144763-rune-crafting-problem-still-not-addressed

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			is this thread is to be seen as a ranting raving lunatic than so be it. formatting will be nonexistent due to lackadaisical behavior, i'd much rather be chinese-farming glory than number crunching. the fact that i'm still going to need to spend thirty-two hours (of uninterrupted 'play') running dungeons to acquire the rune fragments needed for a full set of gear is bad.the runecrafting problem is as follows: players with item level 120 equipment are needing 60 divine rune fragments to complete a single item's potential rune slots, while rune fragment production/spawning is not supporting the requirements. the previous droprates for the runecrafting bags purchasable with the glory currency were optimal, allowing a player to craft one rune per purchased bag. 500 glory for one crafted rune would still mean that a player would still need 17500 glory to be spent on runecrafting bags of a divine quality to completely rune a full set of item level 120 equipment. the math changes for pure runes. however now with the stealth changes between the runecrafting bags function on the PTR and their current performance this is the problem we're running into. to quote a user on the subreddit: " The bags and salvaging went live and the numbers were severely nerfed in comparison to what was on the PTR when tested. I have no idea what caused this change or why it went live so soon with only a few hours to test it. Not sure if it was an accident or what, but rates are much much much lower. Stuff like 1-2 with a chance to receive 0 vs the PTR's minimum of 10 and no chance to receive 0. This means bags are NOT WORTH IT. If you get an average of 1 Divine Fragment each (with luck). That is 2000 glory just to get 4 Divine Fragments. That's barely comparable to salvaging a 1900 boot. (1-12) You could potentially just get 4 from a boot alone." furthermore in the current state of the runecrafting bag's performance a the time required to acquire the rune fragments necessary to craft all 35 runes is 16.67% more than what the same user has recorded in a public spreadsheet as seen here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1qyLJDBqUZBoDPB-MiBfVRtVxEwhHnxjHSv0-sQnR57E/edit#gid=1107264757 this is bad. very bad.	
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After checking out that spreadsheet... holy shit. That is *cupcake*ing atrocious. There's no other way to say it. Even being super generous assuming 20min dungeon runs, that's a complete insane and unsustainable grind. 
 
I don't think CRB understands the situation. All the veterans who have rune tokens are not all that effected by this grind. This system instead forces new players to spend at least 32 hrs for a fully runed GA set and 60 hrs for a DS set. Just the runes, with the fastest way you can grind them out. To be clear, the time saved from natural drops is eclipsed by the time to actually get the gear, so it's really a whole lot more than this. I don't even want to mention how much time (or $$$) it will take to get good rune slots with how ridiculously limited the new system is.
 
CRB has given new players a completely insane mountain of >90 hrs of pure grind just to catch up to where veteran players started. 	
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As posted in other threads and Reddit, what went live is our f2p Alpha patch. PTR is the f2p.1 patch, which has not gone live. 
 
 
The updated rune fragment acquisition rates are still on PTR. There is one known issue that will be addressed on PTR and that is salvaging is currently granting too many rune fragments.
			
				
	Edited October 22, 2015 by CRB_Meerkat	
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Thanks for the quick response, glad to hear that the live bags are not functioning as intended.
 
Even with all the naggles, you guys have a great game here.	
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As posted in other threads and Reddit, what went live is our f2p Alpha patch. PTR is the f2p.1 patch, which has not gone live. 
 
 
The updated rune fragment acquisition rates are still on PTR. There is one known issue that will be addressed on PTR and that is salvaging is currently granting too many rune fragments.
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A few things that don't seem right to me:
 
--600 glory per hour for a GA/DS geared group with signature speedrunning dungeons. That is low. You also get glory from other sources (raid bosses, contracts). The 261 hour estimate is definitely way off.
 
--When grinding dungeons for glory, you're also making a bunch of plat. At current market prices it's at least 1 more fragment per hour.
 
