My feedback on legendary gear.

First of all, I apologize in advance for advocating for more difficulty in a game that some people already find too challenging. My intention is not to be provocative. I simply want to provide honest, heartfelt feedback based on my recent experience earning and using a full set of legendary light armor and a legendary bow, all with a level 10 requirement.

I also want to acknowledge that I don’t intend to upset anyone who has shared my experience and found it enjoyable. I get it—I had so much fun soloing 3-star mobs in Steelbloom last night that I think I woke up with a headache from overindulging in the excitement. I could also casually take on 1v4 fights against players above my level, despite not fully understanding Bard mechanics yet. It was a blast.

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I’d want to change anything about how powerful the gear is. It feels amazing to use high-quality equipment. However, I do take issue with the past statement from Steven that gear will only account for 40% of player power. To me, that feels like a poor design choice for PvX. It’s satisfying to always have more power to work toward, but this sense of progression diminishes if gear power is capped at 40%. What we have now in terms of power is enjoyable to me and I don't know that nerfing gear is the right idea.

My main concern is the ease with which I was able to acquire this gear. Once I understood the process, it only took me from Wednesday afternoon to Sunday afternoon of hardcore gathering to collect the materials for a full set and bow. With the knowledge I have now, I’m confident I could do it even faster.

I understand this is only tier 2 legendary gear, and there are 3–4 more tiers that will progressively become harder to obtain. However, I still think this gear was too easy to acquire—it took less than four days, mostly solo and self-sourced, to gather the materials.

While I appreciate the power that good gear provides, I strongly believe it should require significantly more effort per tier to craft these items.

If anything I would like to see the drop rates reduced to that things I would consider to be "chase items" are real achievements.

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TiberiusTheron

This shouldn’t be happening. Gear and weapon scaling needs to be significantly reduced and made much rarer. If not, every zerg will be unkillable, and the game could be doomed before it even launches. The gameplay balance should prioritize 70% player skill and 30% player gear. It's so broken, it's just stupid. If I could down vote this post, I would.

Vhaeyne

TiberiusTheron wrote: »

This shouldn’t be happening. Gear and weapon scaling needs to be significantly reduced and made much rarer. If not, every zerg will be unkillable, and the game could be doomed before it even launches. The gameplay balance should prioritize 70% player skill and 30% player gear. It's so broken, it's just stupid. If I could down vote this post, I would.

My issue with 70/30 would be that it gives no room for growth. I want to play Ashes for an extreme amount of time. With 70/30 my incentive to perfect my gear will be reduced to the point that I just go chase items in another game.

I live for the grind. I need a juiced out carrot on a stick to keep me going.

I also would not down vote you if I could. That is some reddit tactics that ruins meaningful conversations.

TiberiusTheron

Vhaeyne wrote: »

TiberiusTheron wrote: »

This shouldn’t be happening. Gear and weapon scaling needs to be significantly reduced and made much rarer. If not, every zerg will be unkillable, and the game could be doomed before it even launches. The gameplay balance should prioritize 70% player skill and 30% player gear. It's so broken, it's just stupid. If I could down vote this post, I would.

My issue with 70/30 would be that it gives no room for growth. I want to play Ashes for an extreme amount of time. With 70/30 my incentive to perfect my gear will be reduced to the point that I just go chase items in another game.

I live for the grind. I need a juiced out carrot on a stick to keep me going.

I also would not down vote you if I could. That is some reddit tactics that ruins meaningful conversations.

So you'd rather be selfish and watch the game fail before it's even released, instead of acknowledging that this system is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed, so everyone can enjoy it, not just a few. Got it.

Vhaeyne

@TiberiusTheron

I just gave a negative criticism of the current state of the game.

Yet, because my critique is not as strong as your's in a specific way you think I want to be selfish and watch the game fail.

I guess you are free to think what you think. Get as angry as you like.

_Relic

I would disagree because:
#1 - everyone would do the same, deck out in legendary and it would trivialize PvE and the TTK for PvP is so horrendous AoC would be a meme.

#2 - Items are forever in the current implementation, so the realm would be saturated with legendary gear. Everyone, except new players who have an even higher hill to climb, would be decked out at any given level in legendary.

#3 - Replaces any semblance of skill with just a need to out farm each other.

Vhaeyne

@_Relic

What exactly do you disagree with?

You gave reasons with no explanation.

_Relic

Vhaeyne wrote: »

@_Relic

What exactly do you disagree with?

