I will say Green Gems strike me as a tad expensive. 75 per would be acceptable without devaluing them I feel.
They lost my recurring sub with this crazy etyma mess regardless of how many doodads or gizmos or hoo-ha's everyone else has. If you've accumulated that many, then clearly there wasn't enough places to actually spend them to make it worth the time it took to get them. (despite them being a simple byproduct of running the same zones over and over). Soon you'll have 50k etyma and it'll be the same scenario with whatever comes down the pipe next. SoE will come out with the octogon adorn slot that'll obsolete all the etyma. But the octogon adorn will have 2 "procs" instead of just the one. Then we'll have plaid gems, and crystallized marshmallows in the shapes of pink hearts, yellow moons, orange stars, and green clovers. What I honestly think has happened - is that they perceived the repetitive grinding of CoE zones as an indicator of how much people enjoyed the content in that zone. When in all actuality, it was simply a random numbers game where eventually, that ethereal will drop and I can sell it on the broker (or use it). Run the AS zone 20 times, get 1 ethereal drop (or SLR fabled) and either make a few plat, or have a really nice item. In comparison to running a ToV AS zone and get 19 pieces of vendor trash, and 20 etyma, still 4 etyma shy of getting an adorn. Other than that - the new zones look fantastic. Storyline was great. Which is what makes me play the game in the first place.... its Everquest - not Evergrind. You want gem dislodgers so you don't have to grind out 2k more etyma? "its nice that they actually make people work to get some gear"
I can respect that viewpoint if that is what SoE decides to do, but really in the end all I think that will do is lead to people with more poorly geared alts. Once someone's main has all the ToV gear 3/3 they are likely going to stop grinding as hard for etyma. Then they'll get more raid drops and ditch the heroic gear, but if those gems aren't worth it when comparing the cost of removing them versus leaving them on there when destroying the gear, they are going to be lost. People are going to popping the purples off gear very likely, so those gems are going to be gone. I think at the end of the cycle there would be those with multiple toons with tov gear all 3/3 green gems, but I think that the average pugs would suffer in the meantime. Pugging is painful now with how things are currently going, so anything that makes it better to join a group would be much better in my opinion. Even with no cost to remove there would still be the sink of getting the gems originally.
Folks we absolutely appreciate your feedback regarding Etyma and we are continuing to monitor concerns. Please continue to express how you feel about the current levels and where you think they should be.
The problem for me is the need to rely on doing daily's / weekly's for etyma add 3 or 2 etyma per last name in heroic and 1 for solo's at lest and you could drop the price of green upgrades to 60 etyma or so
I would go lower, the point of Entyma is to keep players doing Heroic Content long after they have gotten all the Armor itself. Players need rewards to chase and lowering the Entyma cost would be counterproductive to this if lowered too much. Yellow Gems are perfectly Priced and Blue ones make me choose between Purple Adornments or a Gem. I would say if they are following the rates they did in TSO then the costs are actually low. I would rather costs be as follows. Yellow Gem: 10 Entyma Blue Gem: 50 Entyma Green Gem: 100 Entyma Purple Adornment: 40 Entyma With those higher costs the drops would be: 1 Per Solo Zone 1 Per Heroic Boss and 3 from the ToV-Last Bosses (Gangrel and company) 1 Per Raid Boss Then perhaps players would feel they have more options beyond quest-grinding, thus the experience is more rewarding without shortening the longevity of the Gem System.
Each heroic zone has two worthless clicky quests in it. Slap an Etyma on each one so that they're not pointless, and many of the prices will be ok they way they are. (Still not so sure on green's and the mount)
Hm, I like that idea. Wish I had thought of it XD that could be up to 2 more Entyma per zone IF you put forth the effort.
