There people saying you dont need legendaries to play this game. Then why are they even in the game? I dont understand why they would put gear in the game that nobody needs?
They are even adding overload slots anything that will make our damage higher by not even trying. I would rather they focus on giving us something to use that gear in
You don't need legendaries for PvE. You can steamroll all the PvE content in the game with a cheap t2 set, rank 7 enchants, and the Draconic weapon set- and your two free artifacts, if you really want to stomp things. Actually, that's overkill, you need a lot less power than that, but I just wanted to cite a cheap/easy setup that would easy for most people to gain, and would make them feel like gods made flesh.
However... for PvP, it's a little different. In PvE, the problem is that your opponents have a fixed power level- and they're calibrated to be insipid and puny. In PvP, you opponents are other players, and they will use every scrap of power that they can get their grimy little hands on. If you're fighting someone with seven oranges and a bunch of R10/perfects, then you're going to want a big stick yourself. As you climb up the PvP ranks, the gear requirement (and the requirement to exploit, admittedly) increases steeply. Leaving aside the FOTM imbalances whereby invisible rogues will oneshot you, it's a game where you are forced to "go big or go home", as loathesome as that expression may be.
I do agree, though. It would be great if there was some high end PvE content, or even some content to challenge people with decent purples.
I am a casual player and found that in the end, it comes down to patience. If you are a casual player with little patience, I'd suggest moving on to something else to avoid disappointment. Let me explain.
I like BIS gear as much as anyone else, but trying to get it early gets costly and frustrating. I simply wait until near the end of one module or the beginning of another to buy the gear. Prices drop dramatically on the "last module" gear as a new module is released.
The bottom line is that I still have good equipment, but did not waste a lot of time or resources getting it. But, again, I don't feel like I have to have the latest and greatest equipment at all times. I leave that mentality to the whales . . .
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!" pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all." looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
All you said AND DRAGON HOARD ENCHANTMENTS. Seriously. I only have two going right now and about to go up to 4 or 5. That pretty much puts you at the ICD and you should rack RP like crazy. Then DON'T USE IT UNTIL 2x Refining day. If it take you 2-5 months to do it so be it. It will happen. Just don't waste those RP.
Yep, I have those, too, and save up all RP until a 2x event comes up.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!" pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all." looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
I am a casual player and found that in the end, it comes down to patience. If you are a casual player with little patience, I'd suggest moving on to something else to avoid disappointment. Let me explain.
I like BIS gear as much as anyone else, but trying to get it early gets costly and frustrating. I simply wait until near the end of one module or the beginning of another to buy the gear. Prices drop dramatically on the "last module" gear as a new module is released.
The bottom line is that I still have good equipment, but did not waste a lot of time or resources getting it. But, again, I don't feel like I have to have the latest and greatest equipment at all times. I leave that mentality to the whales . . .
It's not just the whales. This is also addressed to those who say casuals don't need bis.
I pug PvP a lot. It is the number one thing I like to do in nw. I do not like running PVE content 1000x...or even 3x for that matter, it is just too predictable. I do enjoy it, just not over and over an over again.
In PvP, even pug PvP, you need to stay so what on top of your gear or it just won't be any fun at, again it becomes predictable. So in my mind this will Sooners or later kill (pug) PvP. I've already stopped doing the number one thing I enjoy in game because refining is so horrible to fo. It is the singular most boring thing I have seen in any video game, ever.
I am a casual player and found that in the end, it comes down to patience. If you are a casual player with little patience, I'd suggest moving on to something else to avoid disappointment. Let me explain.
I like BIS gear as much as anyone else, but trying to get it early gets costly and frustrating. I simply wait until near the end of one module or the beginning of another to buy the gear. Prices drop dramatically on the "last module" gear as a new module is released.
The bottom line is that I still have good equipment, but did not waste a lot of time or resources getting it. But, again, I don't feel like I have to have the latest and greatest equipment at all times. I leave that mentality to the whales . . .
It's not just the whales. This is also addressed to those who say casuals don't need bis.
I pug PvP a lot. It is the number one thing I like to do in nw. I do not like running PVE content 1000x...or even 3x for that matter, it is just too predictable. I do enjoy it, just not over and over an over again.
In PvP, even pug PvP, you need to stay somewhat on top of your gear or it just won't be any fun at, all, again it becomes predictable. So in my mind this will Sooners or later kill (pug) PvP. I've already stopped doing the number one thing I enjoy in game because refining is so horrible to do. It is the singular most boring thing I have seen in any video game, ever.
The real issue with refining is they removed the "curtain" that you normally hide the "pay for gear" behind.
At first the BIS weapons were a CHANCE drop defeating the hardest content in the game (CN). This gear was BoE and BIS so players would farm CN over and over and the market was very healthy at that time. Players were choosing to buy zen to convert to AD to BUY their CN weapon, others chose to FARM for their items, some did a mix of both. This is ideal since now players CAN farm this in game, but also have the CHOICE to skip it by buying zen->AD->Gear. Everyone wins.
Then they swapped the BIS weapons over to weapon smithing profession. No more gear about to be "bought" now you could craft it! The problem is you had to have 20 weaponsmithing which wasnt cheap or easy at that time, and then you HAD to buy the materials since there is no way you could ever get the ones you needed to drop.
This was less good for EVERYONE since now the casual had a daunting task of not only farming the dungeon for the off chance of the drops, but also now had to play professions for the weapons.
Notice how they removed Cryptics "buy zen" stage here? Players COULD buy zen to speed up profession leveling but it wasnt instant gratification as it was before. There was no "pay to get to the end goal instantly". Well, alot of people STILL farmed CN since those were still the second best items.
As modules progressed they never released gear similar to the CN set.... They never inserted themselves into the equation again.
So what did they do? INSTEAD of reverting back to what worked well, the CHANCE to get gear or just buy it they gave EVERYONE (essentially) the BIS item but now you have to PAY to increase its value.
