State of the game

Game Discussion
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So I have been playing the game for nearly 1 year.
While there have seen some improvement since then, the overall structure and monetization of the game seems off to what a long lasting game should be.

Issue #1: Not enough game mode to ask for different builds. While we don’t want our current gear to be obsolete, bringing in different modes will ask for different set of gear to warrant player build different sets and not be complacent once a good set is build.

Suggestion: A new mode maybe Tower of , where represent the color. Only said color spell can do majority of damage to the mobs within the tower, color tower will have very high melee resistance and spells resistance form other color, except for melee tower where very high spell resistance to all color will be used. To be impactful, 90%-95% damage reduction from other source will be used. Turn limit of 9 or 10 also imposed added for those builds that can generate infinite armor/resistance. Tower color can be locked out a color per 1 day (for example Red tower only available on Monday) with Sunday opening all color towers. Tower reward will reset weekly.

Issue #2: While developer intentionally slowed down progression of gear, once the gear is maximized (level 45 mythic state, as little value to reach 50) there is little room for improvement and little reason to improve.

This game have little to no power creep. With the exception have some major patches that changes how the game is played, there is no power creep in this game.
While each season introduce new enemy with new gimmick which we may need different spell set to get around, the gear reward per each season does not offer much value. Every season offer at best 1 or 2 gear that may be worth leveling to mythic.

Comparing this to gatcha games where pushing out impactful or broken character that incentivize player to pull or spend resources on, there is little to be seen here and games goes stale.

Issue #3: Value of monetization is low. Especially for player that played long time. Currently and season pass holds most value (due to length, bank token, access to tier 4 relic, which can later be exchange for other tier 4 relic etc). Adventure pass becomes more and more irrelevant the longer you play the game and sas gear move into mythic and followers hitting level 50. Monthly pass probably lost its value 2 months into game. And daily offers are a joke as most of pointed out.

Comparing this to games that have a relative healthy monetization system that does not lose value significant value over time (due to gear or follower progression no longer needed), unless this game is gaining a big amount of new player, I can’t really foresee any long time player spending any money once some progression threshold is reached.

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Great post on the state of the game.

Adding my thoughts onto yours about the state of the game,

It is not so much that high-end players don’t want their gear to be obsolete/irrelevant for a given game mode, but rather the marginal cost of replacing even a single piece of gear (especially if that piece is Mythic) is far too prohibitive to encourage specialized builds. As a result, everyone at the high end settles into a single universal build for various game modes that stymies any experimentation into unique or specialized builds.

Fully agreed. Nearly 2 years since the first players entered Etheria once more, the game’s general level of power has remained more or less stationary. There has been some indirect power creep over that time in that Legendary gear has become more accessible through increased Glyph availability and universal Legendary relics. But there has been no direct power creep to date. My Mythic Esgaard Flail hasn’t changed in any way since I first obtained it all the way back in beta.

That said, my current stance on the subject is that the current levels of non-power creep are intentional. The power creep clock didn’t start until the game reached 1.0, which is to be expected. From that point forward, my current working theory on planned power creep for the game revolves around the where the game’s story is at.

As there is no official term that I am aware of for this, I’ll refer to major arcs of the story as Acts.

Acts are defined by large chunks of the story that are delivered in pieces through Seasons and feature a set of Legendary-base gear that can only be pulled from Ultimate Caches in each Season. As there are 6 pieces of Gear in every set, there are 6 Seasons in each Act. Conveniently, given the length of each Season, this works out to an Act running for one real-life year.

Currently, the game is in Act 1, Season 5. The next Season (1.6) will complete the first Act (only one tree left to visit) and release the last piece of Gear for the Dragonking set. Powercreeping in the middle of the release of the premium Gear set would not make sense, as later pieces in the set would obsolete the earlier pieces.

So, power creep, I believe, will occur between Acts. Next Act rolls out, something happens that requires the hero(ine) to become more powerful, <insert your preferred power-up trope / DBZ reference here> and the player is sent off to chase to newest power creep carrot at the end of the stick for the next real-life year.

There may be some indirect power creep here and there as the Act progresses to help players along over time reach targeted power levels, but I believe that once the power bar on Gear is moved to a new high point in each Act, that the power level will stay there until the following Act starts a year later.

Personally hoping the VIP pass gets “powercreeped” with the start of the next Act. It has close to zero relevance to a veteran player.

Quest Pass is the best value for Glyphs currently, and the Platinum Season Pass has outstanding value (9 Mythic relics + 5k Gems) for its steep cost.

That said… I’m very concerned once power creep starts happening about how Mythic gear will be handled. As one would expect, powercreeped gear would be more powerful. But, as virtually all new Gear is released via Seasons, wouldn’t that mean that going forward once power creep starts happening that Platinum Passes would become mandatory for future releases of Mythic gear? There’s been some talk about allowing future functionality for crafting past Seasons’ Mythic relics. That will surely come with some sort of restriction, likely time-based. Will Eveline be allowed to craft past Seasons’ Mythic relics only once their Act ends and that Season’s gear has been powercreeped?

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I agree with pretty much everything said above. I’d like to add something.

For me, as someone who joined the game in the opening weeks of EA, my biggest issue is that the game has become almost entirely currency driven. I’ll try to explain what I mean.

I don’t feel like I am winning battles to win “prizes.” (yay! Fun!) I feel like I’m clocking in to earn currency, to “shop” for necessities. (what a fun change from day to day life, where I clock in to earn currency, to shop for necessities. Not?) Even the painfully rare “jackpot” loots are just hard to find currency to go “shopping” for necessities.

Whether I am buying new levels for gear, buying new relics with other relics, buying gear with ore, buying season things with season currency, buying glyphs with marks (to buy new levels for gear :woman_facepalming:), etc etc… I’m just buying things to go back to work to buy more things. It feels like less of a game and more like a job. Ironically, the time sink is pretty minimal, and yet it still feels like a job.

Unlike my real job, where I earn dollars to spend on exactly what I want/need… In the PQ3 job, I’m earning 100 different currencies and with each currency (depending on the curency) I can buy different currency, or perhaps a random chance of getting something I need. It’s the real world equivalent of being paid in rubles, yen, euros, rupee, pesos, wan, etc. Then converting those to dollars, taking them to a store, and having the clerk give me random items.

Add in the points made above, about not actually needing anything new? It’s a hamster wheel of a job, to earn a bunch of currencies, to buy a chance at something I need, when I don’t actually need anything. lol

Needless to say, none of that is firing off those dopamine centers of the brain that games usually try to trigger. The gameplay, itself, is really good right now. I love the recent changes there. But it feels so incredibly pointless. All games are pointless, but they shouldn’t FEEL so pointless?

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S-Tier post Tresk. Bang on the money

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