3 Reasons to Permanently Remove Dangerous Enchantments

For those of you who are unaware, recently the patch that added the Red Wing Casino added a new type of enchantment to the game called "Dangerously Improve weapon". This enchantment cost 1 expert metal slab, and it gave a weapon +2 damage to abilities for its skills at a 2% risk of destroying the weapon. The main draw of this enchantment was that it could be repeated infinitely as long as it didn't destroy your weapon.

https://i.imgur.com/essTmt0.png

This resulted in several players having incredibly overpowered weapons that could deal hundreds of bonus damage that were multiplied by treasure effects, allowing players to do thousands of extra damage to enemies and lower level characters destroying content over twice their level. Appropriately, the recent hotfix essentially removed the enchantment because of it being incredibly broken.

However, I have noticed many players trying to offer suggestions on how to balance the enchantment so it can be kept in the game, and even the patch notes for the hotfix state that the enchantment wasn't supposed to add as much damage and it will be re-implemented in a future patch.

I would like to offer three extremely good reasons why dangerous enchantments shouldn't ever be added back into the game, even with balance changes, for I believe they will be incredibly harmful to the game as a whole.

1. Low chances mean nothing for many players

One of the most common suggestions I hear from other players on how dangerous enchantments could be reasonably balanced is to make the upgrade worse. If you make the chances of the item breaking higher or the damage bonus weaker, and therefore the chance of getting a good weapon lower, it would prevent players from getting extremely powerful weapons and therefore make the enchantment balanced.

This sounds like a reasonable argument at first. For example, let's take a +500 damage weapon from the old dangerous enchantment. To get +500 damage, you need to upgrade a weapon 250 times, each with a 2% chance of breaking. This means you'll have about a 0.6% chance of successfully creating a +500 weapon.

For many players, this sounds like a humongous undertaking. You would have to plan around going through 200 weapons on average before getting a +500 weapon! Never mind the cost involved in materials and the fact you could just lose it all. Surely this wouldn't even be worth trying to go for and you'll never see a +500 weapon.

However, this is only the case if you think of it from the perspective of a single player, but Project Gorgon is an MMORPG with many players who are ready to spend tons of time grinding for valuable items! Trying to go through 200 weapons is a daunting task for one player, but if you have 200 players trying once, then one of them is very likely to have created the item, and trying to craft the weapon once is very reasonable even for non-end game players. If they keep trying every few days, then after a few months then the whole server would be flooded with ridiculously overpowered weapons!

This is why lowering the chance of the enchantment working isn't a fix to the problem, it only slows down the inevitable. You could reduce the chance of getting a +500 weapon to 0.1% but then that would just take the player base longer to get these weapons. Not only that, but slowing it down could be pointless in the future. Maybe you could reduce the chance so only one +500 weapon gets created every year with our current player base, but what if the game becomes more popular and more players start trying to craft the weapon? Or what if new content from higher levels allows materials to be farmed much more easily? Trying to reduce the chance or the effectiveness of the enchantment is a band-aid fix that doesn't solve any issues unless taken to ludicrous extremes.

This is why other games that have a similar enchantment system add a limit to the number of times you can upgrade items. In huge MMORPGs with millions of players ready to grind hours a day, it doesn't matter how hard it is to upgrade the item, SOMEONE is going to get that 0.000001% item out of all the combined hours the player base dumps into the game. Limits on how many times you can upgrade the item let the developers keep the items within reasonable bounds, even if someone does get very lucky.

However, remember I'm not arguing to add a cap on the dangerous enchantments, I want them completely removed from the game. Sure an enchantment cap would make them more reasonable, but they still would be incredibly harmful to PG, and let me explain why even with a cap they would cause issues.

2. The economy will be based on gambling

Think about what makes an item valuable to players in an MMORPG, and therefore expensive in trading. The biggest factors to prices are typically rarity and how useful the item is, as these are directly related to supply and demand. The price increases massively if the item is useful to endgame players in particular, as those players have the most wealth.

This is why in any game with a luck based enchantment system, highly enchanted items end up being some of if not the most valuable items in the game. Highly enchanted items are incredibly rare, extremely useful to endgame players, a symbol of wealth to other players and last forever. This is why in these games highly enchanted items tend to be ludicrously expensive compared to everything else, and typically the only items remotely close to the same price are materials you would use to upgrade these items or tradable cash shop items worth a lot of real money. The entire economy revolves around these items because of their value.

The current economy in Project Gorgon is great, and probably one of its strongest points. Players are encouraged to gather commodities such as consumables or crafting materials for wealth, and this lets many players participate in various ways. Players can decide to gather all sorts of different items, and gathering these items is consistent. I can safely say "If I grind X for Y amount of time, then I'll get about Z councils". This kind of grinding rewards hard work, good planning, and even player efficiency/skill.

Dangerous enchantments are the opposite of this, if the economy revolves around highly enchanted items, then none of this applies. There is no skill in clicking a button and hoping my item doesn't break, there is no planning in gambling, and trying to grind harder means I have even more money to lose. At best you can apply these concepts in grinding the mats yourself more effectively, but it all comes down to clicking a button and hoping you get lucky.

What ends up happening in games with luck-based enchantments is that the economy splits into two groups of people.

Group A: People who are willing to gamble on getting good items. These people will invest their money in upgrades in the hopes their investment grows into a very powerful weapon they can use themselves or sell to other people for more money than they spent.

Group B: People who want the enchanted items because of their strength, but don't want to risk anything on gambling. These people will grind money in other ways and buy the weapons from Group A.

This split will always end up happening because there is encouragement for people to go to group A. If not enough players are in group A, then the number of upgraded weapons will be too low, and therefore their price will go up much higher. This encourages people from group B to go into group A, either because the only way of getting their good item is to get it themselves, or the rarity of upgraded items makes it more likely to profit from being in group A.
This will always make these items expensive because the remaining group B's reluctance to gamble means they'll pay very high prices, and more people in group A means the materials to upgrade will be in higher demand, which causes upgraded weapon prices to go even higher as the materials cost more. This also means that many people in group B will start to pay for the weapon by grinding those same materials for people in group A to use since they're now more valuable, causing the economy to revolve around the upgraded weapons and the items to craft them.

