with level so you could farm it even at level 60. Friendly reputation is very easy now with the altar except for DC cause there’s just no meaningful way to farm it (Staunton mine only has one boss and no density).
I ended up not even trying to hit honored and just used legion gear instead
I saw that thread. I don’t have strong opinions about the actual bounty quests themselves (they’re kind of dull, but heh). I think the trouble with bounties is that they are least rewarding in normal/veteran, when they are most needed. If the normal/veteran rewards were the same as in ultimate they would indeed help with this DC issue.
That would be helpful anyway, so that we could refarm their MIs at that level.
To add to this, I personally don’t believe that bounties should be the solution to rep farming. You don’t need to do bounties for the Coven, Barrowholm, Homestead, Rhowari, Cult of the Three. You can comfortably reach Honored rep or get pretty close ot it for all these factions on the same difficulty without mandates.
Malmouth Resistance and Black Legion are a little slower but their rep gain is still not as bad as Devil’s Crossing rep because later parts of Malmouth are teeming with Aetherial horrors.
As others have stated, the DC quests should get a reputation buff.
I feel like I need to elaborate - that post of mine was a joke. Cronley is an early boss against a relatively low-level player who doesn’t have access to many, MANY MIs or augments yet to adapt the build to him.
I could see a slight rework, on the grounds of his only real mechanic being a damage reduction buff. But Shattered Cronley would be terrible for a zone this early.
