106382-treatise-pve-systems-improvements-page-2

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completely removing the elder gem cap is a bad idea
and one that is extremely unlikely to ever happen.
 
the way the elder gem system works is pretty good, in theory you can do any content you like to get the end game currency the cap could be raised a bit or the prices lowered but not a total removal of cap.
 
the biggest issue with the system are spending gems on gear that might be rubbish because you roll bad runes and the need to use all your gems on the amp/ability points for most of a year if you want to improve your character instead of being able to choose from all the cool stuff you can get.
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Attunement stuff
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			Excellent ideas! Except I think that after the changes to attunement that you suggest, it won't be necessary to decrease raid sizes.	
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I am pretty confident that the main reasons that most people left was because you need a freaking mini-Raid group with TS just to do Dungeons, while other content like Adventures and Dailies is tedious and boring as heck. I am not even going to mention how even Battlegrounds require so much coordination that you better make a premade if you don't want endless headaches.
 
In short Carbine forgot to include content for everyone and just made content for guys with no real lives but who can have a second life online.	
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I am pretty confident that the main reasons that most people left was because you need a freaking mini-Raid group with TS just to do Dungeons, while other content like Adventures and Dailies is tedious and boring as heck. I am not even going to mention how even Battlegrounds require so much coordination that you better make a premade if you don't want endless headaches.
 
In short Carbine forgot to include content for everyone and just made content for guys with no real lives but who can have a second life online.
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Carbine has positioned WildStar as a hardcore game since day 1. There really should be no surprise… you're not going to get free loot here.
 
And none of this takes time, but it does take skill - something many of the current WoW generation don't really have experience with. They've never really had to have their gameplay dictate if they have success or not.
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VicVanMeter has put a lot of work into his post, you may agree or disagree with his ideas, but the least you can do is actually form a coherent argument instead of spouting a few one liners then running off. I think everyone who frequents these forums know your positions on the state of this game, but I've never seen you exert any effort in defending them.
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First of all, there's a big difference between unkillable/bugged and difficult. C'thun pre-nerf was mathematically impossible. HC Lich King was just very hard. WoW in Wotlk had pathetically easy dungeons (some took 10-15 min to complete or even less), yet plenty of guilds killed HC Lich King on 25m.
 
Making attunement easier or retroactive might have worked if that was the state of it at launch, but the cat's out of the bag now; the people lost due to attunement issues won't resurface because of minor workarounds. From my perspective you have 2 choices really:
 
Keep attunement and suffer through bad player retention, resulting guild drama, burnout (exasperated by the poor itemization), revolving door of recruits having to be taken through attunements, the game's community possibly outright dying (definitely on some servers), and what do you get out of it? If you invite people in for final bosses of dungeons, you don't know if they're good anyway, and if they're attuned when they join you have the same issue. I'm seeing a whole lot of drawbacks but not any advantages.
 
Or, you scrap attunement, the people who quit in frustration might come back to see raid content, the mid-level raiding guilds will be able to keep their community whole, they'll get to explore the raid content, and if someone's a bad, well, you'll know just at the same point as in the attunement system; when they try the content.
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Excellent ideas! Except I think that after the changes to attunement that you suggest, it won't be necessary to decrease raid sizes.
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Been there, done that. Those days are long past for me, I've learned it's not worth my time. Vic is wasting his.
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Here's a more indepth view of the reasoning behind the changes I suggested earlier in the thread:
 
Normalize ALL PvE drops to have set amount of main stat and grit depending on ilvl (grit costing nothing in item budget except for on tank gear), do the same for crafted gear. 
The reason for this is simple: Progression in gear can only really mean 2 things: survivability or dps/heal power. You want a meaningful progression of power from one content tier to the next for the gameflow to make sense, thus you want incrementally inreasing dps/heal power/survivability each tier. This is pretty basic stuff.
It may be tempting to try and make a complicated itemization system but it will inevitable be reduced to 1 question: "Which item has the most dps/heal power/survivability (hereby refered to as 'power') increase" For dps, healer and tank respectively. Thus, if you step outside the lines of a fairly simple system, it will be undermined by this basic - and logical - way of choosing gear.
It's therefore very dangerous making gear where more than, say, 10-20% of the total 'power' is allocated to flavor stats, especially if these vitally important power stats are allocated on the same level as secondary/tertiary stats. The reason for this is that the more the main stat varies, the more power varies, the more confusing and non-linear the progression becomes. Some crafted gear being better than raid gear is an example of this problem in action (because crafted gear allocates stats logically, and dropped gear doesn't).
Why the grit change though? It's the same issue, power stat is balanced around item budget, if some of the item budget is used for grit, the power level will be lower. So DPS will have to choose between dps and survivability. Don't make them choose. It's a recipe for disaster (hint: they won't choose survivability).
Now, it would be a different situation if the class/role dynamic was different, but we're dealing with a pretty bog standard tank/heal/dps trifecta system, here! The simplicity and familiarity of this system doesn't jive with the ambitious project of reinventing the wheel you've got going here. The item stat system needs to own up to its nature. Normalize it. 
 
Normalize amount of runes compared to quality/ilvl, make all slots omni. Scrap/simplify rune system at a later date. 
The reasoning behind this is that the RNG sucks. J-Tal said so himself, I don't think I need to justify myself further :P The problem is obviously wedded somewhat to the crafting system (and even to the item budget system!), but I still think it's a good idea to scrap the RNG and then maybe rework it in in steps to see what amount of rune RNG makes sense.
It will also synergize pretty well with the above-mentioned suggestion, given that a lot of gear will be replaced. Giving people an easier way to replace their runesets in this period of transition would do a lot to make it smoother.
 
