STOP at the AUGMENT/ARTIFACT fortification break!!

I want to kick this infamous idea of a percentage of success for a "Augment" or "Artifact"!!

This system is really unfair and infamous, it's already long enough to have the necessary elements for fortification but the percentage of breakage is too cruel, it's really not motivating has played and even more shameful, when we want to buy some at the awning and we are encouraged to buy a seal that breaks in less than 2.

I think it's quite normal that we get to UP the item in question in one go! After all, we played for it, didn't we?

It is easy to get your arts to 160. Anything after that I stack and save for the double xp weekend. 160 arts are more than good enough to get you through any elite or regular content in the game. Also, if the scoreboard is your thing, 160 arts will keep you at or near the top in the majority of your runs. If you're impatient you can spend the money. My only real issue is the lack of double xp events. They only seem to be once a year. I sat with 160 artifacts all year and was rarely beaten on the dps board, and my tank build was more than serviceable. My Tank skill though......lol

I just saved all the nth metal for the double xp event we just had. I had enough to top off the arts I wanted to 200, left a few at 180, and still had enough nth metal left over to level one of the new ones to 160 if I want.

I dont mind paying for seals. It would be great to have some way to get them in game or make them tradable again though. I dont mind spending an extra 20 bucks every once in a while on a game I play everyday and seals are pretty much all I ever really need from the marketplace anyways. I usually load up when the MP sales are on.

As you say so well double xp events are rare and for a regular player it's too long to wait that long.

There's a lot of frustration in the game when you try an upgrade 3 times and all 3 times break, I even expect a fourth break...

On my side I hear a lot of people being disgusted by DC's chosen practice of this infamous artifact system, like I'm not the only one.

My guess is that the amount of sold Perfected Artifact XP Packs, Seals of Completions and Seals of Preservation speak another language.
People who can afford it, will spend money on it if they want. Asking them to stop to prove a point won't work because frankly, they don't care.
People reach CR308 in the first week, people will have two+ Rank 23 Augments 30 minutes after a new DLC, people will rank up new artifacts to 200 if there is a new meta developing.
If there is an option to do so, some people will take it and pay for it. It's their decision. That's not gonna change.

Double XP events typically happen the weekend before a new episode. The only exception so far was the weekend before metal 2. Also, new episodes launch every 3-4 months. One thing you can do is just save everything that is over 200xp, and use the ones that are lower. You get a significant number of those, and I had more than 8 stacks of the lower xp items at the last bonus week. Those lower xp even doubled are so small in comparison to what you need at higher breakthroughs, that is almost wasted inventory slave to same them. You could also pick a different cutoff point.

As for breakthrough chances, look at the link in my signature. Depending on the breakthrough you are working on, that could be terrible luck, or you could expect many more failures. At rack 200, you can expect more than 20 failures without using a seal of completion.

The only think I would ask due at this point is that seals of preservation drop in game (like exceptional recovery kiss used to), and the dropped ones can be traded even across platform. They could even make craftable plans fur seals to increase your success chance (like how we had craftable recovery kits that have a smaller range of bytes back than exceptional kits). Seals of completion could stay a marketplace item, like total recovery kits were.

But is it really unfair? It's RNG, generally thought to be one of the most "fair" mechanics out there- you can be brand new and get a breakthrough success every time on your artifact or have max cr/sp and still fail.

My issue is not just with the breakthrough percentages but also too many items needing breakthroughs. 3 artifacts and 1 augment (minimum) per role which require catalysts and seals of some sort and with every breakthrough the percentage chance goes down. Now, if you want to play both roles than double the amount of required material needed for breakthroughs. I had a 95% breakthrough chance fail which is ridiculous. I can only imagine how much revenue is collected from the sales of seals and such but I also understand the need for the revenue.

far more complicated and costly than modding ever was.

I use my loyalty points for seals of completion and only use them when my preservation seals finally get consumed. Still sucks to buy those preservation seals though. The seals not dropping and. Ring tradable is crap IMO.

*Being tradable

You do well to raise this point, because there too, many players come to DC for the new DLC rush 1 week or 2 with the CB next to them and once finished, see them more, because gone on another game enjoying or game X seeks to keep their players on the long term.

How are artifacts and augments more complicated than gear mods?

The old mod system required you to gather hundreds of certain color bits to create certain color bytes, to use with certain items that only came from salvaging gear (done of which only came from gear from a certain episode), and required you to buy a certain amount of something from a vendor.

Artifact xp can drop from anything (including interacting with objects like collection nodes). The only other thing you need is something you buy from one vendor.

Augment xp comes from completing missions/defeating bosses (episode specific) or from savaging any gear. Augment xp can give a bonus if you use it in the correct place. Your base augments don't need anything other than the xp. Your other two just need things that can drop in game.

Both systems had marketplace purchases available to speed up the process (total recovery kits vs seals). The old system had you place something in a piece of gear, which you could accidentally delete/sell/salvage and the mod would be lost. In the new system you don't have to worry about accidentally destroying that effort (at least as easily) since they are separate from gear pieces.

