This is nothing short of a joke. I sincerely hope the "developers", if that's what you like to call yourselves, take a sense of pride in ruining a once great game from pure GREED! You say people are complaining about the item level of level 15 enchantments and your solution to increase these is by requiring people to trade in 3 rank 15s enchantments for a level 2 enchantment that can be increased to level 5? Sounds like nothing more than a money grab to me. Congratulations on losing not only myself, but many many others who have provided monetary funds to keep this game going. You guys sure know how to drive away your loyal fan base and drive a game straight into the ground. In the future, try developing more meaningful content for your game, instead of requiring your fan base to pour money into it ✌
One thing I didn't see that was well received with the last enchantment rework is the guaranteed upgrade after X amount of fails, why was that aspect scrapped (if it was)?
One thing I didn't see that was well received with the last enchantment rework is the guaranteed upgrade after X amount of fails, why was that aspect scrapped (if it was)?
Streak breakers still exist and are on the new enchantments as well.
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arbitrarityMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 96Arc User
The reason players can exchange for rank 2 of the stat enchants and rank 4 of the combat and companion enchants if those match the stats/level/power of the old ones. The damage boost on a rank 4 combat enchant is the same as a rank 14 weapon enchant now. The companion enchant at rank 4 is the damage increase of having all rank 15 indomitables on live now. The exchange is to make sure players can exchange to keep themselves where they already are (or get caught up if behind that now).
The exchange rate for new enchantments destroys an absolutely massive amount of value. The IL remains the same, but the cost to produce doesn't match the value being put in, based on current sources. Saying "exchange for equal stats/level/power" feels like very weak equivocation. Start from the costs to produce new enchantments, compared with the costs of existing ones.
Rank 1 enchantments sell at Bradda for 100k each. So, I can trade 1.5 Rank 15 enchantments (or 1.2m AD) for 30 tokens, to get a Rank 1 enchantment, that costs 100k?
You don't directly sell rank 2 enchantments, but they can be produced with a Coalescent Mote, 3 Potencies, and 100k RP, plus the rank 1 and 10 gold. That's maybe 1.2m (~900k + 150k + 100k), perhaps more once the price of Coalescents shoots up due to the extra demand and lack of zen in the economy. That's still massively less than the 2.4m of present value that 60 tokens represents.
3 tokens for a rank 1, 30 tokens for a rank 2, seem much more reasonable, based on the existence of Bradda's shop, unless you plan to increase the price there to 1m+ per rank 1 enchantment, which... well, you could, but shouldn't. Personally, I'd suggest something like 3-30-75-120 for ranks 1-4. This means substantial IL inflation, but doesn't outright delete half the value of all existing enchantments in the game.
Alternatively, adding an exchange for a Coalescent Mote for 20-25 tokens would be very fair. Perhaps some 5% motes at a lower rate, 10-ish? (400k + 20 pres wards)
Additionally, obvious concerns apply that will be otherwise disruptive to the economy if not handled fairly
What happens to existing Marks of Potency and Enchanting Stones? What will the exchange rate be?
Will there be refining materials or new enchantments in the Tarmalune shop?
This seems like an oddly linear system, given how the Mote/ward requirements seemingly make up 80%+ of the cost to upgrade, and are constant. It's better than Mounts with the 5x scaling of Insignia Dust cost, but it's a pretty massive linear cost. If you end up making non-coalescent motes drop at a reasonable rate, that could end up making it not ridiculously difficult to get Rank 2 enchantments for a new player. Adding a base % to upgrade for lower ranks, so it's not outright 0%, would be nicer, of course.
Post edited by arbitrarity on
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juleadreamMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 372Arc User
So what are people with less than rank 10 enchants supposed to do when this goes live, do without enchants? This is going to hurt a lot of f2p players who will find themselves with enchants they can't do anything with aside from convert to rp; it will also leave a lot of people with multiple alts hanging. I implore you to rethink the exchange system to be inclusive of ALL players - and saying "just upgrade your enchants to rank 10 before the change" is not an acceptable response.
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arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
So what are people with less than rank 10 enchants supposed to do when this goes live, do without enchants? This is going to hurt a lot of f2p players who will find themselves with enchants they can't do anything with aside from convert to rp; it will also leave a lot of people with multiple alts hanging. I implore you to rethink the exchange system to be inclusive of ALL players - and saying "just upgrade your enchants to rank 10 before the change" is not an acceptable response.
