Game Mechanics Alternative Loot Paths in Lootrunning

So, in the current state of loot running, the focus is all on using the beacons available to maximize the end result of the lootrun camp chest pool. Certainly, this is a fun mechanic, but it doesn't really capture the spirit of classical lootrunning, which was more about opening the randomly generated chests than getting one payout that, if bad, can ruin a player's enjoyment of the whole run.

Of course, there are exceptions to this rule, namely loot bonus/quality gained from blue beacons, as well as yellow beacons, both of which specifically affect the loot rewards you gain from chests at the end of each challenge. But by themselves, these are marginal features that the player would ignore for the purpose of getting as many pulls as possible for the final chest.

My proposal is to, essentially, add more ways that the loot runner can maximize the reward chest loot they gain during their runs instead of the end chest pool. This could be done by rebalancing the yellow beacon, or adding new beacons to add additional effects. Here are some of my ideas:

Maroon Beacon- Increase loot rewards for the next challenge, which can stack as a cumulative effect up to a certain amount.

Emerald Beacon- Increase quality of loot rewards for the next challenge, but increase Curse to compensate for higher rewards. This Curse could be temporary or extend to the rest of the run.

Citrine Beacon- Add 1 reward chest reroll (not yet sure if this would apply to all loot chests or only challenge ones.)

Salmon Beacon- Add an extra reward chest to the next challenge at the price of an additional amount of curse.

I feel that inputting these changes would increase engagement with lootrunning, and capture some of the fun back from classical lootrunning which has become a more marginal aspect of lootrunning via camps.

 

I must agree that, another way of loot running must dwell, but it must get along with the current way of loot running, and I'm affraid that your proposal way of loot running might overcome the actual loot running, hence the following elaboration to beef up your suggestion :

First of all, a point of the current state of loot running is that beacon are limited and if we compare to the existing beacons, those which you are suggesting would be very limited aswell. Another problem comes from aqua beacon; even if those became rarer than mytic :hap: ; and more importantly the problem of the potential existence of vibrant version of your beacons, and of course, both added,
Also, looking at your proposal, I believe that if it was to be done, Loot quality and loot bonus shall disapear in blue beacons, this way, there could be a clear differenciation between those two types of run, and it would be too broken to cummulate Loot quality from your beacon and loot quality from blue beacons so to balance :

- Let's assume that Maroon beacons are not affected by aqua or vibrant, as we can't really quantify loot rewards,( or maybe you meant loot chance%, but then it would be the same as I propose for Emerald), so they behave as yellow beacons with the ability to stack, honestly, I understand what you were trying to do with Maroon, but I wonder if this beacon really relevant, because with the Citrine beacon and the Salmon beacon, you will have way more loot capacity anyway, so I believe that those Maroon Beacon should not exist, because it makes more difficult the balancing of other beacons. But if they were to exist, I believe that those maroon beacons shall not exceed more than 10 or 15 beacons per run.

- For Emerald beacons, I believe that the ratio should be of 20 % loot quality for 7 curses sounds quite fair, so that with a lot of luck, a vibrant boosted by 2 aqua, is worth 200% loot quality and 70 curses, again that is with a lot of luck, furthermore I did those ratios, taking into account that we no longer have loot quality in blue beacons, there should be around 5 of these beacons, in order to again make a clear differenciation between those running for the new lootrunning system, and a more classical lootrunning

- For Citrine beacons, the problem is that, they are way too strong if boosted by aqua/ vibrant, I think a chest should not be rerolled more than two times, and that is I belive, a bit op, one time would be fair, so I believe that they should not be boosted by aqua, but they can exist in vibrant, and are limited by only one beacon of course.

- For Salmon beacons, those are quite interesting to input, only one should be fair, and they should be vibrant and boostable by aqua beacons, with a ratio of one chest for 5 curses, so that in summary we have 10 chest for 50 curses. The question is how to put the additional chests ? And to answer honnestly, I believe the best idea would be to stack those chest verticaly, and puting some aside stacked verticaly too, it would be a bit ugly, but there is no room for such commodity as beauty when loot running.

Again I believe the combination of Citrine beacons full boosted and Salmon Beacons full boosted, are quite hard to get, one must be lucky to have both. Furthermore, the low amount of Emerald beacons would be sufficient I believe in order, to not having people doing both.
Also, to make even clearer the distinction between End chest runners and classical loot runners, the loot quality and the loot bonus stripped from the blue beacons shall be replaced by powerfull buffs while having debuffs in loot quality and loot chance.