Remove attunement. Completely. 
A very important point. I know that you in Carbine are probably toying with the idea of easing up some of the steps. As I said earlier in the thread, it's not enough at this point. An easier attunement could've worked at launch, it may work in the future, but right now you need to blast this into space and let the pieces fall where they may.
I've already explained in an earlier post why there doesn't really seem to be any advantages to attunement right now, and one thing's for certain, there's a lot of issues associated with it (explained earlier in the thread), and imo the main cause of the poor player retention (besides the duo of dearth of doable content + poor item power progression).
 
(Optional): Remove all gear from medal rewards. Put vanity/extra rare non-gear stuff on instead. 
This is more of a personal opinion (hence the 'optional'), but I feel that medal rewards should fall outside of the gear progression. You already experienced one of the problem areas, ie. adventure gold medals becoming standard. The solution to that predicament wasn't satisfactory either. The reason being that people had expected gold medal rewards to be part of the standard gear progression and thus got the rug pulled out from under them. Easier to just contain gear progression within the logical path (quest gear -> adventures -> dungeons -> raids), than muddy the steps. Possible exception: BoE items.
It could also be used for 'gated' items (AMP/Ability points and such). As people progress, it should be (by design) be easier and easier to 'gold' adventures/dungeons, and thus the inflow of any gated item will naturally increase as the content moves towards obsoletion in step with new content on the horizon. Also mounts. And costumes.
 
Up the AMP/Ability point item droprates for the love of god. 
I have no comment on this, it should be self-explanatory.
 
edit: Vic, I get that you don't think it's an attunement issue, I don't think we're going to find common ground there so I'll just agree to disagree. Likewise with player retention, I think there's a major problem there, if you're not concerned with that there's not really much to discuss :)	
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You guys are asking for wholesale changes to game systems, which just can't happen in any practical sense. You need to spend more time considering the systems as they are and suggest incremental changes. "Remove attunement" isn't valid. "Remove RNG" isn't valid.
 
Step back and look at the bigger picture of the game's design, and work within that.	
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Been there, done that. Those days are long past for me, I've learned it's not worth my time. Vic is wasting his.
 
Trying to convince an insignificant forum audience of anything is meaningless, and the developer will have their own design iteration based on data and feedback. It's not going to come from some negotiated proposal from said forums.
 
Edit: Just to add… the stuff in this thread is 100% better than most other threads due to the effort put in by Vic, make no mistake. For that of course, he should be applauded. But I don't think the end result and meaning of this thread ultimately won't hold any more weight than anything else.
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Here's a more indepth view of the reasoning behind the changes I suggested earlier in the thread:
 
Normalize ALL PvE drops to have set amount of main stat and grit depending on ilvl (grit costing nothing in item budget except for on tank gear), do the same for crafted gear. 
The reason for this is simple: Progression in gear can only really mean 2 things: survivability or dps/heal power. You want a meaningful progression of power from one content tier to the next for the gameflow to make sense, thus you want incrementally inreasing dps/heal power/survivability each tier. This is pretty basic stuff.
It may be tempting to try and make a complicated itemization system but it will inevitable be reduced to 1 question: "Which item has the most dps/heal power/survivability (hereby refered to as 'power') increase" For dps, healer and tank respectively. Thus, if you step outside the lines of a fairly simple system, it will be undermined by this basic - and logical - way of choosing gear.
It's therefore very dangerous making gear where more than, say, 10-20% of the total 'power' is allocated to flavor stats, especially if these vitally important power stats are allocated on the same level as secondary/tertiary stats. The reason for this is that the more the main stat varies, the more power varies, the more confusing and non-linear the progression becomes. Some crafted gear being better than raid gear is an example of this problem in action (because crafted gear allocates stats logically, and dropped gear doesn't).
Why the grit change though? It's the same issue, power stat is balanced around item budget, if some of the item budget is used for grit, the power level will be lower. So DPS will have to choose between dps and survivability. Don't make them choose. It's a recipe for disaster (hint: they won't choose survivability).
Now, it would be a different situation if the class/role dynamic was different, but we're dealing with a pretty bog standard tank/heal/dps trifecta system, here! The simplicity and familiarity of this system doesn't jive with the ambitious project of reinventing the wheel you've got going here. The item stat system needs to own up to its nature. Normalize it. 
 
Normalize amount of runes compared to quality/ilvl, make all slots omni. Scrap/simplify rune system at a later date. 
The reasoning behind this is that the RNG sucks. J-Tal said so himself, I don't think I need to justify myself further :P The problem is obviously wedded somewhat to the crafting system (and even to the item budget system!), but I still think it's a good idea to scrap the RNG and then maybe rework it in in steps to see what amount of rune RNG makes sense.
It will also synergize pretty well with the above-mentioned suggestion, given that a lot of gear will be replaced. Giving people an easier way to replace their runesets in this period of transition would do a lot to make it smoother.
 
