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Enchantment Progression Rework Suggestion
loboguild
Member Posts: 2,371 Arc User
Maybe it's not final, but the enchantment progression currently on the PTS is a disaster. It's like lowering taxes for the rich.
The devs seems to have noticed that the current system with an identical enchantment as reagent couldn't be extended, because costs would have exploded. R11 would have cost like 6M per, R12 13M. So they just erased the need for an identical enchantment. Now the progression looks like this:
I calculated the RP cost at 0.75 because the current price of a stack of R4 Radiants hovers around 20.000 (20k/27k RP ~= 0.75). I also inserted the new ratings for Radiants and how much AD per rating you have to invest to get from one level to another. Meaning if you already own R6s and you want to upgrade to R7, you need to invest 1,248 AD per rating gained. As you can see, the AD cost per rating gained rises for every Rank until R10. That simply means you have to invest more and more AD to get an addition rating point.
That makes sense, because it's getting harder and harder to improve as you near BiS.
Or let's say, it was harder and harder to improve. Because after R10, the AD/Rating drops considerably because a large chunk of the cost, the identical reagent enchantment, is missing. So after R10, you start to get more rating points for your AD again.
That's completely off and shouldn't work that way. The progression should continue in a way that you are getting less and less for your investment, because now the casual players will still work their butt off to get to the mountain top that is R10, why the rich can enjoy the downhill that is R11 and R12. It's simply not a fair distribution.
I propose the following system instead:
As you can see, we will be keeping the system of identical reagents, but R12 more or less will cost the same as in the current system. We cut down the cost of Potencys significantly (R6/7 would require only Lesser Marks, R8/9 Normal Marks and R10/11/12 Greater Marks) and devide the RPs by 3.
What happens is that you still have the same mountain to climb for a R12, but the mountain gets steeper again as you progress towards BiS instead of having a peak at some point in the middle. All the other ranks get cheaper in the process, allowing everyone to acquire the next rank for the current cost of the previous rank. Currently R7 costs 95, my system lists R8 at 114. R8 was 336, my system lists R9 at 316. And so on. The last ranks will remain the domain of the wealthy and hardcores, only that the threshold moves up a bit.
Sure, the current enchantments will get devalued, but that's how it is right? Whenever a new CPU comes on the market, the older ones move down in pricing and the new state-of-the-art takes over the top spot. It's not like prices stay the same and the newest tools just get even more expensive.
It's the same in MMOs. The old BiS CN weapons or profession weapons are worth <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> nowadays, T1 and T2s are cheap as hell and even Artifact Belts can be had for pennys.
This has to happen unless you want the gap between the have and have-nots to become greater.
This btw. also applies to all Armor and Weapon Enchants.
The devs seems to have noticed that the current system with an identical enchantment as reagent couldn't be extended, because costs would have exploded. R11 would have cost like 6M per, R12 13M. So they just erased the need for an identical enchantment. Now the progression looks like this:
I calculated the RP cost at 0.75 because the current price of a stack of R4 Radiants hovers around 20.000 (20k/27k RP ~= 0.75). I also inserted the new ratings for Radiants and how much AD per rating you have to invest to get from one level to another. Meaning if you already own R6s and you want to upgrade to R7, you need to invest 1,248 AD per rating gained. As you can see, the AD cost per rating gained rises for every Rank until R10. That simply means you have to invest more and more AD to get an addition rating point.
That makes sense, because it's getting harder and harder to improve as you near BiS.
Or let's say, it was harder and harder to improve. Because after R10, the AD/Rating drops considerably because a large chunk of the cost, the identical reagent enchantment, is missing. So after R10, you start to get more rating points for your AD again.
That's completely off and shouldn't work that way. The progression should continue in a way that you are getting less and less for your investment, because now the casual players will still work their butt off to get to the mountain top that is R10, why the rich can enjoy the downhill that is R11 and R12. It's simply not a fair distribution.
I propose the following system instead:
As you can see, we will be keeping the system of identical reagents, but R12 more or less will cost the same as in the current system. We cut down the cost of Potencys significantly (R6/7 would require only Lesser Marks, R8/9 Normal Marks and R10/11/12 Greater Marks) and devide the RPs by 3.
What happens is that you still have the same mountain to climb for a R12, but the mountain gets steeper again as you progress towards BiS instead of having a peak at some point in the middle. All the other ranks get cheaper in the process, allowing everyone to acquire the next rank for the current cost of the previous rank. Currently R7 costs 95, my system lists R8 at 114. R8 was 336, my system lists R9 at 316. And so on. The last ranks will remain the domain of the wealthy and hardcores, only that the threshold moves up a bit.
Sure, the current enchantments will get devalued, but that's how it is right? Whenever a new CPU comes on the market, the older ones move down in pricing and the new state-of-the-art takes over the top spot. It's not like prices stay the same and the newest tools just get even more expensive.