 

I appreciate the constructive criticism, so let me respond to your points in order:

- I think that if these were to be implemented, they would likely have to be Aqua-immune in the way that Yellow Beacons are to prevent extreme abuse, or at the very least balanced with aqua stacking in mind. I think this is probably fine because you can already increase rewards in a different way by mixing these types of beacons, to a limited degree of course. Vibrant is probably fine, given how rare Rainbows are, because that's still a limited degree of bonus/quality. In terms of rarity though I think working under the same mechanics that beacons currently have would balance things out fine. I think replacing the bonus/quality boons is also fine because I honestly don't see much of a difference with those added even in long runs, though that might just be a symptom of the loot idling system being broken as of the moment.

- The Maroon suggestion is reasonable, Maroon definitely fits less with the other beacons because it was more a way of figuring out a better Yellow than a full alternative concept.

-I think the Emerald Beacon numbers are reasonable, but limiting them to that degree I feel would be counterproductive, as it would become something marginal rather than a full-on alternate aspect of the run.

- Honestly, Citrine Beacons might not be necessary with the existence of Salmon Beacons effectively doing the same thing, however if you do want the existence of Citrine Beacons I would agree making them nonstackable would be necessary so that you might be able to get an op combo with Salmon Beacons, but only once in the run.

- Salmon Beacons being the Dark Grey equivalent makes a lot of sense, and the numbers again look reasonable to me. Idk where you would end up putting the extra chests lmao, but that's something for the Content Team to figure out, I'm more interested in balancing and how this would combine into a cohesive meta,

- I think just removing the quality/bonus boons from the pool is probably fine, Idk if actively locking those out using boons is a good way of balancing the distinction. I agree that there probably would need to be a way one could "opt in" to that path through player choice tho.

 

I must say that I don't see either the loot quality or loot chance from blue, yesterday I did a run and I was like 200% loot quality and 300% loot chance, and I never got any mythics for 20 challenges after, they might be not fully operational. However, I already saw recent clip of people looting 2 or 3 mythics in-run, I guess we're just unlucky.

For Maroon, I just think that indeed, it should be just the Yellow beacon that should be reworked.

I agree that, it should be either Citrine or Salmon, both added might a living hell to balance.

For Emerald, the problem if more beacons are added, is that, those who intends to loot run for the final chest, could also benefit from emeralds, and that's not really something we want, because it is crossing the barrier between the two kind of loot run, maybe, adding a penalty on pulls for the final chest on the emerald beacon would be a way to clearly separe the two kinds of loot runners, this way "final chest" loot runner would be convinced to avoid those beacons.

Also, the problem if more Emeralds beacon were added is that, it would be way more easy to drop a mythic by making a run where you always seek to AquaBoost your emerald beacon than making long run for the final chest, and so it would ruin what tried to do with the new system of loot run and above all, it would unfairly weighs the tide on the side of classical loot runners.

Yes anyway, I think the content team intends to add much more beacons, they are plenty of colors they did not use yet, and they put so much beacons on the same tint of color, sometimes, I struggle to find out either it is white or grey. Maybe, one of your idea will figure out and be implemented. (honestly I hope)

By the way I also saw your other post about a reward for grandmaster, I think it would be the good place to put some beacons or else, but we don't know what the content team has in mind, maybe a prestige system to take away little by little RNG from Lootrun. Honestly, I'm confident over they doing, and I'm sure they'll find ways to impress us.

 

Why not have the cost of a loot quality increase be -1 pull from the final rewards chest (or -2 or -3 or however many it takes to balance it)? I think that would make the player decide which type of loot run they were playing, or try to balance it out. Actually, what might work even better is a -1 pull per challenge. You can get 1 and still get some pulls at the end, but if you stack it or grab a vibrant one, you'll be entirely going for rewards as you go, or racking up a lot of curses. While aqua stacking would let you overcome this, you'd have to get either vibrant aqua stacking or vibrant purple to get even +1 end pull, anything else would either be negative or at the very least even.

I think this should give a hefty loot quality bonus in compensation to make up for that, but I like the idea of this being only available on long, curse-heavy runs or as an alternative to the current reward chest focus. This would also serve to buff long runs, which is another issue people have pointed out with the system.

 

I think that's a good idea, and definitely a good way that a player could choose to "opt in" to this type of strategy instead of maxing both and getting incredibly OP. And yeah, one of the main goals of this suggestion is to fix the current problem of the End Chest being very all-or-nothing with its good rewards by creating an alternative playstyle which technically already exists, but is very marginally supported.

 

bump 10char

 

cool idea but what the fuck are these beacon colour choices

 

Lmao, I chose them at complete random because non-color wheel colors are hard to think up lol. Basically, they're placeholders.

 

Seems like a good idea, but I think beacons are already a bit crowded so perhaps only add 1 more.

Anything that only applies to 1 next challenge is just a worse yellow because of the delay. I think rerolls on regular chests is probably too complicated to implement and doesn't add much new beyond extra loot for a small chest.

I think a gold beacon with increased challenge rewards for the rest of run with a curse would be good.