Remove attunement. Completely. 
A very important point. I know that you in Carbine are probably toying with the idea of easing up some of the steps. As I said earlier in the thread, it's not enough at this point. An easier attunement could've worked at launch, it may work in the future, but right now you need to blast this into space and let the pieces fall where they may.
I've already explained in an earlier post why there doesn't really seem to be any advantages to attunement right now, and one thing's for certain, there's a lot of issues associated with it (explained earlier in the thread), and imo the main cause of the poor player retention (besides the duo of dearth of doable content + poor item power progression).
 
(Optional): Remove all gear from medal rewards. Put vanity/extra rare non-gear stuff on instead. 
This is more of a personal opinion (hence the 'optional'), but I feel that medal rewards should fall outside of the gear progression. You already experienced one of the problem areas, ie. adventure gold medals becoming standard. The solution to that predicament wasn't satisfactory either. The reason being that people had expected gold medal rewards to be part of the standard gear progression and thus got the rug pulled out from under them. Easier to just contain gear progression within the logical path (quest gear -> adventures -> dungeons -> raids), than muddy the steps. Possible exception: BoE items.
It could also be used for 'gated' items (AMP/Ability points and such). As people progress, it should be (by design) be easier and easier to 'gold' adventures/dungeons, and thus the inflow of any gated item will naturally increase as the content moves towards obsoletion in step with new content on the horizon. Also mounts. And costumes.
 
Up the AMP/Ability point item droprates for the love of god. 
I have no comment on this, it should be self-explanatory.
 
edit: Vic, I get that you don't think it's an attunement issue, I don't think we're going to find common ground there so I'll just agree to disagree. Likewise with player retention, I think there's a major problem there, if you're not concerned with that there's not really much to discuss :)
 
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(I'm going to only quote a few of your points, this page is becoming a wall of text and we're largely agreed on some of the other points anyway)
 
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No, I think there's plenty to discuss, regardless of game health.  A good idea should be a good idea no matter what.  It's not like success makes change unnecessary or failure makes change mandatory if either is bad for the game overall.  To whit:
 
In your first point, I think I stand by the argument that gear should be tunable.  I think it's important for people to choose in an amorphous system what stats to prioritize.  The reason this is so important is that it makes it a helluva lot easier to gear on the developers' part, if not just ours.  I think, if anything, there should be a sort of diminishing returns, as Sacramento suggested, on certain stats, so that balancing them all becomes the point of good planning and crafting.  That way, people aren't just dumping all their chip power into brutality.
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(I'm going to only quote a few of your points, this page is becoming a wall of text and we're largely agreed on some of the other points anyway)
 
 
If you put diminishing returns on the main stat people will just stack it until the secondary/tertiary stats give comparatively more power increase per item charge, because it's the answer to 'the 1 question'. So effectively it's the same as just putting a standard amount on to start with. The reasoning behind normalizing the power stat is that people always want as much of it as they can, thus there's no point in making people choose. Flavor stats are theoretically the same, but can be balanced to be of rough parity, or have breaking points or soft caps (ie. making them flavored), and besides, they account only for a small percentage of the power so there's room for error.
Obviously I would say the same thing is necessary (I might even say inevitable) for any implementation of your 'token' system.
 
 
 
 
Uncapping the elder points is very dangerous, because you can't just set the price to what's feasible to attain in 3-4 weeks. One of the strengths of daily currency (yes, I don't think it's just a gating mechanism) is that people who only play sporadically have a chance to obtain meaningful upgrades to their character. Uncap elder gems and you'll either end up with them facing absurd item costs compared to their playtime, or people with loads of playtime will plow through dungeons and get capped in a few weeks. It's not really possible to balance EG around both these types of players without a weekly cap. 
Given that the problem (given that you think there is a problem in AMP/Ability points taking almost a year to cap) is thus not solvable by way of using EGs to buy them, it would stand to reason that the droprate in the 'wild' should be increased. I would say 2-3 months at most to cap for an average player (a few hours a day), though it's obviously a matter of opinion.
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Would a system where people can choose whether they want elder gems or money upon reaching cap be feasible? 
 
Example: I hit elder cap on Wednesday every week. I want more gems. Upon hitting cap, I get a choice to have all elder points either count towards further gems at a reduced rate, or money at the current rate. I choose gems.
 
Just an idea I had while reading the thread.	
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Would a system where people can choose whether they want elder gems or money upon reaching cap be feasible? 
 
Example: I hit elder cap on Wednesday every week. I want more gems. Upon hitting cap, I get a choice to have all elder points either count towards further gems at a reduced rate, or money at the current rate. I choose gems.
 
Just an idea I had while reading the thread.
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I wasn't initially intending to answer the gear stats issue, but I've no problem in exploring it and possible solutions.  Certainly, forcing some kind of "stock" stats on high end PVE gear to ensure some kind of variety in the rest works as long as they're still best in slot.  Is the intention to pick a primary stat that gets buffed beyond what might be considered normal (giving it a bonus) but it's fixed (requiring the rest of the stats to be played with around it)?  Or is the intention here to simply split off a set of "primary stats", like every piece of gear has a set of unmodifiable slots that contain a base amount of grit, assault or support, and then a range of chip slots for the rest?  Or is the intention to simply make sure survivability is built in and let the DPS chips fall where they may with some kind of diminishing returns or power system?
 
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<*eats his post for brevity and no small amount of irony*>
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Having the added up value of all your flavor stats equal your AP/SP (according to some rating obviously) is an interesting idea. You run the risk of making making crafted gear very bland though (you can't use diminishing return since people will just ignore every consideration of flavor stat use in favor of stacking as high a total on as possible, and without diminishing return it'll just be max secondary stat every time. To be fair the current system doesn't have much leeway in terms of stat allocation either).
 
