Dev Discussion Seeking Thoughts on Fortify System

Hi all, my name is Sam and I am a UX Designer relatively new to the team. For those of you who don't know what UX is - it stands for 'User Experience,' and that's what I design for! Essentially I focus on designing systems that players like you get to interact with, and I do it all by talking to players and finding out what exactly their experiences are when playing the game. That way we can learn your thoughts/likes/heartaches/loves (game related, please) and therefore make decisions based off of your needs. And today we need your help!

We’re interested in your opinions of the current “Fortify” system - what you use to level up your Artifacts and Augments. We’re looking for a wide range of thoughts on it, so please feel free to share anything you can think of.

Some aspects to consider may be the intuitiveness (is it easy to understand?), interaction flow (are any of the steps frustrating or cumbersome?), usefulness (can you do and see what you need?), or just overall design.

We are specifically looking for areas of the current system that stand out in your experience and why in order to help direct our focus. Try to think about how you feel when you encounter these areas. We are less in need of your specific suggestions or redesigns right now, but again, all thoughts are welcome!

P.S.

It is also helpful to let us know if you are playing on a PC or console (keyboard/mouse or controller) and how that influences your experience. Thank you!

Just to clarify, is this just regarding the fortify process/system/effects, or is this regarding breakthroughs and breakthrough chances?

Welcome by the way!

The worst thing I find on the "Fortify" UI is having to place the seals each time. If I do several attempts in a row it's too easy to miss the seal. Some remind would be nice.

I think the user experience side of the fortify process is absolutely fine. I could offer feedback about the actual milestone numbers themselves and what can be used to fortify what assets, but I don’t think that’s the area you’re seeking feedback for.

I personally dislike the episode specific augments they should have a 100% succes to reach next rank its really annoying to use a seal for this even though seals were for artifacts.

I also would prefer if we only get 1 episode augment for the episodes and not 2 because its too grindy to have 2 for each episode.

Also these augments shouldnt have any effect on combat related stats or buffs in any episode. They can be anything else like more marks gained or maybe something like a shorter raid reset timer? But it should not have any stats buff or immunity or reduction to certain bosses/raids etc

Considering how grind-worthy this game has become in the last year, the system could be better. ESPECIALLY if you have multiple characters. After completion or acquisition of maxed augments / gear, the discounts should be more pronounced while leveling up a secondary and third character. I would love to know the statistics on how many players have more than one character, I'm going to hazard a guess and say it's over 80%? I'll list some of my grievances down below.

Artifacts

• Losing 50% XP (that you paid heavily for) to switch artifacts is way too much
• The purposefully impossibly breakthroughs at higher ranks
• Following the previous point, the need for excessive materials (catalysts, seals, XP) to level
• Secondary roles take a back seat here unless you spend hundreds of dollars
• The synergy that was promised but not delivered between certain artifacts / playstyles
• The meta of 3-4 of the same artifacts for roles like dps and troll when we have 10+ for each
• The first 4 points, but multiplied by every toon you have

I've definitely maxed out my artifacts and won't be switching or buying anymore, even when double xp comes out. I've had a good run with artifacts, but they've gotten a bit out of hand. I just want to re-iterate that the majority of players have or are spending significant amounts of money, only to end up with lackluster results.

Augments

• Relatively decent leveling progression
• Grinding materials for breakthroughs are a bit excessive (exacerbated once again by having multiple characters)
• Materials should have a chance at dropping from OW bounties if we're going to continue having to grind
• Secondary roles take a back seat for a good percentage of players, especially those in the competitive scene, for an extended period of time after a DLC drops, unless you spend money to quickly level them

The UI is a bit daunting the more artifacts, augments, and now gear (OP face) you have. Perhaps a filter to sort by leveled vs. non leveled items, that way you don't have to scroll to the bottom of your fortify tab to find the one not maxed, then do it again after every time you put resources in.

