How to fix epic items

[Riggs]

Given the discussions in the recent threads, clearly the thinking of many players is that the design on epics is broken, esp given that players favor events/raids/items where either you can trade ingredients - and/or you can choose what items to customize rather than being stuck on a set list of items.

Ex;
Shroud
Crystal Cove
Lob (not that a lot of people are running it yet, but are nonetheless salivating over actual high level items you can customize and pick)
New Challenges - farm ingredients - craft an item of choice. Win.

So epics has been the kinda, more or less, half random attempts it seems at high level gear. So many epic items are not great, and certainly not good enough to replace level 12 greensteel (which should have been level 16 in the first place), and what good are epic weapons that dont break boss dr? Answer - almost nothing other than novelty. The balance pass for various packs was nice, but lets face it half the items out there are not even going to see use.

How to fix epic items?

Keep seals BTA and raid item seals drop in the raid.

Make shards tradeable.

Make scrolls optional for all packs (they are basically a non-issue now for desert items).
Either you can craft the items using the scroll, OR 5 epic tokens.

In fact, I would recommend phasing out scrolls entirely(current scrolls will still work, all future upgrades require 5 tokens). They are essentially an item that "I scroll farm on my arcane when I have time to solo" rather than a useful and enjoyable part of the game.

The intent of a quest is to complete the quest, not farm part of it and recall - and since scrolls dont drop often enough in the quests and raids themselves, a lot of people just farm them.

A last change might be to do another pass and look at what epic items are actually made, and simply erase the bottom 20% of items from the epic tables - desert has something like 63 'epic' items...that is just way too many crummy seals and shards to drop to make the process feel epic at all.

.."Zephyr seal anyone?...anyone? Comon it has finesse on it!...and nothing else"

[xoowak]

Mostly agreed. 5 tokens is a bit low, but I'd be happy to see scrolls go. It's an annoying mechanic that discourages grouping. Or (as has been suggested many times) add a 10th or 20th completion mechanic that gives you a list of scrolls as an end reward. Total randomness when the chances are so small is not fun.


A last change might be to do another pass and look at what epic items are actually made, and simply erase the bottom 20% of items from the epic tables - desert has something like 63 'epic' items...that is just way too many crummy seals and shards to drop to make the process feel epic at all.

I'd rather they buffed the weak items to be at least somewhat useful, or at least better than random loot (Sacred Band, I'm looking at you.) Also, I don't think going by # of items made is a good idea. I'm pretty sure some of the very rare ones like RoSS would be removed with that system.

[Riggs]

Yeah, scrolls are the one looting mechanic that is different than every other one in the game.

Requiring tokens instead of scrolls would fulfill one complaint about tradable parts - that people could run the quest once and then buy everything. With a token requirement - you would have to be running some kind of epics multiple times before you could upgrade any items.

Epic Tokens themselves should always stay BtC as the brake on farming with other characters.

I think overall it would be better for the game as well - if people are forced to spend more time in epics on the characters they want epic items on it will reveal not only weaknesses in their characters, but people will complain more about the power imbalance between arcanes and melee - in the realm of the main, and really only level 20 content.

Everyone that talks about scroll farming invariably talks about using their arcane to do it - which in and of itself is a game balance problem that sooner or later needs to be addressed, at least one aspect would be in making epic AC useful again, which it completely is not now.

Crystal Cove for example dropped shards based on how many gathered, but also gems based on how many kills - but there was enough of each that it was not a random and rare drop - you run the quest multiple times, you get more ingredients to eventually craft with each time - only the amount changes based on success.

That would be a much better and emotionally rewarding system for epics as well. Not in the same amounts given the Cove is a limited time event - but steady progress based on how well you do.

In that vein - token fragment drops from killed monsters in epic should be increased to at least 5 per monster rather than 1. Aside from the fact that 1/100th of a token is terribly pathetic, increasing the rate to a more reasonable level would encourage people to clear quests more often - which is supposed to be the intent of quests in the first place - to do all of it not just whatever straight line can be done to complete as fast as possible.

And again (I am getting off topic a lot here) that is a problem with quest design overall that should again be addressed - Turbine constantly tries to find ways to railroad players into not zerging quests - when they so often do not match the rewards to the effort and time involved.

Is anyone who is actually thinking about their time really going to farm up to 450 kills from respawns in Coal Chamber for that extra 10-15%? Is maybe 1000 xp really worth an extra 10-15 minutes in that pain in the behind quest? No it is not. The list of examples could go on, but the low value of optionals in epics is even more pronounced.

In the Cove - the more stuff you killed the more gems you got - period. The more gems you had the more things you could craft and sooner. Effort = reward.

Anyway...

[danotmano1998]

/signed

I'd have to agree that making seals and shards bta really would not hurt anything, IMO.
Make the items BTC sure. Make the ingredients all BTA and be done with it.

Making them available to trade wouldn't be a horrible thing in my eyes either..
Then at least people could have a small chance to have an epic item or two going INTO epics, instead of farming epics to be able to survive epics...

Maybe that's just because I've done 100 or so epic quests and have yet to make a single epic item?? Not sure, I think my viewpoint on this may be a bit jaded. ;)



In the Cove - the more stuff you killed the more gems you got - period. The more gems you had the more things you could craft and sooner. Effort = reward.


Couldn't agree more. Besides the quest just being a lot of fun, I'd run the Cove a million times and not regret it because I always made progress. Even if the quest failed, which rarely ever happened, I made progress, definitive measurable progress (GEMS!). This is not so true of epic quests as they stand now. Perhaps that is why they feel like such a grind. No, I'm not counting the epic token shards. If they dropped in 10's or 20's that would be a big step up in the right direction, IMO.

[JOTMON]

I would rather see a Ingredient/Token system for crafting instead of the random seal/shard/scroll drop system.
At least you know that your ingredients will eventually net you enough to craft something for a toon instead of the purely abysmal random drop system that plagues the unlucky.

The Cannith challenges system is more in line with the crafting system I would like to see come from all the area's.

The only thing that needs some work is opening up the weapon/armour choices, so we can build any weapon or armour/docent with the listed effects instead of limiting it to specific weapons/armour types.

[Dartwick]

This thread is busy bodies trying to fix something that isnt broken.