Relict gear - Voninblod Empowerment

hastati96 · September 2016

The "Tier Combat Remining Time" is pretty short with just 2 hours of combat time. It is pretty annoying to farm such a lot of voninblod just to keep up the tier 3 empowerment. Especially if you use all 4 set pieces!
My suggestion is increase the time by another 3 or 4 hours for each tier.

ironzerg79 · September 2016

It needs to be at least 8 hours for the cost involved. At two hours is literally impossible to earn enough voninblood to keep your gear empowered.

That's the "at least" part.

At best is just needs to be removed. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but it's just not fun.

darthpotater · September 2016

It should be permanent. You spend lots of VB, you get a permanent T3

loboguild · September 2016

I still don't know why this is in the game. @panderus said that Mod 3 Black Ice was an overall success and I have no reason to not believe him. They are most definitely looking at other stuff than the players when evaluating and maybe I don't represent the majority though.

Since Mod 10 I have three armor sets in my inventory. One for PVP (thanks solo queue), one for Mod 10 content (thanks FBI and relic hunting) and one for other group and solo content. It's just puzzling. The devs specifically stated they do not want players to carry more Armor Sets around, yet this HAMSTERED empowerment does just that. Can anybody explain this HAMSTROSITY?

oldbaldyone · September 2016

If you view the number of people who obtained and maintained black ice gear as a judgment of success, sure, I can see it being a success. However, you have to remember that it was the best gear around for both PVE and PVP (I believe), was required to run Kessels....not to mention there really wasn't much else to do. I don't know really ANYONE that actually enjoyed the tiered armor or the BI process....

With everything going on nowadays - constant farming for the coffer, constant campaign dailies just to be able to make a decent AD living, constant farming for RP, etc.....adding another one to the list is just a bad idea for armor that is just a tiny bit better than the next best thing but is MUCH harder to get.

The requirements to restore it just add insult to injury IMO. Its requiring lanolin as if the stuff drops like rain.

micky1p00 · September 2016

loboguild said:
I still don't know why this is in the game. @panderus said that Mod 3 Black Ice was an overall success and I have no reason to not believe him. They are most definitely looking at other stuff than the players when evaluating and maybe I don't represent the majority though.

Since Mod 10 I have three armor sets in my inventory. One for PVP (thanks solo queue), one for Mod 10 content (thanks FBI and relic hunting) and one for other group and solo content. It's just puzzling. The devs specifically stated they do not want players to carry more Armor Sets around, yet this HAMSTERED empowerment does just that. Can anybody explain this HAMSTROSITY?

How many got the armor sets are not the same as how many used it as main set. At the time we needed minimal resistance to get into KR, so like now we would carry a set, swap gear to get inside and swap back once in. To emphasize I still have the old sets, HV, swash etc.. but BI went to the salvage hammer as soon as those restrictions were lifted.
So on paper it was great success, we all farmed the stupid armor, but in practice is was a fail, exactly like this Voniblood.

And additional +1 for the HAMSTERED HAMSTROSITY

Ok, why my hamsters are the wrong color ?

andorrabell · September 2016

ironzerg79 said:
It needs to be at least 8 hours for the cost involved. At two hours is literally impossible to earn enough voninblood to keep your gear empowered.

That's the "at least" part.

At best is just needs to be removed. I was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt here, but it's just not fun.

Yup. If they want a one-time empowerment cost or something, fine. But this gear is being seriously underutilized due to the stupid time needed to upkeep it.

ironzerg79 · September 2016

I'd be fine with that...if I have to grind out 50k voninblood to permanently empower my gear? Fine. I'm totally fine with that. At least there's a light at the end of the tunnel, and the reward is worth the effort.

But I'm not grinding it out, nor am I really interested in even attempting to collect the rest of the Relic pieces given the current empowerment system. At this point, I'm just going to opt out.

beckylunatic · September 2016

oldbaldyone said:
If you view the number of people who obtained and maintained black ice gear as a judgment of success, sure, I can see it being a success. However, you have to remember that it was the best gear around for both PVE and PVP (I believe), was required to run Kessels....not to mention there really wasn't much else to do. I don't know really ANYONE that actually enjoyed the tiered armor or the BI process....

I've written this up before, but assuming that some of the measure of how many players embraced BI gear the first time around was a straightforward count of how many were using it, not only was it great in PvP and had some applications in PvE (and was BiS if your class didn't have an obvious BiS set bonus), 4/6 pieces were high-gear-score equipment that were available to everyone, even solo players. People who'd previously worn a mish-mash of campaign lair drops because they never dared set foot in an epic dungeon enthusiastically decked themselves out in BI gear. They didn't even have to keep it charged if they didn't want to because it was miles better than anything they'd had before regardless.

