This post is intended to help brainstorm and pull together some ideas/reactions for @Jeto and the dev team, because she recently posted:
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SUMMARY of this discussion provided here:
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This post is intended for those who want the improve-gear-up-to-mythic mechanic returned.
If you don’t think that’s a good idea, please, keep that argument to other threads on this issue (there are plenty) or make a new one.
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GOALS of returning and implementing the rarity-improving mechanic, as I see them.
- Attract a wider player base – both casual and intense, both gacha and more “development” based
It’s been clear from forums and chat that a lot of players found the intelligent and “controlled” gear-updating mechanic a key part of their enjoyment of PQ3, and, in the wake of the 3.0 changes, have either stopped or significantly reduced their engagement with or enjoyment of the game now that that mechanic has been nerfed.
While some players may enjoy an advance-only-by-random-drop “gacha” style game, others don’t, and it makes best sense, commercially, for PQ3 to try to attract as wide a customer base as possible, appealing to several kinds of players and play styles.
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- This mechanic must be returned as a core element of gameplay – in order to satisfy the one type of customer
Not to be confused with a necessary element of gameplay. Leaving in the other 3.0 changes, designed (I sense) to appeal to end-game and “gacha” style players, is fine. The two aren’t incompatible.
But if the devs & management want to win back departed players and appeal to new players of this “type”, then the advancing-gear-rarity mechanic has to be at least as practical and obtainable as it was before, not just an expensive or trivial “sidebar” that provides no genuine possibility of advancement.
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- This mechanic must be available to players from the start of the game – in order to attract those customers in the first place
To attract new players who enjoy this sort of gameplay, the possibility of intelligent and guided advancement of gear has to be available from the very start.
If it’s implemented as an “end-game” mechanic, available only to those who have significantly advanced their followers (for example) or already invested a great deal of money, then it will utterly fail in attracting those new kinds of players … because that type of gameplay won’t be part of their initial experience and they will simply move on to some other, more congenial game.
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- This mechanic must encourage microtransactions - so PQ3 stays afloat
On the other hand, from the business side, gear-advancement must be implemented in a way that, while accessible to F2P, must also encourage players to invest money here or there in pursuit of their goals. This is a business, after all.
4a) An observation – “improvement”-focused players will pay a lot.
In fact, this sort of gameplay easily lends itself to increased microtransactions. There’s a wide range of gear and, because successful gear combinations are both interesting and helpful to players, such players will have many different items they wish to level up.
Just returning this mechanic will encourage those players to speed up the improvement process by spending to get gear-improving items (runes, relics etc) so they can pursue all the gear they’re interested in.
Arguably, they’ll be even more interested than the “gacha” players since, rather than spending just for another chance to get a nice piece randomly, these players will actively be striving to improve their existing gear all the time. More of the pieces that drop will interest them and be worth spending resources on.
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I see two possible avenues for gear improving:
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I) HONING – Allow honing items up to the next rarity level
Add a new/final stage of honing to all existing menus. This stage would allow the player to spend aether to improve the selected item up a quality level.
When so improved, the ingredients used to hone the item wouldn’t be returned. They become part of the cost, along with aether, to so improve an item. This supports the “encourage microtransactions” goal above (#4)
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II) FOLLOWERS – ability to “craft” items from one rarity up to the next
Allow leveled-up followers to upgrade items by spending aether. (Much like the – IMHO totally useless and pointless – “make a random item of X quality” ability they now have.)
On the one hand, this would encourage players to advance their followers as fast as possible, possibly buying follower crystals. (Goal 4)
On the other hand, this risks putting a barrier between new players and this kind of gameplay (contrary to goal 3).
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MY SUGGESTIONS
I think PQ3 will attract the most customers – and microtransactions – if they pursue both paths. The two are not incompatible
Thus:
A) ADVANCE GEAR BY HONING – additional honing step added to items that improves rarity
Pay aether to improve a fully-honed item’s rarity up to the next level. Honing materials are consumed, not refunded.
This is expensive (in terms of materials) for the player, but is also immediately available, even to the new players. It allows them (or those who are interested) to try out the mechanic, motivates them to start collecting gear they wish to upgrade, and gives them incentives to pursue further options in the game.
It also makes chest-drops interesting and rewarding again, in a way they no longer are. Since gear rarity can’t be upgraded presently, most items that drop now are useless and disappointing. But, if an uncommon or rare drop of a desired item can be improved up to higher levels, that makes those drops suddenly more appealing again.
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B) ADVANCE GEAR WITH FOLLOWERS – Paths to “craft” existing items to higher rarity using upgraded followers
Also provide this mechanic, once followers are upgraded enough. This will make followers more useful/attractive and appeal to mid- and end- gamers.
The idea here is to provide a potentially quicker & more powerful path to gear advancement, that will encourage players to want to play more (and spend more) to improve the followers.
This will work best in conjunction with (A), because (A) gives the players a taste of the mechanic and - if they like it - a desire to improve it.