As it is on live now, rank 9s are super cheap anyways and basically useless now. I suspect that the new rank 1s will be just as ubiquitous. You really aren't losing anything as a new player by refining old low rank enchants and getting the new ones. You are trying to apply value that hasn't had value in years.
Please explain to me why we, having 13-15 old stones with us, should improve new ones from scratch? And why didn't the green catalysts change to dust? And by the way, the appearance of the saint vorpal is not displayed at all.
i havent gone to preview yet, i beIieve I aint going either, but are we abIe to exchage enchantments and runestones for AD? Iike u did in the past? i dont want to exchange my unbound items for enchantments that wiII get a bound to account
Question: If at the moment I have every enchantment and runestone at rank 15, when the new module goes live, will they be enough to fully equip my character with the new rank 5 enchantments?
One new rank 2 = 3 old rank 15. Why do you think you will get rank 5s ?
Because as it is now a rank 15 enchantment is the max value You can get in the game, the correct conversion shall be all my rank 15 enchantments for the new rank 5 as thats its going to be the max value in the future.
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arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Question: If at the moment I have every enchantment and runestone at rank 15, when the new module goes live, will they be enough to fully equip my character with the new rank 5 enchantments?
One new rank 2 = 3 old rank 15. Why do you think you will get rank 5s ?
Because as it is now a rank 15 enchantment is the max value You can get in the game, the correct conversion shall be all my rank 15 enchantments for the new rank 5 as thats its going to be the max value in the future.
Except that they are adding more levels at the same time. If they didn't change the number of the enchant, a rank 5 would be a rank 18. The stats of a rank 2 are slightly higher than that of live's rank 15.
> @noworries#8859 said: > > For my own curiosity, what were you planning to do with those 100 enchantments if this system change hadn't happened? The enchantments on live can still be upgraded, so one option is to raise some of them to rank 10 to exchange into the new enchantments.
I use r8/r9 weapon/armor/exch on all my alts. Not being able to exchange them and forcing us to spend more AD to upgrade them now is effectively killing off the viability of alts.
That's a lot of wasted expense and lockbox drops just to use as RP which I don't seem to be short on currently.
But you don't seem to think having alts is part of the game I guess.
What about the lower lvl armor and weapon enchantments? Is there any plan for away to get the appearance for those?
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kalina311Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 2,082Arc User
surely this secret refinements nerf /upgrade fiasco will help alleviate all the astral diamond exchange backlog .. that was the plan all along anyways .. LOL
Wow, Ok so people are whining about rank 8/9 armour and weapon enchants… these things are worthless.. the only people who are really complaining are the people who are hoarding hundreds of them. They are worthless now, they will be worthless then. Would you be happy if they gave you 1000 ad for them? No you would want a billion ad or whatever. No they obviously pulled all the metrics and they decided on the cutoff due to how many of those ranks are out there. They did a cost analysis and came to the conclusion that rank 10 should be the cutoff. I agree with them. We have had people who are hoarding hundreds of thousands of “junk” and saying they have absolute value! They don’t. We have had duplication glitches, ad glitches, store glitches, zen glitches… this is to clean up the junk everyone took advantage over the 7 years and didn’t get banned or caught or transferred their stuff to other accounts. This is to slush all the “valued” gear into a currency and then buy new gear… anything that didn’t make the cutoff gets converted into gold or rp. Does this hurt the hoarders? Yes… does this hurt a new player or even a middle player? No. We get 100k ad a day, you can fill up on rank 1’s within 2 weeks of playing. Arc is not stupid, they have metrics, we don’t! So we have no idea what we are talking about, they do.
I will say selling rank 9 unique weapon/armour enchants at rank 8/9 in the zen market and making the cutoff 10 a bit cheeky though. Butterfly,flower,holy vorpal enchants I’m looking at you. But I do understand. Would be nice to mail everyone who has those enchants 1 coal ward per item as a compensation to rank it to 10. Or maybe a coupon or something idk. Regardless all the others arc didn’t sell for zen at lower then 14 so no big deal there.