Relic armor is aimed at a completely different demographic. The empowerment mechanics are similar, but the two are barely comparable otherwise.

And it was @asterdahl who said that BI gear was overall a success, I'm pretty sure.

dupeks · September 2016

andorrabell said:
Yup. If they want a one-time empowerment cost or something, fine. But this gear is being seriously underutilized due to the stupid time needed to upkeep it.

I think that's the biggest bummer: plenty of folks have obtained the gear, some even empowered it, but very few are using it.

The way I look at it, unless I'm running in a close-to-BiS party in FBI, wearing the empowered gear is effectively doubling my required play time. For every hour I wear the gear, I need to spend a similar hour grinding to keep it topped up. I'd much rather just spend that 2nd hour playing the game on my main or my alts, so I won't bother with the empowered gear.

I haven't met anyone who wears the gear outside of FBI, or more specifically outside of just queuing in to FBI. They should create a little beach changing cabin at the FBI spawn so we don't all have to change in the icy wind.

ironzerg79 · September 2016

Keep in mind Black Ice was also SUBSTANTIALLY easier to farm, and running KR generally netted your more Black Ice than you lost, so it was self-sustaining.

Black Ice Armor also had an 8-hour decay time versus 2 hours for Relic.

If Relic mapped 1:1 to Black Ice, I could see it being "successful", but it doesn't. It's not even in the same ballpark.

panderus · September 2016

We are certainly monitoring this and I will try to have a conversation with some folks to see if it is where we think it should be, though a system like this takes some time to see how they pan out since there is a LARGE demand for Voninblod in the beginning and very little later on.

andorrabell · September 2016

panderus said:
We are certainly monitoring this and I will try to have a conversation with some folks to see if it is where we think it should be, though a system like this takes some time to see how they pan out since there is a LARGE demand for Voninblod in the beginning and very little later on.

Thank you for looking at it. I think you will be surprised at how much blood it takes to feed a full set doing normal heroic things (i.e not just running in a circle clicking relics).

darthpotater · September 2016

People is only using it to meet the requeriments to FBI. When you are in, you change to the normal set. This is the reality. Is sad that all the work in a new set is wasted because bad mechanics.

qexotic · September 2016

panderus said:
We are certainly monitoring this and I will try to have a conversation with some folks to see if it is where we think it should be, though a system like this takes some time to see how they pan out since there is a LARGE demand for Voninblod in the beginning and very little later on.

@panderus What exactly are you monitoring ? I am only collecting Voninblod so I can progress through the campaign. Only one of my three characters is actually wearing a piece of the new gear, a Frostborn Arm Piece. I have made no attempt to charge it up at any point as it is only there to provide a chance at extra Voninblod to throw in the campaign progress coffers. Since that chance appears to be something like 1 in 10, somewhat different to the 25% stated, I haven't bothered to give my other two characters any. I may equip at least one of my characters with a set of the new Epic Shirt and Pants as the bonus on them might outweigh the loss of other stats. Likewise, I may add Armour Kits if I can bring myself to farm enough additional Voninblod. Once that is done, my Voninblod farming will cease altogether. That looks likely to be happening in 2-3 weeks time. At no point will I be devoting game playing time and effort to farming Voninblod to empower any of my gear. I suspect, I am not alone in this.

arabatur · September 2016

joe123thewayward said:
I wish the whole voinblood thing would just go away. I have no desire to recharge the gear and thus have not bothered to get the gear. The entire new mod appears to be built around this whole voinblood scheme, so as the novelty of the new zones starts to disappear I find that I have less and less iterest in venturing to the new zones.

^This.

ironzerg79 · September 2016

I don't know how much more clear we can be.

Farming Voninblood is a means to an end. In and of itself, it is NOT FUN. It's not a metric that your systems can collect data on. It's not a trend line on a graph. It's not about the "demand" for Voninblood over time.

It's simply the fact that scouring the maps for relics, chain-running HE's or slogging through daily after daily for the SOLE purpose of earning Voninblood to keep the latest set of gear empowered is NOT fun. And it's an additional sting when you realize that the empowerment drains so quickly relative to the speed at which you can fill it up that it's literally impossible to earn more Voninblood than you deplete while wearing a full 4-piece set in all but the most optimal conditions. And even then, you're just barely breaking even or coming ahead.

