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Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Alpha Two Phase II testing is currently taking place 5+ days each week. More information about testing schedule can be found here
If you have Alpha Two, you can download the game launcher here, and we encourage you to join us on our Official Discord Server for the most up to date testing news.
Accessories Are Underpowered and Scale Poorly
Khallixtus
Member, Alpha Two
This feedback has two parts, first is that accessories in their current state do not provide enough stats, and second is that they do not scale strongly enough with rarity.
In most games, accessories typically have the highest raw attribute-related stats out of any pieces of gear because armour and weapons also come with mitigation and damage stats. This allows for all types of gear to have equal value (though there's always intra-type variance). Having gear be of equal power is important because otherwise you can get into a situation where acquiring/upgrading weak gear is not worth doing.
Which is precisely the case right now with accessories. Jeweller is the only artisan skill that creates multiple items that everyone equips (armour and weapons have different categories from different artisan skills) but because accessories are so weak, Jeweller is one of the few artisan skills that are not being planned on being upgraded to Journeyman on the Lyneth server. This is a result of accessories being so weak that having literally everyone miss out on crafted items doesn't even matter.
Another issue that arises is that materials for armour and materials for jewellery typically require similar effort to acquire. Materials for armour can sometimes be more contested because there is more armour, but this demand difference is not significant enough. So these materials require similar effort to acquire, but there is very little pay-off for acquiring jewellery materials. Compounding this issue is that some materials are used for both jewellery and armour (typically some metals), but because armour is so much more effective, these materials go towards armour. All of this means that jewellery requires just as much investment to create as armour, but is not worth nearly as much.
To put the stats into numbers, comparing at common, the Polished Tin Helmet has 4 Con and Halcyonite Ring has 50 Max HP. This is roughly equivalent. Until you consider that the helmet also has a boatload of armour and some magic resist. You can also compare, again at common, the Tin Pauldrons with 3 Strength to the Bronze or Emerald Rings, with 9 and 8 physical power. This is an equivalent amount of physical power as 3 strength, but loses the extra stats from strength. On top of this, the Pauldrons have armour and magic resist. The only pieces of gear that the rings out-stat are the smallest armour pieces, the belt and bracers, except that these still have some mitigation stats, making the worst pieces of armour at least equal.
And it doesn't get better looking at amulets either. The Halcyonite Necklace has 5-6 Con, the Tin breastplate has 4-5 Con and a boatload of mitigation. It also doesn't get any better looking at level 20 gear, where the Rividium Necklace has 6-7 Strength compared to the Rividium Breastplate has 6 Con, and the Rividium Helmet has 5 Con, and again, armour has the all-important mitigation stats. So why would anyone ever bother to use their Rividium to make accessories over armour?
The second problem is that accessories scale really poorly with increasing rarity. It is likely that at least part of this is an issue caused by their base stats being very low, meaning that a 50% increase of stats, while being a significant percentage, translates to a very poor measurable stat increase. Regardless, moving from Common to Rare to Legendary accessories provides significantly less benefit when compared to moving from Common to Rare to Legendary armour.
For this I'm going to use the top of the stat ranges for visual and mathematical clarity (so instead of 7-9 Strength, I'll state 9 Strength) and I'll also combine armour and magic resist into Mitigation stats (so 50 Armour and 15 Magic Resist are 65 Mitigation).
Looking at the Rividium Necklace, at Common it has 7 Str, Rare has 8 Str plus 4 Phys Crit Chance and 3 Phys Power, and Legendary has 10 Str plus 9 Phys Crit Chance, 8 Phys Power and 9 Phys Acc. Compared to the Rividium Helmet at Common with 5 Con and 70 Mitigation, Rare has 7 Con and 85 Mitigation plus 9 Magic Cast Spd and 7 Magic Crit Power, and Legendary has 12 Con and 127 Mitigation plus 17 Magic Cast Spd, 16 Magic Crit Power and 189 Max Mana.
Percentage-wise, the rare necklace gains 14% of its base stat, plus some extra waterfall stats that amount to a little bit less than 1 Str and 1 Dex. The legendary necklace has a 43% increase in its base stat compared to common, and has enough waterfall stats to amount to roughly 5 attributes.
Comparing this to the helmet, the rare version has a 40% increase in its base Con stat. This is already a percentage increase, on the RARE helmet, comparable to the LEGENDARY necklace. The rare helmet then also gains 21% mitigation and extra stats equivalent to about 3 attributes. The legendary helmet gains a whopping 140% increase in its base Con stat, and then 80% mitigation and extra stats equivalent to something like 10 attributes (6.6 attributes worth of stats plus whatever the mana is worth).
So there is the proof, in numbers, that accessories, for whatever reason, scale terribly as rarity increases. This is not an isolated incident either, I'm not just cherry picking. Crafted accessories scale terribly. This is a bad thing because epic/legendary accessories still require a lot of time and effort to create, but the results are so bad that this effort has very little reward.
Putting together the issues of accessories having very low stats and scaling very poorly with increasing rarity means that there is no point in putting effort into getting good accessories. You can kind of ignore it, filling the slots with whatever common and uncommon accessories you find with relevant stats and never need to bother with trying to improve them, because it is quite literally a waste of time and money.