What makes this "Gambling Economy" so bad though, is that it's all based on luck. In the current PG player economy, everyone can have a stable income based on what they do, but if players start rolling on items for cash, then you're relying on getting lucky to have a weapon to sell. Someone can grind for thousands of hours only to waste all their time and money, or some random player can get extremely lucky and suddenly have millions of gold. Sure you could try to trade other items, but they'll be worth a pittance compared to the inflation behind enchanted weapons. This would destroy the amazing economy PG currently has.

Now the thing is, all that I said here is assuming that the enchantments are actually good. Typically in MMORPGs with a similar system, the enchants are incredibly powerful, or probably even necessary to play the end game which adds to their value. It's possible you could cap the dangerous enchantment at a measly +10 damage and then the economy wouldn't even be scratched since no one would really care.

Now I could just say "Well if the enchantment is practically pointless, why even bother adding it to the game", but that's not really a good reason to remove the enchantment if it's already in the game. So that leads to my last point.

3. Luck based enchantments were never designed to be fun in the first place

This is probably the best reason to remove dangerous enchantments, although the hardest one to explain since "Fun" is subjective.

Gambling can be fun, that's why the casino can be fun! There's excitement to be had in playing a game of Monsters and Mantises and hoping you get lucky, and the chance of getting unlucky adds to the experience and excitement.

You know what's not fun? Grinding for dozens of hours only to have all your time go down the drain because of something completely out of your control.

Luck based enchantments were never designed to be fun to players, they're purposely frustrating, angry and scary because of how much you invest in them and how little control you have over the process.

So why are these luck based enchantments in so many games then? There are tons of MMORPGs out right now that have upgrade systems based on RNG, and many of these games are very successful! So if they weren't added to be fun, and they don't add anything to the game, what were they added for?

https://i.imgur.com/r5drbKP.png

Oh, that's right. Money.

Luck based enchantments were purposefully designed to be frustrating and not fun in order to encourage players to waste their money in the cash shop. This is why RNG upgrades and cash shops go hand in hand with one another, and why so many MMORPGs, especially eastern ones, have them. These luck based upgrades were made bad on purpose to inflict negative emotions on the player to try and get money from them. Are you frustrated because of how long it takes to get materials to upgrade? Spend some money on the cash shop to buy more! Are you angry because your upgrade failed and your best item just broke? Spend some money on the cash shop to recover it! Are you scared because you invested so much time and money on an item and it might break? Spend some money on the cash shop to protect it! This is just one of many frustrating "Features" game developers add to their games to try and get more money out of players.

Now Project Gorgon doesn't have any micro-transactions of course, but that doesn't remove the frustration, anger, and fear associated with these upgrades. There's nothing to be gained from this except adding a grind to equipment that is meant to be upsetting on purpose.

There are other forms of RNG in getting geared up sure, like maybe you could get unlucky and no good items drop for you, or maybe your transmutation bricks and you have to wait another week to roll on an item again, but these forms of RNG are nowhere near as upsetting or frustrating as losing absolutely everything just because a random number generator was in a bad mood. There are also lots of ways to play around it, whereas nothing will save you from losing thousands of metal slabs to an unlucky roll. Grinding for things can be what makes RPGs fun because you only have something to gain. Hoping RNJesus doesn't smite you and you lose everything is what cash shops are built around because you have so much to lose.

Conclusion

Sorry for the long post, but this is definitely something I needed to say and I seriously hope it can convince people why these sorts of things don't belong in this game, and that something resembling Dangerous enchantments never appear again in Project Gorgon. I actually wrote through this whole thing twice and I hope I didn't miss something in my rewrite. I'll be more than happy to explain anything I didn't explain well enough. Thank you very much for reading through my post if you managed to bear it for that long.

I agree with reasons 1 & 3, although as you say 1 can be alleviated with for example a cap. I don't really agree with 2, I can see a purpose to add valuable, special weapons to the economy, because with a cap they would all look alike, just be better than pure loot.

You can already sell, say, legendary weapons. You could also sell them after enchanting, as long as there is no competitive advantage of enchanting a lot, for example with a cap. Then all legendary enchanted weapons would be similar and just worth more than regular legendary.

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Originally Posted by Niph

I agree with reasons 1 & 3, although as you say 1 can be alleviated with for example a cap. I don't really agree with 2, I can see a purpose to add valuable, special weapons to the economy, because with a cap they would all look alike, just be better than pure loot.

You can already sell, say, legendary weapons. You could also sell them after enchanting, as long as there is no competitive advantage of enchanting a lot, for example with a cap. Then all legendary enchanted weapons would be similar and just worth more than regular legendary.

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The idea behind point 2 is that typically these weapons are significantly stronger/rarer than any other weapon in the game, and their value causes a majority of other items to become worthless for trading simply due to the price difference. In other games with this system even with a cap, the price differences are ridiculously extreme, usually with max enchanted items costing several hundred times more than non-enchanted best in slot items.

Not only that, but with so many players trying to get these extremely valuable weapons, the materials to craft them become so valuable there is little reason to grind for other items. For example the price of expert metal slabs more than doubled in four days when dangerous enchants were available, and that's only when a small handful of players knew how strong the weapons were. If the recipe wasn't removed and everyone knew about it, I would bet the price would easily go past 2k per slab, in which case it wouldn't be worth doing any grinding not related to getting expert slabs for many players. This is what happens in many of these games that have this system.

