TOPIC: Safehold Program Details - Feedback Please!

Powerblade3 wrote:

Jeff Martin wrote:

Greg wrote: At level 3, people seem to like the flavor of the followers, but not the potential creep of lots of slot expansion. Perhaps these could instead be focused more on negating hindrances, so that safeholders don’t need to equip a token to avoid their least favorite effect. This would potentially free up, say, a bead for people who like to have free movement or ignore 50% miss chances, but without just straight up giving a 4th bead that could be used to pile on more stats. Options for followers might be

Free movement
Evasion
Ignore 50% miss chance for ethereal
Ignore underwater hindrances
Immune to charm and possession
See invisibility
Immune to retribution (like shirt of shielding)
Limited flight (strike a flying enemy with melee 1/room like fizzy lifting or charm of the faerie)
Sustain without air (like iridescent spindle)

Thanks for the detailed feedback! This was the original idea, but they all seemed to corner-case to me. It would be really disappointing to hardly ever "use" a Follower token while adventuring. I wanted a power that was different than an effect you can get on another Rare token and that was useful during every adventure.

Hey Jeff, I like the idea of having an improving single follower, but perhaps some of the previous suggestions from people were too complicated. Instead, what if the follower gave like a "splash" of another class? It could be as simple as a small, always useful bonus each for Safehold V and IV (like +1 to hit and damage in melee for a Fighter follower) that could slightly improve from V to IV (or add a different bonus) and then a small class feature for Safehold III (like a lesser weapon specialization for Fighter, that allows 1 reslide per game, or 1 flank per game for follower Rogue, etc). The specifics or bonuses could be tweaked up or down, but I thought that this could strike a balance between a smooth and easy design, small always useful bonuses, and a splash of a class feature for something different than a normal Rare token.

+1 I like this concept a lot, as a nice toned down version of what was originally suggested. I would love to see a follower grow in whatever way.

Allen John wrote:

Cassie wrote: My thoughts as they stand (prices are combined with under construction)
-Safehold 5 (SH5) should ideally cost about $100-125 to craft. Somewhere around the price of a 4 star.

That is *way* overshooting the cost of a 4 star. I just submitted an order for a Ring of Sirenbane yesterday (so I know the recipe off-hand), and glancing at Kirk's website, it would cost me a total of $39 to buy all of the components for it at "full retail".

That said, I have no idea where this whole "approachable to new players" thing came from. I'm pretty sure that was never part of the original proposal, only "lots of people will be able to take part", which is very much the same thing. I got excited by the concept of Safeholds knowing full well I'd never own one (it took me over a year to assemble the materials for just the aforementioned Ring of Sirenbane), and this isn't too far off the cost I was expecting for Safehold V.

My pricing of 4 stars is poor 😆 but I still think my pricing structure is solid.

As to the "approachable for new players" I feel like it's just good design sense and something this system sorely needs. It helps offload some of the creep between tiers of play and brings something that even casual players can at least get started in and maybe get them thinking of upgrading it in the future without leaving them out entire. I don't like the idea of nearly the entire design of this being something only people who craft legendary tokens being able to afford (and I say that as someone who does)

Jeff & Company, thanks for putting so much work into such a detailed Safehold proposal! While I'm a bit concerned about what happens when someone decked out with Mythic tokens adventures with a regular party, that concern was already there for someone fully decked out in Legendary/Eldritch/Arcanum tokens. I can see how much effort and thought went into the Safehold design, and I really appreciate it! Thanks also for seeking community feedback and considering all feedback and incorporating much of it.

Matthew Hayward wrote:

Iross wrote: It might also be good to get a clear understanding from TPTB whether this is a conscious decision to have an insurmountable gap in power level between those who invest in safeholds and those who don't, since that's most certainly what the outcome will be of the program currently proposed. +1 to having a very general idea of the costs of the higher level safeholds, it's hard to have a concrete view on this without that knowledge.

This is a weird take to me.

There is an insurmountable power gap between players who play with their token 10-pack and players who've invested in many good rares in many slots.

This gap is not even remotely close to insurmountable. Those players can easily run Normal together as is, and/or loan (or even just give) a couple of helpful rares to the single 10-pack players. And it's easy and natural for single 10-pack players to acquire good rares over time. I played for 6 years (2011-2016) before I ever bought a token.

There is an insurmountable power gap between players with good rares and players who have invested in many Ultra Rares maybe a choice Relic or two.

This one is harder, and the reason why we will always need clear differentiation between HC and NM+ difficulty levels, but it's still not insurmountable. I first started playing NM with my own rares plus borrowing a few URs, and it worked out great and encouraged me to gradually start collecting my own URs.

There is an insurmountable power gap between players with many Ultra Rares and a Relic or two and players who have invested in 10+ Legendary and/or Eldritch Relic tokens.

Again, not insurmountable. These groups can have fun adventuring together, either as is or by loaning a token or two. And if you're in the mostly-UR group but really aspire to one particular legendary, you can save up and get just that one without having to get 10+ of them.

Safeholds are different; the power increase being proposed here is multiplicative, adding a significant number of extra slots which each go from zero to a quite powerful token as opposed to just incrementally increasing the power of one existing slotted token at a time from rare to UR to relic to legendary to legendary+, and to make matters worse the tokens in question can't even be loaned on a run unless the lender also owns extra Safeholds.

So IMO there truly will be an insurmountable power gap between players with and without advanced Safeholds, in the sense that the only way those groups can run together enjoyably is to not equip any of the tokens that depend on Safeholds.