As far as feedback goes, this is terrible. An entire part of gearing a character and an entire section of the crafting system is invalidated and made pointless by having such an underpowered category of gear. Accessories need a huge buff in terms of both base stats that brings their value in line with the other categories of gear, as well as scaling of stats with rarity so that chasing these high-quality items is has the same effort-payoff ratio as the other gear categories.
In most games, accessories typically have the highest raw attribute-related stats out of any pieces of gear because armour and weapons also come with mitigation and damage stats. This allows for all types of gear to have equal value (though there's always intra-type variance). Having gear be of equal power is important because otherwise you can get into a situation where acquiring/upgrading weak gear is not worth doing.
Which is precisely the case right now with accessories. Jeweller is the only artisan skill that creates multiple items that everyone equips (armour and weapons have different categories from different artisan skills) but because accessories are so weak, Jeweller is one of the few artisan skills that are not being planned on being upgraded to Journeyman on the Lyneth server. This is a result of accessories being so weak that having literally everyone miss out on crafted items doesn't even matter.
Another issue that arises is that materials for armour and materials for jewellery typically require similar effort to acquire. Materials for armour can sometimes be more contested because there is more armour, but this demand difference is not significant enough. So these materials require similar effort to acquire, but there is very little pay-off for acquiring jewellery materials. Compounding this issue is that some materials are used for both jewellery and armour (typically some metals), but because armour is so much more effective, these materials go towards armour. All of this means that jewellery requires just as much investment to create as armour, but is not worth nearly as much.
To put the stats into numbers, comparing at common, the Polished Tin Helmet has 4 Con and Halcyonite Ring has 50 Max HP. This is roughly equivalent. Until you consider that the helmet also has a boatload of armour and some magic resist. You can also compare, again at common, the Tin Pauldrons with 3 Strength to the Bronze or Emerald Rings, with 9 and 8 physical power. This is an equivalent amount of physical power as 3 strength, but loses the extra stats from strength. On top of this, the Pauldrons have armour and magic resist. The only pieces of gear that the rings out-stat are the smallest armour pieces, the belt and bracers, except that these still have some mitigation stats, making the worst pieces of armour at least equal.
And it doesn't get better looking at amulets either. The Halcyonite Necklace has 5-6 Con, the Tin breastplate has 4-5 Con and a boatload of mitigation. It also doesn't get any better looking at level 20 gear, where the Rividium Necklace has 6-7 Strength compared to the Rividium Breastplate has 6 Con, and the Rividium Helmet has 5 Con, and again, armour has the all-important mitigation stats. So why would anyone ever bother to use their Rividium to make accessories over armour?
The second problem is that accessories scale really poorly with increasing rarity. It is likely that at least part of this is an issue caused by their base stats being very low, meaning that a 50% increase of stats, while being a significant percentage, translates to a very poor measurable stat increase. Regardless, moving from Common to Rare to Legendary accessories provides significantly less benefit when compared to moving from Common to Rare to Legendary armour.
For this I'm going to use the top of the stat ranges for visual and mathematical clarity (so instead of 7-9 Strength, I'll state 9 Strength) and I'll also combine armour and magic resist into Mitigation stats (so 50 Armour and 15 Magic Resist are 65 Mitigation).
Looking at the Rividium Necklace, at Common it has 7 Str, Rare has 8 Str plus 4 Phys Crit Chance and 3 Phys Power, and Legendary has 10 Str plus 9 Phys Crit Chance, 8 Phys Power and 9 Phys Acc. Compared to the Rividium Helmet at Common with 5 Con and 70 Mitigation, Rare has 7 Con and 85 Mitigation plus 9 Magic Cast Spd and 7 Magic Crit Power, and Legendary has 12 Con and 127 Mitigation plus 17 Magic Cast Spd, 16 Magic Crit Power and 189 Max Mana.
Percentage-wise, the rare necklace gains 14% of its base stat, plus some extra waterfall stats that amount to a little bit less than 1 Str and 1 Dex. The legendary necklace has a 43% increase in its base stat compared to common, and has enough waterfall stats to amount to roughly 5 attributes.
Comparing this to the helmet, the rare version has a 40% increase in its base Con stat. This is already a percentage increase, on the RARE helmet, comparable to the LEGENDARY necklace. The rare helmet then also gains 21% mitigation and extra stats equivalent to about 3 attributes. The legendary helmet gains a whopping 140% increase in its base Con stat, and then 80% mitigation and extra stats equivalent to something like 10 attributes (6.6 attributes worth of stats plus whatever the mana is worth).
So there is the proof, in numbers, that accessories, for whatever reason, scale terribly as rarity increases. This is not an isolated incident either, I'm not just cherry picking. Crafted accessories scale terribly. This is a bad thing because epic/legendary accessories still require a lot of time and effort to create, but the results are so bad that this effort has very little reward.
Putting together the issues of accessories having very low stats and scaling very poorly with increasing rarity means that there is no point in putting effort into getting good accessories. You can kind of ignore it, filling the slots with whatever common and uncommon accessories you find with relevant stats and never need to bother with trying to improve them, because it is quite literally a waste of time and money.
As far as feedback goes, this is terrible. An entire part of gearing a character and an entire section of the crafting system is invalidated and made pointless by having such an underpowered category of gear. Accessories need a huge buff in terms of both base stats that brings their value in line with the other categories of gear, as well as scaling of stats with rarity so that chasing these high-quality items is has the same effort-payoff ratio as the other gear categories.
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