Of course I just realized that adding my latter suggestion (flat AP on all items) is a balance nightmare since different classes have different AP scaling (a problem your suggestion doesn't have to contend with, to its credit). I feel it's better to just stick to a normalized main stat.
 
As I've said before, I'm arguing from a "Stuff needs to happen fast" point of view, and as such I'm not in favor of adding any new stats or crafting systems right now. I have a red thread running through all my suggestions; while some of it is potentially a lot of work (replacing stats on a lot of gear), none of it is a massive upheaval coding wise, and should in fact by quite simple to implement. This is to give CRB something to do that doesn't require a major reworking or additional implementation of content, but can still fix a lot of stuff.	
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Having the added up value of all your flavor stats equal your AP/SP (according to some rating obviously) is an interesting idea. You run the risk of making making crafted gear very bland though (you can't use diminishing return since people will just ignore every consideration of flavor stat use in favor of stacking as high a total on as possible, and without diminishing return it'll just be max secondary stat every time. To be fair the current system doesn't have much leeway in terms of stat allocation either).
 
Of course I just realized that adding my latter suggestion (flat AP on all items) is a balance nightmare since different classes have different AP scaling (a problem your suggestion doesn't have to contend with, to its credit). I feel it's better to just stick to a normalized main stat.
 
As I've said before, I'm arguing from a "Stuff needs to happen fast" point of view, and as such I'm not in favor of adding any new stats or crafting systems right now. I have a red thread running through all my suggestions; while some of it is potentially a lot of work (replacing stats on a lot of gear), none of it is a massive upheaval coding wise, and should in fact by quite simple to implement. This is to give CRB something to do that doesn't require a major reworking or additional implementation of content, but can still fix a lot of stuff.
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I've thought long and hard about the various areas of the end game and different ideas on how to possibly resolve them in the sense of not doing drastic changes, but either "educationally guessed" small changes or incremental changes that'd maybe not completely solve but mitigate some problems we have. I am sorry if anything has been discussed, but I feel as this is the best thread to put forth constructive ideas...
 
ELDER GEMS:
 
This is a system that has significant importance to the game and is both something for raiders, non-raiders, and those in between. You can't raid without purchasing the attunement key and for many people who are unlucky elder gems are the only way to acquire AMP/Ability points. There are also other purchasable items available from the vendor that range from housing decor items to raid gear. Yet the inherent issue is that beyond the attunement key and AMP/Ability points I rarely if ever see anyone purchase the gear from the vendor. Why is that? Some of it seems pretty good at first glance, while others are "meh" or simply not for my class/build. Personally speaking I actually use a shield from the vendor called "ironheart" on my tank and it was a wonderful upgrade..
 
 
Adding purchasable options:
The elder gem vendor currently has a small amount of gear that can be purchased. Initially when this system was introduced and even further as we got closer to launch the elder gems were proposed to be a way to actually acquire gear that a player was unlucky enough not to receive in raids, which we actually see is true in terms of some raid items which require you to kill a certain boss in order to be able to purchase these items.
 
Earlier we had a situation with "gold or bust" breaking the fun from adventures as it was an all or nothing mentality, making it rather terrible for anyone who simply wanted to do the content conflicting with those who were after gear you were guaranteed to get at gold. This was eventually changed to the sytem we ahve now and some have viewed this more in the negative light than others , but it has inherently relieved the "gold or bust" mentality from the adventures in question which was a good step. Where am I going with this though?
 
Well as mentioned earlier we have a system in  place that recognizes when players kill a particular NPC and or clear a dungeon. So why not extend this further down to the dungeons and adventures by including the epics and blues from these instances on the vendor for a price that is high, but reasonable which would equate to at least maybe....1 piece a week.
Dungeons would simply have to have bosses tied to the gear as a pre-requisite
Adventures can either be objective based such as X item needs 6 totems in war of the wilds to unlock for an item coming from war of the wilds, or even then you can have it tied to "bosses"-It is actually in a way for adventures to ahve the pre-requisites bound to particualr bosses/champions/events because it can encourage palyers to continue running them to encounter the bosses they did not meet doing one path OR trying different events such as malgrave rather than a cookie cutter "optimal path choice"
By doing this it gives more options for specific classes and builds rather than 1 or two
 
Removal of Elder gem cap vs a "soft" cap:
I had an earlier discussion with Vic on this that was a bit insightful and brought up some interesting points. The concern primarily with removing this would be the economical standing of the game because some people actually rely soley on the elder gem cap being pushed to gain additional gold form various sources. This inherently can effect CREDD to a degree as well, but the easier option might be to remove elder gem cap completely as opposed to working with the system as a whole. This then turns into more of a long term vs short term development /implementation and can rather be delicate. Why discuss this in the first palce though?
 
Well it was said earlier that there would actually be ways to obtain elder gems outside of just gaining experience, but right now the only way to do this is luck based on boom boxes which are not reliably available.
 
 
Gem cap removal is a simple way to resolve this to a degree, but it can come with some economical problems and a concern for people who use the gem cap as a method to gain income. So for this perhaps if it were done have a money bag as a purchasable item that would be equal to he amount of gold you would get per day at cap. This would be sold in increments of 1, 3, and 7 day bag sizes at the cost equal to as much elder gems those dailies give experience wise.(ei. if one daily gives enough experience for 3 gems, than add/multiply that by the number of total dailies available). Also because there is no gem cap it may be beneficial to double or more the amount of experience required for each gem so that they don't flow in so much that it completely kills the economy and a person could purchase everything form the vendor. This may also call for a price hike too...
 
