I am the proud owner of a full Mythic set of Eldritch God, and enjoy the extra meta it brings to the game over standard sets. The insta max mana on turn one from exploding gems and resulting firework display from celestial gems being created as well as the almost guaranteed “epic efforts” that come with it, the creation of 4 types of special gems, not to mention the free and frequent buffs and debuffs… Generally I love the set and probably wouldnt change it for any other. I dont resent my initial investment of time and money to get it…
BUT…
The crafting update seems to have overlooked the dynamics of this set when it comes to “Quality” enhancement. In that in order to improve the quality of any piece you are required to sacrifice an item from the same set.
Now that Mythic drops from season caches are only 1% that translates to approximately $400 worth of investment into ancient coins (based on rewards pricing for ultimate caches and an average of 1% chance to acquire each time) to get a few points added to it.
Does this not seem ridiculous to you? Did anyone consider Cache set items when designing the upgrade system (I suspect not).
Are there any plans to include material that also considers Cache set items?
As a solution i’d suggest you expand the validity of sacrifical items to any Mythic of that season group (i.e. Seasons 2.0 to 2.5) or if you want to be anal about it, only allow items of a specific season, so in order to upgrade my Landshark Boots I can sacrifice another item of EG (Unlikely) or a mythic from the Trarg set.
This would keep the difficulty of the original acquisition the level you seem to want while also providing a hard to achieve (But at least possible) means of upgrading it too.
Just some fuzzy math for fun…
Im going to assume the Max quality is 1000
If I were to Quality upgrade all 6 pieces (They are all currently Sacred mythic) and managed to get the best match for the sacrifice (Ie matching element etc) so would be awarded 5 points per sacrifice it would take approximately 50 quality enhancements per item.
6x50x$400 = $120,000 for a fully Quality upgraded set of Eldritch God… What a bargain!
While we are speaking about Cache’s (Perhaps I should start a new thread). With the new percentages where the main item that is really sought after from the Cache is the Season legendary/mythic can we do something about the contents and chances of the items in the cache?
There will not be many (If any) people buying an Ultimate cache for 200 coins hoping to drop:
Legendary Relics 18.07% … I stop needing these months ago… I have had this drop at least 10 times this season
Rare armour/Accessory/Weapon 25% … I understand there needs to be a booby prize but really?
Rare minion 7.4% … See above
Random shards 5.02% … again… see above
Epic versions of the above 9% …Some may still find these of value but I suspect the vast majority of people immediately salvage these too
So over 64% of the time I purchase one of these I get completely useless junk as a reward, with the rest of the drops being moderately useless, doesnt seem particularly Ultimate to me…
Just to be clear, while converting coins to real world value you are charging $4 for each Cache pull, the only items arguably worth $4 combined have a 10% chance of appearing… Thats diabolical… In order to get something of value on average I have to spend $40? (Anyone that understands probability will know that even after 10 pulls there is no guarantee).
For the price, I would like to see a majority of the items being somewhat useful, removing all the items mentioned above as they are just a piss take. Random Mythic relics, Glyphs etc, something I can actually use rather than me chasing a 1% drop and all other items I get being just junk.
Add to this, a common mechanic in other Gatcha systems is that after X number of pulls you are guaranteed a version of the key item… Hell I’d be happy if that was just the Legendary version (So long as I can upgrade its quality to Mythic without it costing me my house).
Even if you set that number to 50 (representing 10,000 coins) at least I would know that I would eventually get the item I was obviously seeking as even with 100 pulls or even 500 pulls I am very much NOT assured to get the drop, which is not only exceedingly frustrating but an inappropriate return of investment, especially when you consider the contents of these caches…
I have stopped opening seasonal caches since 3.0. Before, I always did it trying to get the cache-only gear piece, but after the 3.0 rework I decided that it made no sense wasting ancient coins when most of the drops are just useless.
Any feedback from the team? I’d hope that at least the cache contents issue is fairly easy to fix.
I’d understand that the sacrifice part is a bit more of a challenge, but it would be nice if you could at least indicate that you agree or disagree that there is a problem to solve here.
Thanks for you unending support of your community and players.
I doubt that there is going to be a dev answer beyond passing the feedback to the design team, at most.
What’s described above is about vanilla-as-it-gets for gacha systems. It is super common for gacha pulls to be “loser” pulls ~70% of the time, the desired “jackpot” rate between 1 to 5%, and the filler in-between be things of minor usefulness.
The Quality system is a cleverly disguised variation of the also super common mechanic in gacha RPG-style games where a unit/troop/gear/thing is unlocked with a single pull of that thing, but requires many copies of that thing to unlock its maximum potential.
Does it suck as a player? Of course. Does such a system greatly favor paying players? Of course. Devs are not going to come out and say that the system is not working as intended or is broken or is malicious in some way. The gacha system is working exactly as they have designed it.
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Also, as a side note, the devs have already released the patch notes for the next update of their other game, Gems of War, this coming week. The entire patch notes (as a major version number) is them installing this gacha system into that game.
I agree with pretty much everything you mentioned.
I think it is easy to mistake my posts as whine posts rather than understanding the real issues behind them.
As a paying player I expect “some” value for my purchases. I have no problem at all with the Gatcha mechanic, I’m intimately familiar with how it works. What is important when employing it though is that you give the player some value even if that value/utility is far below the asking price of the loot box on average.
my problem is that this is not true of the Cache system.
If you look at almost any other game that utilizes Gatcha even modestly well and relies on evolution mechanics pretty much every reward has a secondary or tertiary value to the player, at its worst it may be just stamina/energy for continued play, or ingredients that can be used in evolving lesser cards to a point where they can be consumed by higher cards (even if that takes some time).
My main gripe with the system as it’s currently employed is NOT that there is a high chance that I will get lesser gear, but that gear has absolutely ZERO value to me.
It would be entirely possible even with the unique elements of PQ3 to have a Gatcha inventory that provides some utility to everyone or at least a significantly reduced chance of it being of no value to me.
I am looking for an excuse to spend my money, instead I am continuously discouraged to do so by the continued poorly considered/implemented changes made, I would like to encourage the devs to use a modicum of applied thought and put themselves in the seat of the mid whale (200 x 1000 disposable/month) a category I fell into before season 3.0.
They would get far more monthly ARPPU and far greater LTV from an audience that has longevity.
I don’t think that’s much to ask, or to ask to receive feedback from the team.
As Lyrian mentioned, I can only pass this on to the team - I don’t have anything else to share other than we have no planned changes to the caches upcoming, 3.2 is just around the corner with 3.3 already being worked on.