Look, I'm not bashing the entirety of Module 10. I think overall, it's great. I think the new zones are some of the best you've added. The daily quests are good. The new heroics are fun. And Fangbreaker Island is a fantastic dungeon. But tying the new rewards to a very punishing grind of Voninblood sours the experience for myself, and a lot of the players (as you've seen in the multitude of threads and hundreds if not thousands of posts on this subject).

ironzerg79 · September 2016

I don't mind the campaign. I don't mind that it'll take the better part of two months to finish.

If the Voninblood empowerment was permanent on the armor, I'd be happy.

I mean, if they really want it to be a thing, make the armor crafted at level one. Make it take 15k Voninblood to empower to each level, but make it permanent once you get there. I'd honestly be 100% totally ok with that.

goatfaceone · September 2016

my guess they will wait until after consoles have time enough to be annoyed with it

panderus · September 2016

desisti said:

panderus said:
We are certainly monitoring this and I will try to have a conversation with some folks to see if it is where we think it should be, though a system like this takes some time to see how they pan out since there is a LARGE demand for Voninblod in the beginning and very little later on.
I like these type of answers where someone just type in words with just vague relation to the topic but no explanation whatsoever - Deffinition.
Translation to this would be: "We'll probably adjust this, but not now as we have other, more important things, not to attend to. This will keep you all occupied for some time. Expect no more posts from me on this topic any time soon as this thread will die out in a week or so"

Forum consist out of <10% of ingame population so the don't have to explain anything to anyone, don't like it, emigrate.</p>

I don't have an explanation yet. I merely stated what I was going to do and let you know these systems take some time to see if the friction was too great or not. There is supposed to be SOME amount of feeling that you don't have enough Voninblod, but is it too much? Hard to tell while you are still paying for the campaign that competes for that resource.

hastati96 · September 2016

Currently I have 3 relict parts and I dont use them because they need to much blood in my opinion. I am glad that I could have ilvl 150 gear but unfortunately the amount of time I need to invest is too much. At the moment I rather use my ilvl 140 equip for the content instead of the relict gear that needs for ever hour playtime another another hour of blood farming just to keep up the t3.
There isnt a problem with farming blood for the campaign boons because you just need to farm them once. I wish it would be the same way with the emporwment.

krailov · September 2016

I think though that you are not factoring in that there will be another 'thing' for us to do at that point, and we are likely to stop farming vonin, as there will be something new to farm. We like to feel that we get value for time/money. I understand your position, but the number of players that will complete the campaign and have 'nothing to do' but farm voninblood at the end to empower their gear...
I am with the others - I enjoy the new content, but between 6 toons, I have only had time to get 2 of them into Lonelywood to date. I do NOT see the new drain as value for time/money, so will likely not see FBI for a long, long time - sad face.

panderus · September 2016

magenubbie said:

panderus said:

There is supposed to be SOME amount of feeling that you don't have enough Voninblod
And, as the entire community told you when you introduced Black Ice, is a horrible way of forcing players to grind. And as with BI in the past, players just won't do it.

Except players did do it. A lot. What some people say and what we see players do are not always the same. Again, though I'm not saying its tuned right, but its probably not grossly off from my feelings of personal gameplay.

vinceent1 · September 2016

panderus said:

magenubbie said:

panderus said:

There is supposed to be SOME amount of feeling that you don't have enough Voninblod
And, as the entire community told you when you introduced Black Ice, is a horrible way of forcing players to grind. And as with BI in the past, players just won't do it.
Except players did do it. A lot. What some people say and what we see players do are not always the same. Again, though I'm not saying its tuned right, but its probably not grossly off from my feelings of personal gameplay.

are you sure they are players and not bots?

qexotic · September 2016

panderus said:

magenubbie said:

panderus said:

There is supposed to be SOME amount of feeling that you don't have enough Voninblod
And, as the entire community told you when you introduced Black Ice, is a horrible way of forcing players to grind. And as with BI in the past, players just won't do it.
Except players did do it. A lot. What some people say and what we see players do are not always the same. Again, though I'm not saying its tuned right, but its probably not grossly off from my feelings of personal gameplay.

I'm sorry @panderus but you seem to be obstinately refusing to see the point that is being made here over and over again. Players may well be 'doing it' in significant quantities but they are almost universally hating doing it. The point being: mining/farming Voninblod is in no way, shape or form an enjoyable or fun way to spend time in the game. Clearly, the data you keep looking at is only telling you part of the story, but are you honestly going to try and convince people that 'they really were/are enjoying' mining Black Ice or farming for relics and Voninblod to empower their almost completely useless new pieces of gear when they keep telling you they aren't ?

Relict gear - Voninblod Empowerment

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