Of course, this is all based on the relative power of the enchantment, and the original one was clearly way too strong. If the strength difference was only like the difference between a normal yellow and a max enchant yellow, then it wouldn't break the economy. It would still be really frustrating though if the enchant cap was very low and your weapon still broke! I'd argue it'd make me even more upset because the chance would be so low and I would know I got incredibly unlucky. That's why I think point 3 is a good argument why it's not a good addition even with extremely restrictive limits.

To be fair ragnarok online did not launch with enriched oridecon. Complaining about them is like complaining about the exp statues because other games are designed to be frustrating to level in order to sell exp boost potions in the cash shop. On RO's launch the difference between someone wearing all +7 gear(easy to get to) and +10(absolutely insanely hard) was minimal, something like taking 300 damage auto attacks(with 6k hp) instead of 340 and most skills in the game ignored defense which was the only benefit to upgrading. Today they go to +20 and you have items that get really overpowered the higher they're upgraded but that is not a fault of the system, it is the fault of how the monetization of the game.

Infinite upgrades are indeed busted but having it taper off(similar to RO's system, +4 to +5 is 60% +9 to +10 is 10% and still a minimal upgrade) or have a cap would be fine. The current enhancements(like the +fire to cloth recipe) don't feel much like upgrades to gear.

To expand on ragnarok online a LOT of people do enjoy that system. Private servers have always been more popular than official servers and 90% of private servers do not sell such a thing, yet everyone plays them and strives for +9 gear

Personally I don't really like project gorgons current itemization with there being almost no unique/rare drops or anything big to work towards, run gazluk keep 3 times and you're done. I get that I'm in the minority that likes grinding but I think an MMORPG needs to have something to work towards.

You also talk about the effect on the economy being 'massive' - To use Ragnarok again, so was elunium/oridecon. I always saw that as a good thing, low levels could get rough ori as drops(5 rough=1normal) and it was a staple thing you could buy/sell.

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Originally Posted by Quanzhigao

Infinite upgrades are indeed busted but having it taper off(similar to RO's system, +4 to +5 is 60% +9 to +10 is 10% and still a minimal upgrade) or have a cap would be fine. The current enhancements(like the +fire to cloth recipe) don't feel much like upgrades to gear.

To expand on ragnarok online a LOT of people do enjoy that system. Private servers have always been more popular than official servers and 90% of private servers do not sell such a thing, yet everyone plays them and strives for +9 gear

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The issue with having the upgrades be powerful, but "Capped", is that you're still forcing everyone to participate in a potentially very frustrating experience. For example you say that +7 gear in RO is easy to get, but from what I remember, the chance of getting a +7 item could be as low as 10% to get. Now that's a much bigger chance than the ridiculous +500 weapon I was talking about and more realistic for a single player, but that could easily still lead to frustrated players who get unlucky and have to attempt their upgrades more times. If the damage boost was small, then many players could just ignore it, sure, but if you make it so the enchantment can boost damage by a large amount like 60%, that's way too big of a damage boost to ignore and the game is almost certainly going to be balanced around it, and the game will end up revolving around the upgrade mechanic. Now of course, that's how it is in RO and many people enjoy it, but I don't believe it's a good fit for PG, as the game's gear system would be ruined by the end game being based around weapons having huge amounts of attack on them and not the treasure mods.

That's not to say the game couldn't have a big upgrade system for end game for every player, but why make it RNG? That's the biggest issue with this kind of upgrade and why I say it isn't a good experience. If every player is relying on getting lucky to get to end game, you're inevitably going to make a lot of players frustrated for no good reason. Why not simply increase the amount of materials if the developers want to increase the grind in the game? Why force players to invest a huge amount of resources and potentially lose them all over and over if you don't have an easy excuse like money? There's a big difference between transmuting and getting a bad mod you don't want so you have to spend a bit more phlog compared to losing the item entirely and having to start from scratch again.

You also say that a lot of people like the RO system, but that's why I say fun is subjective. You say that people might love it, but I have also heard countless people screaming about how frustrating it is, and how they have quit the game due to bad luck. I would also argue that you have to be careful with survivorship bias. If you go into a RO server and ask if people like the system, of course you're more likely to get positive responses, that's because everyone who hated it already quit the game and isn't there to respond! That's not to say a reasonable number of people can't like the system, but it would be very easy to simply avoid the system being heavily RNG and a huge investment in order to make a system more acceptable for more people.

Also, if you want to be fair when talking about Ragnarok Online, I think you'd have to treat classic and renewal as two different games entirely. The fact classic didn't have items like Enriched Oridecon doesn't excuse renewal for trying to push P2W items as hard as possible with the incredibly RNG and overpowered upgrade system. Also the only reason why I used that screenshot from RO in the first place is because it's the only game I currently have on my computer with cash shop items related to RNG upgrades! There are certainly much bigger offenders I could have used, but I deleted them from my computer in disgust and didn't want to redownload them for a screen shot.

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Originally Posted by Yaffy

3 Reasons to Permanently Remove Dangerous Enchantments

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All of your points are valid, but as you've said yourself, just be in the Group B and the problem is solved. PG is not a PvP game, so I don't see how you can't play and enjoy the game @ lvl 125 without the top enchants. Will it all be balanced around those damage bonuses? I doubt it, regular monsters in PG are pretty weak even with added crits.

That being said, I won't like to craft 2000 weapons to get that one max lvl enchant on one of them too.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

All of your points are valid, but as you've said yourself, just be in the Group B and the problem is solved. PG is not a PvP game, so I don't see how you can't play and enjoy the game @ lvl 125 without the top enchants. Will it all be balanced around those damage bonuses? I doubt it, regular monsters in PG are pretty weak even with added crits.

That being said, I won't like to craft 2000 weapons to get that one max lvl enchant on one of them too.

