Except, it’s exactly how it works. The highest tier are so rare/hard to attain that mid-tier gears become an option.
These are entirely different games, you can’t even put them on the same group as other MMORPGs. B2P games don’t need players to regularly play unlike F2P or Subscription type.
Yeah, the new set effect are the most uncreative set effect I ever seen. But I mean, if they locked themselves to making the armor set for specific shallow set of content, I’m not sure how they could have make it any better.
DCP “TURN UNDEAD SET”
UPHILL - Lepizard set.
Maybe with drops that feel iconic like the past? Making stuff drop globally is a lazy way to design maps.
isnt global drop the solution to KS farming?
i like double drop from thauma, it is satisfying, but i despise it when i JP-HK-swell the R8 mobs then suddenly be KSed by some random SR and they got the double drop.
They should let you get pvp gear by doing pvp contents
Agree with all of those, but what i meant there is that you can’t expand classes with a new system before you get classes right, as proved with their plan to stop new class production and focus on reworking old classes (which should anger some fellas).
Yes, anviling is frustrating RNG and a silver sink, but it also provides a small improvement between players that use the same equipment, which makes equipment have this small competitive nature and awe from time to time, and that has some value to the game. The addition of transcendence just amplified its negatives as you are pushed to do it but you can’t use the dead equipment because you can’t play the game without transcended equipment.
I personally think that the ideal way to make equipment interesting is through secondary stats and unique effects (specially in a game that was supposed to support and promote diversity), which ceased to exist since ichors became a thing. That’s why i think it’s reasonable to have it back as the main enhancement system (and also to settle stat checks) and be an investment for the equipment you set with, and also be usable while crafting a better version of it…
Ain’t that done to not bore players to death as everything early and mid game has to offer is remix of the same quests and straight grinding?
If you have to give away enhanced equipment for new/returning players to be able to play the game with minimum efficiency, you can be sure you did something wrong somewhere…
CM as content is bad, and making it mandatory as progression is worse… It’ is hard to have any type of content that is as robotic and repetitive than spawning monsters on the same spot for your party to obliterate them instantaneously…
It’s just simpler and easier to kill anything that moves and not worry about cycling through spots on the map. They might’ve thought it was a good idea because players were frustrated to have to seek a specific monster on specific spots with low population and drop rate and get nothing for most of time (also, it wasn’t that good with CMs either).
Yes, and making the older contents and gears worthless is the price to pay for that. IMO, it was a fair trade. What I’m trying to say is, most games where older contents remain viable were the ones with drawn-out level progression.
Again, it wasn’t necessarily their fault. I joined this game a few months before the first free savi gear was given out and I didn’t feel that the grind was bad. A friend of mine joined a year after and just a little before the Ep11 Savi was added, and he almost quit due to feeling left out. It all depends on the player’s perspective, and for me, I knew the proper expectation of joining an old game. But IMC wanted to cater to those weak-willed players.
I never said it was a good idea to make people spam CM indefinitely. But how does lessening ways to power up yourself help on the situation? With less variety of ways to progress, it will also lessen variety of things to farm up. As a result, all players will do the single most profitable content more.
I just want Monk buffs on the Monk class and not on a Vaivora Weapon. Also, IMC please save Krivis, they did not deserve the mayhem they got.
Back to the topic though, to be fair I do not mind getting different equipment for different content (maybe 2-3 sets sound like a fair number?), but the number of equipment and the material costs for them … players play the game to for the enjoyment and grind to get more enjoyment out of it, but IMC thinks players enjoy grinding content they don’t get right half the time or something.
When CMs first came out and for the better part of 2 years, there was huge variety in making silver, either via CMs or raids and selling the stuff, even HGs were profitable. Now it’s CM or starve. I’ve done thousands of CMs since they came out, I just can’t bring myself to do more. I want anything else to do to make silver.
And the biggest problem with these patch notes? It’s just another double down on RNG to get absolutely core/mandatory gear. They added so many more ways to get Boruta seals but then archstones are still 100% RNG at an extremely low rate, with no end in sight. There are so few just around that even if I did everything else to get things like the (level 10 lol) ark or the new accessories, I have no way whatsoever to reasonably get six. Did the raid, do weekly content, spend hundreds of millions on goddess’ grace, nothing. I have played this game every day since its release. I just can’t wrap my head around the stupidity of a developer that would do this.
That could be the case, but you also have to consider that requesting less farming time means players can do other activities that aren’t directly tied to obtaining resources (or rather, not have it as the primary aspect), like leveling a new character or doing content for fun.
People complain about CM mostly because it’s went from content to engage to a chore.
That just what i believe to be the main reason on changing it, monster based drops can create way more interesting scenarios to the game, specially when paired with a good monster and map (and combat) design.
