The Gear Rework

Official News Developer & Patch Notes
204

100% scam，period。

back in 2.5, lvl 50 item is 1 point better than lvl 45 in every attribute ,thats what’s worth 10 glyphs.
When converted to 3.0, lvl 50 item is 100% the same as lvl 45 with no compensation nor explanation why the players who put in more resources to enjoy this game have to eat the loss.
As I said, keep the way it is now for the lvl 45 items after the update, everyones happy. boost old lvl 50 items a slightly better,sligjtly better is more than enough, as long as i see a gap between lvl 45 and lvl 50 imma gonna shut my mouth. or you return my glyph even tho they are useless at the moment.
im not gonna reply anynore cuz i dont really give a tiny rats ass about whats going to happen, i just want to pop in to let the dev know they did it wrong partially, i enjoy this game but this update pissed me off badly.

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Thank you PQ3 team for the generous and fair transition! Much appreciated! :heart:

Too bad that some people don’t appreciate it. Maybe those people should have transitioned differently - like with the Spell rework. Have their battle scrolls at 0, give them back their resources and try to upgrade the scrolls with the returned resources. Maybe then they will appreciate it.

But nah… I bet that we will watch them complain how their battle scrolls are not maxed out, how unfair the transition is, and how it will take them forever to get the resources to upgrade the scrolls to level 50 for all of their characters, instead.

It’s obvious that no matter what you do, you can’t please them.

P.S. Today I got a legendary drop of Bloodfang Twinblade which had ~1000 less damage than an epic Bloodfang Twinblade that transitioned from 2.5. Makes me wonder how “worthless” my 2.5 epic gear is. Both of them are not honed.

P.S. 2 - we need a feature to compare two items without the need to equip one of them.

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Generous, yes. Fair, no… At least not for people who invested in multiple Mythic Lvl 46+ items.

Not true. We appreciate the generous gains that we received, but we are unhappy that high-investment resources - which represent time and/or money - were essentially vaporized, when they could have been refunded to be used later for battle scroll upgrades on new characters.

That’s the thing… you had to spend time to farm for this new mythic piece, which you currently have agency to use or salvage. I spent months farming resources for glyphs which were converted to zero value. I should not have to spend more time to get something similar (mythic item, relic, etc.) to those glyphs, however straightforward it might be to get new mythic gear. Playing the game itself is at times fun, but at times laborious when farming resources. And of course there is labor involved, because the economics of free-to-play hinges on some people paying to bypass the labor and get straight to the fun. For me, the vaporized glyphs represent the time I spent laboring in the game, not the time I spent having fun in the game. And the value of that labor is now zero (for the glyphs used to upgrade the 2nd/3rd/4th/etc. Mythic items in a particular scroll group to Lvl 46+).

Definitely!

False binary. The third choice is to ask the developers to make sure anything of value gets converted to something of value, which in this case is to refund the glyphs I mentioned earlier. And I disagree with the statement “being upset for a loss of value that isn’t even real”. Yeah, the value of these glyphs isn’t real in the physical sense, because nothing in almost any game is “real” unless it can be traded for real-world money. But again, those glyphs represent “stored time to reward”.

Going back to an earlier example, consider Gamer #1 and Gamer #2, both of whom have one Mythic Level 50 weapon, 10 Mythic Level 45 weapons, and 100 weapon glyphs the day before Gear Rework. If Gamer #1 never used those glyphs, they would still have all 100 glyphs right now. Their “stored time to reward” would be intact, and they would presumably be able to use those glyphs to upgrade Battle Scrolls for a new character or do some future glyph implementation. In contrast, If Gamer #2 used those glyphs to upgrade all 10 Mythic Level 45 weapons to Mythic 50 weapons the day before Gear Rework, then Gamer #2 is going to feel the loss of value, because they will have the same quality weapons as Gamer #1, only now they will have to farm/labor for months just to get back to where they were with 100 weapon glyphs. In other words, Gamer #1 will be able to play a high-powered new character months before Gamer #2. BThat is loss of real-world value right there.

That’s the thing… the time, effort, and money that I put into the game to keep growing was indeed a huge part of the enjoyment of the game. The problem is that the developers shifted the rules in such a way that the in-game realization of a chunk of that “time, effort, and money” was reduced to zero, which impacts my enjoyment. Why does it impact my enjoyment? Because enjoyment comes from both playing the game and also the rewards. The whole psychology of the game includes three elements: (1) give players a fun activity, (2) give them a reward for playing that activity, (3) mix in just enough effort/farming that some people will be willing to pay money to save time to get the reward. This conversion removed the value of a chunk of those rewards when it made lower-level gear equivalent in power to higher-level gear without refunding the resources gamers spent to get that higher-level gear.