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The existence of group B doesn't solve the problem though. Sure it means you don't directly have to deal with gambling, but the effects these sorts of items have on the economy are enormous, and if you plan on buying one then it will affect you directly. The more frustrating and difficult it is to get these upgrades, the more money you will have to shell out for one of these items, which could easily cost millions of gold judging by other games. If you're in group B, you need to figure out how you're going to get that money, and due to the amount of materials and money going into these RNG upgrades, many of the most profitable options will almost certainly be related to the upgraded items themselves. Not only that, but you're at the whim and mercy of how many people are in group A. If you just assume only crazy people will be in group A, then nobody in group B is going to get anything without paying a huge amount because of the limited amount of upgraded items being created, which is why I say the game will "Encourage" many people to go into group A even if they don't want to, which is a nicer way of saying forced.

Once again though, yes this is all assuming the upgrades are actually really good, no one is going to bother if they're capped at a low number. But then adding it to the game is mostly pointless and only potentially frustrating for the people who do bother trying so there's no good reason to add it back in. If the upgrades are good, then yes the game will certainly have to be balanced around it because having ludicrously overpowered players can cause more issues in the game.

The idea that this upgrade could be applicable to all players already implies that the devs need to balance their game around it, because if it's available for everyone and it makes everyone stronger, you don't want to make it so people who use it slaughter content without trying while those who abstain have issues. That will just make everyone want to get these upgrades more because of the power difference. Also it would be a large way to progress your character's strength, which is the whole point of this game!

Also, sure the game is not a PvP game and not a competition, but nobody wants to be a useless dead weight compared to the rest of the people they're playing with. This is why even though Gorgon is a PvE game people still care about things like doing good damage, leveling up their skills, and trying to play well, because it's a Co-op game. People aren't going to be forced into using the upgrades because of competition, they're going to be forced to use it to stay relevant and helpful.

It doesn't solve the problem, but I doubt atm that these enchants will be much of a problem at all. I'll get a bit into the speculation of what I've heard from JackieCola (nothing is confirmed yet), he said that unlocking the skill cap on higher levels like 90-100 will/could cost a couple of millions for a single skill, my point here being that the future economy will also (just as the current one) be built around the grind. And if a player has to grind a lot, it doesn't really matter if he has the top gear, because he'll also be soloing thousands of easy monsters anyway and what matters the most in PG is the time you put in, not whether you have the maxxed out gear. Example: Having the best gear atm (yellow, max-ench, rolled build) and a good stategy allows you to solo a Gaz Patrol and "brag" about it. :D The important question here is, is it worth it, in terms of the real time put into the game in vs councils earned vs xp gained ratio to kill those monsters? Isn't it better to fluently farm some other monsters to get more money and xp and materials? I also want to point out, that there are some very old, rich, "overpowered" characters in the game atm, but they didn't get there by just some "luck" (before the patch and the bug with the weapons), they've played this game for probably thousands of hours, grinding the same monsters/dungeons. It's not very fast as it is to lvl a combat skill 1-70 on a fresh character by yourself, wil take you some time, imagine lvling it to 100 AND unlocking the 25 synergy levels. This game won't suffer because of some limited enchants, even if they're powerful, imo, it requires a lot of grind as it is. Just being able to use a lvl 100 or 125 weapon with the enchants will already be an "achievement" in itself considering the amount of time and councils required to get those levels. And lvling multiple or most of the soft capped skills in the game to the 100, will be fun :cool: And that's another point, there are players who love lvling multiple skills to have diverse gameplay, to roleplay or just because reasons... Getting those enchants for them on a single skill is really not worth the time nor councils anyway. Well, maybe just for one overpowered skill at most, to powerlevel other skills faster, but it won't be a must for them anyway.

And an afterthought related to the shop. I don't know whether there ever will be an ingame "premium" shop in PG, but there will be "VIP" accounts, meaning the subscription.. And nobody knows yet what those bonuses will and will not include, maybe, among other stuff it'll lower your chance to break your weapon while enchanting to 1% or whatever..

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

being that the future economy will also (just as the current one) be built around the grind. And if a player has to grind a lot, it doesn't really matter if he has the top gear, because he'll also be soloing thousands of easy monsters anyway

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Progress being related around grinding though is actually a huge reason why these enchants are powerful and in demand. If people are expected to grind for huge amounts of time, they will will want to do so efficiently. A boosted weapon that improves their DPS and therefore their grinding speed will speed things up, considerably if it's a powerful upgrade.

The reason why currently "Easy" monsters are better for farming is because they're faster to kill, and it's not worth killing "Hard" monsters in that the extra time involved makes it not worthwhile to grind on them. The thing is that if players get stronger, then suddenly "Hard" monsters start becoming easy, which is why becoming stronger in PG allows people to farm things weaker characters would find difficult. A player with an extremely powerful weapon would might be farming "Easy" stuff for them, but something extremely difficult for other players, which is how powerful, upgraded gear can help players grind in the same way it's easier to farm money as a level 70 than a low level character.

Ofc, but are we talking current "to-be-brought-back" with some kind of restrictions damage enchants or damage enchants in general? A lvl 10 player can't farm "hard" mobs because he can't equip anything with a great damage boost yet, that's the point. Moreover, some items are behind the "endurance level x" wall. Can't they add it to the enchanted weapons too? Sure, there is no way a low-lvl player will ever deal as much damage as a lvl 70 player. Bugged enchants are not working anymore, so you can't just create a +xxx damage weapon anymore anyway. If the bonus won't be significant no one will bother as you've already stated above, I'm just saying, that even if the bonus will be mediocre, okayish or even somewhat good, there will be no rush to get it, because one way or another players are limited by their combat skill level and even endurance levels for gear. Just add the endurance requiremerent to the weapons, problem solved, once and for all. And Endurance is actually one of those skills that can't be powerleveld by other players, you just have to fight and take armor damage a lot to max it out.