I highly disagree with you Estred. 200 etyma to get one (1) piece of blue gear to it's max potential and still not be worth a Green with 0 gems is preposterous. I'm sorry, but I want at least two sets of armor for my tank alone and the possibility of having my alts get gear too. My alts are being used to help my tank get etyma now and it's just a time sync. Current etyma drop rate is ghastly and at this point, I'm looking forward to Nov 2014 for a better xpac to bypass the waste of time. I don't feel accomplished buying one blue gem every 2-3 days. I need 28 blue gems to get (1) set of blue gear - that's insane! Blue is middle-tier gear! I should be getting 1 to 1.75 blue gems a day to be able to gear my main. On a Saturday, it should be realistic that I earn enough to buy 3 blue gems if I put the time into it. That's realistic - that means I could get my main geared in a couple weeks and then get to work on my alts. Devs, you want us to do pugs, you want us feeling like we're accomplishing something. Drop etyma in every heroic zone. Put a random/rare gem drop in them as well (just like you did with the purple adorns). As of right now, after I do the Nexus daily quest, I'm not going to join a pug later that day to do the zone again without a chance to get more etyma. I don't need the gear in that zone. I have my sights on the Green Gem gear +. PUGs are going to remain the suck if the people with less time played can't get gear upgrades. I'm not going to take a guy in quest/ 0-3 gem yellow gear to go with me to do Temple zones. (S)He doesn't have the Crit, HP or stats to dps/heal effectively. This is another elitism issue that caused so many issues with Crit Mit in TSO. I feel I have a better chance of getting good gear doing Battlegrounds than I do actually playing with other people that keep the servers alive. Let us farm the etyma & let us gear our alts... You said in the notes that some of these instances have "Best in Slot" gear. That's something COE instances didn't have (Besides the HE mounts). I want to obtain these objects. I want to sell Loot Rights to these objects - (selling them to people keeps the in-game economy alive and keeps the servers alive). I repeat from my second paragraph, we should be able to make at least enough etyma to buy 1-2 blue gems a day. Needing 28 gems for (1) set of armor for (1) toon would equal at least 2-4 weeks worth of work to earn max potential for mid-tier heroic gear. The other point about this is that because the [crates of goods] only drops gear that applies the toon we are playing (and random what piece type you get), you have us playing each toon A LOT to get the exact pieces we want. Then, we have to switch to our alts and run those zones again because we need the armor types that fit that toon. Devs, awesome job keeping us busy - I think 1-2 blue gems a day is fair due to the amount of work we are about to put in for each character's progression.
Quest noun: quest; plural noun: quests a long or arduous search for something. synonyms:search, hunt (in medieval romance) an expedition made by a knight to accomplish a prescribed task. If you lower the cost of etyma, then everyone who's paid full price thus far will be jilted. If you make it rain etyma from every mob, then we'll all be geared up in no time with nothing to do again.. even more so since SLR is gone from AS. So leave the price alone. Add more one shot questing to get etyma, gear, adorns. Add more etyma drops from SOME named mobs. I don't know. How about introducing more quests in the zone? I know its a stretch - considering the name of the game and all, but I'd rather run 10000 quests one time, than 1 quest 10000 times. It seems we get a signature quest to give us the baby gear, then its grind grind grind for the rest. Remember the idea behind mythical weaps? Lotsa stuff to do just to get 1 good weapon that was yours.... your precious...? I'd be tickled pink to see a laundry list of things I needed to do in order to get the exact breastplate I wanted as a reward. At least I'd know I'm working toward something - and not playing the loot lotto based on how many times I farm a zone - or dealing with /ran 1000 in a heroic zone. Anyone who's played long enough probably has a pretty funny jboots story - or GEB story.. or mythical story, none of which involved running one zone over and over until the appropriate gear dropped... or winning a random roll of a digital dodecahedral die. "Awesome 2hander - where'd you get it?" "In a ToV pickup group - we ran the zone 3 times tonight and finally it dropped - I rolled a 999, can you believe it?" That just sounds so lame, doesn't it? I do know that I'm holding on to my etyma as if they were made of unobtanium. I'm not sure how people value their own time, but to me, my time's worth plenty. If I've chosen to accept the daily grind runs and invest the time, I'm definitely not going to squander away my hard earned etyma on a system that may be changing.. potentially.. maybe.. who knows. Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results. I expected my BP to drop after 10 runs through the same zone.... I must be going insane.
This can be read as : make established guild members progress faster and screw freelancers. Or in another words, i want more for me and less for others.
