Let's Talk About Favor

Let's discuss favor. In this post I'll talk about the changes for favor and decoration costs that came with 3.5.0, the problems associated with them, and the possible solutions. Currently, even after the favor cost reductions, obtaining the amount of favor needed for creating a hideout is neither reasonable nor feasible. Keeping decoration costs and favor rewards as they are now is not sustainable for the hideout community.


Favor

Prior to 3.5.0 most favor was obtained through dailies or rotations of dailies. Here is a spreadsheet giving the amounts for master dailies and some random missions.

• Lv8 Daily 9.7k
• Lv7 Rota 68k
• Lv7 Rota + (Standard) Lv8 Daily w/ GM 92k

The second value is what many players would do just to get lv8 masters. The last is what some players who built hideouts would do. To make a fair comparison I'll be using the favor values for a single master and disregarding random missions as unified favor was not a thing.

Here is a post I made detailing the various types of favor farming with the 3.5.0 update. Doing all 4 dailies on any tier maps will net the player much more favor than before. Rotations are now dead, for better or worse, and additional favor gained from prophecies is dead as well, for better or worse.

• T1-3 Dailies 31k
• T14-16 Dailies 43k
• Quarry 150k/hr
• T16 Scarabs 200k/hr

As you can see doing dailies alone will net the player around 4 times as much than before. 3.5.0 also included unified favor (which is much appreciated!) as well as scarabs to focus farm favor. All of this on paper this seems great and because of this I can understand the reasoning behind the "re-balancing" of decoration costs.

However, the two most optimal ways of getting favor, Quarry and Scarab farming, are neither accessible nor ideal ways to play the game. The former involves a high movement speed build mindlessly resetting through instances and the latter requires both a capable build as well as the capitol to pay for the associated costs of sustaining T16 maps and purchasing scarabs.

In addition to unified favor there's now Atlas Objectives which have replaced dailies. Here is a spreadsheet estimating the spawn rates of masters for Quarry, Objectives, and random missions. The sample size is too small to get an accurate estimate of the exact rates but it is enough to give a general idea of how rare they are.

Atlas Objective 8.5%
Random Mission 42% (falls within the margin of error for 33%)

If a player were to do T16 maps with the average rate of 4 per minute (15/hr) they would gain around 70k/hr.


Decorations

As stated before the increased favor gains seem great on paper but they are not ideal in practice. Many decorations have risen in price by 2-4x the amount as before. Even after the favor changes of 3.5.2 which changed the cost of some decorations the costs are still extremely high.

As a result many hideouts now cost anywhere in the range of 5-25 million. You can see the cost of many hideouts by visiting here or here. Keep in mind that the fastest way of gaining favor that I know of is only 200k/hr. Here's some examples of the time required to farm favor.

5 Million Favor
• T16 Maps 71.4 hours
• Quarry Farming 33.3 hours
• Scarabs 25 hours

10 Million Favor
• T16 Maps 142.8 hours
• Quarry Farming 66.6 hours
• Scarabs 50 hours

15 Million Favor
• T16 Maps 214.2 hours
• Quarry Farming 99.9 hours
• Scarabs 75 hours

20 Million Favor
• T16 Maps 285.6 hours
• Quarry Farming 133.2 hours
• Scarabs 100 hours

25 Million Favor
• T16 Maps 357 hours
• Quarry Farming 166.5 hours
• Scarabs 125 hours

In short, there's no reasonable way for players without a significant amount of favor migrated from previous leagues to build a hideout that is on the higher end of the list. It is also extremely unfair to players for the hideout competition.

The 3.5.2 update did reduce the costs of some decorations. Although this is a step in the right direction it's no where near enough of a reduction. Here are 3 of my hideouts before and after the cost changes.

• Old: 25,931,060
• New: 22,646,300
• 13% reduction

• Old: 23,851,690
• New: 18,929,360
• 21% reduction

• Old: 14,099,510
• New: 12,089,130
• 15% reduction

Whilst these do not reflect the changes in their entirety, they do give a general idea of the cost reductions. Hopefully more are to come.