I think the big question is this: What would developers lose or what would the community lose by refunding those glyphs?

Edit #1: @HigureTheStillWind I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness of your replies! I can tell you put a lot of thought and heart into what you say here, and that you truly value this game and community.

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I’m a little confused by the update. Did I utterly screw myself by not leveling all my heroes to 50 before this patch?

I ask this because my main (level 50) has his scrolls at levels 35-40 which seems appropriate for the gear I had. However, all my other characters (levels 10-20) who used the same gear had their scrolls set to their current hero level–yet this level isn’t updating as I level those heroes (e.g. my hero who was level 10 before the update but is 15 now still only has level 10 scrolls). I assumed that by “capped at hero level” it meant that the levels would be given but I just wouldn’t get the benefits until I’d leveled the heroes. However, it seems that the resources were simply granted based on a snapshot of their levels at the time of the update so I now have to earn 7x the resources I already used just to get my other characters up to speed on where my main was. I’m talking literally hundreds of thousands of shards and gold that I seemingly wouldn’t have had to farm if I’d just leveled my heroes beforehand. Yet nothing about this update makes it easier to farm said materials so my progress has essentially been set back a year or more.

This makes me extremely unlikely to want to continue playing anyone but my main. Am I missing something here?

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208

I answered your point it in your post

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Of course that option exist, but I find it a bit “cheeky”: "I don’t want things to stay the same or getting something positive in exchange of “losing” my glyphs “worth”, what I want is both getting something positive and in addition keeping my glyphs worth. That would be the same as saying: “I want new things and more value, but I am not going to accept giving anything in exchange, I just want you to give me 100% free value”. That is why I don’t believe devs must compensate us. I am not saying they shouldn’t do it, if they do it would be great, a nice token of generosity from them to keep us happy. However, if they don’t I completely understand it because we have already getting some value from our “losses”.

This is a tricky question because if developers start “gifting” resources to players, when to stop? If we easily get all the resources we want, that would mean no one would buy anything… So I believe all of us understand they won’t just give things for free, there has to be a valid reason behind it to argue we deserve it.

That is what we have discussing all this time, how solid the argument in favor of us being entitled to compensation is. Both of us have given plenty of arguments and in the end… I believe we can just agree we disagree :laughing: Which is completely normal, both of us seem to have a quite radically different view and feeling of the issue. And the truth is that the only opinion that counts in the end is that of dev’s, which make the final decision.

All in all, I am happy that although the discussion started a bit too heated (I know I was a bit too hot-headed at the beginning) in the end we have been able to tone it down and have a nice and healthy discussion :slightly_smiling_face:

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I’ve made a separate post with my thoughts, as there’s a lot to “scroll” (ha ha) through:

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This line of thought would make sense, except for a few things:

  • The example assumes I have a choice. However, I had no choice in this outcome because the choice was made for me, and the choice vaporized resources that took me months to obtain.
  • The “cost” of the benefits is unfairly high for people who chose a specific pathway, namely upgrading a few gear items to Mythic Lvl 50 instead of making multiple Mythic Lvl 45 items.

The higher the cost of a decision related to high-investment resources, the more agency should be given to the “owner” of those resources, especially when those resources take a lot of time and/or money to obtain. Agency can be given by either providing advanced notice of the intended changes, or by refunding whatever was lost. And again… what would the developers lose by refunding me the glyphs I lost? Nothing. However, by not refunding me those glyphs, I can guarantee that the developers will never earn another dollar from me ever again. @Jeto @Mother_Morgz

Somewhere in some classroom textbook on game design, somebody should write a chapter on the following principle:
Never do something that converts the value of a gamer’s high-investment resources to zero.
or
Never delete the value of a gamer’s invested time or money.

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@Jeto & @Mother_Morgz … Can the developers please explain why they don’t have plans to refund the glyphs I’ve been debating in this discussion? I’m happy to open up another thread entitled, “Why did the developers vaporize my money and time?” similar to what I did with the Steam Exclusive items.

To summarize: I invested time and money into obtaining high-investment resources (glyphs) in this game. With the exception of the glyphs used to upgrade the first Mythic Lvl 50 item in a given battle scroll group, the Gear Rework reduced to zero the value of all glyphs that upgraded my Mythic items from Lvl 45 to 50. Thus, the Gear Rework essentially vaporized the value of a significant amount of time and money that I invested into this game. This could easily be solved if the developers refund the glyphs related to the value I lost. Otherwise, my trust in the game mechanics will be lost, and I guarantee I will never spend another dollar on this game again.