This is whats flawed. You removed the curtain of "We are always here willing to take your money if you want to skip" and flat out said "if you want BIS gear you have to give us money"
Its not as if the Orange Artifact items have a chance to drop somewhere so you can farm to skip the RP grind. THAT could have been ideal then. Casual players can play RP game, get an epic with relative ease, they can even farm the hardest content (which we dont have) for the item, OR pay to skip....
Not only that, but the VALUE they placed on those items is just silly. Even at the PEAK of the old tenebrous enchants those were about 2-3 Million AD each. This item was what made the "haves" and "have nots" in PVP. Its basically orange equipment all over again.
Orange Equipment cost? well its about 4.6M RP and RP is about 2:1 AD right now so 1 orange piece is like 9M+ AD.
This is the issue. Not only did they remove the "chance" to get the BIS item by pure dumb RNG, but they basically FORCED players to pay them.
The solution: This is an in depth solution but I think it would work pretty easily.
- They need to reduce the current PRICE of an artifact item down. If I throw $20 for 3 blood rubys in the Zen store, this shouldnt just get me 150k RP it should give me like 1M RP (Maybe like 300k for EACH). This Re-opens the door of "paying directly for the item" at a more reasonable price.
- They need to create COMPARABLE items to the Orange versions and have THESE drop from a new "capstone" like dungeon. Heck I dont even care if they recycle CN and increase all the monster levels by 10 or 15 levels to make this the new HARDEST content. If you offer BOE Orange EQUIVALENT gear this brings life back to the community.
Notice how this sounds MUCH more like Pre-module Neverwinter? Back when they were ROLLING in the cash. Because now youve given the PVE die hards something to farm, make money on, and have a "challenge". This allows the PVP crowd to farm or PAY AD for that item OR just buy direct from cryptic.
I find it hilarious whenever someone tries to suggest individually identifying and picking up thousands and thousands of items as refinement. That is a recipe for carpal tunnel syndrome.
It's quite amusing when players willingly pass up 100 RP - 600 RP items all over the place, and then complain that the price of 500 RP Peridots is sooooooooooo high.
It's quite amusing when players willingly pass up 100 RP - 600 RP items all over the place, and then complain that the price of 500 RP Peridots is sooooooooooo high.
Different strokes. I pick up some drops but bypass others. depends on my mood for the day. I do realize however that a legendary artifact is probably out of my patience/AD/RP range but purple is good enough for me. . . . at least until the content gets significantly harder.
It is a lie that it is in any way shape or form "required" to pay RL money, or buy botted RP from the AH, in order to get artifacts or artifact equipment to legendary.
My CW is a testament to this. He has one legendary artifact and one legendary mainhand, without paying RL money for it and without buying botted RP from the AH. It was accomplished entirely through normal gameplay.
And I am not the only one who has achieved this level of success.
Do I have 7xLegendary items? No. It's slow going this way, but it is definitely possible.
Of COURSE Cryptic would LOVE for you to pay RL money to refine your gear, and they have devised several ways to "help" you do that. But it is not at all required.
The truth of the matter is, if you (a) slot dragon hoard/fey enchantments and find the best places to use them most effectively, (b) selectively pick up and identify green/blue equipment for refinement, (c) save RP for 2xRP weekends when you get the most benefit from refinement, and (d) select carefully different artifacts to refine into your existing artifacts to boost your refinement progress, then you can successfully avoid having to buy RP either with RL money or from the AH.
Most of the complaints here are from people who object to the refinement system in its totality, and have done so since day 1, and so will never acknowledge the reality of what is or is not possible to achieve in terms of getting items to legendary status. They are completely invested in their objections to the entirety of the refinement paradigm for character advancement, and thus will only give negative criticism whenever it comes up, whether the criticism is merited or not, because it serves their agenda.
And of those complaints that aren't simply ideological objections to refinement, most of the rest are just idle whines from players who complain that there isn't an IWIN button that they could press that would instantly level all of their gear to legendary status.
It's hard for me to take seriously the complaints of the agenda-pushers or the impatient whiners.
Different strokes. I pick up some drops but bypass others. depends on my mood for the day. I do realize however that a legendary artifact is probably out of my patience/AD/RP range but purple is good enough for me. . . . at least until the content gets significantly harder.
You can get a legendary artifact. It's probably easier to get a legendary artifact than it is to get legendary gear. What you do is, you *only* use other artifacts to refine into your primary artifact. You don't put RP into your primary artifacts directly. Then when 2xRP weekend rolls around, you refine one artifact into another for a huge boost in effectiveness.
Now go do that on your GF alt. Then on your DC alt. Then on your <insert class here> alt. Because getting character slots is so cheap as everyone says and it's so fun to have an alt whenever you feel like playing another class.
You seem to be focused only on ONE matter of the entire problem. Alt friendliness is another point. This game swings from alt friendly to alt hating each module.
I do have a serious problem with Crypting outright mocking behaviour when devs promote having alts and then spits us in the face with things like 3000 zen SINGLE CHARACTER companion, 5000 zen skip ONE module token, artifact gear, etc.
Also, how am I, or any legit player, supposed to feel whenever I see tens of thousands of players running around with oranges from botted RP when I work hard to get my stuff to tolerable level?. Imo, Cryptic should admit their failure on the matter, leave the RP unbound so that if some ppl could take advantage of it, then everyone should and THEN LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES FOR THE FUTURE. But it's asking too much, they do this all the time, nightmare mounts, caturday, astral resonators, gifts of simril. And botted RP wasn't even exploit in the primary meaning of this word.
Suggested course of action:
Leave zen prices as they are, make epic companions account wide just like mounts, make it so that whenever you unlock epic/legendary level of artifact gear, you can then choose artifact weapon of the same type and level on your alt, from the vendor (like the Reclaim Agent).
(Example: I unlock epic Chilling artifact on my CW, then I can, once I meet the specific requirements, redeem any ONE artifact mainhand on my TR on epic level).