Causes

A good question to ask is how did this happen? Or rather why is favor an issue in 3.5.0 when it wasn't before? There are several factors, some already discussed, that lead it to the state we are in currently.

• Death of Rota & A Gracious Master
Because rotations and the prophecy do not exist anymore we receive both less favor per master and less favor overall from dailies.

• Decoration Costs
As mentioned before some decorations now cost 100-300% more favor than they previously did. This is by far the largest factor. You can compare favor costs by visiting poedb which has the updated 3.5.2 values and poedecorations which has the pre-3.5.0 values. Although there have been around 370-380 new decorations added with 3.5.0 many of them share the inflated costs.

• Unified Hideouts
With the ability to have multiple hideouts in a single league, without worry that they will be erased afterwards, means that you will need decorations to populate them. Because decorations are unified as well you'll need to purchase additional decorations if you don't want to import every time you switch hideouts.

• More Incentive
With the hideout competition currently going on as well as the new update there's more incentive than ever to decorate hideouts. Whilst this doesn't have any affect on favor it does mean that favor is more in-demand.

• Hideout Calculators
Now that we are able to put a number on the favor cost of hideouts the issue becomes more apparent and we can attach the time needed to farm favor.


Possible Solutions

The amount of time required to farm for favor is insane. Unless if major changes are made the vast majority of players (myself included) wont be able to farm enough to decorate their own hideout. I'll list a number of possible solutions below.

• Reduce Favor Costs
Reducing favor costs further would be one of the simpler solutions to the problem. By reducing the current cost of decorations by 75% it will fall within the realm of reasonable.

• Increase Favor Gains
Alternatively increasing the favor gained by 400% would work as well.

• Remove Unified Decorations
With unified hideouts and the import/export function it makes no sense to have a decoration in only one hideout at a time. The player could just import/export their template in a different hideout and use the same decorations. This will both help QoL as well as some of the favor issues.

• More Favor Options
Having additional sources of favor would allow for a wider range of play other than just Quarry and Scarabs. Awarding favor for master-related instances such as the present-day temple, mine nodes, menagerie, and Elder/Shaper guardians/influence will reward the player for just playing the game.

• Reintroduce A Gracious Master Prophecy
Preferably in conjunction with other solutions. This will help hideout decorators that need more favor than others.

• Decoration Previews
Players must purchase a decoration to view what it looks like. I estimated that the combined cost of every new decoration in 3.5.0 is around 15 million favor. For a new player they will need to purchase both old and new decorations which would possibly be 3 times that amount. By allowing a preview, such as allowing them to move the decoration around and view the variants but not place it, this will help with conserving favor.

• Free Decorations
Worth asking.

GGG, please take into consideration the accessibility of favor for both casual and dedicated players as well as the time required to farm favor.

Great work on calculating the extent of the problem. I want to add that it's pretty unfair to have the hideout competition right after these massive changes to favor were rolled out. I've been farming favor for weeks now trying to finish my hideout before the deadline and it's a miserable experience. Really, the only people who will be able to compete are those who've had tens of millions of favor saved before the 3.5 changes.

What would be a reasonable amount of time/leagues to make 1 hideout?

Vendorable decor might help, gracious master remade into "Favorable outcomes" that would give extra favor for completing master missions, and my absolute fave - being able to claim decor from hideouts you find and vendoring it.

My biggest problem is shitty categories. I'd like to be able to search by "Plant" so that it would show me everything that qualifies as a plant, not just has it in it's name. Category "Dungeon" is nice, but it includes so much that it becomes not very helpful when looking for specific things. Some items have weird names.. like Raphina tree.. wtf is that? It's just a weird palm bush thing, so i want to find it if i just look for "Palm" AND same Raphina tree should also qualify as a plant, so multiple keywords per item and make these keywords as basic as possible please. Perhaps being able to search by multiple keywords.. like "Light" would show all decoration that produce light, but "Light, Fire" would only show light sources produced by fire.