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Just got back into the game. I must be overlooking something very basic. Where do I evolve my gear? Like from legendary to mythic? Please tell me that you do not expect us to get RNG mythic drops for all the gear builds.

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They do, but mythics drop all the time now. Its actually much better than it was before since most of the work is done for you, you just grind for the mythics.

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Wow, what a terrible decision. The lower-level players have basically 0 chance to beat the higher difficulty to get the mythics to drop. It’s amazing that decisions like that are ever made. Throw away gear is a terrible idea after all the investment this game took to make builds and power up. I might as well stop playing now. I feel penalized for not upgrading my old legendary gear and being careful in what to level up.

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Yes, that’s what they’ve done.

All the thought, work, time and expense you put into your gear as you patiently leveled it has been rendered absolutely worthless.

There’s a substantial discussion about this effect of 3.0 in this thread: To save the game for new/mid-level players. Seriously

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But, yes, your game experience now, as you struggle to advance, will be nothing but frustration and disappointment, as virtually every single “reward” you get from the chests is useless crap.

For example: I’ve opened several dozen 100-level chests now, many of them ruby and diamond (i.e. the best you can get) and gotten nothing but crap from them. … And, not being an end-game player, I have to spend a bit of work to get those chests, and only have about a 50-60% success rate winning those battles.

So a lot of work for no reward - not even incremental improvement of my existing gear, which can no longer be upgraded (other than the extremely minor and ‘dead end’ effects of honing).

No reward but disappointment and frustration.

And yet that’s now your only path to advancement.

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It is an unbelievably TERRIBLE change for all but end-game mythic-kitted players.

And – to judge by chat and forums – customers are already abandoning the game because of it.

And no surprise … they were “promised” a game that would allow steady (albeit slow) progress and the ability to find and cultivate chosen gear, and they’ve spent their time and effort (and money) doing so, and looking forward to the reward of getting it to mythic level.

And now - by fiat - that gear they’ve been working on and cared about has been rendered effectively worthless.

All ability to progress steadily (and “intelligently”, by making choices) has been taken away, replaced by nothing but a nearly-constantly-negative-feedback joyless grind with basically no control over advancement.

That’s not fun. Who wants to spend time – or pay money – for that?

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My only hope is that the devs were so focused on the end-game players and their experience that they didn’t bother to think at all about the effect it would have on everyone else.

Which is a rather shocking oversight, if so … but I’d still call that the “best case” scenario.

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To be fair, there are some good aspects to the 3.0 changes, and a lot of the end-game players are enjoying the new challenges.

This is why I think maybe they simply were so focused on the end-gamers they didn’t pay any attention to the rest of their present and future customer base or consider how these changes would affect those players.

Because for new- and especially mid-level players, those good changes of 3.0 are as nothing compared to the horrible effect of no longer being able to upgrade their gear from low-level to mythic. That one thing poisons all the rest.

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Yeah … a LOT of customers feel that way now.

TBH, I myself am only sticking around now in a sort of ‘holding pattern’ to see if, indeed, the devs realize what a colossal mistake that was and hasten to fix it.

If not, I’ll be joining the exodus of all those other mid-level players who have no interest in playing this now very different game, one in which advancement has become nothing but random chance: a thankless, nearly-constantly-disappointing “slot machine” of opening one drops-only-crap chest after another.

Nor can I imagine any new players, coming to the post-3.0 game, will stick around once the novelty has worn off and they realize that this is what is required to advance.

And, if so, that’s pretty much the beginning of the end of the game. Because without new customers to make those micro-transactions and replace departing players, the game will soon cease to be profitable.

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Kinda a shame … I was really starting to get the hang of the game and enjoy it. Starting to invest more time and interest in it. Because there really are some fun, enjoyable elements to it. I’d not have spent as much time on it as I have otherwise.

I’m exactly the kind of mid-game customer the business should want to cultivate and encourage to get deeper into the game & community, and to spend more time and money on it… and that was working, before 3.0

I’ve spent 9-10 months playing, I think, and put in a lot of thought and effort into gathering gear I was slowly upgrading towards mythic. That, like all other mid-level gamers, was where the “value” of the game was to me; where I’d spent my time and effort, and what gave me encouragement looking forward.