Artifact weaponry should NOT be able to be used in refinement just like class artifacts.
*BOOM*
You can now dust off your alt and enjoy him/her once more.
So with your little plan here I would have Legendary Everything on all my Alts? instead of just two of the 5? I like this plan do I get a refund for the extra's I already leveled on the alt?
Artifact Equipment and Artifacts should ALL be bound to account.
This promotes alt play while STILL not guaranteeing players will have all orange.
If I am on my GF who has a Con Belt, I should be able to decide I want to play my TR and throw that CON belt that costs (9M+ AD) as well as his orange artifacts over.
I still cant use my GFs weapon/OH but it atleast lets my feel like there is a point to having an alt.
It's quite amusing when players willingly pass up 100 RP - 600 RP items all over the place, and then complain that the price of 500 RP Peridots is sooooooooooo high.
Some players do not want carpal tunnel syndrome, nor do they want to do boring content for months and months that doesn't reward skill in order to get 1 legendary artifact.
I'd rather have an alternative option to do difficult and challenging dungeons to gate the loot.
The real issue with refining is they removed the "curtain" that you normally hide the "pay for gear" behind.
At first the BIS weapons were a CHANCE drop defeating the hardest content in the game (CN). This gear was BoE and BIS so players would farm CN over and over and the market was very healthy at that time. Players were choosing to buy zen to convert to AD to BUY their CN weapon, others chose to FARM for their items, some did a mix of both. This is ideal since now players CAN farm this in game, but also have the CHOICE to skip it by buying zen->AD->Gear. Everyone wins.
Then they swapped the BIS weapons over to weapon smithing profession. No more gear about to be "bought" now you could craft it! The problem is you had to have 20 weaponsmithing which wasnt cheap or easy at that time, and then you HAD to buy the materials since there is no way you could ever get the ones you needed to drop.
This was less good for EVERYONE since now the casual had a daunting task of not only farming the dungeon for the off chance of the drops, but also now had to play professions for the weapons.
Notice how they removed Cryptics "buy zen" stage here? Players COULD buy zen to speed up profession leveling but it wasnt instant gratification as it was before. There was no "pay to get to the end goal instantly". Well, alot of people STILL farmed CN since those were still the second best items.
As modules progressed they never released gear similar to the CN set.... They never inserted themselves into the equation again.
So what did they do? INSTEAD of reverting back to what worked well, the CHANCE to get gear or just buy it they gave EVERYONE (essentially) the BIS item but now you have to PAY to increase its value.
This is whats flawed. You removed the curtain of "We are always here willing to take your money if you want to skip" and flat out said "if you want BIS gear you have to give us money"
Its not as if the Orange Artifact items have a chance to drop somewhere so you can farm to skip the RP grind. THAT could have been ideal then. Casual players can play RP game, get an epic with relative ease, they can even farm the hardest content (which we dont have) for the item, OR pay to skip....
Not only that, but the VALUE they placed on those items is just silly. Even at the PEAK of the old tenebrous enchants those were about 2-3 Million AD each. This item was what made the "haves" and "have nots" in PVP. Its basically orange equipment all over again.
Orange Equipment cost? well its about 4.6M RP and RP is about 2:1 AD right now so 1 orange piece is like 9M+ AD.
This is the issue. Not only did they remove the "chance" to get the BIS item by pure dumb RNG, but they basically FORCED players to pay them.
The solution: This is an in depth solution but I think it would work pretty easily.
- They need to reduce the current PRICE of an artifact item down. If I throw $20 for 3 blood rubys in the Zen store, this shouldnt just get me 150k RP it should give me like 1M RP (Maybe like 300k for EACH). This Re-opens the door of "paying directly for the item" at a more reasonable price.
- They need to create COMPARABLE items to the Orange versions and have THESE drop from a new "capstone" like dungeon. Heck I dont even care if they recycle CN and increase all the monster levels by 10 or 15 levels to make this the new HARDEST content. If you offer BOE Orange EQUIVALENT gear this brings life back to the community.
Notice how this sounds MUCH more like Pre-module Neverwinter? Back when they were ROLLING in the cash. Because now youve given the PVE die hards something to farm, make money on, and have a "challenge". This allows the PVP crowd to farm or PAY AD for that item OR just buy direct from cryptic.
THIS solves alot of the issues.
Smartest post I've seen here. They seem to have done a good job of eliminating any reward for skilled gameplay and have exclusively gated BIS gear behind paywalls.
Like I said before, I do not mind having cash shops. I did not mind that you could get BIS gear ever since this game's existence through your credit card. This was because there were many ways to get it. You can open your credit card and take a shortcut, or you can invest time and effort into the game, become skilled, join a good guild or run with friends (god forbid guilds have a purpose) and run tier 2 dungeons to farm. People were earning diamonds. People were running dungeons.
Some players do not want carpal tunnel syndrome, nor do they want to do boring content for months and months that doesn't reward skill in order to get 1 legendary artifact.
I'd rather have an alternative option to do difficult and challenging dungeons to gate the loot.
Lets say you dont even pass up that RP, after a while (how long does it take for a full stack of 99?) you get a full stack of Peridots woohoo! Thats about 100k AD and gets you
1.08 % of your way to an orange item! Oh man I only have to do that ~92 more times for the best item. YAY! That sounds reasonable.
Some players do not want carpal tunnel syndrome, nor do they want to do boring content for months and months that doesn't reward skill in order to get 1 legendary artifact.
I'd rather have an alternative option to do difficult and challenging dungeons to gate the loot.
I think it's pretty clear by now that we aren't going to get the super-duper-hard dungeon that only 25k+++ players can even hope to finish.
The legendary gear is an aspirational goal intended for players to have something to strive for. IT'S NOT NEEDED FOR ANY OF THE CONTENT IN THIS GAME, and yes that includes PVP. (Of all the PVP matches that you have played recently, in how many matches did having orange gear (if you even have any), compared to having purple quality gear, make the difference between winning and losing? Answer: very very very very few.) It is not intended for players to obtain legendary gear through ordinary gameplay (i.e., not using RL money or not buying botted RP from AH) within just a few weeks' time.
