The power creep is getting silly.

@kaeshiva ; The answer to the crafting issue is so simple and I have brought it up before.

Why can’t you get 80 % of mats value from the appropriate NPC merchant? This would get the junk off the vendors, let you list good stuff and make money off special orders and good items in high demand.

It’s the negative connotation that needs to be removed from many aspects of the game which will make the current players enjoy the game more, the new ones stay as well as attracting more to SOTA.

R/Boris

 

I mean, those are noble intentions, but it's absurd to rely on players to create an actual sense of progression through the game, and even that won't change the fact that there are no actual long term goals to pursue. You'll have a second job keeping the dungeon rewards stocked, and the people who finish it also only have a temporary benefit before the gear breaks down, so we're still right back where we started, power comes from gear, gear is upkeep, upkeep isn't fun and the devs just keep shifting the power more and more toward gear and away from XP which you at least get to keep, even though gaining it is boring and grindy too.

 

And every time they pump up the gear, they notice that people are just waking through high level scenes and then they have a round of skill nerfs.

 

the issue is that mat values are set by players. a beetle to a vendor is under 100g where a player its value is 1100-2800g... so how would that work?

 

some what true... its not really skill nerfs anymore... its more adding resistance to slow people down. One of the biggest mistakes int he game was double xp and UT. That really broke it completely when that came in the xp rates went up so high that GM's instead of taking weeks or months became less then a hour.... This is what created unbalance because the devs though they would have all time in the world to produce content at a slower pace and to balance things where people instead just setup xp camps to push themselves up so fast that the content and balance became a real issue. They started to slow that progression down but it was too late. That is why they are doing dmg control today by trying to put back in place the balance and things to slow progression so they can catch up and support the levels that are there. I feel bad for them as its a nightmare to try and feed the top end when people are leveling way outside what was planned for the goals. if your player base all power level and your content was designed for them lower levels... you see where this issue is

 

the difference between a lvl 100 and a lvl 140 masterwork is like 3% right? I havent checked in a long time but if that is the case, continuous leveling sicne day one is not the reason those masterworks are getting stronger.

a 15% damage masterwork is about 5% mroe damage than you get from leveling a melee skill from 100 to 120. you need 120 skill points in a stat skill to get +60 to that stat. so a good crafted wand can get you close to 60 levels in Intellegence worth of int.

So i deffinately see where aetrion is coming from. High end gear can provide 25%-50% of your characters total power. And it didnt used to be that much, and its not because crafters are leveling up, its because of changes in the crafting system.

It doesnt bother me that much, in fact i still wish gear wore out alot faster and was cheaper to make so thered be a more fluid market for it. But theres deffinatley a power creep. Wont be too long before you see folks topping over 2000 health and hitting stuff for 3000 dmg

 

Take for example a bronze 1 handed sword. It takes “x” amount of materials to create and SOTANET gives you a low/median/high price for the item. Take the median price and multiply it by .8 and you have a tweak able starting point. Adjust it monthly to account for supply/demand on gatherer prices.

The crafters make money by getting a fair return on undesired results, a lot of garbage items disappear from the game and gatherers can make money to buy crafted goods. It may sound too simple but it beats what we have now. I have seen the extreme prices out there with people asking for 500k and up for one piece of gear. For that insane amount it better also cook, clean and other things I cannot mention here
“Grins”.

R/Boris

 

that sounds about right 25%-50%. it was for sure a lot less return on the older gear was fractions per point. The third tier was to help offset the artifacts which are still more powerful in many cases then the crafted gear for best in slot.

I also agree 100% and then some on the wish that there was higher turn around in gear, and that the mats were more available to bring the prices down. I am already have a mage around 1200-1300hp, and seen some tanks close to 2k already. I can for sure see with two more tiers coming ep2 for artifacts that we will get up there for sure in dmg one day but at the same time I expect the mobs in ep2 to be a lot harder....

Look at WOW and other games. They do the same thing, gear every episode becomes old news and today people there hit for insane numbers .. but the mobs also have insane health...

 

I think that would be great at least for return on what is invested. Oh I know about pricey gear lol. even my prices started to creep up but not anywhere near that cost. However looking at those vendors with the higher prices they must still sell to some players or you would think that the prices would be dropping which they never do... so that means there is a market for that crazy priced stuff... myself I feel bad posting anything for 100k... but sometimes I need the coin to keep feeding my crafting machine...

 

Brother, I am sure you neither use heavy armor nor use body slam or you would not say you wish gear would wear out faster. I do not kite and kill, I get in its face, slam the hell out of it and try to kill it before it gets a look at the steamroller that just went over it.

It’s unreal how I slammed it to the ground and took dmg to armor/weapons but that is my play style.

R/Boris

 

All I can say about this is that as the game becomes more gear-centric, the less interested I am in it. And no, I don't believe that UT and double XP are the issue.

 

If there is one thing that is completely wrong in your statement here is that adventurers get hollow return for raising skills past 100 is totally false, considering you get the same increase in power from 1-20 than from 101-120, the only difference is the exp cost.

Meanwhile, you have crafters who get bent over twice, needing to deal with diminishing returns in enchantment/masterwork increase AND in increased exp gains (at the same rate as adventuring skills). This means that a lvl 100 crafter and a lvl 120 crafter have a barely noticeable difference, even smaller than a lvl 100 adventurer and a 120 adventurer.

Also, when you play other games you so often refer to, you have to progress step by step, locked behind lvl requirements, you cant get a max lvl item at level 1, because even if you buy it, you cant wield it. Here in shroud, the only limit is the gold you acquire. You should look at gear prices the same way you look at level requirements in other games : lvl up and increase your gold/loot per hour to buy 3x3 gear, then when you have that work towards 4x4 gear, then 5x4.