I use r8/r9 weapon/armor/exch on all my alts. Not being able to exchange them and forcing us to spend more AD to upgrade them now is effectively killing off the viability of alts.
That really depends on what happens to the lockboxes now. Old r9 enchants obviously will not be in the lockboxes any more, if the lockboxes receive the new r1 enchants instead they will(after some time) be cheap enough that you can fill up your alts with little cost.
What about the lower lvl armor and weapon enchantments? Is there any plan for away to get the appearance for those?
Addition: Currently the different ranks have different intensity of the effect. (A r9 Plaguefire enchant is less bright flaming blue than a r14.) Will that even still exist in the new system? Can I convert 5 different intensities of the same enchant, or is there any way to choose the intensity while having converted 1 of that enchant effect?
This rework gave up even on the pretense that it was needed or to be improving the game. What an atrocity. I don't even care for the trial anymore, the last switches down the light.
I use r8/r9 weapon/armor/exch on all my alts. Not being able to exchange them and forcing us to spend more AD to upgrade them now is effectively killing off the viability of alts.
That really depends on what happens to the lockboxes now. Old r9 enchants obviously will not be in the lockboxes any more, if the lockboxes receive the new r1 enchants instead they will(after some time) be cheap enough that you can fill up your alts with little cost.
Well, the latest lockbox has no new enchantments/runestones in it on the PTS, just checked. And that would fall in line with no new enchantments/runestones being in the Tarmalune Trade Bar Store on the PTS either...
> @trialbyfire001 said: > Wow, > Ok so people are whining about rank 8/9 armour and weapon enchants… these things are worthless.. the only people who are really complaining are the people who are hoarding hundreds of them. They are worthless now, they will be worthless then. Would you be happy if they gave you 1000 ad for them? No you would want a billion ad or whatever. No they obviously pulled all the metrics and they decided on the cutoff due to how many of those ranks are out there. They did a cost analysis and came to the conclusion that rank 10 should be the cutoff. I agree with them. We have had people who are hoarding hundreds of thousands of “junk” and saying they have absolute value! They don’t. We have had duplication glitches, ad glitches, store glitches, zen glitches… this is to clean up the junk everyone took advantage over the 7 years and didn’t get banned or caught or transferred their stuff to other accounts. This is to slush all the “valued” gear into a currency and then buy new gear… anything that didn’t make the cutoff gets converted into gold or rp. Does this hurt the hoarders? Yes… does this hurt a new player or even a middle player? No. We get 100k ad a day, you can fill up on rank 1’s within 2 weeks of playing. > Arc is not stupid, they have metrics, we don’t! So we have no idea what we are talking about, they do.
I'm not a hoarder. I use these all on my alts...15 of them I play through all content. Making r8/r9 useless means having to buy all new enchants instead of being able to exchange these to recoup some of that cost.
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arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
> @trialbyfire001 said: > Wow, > Ok so people are whining about rank 8/9 armour and weapon enchants… these things are worthless.. the only people who are really complaining are the people who are hoarding hundreds of them. They are worthless now, they will be worthless then. Would you be happy if they gave you 1000 ad for them? No you would want a billion ad or whatever. No they obviously pulled all the metrics and they decided on the cutoff due to how many of those ranks are out there. They did a cost analysis and came to the conclusion that rank 10 should be the cutoff. I agree with them. We have had people who are hoarding hundreds of thousands of “junk” and saying they have absolute value! They don’t. We have had duplication glitches, ad glitches, store glitches, zen glitches… this is to clean up the junk everyone took advantage over the 7 years and didn’t get banned or caught or transferred their stuff to other accounts. This is to slush all the “valued” gear into a currency and then buy new gear… anything that didn’t make the cutoff gets converted into gold or rp. Does this hurt the hoarders? Yes… does this hurt a new player or even a middle player? No. We get 100k ad a day, you can fill up on rank 1’s within 2 weeks of playing. > Arc is not stupid, they have metrics, we don’t! So we have no idea what we are talking about, they do.
I'm not a hoarder. I use these all on my alts...15 of them I play through all content. Making r8/r9 useless means having to buy all new enchants instead of being able to exchange these to recoup some of that cost.
Do they (rank 9s) really add that much to your alts though? Can't you just run almost as well without?