A "soft" cap meaning that the current cap remain in place but there would be more methods to obtain edlder gems would be the best, but requires much more work. The benefits though are very good though as you don't disrupt the current setup too much and you can bring mroe activity into the game as well.
 
Ways to obtain elder gems after the cap:
Daily dungeon,adventure,world boss clearing
Completion of veteran content rewarding X amount for a full clear
Possibly offering a few elder gems for doing PUGs
I believe that either of the two options combined with the above section of adding more gear and possibly other purchasable items to the vendor would be fantastic.
 
 
ATTUNEMENT :
 
The hottest and touchy topic on both sides of the fence being for and against it, with those who want a middle ground caught in the "crossfire" As some who have taken note though, I'll simply put a reminder that Carbine acknowledges Attunement is something they didn't like how it turned out and would be doing something a bit "easier" next time they institute an attunement. What exactly was the problem was never clearly specified so it's anyone's guess what they and also players see as the problem.
 
 
Timed silver dungeons:
That dreaded topic that's been so hot lately and arguably the most talked about section of the attunement process followed shortly by world bosses. Without going into the entire arguement of timers in general and explain why some people hate them and other don't I'm just going to clarify one thing that often gets misunderstood. The timers themselves are not the problem, but rather them being tied to the attunement process is for those against the timers.
 
There are a few options I think might be beneficial to the game in this regard:
Make the attunement bronze level. Despite what some may think, this may be the easiest solution as it is a variable change as opposed to a systems mechanical change. In addtition tihs lets the content in and of itself be the gate as opposed to the content AND a timer. Even if it took a group 7 hours, the fact remains that they have learned to get better enough ot kill a boss and clear said dungeon. Speaking form personal experience in PUGs and guild groups sometimes your group just is not capable of killing a boss at all and that alone can be a gate.	Adjust the timers and or the content to be wider and give more breathing room. This has been done to some extent, recently noted with SC and STL, but sitll palces underlying pressure on said group and add still gives the timers their presence.	Change the timers to begin upon initially attacking a monster rather than when the party enters the dungeon.
 
 
World bosses:
This can be a pain on the lesser populated servers/factions and killing Deradune metal maw as a 50 doesn't exactly show much prowess/skill. "grats you just facerolled a level 10 raid boss as a 50...woo!"
I'd least say maybe cut this stage in half to 5 encounters instead of 10. Though honestly I feel like this stage should have been 1 world boss or instanced raid boss that you must kill and is actually "built" as a boss instead of having trivial difficulty like scorchwing who is only a pain because of the 60 second immunity.
 
 
Logistics:
Both of the above relate to this as well as the adventure stage, but we've gone over this previously and the best way to resolve the logistical problem of people being on different stages is retroactive rewarding in my opinion.
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I feel like perhaps the best way to work around this for organization purposes is to have retroactive rewarding, the player would still basically go through the steps they would do on their own and can read the quest text, but on stages like the dungeons, adventures, and world bosses, it'd help a bit. So if you were running a STL veteran and got a silver but weren't on that stage yet, you'd get that part of your attunement retroactively awarded once you do get there.
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			All those problems related to RNG could be solved by changing the name of the game to RNGstar: The Grinding.	
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I've thought long and hard about the various areas of the end game and different ideas on how to possibly resolve them in the sense of not doing drastic changes, but either "educationally guessed" small changes or incremental changes that'd maybe not completely solve but mitigate some problems we have. I am sorry if anything has been discussed, but I feel as this is the best thread to put forth constructive ideas...
 
ELDER GEMS:
 
This is a system that has significant importance to the game and is both something for raiders, non-raiders, and those in between. You can't raid without purchasing the attunement key and for many people who are unlucky elder gems are the only way to acquire AMP/Ability points. There are also other purchasable items available from the vendor that range from housing decor items to raid gear. Yet the inherent issue is that beyond the attunement key and AMP/Ability points I rarely if ever see anyone purchase the gear from the vendor. Why is that? Some of it seems pretty good at first glance, while others are "meh" or simply not for my class/build. Personally speaking I actually use a shield from the vendor called "ironheart" on my tank and it was a wonderful upgrade..
 
 
Adding purchasable options:
The elder gem vendor currently has a small amount of gear that can be purchased. Initially when this system was introduced and even further as we got closer to launch the elder gems were proposed to be a way to actually acquire gear that a player was unlucky enough not to receive in raids, which we actually see is true in terms of some raid items which require you to kill a certain boss in order to be able to purchase these items.
 
Earlier we had a situation with "gold or bust" breaking the fun from adventures as it was an all or nothing mentality, making it rather terrible for anyone who simply wanted to do the content conflicting with those who were after gear you were guaranteed to get at gold. This was eventually changed to the sytem we ahve now and some have viewed this more in the negative light than others , but it has inherently relieved the "gold or bust" mentality from the adventures in question which was a good step. Where am I going with this though?
 
