There needs to be a gear catch up

General Discussion General Discussion
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Hey long term player here. Over seven thousand hours combined across all my alpha playtests, preview, betas and launch.

I just read the patch notes, and turning the dial to make more builds and classes viable is definitely a step in the right direction. Dungeon improvements sound great but there is still the issue of rolling for gear.

Players do not mind a gear grind as long as there is an attainable goal in sight.

What players do mind and hate is a gear grind with endless RNG and RNG hell.

Datamined files show that rolls are out of 1 million and that you sometimes need to roll high enough to even get on a table to then roll another million.

So we are talking about rolling 1 out of 2 million or 1 out of 3 million potentially. Sure this is affected by luck but that doesn’t change the perk pool being large and finding true BiS a pain.

Please for the love of God, for the love of this game, for the love of everything that was fun about gaming. Give us a gear catch up from the PvP vendor at 600 GS that allows us to pick perks, attributes and whatever want for at least 2 our of 3 perks and attributes.

The 3rd perk can be random or be refreshing or resilient. This would bring back SOOOOO MANY players to the game because now they can feel like there is something to work towards instead of being stuck in a useless RNG hell.

Please listen to your long term players who actually care about the game.

I had to quit the game because company management was too demanding when you’re bleeding players. Another issue was the gear grind and my class being irrelevant in the meta.

it sucked that I had so many hours in rapier and rapier was just so irrelevant other than for healers. Another thing that sucked was pouring all my gold and time into a void set for void to become nerfed as well as my fire set.

Now with the big power boost to all classes and re work of perks it helps that more things will be viable. But it is key now that the gear to become viable is also attainable.

Balance is still not 100% there yet but please this needs to happen or the game will not sustain.

Players will come back be like ok this is cool, but you absolutely need a hook

not getting the gear or at least seeing the positive reinforcement of being on some path towards that gear like WoW arena tokens or GW2 PvP currency, players will quickly realize the reality of the RNG hell and be like screw this, too random and my time is not being rewarded.

We are talking potentially months maybe 6 months or more potentially even a year to even try to attain true perfect BiS if RNG is not on your side.

Is this a fun system? No, it’s honestly trash and please Amazon can we go to a time where your work was rewarded in an MMORPG instead of this trash gambling system we currently have.

We don’t care if it takes 1-2 months a piece of gear, the fact that there is a path we can work towards is what is needed.

There needs to be even earlier a something for. fresh 60s to be competitive and at least have fun.

FUN is the key concept, you need to focus on. How can players enjoy the content available in a fun way?

By giving them the tools they need to be successful.

Not hiding those tools behind layers of grinding and RNG, only for no players to be left because they would rather leave and play something actually fun that doesn’t feel like a job.

This should be the main focus of every team meeting, is this fun?

If it’s not fun, don’t put it in the game.

Not the scheming plan of. releasing early when the game clearly wasn’t ready.

Ignoring the valuable feedback of your die hard fans and alpha testers who begged and pleaded not to release, and creating this perpetual carrot on the stick of copium and hopium.

This patch is a step in the right direction as now I can just go on and enjoy a dungeon without it feeling like a job, but now PvP needs to be a viable leveling path as well as gearing path.

For example, why can’t we sell or trade PvP gear from boxes? Warhammer Online and GW2 had these systems very early on. It’s not rocket science, please stop trying to reinvent the wheel in the worst ways possible, and just make the game fun and accessible for all types of players.

You could literally copy and paste the WoW arena system with ranks for small scale arenas and battlegrounds and give a token currency for getting all the perks you need and you will literally see this games PvP scene begin to make a comeback.

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I think just adding 590 gear to the faction shop would be good enough.

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Well written post.

Have you spent any time on the new PTR patch? Crafting is being overhauled a lot. I suggest going on and trying to roll some gear if you have not already.

And don’t forget the perfect salvages, the new currency used to craft a lot of the named items from expeditions and changes to Gypsum.