Awakening could be changed into something more akin to the first iteration, like a semi-randomized dungeon that you pick which boss to fight in exchange for a stat. Other interesting way to do it is by making it kinda like Pamoka, in which the weapon gains EXP and unlocks X stat lines.
On matter of skill gems, they could’ve been added to the side equipment (accessories, seals, ark, etc).
(Digression)
I liked the flavor of Awakening being a fixed predetermined effect in the 2015 cbt. It wasn’t explored that much since they gave the bonuses randomly. Another concept that was never tested and i like is trading a stat for another (equivalent exchange memes).
This is cool on paper but the skill gems are ultra-rare and you destroy them on removal. 
ToS seems like it doesn’t have clear direction with its upgrade systems. A lot of them are somewhat redundant, extremely expensive, and mostly based in RNG.
Like, why do vaivoras exist at all and why do they have to be a low world drop instead of just rebalancing classes through their attributes? You introduce Arts (but not a useful one for everyone), then Vaivoras which are basically just Arts ichors that only benefit certain classes, making the balancing even worse. If you have to introduce a vaivora for every class to balance it now, why not just make them Arts/attributes in the first place?
I played another F2P KRMMORPG called Mabinogi for several years. The weapon upgrading system had some RNG too, most of the good weapons had to be crafted or were rare drops. Weapons had durability that decreased when used, but could be permanently lost through failing repairs/enchants (like potential). Weapons could have 2 enchants, but the higher the level the enchant, there was a chance of destroying the weapon permanently. Weapons could then be “special upgraded” to 7, which had a chance of failing at each level like anviling and would set you back if they failed, and would break the weapon from 5-7.
The difference is you could protect your gear from being destroyed with cash shop/event items for each of these upgrade systems. ToS doesn’t have anything like that, but still demands you gamble at every step and much more often.
Not only can you not insure your gear, your character’s power is tied to it. In Mabinogi you could get strong enough where you could do any content with any weapon because your base stats determined most of your scaling. In ToS if your weapon is gimped, you are gimped.
I understand the Devs get to make Dev decisions, as almost anyone does, but that doesn’t mean these decisions are above criticism.
Having to grind for an end game weapon wouldn’t be that bad if it wasn’t guaranteed to not be useful with the next patch and the grind for the new gear is completely uphill.
Make sense though.
The new so-called “updates” we got this month is some contents gated behind insane rng World Drop or billion of paywall.
The new Ark Stone drop is a big slap in face to all the players yet again, much like Vaivora, but arguably worse because there’s even less chance to farm it. Those “new contents” might as well equate to none existent update for 99.9% of players.
The April returning savior events tricked player into thinking the game is going into right direction, only to slap your face again and again in June update and the upcoming Legend gears upgrade.
People straight up quit after seeing what’s the future update going to be like
The real problem is not how grindy the game will be, most Korean MMORPG are like that.
The real problem is the botters, you can grind for years what botters could achieve in a month.
Most population in the game are bots and bots owners, while real players only do CM’s, and only small numbers farm in end game area.
if we can change ark stone type like now it is not that bad
What? Old as in the player-base is old. When a game is old, there are fewer people grinding at lower levels and there is virtually no market for old lower-level stuff, etc. New players have to play alone until they reach a certain level/equip so they can join endgame parties. This is what actually made new players feel isolated and left out. For players after Ep11, it’s only a few days grind until they get their Savi set. For players before Ep11 and missed out on the free savi events, that grind extends until they crafted their savi set.
Looks like the upgrading system in Blade and Soul there’s a different path of upgrading your weapon and different materials too sounds good Well since lower rarity are being useless now.
This game for a long time encouraged alts to experiment, and also encouraged alt because a lot of older content was character based, not team based. That changed heavily but only in the last year. This actually lead to low level maps being populated quite heavily, especially grinding maps.
Bots don’t exist without RMTers. The problem is actually unpunished RMT. Most bots also don’t farm in “end-game” areas because the silver drop rate was reduced–this is also why there’s extremely low variety in how to make silver. All the variance was nerfed to make botting less efficient.
So yet again, RMTers and a dev with extremely poor means of handling them just did nothing but hurt legit players.
Dude, I’ve been playing MMOs since 2005. You can’t compare games with different business models with each other. There are great things from Pay to Play or Buy to Play that would make zero sense in Free to Play. The problem is you are looking at it from the gameplay perspective only and neglecting the business side of it.
Also, feeling separated from high-level old players with your fellow low levels is extremely different from being isolated by yourself. New/Returnee rewards are there because the rate of new players was very low before Growth Servers were introduced. The state of PC MMORPGs is nowhere near how it was 4-8 years ago.
