Dev Discussion Seeking Thoughts on Fortify System

Discussion in 'Concluded' started by Sammiford, Mar 2, 2021.

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  1. L T Devoted Player

    What I hate about the fortify process is that a lot of times you can over-consume-- i.e. 1 exobyte would have maxed things out but 4 got consumed. This is more of an issue for the special fortify items like Halloween, JL Dark, and Wonderverse than for Augments and Artifacts though.
    • Like x 5
  2. TheEnquirer Active Player

    They should create a special exobyte where any leftover XP from leveling an augment automatically gets turned into it. It seems simple enough, right? Put in Exos > Calculate leftover > Designate specific exobyte with the remaining amount
    • Like x 3
  3. AV Loyal Player

    Being able to overconsume XP is also a big advantage though in that it lets us more deeply pre-load older augs to feed into the new ones when they come out or for similar purposes.
    • Like x 2
  4. MrStoob Well-Known Player

    Not sure if it was specifically mentioned above (TL;DR) but...

    Removing maxed arts/augs from the fortify list would be a welcome quality of life change. The one you need to upgrade will invariably be near bottom of the list, as it will has less XP than those maxed. Scrolling up and down the list can be annoying, particularly if your list is long because you're still using augs from each episode.

    Thanks.
    • Like x 6
  5. Zeph El New Player

    My biggest issues with the fortify system are having such low breakthrough percentages (and no Seals of Completion anywhere but the Marketplace) and the clutter of "food" for the arts/augments that fills our bags and inventory.
    • Like x 7
  6. Penryn The Gadgeteer

    One of the things I dislike about the Fortify system is the default sorting order for Exobytes for Origin Augments. When you start to scroll through a long list of Exobyte stacks in the Fortify menu, you will see a slapdash sorting. You may see some Mk 15 exobytes, followed by Flawed Mk 14 exobytes, followed by some other Mk 15 exobytes, followed by more Mk 14 exobytes, and it all just ends up being a gigantic mess. If you are only wanting to use "Mighty" Exobytes for your Might-based Origin Augment, you have to manually scan the entire list very carefully. There is no way to sort the Exobytes based on their Type modifier (Example: Might, Precision, etc...). The low-stacking size for Exobytes only exacerbates the situation.

    If you have a lot of Artifacts, Augments, and Exobytes, it is very easy for the UI to bug out. When that happens, you have to go to a different inventory tab, swap back to the Fortify Menu, and start the process over again.

    On that note, the Fortify menu becomes more unwieldly the longer you've played the game. If you've been around for a long time, you'll have a long list of Artifacts and Adaptive Augments. Searching through those subsections can be a pain since the only sorting criteria are "is the artifact/augment equipped" and "Rank". If you only care about leveling up an Origin Augment, you have to scroll past your long lists of Artifacts and Adaptive Augments to get to the Origin Augments section.
    • Like x 7
  7. Zamara Dedicated Player

    One thing i didn't see mentioned is how artifacts that are imprinted into an armory show up to be fed into other artifacts but the ones marked as important don't. Why is it not like it is for items? items that are marked as important or imprinted to armories don't show up in the salvage/sell/donate menus so why do artifacts only get greyed out when marked as important but not when assigned to armories? you have to mark them on top of imprinting them to keep them safe from being accidentally fed into a new one
    • Like x 2
  8. Apollonia Dedicated Player

    - I feel like I'm being exploited and ripped off by the breakthrough system because of the exceptionally high failure rates on Artifacts. Bc of this I'm only buying Completions on sale days with DI bucks.
    - I feel frustrated and like my time is being wasted with "busy" work when being forced to breakthrough on Episode augments. I don't like that they exist at all and wish they were just more Origins. I know you guys want to make sure players have something to work towards every DLC but I resent it and it makes me less likely to participate.
    - Really like how Origins are handled. They're simple and fun and no gatekeeping from paywalls or paywalls by proxy.
    - Annoyed at the way the Augments and all items that can be fortified are organized/stored. The list is getting long. They need to be organized into their own inventories/box categories or something.
    - The exobyte system is totally forgotten now. I don't imagine people combine them at all via R&D anymore. Or it's super rare they do.
    - I really dislike how the fortify system is parallel to our character stats instead of our main character stats. I wish our gear was totally replaced by the stats from our Origin augments. I'm a meta character so it doesn't make sense that I get any stats from gear. It should come from me DNA. Same if you're magic -- it should come from Tomes etc. Tech is fine I guess but I with there was more layers to this aspect of character creation and the game diverged away from the standard Fantasy MMO gear collection system.
    • Like x 5
  9. MrMigraine Devoted Player

    This may be mildly off topic, but it does use the Fortify system, so I'm considering it to be fair game. :D

    I really, really like what has been done with the Items of Omnipotence in the Long Live The Legion Episode. The crafting aspect is fantastic, using infinitely farmable (though rare) materials. It's something I've wanted to be part of OP item acquisition ever since the Starro Event. I hope it's the kind of thing that continues into new episodes (no more Collection collecting as a necessary component, please). Belated Kudos, and keep up the good work!

    On to the questions you actually asked: my only real issue with the UI has already been mentioned: the tendency for the fortifying process to glitch out when trying to apply Nth Metal more than once. I usually have to exit the menu, and start any second fortifying process over. I'm on PS4 and have never had any problems understanding the system.