But I know this, you know this, and you still object, because you just don't like refining in general.
The legendary gear is an aspirational goal intended for players to have something to strive for. IT'S NOT NEEDED FOR ANY OF THE CONTENT IN THIS GAME, and yes that includes PVP.
And there's nothing to do in this game, except grinding mobs to refine stuff you don't need, to play the content you don't need to play, because you don't need the mentioned gear to play it, and you don't get anything worthy out of it even if you do.
Yet they keep to produce more artifact gear as a new content. Like we're playing Refinement online, where the content is RP of different forms and the reward is a shiny orange corner around an item on you character, because you don't need that gear to play the content you don't need to play anyway, because it doesn't give you rewards and is not fun.
Clear enough?
M6 almost drains your soul given how boring it is. (c) joocycuzzzzzz
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
And there's nothing to do in this game, except grinding mobs to refine stuff you don't need, to play the content you don't need to play, because you don't need the mentioned gear to play it, and you don't get anything worthy out of it even if you do.
Yet they keep to produce more artifact gear as a new content. Like we're playing Refinement online, where the content is RP of different forms and the reward is a shiny orange corner around an item on you character, because you don't need that gear to play the content you don't need to play anyway, because it doesn't give you rewards and is not fun.
Clear enough?
Ha, they dont get it, most of these guys got their legendaries by buying them for 400k apiece when they were cheap, now that its not cheap, its easy for them to say, its aspirational, or stop complaining or lots of other hyperbole.
Here is the simplest issues and fixes in the entire game.
Make all DDs drop at least a epic bound RP in its chest, for finishing the run. Reason to run them and bots cant make a money from it.
Half the value of refinement, its boring and ridiculous and many of us want to play many more then one toon.
PVP.. OMG queues were needed 2 mods ago to separate people. This fixes everything. YA some poor 11 k with all t1s come into the queue, and then dies 35 times, there isnt anything to learn from that. You enter with the gear you have, no switching.
sub 10 one queue 10-15k 15-20 and 20k+ plus queues. so all those premades can just play each other already.
This is the best for everyone 4 queues, you can always move the GS up or down later on. But something has to be fixed ASAP.
Open up the game again, allow us to play multiple alts without having to grind all for one toon.
This makes most people at least tolerate things.
Then start working on actual content people can play again, basides having one HE instance where it can be failed by one jerk who runs ahead on one of the dragon heads, isnt fun for most poeple.
Too much grind, too much gear required to compete now at pvp levels (it only takes one BiS type amongst the rest of them to totally dominate a match. That isnt about l2p, its just a failure on cryptics part.
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silverkeltMember, NW M9 PlaytestPosts: 4,235Arc User
edited January 2015
its way to much positivy out of others.
Lets say you want to play 4 toons at ok levels (you know 18k or something) to get 4 toons at 4 legendary levels, its beyond reasonable and its boring.
Is that the best you can come up with about your game, lets make a whole system, that is extremely boring and release it?
The legendary gear is an aspirational goal intended for players to have something to strive for. IT'S NOT NEEDED FOR ANY OF THE CONTENT IN THIS GAME, and yes that includes PVP. (Of all the PVP matches that you have played recently, in how many matches did having orange gear (if you even have any), compared to having purple quality gear, make the difference between winning and losing? Answer: very very very very few.) It is not intended for players to obtain legendary gear through ordinary gameplay (i.e., not using RL money or not buying botted RP from AH) within just a few weeks' time.
I never said to give away legendary gear like candy. But I want there to be an option to obtain BIS gear through difficult dungeons, through difficult raids etc.
Everyone who doesn't bot that HAMSTER is just stupid. It's a pretty simple marco...
Yes if you want to buy 90 stacks of peridots. What I was referring to is the comment made saying people skip over RP drops all the time.
So even if they DIDNT skip the RP drops when you add up all that RP its what? 50k? 100k? My point was thats like 1-2% of an orange so its not as if skipping that RP makes any difference.
Maybe we need to make it so none of that exists by enabling us to FARM gear via dungeons?
Most of the complaints here are from people who object to the refinement system in its totality, and have done so since day 1, and so will never acknowledge the reality of what is or is not possible to achieve in terms of getting items to legendary status.
And some people don't realise that while getting a legendary by farming is a great achievement. It took 2 modules to do so, you're 1/4 of the way there, more artifacts or other items are a strong possibility and you HAD to take advantage of 2xrp to achieve that. I'm sorry, but if you're forced to use 2x rp to gear 1/4 of the rate gear comes out while Mr big wallet gets it day 1, that is NOT a good system. Even if you ignore the hassle and skilless the whole thing is. If I was pushing my own agenda I'd be glad the system is so horribly broken because rp is at the point where I may make the 100m AD cap from a single investment. But no, I actually care about whether a system is well designed and fair instead of something that promotes botting immensely or helps whales bully others in pvp. God help you if you want to play on more than 1 character.
Before mod 1 we had content that was actually interesting. Now it's all mindless and repetitive and unrewarding. I don't see anyone saying BiS is an absolute must. But if the enemy has BiS or close (which happens more than you let on) then you're going to get wrecked if you don't. It's also the only goal left and when progress is so boringly slow you might as well stop and move on because there's nothing else when you've done it all once or twice. If the progress was slow, then they had better make it an interesting, non tedious path otherwise it's just demoralising.
The only thing keeping me playing is previously earned wealth, and that's sad. Especially when with some decent design and price modelling the game could have been one of the best games there was.