Adding higher gear in shops I do welcome. I wish the replicas sets werent such hot garbage too.

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I haven’t, my concern is still finding the data just for how truly low % it is to get a true BiS roll, I’d much rather bypass the crafting grind and go about it just by PvPing.

If crafters want to craft and create things on the market, great, but for a PvPer like myself I wish there was a way to just PvP all day and do what we enjoy to make money and get gear.

PvErs if they want to do dungeons all day they can do that and get good gear etc etc.

Crafters can spend all day farming and doing that and get good gear

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Whenever they do that, they seem to do things like raise the gear cap 25 more or so, but don’t offer those extra points in the catchup.

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well best you are going to get is a few pvp only named items a few off of dungeons and you will need 2-4 pieces you buy or craft with your weapon perks.

thats about it.

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Right but still a PvPer is forced into content they may have no care in doing.

If new returning players could just PvP all day and level through a strict PvP path with PvP rewards like GW2 or Warhammer Online the game would recover players.

I don’t know how in 2022 we are still playing a game that feels like it was developed and made in the 1990’s

Coupled with the fact that the PvP named items actually aren’t even that good for some of them. Maybe that will change with the perks change but still I’d rather have a certain thing doing something I enjoy than a literal 1/1,000,000 chance to get that piece of BiS. It’s actually much higher if you account for each perk needing to be rolled.

The issue only gets exacerbated the more perks they add into the game which they have done and seems will continue to do when they release new weapons.

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i mean technically a lot of the named stuff from the pvp track isnt bad.

you will get screwed often on con if you are doing something stupid specific but shriking heal refreshing of some kind and resil is good enough for 90% of the game.

even the conscript stuff can drop as near bisses too

iv see 5 thwarting strikes refreshing move great axes so far around forums and reddit (i still get garbage) but thwarting strikes still pop up.

you theoretically can just pvp track your way to bis eventually you will need to make concessions every once in a while to go do a quick dungeon for an amulet or something but even thats going to get easier with the materia system (seriously am i the only one worried ags is going to get sued by square?)

true TRUE bis is going to take work.

you can grind the track to 400 and maybe get a few pieces, you might need to run 400 dungeons to get some bis pieces you might have to craft 40000 pieces to get a bis or whatever but its still the same grind.

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There shouldn’t have to be a concession though for a video game made by one of the biggest companies on the planet in 2022, with no lack of feedback for how to make a good game to cater to all players.

It’s a psychological thing too, we are more die hard fans with invested time.

The average player will see the current system and be like fuck this and move on.

There needs to be some visible thing with a clear defined reward track, so you look at the vendor/faction shop and say ok if I grind more I will get this.

Not praying to RNG gods.

Also current system seriously shafts PvPers because you can’t even sell the BiS. you might get for another class because it is all soul bound.

Idk who was the genius who implemented that but it’s not it man.

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bad news bears.

its a subsidiary.

they get a budget and a goal

they already baited and got all the money.

anything else after that is entirely on the will of the dev team on what i would assume to be a fair but slimed down budget.

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Eh debatable, but let’s keep the topic of this thread to the focus and point of gear catch up and gearing up in general. Not the fact that in beginning development they had a near unlimited budget, to being pressured to launch and now being a shell of what they were.

It’s 2022, where this game switched focus from being a survival/softcore PvP game to becoming all inclusive all types of playstyle, PvE, PvP, crafter, to falling miserably short on all of them.

Crafters hate the RNG and how pointless roll after roll is
PvErs hated the grind and essentially being forced to craft to get good gear until mutators but even then you needed to supplement with crafting
PvPers hate it because wars gave/give shit gear as did OPR and arenas and even actual legitimate rankings based on performance are non existent.

PvPers still get dicked the hardest because you can at least sell some of the gear from dungeons and some of what you craft. Not to fail to mention you also can’t even level from PvP legitimately from 0-60 unless you exploit kills.

