H
Harb
Guest
Preparing for the SA release, I just completed reorganizing years of loot to get ready for imbuing. It was a pain. Our eyes are “keyed” to quickly scan items on a creature’s corpse to seek properties that make sense to each of us. It seems to me that those well known “indicators” are about to change, as we search for 400% items to attain magical relics via imbuing. Two things struck me really hard, first was how painful it is to actually calculate overall % quickly, and second how significantly item values are about to change. A simple solution could alleviate the first problem; add an intensity line to an item’s property list so we can quickly determine if it’s a strong candidate for imbuing. Your focus group may have already noticed and recommended this as it appears release isn’t very far away.
The second observation is a little more difficult and controversial I suppose. The 400% threshold is potentially incredibly high. Items I cherished tended to fair poorly, and I was surprised by things that did well. My jewelry stinks. None of our 3/1s measured up, nor did the LMC/LRC or skill stuff. What rocked was potions/ night sight/ FC1, you start at 300%, but how many of us keep a pile of those? I really couldn’t get a feel for armor, most of it was enhanced and thus not a candidate or was destroyed trying. Suffice it to say that mage armor/ night sight/ regen stuff gives you a big head start, but again, not the norm for most of us in the past. I had weapons that made the grade, more so than anything else. SC/ no FC/ element damage/ UBWS/ slayer and you’re all set. Weapons do however reinforce the concern of potential difficulty (read that near impossibility). Some properties are more uncommon than others, most notably super slayers. Frankly, I did not have a single super slayer that made even a 350% threshold, much less a 400% one, and that’s in years of play. Hit area was also a void. It would also be very helpful to consider two additional things; weights for certain properties such as super slayers, considering lowering the threshold to 350 or 375, or a combination thereof. While I’m sure you have feedback from both QA and the focus group and they’re bound by NDAs and can’t respond – I’d point out that unless testing on mirrored TCs of their home shards, none of them are actually able to put all this into it’s “historical context,” i.e. all the effort already done over the years!
Imbuing isn’t actually like a new skill set that can tweaked along the way, it really has to be done right the first time as it’ll cause a clean-up Brittainia campaign like no other. Those who commit early don’t want to waste their stuff on a skill that might be easier later, and those who wait don’t want to miss an opportunity should it be tweaked toward greater difficulty. Anyhow, for your consideration!
The second observation is a little more difficult and controversial I suppose. The 400% threshold is potentially incredibly high. Items I cherished tended to fair poorly, and I was surprised by things that did well. My jewelry stinks. None of our 3/1s measured up, nor did the LMC/LRC or skill stuff. What rocked was potions/ night sight/ FC1, you start at 300%, but how many of us keep a pile of those? I really couldn’t get a feel for armor, most of it was enhanced and thus not a candidate or was destroyed trying. Suffice it to say that mage armor/ night sight/ regen stuff gives you a big head start, but again, not the norm for most of us in the past. I had weapons that made the grade, more so than anything else. SC/ no FC/ element damage/ UBWS/ slayer and you’re all set. Weapons do however reinforce the concern of potential difficulty (read that near impossibility). Some properties are more uncommon than others, most notably super slayers. Frankly, I did not have a single super slayer that made even a 350% threshold, much less a 400% one, and that’s in years of play. Hit area was also a void. It would also be very helpful to consider two additional things; weights for certain properties such as super slayers, considering lowering the threshold to 350 or 375, or a combination thereof. While I’m sure you have feedback from both QA and the focus group and they’re bound by NDAs and can’t respond – I’d point out that unless testing on mirrored TCs of their home shards, none of them are actually able to put all this into it’s “historical context,” i.e. all the effort already done over the years!
Imbuing isn’t actually like a new skill set that can tweaked along the way, it really has to be done right the first time as it’ll cause a clean-up Brittainia campaign like no other. Those who commit early don’t want to waste their stuff on a skill that might be easier later, and those who wait don’t want to miss an opportunity should it be tweaked toward greater difficulty. Anyhow, for your consideration!
Thats really not the point however. My concern is at the point of attack (well, immediately afterwards really). Imbuing will naturally spur a huge clean-up campaign, so I tend to think of our loot collection being gone once and for all (either worn or imbued). I suspect it'll be the same for many of us here. Thats actually a good thing for us and the servers! But I gotta tell ya, I was absolutely amazed with how few items actually hit the 400% threshold. At the point of attack, calculating loot "should not" be time consuming and frankly, boring. The consequence of it can be twofold, 1) less satisfaction in game play and 2) hording anew again - pending taking the time to actually calculate whats worthwhile and what isn't. There are some things in the game that naturally are necessarily meticulous, such as building the right gear for all your characters. But where unecessary, as in this case alleviated by a simple change in displayed properties, it seems best avoided from a player satisfaction perspective.