Before mod 1 we had content that was actually interesting. Now it's all mindless and repetitive and unrewarding. I don't see anyone saying BiS is an absolute must. But if the enemy has BiS or close (which happens more than you let on) then you're going to get wrecked if you don't. It's also the only goal left and when progress is so boringly slow you might as well stop and move on because there's nothing else when you've done it all once or twice. If the progress was slow, then they had better make it an interesting, non tedious path otherwise it's just demoralising.
The only thing keeping me playing is previously earned wealth, and that's sad. Especially when with some decent design and price modelling the game could have been one of the best games there was.
Agreed. I am also not a fan of BIS gear being almost exclusively gated in the auction house/zen store/ credit card. Plus I think a lot of people would agree that the refining system isn't enjoyable. I would rather be farming Castle Never earning millions of AD rather than sitting on Protector's Enclave slowly refining each and every stone that I bought from the auction house which I could afford only because I was lucky enough to farm Castle Never before Cryptic decided to shift the BIS gear to the auction house.
Correction, lots and lots of players don't like refining in general.
Look.
Refining isn't going away. That much should be evident. The devs have invested WAY too much effort into refining to just toss it overboard now on a whim.
So continuing to whine and complain about refining serves no purpose. None. It is just whiny and stupid.
So BIS gear is going to come from refining. Deal with it and accept reality already.
That being said, I would love there to be more sources of RP rather than green/blue gear and RP stones that drop during daily quests. RP stones from DD chests; guaranteed RP items in skill nodes like there is now for enchants/runestones; make artifact gear refinable into other artifact gear with a refining bonus, just like how artifacts work now; shorten the cooldown on dragon hoard/fey blessing enchants; these are all good ideas that have been suggested here on the forums and elsewhere and I think these ought to be implemented to make RP overall more plentiful, so that so many players don't feel forced to go to the AH to buy RP.
But continuing to whine and complain mindlessly about refining is dumb.
And some people don't realise that while getting a legendary by farming is a great achievement. It took 2 modules to do so, you're 1/4 of the way there, more artifacts or other items are a strong possibility and you HAD to take advantage of 2xrp to achieve that. I'm sorry, but if you're forced to use 2x rp to gear 1/4 of the rate gear comes out while Mr big wallet gets it day 1, that is NOT a good system. Even if you ignore the hassle and skilless the whole thing is. If I was pushing my own agenda I'd be glad the system is so horribly broken because rp is at the point where I may make the 100m AD cap from a single investment. But no, I actually care about whether a system is well designed and fair instead of something that promotes botting immensely or helps whales bully others in pvp. God help you if you want to play on more than 1 character.
Before mod 1 we had content that was actually interesting. Now it's all mindless and repetitive and unrewarding. I don't see anyone saying BiS is an absolute must. But if the enemy has BiS or close (which happens more than you let on) then you're going to get wrecked if you don't. It's also the only goal left and when progress is so boringly slow you might as well stop and move on because there's nothing else when you've done it all once or twice. If the progress was slow, then they had better make it an interesting, non tedious path otherwise it's just demoralising.
The only thing keeping me playing is previously earned wealth, and that's sad. Especially when with some decent design and price modelling the game could have been one of the best games there was.
First of all, I'm a semi-casual player. I don't play 10 hours a day like some people around here do. A more serious player could have done much more than I have managed to. Second I will be the first to admit I made some mistakes along the way which slowed my progress. Third, there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of 2xRP weekends to get your items to legendary. I wasn't *forced* to. I CHOSE to in order to expedite the process. I could have dumped all of my RP into my gear as soon as I got it. Who knows, that might have been even faster since then I wouldn't have had to wait for a 2xRP weekend. So yes I am proud that I got my mainhand to legendary without any botted RP and only through farming. But I would never claim that the farming method I chose is the FASTEST method. And I wasn't even the first to do it, so of course I wasn't the fastest! I only post my story so that I may demonstrate that yes, it is possible to obtain legendary gear without resorting to botted RP. Not that my method is the only method, the most efficient method, or the fastest method.
And "Mr. Big Wallet" is going to have an advantage over any F2P farmer IN ANY EVENT in terms of getting their gear to BIS status in a short amount of time. Refining, or the lack thereof, doesn't change that. So that is a total red herring.
And when it comes to PVP, please, if your opponent is a high-end PVPer and has Legendary gear, but you're not a high-end PVPer, the fact that you don't have Legendary gear is the least of your concerns. You're going to "get wrecked" anyway. I would LOVE to see a non-premade PVP match where victory was only achieved because you had a Level 60 mainhand as opposed to a Level 50 mainhand. Maybe 1 match in a million is decided that way. The vast majority of the time, that small of a difference doesn't matter, and victory is decided either by VAST gear score differences, or general incompetence of the losing team. But Lvl 50 vs. Lvl 60? Nah doesn't matter.
Comments
You don't need legendaries for PvE. You can steamroll all the PvE content in the game with a cheap t2 set, rank 7 enchants, and the Draconic weapon set- and your two free artifacts, if you really want to stomp things. Actually, that's overkill, you need a lot less power than that, but I just wanted to cite a cheap/easy setup that would easy for most people to gain, and would make them feel like gods made flesh.
However... for PvP, it's a little different. In PvE, the problem is that your opponents have a fixed power level- and they're calibrated to be insipid and puny. In PvP, you opponents are other players, and they will use every scrap of power that they can get their grimy little hands on. If you're fighting someone with seven oranges and a bunch of R10/perfects, then you're going to want a big stick yourself. As you climb up the PvP ranks, the gear requirement (and the requirement to exploit, admittedly) increases steeply. Leaving aside the FOTM imbalances whereby invisible rogues will oneshot you, it's a game where you are forced to "go big or go home", as loathesome as that expression may be.
I do agree, though. It would be great if there was some high end PvE content, or even some content to challenge people with decent purples.
Unlike a monthly-fee game such as WoW, a f2p's aim is not to keep its regulars.