It's the same in MMOs. The old BiS CN weapons or profession weapons are worth <font color="orange">HAMSTER</font> nowadays, T1 and T2s are cheap as hell and even Artifact Belts can be had for pennys.
This has to happen unless you want the gap between the have and have-nots to become greater.
This btw. also applies to all Armor and Weapon Enchants.
Post edited by loboguild on
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Comments
1. In new mod mobs are droping rank 5s, A LOT (at least for me on preview)
2. Blue marks of potency can be obtained from bunch of dailies, which will cause huge drop of their price
Of course you'll have to wait a few weeks after mod 6 release for the prices to drop, because of big demand, but after this I expect rank 7 cost no more than 20k:P (btw around 2 months ago, when bots were selling blue marks for around 10-13k, you could buy silver enchants rank 7 for around 30k AD :P )
Also even in today's economy with expensive rank 10 enchantments, it still would be a lot cheaper to make it from 1 to 10 than from 10 to 12, so I don't really get how can you call going from rank 10 to 12 a "downhill":
rank 10 radiant nowadays -2,5kk
going from 10 to 12: 10 x gmop, 1 coal ward, 1.680.000 RP, a lot green wards from going 10 to 11 (5% chance) = 1kk +450k +1.26kk (0.75 ad/rp) + 100k = 2.71kk
I wouldn't depend on this until its actually on live, this was the same scenario when IWD came out, rank5s left and right, and BAAM!! no more rank5s
Please don't use absolute numbers to judge my downhill argument. You need to weight the cost relative to the ratings increase and the fact is that somebody owning R10s is getting more rating increase for every AD invested than somebody who is trying to upgrade from 9 to 10. Currently, the best way to progress with your enchantments is to rank them up level by level. Meaning if you own Rank 7s, bring them all up to R8, then R9, then R10. Under the new system, starting at R8, it makes more sense to upgrade one enchant to R12, then the next, then the next.
If you remove blue Mark of Potencys and all RP costs from the equation, R12 would cost 2.6M, which is actually what R10 costs right now. But the issue remains that the gap between BiS and others will get bigger. Here's a simple example:
Player A is a casual player and is able to get to R8s under the current system. That would cost him 336k AD per enchant and nets 220 rating points. Under the new system, spending the same amount of money results in a mix of R8s and R9s, which I'm gonna call R8.5, and nets 310 rating points.
Player B is a hardcore player that is able to get to R10 (2.4M under the current system) or 300 rating points. Under the new system, spending the same amount of money would mean R11.6, or 552 rating points.
Currently the R10s net 1.36 more rating points than R8s, under the new system R11.6s are worth 1.78 more rating points then R8.5s. Same money spend results in a better ratio for those that spend more. That's not the case right now.
I agree that my system screws those that worked hard (or not...) to get their R10s. But as I've stated that's the way it is when new BiS is introduced, old stuff gets cheaper. Or that should be the way it is.
You only have two choices to keep the costs down. Either you disvalue existing enchants or you cater to the rich. The alternative would be to keep the current progression and make R12s cost 13M. Is that what you want?
And yes, GMOPs should be dropping a lot more, but I doubt they are gonna do that because the 100k per is hardcoded due to the availability in the Bazaar.
I think that would eliminate a bit of the perceived complexity. Having to create a high ranked enchant, then having to go through the process AGAIN to get the duplicate, then merging the two is needlessly cumbersome. I think it also obfuscates the true cost of improving your enchantments, and thus most people just stop at a certain point.
And to those who are already geared out in full R10s? I don't see what the problem is. Yes, you have to "work harder" for those, but you've also been getting the full benefit from them, and you're already ahead of the game when it comes to getting yourself back up to R12. And even then, the cost of going from R10 to R12 is still millions of AD per enchant, which is still out of reach of your average player, so it's not like a change in the system is going to make BiS enchants "easy" to get by any stretch of the imagination.
Anyway removing 1 (from total 2) gmop needed to upgrade from rank 8 to 9 would also help casuals to keep up
Is ok like this.
Why doesn't it make sense to pay the most for the last tier? That's how it worked with Rank 10 so far. R10 is 250% of the cost of a R9 and 700% of R8 currently. In my proposed system R12 is 250% of the cost of R11 and 600% more than R10. Nothing changes.
In terms of the new stats curves: Taking my example from above the high-rolling Player B gets 0.48 percentage points more from power under the old system and 0.60 percentage points under the new system while spending the same amount of money vs casual Player A. So how exactly is is the gap becoming smaller?
Your example: 9-12 is 0.65 percentage points differential while paying only five times as much for the upgrade vs. 0.48 while paying seven times as much for the upgrade from 8 to 10 btw. Again: Using absolute numbers is... well absolutely misleading.
Guys, look at the math. So far with the identical reagent enchants they are using a square function and turn it into a linear function starting at R11 more or less. It's not that complicated. Overall the cost of RPs and Wards are a minor factor.