Well as mentioned earlier we have a system in  place that recognizes when players kill a particular NPC and or clear a dungeon. So why not extend this further down to the dungeons and adventures by including the epics and blues from these instances on the vendor for a price that is high, but reasonable which would equate to at least maybe....1 piece a week.
Dungeons would simply have to have bosses tied to the gear as a pre-requisite
Adventures can either be objective based such as X item needs 6 totems in war of the wilds to unlock for an item coming from war of the wilds, or even then you can have it tied to "bosses"-It is actually in a way for adventures to ahve the pre-requisites bound to particualr bosses/champions/events because it can encourage palyers to continue running them to encounter the bosses they did not meet doing one path OR trying different events such as malgrave rather than a cookie cutter "optimal path choice"
By doing this it gives more options for specific classes and builds rather than 1 or two
 
Removal of Elder gem cap vs a "soft" cap:
I had an earlier discussion with Vic on this that was a bit insightful and brought up some interesting points. The concern primarily with removing this would be the economical standing of the game because some people actually rely soley on the elder gem cap being pushed to gain additional gold form various sources. This inherently can effect CREDD to a degree as well, but the easier option might be to remove elder gem cap completely as opposed to working with the system as a whole. This then turns into more of a long term vs short term development /implementation and can rather be delicate. Why discuss this in the first palce though?
 
Well it was said earlier that there would actually be ways to obtain elder gems outside of just gaining experience, but right now the only way to do this is luck based on boom boxes which are not reliably available.
 
 
Gem cap removal is a simple way to resolve this to a degree, but it can come with some economical problems and a concern for people who use the gem cap as a method to gain income. So for this perhaps if it were done have a money bag as a purchasable item that would be equal to he amount of gold you would get per day at cap. This would be sold in increments of 1, 3, and 7 day bag sizes at the cost equal to as much elder gems those dailies give experience wise.(ei. if one daily gives enough experience for 3 gems, than add/multiply that by the number of total dailies available). Also because there is no gem cap it may be beneficial to double or more the amount of experience required for each gem so that they don't flow in so much that it completely kills the economy and a person could purchase everything form the vendor. This may also call for a price hike too...
 
A "soft" cap meaning that the current cap remain in place but there would be more methods to obtain edlder gems would be the best, but requires much more work. The benefits though are very good though as you don't disrupt the current setup too much and you can bring mroe activity into the game as well.
 
Ways to obtain elder gems after the cap:
Daily dungeon,adventure,world boss clearing
Completion of veteran content rewarding X amount for a full clear
Possibly offering a few elder gems for doing PUGs
I believe that either of the two options combined with the above section of adding more gear and possibly other purchasable items to the vendor would be fantastic.
 
 
ATTUNEMENT :
 
The hottest and touchy topic on both sides of the fence being for and against it, with those who want a middle ground caught in the "crossfire" As some who have taken note though, I'll simply put a reminder that Carbine acknowledges Attunement is something they didn't like how it turned out and would be doing something a bit "easier" next time they institute an attunement. What exactly was the problem was never clearly specified so it's anyone's guess what they and also players see as the problem.
 
 
Timed silver dungeons:
That dreaded topic that's been so hot lately and arguably the most talked about section of the attunement process followed shortly by world bosses. Without going into the entire arguement of timers in general and explain why some people hate them and other don't I'm just going to clarify one thing that often gets misunderstood. The timers themselves are not the problem, but rather them being tied to the attunement process is for those against the timers.
 
There are a few options I think might be beneficial to the game in this regard:
Make the attunement bronze level. Despite what some may think, this may be the easiest solution as it is a variable change as opposed to a systems mechanical change. In addtition tihs lets the content in and of itself be the gate as opposed to the content AND a timer. Even if it took a group 7 hours, the fact remains that they have learned to get better enough ot kill a boss and clear said dungeon. Speaking form personal experience in PUGs and guild groups sometimes your group just is not capable of killing a boss at all and that alone can be a gate.	Adjust the timers and or the content to be wider and give more breathing room. This has been done to some extent, recently noted with SC and STL, but sitll palces underlying pressure on said group and add still gives the timers their presence.	Change the timers to begin upon initially attacking a monster rather than when the party enters the dungeon.
 
 
World bosses:
This can be a pain on the lesser populated servers/factions and killing Deradune metal maw as a 50 doesn't exactly show much prowess/skill. "grats you just facerolled a level 10 raid boss as a 50...woo!"
I'd least say maybe cut this stage in half to 5 encounters instead of 10. Though honestly I feel like this stage should have been 1 world boss or instanced raid boss that you must kill and is actually "built" as a boss instead of having trivial difficulty like scorchwing who is only a pain because of the 60 second immunity.
 
 
Logistics:
Both of the above relate to this as well as the adventure stage, but we've gone over this previously and the best way to resolve the logistical problem of people being on different stages is retroactive rewarding in my opinion.
 
RUNE SLOTS:
 
From what I've read and noticed, when people are referring to RNG of itemization they're referring to the rune slots aspects and how they work. It's important to note that itemiczation and classes themself are undergoing changes to varying degrees, such as engineer and warrior AP scaling and having "normalizaed" amount of slots depending on gear level(ie. Superb items having X  amount of slots and common having Y amount of slots). While these are welcomed changes this doesn't completely help with the fact that even if the number of slots is the same you can inherently get an item that is "useless" due to the types of rune slots you get.
 
This is something I can't really think of a simple solution for because the rune system itself is rather inherently quite large.
 
