Remove Kingsmarch as a core mechanic

The FOMO is still real. I was going to ignore Kingsmarch entirely this league but then gold farm groups ended up being way cheaper/better than I expected and I did it anyways. Mappers are more rewarding than ever because of the economy and crop shipping is as good as always.

Streamers are demanding that Kingsmarch be nerfed until it's worthless but it's playing a huge part in extending game play times in a game where leagues are going to get shorter and shorter every season now because of asynch trade. If GGG caves and removes Kingsmarch from relevancy the mapping and endgame meta has to be absolutely flawless or leagues aren't going to last a week anymore.

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DiabloImmoral#7632 wrote:

The FOMO is still real. I was going to ignore Kingsmarch entirely this league but then gold farm groups ended up being way cheaper/better than I expected and I did it anyways. Mappers are more rewarding than ever because of the economy and crop shipping is as good as always.

Streamers are demanding that Kingsmarch be nerfed until it's worthless but it's playing a huge part in extending game play times in a game where leagues are going to get shorter and shorter every season now because of asynch trade. If GGG caves and removes Kingsmarch from relevancy the mapping and endgame meta has to be absolutely flawless or leagues aren't going to last a week anymore.

They could also release a classic Expedition-style balance patch, one that reins in power creep and restores a higher baseline difficulty to the game. With trading now easier than ever and player power skyrocketing as a result, the core experience has slipped into being far too forgiving. By raising the base difficulty ceiling and dialing back player strength, you end up with a league that naturally stays engaging for much longer, even with how absurdly convenient trading has become.

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DiabloImmoral#7632 wrote:

The FOMO is still real. I was going to ignore Kingsmarch entirely this league but then gold farm groups ended up being way cheaper/better than I expected and I did it anyways. Mappers are more rewarding than ever because of the economy and crop shipping is as good as always.

Streamers are demanding that Kingsmarch be nerfed until it's worthless but it's playing a huge part in extending game play times in a game where leagues are going to get shorter and shorter every season now because of asynch trade. If GGG caves and removes Kingsmarch from relevancy the mapping and endgame meta has to be absolutely flawless or leagues aren't going to last a week anymore.

Leagues are getting shorter because of how stale and boring endgame actually is.

The atlas tree released in 3.17 which was nearly FOUR YEARS AGO! And it barely saw any changes over that time. They added and removed clusters and keystones here or there. Buffed some nodes, nerfed some others. But overall, very little has changed with this system and it's pretty much always the same - endgame farm strategy is one league mechanic and ALL map modifier effect, quantity, rarity and scarab drop rate nodes. You only spend a third of your points into the actual farm, and remainder lands in throwaway garbage nodes. And it's the same fucking old mechanics every god damn time, even though so many leagues passed away since this system was introduced.

-Sentinel - 8% chance for random thing, no support at all
-Kalandra - gives completely useless shit 99% of the time. Itemized reflection drops once per league. Literally, I dropped 1 in Settlers and 1 in Mercs.
-Sanctum - this is a proper mechanic, but still has ZERO support on Atlas
-Crucible - gone from the game
-TOTA - gone from the game
-Affliction - 8% chance to spawn, zero support on Atlas
-Necropolis - lol fuck that one
-Settlers - proper mechanic with Atlas tree support, did they finally woke up?
-Mercs - Will go core sometime (?), I don't expect tree support for this.
-Breach - gone from the tree as this is "current" mechanic.

Legacy of Phrecia was finally a decent change of pace, where endgame strats focused on juicing LEAGUE MECHANIC instead of plain quant numbers to retarded levels. Too bad Settlers was so long and it didn't really had the draw of actual new league.

Agreed, I dont think anyone I know wanted kingsmarch to go core and all were shocked when it did.
Ill just stop playing if kingsmarch stays core and return whenever its removed. Tired of doing this tedious mechanic for 3 leagues in a row, and one of those leagues being a year long.

Why bother with micromanagement?
Just hire farmers and dusters and then ignore the whole thing until you can yolo send out a max ship.

You mean remove the recombinator? Are you barking mad?

