Update Discussion: October 18, 2018

[Delfin]

I haven't tested new weapons recipes enough but I understand what Yaffy says and I agree totally with his concerns. We need a deeper end game damage system which no depends a lot on rng. About Halloween I don't like it. Therefore, I have done very few of the quests. I would love that time spent on holidays to be spent improving actual content. However, New invasion system performed by Jack is very interesting. All in all I still have to say thank you for all your efforts!

[Kway]

Has anyone located this “secret” entrance to Gaz Keep? And if so where in the Keep does it lead?

[Niph]

[Daguin]

Halloween quests are so much fun this year...Thanks for all the hard work! Really happy about the back entrance to GK, and the AOE loot-lock adjustment too.

[Citan]

Some notes about the new recipes:

@Yaffy - I did see your post about the new recipes and, obviously, I disagree with your assessment. It sounds like you will never be happy with anything that might destroy a weapon. That's fine. I understand that concern -- we've had this discussion with players before during alpha, and my takeaway was that I should make certain that you don't NEED to risk your equipment to be successful. And that will remain true: you will always be able to have really amazing builds without risking your gear, even at max level. But there will be many ways to alter gear. Dozens of ways, eventually.

These recipes are intended for about level 30-40ish players. That's obvious, right? It's in the level 40 city and has relatively easy prereqs. Yes, you can use them on high-level weapons, but you certainly don't NEED to "dangerously improve" a weapon to have a successful high-level build. In fact, players at level 70 could ALREADY be really, really overpowered. As in: soloing elites, often soloing bosses... very overpowered. Too overpowered? Yes, but not as overpowered as it seems at first glance... because those gear sets are insane! Getting 50 treasure mods that synergize takes a lot of time and work. Shouldn't it be kind of broken? It should! The exact amount of overpowered is a question we'll have to figure out, but I'm not trying to balance the game around players having perfect gear at level 70. You can get that, and it's cool, and I want you to feel like a badass for all the work you did. I do not, however, have any personal need to let you have "the best possible" gear. If the argument is that you just want to have the absolute very best stuff and it's too hard now... I don't care. But if players feel like they NEED to dangerously improve high-level weapons, that's wrong and I'll fix it. Right now, certainly, they don't.

The new city (the casino) is for level 40s, because that's where we lose players. Somewhere after the 30s, but before the 50s, players get exhausted. There aren't (weren't) enough goalposts, so the goals feel too distant and the game feels too grindy. So the casino is a hub for new kinds of goals. Those earlier goals (like running GK, or learning Battle Chemistry, or whatever thing they're working on) are still there, and I don't want to take away from them. But there need to be lots of new goals, new ways to improve, new things to do.

This being a casino, it's obvious that there should be some high-risk, high-reward techniques. Again, getting the exact numbers right will take time. But I think I'm right that this is where a risky technique should fit into the game, and I'm pretty sure I can make it work. (Eventually.)

Players in this level range tend to have several weapons they've been holding on to, but none of them are very good. Adding 100 simple damage to one might make it last another 10 levels, though, and if they get one to +300 and end up feeling overpowered for a few levels, GREAT, I love that. They worked hard and they should feel overpowered for a while.

But just to be clear: in the final game, I can't imagine anyone with legendary level 70 gear risking it in one of these recipes, because why in the everliving FUCK would they do that? That's a terrible risk for tiny reward. Keep in mind these players will probably only have one or two legendaries at that level at most, since they won't be staying at level 70 terribly long. I don't currently see a situation happening at level 70 that's comparable to what level 35 players are experiencing. But if I'm wrong and these recipes end up seeming "mandatory" at higher level, I'll limit the recipes further until they aren't. Surely by level 120 a recipe that "adds 2 simple damage with a 3% chance to destroy your weapon" is a terrible, terrible deal. There will be other better ways to enhance top-end gear.

I still need to tweak these recipes more in the future; I'm still trying to figure out the right risk/reward, and what sorts of limitations they should have. They use a new type of damage so that I can organize the calculations in different ways as needed. When I'm happier with how they work I'll add versions for more skills, but right now it's nice to keep it contained a bit.

(Edited to add: I might add one or two more recipes soon in order to get more data and feedback coming in. Not a lot of people are testing the Knife one, which is the one I'm most worried about, balance-wise, because you can dual-wield knives and double stack the simple damage.)

[Yaffy]

These recipes are intended for about level 30-40ish players.

I don't know how much you'd take my word for it, but I certainly believe that these upgrades are noticeably useful even at level 70, and will continue to be useful past level 70 (Although less so of course). If there are still plans for a widespread damage nerf, then the dangerous enchantment will certainly be much stronger.

From one of my earlier posts, I stated that end game DPS builds with perfect gear tend to have a sustained DPS around 1k to 1.5k dps with perfect gear. Now for the most part DPS isn't a humongous deal because many players simply burst down what they kill, but assuming you want to stray away from a burst game meta or you're talking about much tougher enemies, then dangerous enchantments can easily add around 200+ DPS on sword/hammer or 400+ on knife. Potentially more for some more gimmicky builds.