Mismatch penalty:	Having a way to "force" a talisman in a slot at the cost of its effectiveness?
	Like if I wanted to put a +physical resist into a life rune slot that would give me +222 if it were an actual physical resist slot it'd give me +180 instead or whatever lower slot would be. This lets people rune how they feel best sutis them and while it's not the ABSOLUTE best, still allows them to get close.
 
	I can't recall actual percentages of each slot, but to further explain and using random simply numbers.
 
	In this scenario we're using a 1 slot weapon.
	Let's say that 1st slot is 100% , 2nd slot is 75%(again I don't remember actual percentages ofhand)
	My weapon has a logic slot but I want a +health rune put on it, which would come normally from earth and life runes.
 
	I make the +health anyway and plop it in the logic slot. Normally I would get +400 health, BUT because it's not a matching slot a penalty is put in and instead of getting 100%, I get 75% of the benefit from that rune, resulting in +300 health...
	 
	
Runes for all(possibly as Bandage)	As a temporary solution while itemization and others aspects are being worked on regarding stats in general, perhaps having all sets available to all runes is a possible solution for now?
 
I ran out of steam..I wanted to touch on the game as a whole and give more elaborate ideas for fixes, but felt it might deviate too far from reasonable and or specifically PvE
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			Added a quick addendum summarizing the possibility of adding enrage timers to all bosses as a possible overall timer replacement rather than a new metric.	
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I really appreciate all the well thought out lengthy posts in here, but i get the feeling if i asked for a TL:DR it would still be longer then the Lord of the Rings.
 
 
Damn being a Kinesthetic leaning learner. :(	
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I really appreciate all the well thought out lengthy posts in here, but i get the feeling if i asked for a TL:DR it would still be longer then the Lord of the Rings.
 
 
Damn being a Kinesthetic leaning learner. :(
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They're complex issues, so I don't think a TL;DR would go any way to explaining what's going on.  But I think I can try to boil them down:
 
 
A lot of small issues are the results of Carbine having "fixed" things with short term solutions.  We're trying to figure out the "best" (i.e. permanent) solutions to issues.  Attunement has too much separation between its bits, making attunement harder for large groups (since they don't get credit) and retroactive awarding (giving people credit for silvers and world bosses they already killed when they get there) seems to be the best option.  RNG is an issue, and I'm looking into ways to marry crafting and tokens dropping from content to make an integrated gearing solution.  We're also discussing tiering the gear with corresponding tiered tokens.  Overall dungeons timers could do to be replaced by enrages on individual mobs and bosses or replaced by a full clear requirement mixed with a better metric for judging performance.  We're also discussing ways to allow people to exceed the elder gem weekly cap or to remove the cap, thereby giving people a reason to play beyond the cap every week (thus increasing on-server populations).  It might also alleviate problems with AMP/Ability Points and other necessary items being so heavily tied to low percentage drop rates.  Slower but steady progress seems more popular than stuttering, limited progress.
 
The last bunch of posts have been Joseba bringing up some excellent points about gear statistics, and we've been looking at ways that the entire stat system could be fundamentally overhauled to make the crafting/token system a lot more entertaining, useful, and variable without being too cumbersome.  To summarize, we're looking at making AP and SP either fixed or dependent on other stats, then working the other flavor stats into the game.  We're still in the middle of that conversation, but that may be the most complicated (and most necessary) change to the way gear is applied.  It is also taken as given that the rune system should be controllable by the crafter that makes the gear or that they can be changed later for some amount of materials.
 
 
This only touches on some of the broadest basics and doesn't cover everything, but I think that's a pretty good summary of where we are.
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It might seem like a good idea (more elder gems for those that choose it!), but then CRB would have to balance item costs around this soft cap (so people don't earn everything immediately and run out of things to do), leading to inflated prices, which in turn would make going 'over cap' seem like necessity (since the prices are now balanced around that you do), defeating the concept. It would also punish people with low playing time since it'll take even more weeks of hitting 'soft-cap' now to gain anything meaningful.
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 I do agree with what is said here,but I want to add several more suggestions especially regarding quests
 
Quests are the lifeblood for experience, reputation and drop, yet there are some real problems with quests
 
First, the quest arrow is HORRIBLE. Please reread this. Many times the arrow points to walls and places you can't go , which is NOT near any stairs or elevators. There should be  a line showing exactly where the solution locations are. I can't emphasize this enough.;
 
Secondly, some quests are quite unclear as to what is needed. There should be  clearer description in a number of cases about what exactly is needed to fulful the quest. For many quests, this isn't a problem. However, I have run into quests that require me to go online in order to figure out what is needed.
 
Third major change: Engineer pets. It is absolutely unacceptable the way pets aggro mobs. IN fact, their aggro rate exceeds that of the player's aggro. Frankly, if we wanted a high aggro, at least give us a better tanking pet such as the bruiser. My simple suggestion is to remove aggro from the artilary bot pet.Fourth: maps are a bit obscure. Many times I click on the quest number yet don't see that number on either the mini map or regular map. It shoud always be shown on the map. This reinforces the need for a better quest arrow/line.Fifth; I think dungeons are much too difficult. C'mon, they are as tough as mini raids found in other games. I especilally don't like the 16 steps needed for raid qualification too. It is just much too much grinding.Finally, I agree with the guy who noted that items from crafting and auction house are better than dropped items. This needs some fixing. 	
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First, the quest arrow is HORRIBLE. Please reread this. Many times the arrow points to walls and places you can't go , which is NOT near any stairs or elevators. There should be  a line showing exactly where the solution locations are. I can't emphasize this enough.
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First, the quest arrow is HORRIBLE. Please reread this. Many times the arrow points to walls and places you can't go , which is NOT near any stairs or elevators. There should be  a line showing exactly where the solution locations are. I can't emphasize this enough.;
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Crafted items should be the top level items. Dungeons and raids should drop mats to upgrade your crafted gear, not replace it completely and make crafting a useless skill.
 