    (Also, welcome to the team and the boards!)
    • Like x 4
  10. StealthBlue Loyal Player

    I would say the most frustrating thing at this point from a UI/UX standpoint is that scrolling stops working randomly, especially when you need to scroll down far in the list for what you want to rank up and/or what you want to use as XP. The sorting of XP and adaptive augments are also both annoying and appear haphazard.

    There have been some suggestions for helping with the long list, but I think the easiest thing to add would be the ability to collapse sections when picking what you want to rank up. For example, on two of my alts I'm working on the last origin augment for each role. So when I'm loading xp into them, after I finish with one I currently have to scroll back down the list again. If I could collapse artifacts and adaptive augments, it would save a lot of time scrolling and prevent a possible lock in the the window where your cursor moves down but the window stops scrolling down. Also, giving an option to filter to what you have equipped could help as well, so you can hide large chunks of the list.

    On my main, the order of my adaptive augments is currently my two equipped legion, two warsuit power cores, one platinum engraving, two dark phlacteries, then a second platinum engraving, all at rank 23. I finished the second platinum engraving long before i finished the second dark phylactery (I didn't have much time to play during JLD), so the order isn't based on when I broke through at rank 23, it just appears random.

    On the XP, I can't figure out how it's sorted. It's not the order from your inventory, when you got it, or they type of xp, it's just completely random. Ideally, I would want xp not marked important to show up first in the list. I currently save all nth metal 200xp and above for a double xp on fortification week. Usually all that "important" xp is grouped together in my inventory, but new xp is scattered throughout the important ones when I go to the fortification screen. Also, for adaptive augments, it would be nice if the xp was grouped by type (might, dom, etc) with the type matching the loaded augment type listed first.
    • Like x 4
  11. N-IX Well-Known Player

    system much too expensive with little chance of breakthrough except by taking out the wallet
    • Like x 3
  12. KN1TE Dedicated Player

    Yes mark them and save to armory then. I also store my other role Artifacts in the bank. So when I switch armories, all my gear and artifacts from other roles, goes in the bank. No accidental deleting, salvaging, or absorbing gear or artifacts that way.
    • Like x 2
  13. MyDpsIsBetter Dedicated Player

    I agree with above posters once level 23 is reached the buffs should be permanently absorbed. This would be a major QoL improvement.
    • Like x 6
  14. Illumin411 Loyal Player

    I’m not sure if you mean specifically the UI in the upgrade page or the braoder system that is all things artifact, augments, exobytes, catalysts etc. If the latter, my biggest gripe BY FAR was the change when Wonderverse dropped to no longer allow any exobytes other than that DLC’s exobytes to be fed in to the augments foe that DLC which also removed the 50% bonus for using the DLC exobytes and color matched exobytes.

    Nearly every time people complain about things costing money and the paywall I’m one of the first to jump to DI’s defense. I remind people that you guys are a business and need revenue to be profitable which is needed to keep the game going. I remind people that something of value is being offered for their money. Before the Wonderverse change, the player base went from a system that had been in place since augments were introduced and allowed us to level up the augments within a couple weeks just running non-locked content every day without even replaying. You’d probably have to buy a quarter of the catalysts off the broker or marketplace but that wasn’t too bad. That system worked just fine and dandy.

    But the new system introduced in Wonderverse reduced our options to either dropping half a billion on broker, paying for replays and spamming content paying for the exobytes and catalysts off the broker or waiting 2+ months to get the leveled up. In other words, It forced us to sacrifice exorbitant amounts of wither DC cash, realy cash or our valuable time. As I said above, I’ve always defended D.I.’s rijght and duty to to offer the playerbase things of value and putting a price on it. That’s the entire point of a business after all and your customer iss is free and o take the new thing or leave i . But in this case, nothing of additional value from what we had the previous DLC’s was being offered in exchange for the skyrocketed prices we would now have to have to pay. Essentially, from a general business standpoint, you took value away the players and then turned around and charged them for it. That is NEVER a Good business strategy.
    • Like x 2
  15. MrStoob Well-Known Player

    I'd still like the option to be able to burn up an aug to upgrade another one though - just removing maxed items from the Fortify list would do I think.
    • Like x 1
  16. Sammiford Developer


    Thanks! Could you elaborate on "archive unequipped" items? How could that help your overall experience with this system?
  17. BumblingB I got better.

    Probably so they don't show up in the list. Kind of like the RND table, you can archive the many obsolete plans, which helps with scrolling with a controller.
    • Like x 3
  18. PsySomatic Extra Life 2020

    BumblingB hit the nail on the head. It is not nearly as bad as the R&D station menu, as I have hundreds of plans and I almost dread having to use it, but it will likely get there eventually.

    Having the ability to archive unequipped items in that list would help out a lot, especially later when and if we have hundreds of items to scroll through.
    • Like x 2
  19. Fer3 New Player

    Can y’all please add a gender change token
    • Like x 1
  20. Sammiford Developer

    Hello all! Thank you very much for the feedback. It has all been very helpful. There were definitely some common themes amongst all of the comments, so that's great for us to know that there are some specific issues everyone is experiencing with the Fortify System.

    Again, much appreciated! Keep a lookout for the next UX-esq post, we'll look forward to hearing from you all again.
    • Like x 6
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