Doing low level master quests on high level masters is not worth it!

i am mostly angling this from a gamplay perspective , it is till time played be it on a level 1 character or a level 90.

and those who want to farm masters , will farm masters and they will use the most cheesy method they can imagine to do it.

but that is their choice to play the game in a cheesy grindy way. But i dont think we need to sacrifice the value of master quests for low levels for it.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

GGG lives by the mantra "We make a game that we would want to play".

Honest question... has anyone from GGG gotten anywhere with FM through regular play? No cheats. No help from mysterious "friends". I'd bet not.

What do you mean gotten anywhere?

I like the OP's suggestion. There is indeed little point in doing master quests with lower level chars once you have encountered them in maps.

Also, I don't think it would be a problem if dedicated grinders can level their masters slightly faster (not sure if that would be the case anyways) by leveling new chars instead of chaining tidal over and over again.

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kruemel2222 wrote:

I like the OP's suggestion. There is indeed little point in doing master quests with lower level chars once you have encountered them in maps.

Also, I don't think it would be a problem if dedicated grinders can level their masters slightly faster (not sure if that would be the case anyways) by leveling new chars instead of chaining tidal over and over again.

exactly , we should not be worried about what the grinders are doing , because they will already be using artifical ways to level their masters.

and considering it takes over a million exp points to get level 8s i dont think we should be worried about it that much.

a final point i should make is that when i said 4% that was just a throw out number , one that doesnt have to be consistent through out the levels .

maybe full exp for level 5 is 4% , but full exp for 7 is only 2% and then full exp for level 8 is like .5% .

it is completely scalable to however long ggg wants a particular level threshold to take.

As much as I enjoy 95% of the Forgotten Masters content thus far, I have to agree that the reputation gain disparity as it currently stands is utterly absurd. At present, the only way to level Masters beyond 3 or 4 at all is to do missions on a high level character in Merciless.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

I'm not saying I think the masters are perfect, but I don't agree that a player running maps should get the same rep bonus doing harder content than someone whose running a low level zone.

I fully agree with this. More in response later.

Altoholic that I am, today I was working on a new alt and ran into Haku and Elreon in A1N. When I saw that Haku (currently level 5) gave me ONE POINT of reputation, I thought I must have been mistaken so I screenshotted Elreon's (level 6) pre- and post-mission values. Again, ONE point.



That is, aside from possible favour gains (which as far as I know could be as heavily, stupidly nerfed as reputation), there was zero reason to do these missions other than for variety's sake. No progress towards leveling Masters was made, and that seems ridiculous.

I understand that there are balance issues with giving low-level Masters (who grant easier missions) a large amount of reputation gain. I certainly would support an A1N Master granting 1 point of reputation were I to complete the mission on Fatefletch, who's level 72. But something like 600 rep feels reasonable to me: while Haku and Elreon could be farmed up this way by making tons of low-level alts, it would take at least 3-4 times as many missions (and consequently as much time) as the Tidal Island Master farming in Merciless that's all the rage. Thus, it shouldn't be any more exploitable than taking a 70+ character into A1M to farm (and however much more difficult Merciless missions may be, when you're 12 levels above the zone they're just as trivial, if not more so, than doing Normal missions at level).

For an expansion that was so careful to provide content for beginning and mid-game players, the current state of affairs flies in the face of rationality. Sure, you can level Masters and make progress early on--if it's your first character. Wait, you'd rather explore Normal and Cruel with a wide variety of builds than cheese through missions in A1M? Go fuck yourself.

I'm on a new character since I found a shavs. It does pain me to pass by the masters, knowing that I want to run them, but it's not worth it. I stand by my original statement in regards to a % based system though.

I would like to see something changes, as the above poster noted about how around 600 points could be fair.

I agree with the OP. This probably works out quite well, about the concern this is punishing high level players;
a) the cap could simply stop increasing by the time the max level zones end (i.e. lv ~67), so lv 70, 80, whatever chars don't get reduced exp on maps.
b) High level chars tend to have better clear speeds, and as such have higher chances of finding masters much more quickly as well as finishing their missions much more quickly.
c) As other people stated, some masters simply don't appear until later in the game, so making new chars is inefficent

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Sorry about the OP comment. Am on a phone and didn't look.

In terms of the spice to midgame, I thought it was to help midgame play via crafting, which it did. I'm not saying I think the masters are perfect, but I don't agree that a player running maps should get the same rep bonus doing harder content than someone whose running a low level zone.

... except that it barely does with massive crafting prices. Unless ofc you have tons of currency and gear stacked in your stash, but then you didn't need it in the first place. Adds mostly a nice touch if you already have tons of currency/gear.

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SL4Y3R wrote:

Sorry about the OP comment. Am on a phone and didn't look.

In terms of the spice to midgame, I thought it was to help midgame play via crafting, which it did. I'm not saying I think the masters are perfect, but I don't agree that a player running maps should get the same rep bonus doing harder content than someone whose running a low level zone.

I think maps are already seperated. A master in a 66 map gives more than a master in the upper sceptre and maps can spawn Zana. So mapping is definitly the best thing if you want all 7 masters.

Maps could just give a seperate value right now. If there is a difference in map-level I didn't notice it, they all seem to give similar xp. But right now the best thing is not to do maps nor to use low level chars. The best thing is to use a Merciless zone and run it over and over and since docks is the easiest most rewarding one everyone uses it.

It wouldn't hurt to treat masters like currency-drops. If your char is more than 2 levels above a certain zone it gets a penalty and your level is never considered to be over 68. Maps could simply give a bonus based on the maps IIQ (so you could in theory run terribly hard maps just to search for masters... but it could happen that you have to beat uber-vagan).

Right now one of the best ways is to run clean 66 maps, since this includes Zana and they are easy. Exspecially Tropical Island or Mountain Ledge are really good maps since they have such an easy pattern.

yep , remeber this idea is not set in stone , if you have a concern with my suggestion, voice it and then if you so wish throw out a suggestion to fix it.


for maps , i would assume having zana as an exclusive would have been enough, but we can always tie some exp to map difficulty. like say quality affects master exp or somthing , but that would probably be a balance nightmare considering how easy some builds have it vs others in regards to certain mods.

or we can do what exp does and remove diminishing returns for level 65+ content for people who are 80+ etc. that way high level players can do any 65+ area and get full exp.

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Omega_k2 wrote:

I agree with the OP. This probably works out quite well, about the concern this is punishing high level players;
a) the cap could simply stop increasing by the time the max level zones end (i.e. lv ~67), so lv 70, 80, whatever chars don't get reduced exp on maps.
b) High level chars tend to have better clear speeds, and as such have higher chances of finding masters much more quickly as well as finishing their missions much more quickly.
c) As other people stated, some masters simply don't appear until later in the game, so making new chars is inefficent

"

SL4Y3R wrote:

Sorry about the OP comment. Am on a phone and didn't look.

In terms of the spice to midgame, I thought it was to help midgame play via crafting, which it did. I'm not saying I think the masters are perfect, but I don't agree that a player running maps should get the same rep bonus doing harder content than someone whose running a low level zone.

... except that it barely does with massive crafting prices. Unless ofc you have tons of currency and gear stacked in your stash, but then you didn't need it in the first place. Adds mostly a nice touch if you already have tons of currency/gear.

In terms of efficiency, maps are the last place you want to run masters. Except zana of course. You could have an amazing build at lvl 100 and it would be still be slower.