--The implication that getting full exceptional runes of the highest quality is necessary to complete content. You don't NEED these runes NOW in order to play the game properly. Getting "good enough" runes is really cheap (ppl in trade selling blue tokens for 10g each or you can craft superb versions affordably) and getting "perfect" runes is something you can aim for over months of playing. My guild was one of those that reformed for F2P. Several players leveled new fresh characters. The vast majority don't have exceptional rune tokens (weren't playing when it was possible to earn them). We spent about 8 hours/week in DS in our first two weeks in there. And yesterday was our 2nd day of week 3 and we are 5/9. Why exactly is perfect runes being a long grind a problem? There needs to be some kind of long-term progression to do on your character. If you want to grind plat or grind glory to perfect your character ahead of its natural progression, so that you have a leg up for the boss that you're on, then you should be thankful that option exists at all rather than complaining how hard it is to accomplish.
 
--Not all planned changes are live yet. When everything is in we'll see how things look.
 
--Most classes are gonna want to put class sets in shoulders and legs. Your guild runs should be providing those foci and many fragments. So assuming that regular raiding isn't part of the "grind" calculated in earning glory to buy bags or salvage gear, then you can cross off leg and shoulder runes as part of the grind, as that's limited by waiting your turn to receive the goods from your guild.
			
				
	Edited October 22, 2015 by NonY	
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The implication that getting full exceptional runes of the highest quality is necessary to complete content.
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I couldn't find the posts you are referring to. Does this mean that the changes you were released were not the changes you meant (suggest by "alpha")? So the number of rune fragments should be higher than on live, but lower (in the case of salvaging) that on the PTR?
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Once rune tokens are out of the population, getting exceptional will basically be the same grind as getting normals, since the restrictive factor at current drop rates is the fragments, not the foci. When the foci become harder to acquire than the fragments, then the discussion about exceptional vs normal will make sense. But for now, why would any new player (who doesn't have tokens) NOT put exceptionals in?
 
This just illustrates how broken the system is.
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to tl:dr for anyone: a patch to the PTR went up one day, and the following morning a patch to the live client of the game was delivered. those two patches are not one and the same. the patch that was given to the PTR on the 20th 2015 was for a future date and has not yet passed QA/"greenlight"/clearance/whatever-lingo-makes-you-happy etc. the rune crafting bags will return to what was seen and tested on the PTR Oct 20th, 2015. 
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A few things that don't seem right to me:
 
--600 glory per hour for a GA/DS geared group with signature speedrunning dungeons. That is low. You also get glory from other sources (raid bosses, contracts). The 261 hour estimate is definitely way off.
 
--When grinding dungeons for glory, you're also making a bunch of plat. At current market prices it's at least 1 more fragment per hour.
 
--The implication that getting full exceptional runes of the highest quality is necessary to complete content. You don't NEED these runes NOW in order to play the game properly. Getting "good enough" runes is really cheap (ppl in trade selling blue tokens for 10g each or you can craft superb versions affordably) and getting "perfect" runes is something you can aim for over months of playing. My guild was one of those that reformed for F2P. Several players leveled new fresh characters. The vast majority don't have exceptional rune tokens (weren't playing when it was possible to earn them). We spent about 8 hours/week in DS in our first two weeks in there. And yesterday was our 2nd day of week 3 and we are 5/9. Why exactly is perfect runes being a long grind a problem? There needs to be some kind of long-term progression to do on your character. If you want to grind plat or grind glory to perfect your character ahead of its natural progression, so that you have a leg up for the boss that you're on, then you should be thankful that option exists at all rather than complaining how hard it is to accomplish.
 
--Not all planned changes are live yet. When everything is in we'll see how things look.
 
--Most classes are gonna want to put class sets in shoulders and legs. Your guild runs should be providing those foci and many fragments. So assuming that regular raiding isn't part of the "grind" calculated in earning glory to buy bags or salvage gear, then you can cross off leg and shoulder runes as part of the grind, as that's limited by waiting your turn to receive the goods from your guild.
 