I think I second this. If you have seals, they should auto-equip into the slot as catalysts do.

I think the episode head mods shouldn't have breakthroughs anymore the amount of stuff needed to level them up is more then enough without having to deal with losing everything because you don't want to spend extra on top of paying for the episodes or membership.

I play on both PS4 and PC, but mostly on PS4. I personally don't have a problem with understanding how to use the feature itself.. The breakthrough chances, XP requirements, Catalyst Lost, etc are something that bothers me though.

But in regards to the interactive flow/cumbersomeness of the menus, I think it would be nice if we could archive unequipped augments/artifacts.

Also, I don't know if it is intended, but on PS after pushing through some XP the menu locks up and I have to back out of that menu in order to put in more XP. And it is pretty annoying when you have a lot of XP to use.

Good question! Thanks for asking for clarification. Let's stick to the fortify process & system for now. If the breakthrough feature is something that you can't leave out when talking about this then by all means include it, but we're looking for thoughts concerning the layout, interactions, and overall feel of using the system.

The fortify system is pretty intuitive as it stands. There is a mini tutorial guide on how it works for the first time and sometimes reappears when attempting to fortify a new artifact.

One aspect that gets annoying is the scrolling through the list of augments you want to upgrade or use gets longer and longer. Most people tend to feed their old adaptive augments to feed their new ones, but at the same time some people keep their old ones to help others get specific feats or to help mitigate damage in certain raids. With that said, I sometimes keep 4 from an episode for DPS/Support. With the amount of new episodes and adaptive augments this gets cumbersome to constantly scroll through the list to search and feed/place augments at any given time.

Even if you aren't like me and keep 4, at most if you keep old ones you would most likely keep 2. That means we have Titans, Atlantis, JLD, Metal I, Metal II, BoP, Wonderverse, and now LLL. That is 16 adaptive augments we have to scroll through each and every time we are running older content. To make matters worse, they aren't categorized by episodes and sometimes the partner augment can be towards the top of the list, while the other is at the bottom.

EXAMPLE:


If nothing can be done about the amount we have to shuffle through, at the very least can they be categorized by episode/role? Like for example have Titans first and LLL toward the bottom with also having support right after that like it is with vendor gear. Also possibly a toggle sort option to have newer augments at the top and oldest at the bottom still keeping the organization of the list like in the on duty menu.

PS

Welcome to the team and hopefully you can carve your way here.

Oh! Welcome Sammiford! Nice to meet a new face (online.)

A few of points.

• There needs to be an option to automatically choose for you the next Seal if the breakthrough was unsuccessful. It's rather annoying that you can have 20 seals in your inventory, but have to put them in individually every failure. One misclick and you have to go acquire all the catalysts again.
• Can we have an add all nth metal to the system? It's just a nice quality of life option. That way we can just hit one button and hit try.
• Can we have an auto-level option, like other games have? Where you can choose how many levels or attempts to try before stopping?
• Can we have more than just the few slots for exp?
• Can you tell whoever is in charge of stacking to make exobytes stack more than 4 as well as any same type of exp to stack together?

Thank you!

Losing all that xp when you switch artifacts is crazy greedy in my opinion.

It's ridiculous for us to be limited to 4 per stack.

I’m an Xbox guy. Six artifacts for one toon with two roles costs a lot, and worse off by the time you get them all to lvl 80, better artifacts may have dropped meaning you might have to replace some of them. The source mark drain for this also means you don’t have marks to buy gear with to get your cr up, dragging your cr progression to a near halt. I think it’s weird to spend several hundred marks to upgrade an artifact just to have a high chance of losing them all with a failed break through, feels too much like straight up gambling. As frustrating as this is for me who has played for a while, I can’t imagine what a new player must go through spending all this time on an artifact that might not even be worth his time. Typical console players expect games to be intuitive and not need to consult the internet for basic build information. Sure a console guy may check the internet to beat a puzzle or difficult mission, but not to figure out basic build info. I think console players and PC players have far different expectations when coming to the game and many of these aspects may seem normal for a PC gamer but off putting to a console player. I think this is why the forums seem so polarized on many of these issues.