Tired of Dailies/Tyranny of Dailies/Timers of Doom/Tricked Or Duped/Tremendously Obnoxious Dailies/Try Otherwise, Devs
I like BIS gear as much as anyone else, but trying to get it early gets costly and frustrating. I simply wait until near the end of one module or the beginning of another to buy the gear. Prices drop dramatically on the "last module" gear as a new module is released.
The bottom line is that I still have good equipment, but did not waste a lot of time or resources getting it. But, again, I don't feel like I have to have the latest and greatest equipment at all times. I leave that mentality to the whales . . .
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
Yep, I have those, too, and save up all RP until a 2x event comes up.
myles08807 said, "Back in my day, we didn't have any of this fancy Mulhorand gear while we were leveling . . . we walked uphill both ways while dying once every five seconds while leveling, and we liked it fine!" . . . Now, get off my lawn, you kids!"
pointsman said, "I don't rue the game. In fact I don't feel any regret for the game at all."
looomis said, "I don't like people changing to alts and then bragging about their mains like schizophrenic role players."
It's not just the whales. This is also addressed to those who say casuals don't need bis.
I pug PvP a lot. It is the number one thing I like to do in nw. I do not like running PVE content 1000x...or even 3x for that matter, it is just too predictable. I do enjoy it, just not over and over an over again.
In PvP, even pug PvP, you need to stay so what on top of your gear or it just won't be any fun at, again it becomes predictable. So in my mind this will Sooners or later kill (pug) PvP. I've already stopped doing the number one thing I enjoy in game because refining is so horrible to fo. It is the singular most boring thing I have seen in any video game, ever.
It's not just the whales. This is also addressed to those who say casuals don't need bis.
I pug PvP a lot. It is the number one thing I like to do in nw. I do not like running PVE content 1000x...or even 3x for that matter, it is just too predictable. I do enjoy it, just not over and over an over again.
In PvP, even pug PvP, you need to stay somewhat on top of your gear or it just won't be any fun at, all, again it becomes predictable. So in my mind this will Sooners or later kill (pug) PvP. I've already stopped doing the number one thing I enjoy in game because refining is so horrible to do. It is the singular most boring thing I have seen in any video game, ever.
At first the BIS weapons were a CHANCE drop defeating the hardest content in the game (CN). This gear was BoE and BIS so players would farm CN over and over and the market was very healthy at that time. Players were choosing to buy zen to convert to AD to BUY their CN weapon, others chose to FARM for their items, some did a mix of both. This is ideal since now players CAN farm this in game, but also have the CHOICE to skip it by buying zen->AD->Gear. Everyone wins.
Then they swapped the BIS weapons over to weapon smithing profession. No more gear about to be "bought" now you could craft it! The problem is you had to have 20 weaponsmithing which wasnt cheap or easy at that time, and then you HAD to buy the materials since there is no way you could ever get the ones you needed to drop.
This was less good for EVERYONE since now the casual had a daunting task of not only farming the dungeon for the off chance of the drops, but also now had to play professions for the weapons.
Notice how they removed Cryptics "buy zen" stage here? Players COULD buy zen to speed up profession leveling but it wasnt instant gratification as it was before. There was no "pay to get to the end goal instantly". Well, alot of people STILL farmed CN since those were still the second best items.
As modules progressed they never released gear similar to the CN set.... They never inserted themselves into the equation again.
So what did they do? INSTEAD of reverting back to what worked well, the CHANCE to get gear or just buy it they gave EVERYONE (essentially) the BIS item but now you have to PAY to increase its value.
This is whats flawed. You removed the curtain of "We are always here willing to take your money if you want to skip" and flat out said "if you want BIS gear you have to give us money"
Its not as if the Orange Artifact items have a chance to drop somewhere so you can farm to skip the RP grind. THAT could have been ideal then. Casual players can play RP game, get an epic with relative ease, they can even farm the hardest content (which we dont have) for the item, OR pay to skip....
Not only that, but the VALUE they placed on those items is just silly. Even at the PEAK of the old tenebrous enchants those were about 2-3 Million AD each. This item was what made the "haves" and "have nots" in PVP. Its basically orange equipment all over again.
Orange Equipment cost? well its about 4.6M RP and RP is about 2:1 AD right now so 1 orange piece is like 9M+ AD.
This is the issue. Not only did they remove the "chance" to get the BIS item by pure dumb RNG, but they basically FORCED players to pay them.
The solution: This is an in depth solution but I think it would work pretty easily.
- They need to reduce the current PRICE of an artifact item down. If I throw $20 for 3 blood rubys in the Zen store, this shouldnt just get me 150k RP it should give me like 1M RP (Maybe like 300k for EACH). This Re-opens the door of "paying directly for the item" at a more reasonable price.
- They need to create COMPARABLE items to the Orange versions and have THESE drop from a new "capstone" like dungeon. Heck I dont even care if they recycle CN and increase all the monster levels by 10 or 15 levels to make this the new HARDEST content. If you offer BOE Orange EQUIVALENT gear this brings life back to the community.
Notice how this sounds MUCH more like Pre-module Neverwinter? Back when they were ROLLING in the cash. Because now youve given the PVE die hards something to farm, make money on, and have a "challenge". This allows the PVP crowd to farm or PAY AD for that item OR just buy direct from cryptic.
THIS solves alot of the issues.
It's quite amusing when players willingly pass up 100 RP - 600 RP items all over the place, and then complain that the price of 500 RP Peridots is sooooooooooo high.
Different strokes. I pick up some drops but bypass others. depends on my mood for the day. I do realize however that a legendary artifact is probably out of my patience/AD/RP range but purple is good enough for me. . . . at least until the content gets significantly harder.
My CW is a testament to this. He has one legendary artifact and one legendary mainhand, without paying RL money for it and without buying botted RP from the AH. It was accomplished entirely through normal gameplay.
And I am not the only one who has achieved this level of success.
Do I have 7xLegendary items? No. It's slow going this way, but it is definitely possible.
Of COURSE Cryptic would LOVE for you to pay RL money to refine your gear, and they have devised several ways to "help" you do that. But it is not at all required.
