Deldaron
09-26-2020, 09:44 AM
I am curious to hear people's thoughts on the Transmutation Repair Time Gate. At the core of this is a bit of a suggestion that it be reduced/removed, but it's not something I feel so strongly about so I wanted to frame this as a discussion to see if anyone had good points one way or another. The time gate is something that I don't terribly mind, though it does tend to wear on me towards the end of a full set and I end up forgetting to finish a piece of gear. When I want something and want something now I feel frustrated, but I enjoy progression and the feeling of finalizing that piece of gear is usually very exciting. I would like to avoid "I hate it/it sucks" and "deal with it", but am hoping for constructive thoughts about what it adds to/detracts from for players experiences.
I did a cursory glance for previous discussions, but if someone is aware of one please let me know :)
My thoughts on the subject:
Pros:
Slower progression - the main reason I see this in place is to slow the progression of players to god form end game elite crushers. It forces a time lag on getting your final gear set lowering the number of players who can just zoom through late game content. This serves to kind of level out late game performance, both by making it more challenging for all players and increases the likelihood that a new to late game player will not feel like they are so much weaker than people who have been there for a little bit.
[assumed] cheaper repair - the assumption here is that if the time gate were to go away an alternative method would be required to slow progression at late game. If there's no time gate the cost to repair would increase and it would favor veteran players with millions of councils. This is kind of how glowy yellow crystals and vervadium function - a player without the means to afford glowy yellow crystals and vervadium must gather them with a time gate, while a rich player can just buy from the stalls to craft their max enchanted yellows faster.
Economy boost - as I'll mention in the cons, I would rather build a new set/piece of gear than risk damaging a finalized set. If I'm not the only one and there are people crafting multiple sets to test out their options this could boost the economy. But I find that instead I'm just reluctant to try alternative sets.
Cons:
Build variety - because of the time gate of transmutation/repair I am personally less likely to explore alternative builds for my same combat skills. Once I have a set that I am happy with I would rather start from scratch and craft a new set of max enchanted yellow gear (with its own time gate) instead of trust my finalized set to the RNG gods to test out alternatives. With small changes you can manipulate augmentation to test out different 7th mods, but anything more and I would either start over or stick with what I have.
Delayed upgrades - if I move from lvl 70 gear to lvl 80, but the mods are wrong I will sometimes wait weeks to change the gear in my loadout. I often don't need all 7 mods to be perfect before it feels like an improvement, but there are definitely times where I'm holding onto what should be better gear waiting for the RNG gods to bless me.
Stacked time gates - this is what makes me question why there is a time gate in transmutation. For max enchanted gear there's already a time gate, for most tailoring 80 gear there's a time gate regardless of max enchanted. Both of these "time-gates" can be bought out however, as you can buy the mats that have time gates from other players. Re-rolling mods is the only situation where it is unavoidable (though you could go crazy and craft a second max ench yellow and try again, you'd have to be super rich and it would cost more than its worth imo).
Again I don't think it's awful, but I do question the purpose of the time gate. Perhaps it is naive of me as not having a time gate would allow players to quick switch optimize for flavor of the week damage types. Also, gear is usable well before its finalized so that hunt for the last modification is often a small improvement that isn't necessary, but with the low chance to craft legendary and existing material harvesting time gates does the delayed progression add to the overall experience?
I did a cursory glance for previous discussions, but if someone is aware of one please let me know :)
My thoughts on the subject:
Pros:
Slower progression - the main reason I see this in place is to slow the progression of players to god form end game elite crushers. It forces a time lag on getting your final gear set lowering the number of players who can just zoom through late game content. This serves to kind of level out late game performance, both by making it more challenging for all players and increases the likelihood that a new to late game player will not feel like they are so much weaker than people who have been there for a little bit.
[assumed] cheaper repair - the assumption here is that if the time gate were to go away an alternative method would be required to slow progression at late game. If there's no time gate the cost to repair would increase and it would favor veteran players with millions of councils. This is kind of how glowy yellow crystals and vervadium function - a player without the means to afford glowy yellow crystals and vervadium must gather them with a time gate, while a rich player can just buy from the stalls to craft their max enchanted yellows faster.
Economy boost - as I'll mention in the cons, I would rather build a new set/piece of gear than risk damaging a finalized set. If I'm not the only one and there are people crafting multiple sets to test out their options this could boost the economy. But I find that instead I'm just reluctant to try alternative sets.
Cons:
Build variety - because of the time gate of transmutation/repair I am personally less likely to explore alternative builds for my same combat skills. Once I have a set that I am happy with I would rather start from scratch and craft a new set of max enchanted yellow gear (with its own time gate) instead of trust my finalized set to the RNG gods to test out alternatives. With small changes you can manipulate augmentation to test out different 7th mods, but anything more and I would either start over or stick with what I have.
Delayed upgrades - if I move from lvl 70 gear to lvl 80, but the mods are wrong I will sometimes wait weeks to change the gear in my loadout. I often don't need all 7 mods to be perfect before it feels like an improvement, but there are definitely times where I'm holding onto what should be better gear waiting for the RNG gods to bless me.
Stacked time gates - this is what makes me question why there is a time gate in transmutation. For max enchanted gear there's already a time gate, for most tailoring 80 gear there's a time gate regardless of max enchanted. Both of these "time-gates" can be bought out however, as you can buy the mats that have time gates from other players. Re-rolling mods is the only situation where it is unavoidable (though you could go crazy and craft a second max ench yellow and try again, you'd have to be super rich and it would cost more than its worth imo).
Again I don't think it's awful, but I do question the purpose of the time gate. Perhaps it is naive of me as not having a time gate would allow players to quick switch optimize for flavor of the week damage types. Also, gear is usable well before its finalized so that hunt for the last modification is often a small improvement that isn't necessary, but with the low chance to craft legendary and existing material harvesting time gates does the delayed progression add to the overall experience?