That would look like this:
I like it because 6-10 gets cheaper as you said, but R10 retains more value than in my proposed system, which shouldn't upset those that already own them as much.
R6-10: square increase of cost and ratings
R11/12: linear increase of cost and ratings
The downside is that people already owning R10 have to take a hard look whether it's even viable to upgrade to R12 for a miserable 100 rating points. And the answer is probably that it's not.
It's already more than 30M to reach rank 12 starting from rank 10
So what you're saying is that it's ok to use broken enchant progression because it doesn't matter in the big picture? Nah sorry, the fix is easy, so you might as well bring that in line before release.
In the end as I laid out you only have to tweak the ratings or the cost. It's something that has to happen.
And btw.: This also applies to the Weapon and Armor Enchants and I don't think their additional effects are negligible.
Perfect solution would be eliminate the need of 2nd enchantment to refine, and just put more marks needed to refine on every higher level (someone said that before I think). Anyway since that is not gonna happen, I'd simply stick with the old slightly broken system because of one thing: It won't break our economy. Enchantments is the only real investment in this game, since everything else is boa. With your changes EVERYONE will lose a lot ADs invested in their gear. Casual players who just spent a lot of time to get those few millions to get full r8, now will look how those few millions become almost nothing in one second.
So after all they'll end up with maybe a little higher rank enchants, which will doesn't matter anyway thanks to new stat curves, but completely broken with nothing valuable to trade
Your proposal might work, but it requires a significant number of changes to the whole system. Also, it will sharply decrease the value of existing enchantments, and screw people who invested a lot. It's unlikely to happen (ragequits and so on).
What would be far easier to achieve is to mantain the current system (and AD/RP required) and tune the stats bonus instead.
It should be roughly something like this (we keep things low till R5, as those enchantments are quite easy to get and still don't require a big investment, they drop quite often so don't even need actual refining):
R5 -> 150
R6 -> 230
R7 -> 310
R8 -> 390
R9 -> 470
R10 -> 550
R11 -> 575
R12 -> 600
It's just a rough estimate, but this way you get +80 stat/rank when you need a lot of resources to go up. As you get high enough (R10), you can still make a somewhat smaller investment and get a smaller chunk of bonus, +25 stat/rank (kind of diminishing returns).
Stats will increase overall, so everyone will be happy. Investments will be mantained (and R10 enchantments won't be cut by 2/3 in value). R12 will still matter to "rich people", but they won't be terribly imbalanced as they are now (R7, probably the most common rank among non-hardcore players, will get half the total stat bonus instead of the current 35%)
As mentioned, the only thing is that with such a system, upgrading to R12 makes absolutely no sense. So BiS players don't get something to work for in the enchantment area. But I'd say that's the best solution for everyone regardless. Old stuff fully retains its value and if you still are eager to own the best of the best, you have to pay a lot of extra money for a comparably small return.
Ooops sorry, missed your other post
What we need to "work for" is actual harder content and better items that come from actual gameplay.
Removing 2x enchants completely, and adjusting in GMoPs + refining points. I think the system of r11 and r12 not requiring them is MUCH preferrable over the actual system of duplicate enchants.
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I like this one. And as someone's already pointed out, because of the dramatic increase in stats on gear, the enchantments become less inherently less valuable, so lowering the costs a bit makes sense as well.
And I know people who have max stuff might complain, but that's the ever evolving MMO system. Things change and evolve. I wouldn't let that criticism derail an otherwise great analysis (and suggestions for improvement).
i would rather prefer to use 2 rank 10 for a rank 11.
Why is their work "devalued"? They still get the stat increase. And all the content they did while having R10's doesn't get taken away from them. And they're still WAY closer to getting R12's than anyone who doesn't currently have R10 enchantments.
This is genious IMO and creates more prigression without drastically increasing costs. It also more "levels" the playing field for PVP since the actual bonus a rank 12 player would have over a rank 9-10 would be minimal.
With THIS system a casual/semi-casual can attain rank9/10s with some work.
I thino the system has to adopt something like this otherwise you will juat create a larger divide between have and have nots. Typically with new content like this, MOST games make the obsolete gear much easier to get.
Weapon and Armor enchants have to be reworked in a similar way btw. Example using Terror:
Lesser: 6% WeaponDmg - 5% Debuff
Normal: 11% WeaponDmg - 10% Debuff
Greater: 17% WeaponDmg - 20% Debuff
Perfect: 25% WeaponDmg - 40% Debuff - 2% Root
Pure: 25% WeaponDmg - 40% Debuff - 6% Root
Transcendent: 25% WeaponDmg - 40% Debuff - 10% Root
Currently, Pure and Transcendent offer too much improvement for their cost. I think you can keep additional utility mostly exclusive to the new Pure and Trans as incentive to get those, everything else scales until Perfect.