Ok you said the whole reason to change the enchantments was to make the item level and stats more meaningful. How is this being accomplished in any way? Rank 15 is 200 a rank 2 is 600 but it takes 3 rank 15 to get 1 rank 2. Yes they can go to rank 5 but the same could have been accomplished by raising the levels on current enchants. Instead you are doing this new system that is going to require new components to upgrade them yet all the components we have (even from lockboxes and dungeons) will have no use or value except as rp. The enchants we get from lockboxes and the enchants you gave the new characters as they leveled are useless. I don't see this as an improvement at all. We are even losing stats with your new system. How is this helpful at all? This is just killing the game congrats. Im sure my opinion doesn't matter nor anyone else's you have made that clear in the past.
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arazith07Member, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 1,719Arc User
Ok you said the whole reason to change the enchantments was to make the item level and stats more meaningful. How is this being accomplished in any way? Rank 15 is 200 a rank 2 is 600 but it takes 3 rank 15 to get 1 rank 2. Yes they can go to rank 5 but the same could have been accomplished by raising the levels on current enchants. Instead you are doing this new system that is going to require new components to upgrade them yet all the components we have (even from lockboxes and dungeons) will have no use or value except as rp. The enchants we get from lockboxes and the enchants you gave the new characters as they leveled are useless. I don't see this as an improvement at all. We are even losing stats with your new system. How is this helpful at all? This is just killing the game congrats. Im sure my opinion doesn't matter nor anyone else's you have made that clear in the past.
You are literally saying that the exchange is fair with the numbers but then say that you are losing stats? I don't think you are quite understanding everything here.
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plasticbatMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 12,208Arc User
edited December 2021
So, if a toon currently is using rank 10 enchantment only, after the change, he won't even able to trade for one rank 1 enchantment. i.e. he will not be able to have any enchantment at all. Am I right?
Post edited by plasticbat on
*** The game can read your mind. If you want it, you won't get it. If you don't expect to get it, you will. ***
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arbitrarityMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 96Arc User
edited December 2021
On a related note, this introduces a pretty massive amount of IL inflation. Full rank 5s is about 20000 IL (1500 * 10 + 5000), vs the current 6600 (24 * 200 + 800 * 2). 13500 IL is nearly 20% of the current max IL. 75k+ TIL is likely to make a lot of content relatively less difficult. In turn, that generally makes Mythic insignias and Legendary Collars much less appealing, since the marginal IL they improve is much more easily gained through enchantment upgrades.
Generally, I think players aren't happy with the treadmill of introducing new must-have items at high prices, selling them at a massive discount later, then finally invalidating them.
Items don't necessarily need to retain value forever, and making reasonable-IL items widely available to newer players is generally desirable. Even increasing the upper limit of cost to fully outfit a character is... well, both an unpleasant reality of short-term sales targets, and a way to give players something to strive for. But this cycle seems to be happening at a faster and faster pace in the last couple of years, and seems disastrous for long-term engagement.
I'm not averse to reworking refinement, in general. There are some useful goals that can be achieved that way, like making RP relevant again, and fixing the imbalance between cost to buy and cost to upgrade (which has probably destroyed ward sales). I'm not averse to making enchantments a larger part of IL contribution and stat balance.
I don't like deleting over half the value of every existing rank 15 in the game, and I don't like making passably outfitting a new player, or alt, absurdly expensive. In designing a new set of enchantment ranks, I'd expect 4 goals:
- Existing investments in character power should mostly retain their value (in AD or AD-equivalent and IL) - Players should be able to reasonably equip a character on a budget - IL creep is kept reasonable - The upper limit of cost is expanded reasonably (again, inevitability of trying to drive sales)
Personally, I think this new system fails on 3/4 of these goals. Hilariously, "the upper limit of cost is expanded reasonably" is the one I think passes. Existing 2x r14 + 24x r15 cost at least 36m AD, probably more, depending on when you bought in. New system, 12x r5, is likely under 60 million AD. Compared to something like Mythic Mount Insignias/Collars, that's actually a relatively tame jump.