So if that ability to advance really is being taken away — and if the devs are really that tone-deaf to the game-experience and efforts of their customers … well, I’m not going to stick around to throw away more time and effort where it’s not rewarded or even (apparently) respected.

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So I really do hope they fix this. And soon.

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217

Thanks for the details and I agree 100 percent with you. It is a shame to time gate the RNG via the same chests. That should have drastically reduced the time to open a chest if they are going 100 pct RNG to progress now.

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It’s a reasonable suggestion, prima facie … but don’t think it’ll work.

Oh, yes, from the player-experience end, they could drastically improve the drop rate to offsest how negative it all is now.

But in order to make it “worth it” to players – to give enough “positive feedback” not to alienate their customers – that drop rate would have to be so high that players would never need to make micro-transactions. And that’s not a sustainable business solution either.

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What they had before, with gear improving, was really smart, IMHO.

It was slow but steady progress, it invited customers to invest in gear that they could work hard to find and improve and (thus) care about, and it offered micro-transactions that would let you speed up the rate at which you progressed.

In other words, it gave a long term “guarantee” that you could advance with enough time/effort/money, it gave you meaningful accomplishments (getting the gear and increasing its value), it provided regular positive feedback (i.e. each time you increased its level and quality), and it even gave some minimal value to “crap” gear that dropped (since you could salvage it and use the bits and bobs to improve the gear you wanted).

It was a really good balance of encouragement & positive feedback to justify the grind, yet with the grind hard enough that micro-transactions to help you along were worth it – especially when you finally got those gear pieces you really wanted, and were eager to level up to mythic.

You cared about your gear, it promised you future success and fun as you leveled it up towards mythic, and you were willing to spend time and money and effort to pursue that goal.

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As long as gear improvement remains nothing but enslavement to random drops - as it is post-3.0 – I don’t believe it’s possible to get that good balance of positive feedback and financial incentive, no matter what the drop rate.

This is why I think that if they don’t restore the ability to level up gear all the way from common to mythic that it will prove to be a fatal change to the survival of the game, as recruitment and customer retention wither in response.

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Well… First day I got 2 mythics, great. Then after farming Ruins of Morsauloth all the week, around 8 hours a day, I haven’t received a single mythic royal piece yet. That is not a reasonable drop rate, if I can’t get a single mythic of the set I need after 50 hours of farming lvl 100 dungeons then how will do lower level players? I may be unlucky, but that is the problem with randomness, that the people that spend lots of time and get no rewards will end up getting fed up with the game. I am getting tired of farming myself, opening chests has no more thrill for me, it is just another boring chore hoping for a miracle. I can understand very well why so many players are on the verge of quitting or have already left, this kind of progression system is pretty tedious and joyless, but playing a game should be entertaining and enjoyable.

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To make things interesting for me and keep myself motivated, I decided to create an Excel sheet with some tables. The purpose - to have visibility on the scrolls I have by rarity, scrolls needed to upgrade all spells to ancient mythic, and what will be the gem cost of acquiring those scrolls.

I have been using it for several weeks now, but this initial version can be improved.
So instead of the count of spells by rarity, I will list all of the spells by name, and add the relevant data for the calculation. This way it will be possible to pivot table, filters, etc, and it will be easier to maintain.

I don’t consider myself a farmer, because I am playing 7 to 14 hours a week.

So, what do I do?
I am focused on upgrading the spells for main man character + all general non-seasonal spell.

What is my strategy?
After doing the daily chores, I play 100 lvl hunts until I fill all my slots. This way, regardless of what spell pages I get, it is towards my goal and feels very rewarding. I already got 5 mytics (all of them sacred).

After I am done with the general spells and my main char, I can go after the seasonal spells or some other character.

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@AeonNhiyr exactly, i spent countless hours and a lot of real money myself, i agree with you.

@KenpoKid69 well as we have been discussing , its really not that easy farming for mythic gear due to 505’s notoriously ridiculous drop rates, i still have only found 1 mythic and it was a random piece of rubbish i dont even want.

@Jeto thank the devs for ruining the game, ive followed suit with so many other and have now deleted this rubbish inbalanced game, no more money from me now too.

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@HigureTheStillWind

My issue too, you’re lucky, i only got 1 mythic.

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@Beg4

“the devs realize what a colossal mistake that was and hasten to fix it.”

Yup, thats the only way i will even consider reisntalling this rubbish game and spending real money again, i dont like being taken for a fool, the devs took us all for fools as they always do, they think we’re 6 year olds playing their game and treat us as such.