I think once we get a head augment to 23 we should keep its effects for that episode forever. Once a new episode is out these head aumgents use up space in the UI if you still need them to do some feats in elites. Also due to grindy concept of them is very likely if we still need a feat from the older episode's elite we still feed them into the new head augments because everyone wants to finish new content fast. If we want to keep the older head aumgents they can be feed accidently into new ones by distractions.
About the "body augments" maybe summarize them better in a grid.

Breakout chances should be always 100%. Imagine if you save money for a car and when you get to go buy it theres a chance that the guy that is selling it, doesn't actually want to sell it, but takes all your money and you have to start again from 0 if you are not willing to pay more for a chance to keep the money if the guys doesnt want to sell it after all.....

I feel the flaws with the system are a result of UI inventory management limitations and not the fortify system itself, with the following being the biggest detractors:

- Manually opening thousands of individual Nth Metal Caches instead of having a "open x number of caches" option.
- The fortify UI (and also the Augment UI) starts to derp out when a player has a lot of different augments in that exp items, Artis, and augs sometimes disappear from the listed order until scrolling up and down repeatedly

Welcome!

- episode specific augments should be one, and not two per episode. No chances at breakthroughs. It should be 100% success rate. The grinding of the catalyst is a bit wild if you like to run multiple characters.

- the scrolling in the fortify augments can get a little aggravating when you have alot of XP to burn through. Having a way to archive augments you aren't using for that armory would be a great option if it was able to be implemented with the current UI.

WHY ARE EXOBYTES LIMITED TO 4??!!??!! PLEASE CHANGE THIS, I SPEAK FOR 100% OF THE POPULATION!

Speaking of episode specific augments. If this system continues, sometimes players like to or are forced to keep them even after the life of an episode because of whatever reason whether that be just because, renown, or helping friends in lower content get elite feats who dont have the augments ranked (FGSe for example). I dont know how, but maybe find a way to maybe not get rid of the current episode augment system but enhance it. Having multiple episode augments gets clunky if you decide to keep all of them. Scrolling and equipping ect, it's a hassle.

Good ideas. I agree with once 23 level achievement you get the feat. and buff from the episode going forward. To cumbersome to change artifacts around for each episode and sounding like a broken record, "remember you head mods for..."

There should only be 2 head mods. One for damage role and one for your support role. If your in damage role the one is active. Other role, the other is active. The feat.s could be role specific for your roles buff. Or just make both active if that's easier. But have a feat. for damage and support head augments, one a piece only. This would encourage more people to run roles. I only get 2 damage augments maxed to 23 on my main and skip the healer role augments. My other 6 toons of level just get the free ones to level 11. Too much to grind up the real augments. Especially because of breakthru failure rates.

If you go to run say DMElite and you want to have your head mods for that one...it can be difficult to remember what head augment is what. And if you just put it in your head slots manually, but didn't save it to both roles armories, and your healer or tank is knocked out you have to switch your roles, the augments are switched also, meaning you may miss out on whatever missing bonus that episode head augments give.

In wonderverse bounties currently, if you just go run the bounties but don't wear the head mods, you miss out on extra mods. I have missed out on marks from not putting them in or from switching to another role because that role healer, troll, tank is needed to defeat the boss with the group.

With the idea that they disappear at level 23, they should automatically be installed based on the content your running. So running Phoenix Cannon (Elite) raid, your metal part 2 head mods show installed when inspected, however, they are no seen in your augment list. I believe earth 3 had a feat. where once you got the whole gear set you got extra marks in content. So attribute the feat. the buffs not necessarily the installed augments and level.

Literally a great example of what I stated above with enhancing the system. They should be permanent after reaching level 23 without having to actually keep the episode specific augments.