The Bottleneck- As is current.
lacktoes
Posts: 5 ✭
TL;DR: Remove the turdmode-cap on aether. If you interweave that in char-progression, do NOT keep the daily cap. It ruins progression, and thus the game.
The only "thing" stopping progress (read; not slowing down, stopping) is the cap on refined aether.
Like... Imagine a snowboarder trying to improve his/her skillset. Only to limit them by setting a daily time-limit of 2 minutes of training. How the f* will that not completely stop the snowbarder's progression?
When you decide to implement a currency into everything that has to do with upgrading, and then limit it, the way you've done it, it surely will not only slow the process but also, in time, break it.
Where i am now is that i can log in, let it auto-convert UNrefined into refined, then log off again; for the next 2-3 days... And iwill do that, cause "beta".
- I don't think this game will live super long, if you don't fix this "soon". That's unfortunate, cause the game has potential - Just not when core-mechanics are this fkd.
GL to the dev team tho :)
Oh 1 more thing; Do implement optional pvp, but not the arena as you got now. You heard about Diablo 3? Exactly, so disgusting, that we all forgot it.
Comments
+1
Gold is a bigger bottleneck than anything else.
You will never run out of Gold but it`s the only currency that`s not capped because you`ll never run out of it, same as relic fragments. my main Prob is that usually from wednesday on there is no reason to log in until reset cause i get neither planar-/chromatic Mana what i mainly need to upgrade structures and unlock the spells. for aether, if i really want to upgrade a new set i can put 10$ in and push them to be playable. But getting nothing and it`s really nothing else than gold for the half time you want to play the game sucks and will push me away from it. That really makes me sad cause i really like it but it seems to be a waste of time (and money).
Nope.
I am running out of gold. I have plenty of planar mana to upgrade my realm, but cannot because I have not enough gold. In fact, I do welcome the planar mana cap since it allows me to get increased amounts of gold. But I agree that the aether cap feels worse, it makes trying different builds more difficult, since you never have enough aether to upgrade all the equipments and spells you want.
So your issue regarding gold is the lack of it. That can be resolved by grinding. Yeah, i know. Alot of grinding, for not so much gold. It's indeed abit of a bummer, but none the less can be farmed.
I also ran into to the mana cap issue. Its not as heavy as the aether one, but annoying indeed.
The minimum amount of aether i need atm is about 25k(?). Thats just to upgrade 1 spell. i have a ton of spells i need to upgrade. Also gear, and buildings in my realm. I could create a new class, but wait. thats like 150 or 200k aether atm.
No. The daily cap on aether has to be removed, or they need to remove aether out of anything related to the progression of the planeswalker.
True, gold is a bottleneck for me due to the limited amount of time I play, but aether is a universal bottleneck because no matter how much you play you cannot go over the cap. I have all my spells at level 7, so now I can only upgrade a single spell per day due to the aether cap, forcing me to choose between keeping growing my build or trying a new one, but never both. Knowing that I won't be able to fully upgrade my spells to the next level until a couple of weeks have passed, without the possibility of trying other builds (not if I want to play them in Master) does not motivate me much to keep playing.
I believe it is designed like this to make the game progression last longer since it is lacking in endgame content, otherwise people would finish everything in just some weeks and stop playing. But when your progression gets too slow, it can also remove the enjoyment of leveling up. And the moment the game feels more like a chore than a way to enjoy your time, is when people stop playing.
But then again, the gold is not your bottleneck. It's the time you have to invest in the game, wich is subjective to all of us, and Devs can't change that. They could bump up the amount of gold dropped tho, i'll give you that. They should, but they wont. Keeping the gold income low means more players will spend real money on packs and boosters, to sell at broker,
So, left with ingame bottlenecks, and that was plural yes, the aether-cap is currently the worst.
Im afraid they wont change this system tho, cause this is their type of business-model.
Hint to devs: Keeping this model kills the games. It's basic psychology. (higurewindstill mentioned it above)
I also don't think they will change this model since it takes advantage of the lack of patience of most people and covers up for the lack of content of the game. There will be people that once they see there aren't progressing at all will quit the game, but without the caps players would achieve everything in just some weeks and once there is no more novelty they would also quit. So I believe they have chosen this method to make as much profit as possible from the reduced amount of content the game has right now.