And as for the overall farm of hard or easy mobs, well, you already have it based on the luck.. You craft an item, if you're lucky it'll be a max-enc legendary (yellow), then you need some luck to roll the mods on it as fast as you possibly can to max out your damage or healing or whatever build players are going for with that set. And that is exactly my point, this game requires a lot of time put into it to get the maxed out set of gear, esp if you're unlucky, so there is already a huge gap between a fresh lvl70 and the lvl70 player who's been crafting for 16 months. Has little to do with bugged enchants, just the way the game is. And if you have to craft hundreds of items, you'll have to farm a lot, really a lot. It all takes time anyway and btw the vast majority of those items are attuned anyway (if you roll once it becomes attuned), so you can't really trade them, makes no sense.

Being forced into some kind of (rolling) adding a capped amount damage by gambling to the future craftable weapons makes sense, imho. It's just more grind, but the whole game is about the grind anyway, at least if you want to farm the "hard" monsters.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

Just add the endurance requiremerent to the weapons, problem solved, once and for all.

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This doesn't solve many of the problems involved. This will only stop low level players from using these weapons, not stop players from wanting it. Their demand with wealthiest and strongest players won't go down, and even if someone manages to get one but can't use it, it'll be incredibly valuable for selling anyways. Not only that, but players who are lucky enough to get the weapon can just hold onto it for later if it's worth holding onto.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

And as for the overall farm of hard or easy mobs, well, you already have it based on the luck.. You craft an item, if you're lucky it'll be a max-enc legendary (yellow)

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Max enchanting crafting and transmutation are significantly different than having to invest on something like dangerous upgrades.
1. There is no risk of losing the item you are working on, where as dangerous upgrades risk you losing the item and everything you've invested into it, which can be a huge amount of time and money. You're only spending materials to craft, Transmutating or Max enchanting will never leave you weapon-less.
2. Max enchanted items are not necessarily the best items you can get, as an extra treasure mod may not be very helpful to your build and found items can be more helpful as a best in slot item. There is no reason not to want more damage on a weapon like on a dangerous upgrade which is why everyone has to be involved with it.
3. Transmutation forces the item to become soulbound to the player, which is why everyone needs to transmute their own gear. Dangerous upgrades don't attune the weapon, which is why they become so prominent in the economy and money becomes directly linked to power. If they did attune, then suddenly everyone would be forced to do the gambling themselves if no one could buy the items which would make things even worse.
4. The chance of crafting a max-enchant yellow or getting the mod you want from transmutation is significantly higher than any RNG upgrade system in any game I've seen. That's not saying I'd be ok with dangerous enchants if they had a high success rate, but it certainly makes it a loss less frustrating, and the grind is much more reasonable. A fresh level 70 can definitely end up with an end game set in a month. Korean MMORPGs with these systems are not known for having reasonable grinds around a month long for end game gear.

Also, just because Project Gorgon involves grinding doesn't justify frustrating systems in order to encourage more grinding. The devs want to make the game fun and rewarding, not to try and consume as much of our lives as possible rolling dice. If they wish to add a rewarding grind, there is no reason not to simply remove the heavy RNG aspects and make it very costly instead which is more in the spirit of Project Gorgon. Something that rewards hard work, not the luckiest players.

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Originally Posted by Yaffy

Also, just because Project Gorgon involves grinding doesn't justify frustrating systems in order to encourage more grinding. The devs want to make the game fun and rewarding, not to try and consume as much of our lives as possible rolling dice. If they wish to add a rewarding grind, there is no reason not to simply remove the heavy RNG aspects and make it very costly instead which is more in the spirit of Project Gorgon. Something that rewards hard work, not the luckiest players.

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Yes, and this is why these weapon damage enchancements will be reworked and return in some future patch. Question is how will they be reworked.. We can really only speculate here at this point. Attuning, consuming enchant points, adding the endurance skill level requirement will all help to avoid the limitless grind, low levels with extremely high damage output and millions of councils earned just based on the luck. So, just those could adress all of your concerns except for the chance to destroy a weapon for good. Well, if the weaponsmithing and bowcrafting as weapons crafting skill will be finally added to the game, your max damage enchant will not be that hard to get, even if some of the weapons will get destroyed in the process. Anyway, we'll see.

Would the game be better overall without a mechanic like that at all? It's hard to tell atm, but yeah, it would be better, if all the enchants would just require more resources and never destroy any of your items.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

Yes, and this is why these weapon damage enchancements will be reworked and return in some future patch. Question is how will they be reworked.. We can really only speculate here at this point. Attuning, consuming enchant points, adding the endurance skill level requirement will all help to avoid the limitless grind, low levels with extremely high damage output and millions of councils earned just based on the luck. So, just those could adress all of your concerns except for the chance to destroy a weapon for good. Well, if the weaponsmithing and bowcrafting as weapons crafting skill will be finally added to the game, your max damage enchant will not be that hard to get, even if some of the weapons will get destroyed in the process. Anyway, we'll see.

Would the game be better overall without a mechanic like that at all? It's hard to tell atm, but yeah, it would be better, if all the enchants would just require more resources and never destroy any of your items.

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Oh well, what I mean by "Dangerous Enchantments should never come back" is the idea that upgrades that have the chance to break the item should never come back. I have no problem with a big end-game upgrade system otherwise! I'd still want to try and avoid the upgrades being really strong just to avoid crazy huge power creep, but if they were reasonable and weren't based significantly on luck I'd have no problem with it.

Agreed with OP on all points (especially the last one), and would like to add that nothing I've found in PG requires a stronger weapon. Not being able to solo certain content encourages group play, and or better builds. I'd rather see a new weapon-crafting system rolled out than an enchantment that is easy to abuse and based entirely on RNG.

quick edit: I'd like to see the unique boss gear (claudia's puch, sedgwick's sword, old crusty's backside, etc.) actually be useful, sought after items. Currently they are good for a laugh or hoplology, but almost no one seeks them out. Maybe it's just fond memories of those big raids needed in AC to get unique legendary items from bosses, but it seems like the items are already there....why not make them better?