The salient analogy is not bringing your Epic-level build to a Normal or Hardcore difficulty run, except now it's not just those difficulty levels that will be impacted; we're going to be talking about not bringing your Safehold build to an Epic run because it's too broken.

Azzy wrote: full-party benefits. If you have a big fancy proper castle, then you're a big proper fancy leader as well, right?

I'll add a big +1 to all the recent suggestions of full-party benefits, quoting Azzy's particularly choice turn of phrase.

Widseth's is super powerful, but everybody loves it because it helps _everybody_. I would feel totally different (much better) about the entire idea if it were focused on party buffs.

Impy wrote:

Powerblade3 wrote:

Jeff Martin wrote:

Greg wrote: At level 3, people seem to like the flavor of the followers, but not the potential creep of lots of slot expansion. Perhaps these could instead be focused more on negating hindrances, so that safeholders don’t need to equip a token to avoid their least favorite effect. This would potentially free up, say, a bead for people who like to have free movement or ignore 50% miss chances, but without just straight up giving a 4th bead that could be used to pile on more stats. Options for followers might be

Free movement
Evasion
Ignore 50% miss chance for ethereal
Ignore underwater hindrances
Immune to charm and possession
See invisibility
Immune to retribution (like shirt of shielding)
Limited flight (strike a flying enemy with melee 1/room like fizzy lifting or charm of the faerie)
Sustain without air (like iridescent spindle)

Thanks for the detailed feedback! This was the original idea, but they all seemed to corner-case to me. It would be really disappointing to hardly ever "use" a Follower token while adventuring. I wanted a power that was different than an effect you can get on another Rare token and that was useful during every adventure.

Hey Jeff, I like the idea of having an improving single follower, but perhaps some of the previous suggestions from people were too complicated. Instead, what if the follower gave like a "splash" of another class? It could be as simple as a small, always useful bonus each for Safehold V and IV (like +1 to hit and damage in melee for a Fighter follower) that could slightly improve from V to IV (or add a different bonus) and then a small class feature for Safehold III (like a lesser weapon specialization for Fighter, that allows 1 reslide per game, or 1 flank per game for follower Rogue, etc). The specifics or bonuses could be tweaked up or down, but I thought that this could strike a balance between a smooth and easy design, small always useful bonuses, and a splash of a class feature for something different than a normal Rare token.

+1 I like this concept a lot, as a nice toned down version of what was originally suggested. I would love to see a follower grow in whatever way.

I'll full on +1 whatever gets a single follower and keeps things somewhat constrained. Could think of it as a 4* follower, Relic Follower, and Legendary follower type setup with 3 FoP type powers. A simplified cleric could be:

Safehold V
Bless (1/game)

Safehold IV
Bless (1/game)
Restore Spell (1/game)

Safehold III
Bless (1/game)
Restore Spell (1/game)
Heal 20 (1/game)

Endgame wrote:

Impy wrote:

Powerblade3 wrote:

Jeff Martin wrote:

Greg wrote: At level 3, people seem to like the flavor of the followers, but not the potential creep of lots of slot expansion. Perhaps these could instead be focused more on negating hindrances, so that safeholders don’t need to equip a token to avoid their least favorite effect. This would potentially free up, say, a bead for people who like to have free movement or ignore 50% miss chances, but without just straight up giving a 4th bead that could be used to pile on more stats. Options for followers might be

Free movement
Evasion
Ignore 50% miss chance for ethereal
Ignore underwater hindrances
Immune to charm and possession
See invisibility
Immune to retribution (like shirt of shielding)
Limited flight (strike a flying enemy with melee 1/room like fizzy lifting or charm of the faerie)
Sustain without air (like iridescent spindle)

Thanks for the detailed feedback! This was the original idea, but they all seemed to corner-case to me. It would be really disappointing to hardly ever "use" a Follower token while adventuring. I wanted a power that was different than an effect you can get on another Rare token and that was useful during every adventure.

Hey Jeff, I like the idea of having an improving single follower, but perhaps some of the previous suggestions from people were too complicated. Instead, what if the follower gave like a "splash" of another class? It could be as simple as a small, always useful bonus each for Safehold V and IV (like +1 to hit and damage in melee for a Fighter follower) that could slightly improve from V to IV (or add a different bonus) and then a small class feature for Safehold III (like a lesser weapon specialization for Fighter, that allows 1 reslide per game, or 1 flank per game for follower Rogue, etc). The specifics or bonuses could be tweaked up or down, but I thought that this could strike a balance between a smooth and easy design, small always useful bonuses, and a splash of a class feature for something different than a normal Rare token.

+1 I like this concept a lot, as a nice toned down version of what was originally suggested. I would love to see a follower grow in whatever way.

I'll full on +1 whatever gets a single follower and keeps things somewhat constrained. Could think of it as a 4* follower, Relic Follower, and Legendary follower type setup with 3 FoP type powers. A simplified cleric could be:

Safehold V
Bless (1/game)

Safehold IV
Bless (1/game)
Restore Spell (1/game)

Safehold III
Bless (1/game)
Restore Spell (1/game)
Heal 20 (1/game)

Thanks again for all the input. I think we should stay away from stealing class powers to make some fun. We do it sometimes tokens, but one of the reasons for me to abandon this idea was it made some characters kind of redundant and feel less cool. I took a lot of heat for the Bowl of Spirit Sight -- so I am avoiding that with these tokens.