Sorry for off topic, but i think my problem is much more important :)

Also when you reclaim decor there needs to be some kind of pop-up window to allow to choose what hideout to claim it from, like how it is with MTX, because right now it just takes it from random(?) hideout and can fuck things up

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ChefoSLR wrote:

Great work on calculating the extent of the problem. I want to add that it's pretty unfair to have the hideout competition right after these massive changes to favor were rolled out. I've been farming favor for weeks now trying to finish my hideout before the deadline and it's a miserable experience. Really, the only people who will be able to compete are those who've had tens of millions of favor saved before the 3.5 changes.

Yes I've farmed over the course of the league maybe 10m favor but I've spent around 30m making hideouts. It's not sustainable at all and farming favor does indeed get very old.

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Nubatack wrote:

What would be a reasonable amount of time/leagues to make 1 hideout?

Vendorable decor might help, gracious master remade into "Favorable outcomes" that would give extra favor for completing master missions, and my absolute fave - being able to claim decor from hideouts you find and vendoring it.

My biggest problem is shitty categories. I'd like to be able to search by "Plant" so that it would show me everything that qualifies as a plant, not just has it in it's name. Category "Dungeon" is nice, but it includes so much that it becomes not very helpful when looking for specific things. Some items have weird names.. like Raphina tree.. wtf is that? It's just a weird palm bush thing, so i want to find it if i just look for "Palm" AND same Raphina tree should also qualify as a plant, so multiple keywords per item and make these keywords as basic as possible please. Perhaps being able to search by multiple keywords.. like "Light" would show all decoration that produce light, but "Light, Fire" would only show light sources produced by fire.

Sorry for off topic, but i think my problem is much more important :)

In my opinion 20 hours of grinding specifically for favor should allow you to have enough favor to create an "expensive" hideout. As it is right now that number is 125 hours.

Those are good suggestions I like the idea of selling decorations back.

What I have to do is memorize both the name and what the decoration looks like. I think the decoration UI needs an overhaul or maybe they aren't finished with it yet.

I reply to this thread just to say that I have grinded favor since the start of h/o competition and I could submit my hideout only on 16 or 17 Jan. I created it with more than 8 mil favor and if I didn't use big mtxs I would need more. And I still grind favor, I need another 3 or 4 mils for my second hideout.

And I can't say that I didn't play enough. I have only one character this league, so I didn't split my time for leveling and gearing another characters and I've played at least 4 hours per day since the start of this league.

I don't really mind that I need to grind in grinding game (I don't say that decoration costs are fair the way they are now though), but in the end I didn't do content I wanted to do like uber elder farm and delve, especially delve.

Ty for creating this thread, I hope things will change at least in next league :).

That's an extremely good piece of feedback!

I'm not sure about "Reintroduce A Gracious Master Prophecy" though. Getting this prophecy will be more and more disappointing with time, as not everyone is interested in hideouts and its value will decrease with time as people will be done with their hideouts and you only need one to live in, which is even less than before 3.5.0 if you find your favourite hideout. I think a prophecy with favour should also offer something else. Combining Gracious Master and Master Seeks Help or adding 'you'll encounter a random master and get triple favour' would be perfect for me.

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Nubatack wrote:

Also when you reclaim decor there needs to be some kind of pop-up window to allow to choose what hideout to claim it from, like how it is with MTX

I so much agree with this.

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Iangyratu wrote:

That's an extremely good piece of feedback!

I'm not sure about "Reintroduce A Gracious Master Prophecy" though. Getting this prophecy will be more and more disappointing with time, as not everyone is interested in hideouts and its value will decrease with time as people will be done with their hideouts and you only need one to live in, which is even less than before 3.5.0 if you find your favourite hideout. I think a prophecy with favour should also offer something else. Combining Gracious Master and Master Seeks Help or adding 'you'll encounter a random master and get triple favour' would be perfect for me.

Yes it's not an ideal solution but it's definitely better than what we have now. It wouldn't be good from both hideout makers and those who don't care about it as the former will require trading for hundreds and the latter will just be disappointed with it, although that's the majority of the prophecies anyway.

Bump to draw attention to that topic. Favour costs are really bad right now. Hopefully someone at GGG is going to improve that part of the hideout creation.

I was looking up stuff to make a nice hideout and some of the total prices are insane now... and I only have a few mil to my name. It was totally discouraging as a new player.