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Originally Posted by Daguin

I'd like to see the unique boss gear (claudia's puch, sedgwick's sword, old crusty's backside, etc.) actually be useful, sought after items.

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I definitely agree with this! One way to make the gear system more interesting is having items with more interesting/useful base properties that have the potential to be best in slot gear for very specific builds. Stuff like the new Nimble equipment is a perfect example. It means that players will use all sorts of different equipment pieces depending on their build. Right now a lot of boss uniques aren't really that interesting because they only add damage, meaning once players level up they'll toss them for non-unique items because those higher level items give more damage.

There are a lot of really cool ideas you could make from this. Like what if the Stolen War Golem's fist converted unarmed damage to fire, which would allow for fire based unarmed builds to be made and it could open a lot of neat possibilities for players. Or even just really interesting effects like making Claudia's pouch cause Tundra spikes to apply an "Aged" debuff to enemies, rather than just doing more damage. It probably wouldn't open any new builds, but the item would be a lot more interesting, fit the boss, and worth using for Ice mages who like Tundra Spikes. Maybe Lomas from Kur tower's cloak could allow Necromancers an extra two shambling corpses, which would be a big boost to "Shambling corpse builds", a skill players don't normally ever build around. There's a ton of super interesting ideas that could be made!

The only problem with this though is that players will still out level items, which is what takes away from their use. There are already quite a few really interesting base items in the game, like the flame basher hammer. The issue is that the flame basher is something like a level 40-50 item at best, so even though setting everything on fire is cool, it's super detrimental to have mods on your weapon that are 20-30 levels lower at end game. I wouldn't mind seeing an upgrade mechanic that lets you make low level items higher level so they can have appropriate level treasure effects, maybe a recipe that moves the base effects of one equip to another one. This way you could continue to use unique items if they were really interesting and worthwhile to use.

Claudia's pouch is a pretty good item and i think it really needs improvement, it's easier to get to the stone war golem in GK then to Claudia, just because it's a lv 60-65 dungeon it doesn't mean the boss loot shouldn't be 70 like with a 65 level req.
I really like the staff from hyppogriff(sp) but i wish it would give those % based on the skills you are using and not just ice / fire , if i wanted a nice archery/druid one land the staff at 8% base for each skill, without having the fire/ice, this would make it a more sought after item, broaden the people interested in it.
Zukelmux ring is actually a really good ring once you land a yellow the problem is you don't get a ring every time you kill him and now with the crits introduced to the opposite side some of this rewards should be tweaked, like if you get to Zukelmux it should be mandatory you get his signature item every time you kill him.

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Originally Posted by Daguin

quick edit: I'd like to see the unique boss gear (claudia's puch, sedgwick's sword, old crusty's backside, etc.) actually be useful, sought after items. Currently they are good for a laugh or hoplology, but almost no one seeks them out. Maybe it's just fond memories of those big raids needed in AC to get unique legendary items from bosses, but it seems like the items are already there....why not make them better?

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Originally Posted by Yaffy

I definitely agree with this! One way to make the gear system more interesting is having items with more interesting/useful base properties that have the potential to be best in slot gear for very specific builds.

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This is a dangerous path that will lead PG to it's demise. No, just no. One simply does not add overpowered uniques to the game with no skill cap and tens of crafting skills. This one is the way to kill crafting, this one is the easy way to figure out the best, read most overpowered and easy, build in the game and just play it. All of a sudden all the players are running with the same build, same gear, farming the same bosses/dungeons/monsters over and over. Crafting is dead, economy is dead. The whole economy is get some councils and buy that overpowered item. Just no. Not in a sandbox game. Never. Na-ah. No way. Forget it. Not a chance. Mobs have to drop complete trash to encourage the players to get into the crafting.

P.S. In 3 years from now.
- "This game has 50 different crafting skills! And no cap! It's amazing!"
- "Yeah, but everybody is using the same weapon that drops from boss x and armor, that drops in dungeon y. Forget skills, they're useless."

^ Bit of a strawman argument don't you think? Noone asked for OP unique gear. The thing that is wanted is gear that is more distinct from other gear

Wanna know what gear you use atm? Any yellow with the mods for your abilities. Armor and combat refresh are not important enough to make interesting choices, I'd say almost every player couldn't tell you the difference between leather and cloth gear outside of 'high armor on leather?'

The recently added nimble gear is the kind of stuff that we need more of. Currently we have a decent amount of choices but some of them are basically irrelevent(ive never seen someone use or request camo gear and the damage reflect gear that drops in gaz is a joke)

I'd just like gear to be more than the mods it comes with. Also stacking multiple % and flat damage mods leads to insanely broken builds(in comparison to people that spread mods over all abilities) - Nerfing mods and instead adding other effects would help.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

This is a dangerous path that will lead PG to it's demise. No, just no. One simply does not add overpowered uniques to the game with no skill cap and tens of crafting skills. This one is the way to kill crafting, this one is the easy way to figure out the best, read most overpowered and easy, build in the game and just play it. All of a sudden all the players are running with the same build, same gear, farming the same bosses/dungeons/monsters over and over. Crafting is dead, economy is dead. The whole economy is get some councils and buy that overpowered item. Just no. Not in a sandbox game. Never. Na-ah. No way. Forget it. Not a chance. Mobs have to drop complete trash to encourage the players to get into the crafting.

P.S. In 3 years from now.
- "This game has 50 different crafting skills! And no cap! It's amazing!"
- "Yeah, but everybody is using the same weapon that drops from boss x and armor, that drops in dungeon y. Forget skills, they're useless."