Tangent: When heading off for fame and fortune, make damn sure everyone has the quest for every zone you're planning on running. Or remember to share when you get there. It's a little hard to climb the ladder when you leave 50 Etyma behind that everyone should have gotten.... (2 heroics, 5 people missed out on 5 per run). Gonna be grumbling about that one for a while...
Not how I meant it. Each level of play is designed for itself. You will gear up decently quick from Solo Content if you use Solo Gear. You won't gear up Arcane Armor by running Solo Zones in any means of quick-time. Per day only running one zone you can get 2 Etnyma (Daily and Zone). That's 3 days per gem. I could see the Daily Quest should give 3 Entyma. The Heroic In-Zone Quests should also reward 1 Entyma making each Heroic Zone worth 5 from the Zone Quest and 5 from the Daily or 11 per day if you only run the Daily Zone. That's almost 3 days for a Gem (33 Gems for a 30 cost Gem). As you can see the Entyma rates are no different for Solo Players than Heroic Players. It takes 3 Days to earn 1 Gem by running the Daily Zone every day and only the Daily Zone. Heroics have the drawback of Potent Gear which at 125 Entyma would take 13 days per gem at that rate. Simply put you have to work hard for what you want. If you run 3 zones Solo per day you will have a Gem every 2 days and for Solo Content a Gem is more important than a Purple Adornment. Changes I would rather to see over cost increase/decrease would have been a slight adjustment in quest rewards. Solo Zone Quests are 1 Entyma. Heroic Zone Quests are 5 Entyma. Daily Solo Quests are 2 Entyma. Daily Heroic Quests are 10 Entyma. Weekly Solo are 10 Entyma. Weekly Heroic are 20 Entyma. That would be one way to address the issue. The other is Tradeskillers can craft reduced costs, so help your fellow players out.
I think the solution would be just make the zone specific quests repeatable. Drop some Etyma from Raid Bosses or give the raid zone some sort of quest that you have to complete, w/e your fancy. I still think the daily crafting quest rewards to little etyma, as well as the weekly. From a cost standpoint, if you were to implement those changes, I actually think purple runes need a MODERATE INCREASE in price, maybe just 5-10 Etyma, with purchaseable "war runes" costing 75, while the upgrader gems need about a 30% decrease in price. That would be about 6 zones to purchase a normal rune (4 if crafted). 15 to purchase a war rune (10 if crafted). And as far as the ugrader gems, these should remain relatively expensive the potent should probably be 75, which would be 315 zones to max out. This doesn't include you can get a daily mission still and weeklies, which would shorten that time.
I would be fine with the Etyma costs as is, IF they were able to make it so you could remove gems from gear and trade these in for maybe 50% return. Or make it so 4 yellow gems removed, allow you to outright purchase one blue, 4 blue = 1 green etc. As it sits now, most of our guild members aren't bothering to upgrade gear with gems until we get at least T2 heroic armor. Putting Gems in anything lower than that when our intent is to Raid is a complete waste of Etyma that should be spent on Adorns, and green gems with the prices as high as they are now. Some form of Gem removal and trade system would make it so we don't have to hoard the limited Etyma we are receiving to use on gear we haven't even seen yet.
Glad things are being monitored. For what its worth .....at least for me .........3 nights a week for raiding means 2-3 nights a week of not earning currency. That IMO needs to change......we should be seeing currency off raid trash and raid bosses beyond just the 2 in DC. Add to that the fact that I really need to be in at least 4/4 Blue Arcane or Green Potency gear to raid effectively........we simply need more/quicker ways to earn the currency on our own. I already made the mistake of buying yellow gems for cryptic gear instead of just holding off. Running pugs on those off-raid nights is just not reasonable considering the nature of the zones and the horrible experience that is pugs. Also, while I am not one of those players........this whole system is really ugly for people with multiple alts.....especially ones that use them on regular basis for raiding.
I did the same thing and now cannot stop regreting it. Spent 24 etymas on my cryptic shoulders. Now I have a couple of arcane and not enough currency to get all blue gems required. And honestly speaking I don't even want to. In case I will get some potency gear. Geez, what a bummer! I wish I could turn time back.
