First and foremost, placing this at the top of the post,
Premium Currency Confirmation Prompts Needed
Now that there are in-game unexpected popup flash offers, the game really, really needs confirmation prompts for Crown spending. I should not be living in fear of accidentally spending 750 Crowns from a Flash Offer pop-up when it shows up while I’m trying to buy Food/Ore deals from the guild Bazaar.
Ok, with that out of the way, the rest of the post.
Mythic isn’t Very Mythic
- Yay, level 50 Mythic weapon.
It’s rather underwhelming for the absurd cost of obtaining this. Keep in mind that a level 50 weapon costs four extremely rare matching Mythic relics as well as FOURTEEN Weapon Glyphs.
From a damage perspective:
- Rare (25) = 678 damage
- Epic (35) = 1869 damage (2.75x Rare damage)
- Legendary (45) = 4278 damage (2.29x Epic damage)
- Mythic (50) = 6575 damage (1.54x Legendary damage)
As an item levels up, the cost of leveling it up drastically increases, while the benefits those level ups continually decreases.
To some degree, the low weapon damage could have been handwaved considering that there are only five level-ups at Mythic rarity. However that 14 Glyph requirement says otherwise. Also, if a player can clear runs with 4k weapon damage, 6k damage isn’t really that noticeable above and beyond that weapon at Legendary (45).
So, Attributes compensate for this, right?
Well, no.
In 0.37, the devs quietly split the Attribute scaling for Mythic into two parts. Legendary Attributes are rated at “+5”. Mythic (45) Attributes increase to “+7”, while item Level 50 is required for Attribute level “+8”.
The problem is that the scaling for Attribute is mostly linear.
Strong and Life break this trend by being double their Legendary Attribute values (+100) at max Mythic (+200).
On the other hand… there’s everything else, which has completely linear scaling to the Attribute level.
Speed scales at 0.02x per Attribute level (+0.10 seconds at Legendary, +0.14 seconds at Mythic +7, +0.16 seconds at Mythic +8).
Heal scales at 2% per Attribute level, while everything else is at 1% scaling per attribute level. 5% → 7% → 8%.
This means that for the cost of 14 Glyphs, most Attributes on an item will increase by only 1% each from Mythic (45) to Mythic (50), a horrifically bad deal for the player.
Note: Other Gear pieces, such as Armor and Accessories, scale similarly defensively.
As currently implemented, there is little incentive for the player to work towards raising Gear further once achieving Mythic ascension. For future Mythic evolutions, I would not raise those Gear pieces beyond Mythic (45).
Attributes bonuses should be raised further at “+8” to incentivize the cost of leveling to 50, with possible caps being out in place on stat growth to avoid out-of-bounds or otherwise undesirably high stat values in various stats being achieved.
Events
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Loot chests from Events now drop drastically worse loot in 0.38 than in 0.37. I’ve yet to see a single Epic (4 star) item appear from any Event chest in 0.38, whereas they were infrequent dungeon run drops from Event runs in 0.37. Are these because the chest levels are set to be very low, preventing appearance of higher rarity loot from these chests.? In 0.37, players achieved better rewards in chests through tier purchases which allowed for higher level dungeon runs to occur, and in turn generate higher level chests.
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Dungeon cap scaling is capped too low in 0.38. The cap on Tier X Event dungeons is currently level 60. Unless a high-risk modifier is in play for an Event (such as Burns and Spell Rushes), dungeon level 60 is of low to trivial difficulty for well-geared players.
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Should Dragons be allowed to have their very high-powered breath weapons be pre-charged in Events where Spell Rush mode is in effect?
Dungeons
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Multiplayer was untouched in 0.38. Still as unstable as ever. Still great, when it works.
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Dungeon drops loot tables are not rolling correctly. Chest drops like these should not be occurring. The overabundance of Mythic Scroll/Rune drops in chests are diluting other drops from appearing, such as follower crystals and relics.
Economy
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Daily Deals continue to seemingly worsen by the day. Shards still appear as solid purchases for those that need them. Rarer, more desirable items, were moved further out of players’ reaches should they appear. Glyphs for Gems instead of Crowns are now very rare. Legendary Relics appearance rates are now much lower, and when they do appear cost 1500 Gems the majority of the time.
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Even if I wanted to buy Major relics in the shop, how would a player use them with how limited Eveline crystals are in the shop? This seems like a significant disincentive against purchasing higher rarity relics in the shop?
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Rare and Epic Relics are abundently found on the Daily Challenge board, but Legendary Relics were made much rarer. Follower crystals do tend to appear somewhat frequently on the board through, with a crystal showing up generally at least every other day. This allows progress, albeit glacially slowly, for followers.
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Marks… it’s all about the Marks now. Marks are now a slight of hand for purchasing things in-game for Gems. Spend more Gems in an Event, earn more Marks to buy things more frequently in the Mark Shop. On one hand, a player can save and plan for a purchase of a specific thing in the Shop on a given day of the week. On the other hand, I believe that every other loot source was significantly punished to compensate for this weekly scheduled purchase capability. This feels very un-fun. Perhaps the pendulum was swung a little too harshly towards monetization for a single update?
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Still waiting to see where the long-term rationing of in-game income will come from. Perhaps Seasons will provide this once the game’s story starts to more forward?
EDIT: Missed a talking point I wanted to comment on.
Mana Mastery, What Good Is it?
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0.38 did not change spell scaling from previous versions of the game, but instead augmented spell damage by granting additional mana mastery from a spell loadout, with the bonus mastery scaling with the level of the equipped spell.
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That’s appreciated, but what does that mean? In a given loadout, I have 1200-1300 mastery in my class’s primary color (Green). Ok, but there’s no feedback to the player on the benefits of this mana mastery. Higher mana master must be better than lower mana mastery, right? But how much better? Is the benefits of mana mastery linear or is it affected by diminishing returns? Should I equip another secondary mana color (Yellow) instead of another Green piece that will have next to no benefit because my mana mastery is already seemingly very high? I don’t know and I don’t believe that there is any current in-game way of determining this information in-game currently, even implicitly.
EDIT 2: Post cleanup and additional clarifications.
