I Can't Stand Artifacts

How many 60% breakthroughs am i supposed to fail before i breakthrough?
Failed 7 in a row.
It ate all my sops' then all my cats.
I mean how much time and money am i supposed to invest?
I had over 700 source marks now im down to where i better keep the small amount i have left.
This is stupid. Im tired of artifacts. TIRED OF THEM.

You put something in the game that's more of a headache than something to enjoy the game with.
People are gonna be CHECKIN ME for the arts i have this next dlc for sure and i cant even breakthrough to the middle point?!

I cant even breakthrough to 100. Somethings gotta change.
I dont wanna hear about makin money, THEYRE BANKING FOR SURE.
Im not gonna shell out to rank an artifact to the rudimentary 100.
Sick of these things.

Rant over lol

Trust me you arent the only with this feeling me & 3 friends have the same distaste for artifacts.

When you consider the time you spent to earn all the Source Marks it takes to buy a bunch of cats for a breakthrough, to me its worth the price of a SOC or another pack or two of SOP's to do the Breakthrough. I have never liked this 'Breakthrough' system; I first saw it in Neverwinter, and when I saw it in this game I almost yelled 'OH NO! Not again!'
But, it is what it is.
I don't think you should have to do any Breakthroughs until you hit 80, especially now with all the various Artifacts available. But again, I doubt they will ever change it.

If you insist on a breakthrough system then it should be at the milestones... 80, 120, 160, and 200.

I could go into a long thing about artifacts, but rather than write an essay, here are the main points:

• they are a crutch for low SP characters so they don’t have to necessarily go back and run all the old feats in the old content that nobody queues any more
• they have unintended consequences... meaning they cause problems or expose underlying ones
• we have so many of them to choose from, but if you don’t use whatever is in the current meta, forget it... this makes it a lot like the “one true loadout” from advanced mechanics days; updates to the effects of some of them rather than new ones would be nice
• they always were intended to be yet another source of revenue

500 loyalty points to buy only one Seal of Completion doesn't seem too fair. If we go by you pretty much need them by lvl 160 and you still three breakthroughs on one Artifact with three Artifacts on only one main toon not counting another three for your support builds that basically goes bare minimum it would take nine months at best to level up there Artifacts. On only one toon. Assuming it was only three Artifacts you chose for one role. Paying for a monthly subscription membership to being told the only way you can play is paying added costs not including Time Capsules also or inventory space other stuff etc doesn't feel like a deal for a game.

If i had bought another pack of SOP's it wouldve eaten those too. I had used 3 already, and i think there's a pretty large consesus that you don't use SOC's on an 100 breakthrough. I sure wouldnt do it, i havent had to do it, and it would be a waste.

Imagine you're going towards a goal with odds in your favor and the wildly inconsistent rng or whatever keeps moving the goal post at the same time taking your resources along with it. It DISCOURAGES you from playing the game. If i wanna fast track it and take my chances again i would have to spend money for replays or......run a BUNCH of raids, etc the old fashioned way again for who knows how long.

Im batting 1000 in a category i dont wanna be batting 1000 in, so would you wanna go back up to bat?

I expected to fail a couple times maybe 3 or 4, although i think its crap, but 7 times is ridiculous and im not cool with it at all.

I think they should set it so there are a max number of failures per level of Breakthrough you can have to avoid what you went through. I don't like this particular system. I do think the SOC's are too expensive considering you pretty much need them after, what, 120? If you have 6 Arts per toon, that is a lot as Dominic Blue said. It's just that I hate to see someone burning through a lot of catalysts that cost a bunch of Source Marks on multiple attempts. That's a lot of grinding.
I believe many people have suggested giving out SOC's as rewards in addition to having them on the MP. That would help a lot.

I've said it before plenty of times on this forum that my one single major gripe with this game is artifact breakthrough. on the whole, I like artifacts, but I hate the lousy cash-grab aspects of the system. I get it, I understand the game needs to make money, of course I do, & I'm more than happy to drop cash on the game whenever I can, but I don't like feeling like I'm being forced into having to spend money I can ill afford just to level up. if it were down to me, there would be no failures at any breakthrough.

either have seals ( both preservation & completion ) drop in content in-game, or do away with the need for them.

Seals should be craftable for marks and catalysts so you are not forced to buy them. I stopped to care about high level artifacts but nothing will change how ridiculous this kind of business is, it's probably the worst cash grab scheme in the history of videogames. The probabilities are stupidly low, the xp required is stupidly high and the catalysts are all expensive (but at least you can get them for free).

The breakthrough system for artifacts is ridiculous. The cost in experience and catalysts for ranking up artifacts is more than enough as it is.

