5 Art Slots & Locked Arts- An Alternative

Lol

I've personally never encountered this, as long as you know mechanics, have decent skill points and a good loadout for your power with your gear/arts up, you can run elite content. A player who is artifact swapping will always do more damage, but it's just how it is. There is always going to be some sort of skill gap. Every game is like that.

IMO, you don't need to artifact swap, especially if you don't want to. I have played heal role, DPS role, and tank role all without artifact swapping and got through elite. Trolls are really the only ones who have to artifact swap heavily as they're running shields and trying to buff both prec and might. I've never seen a group leave somebody out because they don't swap artifacts. I have, however, seen people get left out/kicked if they are a liability to the group, don't know mechanics, or just are not ready to run elite content.

Why not?

People are mostly talking about skill gap and balance but I think another important aspect is how bad swapping makes gameplay recordings look.

Nobody wants to watch a raid video with someone constantly opening their inventory to swap arts. Its also not great marketing for the game either.

Is it wrong that I've reached the point in my life/with this game where I'm just incredibly amused by people insisting that some sort of compromise be put into place because they are highly resistant to a change to the game's rules taking place?

Slight silliness aside, there is one comment I want to address:

The artifacts were made to be used. Period. Without input or commentary from the devs that designed/implemented those artifacts, that's the most we can say about what sort of idea they were made with. Just because you see some artifacts as only good for swapping doesn't necessarily mean that's what the devs envisioned for them. It gets a little close to putting the words into someone else's mouth, and that doesn't usually go well.

Changes to the game happen. Always have, always will. Best advice I could give is to see how well you can adapt or at the very least see how things actually play out before calling for compromises.

Maybe the compromise is a 180 second cool down before you can swap with a 5 sec swap window.

Statements like this always make me laugh .. I saw another person say the same thing the other day “it was designed to be a swap” as if they have some inside info none of the rest of us do.

They never back it up with a hard source and any push back to a silly claim like that is answered with “it’s just common sense”

Unless strictly stated, no artifact was designed with swapping in mind. Show me hard proof or else you are just assuming. (Not you but the idiots who spout stuff like that)

The compromise is you can’t swap anymore figure another way to chase the scoreboard I’m sure someone will find another unintended effect and share it on YouTube and it will catch on like wildfire .. be patient

I have never been kicked for not following mechs; however, believe it or not I have been kicked for following them. I have also been excluded from runs where I was told I needed a certain artifact set-up as a troll requiring Rao, which I had, BOP, and Hecate. I had buff arts on at the time. SP has never been an issue--at 904 at the moment.

Everyone has their own experiences with random people in the community...each more ridiculous than the other. I have encountered alot of the art swapping requirements as a troll as well as DPS. I haven't played any other roles in several years because of the allies and artifacts required by the community.

I suspect this is actually a more significant part of this decision than many realize.

When the 'best players in the game', who you hope are going to showcase your game in the best possible way make it look like 'Inventory Universe Online' it's going to get noticed... eventually.

I hope they add philosopher stone and dead king as their own personal slots.

Actually they did say that. It was stated a few times that arts were designed to function like gear and players can change (swap them). What wasn’t intended was the lingering effects that some arts had where you could remove them and their effects would persist.

When they first started talking about more slots, I did wonder if they were going to "add" more slots but then have them restricted to the more low utility ones as a way to keep the balance while also getting people to spend money on arts that were less popular.

I feel the lingering effects are one of the biggest problems they couldn't hurdle over if they didn't lock the artifacts. Sure, a lot of the newer artifacts were designed with swapping in mind, since they drop effects when swapped out, but quite a number of the older well established ones didn't get that fix.

I'm not so sure that is the case. I feel it is more towards what will sell. Yes, watching someone play piano with their inventory does paint a bad picture, but we all know that players paid quite a bit to get those "meta required" artifacts and I doubt people above cared as long as money is coming in. Which leads to why add another slot? Because they can't sell you MORE artifacts when you have established your BIS and SWAP selection. You gotta admit the trend with some of the recent artifacts being powerful, but only one to two have been considered "meta required", even when they are strong on their own.