 
As to what can fix the game in the long term... Stop balancing the classes around PvP. The entire core of the game is built around PvE, so why in the hell are you balancing the game around PvP? PvP and PvE need to be separate mechanics, the fact that it wasn't done at the start shows a lack of forethought on Carbines part.	
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Sorry I took a while to respond to this, and apologies if I'm distracting too much from the main discussion at hand. I meant that they would keep Elder Gem costs the same, and simply give people the option to either receive Elder Gems at a reduced rate after the current cap, or receive money at the current rate.
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 I do agree with what is said here,but I want to add several more suggestions especially regarding quests
 
Quests are the lifeblood for experience, reputation and drop, yet there are some real problems with quests
 
First, the quest arrow is HORRIBLE. Please reread this. Many times the arrow points to walls and places you can't go , which is NOT near any stairs or elevators. There should be  a line showing exactly where the solution locations are. I can't emphasize this enough.;
 
Secondly, some quests are quite unclear as to what is needed. There should be  clearer description in a number of cases about what exactly is needed to fulful the quest. For many quests, this isn't a problem. However, I have run into quests that require me to go online in order to figure out what is needed.
 
Third major change: Engineer pets. It is absolutely unacceptable the way pets aggro mobs. IN fact, their aggro rate exceeds that of the player's aggro. Frankly, if we wanted a high aggro, at least give us a better tanking pet such as the bruiser. My simple suggestion is to remove aggro from the artilary bot pet.
 
Fourth: maps are a bit obscure. Many times I click on the quest number yet don't see that number on either the mini map or regular map. It shoud always be shown on the map. This reinforces the need for a better quest arrow/line.
 
Fifth; I think dungeons are much too difficult. C'mon, they are as tough as mini raids found in other games. I especilally don't like the 16 steps needed for raid qualification too. It is just much too much grinding.
 
Finally, I agree with the guy who noted that items from crafting and auction house are better than dropped items. This needs some fixing.
 
 
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Crafted items should be the top level items. Dungeons and raids should drop mats to upgrade your crafted gear, not replace it completely and make crafting a useless skill.
 
 
As to what can fix the game in the long term... Stop balancing the classes around PvP. The entire core of the game is built around PvE, so why in the hell are you balancing the game around PvP? PvP and PvE need to be separate mechanics, the fact that it wasn't done at the start shows a lack of forethought on Carbines part.
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That ought to work.  Or, we had that idea that you could trade gems for money through some kind of vendor.
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			Only problem I have with the first Idea for crafting is that crafter no longer have the minigame of creating the item I would prefer that Dungeon provide a vanilla item, then another item from the crafter provides stat modifier, so the crafter have to play with his profession like it is right now.	
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Only problem I have with the first Idea for crafting is that crafter no longer have the minigame of creating the item I would prefer that Dungeon provide a vanilla item, then another item from the crafter provides stat modifier, so the crafter have to play with his profession like it is right now.
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			I'm not fond of dungeon medals in general, regardless of the particular metric they use. I want to feel like I'm battling through a powerful enemy fortress, not being given marks out of ten for some strange sporting event. Rewarding stronger players is a good idea, as it keeps the content relevant for longer, but whatever happened to doing that in-universe rather than via some meta medal system? I'd like to see less medals, more summonable bosses and optional, extra-challenging events. I think this would also help with the general perception of gold / silver being the standard baseline, rather than something extra on top for the powerful groups that can manage it - people talk about "losing gold" (and then immediately vote disband) because getting gold isn't about collecting the requirements for gold as you play the dungeon, but rather about avoiding losing them. Tying the higher levels of reward to specific, harder content would make that reward a bonus for players able to complete it, rather than having the normal level of reward feel like a wooden spoon for groups unable to complete the content "properly".	
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			I saw this thread and started reading, and then noticed the dates and wondered how I missed it when you originally posted it Vic.  Regardless, very well thought out, and kudos to you for posting this.  +1 to all the ideas you expressed.	
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I'm not fond of dungeon medals in general, regardless of the particular metric they use. I want to feel like I'm battling through a powerful enemy fortress, not being given marks out of ten for some strange sporting event. Rewarding stronger players is a good idea, as it keeps the content relevant for longer, but whatever happened to doing that in-universe rather than via some meta medal system? I'd like to see less medals, more summonable bosses and optional, extra-challenging events. I think this would also help with the general perception of gold / silver being the standard baseline, rather than something extra on top for the powerful groups that can manage it - people talk about "losing gold" (and then immediately vote disband) because getting gold isn't about collecting the requirements for gold as you play the dungeon, but rather about avoiding losing them. Tying the higher levels of reward to specific, harder content would make that reward a bonus for players able to complete it, rather than having the normal level of reward feel like a wooden spoon for groups unable to complete the content "properly".
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I saw this thread and started reading, and then noticed the dates and wondered how I missed it when you originally posted it Vic.  Regardless, very well thought out, and kudos to you for posting this.  +1 to all the ideas you expressed.
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