The truth of the matter is, if you (a) slot dragon hoard/fey enchantments and find the best places to use them most effectively, (b) selectively pick up and identify green/blue equipment for refinement, (c) save RP for 2xRP weekends when you get the most benefit from refinement, and (d) select carefully different artifacts to refine into your existing artifacts to boost your refinement progress, then you can successfully avoid having to buy RP either with RL money or from the AH.
Most of the complaints here are from people who object to the refinement system in its totality, and have done so since day 1, and so will never acknowledge the reality of what is or is not possible to achieve in terms of getting items to legendary status. They are completely invested in their objections to the entirety of the refinement paradigm for character advancement, and thus will only give negative criticism whenever it comes up, whether the criticism is merited or not, because it serves their agenda.
And of those complaints that aren't simply ideological objections to refinement, most of the rest are just idle whines from players who complain that there isn't an IWIN button that they could press that would instantly level all of their gear to legendary status.
It's hard for me to take seriously the complaints of the agenda-pushers or the impatient whiners.
You can get a legendary artifact. It's probably easier to get a legendary artifact than it is to get legendary gear. What you do is, you *only* use other artifacts to refine into your primary artifact. You don't put RP into your primary artifacts directly. Then when 2xRP weekend rolls around, you refine one artifact into another for a huge boost in effectiveness.
Now go do that on your GF alt. Then on your DC alt. Then on your <insert class here> alt. Because getting character slots is so cheap as everyone says and it's so fun to have an alt whenever you feel like playing another class.
You seem to be focused only on ONE matter of the entire problem. Alt friendliness is another point. This game swings from alt friendly to alt hating each module.
I do have a serious problem with Crypting outright mocking behaviour when devs promote having alts and then spits us in the face with things like 3000 zen SINGLE CHARACTER companion, 5000 zen skip ONE module token, artifact gear, etc.
Also, how am I, or any legit player, supposed to feel whenever I see tens of thousands of players running around with oranges from botted RP when I work hard to get my stuff to tolerable level?. Imo, Cryptic should admit their failure on the matter, leave the RP unbound so that if some ppl could take advantage of it, then everyone should and THEN LEARN FROM THEIR MISTAKES FOR THE FUTURE. But it's asking too much, they do this all the time, nightmare mounts, caturday, astral resonators, gifts of simril. And botted RP wasn't even exploit in the primary meaning of this word.
Suggested course of action:
Leave zen prices as they are, make epic companions account wide just like mounts, make it so that whenever you unlock epic/legendary level of artifact gear, you can then choose artifact weapon of the same type and level on your alt, from the vendor (like the Reclaim Agent).
(Example: I unlock epic Chilling artifact on my CW, then I can, once I meet the specific requirements, redeem any ONE artifact mainhand on my TR on epic level).
Artifact weaponry should NOT be able to be used in refinement just like class artifacts.
*BOOM*
You can now dust off your alt and enjoy him/her once more.
Artifact Equipment and Artifacts should ALL be bound to account.
This promotes alt play while STILL not guaranteeing players will have all orange.
If I am on my GF who has a Con Belt, I should be able to decide I want to play my TR and throw that CON belt that costs (9M+ AD) as well as his orange artifacts over.
I still cant use my GFs weapon/OH but it atleast lets my feel like there is a point to having an alt.
Some players do not want carpal tunnel syndrome, nor do they want to do boring content for months and months that doesn't reward skill in order to get 1 legendary artifact.
I'd rather have an alternative option to do difficult and challenging dungeons to gate the loot.
Smartest post I've seen here. They seem to have done a good job of eliminating any reward for skilled gameplay and have exclusively gated BIS gear behind paywalls.
Like I said before, I do not mind having cash shops. I did not mind that you could get BIS gear ever since this game's existence through your credit card. This was because there were many ways to get it. You can open your credit card and take a shortcut, or you can invest time and effort into the game, become skilled, join a good guild or run with friends (god forbid guilds have a purpose) and run tier 2 dungeons to farm. People were earning diamonds. People were running dungeons.
Lets say you dont even pass up that RP, after a while (how long does it take for a full stack of 99?) you get a full stack of Peridots woohoo! Thats about 100k AD and gets you
1.08 % of your way to an orange item! Oh man I only have to do that ~92 more times for the best item. YAY! That sounds reasonable.
I think it's pretty clear by now that we aren't going to get the super-duper-hard dungeon that only 25k+++ players can even hope to finish.
The legendary gear is an aspirational goal intended for players to have something to strive for. IT'S NOT NEEDED FOR ANY OF THE CONTENT IN THIS GAME, and yes that includes PVP. (Of all the PVP matches that you have played recently, in how many matches did having orange gear (if you even have any), compared to having purple quality gear, make the difference between winning and losing? Answer: very very very very few.) It is not intended for players to obtain legendary gear through ordinary gameplay (i.e., not using RL money or not buying botted RP from AH) within just a few weeks' time.
But I know this, you know this, and you still object, because you just don't like refining in general.
And there's nothing to do in this game, except grinding mobs to refine stuff you don't need, to play the content you don't need to play, because you don't need the mentioned gear to play it, and you don't get anything worthy out of it even if you do.
Yet they keep to produce more artifact gear as a new content. Like we're playing Refinement online, where the content is RP of different forms and the reward is a shiny orange corner around an item on you character, because you don't need that gear to play the content you don't need to play anyway, because it doesn't give you rewards and is not fun.
Clear enough?
Ha, they dont get it, most of these guys got their legendaries by buying them for 400k apiece when they were cheap, now that its not cheap, its easy for them to say, its aspirational, or stop complaining or lots of other hyperbole.
Here is the simplest issues and fixes in the entire game.
Make all DDs drop at least a epic bound RP in its chest, for finishing the run. Reason to run them and bots cant make a money from it.
Half the value of refinement, its boring and ridiculous and many of us want to play many more then one toon.
