Type 3 Augments

Discussion in 'The Veterans' Lounge' started by Rykear, May 14, 2013.

  1. Rykear Elder

    All,

    In the past, I have upgraded the power source and spell enhance type three augments but, the cost seems to have exceeded what I am willing to pay or farm to replace going from tier 1 to tier 4.

    In the past, it seemed like I would hold off and upgrade the tier 4 armor and have playable time to use it before the next new expansion. Now, my playing has changed as I know have several alternate characters which I also advance but the general replacement/installment plan would be the same. Install items in tier 1 and tier 4 or tier 4 only.

    With the new model for expansion rollout, this does not seem viable as either a main character or main with alternates characters. Is this intended? To elaborate, this would be an area where you could distinguish between more played characters to casual players. Is this intended to be the separation or, is this something to be improved in the development process of the game?

    What are your thoughts?


    Rykear
  2. Recnarp Augur

    The devs really want to control stat inflation, so I would imagine they feel the same way about type 3s. Back then, everything use to be a minor upgrade, now its a barely noticeable upgrade.
  3. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    You are intended to progression from Tier 1 -> Tier 2 -> Tier 3 -> Tier 4 in your armor progression. Of course, no one ever did this for a couple reasons:

    1) In previous expansions (SoF -> VoA) bad design choices made Tier 1 (and in some cases Tier 2) WORSE than the previous expansions' top tier. This was due to thinking that creating bridging content was anything except a giant waste of time and resources that should be spent adding -higher- content to the game. Rather than create 4 completely new and better tiers, they made 1-2 tiers a freebie so that upgraded gear started in Tier 2-3 instead of Tier 1. The only exception to this was of course, Underfoot, where Tier 1 was better than the previous top tier.

    The effect of this is that people simply skipped most of the lower tier gear because it wasn't useful, meaning that 25-50% of the time spent making that gear was wasted development time.

    2) You never actually had to. Content in these expansions was never tuned to require that you complete the previous tier (of gear) before being able to do content in the next tier. The only exception to this, (sort of), is again Underfoot, where the values on mobs were actually tuned to require that you max out one tier before you are able to withstand (barely) the next tier of content. Of course, people then complained it was too hard, and those with short memories compared it to pre-nerf GoD to which it wasn't even close.

    The effect of this is that people simply skipped Tier 2-3 and went straight to Tier 4 because they could. If people can sprint directly to the finish line without having to follow the predesignated course route, they will.


    RoF changed that. Staggering content out over the year means they can't make Tier 1-2 a throwaway freebie anymore or people will get pissed at no upgrades. It also means that people can no longer just sprint to the end and go Tier 4 -> Tier 4, because there is no Tier 4, (yet). I mean, technically they could, but it would mean going for 3/4 of the year without upgrading while you wait, and people aren't going to do that.

    The effect of this is that people actually have to follow the intended progression. (Sorta, T1 could still be skipped even if it is better than VoA T4). Now people are being hit with the cost of having to replace all those Type 3 augments in 3-4 sets of gear. They removed the plat sink in making the actual armor, but that still won't be enough to offset the cost.

    What I think they should do is add a new "Type 3 Augment Distiller" to the vendors at a 7.5k plat price point. This would make them half the cost of a new type 3 augment. Players would still be required to shell out the full amount at least once per expansion, but after that they only have to pay 50% to continue to use them. You would essentially get 3 "sets" of augments for the price of 2 and 3 is all most people are going to get anyway. I have no idea how difficult it would be to add a new type of distiller, so if it is too much for that, Plan "B" is cut the price of Type 3 augments by 1/3rd, it would have the same effect. (Mostly).


    tl;dr
    Add "type 3 augment distillers." Make them cost 50% of the cost of Type 3 augments. If they can't, cut the price of Type 3 augments by 1/3rd.
    Reprisal and Kyreth like this.
  4. Rykear Elder

    Beimeith,

    I do not necessarily mind the current form if it was by design meant to create differences between toons based on playtime.

    I, howevever, like the distiller idea. Would save the time from farming more power source augmentations and cut down the costs for the spell enhancers!


    Thanks for your reply,

    Rykear
  5. fransisco Augur

    You forget 1 big thing Beimeith. After an expansion is no longer the current one, people still need to be able to level up through it. It entering the t1 zones requires you to have geared up in the t3/t4 zones of the previous expansion (Which is probably still locked behind lots of progression), the bar for leveling up would be placed even hire.
    The Devs are making things with the life of the game in mind, not just the current expansion. The price of a few type 3 augs is definately worth it.
  6. Jhenna_BB Proudly Prestigious Pointed Purveyor of Pincusions

    I only use the Irae for my Splash-back nuke because it's on a regular spell cooldown and not 45 seconds and the cost. I find my quick heal is always up when I need to cast a heal at all which negates my need for my somewhat useful Salus aug too.

    I'd rather stick to all my old LDoN augs thank you very much. Other classes might have more use for Irae and Salus augs but to me only a Raiding Ranger would bother to squeeze out every ounce of dps.

    You can keep your money sink.
  7. Tarvas Redwall of Coirnav, now Drinal

    T1 HoT, VoA, and RoF are great stopping points for toons to pick up some easy gear. Glad it is in there.
  8. Beimeith Lord of the Game

    If you are still leveling up then you shouldn't be in the newest content in the first place. If you haven't completed the "old" content, then the "old" content is actually still "new" content to you. The only people that really have a valid grief with this are casters because of focus decay, but even that has been mostly mitigated to not matter.

    Not to mention that people will always find ways to skip ahead. The Squires in Crystallos originally hit like a train. People still skipped the intermediate tiers of gear and just 2 grouped them. I'm not suggesting that is a good situation, I'm just pointing out that when they make content harder, people find ways to compensate and still get it done.