You gave reasons with no explanation.

I disagree with your entire sentiment that having legendary gear that trivializes content should be part of the game just because you find it enjoyable.

There is a big difference between a "twink" character that has good gear in an MMO and has an easier time, than AoC current state of a single bard soloing a raid boss because they have legendary weapons.

Vhaeyne

@_Relic @TiberiusTheron

Some clarification:

Vhaeyne wrote: »

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I’d want to change anything about how powerful the gear is.

I indented to show indifference about current gear strength with this statement.

The strength of the gear is not the issue I am trying to address with this thread. If its too strong its too strong.

I actually prefer a long TTK myself so I think we all have common ground there.

I just want it to feel like it is worth getting. The current strength of the gear is a different topic.

@TiberiusTheron
I apologize for getting sucked into the tangent about gear strength.

The sole intent of this feedback is that the gear is too easy to obtain currently.

I think there is room for us all to agree with each other here with good clarification.

_Relic

Vhaeyne wrote: »

The sole intent of this feedback is that the gear is too easy to obtain currently.

I agree it should definitely be more difficult to obtain rarer tiers of gear, especially since gear is fully tradeable without any mechanism to have old gear destroyed (limited number of repairs or other systems). Hopefully the current drop rates of rare tier materials is either for testing or becomes increasingly more difficult in further tiers.

Hides, for example, seem to be considerably more difficult to find rarer tiers of - I would be happy with this rarity for all other materials.

TiberiusTheron

Vhaeyne wrote: »

@_Relic @TiberiusTheron

Some clarification:

Vhaeyne wrote: »

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know if I’d want to change anything about how powerful the gear is.

I indented to show indifference about current gear strength with this statement.

The strength of the gear is not the issue I am trying to address with this thread. If its too strong its too strong.

I actually prefer a long TTK myself so I think we all have common ground there.

I just want it to feel like it is worth getting. The current strength of the gear is a different topic.

@TiberiusTheron
I apologize for getting sucked into the tangent about gear strength.

The sole intent of this feedback is that the gear is too easy to obtain currently.

I think there is room for us all to agree with each other here with good clarification.

Water under the bridge, brother. I think high-end crafted gear should be much harder to obtain, with gear scaling significantly reduced. It should take months to acquire a quality set of crafted gear, making it feel truly special—without turning players into overpowered gods.

zxbiohazardzx

reference https://forums.ashesofcreation.com/discussion/64315/artisan-quality-rating-and-unintended-snowballing#latest

Blood_Raven

As with most things it depends on what the devs want. I see 2 overall problems with the current system.
1) Legendary gear is to easy to obtain and will only become more easy as player stalls are put into the game. How many people have high quality materials just sitting in their storage atm that will in the future be on sale at a player stall because not everyone likes yelling WTS in global chat
2) The balance between Legendary weapons and Legendary Armor is off, the weapon is trumping the Armor. Does the armor help? Sure but not enough to extend the TTK for skill to become the real factor in a fight.

Darsh13

@Vhaeyne
I’m not sure that increasing the “grind” for acquiring the items is necessary.

I do believe that they might need to tweak the power of the items a little as it does seem like the gap is ridiculous.

One thing that we do need to consider is that armor and weapons will also be enchantable similar to lineage 2 (+1, +2 , +3 ect) using scribing scrolls, and will have greater chances of failure and down leveling your enchants as the enchant lvl gets higher.

Another thing to consider is that durability does not currently function as intended. When our items break we currently just need to go speak with the NPC vendor and repair the item for a small silver cost. iirc, the real intended system is that items will require materials to repair them. And if it’s completely broken , it will require even more! So if you want to repair a legendary item, you will need to get more of those legendary materials.. which means you may prefer to use lower grade items most of the time and keep your legendaries for when you really need them.

I’m not sure but you may also need to find the appropriate crafter to repair the gear as well..

Vhaeyne

@Darsh13

Everything you said might be true.

If that’s the case, it’s better than what we have now.

As I mentioned, the grind might get harder at higher tiers.

In that case, it would make sense for some low-tier legos to only require a four-day grind.

I am basically advocating for something for me to spend a long time working on. I know going into phase 2 I will be setting myself in a position to be able to start working on this gear as soon as we get the benches again.

@Blood_Raven

The armor does feel really really good, but you may be right. The weapon does seem to out class the armor.
It feels like most people want a lower TTK. Changing the power ratio here might help a lot.

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