4th Artifact Slot or 180/200

Sup guys, I was thinking this morning about the possibility of a 4th Artifact slot and 180/200 Milestones and it got me wondering:

Which do you personally feel would be more of a balance issue, 4th Artifact Slot or the 180/200 Artifact Milestone markers?

I personally think a 180/200 Artifact Milestone marker would be more of a problem than a 4th Artifact Slot. The reason being is because it would require so much XP to get to them, that the developers would have to make them worth the time, grind, and money. At this time, it takes roughly 670k XP to get to 160. If the precedence set by previous artifacts was to continue this means it would require 1,340,000 XP to get just from 160 to 180 and then another 2,680,000 XP to get just from 180 to 200. That is a staggering amount of XP to say the least.

However, please do not think I made this thread to complain about the XP requirements to reach such milestones such as 180 and 200 as I did not. I simply posted what the possible requirements would be for such a task and in so pointing out that the rewards for doing such would have to be substantial as far as the effect goes which in turn I feel would cause even more imbalance with the Artifacts. I mean, imagine Eye of the Gemini going from 20% total damage to 22.5% then 25% or lasting 8 seconds then 10 seconds. How about Wrist Dispenser going from 54% to 60% then 66%? Craziness to say the least as they are already very strong Artifacts.

With all that said, what is everyone else's outlook on the possibility of a 4th Artifact Slot or 180/200 Milestone?

Any level increase for artifacts like EoG or VWD would be overkill.

When we went from rank 120 being the max to rank 160 being the max, lower xp nth metal amounts were removed from the game and higher values were added (effectively increasing the amount of xp received). Also, the vault was updated to include a large chunk of xp once a week. It is very likely that this would happen again, with the vault weekly bonus increasing.

I'd have to do some searching for what the effective increase in xp was. It if was double what you got when artifacts launched, rank 100 became as easy as getting to rank 80 originally was. If it was quadruple, rank 120 became as easy as rank 80 originally was.

Another thing to remember, rank 180 won't likely improve the function of the artifact and would only be a stat increase. Currently, an artifact's special ability becomes active at rank 80, and increases at ranks 120 and 160. However, there are also breakthroughs at ranks 100 and 140.

The xp amounts listed in the OP are incorrect. Rank 180 would require a total of 1,340,000 XP, meaning only 670k xp more than rank 160. And rank 200 would require a total of 2,680,000 xp, or 1,340,000 xp more than rank 180. The pattern is each breakthrough xp requirement is double the last, not the difference between breakthroughs is double the amount of the total needed for the previous breakthrough.

im just now almost hitting 160

This Artifact-system has been milked and exploited upon enough as it is. The only thing i'd like to see if anything at all, is a few more, creative artifacts, granted they're not continuing down the path of gamebreaking imbalance.

Yeah I'm struggling to see how some artifacts can be increased without making them even more game breaking, Soul cloak and gemini already restore exhorbitant mounts of supercharge, you also imagine increasing that part of it. decreased the cool down on other shields more too. I mean list goes on really.

And adding a 4 slot so that I could carry around something like tetra > solar > EoG > soul cloak or flick one out for the scepter it's just going to get crazy.

Well like all good answers, depends. You need to analise the roles, the artifacts available and the buffs they could give.

Example, mancles pretty good, but next buff would give another 10% sheild reduction? That would be ok. Lazurus pit, so now u get up in every 20 mins? There almost no risk, seems broken. Now the combinations and prob where you wanted to go from the start, what if we instead add a new arti slot using a dps stand point, likely the part you wanted to explore.

If prec i would assume, EoG, Venom, and now you would go for legend AI or the prec heath based or the orbital one that no ones uses?

Or if you might, you would go for Solar Amplifier, Scrap, EoG and now either Tetrahedron or Orbital artifacts.

Since thoose last options seems usually kind of bad xd, compared to the others. I still would say a level increase is better then and augement increase. Because it gives abit more control to the devs. Plus down the road if a new artifacts comes down the road, it would be hard to take in consideration the new possibilitys. However if the 4th slot only allowed for a support/utility type of artifacts, i would consider pretty balence and k. Lets say if you a tank u can use 3 suppport/utility and 1 aggresive(like cog) and if you a dps you could use 3aggressive and 1support/utillity, would be pretty balence a system like this.

Not to mention that the only ones who would actually benefit off of a Rank increase given how it 99% will be an extreme increase just like 120 to 160 went down, are exploiters, other in-game billionaires and/or whoever can afford to waste their mortgage money on Marketplace Nth Metal.

I can swear there's an official announcement somewhere stating Artifacts were not supposed to be a Pay to Progress-type implementation that is considered a requirement towards character progression, either. It's grindy enough as it is, especially for those who decided not to completely exploit the Artifact Exp to max out their Artifacts.

You are correct Stealth. I messed up there but that is still A LOT of XP to say the least.

Yes, but as mentioned, with the previous bump in the max artifact rank, we also started earning xp faster. So what looks daunting based off of the amount of xp we currently get, could possibly end up being no different than the current time investment involved to get to rank 160 (0 to 160 now vs 0 to 200 after the change). It really just depends on if/how much the amount of nth metal we get increases.

That would definitely have to be a substantial boost but would make sense for them to do so. However, in doing so they will slightly nullify their 75k XP Token in the Marketplace. Of course they could always just release a 150k XP Token and charge $15 for it or something. Even then...150k XP token is nothing when you need over 2 million XP.

Except people, well financially astute people, I would say, wait for that double weekend and that 150k becomes 300k, which makes a bigger dent. The trouble though is that when you wait for double weekends, and I might add there hasn't been one now for 12 weeks and the last gap between the weekends was 9 weeks, you're naturally always playing catch up.

Neither.
Running 3 toons w/ both roles and keeping these up is enough. I get I am an oddity but still my thoughts

I salute you for playing multiple toons man. lol. No way I could keep up with multiple toons. I tried it once and it got old REAL fast.

Nomore new levels

4th slot is ok i guess

That's also why you are so damn good with one. Like Farmer with HL controlling
Sadly with running both roles on 1 toon you generally need more than 3 artifacts. Any more either by level or adding another is just too much IMO.

I'll take the 4th Artifact slot for 800 please Alex.

I don't particularly want either of those. I keep getting the feeling that these artifacts are being used as a band-aid to fix systemic problems instead of actually going in and fixing what's wrong with the game code. Are they fun? Sure. It's great to see options available, but once everyone figures out what the go-to ones are for each role, that's where everyone winds up.

All of my alts have artifacts that go to 80 and just stop, aint nobody got time for anything else

plus I run alts to get nth metal to feed my main and, my alts are my army of mules for everything, especially events.

I know some people would love to have Christmas every day of the year but too much of anything is not good. I'm not opposed to more artifacts and other things but.............


I would have to say this is not a very good idea.

1. We already have 3 slots and that's more than enough.
2. The artifacts are already strong enough and a couple are almost to the point of being game breaking in certain situations.