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Spacecom#5362 wrote:

You mean remove the recombinator? Are you barking mad?

recomb isn't inherently kingsmarch thing. It's a resurrect from Sentinel league.

they can easily axe kingsmarch and make recomb to run on accordingly larger gold amounts.

Its not a dark pattern like some guy said.

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Woong621#1892 wrote:

Why is Kingsmarch a bad mechanic?


2. Upkeep & time-sinking - I am not looking forward to waking up and going to Kingsmarch to check my mappers and boats and send out new ones. I am playing an ARPG, not a mobile game.

4. Accessibility - I can see Kingsmarch being a decent mechanic for casual players, but I don't see how casual players that play 1-2 hours a day can get enough gold to manage a maxed out town?

2. FOMO mechanic as mentioned by chris is a dark pattern and i agree. this is why i say settlers is both the best and worst thing to hit poe.

on one hand casuals can earn a few divs a day if they collect enough gold

i have no solution/suggestion for this. its either keep it in or remove it, tho its unlikely to be removed. perhaps consider treating it as a mechanic to ignore if you dont like it too much.

4. true. back in settlers league a huge lot of casuals mention how they dont get enough gold. this was met with a lot of pushback from "better players".

based of memory, running a t16 map alc and go could give between 3-25k gold per run. but if you juiced it it could jump up to 30-50k minimum. if you ran juiced t17s it could give 100k ish or so.

the better players usually had over abundance hence they always were at odds with anyone saying theres not enough gold. while the casuals on the opposite end. theyre right from their perspective. but their opinions definitely fail to reflect the experiences of more casual players.

to me the best compromise is to make everything "non mapping" use significantly lower amount of gold, while mappers use gold at a more obscene amount.

weak players struggle with gold to run basic stuff and would naturally avoid using map runners.

better players would run everything and have enough excess gold that they can comfortably run map runners.

this way gold amount doesnt need to be tweaked.

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Piousqd#0073 wrote:

Just curious, has GGG ever removed a mechanic from core, after making it core?

prophecy, perandus, metamorph

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exsea#1724 wrote:

prophecy, perandus, metamorph

All three of those mechanics are fairly simple systems that just haven’t aged well at all. If I recall correctly, even GGG said that Metamorph, while nice on paper, ended up getting removed because it simply wasn’t interesting enough and was a pain to balance. The body parts were utterly useless, not engaging, and the whole thing just felt outdated.

Kingsmarch actually brings quite a lot to the table. It brought recombinators back into the game, which is great for crafting. It added Mappers, which are incredibly handy for running all your unwanted maps, something that used to be a real pain if you wanted to get rid of them through trading. Before the new trade system, selling unwanted maps was tedious, slow, and frustrating, and not everyone wants to bother with third-party crap like TFT just to bulk-sell maps to flipping bots in one click. That whole workaround really shouldn’t even need to exist. Having an in-game alternative as simple as letting your Kingsmarch map runners clear the maps for you is just far easier and way more convenient. On top of that, the new currency exchange and trade system have fixed the old, faulty trading process. It’s made TFT even more useless, and hopefully over time GGG finds a way to shut it down entirely. Who knows.

Kingsmarch being added to core also introduced gold to the main game, which enabled a bunch of QoL features. Being able to respec your passive tree with gold is extremely helpful early on, especially after finishing the campaign when you’re starving for regret orbs. Without gold as a proper sink, the new trade system clearly wouldn’t exist at all. A lot of the good changes we have now exist because gold became a core currency, and that’s all thanks to Kingsmarch. Even the last league with mercs showed that GGG is all in on exploring further uses for gold as a resource. Without Kingsmarch, there’s no gold, so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. If anything, they’ll likely keep adding new things to it or tweak some numbers here and there. Overall, nothing drastic like a full removal is likely.

The ship mechanic is also a nice addition. It brings back items like tattoos or grafts without adding even more loot vomit to the core game, since you can specifically target what you want. Ships being a decent passive income is just a natural part of engaging with the system. It’s neither good nor bad, it’s just how it works while you keep your gold flowing.

Overall, Kingsmarch delivers far more depth, utility, and QoL improvements than those older mechanics that got removed, and honestly, it’s a clear upgrade over systems that simply didn’t keep up with the game.