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All of your points are already applicable to top-end content ie: gazluk armor, max enchant evasion stuff, pocket gear, the dmg. enchant in OP, etc. We all look remarkably similar as is, and there isn't much incentive to seek out alternative ("unique") gear.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

This is a dangerous path that will lead PG to it's demise. No, just no. One simply does not add overpowered uniques to the game with no skill cap and tens of crafting skills. This one is the way to kill crafting, this one is the easy way to figure out the best, read most overpowered and easy, build in the game and just play it. All of a sudden all the players are running with the same build, same gear, farming the same bosses/dungeons/monsters over and over. Crafting is dead, economy is dead. The whole economy is get some councils and buy that overpowered item. Just no. Not in a sandbox game. Never. Na-ah. No way. Forget it. Not a chance. Mobs have to drop complete trash to encourage the players to get into the crafting.

P.S. In 3 years from now.
- "This game has 50 different crafting skills! And no cap! It's amazing!"
- "Yeah, but everybody is using the same weapon that drops from boss x and armor, that drops in dungeon y. Forget skills, they're useless."

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You misunderstand the idea. The idea isn't to make it so unique drops are blatantly better than everything else no matter your build, it's to try and make them different and unique, so they allow new ideas to builds players don't normally use. This way they would enable more build options and choices, not limit them.

For example, my example of the stolen war golem's fist converting damage to fire would actually not be a very helpful weapon for many current unarmed builds. Many unarmed builds make use of bonuses to crushing damage, such as by using bruising blow which makes enemies weak to crushing. Converting your damage to fire would actually make you do less damage because now you wouldn't be getting any bonuses from your crushing damage! Instead the idea would be that you could build something like unarmed+Priest and build tons of fire mods so you blow up your enemies with explosive fiery martial arts, which is a totally unique and awesome sounding build which there's no real good reason to make now, but could be with the addition of a unique item. (And keep in mind that unarmed+Priest for tanking can be a thing now, but would be a totally different kind of build than a fire unarmed+priest!)

Because the item is only good for a very specific kind of build, not everyone is going to want them for min-maxing, that way those few players that do want to make their characters around those builds have a large incentive to get a yellow off of these boss monsters, and to everyone else at least the item is cool and unique and worth trying out for fun.

Or just as another example, look at the Flame Basher hammer, it only gives you a 25% chance of igniting enemies for 50 damage over 20 seconds which is a pitifully weak DoT. On average this will add 12-13 damage per hit that doesn't scale with anything hammer related if the monster ends up actually living the full 20 seconds.
Is this DoT going to massively increase my damage and make this the best hammer to use for DPS? No.
But is using thunderstrike and watching everything around you burst into flames freaking awesome? Hell yeah.

These unique items don't actually have to be super good for min-maxing your stats. They can just be really interesting and fun too!

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Originally Posted by NickzMagic

Wanna know what gear you use atm? Any yellow with the mods for your abilities. Armor and combat refresh are not important enough to make interesting choices, I'd say almost every player couldn't tell you the difference between leather and cloth gear outside of 'high armor on leather?'

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Originally Posted by Daguin

All of your points are already applicable to top-end content ie: gazluk armor, max enchant evasion stuff, pocket gear, the dmg. enchant in OP, etc. We all look remarkably similar as is, and there isn't much incentive to seek out alternative ("unique") gear.

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Not True. I craft my gear and then roll and augment it, creating a good set takes time, plus "any yellow" ? No, I have my different sets for different purposes, a winter set, a regular set, etc. I even used to have a separate movement speed set, but they take too much inventory slots.

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Originally Posted by NickzMagic

I'd just like gear to be more than the mods it comes with. Also stacking multiple % and flat damage mods leads to insanely broken builds(in comparison to people that spread mods over all abilities) - Nerfing mods and instead adding other effects would help.

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I don't want any other effects on the crafted gear, want MOAR damage! Ofc builds are somewhat broken, it's still beta, everything will be tuned, but it makes no sense in any game, IF the crafted gear is inferior, makes crafting dead. And combat refresh itself is very important, saves my ass a lot during the fights in Gaz.

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Originally Posted by Yaffy

You misunderstand the idea. The idea isn't to make it so unique drops are blatantly better than everything else no matter your build, it's to try and make them different and unique, so they allow new ideas to builds players don't normally use. This way they would enable more build options and choices, not limit them.

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No, I got it right, it's my experience in games. You want unique items as in an item that would enable and allow you to create a build around it. It's a question of balance, if the item and the build are not good enough, no one will bother, if it's too good, someone will optimize it and everyone will run it. And a month later you'll have some "artifacts/uniques/whatevername" that go together, synergize very well and there is no telling if the build will turn out to be overpowered as hell... At least atm we have a choice of abilities we want to have mods for and play.

Moreover, in your example, you just want a new combat combat skill, like a pyromania(c), setting everything on fire with some large aoe fire abilites, but it'll be created with an item, not a skill itself. So, from the standpoint of a general game design, depending on your creativity and the item, it could be a lot of work to introduce some new mechanics into the game. And it'll either be overpowered or not a single player will be using it. Not a single player means not a single player, because, even if you're a fan, you will hit a wall sooner or later, like say, a monster with lots of fire resistance or immunity, so you'll change your build to something more effective and as you and the game move forward, you'll never go back to that particular pyromaniac build. Is it even worth the effort to create something like that?

I think that having a current system with skills and mods for their abilities is a good game design for the developer, makes it's easier to look after and introduce new builds. There is a good reason we are able to run 2 combat skills at once (even 3 with a crossbow) using different kinds of damage, even the physical only is piercing, slashing, crushing...

P.S. What you guys are talking about reminds me of games like Diablo 3 and POE.. and even a bit UO since the AOS. And in all of those games, except POE, crafting is just useless and dead. One may argue that it's dead is POE too, as you can just buy the items off the market.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

it's still beta

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One of the points of a beta is for players to suggest such things

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

You want unique items as in an item that would enable and allow you to create a build around it

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Sounds like someone wants this to play like PoE (path of exile) where you build all your skills around the gear you get.