Plus (as noted above) there is a lot of gear to try out. Hundreds of pieces (especially if you want versions in different colors!) … Players are at no risk of running out of gear to pursue and spend resources on.
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B1) EXISTING CRAFTING – tweak the “old” crafting methods to fit 3.0 system
The current “craft item” options are (imho) pretty much useless. Even under the old system, they were simply too expensive and too random to be of any interest whatsoever.
They can be made more interesting by having the improved rarity of the product reflect the current level of the follower
E.g. “Craft Random Weapon/Shield” would cost gold, ore, and aether. Its cost would increase with Soulchaser’s level, but so would the rarity of the weapon it produced.
E.g. at follower level 25, such crafting would generate only a common or rare item … by level 50, it could generate all the way up to legendary. (NOT mythic.)
Similarly, as they get unlocked at higher Soulchaser levels, the other ones:
- Craft weapon/shield
- Craft for set
- Craft for slot/set
- And (new - for level 45 or maybe 50) craft weapon or shield for slot and set [i.e. **fully specified**].
Likely, these would produce a range of possible qualities, but the ‘top’ option shouldn’t be vanishingly impossible. E.g. a level 50 Soulchaser should craft a rare 25% of the time, an epic 65% of the time, and a legendary 10% of the time. No less.
Remove the “Craft random item” for aether (and similar) options. These would now be redundant as they largely already are: that’s just another gacha lootbox.
Alternatively, leave these “gacha” options in, but lower the follower level at which they become available. (Or, at least, the epic and legendary ones). This will make followers more appealing to the “gacha”-style-favoring customers.
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B2) NEW CRAFTING – UPGRADING – higher-level followers could improve existing items’ rarity
Higher-level followers should also be able to improve specific gear, for a cost. E.g.
- level 40, convert rare to epic
- level 45, convert epic to legendary
- level 50, convert legendary to mythic.
The new, improved item that’s produce would be unhoned. [But see B3 below.]
This would, in effect, be an alternate upgrading route (in addition to honing), one that mid-game players would want to pursue (i.e. leveling followers) and reward high-end players with the quicker (if not less expensive) mechanic. Costs should not be identical to honing costs, though, otherwise what’s the point.
To upgrade rare and epic items should probably cost gold and relics. To upgrade a legendary item to mythic should cost one follower crystal. … This would give those crystals new and continuing value to players who’ve already maxed out that follower.
NO MORE than one crystal though. Again, there are a lot of different pieces to upgrade. Hundreds, once you start going for different colors. There is no chance of players running out of things they’d want to improve this way, and so raising the cost wouldn’t encourage more spending, it’d drive away players and result in less spending.
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B3) NEW CRAFTING – OPTIONAL – make such crafting particularly attractive to end-gamers
As an interesting twist – and to provide optional “depth” to the sorts of players who enjoy this kind of gameplay – the following:
Allow any item’s rarity to be upgraded by the crafters in this way, regardless of the items’ honing status. (This also gives added value to the ‘upgrade by follower’ path to mid- and end-gamers, because it opens a possibility the ‘honing’ avenue doesn’t allow.)
However, the “base quality” of the item so produced will be calculated from the quality of that item at the time it’s upgraded.
E.g., Suppose I have an unhoned epic item of quality 300. If I use a follower to upgrade it to legendary rarity, its new base quality would be 300+X (whatever that X value or range of values is to move from epic to legendary.)
However, suppose I fully hone that epic item first. Now its quality number is 360 (or whatever it’d be; I have no fully honed epic items to consult yet). Then the converted unhoned item of the improved rarity would have a base quality value of 360+X (capped, of course, if there’s some max value.)
This would encourage even more customer engagement and spending… because, if a player (even an end-game player) has a particular set of pieces they really like, they now have the challenge of acquiring one such piece all the way down at rare and then spending the time & resources to fully improve it (through full honing and then crafters’ upgrading) to get the best possible (or close to the best possible) mythic version.
This would provide new challenges to even end-game players, who may feel they haven’t anything left to pursue, without requiring significant new content, just tweaking of the existing follower and gear system!
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So … there’s my suggestion for the best way – both for the enjoyment/engagement of players and for the finances of PQ3 – to re-introduce the gear-improving mechanism back into the game.
I think it both preserves the existing 3.0 changes (that are of interest to some sorts of players), while also re-engaging the players who like the challenge of more deliberate and thoughtful gear improvement.
I think it adds value and interest to the (currently) boring “usual” drops, because it makes low-end gear of potential value again (at least to those players who wish to pursue that route).
I think it makes the improvement mechanic available to new players from the get-go (as it used to be) while yet offering “better” methods of the mechanic at higher levels that will inspire them to stick with the game to reach that level
It makes gear-improvement at a reasonable cost (doable, but not cheap) so that it will attract the F2P players, yet give plenty of opportunity/incentive/scope for microtransactions to speed up the process.
And it adds elements for end-game players (the B3 part especially) that will give them new challenges (and expenses) as they try to get the very best version of gear for their high-end play.
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Thoughts?