That's a massive boost to a perfect end game build, and it's going to be even more noticeable with cruddily thrown together builds. A +300 simple damage boost is much more powerful than almost any single end game mod for damage. You can compare it for example to a level 70 boost to base damage since it applies to all attacks in the same way. I would argue +300 simple damage is somewhere around the power of 80% base damage at worst, and that's only if your build is based around high base damage skills with long cooldowns. For knife it can potentially be as strong as around 400% bonus base damage.

Because of that I seriously disagree with your comment on it being "A terrible risk for a tiny reward". The reward is so good that you don't need to actually take any risk at all. Currently the property is still strong enough that you can take a bunch of junky weapons enmasse, upgrade them until you get a +300 weapon, and it will be much better than a maxed out level 70 yellow. On my hammer build I have a cruddy level 50, 3 mod weapon with +300 simple damage and it's stronger than my max enchanted level 70 yellow club. For my knife build I have a level 30 dirk with only +100 damage and it's boosting my damage more than my old level 70 modded off hand because of how much knife can benefit. I will simply hang onto this dirk until I upgrade another dirk to a higher value and then switch until I have +300. Yes it would be even better if it was on a level 70 yellow, but right now I can simply rush for a +300 weapon on a piece of trash because it's so much better than level 70 mods, and then I can potentially work on level 70 items.

There will be other better ways to enhance top-end gear.

This is another issue I have with dangerous enchantments though. Aside from the tedium of going through a bunch of weapons until you hit +300, there is no downside to having +300 damage on your weapon. Even if you add another upgrade system why wouldn't you want to use both that upgrade AND dangerous enchantments on it? To me what this means I'll do is that I'll avoid any cool upgrade system you might have planned until I have a +300 damage weapon, and THEN I'll go onto whatever end game enchantment system you have planned, because doing it the other way around would be incredibly risky. If you want to prevent something like dangerous enchantments from getting in the way of any new upgrade system, you'd have to make them incompatible.

The new city (the casino) is for level 40s, because that's where we lose players. Somewhere after the 30s, but before the 50s, players get exhausted. There aren't (weren't) enough goalposts, so the goals feel too distant and the game feels too grindy. So the casino is a hub for new kinds of goals. Those earlier goals (like running GK, or learning Battle Chemistry, or whatever thing they're working on) are still there, and I don't want to take away from them. But there need to be lots of new goals, new ways to improve, new things to do.

This being a casino, it's obvious that there should be some high-risk, high-reward techniques. Again, getting the exact numbers right will take time. But I think I'm right that this is where a risky technique should fit into the game, and I'm pretty sure I can make it work. (Eventually.)

Now you already know I don't find the idea of risking my weapons and materials very fun, but I don't believe dangerous enchantments are a good goal to keep level 40 players engaged. The issue with dangerous weapons is that it isn't a very clear goal or upgrade at all, and even in these threads there are high level players that have taken a look at it and think the success rate is too low (Even when they get the math wrong and overestimate!). If a level 70 player thinks it's too much effort, why would a level 40 player think it's worth doing?

I've stated that I know how valuable the enchantment is, but I don't think many level 40 players will look at the dangerous enchantments and think it's worth putting time into until they have a much better source of income based on the other player reactions in this thread. Many players don't realize that just getting something like +50 damage, which is much more probable, is already a big boost and only think of how hard it is to cap out. Combine that with the fact that level 40 players are probably trying to save any penny they can for the cost to uncap their skills and I don't think level 40 players will be open to using this upgrade system at all.

If you want a RNG upgrade system to thematically fit the casino, I think you could certainly make it a lot more fun than just a simple recipe to add +2 damage on a weapon. You could have a game/machine in the casino for the sole purpose of upgrading gear which consumes red wing tokens to use, and it could apply a mod on your gear which could be anything from a horrible negative effect to a great positive effect, or even just plain silly effects. Using the machine more than once would replace the old upgrade with whatever new one you got. Not only would lower level players be much more willing to try it out, but it would encourage people to play more casino games, fit the casino a lot more thematically and most importantly be much more fun.

I don't know if this is really the proper time to suggest an alternative, but I think there's a lot of room for a much more interesting upgrade system based off of a casino than just a blacksmithing recipe with a fixed bonus and a break chance.

[Citan]

I don't think it's too late for new ideas here, but I do want to make use of low-mid tier metal ingots, because they're relatively unused and will basically always be relatively unused. (Actual metal-armor-smithing is a level 80 thing, so while it'll be possible to hammer up some level 40 platemail, it's unlikely to happen often.)

So if people have ideas for other ways to "dangerously" (riskily) augment gear, using metal ingots (possibly among other things), that they think will work better for the target level range, please share!