PVP.. OMG queues were needed 2 mods ago to separate people. This fixes everything. YA some poor 11 k with all t1s come into the queue, and then dies 35 times, there isnt anything to learn from that. You enter with the gear you have, no switching.
sub 10 one queue 10-15k 15-20 and 20k+ plus queues. so all those premades can just play each other already.
This is the best for everyone 4 queues, you can always move the GS up or down later on. But something has to be fixed ASAP.
Open up the game again, allow us to play multiple alts without having to grind all for one toon.
This makes most people at least tolerate things.
Then start working on actual content people can play again, basides having one HE instance where it can be failed by one jerk who runs ahead on one of the dragon heads, isnt fun for most poeple.
Too much grind, too much gear required to compete now at pvp levels (it only takes one BiS type amongst the rest of them to totally dominate a match. That isnt about l2p, its just a failure on cryptics part.
Lets say you want to play 4 toons at ok levels (you know 18k or something) to get 4 toons at 4 legendary levels, its beyond reasonable and its boring.
Is that the best you can come up with about your game, lets make a whole system, that is extremely boring and release it?
And I will keep lobbying on the forums. Where else would they "read feedback"?
I never said to give away legendary gear like candy. But I want there to be an option to obtain BIS gear through difficult dungeons, through difficult raids etc.
Correction, lots and lots of players don't like refining in general.
Yes if you want to buy 90 stacks of peridots. What I was referring to is the comment made saying people skip over RP drops all the time.
So even if they DIDNT skip the RP drops when you add up all that RP its what? 50k? 100k? My point was thats like 1-2% of an orange so its not as if skipping that RP makes any difference.
Maybe we need to make it so none of that exists by enabling us to FARM gear via dungeons?
And some people don't realise that while getting a legendary by farming is a great achievement. It took 2 modules to do so, you're 1/4 of the way there, more artifacts or other items are a strong possibility and you HAD to take advantage of 2xrp to achieve that. I'm sorry, but if you're forced to use 2x rp to gear 1/4 of the rate gear comes out while Mr big wallet gets it day 1, that is NOT a good system. Even if you ignore the hassle and skilless the whole thing is. If I was pushing my own agenda I'd be glad the system is so horribly broken because rp is at the point where I may make the 100m AD cap from a single investment. But no, I actually care about whether a system is well designed and fair instead of something that promotes botting immensely or helps whales bully others in pvp. God help you if you want to play on more than 1 character.
Before mod 1 we had content that was actually interesting. Now it's all mindless and repetitive and unrewarding. I don't see anyone saying BiS is an absolute must. But if the enemy has BiS or close (which happens more than you let on) then you're going to get wrecked if you don't. It's also the only goal left and when progress is so boringly slow you might as well stop and move on because there's nothing else when you've done it all once or twice. If the progress was slow, then they had better make it an interesting, non tedious path otherwise it's just demoralising.
The only thing keeping me playing is previously earned wealth, and that's sad. Especially when with some decent design and price modelling the game could have been one of the best games there was.
Agreed. I am also not a fan of BIS gear being almost exclusively gated in the auction house/zen store/ credit card. Plus I think a lot of people would agree that the refining system isn't enjoyable. I would rather be farming Castle Never earning millions of AD rather than sitting on Protector's Enclave slowly refining each and every stone that I bought from the auction house which I could afford only because I was lucky enough to farm Castle Never before Cryptic decided to shift the BIS gear to the auction house.
Look.
Refining isn't going away. That much should be evident. The devs have invested WAY too much effort into refining to just toss it overboard now on a whim.
So continuing to whine and complain about refining serves no purpose. None. It is just whiny and stupid.
So BIS gear is going to come from refining. Deal with it and accept reality already.
That being said, I would love there to be more sources of RP rather than green/blue gear and RP stones that drop during daily quests. RP stones from DD chests; guaranteed RP items in skill nodes like there is now for enchants/runestones; make artifact gear refinable into other artifact gear with a refining bonus, just like how artifacts work now; shorten the cooldown on dragon hoard/fey blessing enchants; these are all good ideas that have been suggested here on the forums and elsewhere and I think these ought to be implemented to make RP overall more plentiful, so that so many players don't feel forced to go to the AH to buy RP.
But continuing to whine and complain mindlessly about refining is dumb.
First of all, I'm a semi-casual player. I don't play 10 hours a day like some people around here do. A more serious player could have done much more than I have managed to. Second I will be the first to admit I made some mistakes along the way which slowed my progress. Third, there is nothing wrong with taking advantage of 2xRP weekends to get your items to legendary. I wasn't *forced* to. I CHOSE to in order to expedite the process. I could have dumped all of my RP into my gear as soon as I got it. Who knows, that might have been even faster since then I wouldn't have had to wait for a 2xRP weekend. So yes I am proud that I got my mainhand to legendary without any botted RP and only through farming. But I would never claim that the farming method I chose is the FASTEST method. And I wasn't even the first to do it, so of course I wasn't the fastest! I only post my story so that I may demonstrate that yes, it is possible to obtain legendary gear without resorting to botted RP. Not that my method is the only method, the most efficient method, or the fastest method.
And "Mr. Big Wallet" is going to have an advantage over any F2P farmer IN ANY EVENT in terms of getting their gear to BIS status in a short amount of time. Refining, or the lack thereof, doesn't change that. So that is a total red herring.
And when it comes to PVP, please, if your opponent is a high-end PVPer and has Legendary gear, but you're not a high-end PVPer, the fact that you don't have Legendary gear is the least of your concerns. You're going to "get wrecked" anyway. I would LOVE to see a non-premade PVP match where victory was only achieved because you had a Level 60 mainhand as opposed to a Level 50 mainhand. Maybe 1 match in a million is decided that way. The vast majority of the time, that small of a difference doesn't matter, and victory is decided either by VAST gear score differences, or general incompetence of the losing team. But Lvl 50 vs. Lvl 60? Nah doesn't matter.