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--No. Gear optimization shouldn't require a six hour grind session after receiving one upgrade per new piece of equipment. This practice will slow guilds of new players down to progression paces of Enigma's back when the game was weeks passed the Head-Start opening weekend and a complete mess of broken or overtuned bosses. Coming from Shots Fired (which has been gone for a long time due to DnT's poaching) that was competing with Death and Taxes as well as Subterfuge, that kind of progression (intentional or buggy/inconsistent) is not fun. Being held back because of something you can't control is a justifiable reason for people to quit playing the game. 
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--Class sets were not discussed in the original post, and that's not the bottlenecking issue. The rune fragments are. Guilds that are clearing GA and seeing regular kills in DS are acquiring the class set foci without problem. This Point is moot.
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I think you missed his point. Which was that you don't have to account for the rune frags in those two pieces because the guild will farm them for you. Which is a problematic assumption because:
a. I don't think you can assume that all guilds are going to give those with set focuses fragments. We are spreading fragments out so everyone who contributes gets access to them.
b. Even if they did, a full clear of GA is not netting enough fragments to make one class set (but it is netting enough focus to make multiple class sets for those who can get the fragements)
c. GA guilds are only going to be farming for one set.
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I know not everything they planned is not live yet because of the content of the sticky post in this very subforum, which was posted on the night of October 9. Being able to trade up runes and being able to extract runes with gold instead of service tokens could both have significant impacts on this situation. They're not in yet so I think it's early to freak out. Carbine knew before October 9 that there were gonna be issues and they come up with some changes they wanted to make and they're not all in yet.
 
I'm not sure why the point about rune fragments coming from raids is moot. You made a post with an attempt to calculate how much time needs to be spent to fully rune out gear and ignored the fact that, simultaneously while acquiring the gear you need to rune, you are also obtaining some of the fragments. How many fragments will depend on how much loot your guild is salvaging as opposed to equipping but it's significant in any case. Like I said, my guild geared up fresh 50's and we've still had a lot of runes to give to people to help craft their class sets.
 
I don't really care whether runes are free or stay as hard to get as they currently are. I just thought that the overview of the fragment situation was not accurate and tried to provide some more information on how runes are acquired.
 
edit: I will say that it's a bad loot situation when the runes are more difficult (or inconvenient) to acquire than the gear. But I'm not naive enough to think I'm educating Carbine on anything by making a post about it. They obviously know. If recovering runes with gold is affordable, that'll go a long way in helping people not dread getting an upgrade. But as far as feeling discomfort because you're wearing unoptimal gear, I don't feel it. If my gear is good enough to give me a fair shot at killing a boss when I do the mechanics correctly, then I don't care. I guess if enough people in the community are irked by being unable to instantly complete trivial character progression, then those of us who'd enjoy long term character progression (trivial as it may be) must become bored so that you can be comfortable.
			
				
	Edited October 23, 2015 by NonY	
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			Some people do not realise that this is NOT a korean-chinese-whatever mmo. And we are meant to spend most of our time doing the damn content, and not farming dungeons for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, just to rune our gear. If you think that ~100+ hours worth of farm to rune 7 items is fine, then, well, good luck.
			
				
	Edited October 23, 2015 by The God	
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I'm not sure why the point about rune fragments coming from raids is moot. You made a post with an attempt to calculate how much time needs to be spent to fully rune out gear and ignored the fact that, simultaneously while acquiring the gear you need to rune, you are also obtaining some of the fragments. How many fragments will depend on how much loot your guild is salvaging as opposed to equipping but it's significant in any case. Like I said, my guild geared up fresh 50's and we've still had a lot of runes to give to people to help craft their class sets.
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I'll be interested to see how you feel when you are doing progression on System Daemons.
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Fair enough, about System Daemons. Mechanics >>>>>> runes for sure. What runes do is make you have to deal with less add phases, and therefore less opportunities for mistakes. So every little bit helps.
 
And I agree that optimal runes aren't necessary for progression, but it helps a lot. And exceptions vs non-exceptionals isn't the question here, as exceptionals are as easy to get as non-exceptionals since the gating material is fragments, not the focus.	
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