Even if the aether cap is annoying, I believe it is better to other alternatives generally used to promote expending money in the game. For example, I used to play the Magic Puzzle Quest game, but had to quit because they made it so that the amount of time a F2P player needed to gather enough resources was too high. Here, the problem a F2P player faces is slow progression, but you can still keep advancing with a limited amount of time invested. For me it has been a positive surprise finding that the downside of being F2P was just needing to wait longer, instead of having to play more hours. The game of course would be more enjoyable without caps, but I understand that companies prioritize making a profit. Taking into account that I haven't paid anything for the game, I feel more than happy with all the enjoyment it is giving me right now. However, I do feel that the progression barrier at higher levels is too high, I don't know how much longer I will be enjoying playing the game when the progression takes weeks to happen.
They won't ever remove the daily cap on Refined Aether, because you can exchange it for Zen, and that's their source of income. So if ppl could farm infinite ammount of aether, they would not buy Zen for real live money as much and Arc could just take out the possibility of the trade Aether->Zen, which would suck. Right now I just buy 1000 Zen for Aether for Pass and use the rest of Aether for upgrades from the 90 day between new Passes. So yeah, no need to use real money for the game, and that's not what they want.
To Be Deleted.
You are like a 1%er complaining about taxes. The VAST majority of the players in this game aren't trying to upgrade spells from 8 to 9 yet. The VAST majority of players in any game like this are casual players and I can assure you anyone who isn't grinding 40+ hours a week like this is a full time job or isn't dumping actual money into the game, is facing a gold bottleneck.
I'm a casual f2p kinda guy myself, so I get the feeling, but it's not exactly correct to call gold a bottleneck, because there's no limit on it at all. As in, the game doesn't ever step in and stop you from getting more.
I certainly would still appreciate acquiring it at a higher pace, though. Currently, I'm probably getting like 40-something-K each day, and most of it is from the broker.
Aether is going to be a bottleneck now for obsessive grinders, but it wasn't really a bottleneck before. I reached aether core level 9 before they started playing with planar mana caps and costs, and had the aether to upgrade my whole deck to level 9 off just the 50k per day (and that's minus a battlepass's worth of zen bought with aether - admittedly before the market got too crazy - and minus the aether to bring a full gear set up to max or near max gear score).
I spent maybe 2h/day playing, making sure i hit the 50k aether limit and the weekly planar mana limit.
Now, with the reduced planar mana costs to upgrade stuff, yeah, people are going to upgrade their personal realm a lot faster, but the old rate did pace you to ensure you had enough aether to upgrade one deck.
But an even bigger bottleneck than aether for going to level 10 cards is going to be spell pages. Before reduced costs, i was just about keeping pace on spell pages (I have 2 spells still at level 8 because of not enough pages), but level 10 pages weren't going to happen for most of my deck even under the old pace. With the new accelerated pace, I'm barely going to have made a start on getting enough spell pages. I think I'll have the aether before the spell pages...
And it costs 125k just to upgrade one station in your realm from 7 to 8. There absolutely is a limit... time. Most people simply can't play this game like its a job and the drop rate for gold is abysmal across the board. I'm sitting at storage cap on planar mana because I can't spend it on anything as I don't have the gold and unlike the old weekly cap, planar mana doesn't convert to gold when you're sitting at 30k.
Make sure you use your trade tokens to sell spell pages to spells you aren't using. You can net a pile of gold that way per day.
Yeah, most of my gold comes from the broker, but it's really not that much compared to the amount of gold that's needed. Things cost hundreds of thousands to upgrade, but 10 trade coins will get probably about 40-50k each day, if you're lucky.
Anyway, as a somewhat casual player, I find that I'm lacking in pretty much every resource (other than relic fragments, of course).
What's a bottleneck for me changes. Right now, it's gold. Before, it was planar mana. It's not the lack of resources that bothers me, it's the excess of unusable resources. I'm OK with having a cap on things, but they NEED to allow me to purchase stuff using only 1 type of currency.
Updating artifacts requires ONLY gold, no other resource. This is good.
We need to be able to update SOMETHING using ONLY Eternal Echoes.
We need to be able to get SOMETHING using only Planar Mana.
We need to be able to get SOMETHING using only Chromatic Mana.
We need to be able to get SOMETHING using only relic pieces.
Imagine how much better the game would be if I could, FOR EXAMPLE, do this:
convert each common relic piece into 1 gold
convert each uncommon relic piece into 5 gold
convert each rare relic piece into 25 gold
convert each mythic relic piece into 100 gold
convert 200 eternal echoes into 1 skin
convert 500 of each planar mana into 1 character rename
convert 3000 chromatic mana into a new loadout
convert 100,000 unrefined aether into 10 zen
convert 20 extra copies of an equipment into 1 new option for that equipment
Why would I love this so much? Because right now, I'm maxed out on numerous items, and getting nothing for it. This is a true shame when I'm so short on gold. When I get more gold, I'll get other items such as planar mana as well, except I won't because I'm maxed out on planar mana.