I think you could achieve a better balance of these goals by making enchantment cost progression somewhat less linear (though again, not as crazy as Mounts, please). I'd spread out enchantment levels just a tiny bit more, from 1-6, targetting IL/cost to upgrade such that, for example:
- Rank 1 is easy for new players to acquire (125 IL or so, equivalent to a rank 10, sell for maybe 10k?) - Rank 2 is a relatively inexpensive upgrade, suitable for intermediate players and alts (1 glyph, 50k RP, base 20% chance to upgrade, 250 IL, target cost similar to a rank 12 around 150k) - Rank 3 represents some substantial investment in the character, but is attainable with dedicated effort (3 glyphs, 150k RP, 5% chance to upgrade, 375 IL, target cost 600k, maybe include these in the Tarmalune store) - Rank 4 is a substantial investment, comparable to a rank 15 before they were de-valued (6 glyphs, 300k RP, 1% chance to upgrade, 500 IL, target cost 1.6m, avoid selling these through any source for a while) - Rank 5 is a large investment, but still reasonable for gear (10 glyphs, 500k RP, 0% chance to upgrade, 625 IL, target cost 3m) - Rank 6, sky's the limit (probably need to add some more expensive reagents here, aim for a cost of 5-6m, 750 IL)
Then rebalance your existing trade-in around those target costs, allowing players to exchange for up to rank 3 (maybe 4?) for general enchantments, maybe rank 5 for Combat/Companion Enchantments, and trade extra tokens for decent Motes.
Maybe triple the IL for the Combat enchantment relative to others, so it goes from 375-2250, leaving a total max IL net impact of 3150 (6600 to 9750), a minor boost on current BIS (10 * 500 + 1875 = 6875), fairly break-even for other ranges (24x rank 12s and rank 8 weapon/armor is 3760 IL, compared to 3625 from 10x rank 2 and a rank 3 combat, 24x rank 9 is basically zero cost, but 2160 IL, vs 2000 from 10x rank 1 + rank 2 combat).
By extending the upper end with an extra level or two, you still have room to pull money out of the economy and sell wards, while leaving players feeling less cheated about their existing enchantments losing value, and losing large amounts of relative progression
1) Will the rewards for opening Coffer of Celestial Artifacts be updated (they currently drop MoPs and Enchants)
2) Will rewards from Dread Ring Lairs be updated to provide the new Enchants?
3) Will the Sybilla Legacy Store be updated to provide the new enchants?
4) Will the lvl 18 profession recipes be updated to allow the crafting of the equivalent Armor Enchantments?
5) Will the Stronghold Overload vendor be updated to provide higher rank overloads?
6) The Dragon Glyphs from Siege of Neverwinter Store, will those be useable or exchanged for new types?
7) Will Stronghold Building resource requirements be updated to accept/require much more surplus equipment so all the obsolete items can be donated for the good of all?
8) Will all the Enchant chests since Jubilee V be updated to yield the new enchants?
9) Will the Adventure Seal store be updated to offer enchants in the new system (instead of the Rank 5s currently)?
The proposal to provide 2 weeks of a temporary enchant needs to be retained into the future. Many players may return outside of the launch window month.
Any assumption that a new level 20 player can earn 100k/day is a total misunderstanding of the queue IL threshholds - none of them will be able to afford to buy any of the new enchantments for a long while with AD.
Comments
The exchange rate for new enchantments destroys an absolutely massive amount of value. The IL remains the same, but the cost to produce doesn't match the value being put in, based on current sources. Saying "exchange for equal stats/level/power" feels like very weak equivocation. Start from the costs to produce new enchantments, compared with the costs of existing ones.
3 tokens for a rank 1, 30 tokens for a rank 2, seem much more reasonable, based on the existence of Bradda's shop, unless you plan to increase the price there to 1m+ per rank 1 enchantment, which... well, you could, but shouldn't. Personally, I'd suggest something like 3-30-75-120 for ranks 1-4. This means substantial IL inflation, but doesn't outright delete half the value of all existing enchantments in the game.
Alternatively, adding an exchange for a Coalescent Mote for 20-25 tokens would be very fair. Perhaps some 5% motes at a lower rate, 10-ish? (400k + 20 pres wards)
Additionally, obvious concerns apply that will be otherwise disruptive to the economy if not handled fairly
- What happens to existing Marks of Potency and Enchanting Stones? What will the exchange rate be?
- Will there be refining materials or new enchantments in the Tarmalune shop?