You can’t sell any PvP drops and its simply shouldn’t be this way in 2022

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look im not disagreeing with any of that.

id be 100% down with sellable pvp gear

or at the very least a way to change attributes or perks to suit what you are trying to do.

but shits a changing. even the pvp caches the random drops everything should start rolling a little better for everyone meaning more crap will start hitting the market and become affordable. absolute true bis for one specific build might even become affordable too

we just need to wait and see with this patch.

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We could wait but I think the time for waiting is over, gear catch up is the last big impediment to the revival of this game.

So many players in my community are hyped for the viability of builds they thought would be good but the meta just didn’t allow to be fun.

But the questions comes, well ah shit how am I going to get geared for it, and they decide ah I’ll wait for a patch where that gets better because they are aware of how bad it actually is due to datamined information.

Players are more informed than ever about the true nature of game systems and the bad taste is hard to get rid of without a full 180 turn around.

It has been YEARS, YEARS since previous alphas we have drawn attention to these issues and balancing and only literally no lie, like 20 months, almost 2 years that they addressed it.

is it going to be another 2 years before they address gear grind? The ship is sunk with only one tiny air pocket left and they simply can’t afford to wait longer. What needs to be done is being voiced by their die hard veteran players so I hope these posts are seen by someone competent, and with a backbone enough to do what needs to be done.

Not just because it will be fun but will also make them a lot of money $ because people will be happy to play a fun game.

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im still not disagreeing with you.

but it should be better now for new players

  1. leveling from 1-60 has improved quite a lot and worst case its time to feed your friends a shit ton of mats to townboard
  2. the speed at which you can generate gypsums from 500-600 is going to double down now you can make a shit ton more in short period of time by doing two arenas 2 pvp arenas and maybe an opr if you want? better to just do 3 diamonds maybe a chest run whatever the usual BS to get to 600 expertice.

realistically it meanders here a bit with umbrals

thats ultimately where new people will get stuck on. that should be the focus.

there should be good enough purples soon flooding the market so i wouldnt worry that much.

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You know this is an MMO and not Rust or the other rust like games?

MMOs have always had the systems intertwined to some degree.

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For sure, I hope I’m not coming off bad I’m just passionate about this game and spent way too much time testing/playing that it’s a bit of tough love for the dev. team at this point.

I just very much dislike having to do a chest run and other things, wish we could just PvP to get geared/expertise in a realistic way,

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well on the bright side its 3 gypsum casts per day doing ONLY pvp now.

better than the 1 previous amr?

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Sure but there are many examples of MMO’s that don’t and are still successful. See GW2 as a good example.

Regardless of that fact, even WoW at end game you can strictly do arenas and get good gear that you are competitive for in PvP, the sets look epic, there are limited edition titles and skins for the arena season etc.

Also Warhammer Online even though it died due to it’s own reasons, was one of my funnest PvP experiences and I leveled strictly through battle grounds, open world PvP and did all my gearing that way.

It’s 2022 baby, time to kick out the old school mentality and make some money, and actually cater to all types of players in the process.

it is an incredibly cheap cop out that arenas get implemented. there are no leaderboards or ranks but instead PvP has become “crafting” through leveling your “rank” which is not based on skill/score but just grinding it out.

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I truly think thats what they were trying.

Have you heard the story of the alpha being so toxic thay had to completly re-tool the game?

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Sure but that’s neither here nor their, alpha was toxic, I knew many who played then and people would be bush wookies and hide and kill players.

I’ll tell you what though, combat was far more interesting back then and felt much more Souls like, to be honest if the game released the way it was intended before they switched design focus at least it would have had more of an identity and would have retained more players actually even though it was niche. Now they are catering really to no one as all the content across all facets of the game was so sparse at launch. But we all are hopeful content will come with time which is true.

but that’s not the point, about the past, about PvP being toxic is not the point of this thread so I’d appreciate this thread not getting de railed.

This is about the current gear grind being toxic, and systems not catering to player fun but instead of putting players on a toxic gambling treadmill, which I would argue is almost as predatory as the original game design lol.