Locking the slot will force the change and make it easier to sell you new artifacts. When you have many competing for best in 5 slots and another one comes out. You might actually consider it, since you don't have to think about on if it's a swap worthy or not.

Let's not forget what happened to precision. It was a viable play style and still is in certain circumstances. But cutting off the damage from flurry shot and nerfing smokebomb and backflip kick was a terrible decision. Add onto that newer abilities such as spore pod and shadow curse don't damage split and moreover Omega Totality is the behemoth of all artifacts. Once I started using Omega Totality and spore pod, going from precision for the last three years to might, my 6mil 10 second parses have now tripled. That isn't including henchman, pets, orbitals, or any sweaty swapping.

In short, the game has become somewhat limited in scope, pigeonholing players into certain weapons (brawling and dual wield) to be competitive/competent, and frankly if you aren't using Omega totality you are severely lacking in output. Hopefully they plan to release more variety of iconic abilities if no new powers are in the works. I used to love using iconic abilities before some of them became meta, even if it meant I wouldn't be topping the scoreboard.

Artifacts no longer should be considered gear and be treated like augments with their own UI tab. Some system can be implemented so that just like unlocking weapon masteries, more artifacts can be used with the obvious diminishing returns the further you go. Just as adding more skill points to ones might or precision nets less of a return passed 100 points. Gear has a larger effect on stats and so do artifacts and allies.

The first DLC to be released after the introduction of artifacts was episode 33 (Atlantis):

• Eye of Gemini (Any)
• Manacles of Force (Tank)
• Orb of Arion (Healer)
• Dead King's Scepter (Damage)

Then came episode 34 (JLD):

• Claw of Aelkhünd (Controller)
• Grimorium Verum (Damage)
• Mystic Symbol Of The Seven (Tank)
• Philosopher's Stone (Any)

There was no need to swap when those artifacts were made, simply because there was barely any artifacts to begin with! Of course, there were the other basic, less interesting one's that you get from Constantine's mission, but we ain't counting those, because no one cares.
If you want to much to keep those artifacts, you can put them in the new 2 slots. If you only want them so you can swap, then they don't matter as much to you. It's like when you collect a bunch of items in open world games and refuse to consume them because you think you might need them in the future, then you finish the game with an inventory full of stuff you didn't use.

They're not supporting the game, they're supporting Daybreak and EG7. They don't automatically reinvest our money back. That's not how it works. It's sad, but it's the truth.

My hot take is: opening inventory all of the time is the opposite of playing. In the entire history of video games, managing inventory is something you do out of combat, especially because they occupy most of or the entire screen. The only reason why DPS in this game were able to get away with doing that is because they have tanks and healers carrying them - if they get themselves killed, they just blame support. One of the first comments I read in this forum was someone saying that tanks and healers only exist so DPS can climb the ladder (board), and I can't tell the amount of times I saw someone calling a healer/tank weak when they were actually regular but weren't able to carry their bs.

Again: if you're not reading/seeing what's happening during the fight and are only pressing buttons, you're not playing the game, you're managing inventory. You can't even see the immediate results of your actions, just a bunch of numbers on the scoreboard. People love to say that this or that artifact was made to be swapped, but they conveniently forget that mechanics weren't made to be ignored.

I don't disagree, only wish to add that I think it will get to a certain point where action might get taken, despite any money flowing in, when your game struggles to attract new players because it looks like photosensitive seizure inducing trash with players opening and closing their inventory every 0.5s.

So while it wasn't likely the 'primary reasoning' behind the change I certainly think it was a considered concern.

In addition, you'll also note that a lot of new artifacts also require an additional power in the tray, so players are definitely being guided to think carefully about their artifact choices and live with the consequence of that choice in battle, so all the rest a side this change has slowly been drifting in for a while now regardless.