This seems like an oddly linear system, given how the Mote/ward requirements seemingly make up 80%+ of the cost to upgrade, and are constant. It's better than Mounts with the 5x scaling of Insignia Dust cost, but it's a pretty massive linear cost. If you end up making non-coalescent motes drop at a reasonable rate, that could end up making it not ridiculously difficult to get Rank 2 enchantments for a new player. Adding a base % to upgrade for lower ranks, so it's not outright 0%, would be nicer, of course.>
> For my own curiosity, what were you planning to do with those 100 enchantments if this system change hadn't happened? The enchantments on live can still be upgraded, so one option is to raise some of them to rank 10 to exchange into the new enchantments.
I use r8/r9 weapon/armor/exch on all my alts. Not being able to exchange them and forcing us to spend more AD to upgrade them now is effectively killing off the viability of alts.
That's a lot of wasted expense and lockbox drops just to use as RP which I don't seem to be short on currently.
But you don't seem to think having alts is part of the game I guess.
Ok so people are whining about rank 8/9 armour and weapon enchants… these things are worthless.. the only people who are really complaining are the people who are hoarding hundreds of them. They are worthless now, they will be worthless then. Would you be happy if they gave you 1000 ad for them? No you would want a billion ad or whatever. No they obviously pulled all the metrics and they decided on the cutoff due to how many of those ranks are out there. They did a cost analysis and came to the conclusion that rank 10 should be the cutoff. I agree with them. We have had people who are hoarding hundreds of thousands of “junk” and saying they have absolute value! They don’t. We have had duplication glitches, ad glitches, store glitches, zen glitches… this is to clean up the junk everyone took advantage over the 7 years and didn’t get banned or caught or transferred their stuff to other accounts. This is to slush all the “valued” gear into a currency and then buy new gear… anything that didn’t make the cutoff gets converted into gold or rp. Does this hurt the hoarders? Yes… does this hurt a new player or even a middle player? No. We get 100k ad a day, you can fill up on rank 1’s within 2 weeks of playing.
Arc is not stupid, they have metrics, we don’t! So we have no idea what we are talking about, they do.
> Wow,
> Ok so people are whining about rank 8/9 armour and weapon enchants… these things are worthless.. the only people who are really complaining are the people who are hoarding hundreds of them. They are worthless now, they will be worthless then. Would you be happy if they gave you 1000 ad for them? No you would want a billion ad or whatever. No they obviously pulled all the metrics and they decided on the cutoff due to how many of those ranks are out there. They did a cost analysis and came to the conclusion that rank 10 should be the cutoff. I agree with them. We have had people who are hoarding hundreds of thousands of “junk” and saying they have absolute value! They don’t. We have had duplication glitches, ad glitches, store glitches, zen glitches… this is to clean up the junk everyone took advantage over the 7 years and didn’t get banned or caught or transferred their stuff to other accounts. This is to slush all the “valued” gear into a currency and then buy new gear… anything that didn’t make the cutoff gets converted into gold or rp. Does this hurt the hoarders? Yes… does this hurt a new player or even a middle player? No. We get 100k ad a day, you can fill up on rank 1’s within 2 weeks of playing.
> Arc is not stupid, they have metrics, we don’t! So we have no idea what we are talking about, they do.
I'm not a hoarder. I use these all on my alts...15 of them I play through all content. Making r8/r9 useless means having to buy all new enchants instead of being able to exchange these to recoup some of that cost.
In turn, that generally makes Mythic insignias and Legendary Collars much less appealing, since the marginal IL they improve is much more easily gained through enchantment upgrades.
Generally, I think players aren't happy with the treadmill of introducing new must-have items at high prices, selling them at a massive discount later, then finally invalidating them.
Items don't necessarily need to retain value forever, and making reasonable-IL items widely available to newer players is generally desirable. Even increasing the upper limit of cost to fully outfit a character is... well, both an unpleasant reality of short-term sales targets, and a way to give players something to strive for.
But this cycle seems to be happening at a faster and faster pace in the last couple of years, and seems disastrous for long-term engagement.
I'm not averse to reworking refinement, in general. There are some useful goals that can be achieved that way, like making RP relevant again, and fixing the imbalance between cost to buy and cost to upgrade (which has probably destroyed ward sales). I'm not averse to making enchantments a larger part of IL contribution and stat balance.