As is, reliquaries are pointless. You get a small amount of gold and nothing else since most players are maxed out on relic fragments.
More things converting into gold when you're capped would be a good first step. Also, even though they softened the caps on a lot of things, they should bring back the gold as a little bonus.
Not that this matters much to me personally, since I've never actually reached the cap on anything other than relic fragments. I just think it'd be a nice addition.
Tbh all the caps are messing the game and give me the feeling of those p2w, ad-infested mobile-toilet games.
Is that the feeling you want your customers to have?
Its a shame really, cause the game's core idea has potential.
Let the players feel they can progress further and faster and make pretty armor to sell for money or other cosmetics, like banners, pets, different animations for whatever.
I went bk playing D3 with some friends, and it does feel good when you see things drop.
Find a way to give that feeling to us, if you want this game to go anywhere in the future.
+1 currency conversion from what you have to what you need would improve the game
I agree, having unusable resources you cannot convert to usable ones feels bad. It could be nice to be able to make something out of those resources we have no use for, even if the rate exchange is minimal, at least you won't have that awful feeling of being at the cap for all kinds of reliq fragments and getting chests you know will never use from the paid battlepass.
Upgrading artifacts requires both gold and relic pieces. Granted, most of us are capped on relic pieces and don't care but that doesn't change the fact that your statement about them only requiring gold is wrong.
I believe that statement refers to gold being the only limiting factor on upgrading artifacts. In my case I have never run out of fragments upgrading artifacts, so although theoretically you need two types of currency, it feels as if gold is what you only need.
There's always going to be some limiting resource, even without caps. Otherwise there'd be no point in playing the game. If you just had everything handed to you, why would you play?
And upgrading your realm is supposed to be a long project, not something you finish in 3 weeks.
ARPGs are about turning time into drops. People who grind like its a job will have more drops. People who don't play much will have less drops. These things are inevitable. (Currency caps were relatively advantageous to more casual players - they told you when you'd achieved all you needed to achieve for the week).
That said, it's perfectly possible to make >50kG/day just off selling spell pages to the consignment broker. Yes, with the cheaper planar mana costs, that won't perfectly keep up for upgrading your personal realm, but oh noes. The hardship.
This update was good and bad it seems. Everyone now wants end game content. We need a planar mana wisp for gold, maybe.
I agree that there will always be a limiting resource, and that if everything was handed directly to us, then the game would be boring. But I believe that earning resources and progression being too slow would also make people bored in the game. Therefore, it should be important reaching a balance between both ends, not too easy but neither too difficult, and for that our feedback is important. People will always complain, but it is important to detect when there are strong reasons behind those complains.
The Devs are listening with changes to art cards, performance, etc. The gold will get sorted soon I imagine. The artifacts and other stuff will follow. I have not noticed the gold being nerfed much maybe due to drops from mobs and legendary foes I see at master. I don't sell world enchantments, just burn for aether. You are right though balance is a difficult thing to achieve but it is being done.
i think the gold thing IS sorted...
previously with planar mana being the bottlenick, it affected everyone with no way around it...
with the bottlenick now being gold, you can easily overcome that with zen.
but yeah, if the reduced planar mana remains as low as it is now (even your own personal mana vault won't give you more planar mana when you're at cap, how much sense does that make?)... i'd much rather have the gold.
the reduced plana mana earned, combined with the reduced gold earned... means there's zero reason to try and actually hit the cap every week.
overall i'm happy with the changes in a way... they've made it super easy to be uber casual and not really get invested in the game.
here's what's done it for me: if you combine the no use after cap play, and reaching the cap quicker with the new quickplay feature, it's freed up alot of time.
Count me with the Aether cap limit is a problem players. I don't have a problem earning gold. My current status is: Realm all level 10. Of my 6 builds (based on class) I have one deck level 8. 5 decks level 7. At the current cap it will take me another month and a half to get all my decks to level 8. Seems pretty slow and just a little dull given no foreseeable new content being added in the mean time. I have tweaked all my builds, equipment and artifacts all upgraded and appropriate to the build. I am also like the original poster mostly just logging in and watching the refined aether total finally climb to where I can completely upgrade 1 deck. It's like watching an hour glass fill, not fun really. This cap also holds me back from experimenting more with newly available spells. I have spent resources on a couple that I like but adding them to an existing deck means lowering the overall effectiveness of the deck until there are pages and aether enough to upgrade them.