[Niph]

It takes 5 attempts on average to improve a weapon with +50 without breaking it. I can see myself looting 5 legendary swords with the proper proportion of mods, improve one to +50 and then transmute mods for the perfect combo. However that's a tiny reward (for low risk, just going into GK regularly).

If I want the +300, I must loot 96 legendary swords on average. It's not going to happen. So I must put the limit somewhere, I must decide what the max improvement I'll try. Based on my expectations of how many legendary swords I can hope to get.

If dangerously improving a weapon will be replaced by something else at higher levels then it makes sense now. In fact, it could be balanced again to make it more favorable to players, or they might not bother (in their 40's).

If it can stack with other means of improvement even at high level, that could be a problem. Because, yeah, farming the top level dungeon for legendary swords to break, hmm, I could do that.

[Yaffy]

I don't think it's too late for new ideas here, but I do want to make use of low-mid tier metal ingots, because they're relatively unused and will basically always be relatively unused. (Actual metal-armor-smithing is a level 80 thing, so while it'll be possible to hammer up some level 40 platemail, it's unlikely to happen often.)

So if people have ideas for other ways to "dangerously" (riskily) augment gear, using metal ingots (possibly among other things), that they think will work better for the target level range, please share!

If you want to make use of low-mid tier metal ingots in a risky way that's appropriate for lower level players, I think the best way of doing it would be to tone down the scale of the upgrade. Right now the current dangerous enchantment feels too crazy because it goes all the way up to +300 damage, so many people have the impression they will need to use a humongous amount of metal slabs and weapons to get anywhere and don't even bother, and it's also why the enchantment can scale ridiculously up to level 70. Just by looking at it people know that because of the break chance and the cap it's a big investment.

If you want to keep things as a blacksmithing recipe, I think a much better way of doing it is to have a recipe for weapons/armor that doesn't stack, but has a very unpredictable result.

For example, you could have "Unpredictable simple enchantment", which costs 1 simple metal slab, and can be applied to weapons or armor. On use, it has a very wide variety of effects it can apply to the item. For example, if you used it on a sword, it could give you:

Anywhere from -10 sword damage to +10 sword damage
Anywhere from -2 power cost of sword attacks to +2 power cost of sword attacks
Anywhere from -10 health to +10 health

Those are just some examples, but you could have a very wide variety of effects so there's a lot of room for interesting ideas. You could just go with simple stats like base modifiers to health/power/damage that already exist on items, but you could also throw in some "Rare" effects which could be like a big jackpot. Ex. All sword attacks heal you for +5 health on hit. If you use the upgrade on an item which already has a modifier, it will replace the old modifier with a new one.

Higher level variants of the upgrade would have much more dramatic effects, so for example using the basic slab version would increase the range of the bonuses, both positively and negatively. So for example the sword damage roll that used to be from -10 to +10 could become -15 to +15, the good quality slab could be -20 to +20, etc.

I think an upgrade system like this is a lot more interesting and more accessible for lower level players. It wouldn't have the huge investment scare that the current dangerous enchantment has, and players can decide on whether they just want to get any sort of good enchantment, or maybe they want to keep upgrading until they get something really good. It would definitely be a great "Slab sink" for players to dump their lower level metal slabs into, especially if there are some really neat modifiers added to the pool. Players could customize their builds further with this upgrade (Ex. A player building DPS wants + damage, while a tank wants to roll for elemental resistance) which adds to the depth of build customization as well as giving players a reason to collect lots of slabs if they want specific bonuses.

Not only that, but since the limits of the upgrade is based on a cap based on the quality of the slab, the strength of the upgrades could easily be balanced for certain level ranges. Expert slab upgrades would be appropriate for level 40 players, while astounding metal slabs would be appropriate for level 80 players. This would make it much easier to balance than the current dangerous enchantment.

This kind of upgrade/gear system in games typically doesn't go with negative numbers, but if you want to make the upgrade "Risky" then you can have negatives if you want to have that kind of scare associated with it. Even if the modifiers were only positive, it can already be risky. It can be very risky if you have a +40 sword damage enchant that you want to be +50, but it could reroll into +1 sword damage! But if you want to really have critical failures then negative modifiers can be added, just to hear the tormented screams of gamblers in global chat.

[Delfin]

Wow Yaffy's idea is amazing and it surely would be a lvl 40 goal. On the contrary, current recipes don't look like a lvl 40 gear. Just be on their shoes, you barely have surveying high enough at lvl 40 to be spending metal slabs into a risky recipe. Not to speak that most councils around that level are invested into upgrading your skills. I have to say that Citan is doing a great job cause he is participating actively in forums 'listening' players concerns. Therefore, I want to give my opinion about the players leaving around those levels. Although game isn't designed to be handholding, I have encountered many players around 30s that don't even know where Kur or Eltibule or Sun Vale are. Why don't you try to add more signs into the game like Transit signals. So from start people now that serbule isn't all and there are many more interesting places to go. There are other things like better explanations about crafting since crafting isn't seem a goal until lol 50. I'm no trying to make the game more easy but accesible. Thanks for your time.