I don't like deleting over half the value of every existing rank 15 in the game, and I don't like making passably outfitting a new player, or alt, absurdly expensive.
In designing a new set of enchantment ranks, I'd expect 4 goals:
- Existing investments in character power should mostly retain their value (in AD or AD-equivalent and IL)
- Players should be able to reasonably equip a character on a budget
- IL creep is kept reasonable
- The upper limit of cost is expanded reasonably (again, inevitability of trying to drive sales)
Personally, I think this new system fails on 3/4 of these goals. Hilariously, "the upper limit of cost is expanded reasonably" is the one I think passes. Existing 2x r14 + 24x r15 cost at least 36m AD, probably more, depending on when you bought in. New system, 12x r5, is likely under 60 million AD. Compared to something like Mythic Mount Insignias/Collars, that's actually a relatively tame jump.
I think you could achieve a better balance of these goals by making enchantment cost progression somewhat less linear (though again, not as crazy as Mounts, please). I'd spread out enchantment levels just a tiny bit more, from 1-6, targetting IL/cost to upgrade such that, for example:
- Rank 1 is easy for new players to acquire (125 IL or so, equivalent to a rank 10, sell for maybe 10k?)
- Rank 2 is a relatively inexpensive upgrade, suitable for intermediate players and alts (1 glyph, 50k RP, base 20% chance to upgrade, 250 IL, target cost similar to a rank 12 around 150k)
- Rank 3 represents some substantial investment in the character, but is attainable with dedicated effort (3 glyphs, 150k RP, 5% chance to upgrade, 375 IL, target cost 600k, maybe include these in the Tarmalune store)
- Rank 4 is a substantial investment, comparable to a rank 15 before they were de-valued (6 glyphs, 300k RP, 1% chance to upgrade, 500 IL, target cost 1.6m, avoid selling these through any source for a while)
- Rank 5 is a large investment, but still reasonable for gear (10 glyphs, 500k RP, 0% chance to upgrade, 625 IL, target cost 3m)
- Rank 6, sky's the limit (probably need to add some more expensive reagents here, aim for a cost of 5-6m, 750 IL)
Then rebalance your existing trade-in around those target costs, allowing players to exchange for up to rank 3 (maybe 4?) for general enchantments, maybe rank 5 for Combat/Companion Enchantments, and trade extra tokens for decent Motes.
Maybe triple the IL for the Combat enchantment relative to others, so it goes from 375-2250, leaving a total max IL net impact of 3150 (6600 to 9750), a minor boost on current BIS (10 * 500 + 1875 = 6875), fairly break-even for other ranges (24x rank 12s and rank 8 weapon/armor is 3760 IL, compared to 3625 from 10x rank 2 and a rank 3 combat, 24x rank 9 is basically zero cost, but 2160 IL, vs 2000 from 10x rank 1 + rank 2 combat).
By extending the upper end with an extra level or two, you still have room to pull money out of the economy and sell wards, while leaving players feeling less cheated about their existing enchantments losing value, and losing large amounts of relative progression
1) Will the rewards for opening Coffer of Celestial Artifacts be updated (they currently drop MoPs and Enchants)
2) Will rewards from Dread Ring Lairs be updated to provide the new Enchants?
3) Will the Sybilla Legacy Store be updated to provide the new enchants?
4) Will the lvl 18 profession recipes be updated to allow the crafting of the equivalent Armor Enchantments?
5) Will the Stronghold Overload vendor be updated to provide higher rank overloads?
6) The Dragon Glyphs from Siege of Neverwinter Store, will those be useable or exchanged for new types?
7) Will Stronghold Building resource requirements be updated to accept/require much more surplus equipment so all the obsolete items can be donated for the good of all?
8) Will all the Enchant chests since Jubilee V be updated to yield the new enchants?
9) Will the Adventure Seal store be updated to offer enchants in the new system (instead of the Rank 5s currently)?
The proposal to provide 2 weeks of a temporary enchant needs to be retained into the future. Many players may return outside of the launch window month.
Any assumption that a new level 20 player can earn 100k/day is a total misunderstanding of the queue IL threshholds - none of them will be able to afford to buy any of the new enchantments for a long while with AD.