The easiest option for me there....is to go play PoE if I wanted that.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

No, I got it right, it's my experience in games. You want unique items as in an item that would enable and allow you to create a build around it. It's a question of balance, if the item and the build are not good enough, no one will bother, if it's too good, someone will optimize it and everyone will run it. And a month later you'll have some "artifacts/uniques/whatevername" that go together, synergize very well and there is no telling if the build will turn out to be overpowered as hell... At least atm we have a choice of abilities we want to have mods for and play.

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Your logic applies to any sort of customization choice in this game, or any sort of RPG game. It's not a proper argument at all, because you could claim the addition of any sort of new choices could potentially be overpowered or under powered. The idea of "Everyone will use it because it's considered the strongest thing" or "No one will use it because it's weak" could apply to Project Gorgon at this very day and yet there are still people playing all sorts of builds. Of course the items will need to be balanced properly, just like anything else in this game. You're assuming that boss drops must be one of two extremes, why can't they possibly be within reasonable bounds?

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

Moreover, in your example, you just want a new combat combat skill, like a pyromania(c), setting everything on fire with some large aoe fire abilites, but it'll be created with an item, not a skill itself.

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That's not true, I'm saying that right now there are skill combinations + builds right now that you don't have any real reason to make (Since there's very little synergy between the two), or are impossible to use (Since they require conflicting equipment or forms). The idea behind unique items is that they would give you more reason to use the combination or they would enable it. It's essentially no different than the bunny hat that allows you to use ice magic, which allows you to use Bunny + Ice Magic and is impossible otherwise. There's no new skill being added, just an item that enables a combination from two preexisting skills.

Unique items could certainly be overly complicated, there's no cap on how complicated they could be, but they could just as easily use something already present in the game. For example the idea of the stolen war golem's fist converting unarmed damage to fire is not a new mechanic. The swords you can get in Gazluk already have a property that transforms sword attacks into fire and it can definitely change how you build sword when you use it. I'm simply suggesting a similar item.

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Originally Posted by Grobyddonot

And it'll either be overpowered or not a single player will be using it. Not a single player means not a single player, because, even if you're a fan, you will hit a wall sooner or later, like say, a monster with lots of fire resistance or immunity, so you'll change your build to something more effective and as you and the game move forward, you'll never go back to that particular pyromaniac build. Is it even worth the effort to create something like that?

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Once again, you're thinking there can only be extremes. Plus, I don't understand your argument. Why would monsters with fire resistance or immunity cause you to throw out your entire build? Fire mages don't toss their fire magic gear in the garbage when they bump into Illimari mobs. Why can't people switch between builds as they like? Or why couldn't a "Fire unarmed" character splash another damage type if an enemy is fire immune just like fire mages would, or just simply equip another fist weapon to change their damage type back?

Also, keep in mind that unique items in Path of Exile/Diablo are different than a suggestion for boss items. In those games many unique items are totally random drops that you can just stumble upon from any mob, and in Path those that aren't are typically extremely strong for a huge amount of players in order to encourage players to fight end game bosses no matter their build. For example one of the end game bosses, Atziri, drops a flask which gives players bonus chaos damage, chaos resistance and life leech. Not only are these bonuses very powerful, but there's basically no reason not to use it for 99% of builds because as long as you're doing damage it's a super useful item. The devs intended to make it extremely useful on purpose as a reward to fight an end game boss.

I believe what people are suggesting in this thread (Or at least myself) is to make it so these "Unique" items are only dropped by bosses or gained in specific ways, and then the goal is to make them simply more interesting and cool rather than aiming to make them super strong compared to everything else. Not only that, but it'd be very simple to make these unique items tied to certain skills, because skills typically have item requirements. For example Claudia's pouch is tied to ice magic, so if all it did was affect ice magic skills then you wouldn't see it on anyone but ice mages, and therefore only a small portion of players would consider using it. An example of making it a super strong boss drop to encourage players to collect it would be to make it grant 50% cold resist or something, then everyone would run it, but no one is suggesting that.

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Originally Posted by Kryshael

Sounds like someone wants this to play like PoE (path of exile) where you build all your skills around the gear you get.

The easiest option for me there....is to go play PoE if I wanted that.

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That's not really the main idea, it's more just about making the items more interesting to make boss items more worthwhile than an extra 1% base damage. For example the flame basher hammer in the game would be a great boss drop because it's interesting. It wouldn't give you any reason to make a new build (You can't even use hammer with fire magic!) and it's not even a very useful effect, but it's super fun.

As for stuff that "Enables" new builds, there's already stuff like that in PG! Things like the Bunny's familiar controller which allows ice magic is a piece of equipment which enables a normally impossible build, and a lot of people (But not everyone!) likes to pair Bunny with ice magic, and it's only possible because of 1 unique piece of equipment. You can even use unarmed and ice magic together with it in order to have two empty hands, when normally you would have to use a hand slot to use ice magic. Wouldn't this be a case of building your whole character around one piece of gear?

I'm not asking for a PoE/Diablo scenario where characters are decked out in several uniques in order to synergize and juggle around certain mechanics, it's more about having a cool trophy to show off or simply more "Build enablers".

Make the recipe ingredients rare (and I mean rare), remove the 2% break chance, put a cap of 1 improvement per 5 levels of the highest mod. That level 70 Flaming Gazluk Sword of Whatever can only be improved 14 times maximum, and the ingredient(s) needed are so hard to come by that I can't just get another upgrade in the future and slap it full of improvements immediately.

Either that, or let the recipe not add damage, but change the damage type. My best sword, the 70 Flaming Gazluk Sword of Whatever, deals fire damage. Would be nice if let's say I wanted to change it to deal nature damage instead, but that requires changing the sword fire graphic and name of "Flaming" to something like "Earthbound".

Whatever they choose, the recipe shouldn't come back at all in similar form to what it was. It was too easy and the risk was zero (weapon didn't matter, if you added +300 damage it became stronger than any dropped weapon ever found). It's just... really bad design.