Artifacts and base augments are for life (unless you feel the need to swap artifacts often, out change powers out betwe). Artifacts have a max permanent level, that once you reach, you are done. Only the episode augments (2-4) need to be addressed every episode. Gear mods (10-20) had to be re crafted every episode.

As for cost, with mods you could spend $15-30 per episode on total recovery kits (more of you fully modded more than once). For the episode augments, you could spend up to $28, if it takes you 4 preservation and one completion per augment to max out 4 augments. Artifacts would be a separate issue here, as they coexisted with mods.

Now there are some options that exist for augments that didn't exist for mods, namely the ability to buy xp and catalysts for augments (which would have been similar to buying bits/bytes/episode specific materials for mods). I left those out of the comparison above since it wasn't an option for mods.

Basically, you can choose to make augments more expensive than mods, but they aren't by nature more expensive. Also, there is a chance augments are less expensive. For example, I maxed out one of my BOP augments only consuming one seal of preservation, so it essentially it cost me 50 cents.

The only thing I will counter in your statement is that it was much easier to attain bits/bytes then it is to attain Nth/Source Marks/Catalysts which is all needed to rank the artifacts. Nth and Source Marks don’t cost and can be attained at your own pace but can take a long time to gather all that you need to rank the artifact to a specific ranking. You also have more than one artifact to rank which takes even more time. The other thing is that with mods, it was 100% guaranteed you could make the mod as there are percentages of chance that you might breakthrough with the artifacts.

That's not what I am seeing. In my eyes what is happening is a time shift from a few minutes every day over a longer period of time to a very short time frame but a huge amount of playtime and additionally a huge amount of money spent.

All things considered, it's about the same but psychologically it feels to them as they are more efficient by doing that. But they really aren't. But that's the sales perspective behind it and why it works.
In general, only two things cause people to buy something: Lust and anxiety. In this case it's most commonly the lust to play other things sooner and more often in a shorter time period and the anxiety to miss out on the whole gearing process.

Or on easier and more commonly used words: "I want to be done with it to do other stuff." It's just a felt thing but not much of a real thing. But that's how people work and why this concept in general works. ^^

I was only comparing complexity and cost (the two things mentioned in the post I was replying to).

Is the current system with augments less complex than mods? Yes.

How do the costs compare between mods and augments? As mentioned above, they can be similar. To expand on that, you could spend no money in either system, but the current system allows you to spend more, if you desire/are impatient.

Now as for how long it takes, I would argue augments take less time to max out. At this point I've maxed 7 of 8 base augments and 1 episode augment on my main, and am close to maxing out the rest. For mods I would be somewhere into the second month to be this far along.

Just as a reminder, we did have % chance during mods, but it was on recovery kits. Both methods determine how long it takes to finish upgrading, but the recovery version was less obvious.

Artifacts are a different story, as I mentioned previously. They existed before augments, while we still had mods. So you can't compare artifacts to gear mods. The grind the artifacts is intended to be long, and the benefits are supposed to be enticing. If you find a combination of artifacts that works well with a play style you enjoy, there isn't a need to drop it for the new one. I'm doing just fine with my choice of artifacts on my main, the most recent of which came out in the Atlantis episode. Sure, I might be able to squeeze out a little more damage if I completely changed my play style and artifacts, but I hold my own well enough (even doing better than some people that chase what's considered the "best" setup).

For this story, I can tell you that I've had a lot of feedback from players saying they were disgusted with DCUO by this infamous artifact system, they found the idea interesting but the Daybreak principle of trying to make as much money as possible on this system disgusts them with the game, which they still love and hope to be able to come back to a game "less money pumping", as they say.

The current practice of Daybreak in general disgusts them too, they seem to think that the game is at the end of its life and that the devs are looking for all possible ways to collect as much money as they can while they still can...

For my part, I wouldn't be surprised if one day a gambling commission would attack Daybreak one day, the "loot box" system attracts them more and more, I personally wouldn't mind, but I also find the practice of Daybreak's "money pump" policy disgusting and when I re-did a character I was shocked by the incitement to visit the shop for a whole bunch of stuff...

The game gives me more of a vision of a video game, but a casino game and I clearly wouldn't be surprised if one day a commission or something would attack Daybreak especially since the game clearly affects minors and that's very interesting for commissions in general.

I think augments are worse then artifacts. Not only you have farm for the materials, and no guarantee you will get the materials you need but you also have break through. They are only useful for what ever dlc is currently out. Once we move on, we have to start all over again. They should remove the breakthrough on the augments. They can't even throw us a bone there, are they really hurting that much on cash?

It's obviously not at all normal for you to get non-free items you want for free. If it were, you wouldn't be asking for it.

What you want to do is change what's currently normal. "Quite reasonable" (in your opinion) seems to be what you were trying to say.

i like the augments themselves but despise the money hungry system behind them

What I'm saying is, once we've collected the necessary elements and UP the artifact, it's a UP and mission accomplished, what I'm saying is to put an end to the percentage of success when we've been struggling to get it!

Why are you trying to understand to complicate something clearly explained?