Thoughts on anvil enhancement
My mace T___T.
With the recent changes (2months back) to Transcendence, I feel that transcendence is at a pretty good position now, balanced. Anvil enhancement, on the other hand, is pretty bad, the range between the good and poor enhanced equipment is pretty wide, with as much as 2k+ difference in attack/def per piece of gear (comparing +6 vs +40). Even the middle +20 is so hard to reach for most players.
RNG separating the gap between the lucky and the majority
Success of anvil enhancement is heavily constrained by the Potential system. Itâs a 50/50 chance of failure to upgrade which lowers equipment potential by 1 and reduces the current anvil enhancement level by 1. This is made worse by the introduction of diamond anvils where it removes the penalty of enhancement drop. Diamond anvils can only be acquired via the gameâs cash shop, further segregating the paying and non-paying community.
Severely reduces the experience of character progression
The above image shows a +16 primus mace vs a +11 primus mace. Most players will choose the +16 even when the attribute rolls of the +11 is so much better. As the anvil enhancement of an equipment gets better, the lesser worth core stats such as STR/INT will be. How much INT and STR is needed to bridge that 5 anvil level gap? What is the point of adding STR/INT when a few knocks of anvil grant more bonuses than investing 100 stat points into INT?
Core stats on high level anvil equipment feels like a decoration.
Character progression is not limited to just atk/def/stat collecting. Players feel progression when they get a new piece of gear which they can equip whenever a new content patch rolls out. This is one of key selling points of an MMO, as players can watch their character grow and continue on with their progress as new content patches are released.
Letâs say a player is fortunate enough to enhance a +30 Solmiki staff, will any new staff in future content make him or her change the current +30 staff? Will a +16 level 500 staff make it worthwhile for a switch?
Mostly likely that player will have no choice but to keep using the +30staff until he/she is lucky enough to enhance another weapon of higher level that can match the current one in attack power. How many years of content will it take to make that +30 staff of ilevel330 obsolete?
Is this the gear progression that the game developers envision for the game?
Addressing the Anvil issue
We have to address 2 issues for anvil enhancements that irks most of the players, the heavy penalties of losing both potential and enhancement level on failing; and reducing the range between the mid and high levels of enhancements.
On the side note, as there is current 2 ways to ways (anvil and transcendence) to increase attack stats (physical/magical), core stats such as STR/INT get further shafted (has much lesser weightage) as the bonuses they given arenât substantial enough to compete with +1 anvil level of a weapon. How many times do players decide to forgo STR/INT for the other 3 stats since these 2 donât really matter much when there is a high enhanced weapon available?
Personally I think anvil enhancements should be reworked to grant something else other than +atk/def of the gear. This will bring more value to core stats such as STR/INT and provide a max atk/def limit with transcendence being the only thing to enhance the gear atk/def stats.
Letâs cover the Potential system firstâŚ
Would removing Potential system fix the anvil system?
Although removing potential system makes players feel less depressed in failing anvil enhancements, it raises more problems to the game. Like as silver sinks is needed in the game, there needs to be a system in place to remove equipments from the game.
Without potential system, players would just keep enhancing their own equipment, and sell similar items they have on the market. Items such as Masinios mace will continually be circulated, without much ways to remove them (besides consuming it via inchor extraction). This will lead to oversupply of items and reduction of the prices, making them lose their rarity.
Hence, there is a need for another method to remove items from the market should we need to remove Potential system. Keeping this in mind, letâs move on to the suggestion.
Suggestion - Changing the way Anvil enhancements work - Stat enhancements
Anvil enhancements, instead of granting +atk/def bonuses on enhancements, increases the stats of the gear, with a max of +20 as the enhancement limit. Each level of enhancement increases the stat bonus by 5%, with 100% at max. Anvil enhancements success rate is 100%.
The potential system is replaced with similar gear required to enhance the gear. For gears that are traded via raid materials, they can be enhanced via the NPC with a fraction of the required fragments of the original gear.
Example, to enhance (values to change) via NPC, no more straight anvil:
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Primus Raffye Mace - need 1x Primus Raffye Mace as material + silver
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Masinois Mace - need 1x Masinois Mace RCP + 30 pieces of macehead + silver
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Velcoffer Mace - need 10 pieces of velcoffer fragment + silver
Pros of changing to this type of anvil enhancement:
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A no risk, effort rewarding way to upgrade equipment. Reduces player frustration caused by RNG
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Way to remove equipment or equipment materials from the game without relying on the destructive potential system
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Provides a cap to all equipment upgrades, hence it is easier to balance PVE/PVP content as the upper limits of gear and range is known.
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Brings core stats and other stats into the spotlight, +STR/INT in gear is much more valued as high anvil enhancements gain more STR/INT bonuses which in turn increases atk damage. Players have more tools to customise their build further as stats such as +crit rate on gear can be increased via such enhancements. It makes hunting for gears with a specfic group of stats more important, rather than focusing on high patk/matk only
With the change of this enhancement we, will have a more wholesome equipment progress system + a way to remove items/materials from the game without leading to player frustration:
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Transcendence to increase atk/def of gear
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Anvil to increase stats of gear
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Gems to add stats (no bonus from anvil)
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Awakening to augment stats (gain bonuses from anvil)
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