Leveling an artifact to a high rank like 160 or 200 would require months of farming Source Marks and Nth metal which is totally fine. The costs are already high enough that the many players who don't want to wait that long can and do purchase catalysts and Nth metal from the marketplace to accelerate this process.

The addition of the breakthrough system on top of that is just unnecessary and such a blatant cash grab. After either many months or many dollars needed to acquire the materials, Daybreak turns around and says, "Now pay us even more money or we'll most likely just take those materials you farmed/purchased and destroy them giving you nothing in return."

I have no problem with artifacts themselves. It's this extra unnecessary forced purchase that turns many people off.

Whoops... forgot one other major point...

• It makes the ability to effectively run alts at end-game levels difficult.

Honestly, if they arent going to give us any way in game to earn seals, they should at the very least think about putting both of them in the quark vendor. They are still getting money from TCs and they can make them cost a thousand quarks for the seal of completion for all I care. Just give us something other than the marketplace.

At least with DCUO, there is an opportunity to 100% a breakthrough via PoC. I've played other MMOs with upgrade systems where the higher level upgrade successes are nigh on impossible (KnightOnline for e.g.).

I especially hate having the episode augment breakthroughs on top of artifact breakthroughs.

The artifact system complete in my opinion should be removed.... Ever since arts was introduced into the game skill points and gear are not as important anymore... It helps but not necessary..... Unfortunately while DCUO are suffering and is in need support roles have 3 that are just sitting in my account collecting dust because of these arts....

Ugh, I feel your pain. I want to play so bad on my alts, but I can't, because they keep bringing up new, better artifacts and I just hate how I level up a good artifact on an alt and then they end up bringing a similar one, but better and it's a never ending loop.

It feels like nothing's ever enough, just keep spending money on artifacts so you can be accepted in raids...

Poor cats...he ate them all

Correct me if I'm mis-reading this but I don't think you hate artifacts as much as you hate the advancement percentages. I can't see many making an argument against those.

I've said this before but one time on test, on a whim I thought I'd see how many attempts it'd take to break through to 160 and had 26 (IIRC might have been more) consecutive fails.

So with that in mind, I just save my sub stipend and straight up buy seals of completion. Also I mitigate my expectations for alts. IE I don't bother trying to level over 120 and even then I will only use freebie seals of pres for them.

All that said I personally think artifacts are a needed layer of customization for the game. I get that they are a revenue stream for DB but I think they can look at ways to make them a little more viable accross the board without killing the golden goose.

I think you nailed one of the biggest problems in this game, Skill Points. Skill points mean nothing in this game for a long time now. Artifacts make it worse. I do wish they could figure out a system to make them mean something. Having a giant health pool, as a might player, just doesn't matter. Healers can't heal a one shot, which is usually what people die from, not dots.

What I would like to see? Leave the current system as is, but add to it. It would take forever to redo everything. Why have they not thought or implemented a system for leveling up powers in my loadout. Its great we get access to all our powers at level 30. Whoohoo! From their, why not build a system that can and should, reward long time players and grinders? Just a random example. Say I'm earth and use jackhammer. Let me start putting skill points, past what I need to max the might and power, into jackhammer. A level 30 player we with 50 SP should not hit the same as a level 30 player with 473 sp. Makes no sense. This could be done with weapons also, for those prec peeps out there. Say you've capped your precision and have another 200sp left over. Why not be able to spec them into your weapon combo to strengthen it?

Our current system is so outdated and does not really reward playing the game long term. Hard or long grindy feats just make no sense if the reward is not worth it. And it has not felt worth it in years.

This is exactly why for the last 2 episodes I haven't bought a total of 2 pieces of vendor gear. I went through all of metal 2 with metal 1 elite, and this episode I only bought 2 pieces of elite to keep my affinities up. All purple gear with max augs/arts is more than enough and I have no issue even scoreboard chasing against 80% of the dps out there with the same arts and max cr. When the gear goes to source marks for half price I'll buy it all then for the feats. This next episode will be even easier with the new rings and neck counting towards affinity.

Funny story. Up until around the middle of BOP, people were telling me I couldn't join their group because I "wasnt at least 300cr". I would even tell them I was max augs/arts with 500+sp. Finally I told one player that if they add me to the group I would pay everyone else in the group 100mill if I was the last dps on the board at the end. But if I got first, they had to pay me 100mill. In the end I didnt accept their money and I met some new and great people that I ended up playing with a lot this episode.

I'm not trying to brag or anything, the purpose of the story is that CR no longer matters. And while SP are still great to have, they are really just sprinkles on top of the artifact sundae now