renown is a VERY bad idea

very poorly thought out.....

Only 3 ranks probably means each rank is an extremely "powerful" multiplier. Plus the idea of being FORCED to play the mechanic or else you get punished is feelsbadhuge. This idea of "infamous" is also very bad.....it essentially tells us that 90% or more of all mercenaries are going to be....useless encounters, because the possibility of an infamous encounter exists.

The most hated mechanics in PoE are mechanics that feel "forced" on us (see: lantern of Arimor). And they introduce another one? *Ed: I guess you can still COMPLETELY ignore them without penalty, which is better than Lantern but still pretty feelsbadman.


I already had low hopes for Trarthus, and its getting even worse...

It is 3 ranks, it is not that many times, if you are ignoring it anways, why would you care. That is definetly not forced upon you.

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Light9#5461 wrote:

It is 3 ranks, it is not that many times, if you are ignoring it anways, why would you care. That is definetly not forced upon you.

It is 100% forced on you if you get punished for not interacting with it. That is what "forced" means.

Punished for failing is fine. Punished for choosing not to interact is a problem.

Three ranks doesn't matter: less ranks means likely more effect per rank (as I said), which also means a greater proportional punishment for skipping.

Think about Ultimatum: try something thats too difficult and fail, and you lose the drops. But decide to leave because you KNOW it'll be too hard, and you keep what you had. THAT is an "unforced" mechanic.

"oh noooo I actually have to commit 3 times in a row, how dare they make me put in some work for extra rewards" *baby noises*

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Draethorian123#0716 wrote:

"oh noooo I actually have to commit 3 times in a row, how dare they make me put in some work for extra rewards" *baby noises*

When you don't have to do that for any other mechanic in the game....yes its a problem.

The entire "point" of PoE is to not be forced into things. And ideally, your decision to engage is based on your knowledge of your build.....NOT luck. I compared it to Arimor: at least with Arimor, even though we were forced into it, we could customize the encounters a bit.

And you don't understand the difference here: they crafted a mechanic that ultimately WILL make anything sub-3 renown completely and utterly useless, AND at the same time not allow you to even look at the mechanic before committing. That turns it into a necessary 100% luck-based system. It removes the decision.

It's not a matter of "committing"....its just plain bad design. There's no reason for it to exist, except for the sole purpose of making the baseline rewards bad by comparison and forcing a new lottery on you.

It keeps people from instance farming for perfect mercs.

It's a good way to incentivize players to actually kill mercs the find rather than reloading the zone over and over to get a good merc.

This is a good thing.

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Draethorian123#0716 wrote:

"oh noooo I actually have to commit 3 times in a row, how dare they make me put in some work for extra rewards" *baby noises*

Imagine, if you would, that the valuable beasts in Bestiary won't spawn unless you capture bad ones, and failing to capture any (as in you forgot them in the map) will result in taking away from that. Imagine if currency strongboxes only spawn if you open up garbage ones, and not opening them takes away from the amount opened. Imagine if Mageblood cards only drop if you pick up more bad cards, and leaving any behind will take that away. Imagine if valuable Legion spawns depend on how many non-rewarding troops you break out in prior encounters. Imagine if Tujen or Dannig only spawn in Expedition if you can bother to deal with Gwennen or Rog.

If any of that sounds bad, congrats, you're beginning to understand why renown sounds like a bad idea for mercs.

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Prizy#1622 wrote:

It keeps people from instance farming for perfect mercs.

lol no......no it doesn't. The implementation of "one mercenary per area, regardless of instance" (which they COULD have done) stops instance farming. Renown doesn't do any of the things you describe.

Additionally, you can STILL instance-farm in the current system as long as you don't actually CLICK on the mercenary. You can still see their name and that nice fancy gold border (at least as far as I'm aware). Nice try though.

Yes it does, if its one per instance you just spam instances if it doesn't have a negative.

I don't think its a very elegant solution but it is a solution, basically you have to chain engage with the mechanic to be able to find the better rewards and if you try to scumbag it it doesn't work.

But it also doesn't take long to get back if you scuff it or just decide not to do it for a while.

Its OK as i say, inelegant but it'll do.

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Draegnarrr#2823 wrote:

Yes it does, if its one per instance you just spam instances if it doesn't have a negative.

I don't think its a very elegant solution but it is a solution, basically you have to chain engage with the mechanic to be able to find the better rewards and if you try to scumbag it it doesn't work.

But it also doesn't take long to get back if you scuff it or just decide not to do it for a while.

Its OK as i say, inelegant but it'll do.

"Backing out means that you speak to a Mercenary, view their gear and skills, then walk away and never fight that Mercenary"

You can STILL instance farm. Renown doesn't tackle this problem well at all. You just need to spot the name. And you even can see the class too.

The only thing renown does is force you to take fights and get "rewards" that are totally meaningless. It also punishes luck if you get hit with the perfect counter to your build that you literally can't back out of.



If combating instance farming was truly their goal, they could have easily set an area timer on mercenaries. They've done this with events many many times in the past. While event timers were server-wide everyone-gets-the-same, I bet its not hard to simply program something that says "New random mercenary in area after 15 minutes; mercenary stays the same for all instances within 15 minutes". Bam: instance spamming solved without forcing needless content on us.