If most of the power came from another source then gear, that would mean you would need to respec every time you want to change your playstyle, which would basically ruin the game for sooo many adventurers. Meanwhile, now, thanks to that fact that it mainly comes from gear, with a simple armor swap you are a new class, actually being true to the games vision of being sandbox and allowing to play anything you want, whenever you want.

Powercreep might seem huge for you because you came back mostly when the new "end game game" finally got an update. Top tier gear was very stale the past 2 years before this, so for many of us, this was a necessary upgrade.

 

they are not anymore... they were a major issue. Even Chris wanted to get rid of UT after he saw what it did. the level curve was to be much slower, then that happened which broke everything. that is why they had issues with the math on some skills so soon as it was never intended for people to reach these levels so soon in the game. UT broke a lot with all that power leveling and the double xp.

I straight up tank things as a mage as well... wearing part heavy, no body slam though... that would cost me too much... I do repair almost every day but some of my gear I have had for a very very long time... my recently expired dolus hood was on 5 major repairs... some of my old stuff was down to 11 dur before I retired them... being a crafter of gear though you can see why I would support the idea lol... means more sales to me... it also means leveling faster as I would be spending that extra coin on them more pricey beetles lol.

 

Exactly. And right now, gear is the problem.

 

Amen to that. This is exactly why I think crafting deserved the recent changes. Its crazy work to get to these levels and the costs are astronomical... compared to the cost of the gear its pretty reasonable in most cases. if anything I would love to see crafting expanded more with more special items to be added that people can farm to add changes to things. Even fluff things would be cool like adding fx's to gear could require parts of this and that or special quest rewards. as to increase xp I wish there was at least some sort of crafting xp quests to do, I already do the daily ones I know that reward both adventure and crafting side but compared to adventure its not even close. at the same time though I dont want to see adventure rates as I dont want to see adventures getting the cake and eatting it too. I put too many years into crafting to want joe casual to be able to catch up over night... there must be a reward to all those that spend the time imo.

 

A general increase in HP would do this game some good actually, because healing is kind of in a weird place right now, where healing amount is much less important than how quickly you can cast your heals, since you can healing blast people for 500-700 points with just 150 life attunement, but when someone takes a hit that big they will get killed outright if they take another before you heal them. It also stops the devs from putting in any damage spells that hit like Healing Blast, because they would just one-shot everything in PvP, even though that would be a fairly appropriate amount of damage to actually feel like a powerful mage for once when you're fighting enemies with 5k+ health.

You get more glyphs at low levels, those make a huge difference in the power of active skills. For passive skills, yea, technically the reward doesn't get worse as you keep going up, but you hit costs of about 100 million XP when you get to 130 on your typical innate, and 100 million XP is essentially a work week's worth of UT. Those skill levels are meant as gravy for long term players, and that's ok, but that kind of XP isn't earned by just playing for fun.

I would like to see crafting expanded too. For one I would really like it if they made artifact slots and gear slots a completely different thing so they don't need to compete for power. Then they could add permanent bound artifacts that are content completion rewards so that doing hard content pays off for adventurers without taking anything away from the crafting side of the game. It would also reign in the amount of power in the game that's purely for sale by adding milestone artifacts as an additional pillar to stat contribution.

 

the only reason they are not any more is they started to adjust all the zones to be harder and dishing out simular xp in these revamps. Add in now the resists to physical, and now the variety of resists for magic this will once again slow things down a little more and add more challenge. Both gear and levels are to blame not just the gear... which is all ok as its starting to balance things out. look at despire it was created for all of the high level people for something to do rather then farm dragons and the few high level places. We will continue to see them tweak the mobs up going forward so that they dont have to nerf classes. there are still a few skills that need some adjusting but once that is said and done the progression will be back in line with content going forward based on the logic I see. Then that will give the devs time to deal with more bugs and adding more to support the fun / adventure side of things rather then damage control. at least that is how I see it.

I already feel powerful as a mage singe level 96 in cloth I could kill dragons, with today 1.2k hp mage I can take almost everything... if I have 5k health Id be so bored as there would be no challenge. they would have to up the dmg of high level mobs and or reists so much that it would make it all a grind again. thats my view. as to healers its all about timing... same with mages and fighting as one. many players as you say spam attacks which sure allows you to burn things down or keep things up, but then your on cool down. If you ever seen any of my mage streams you will see that I dont go all out or I would die. its all planned skills for specific mob behavior . I save my skills for those big hits so that I can eat them.... if I dont plan well as a mage i become a ghost pretty fast... I tank things straight up.... have for a very long time in many different schools. I tested many to see what is viable and to have backup builds incase of nerfs. its how I play, and also as @Violette Dyonisys mentioned with the way gear is setup now for the 25-50% power it allows me to run 6 decks for fights. I actively use 5 of the 6 well fighting always. anyone that uses decks properly knows how important it is to be able to switch gear on the fly and or schools. between combat decks, buff decks, debuff decks, various artifact / skill bonus gear etc this is how you as a player can in almost every class take almost anything you want and keeps it open. The alternative would be to level cap gear which would change everything and make it more controlled but limit how players play all round.

 

When you have all your xp loaded into 1 skill vs the many this is what really makes this all possible not just the gear. a level 100 skill with same gear will not survive vs my level 140 skill. just like all my HP as a mage does not come from my gear at all but rather the 4-5 stats I pumped up beyond 110 to get all that str / health.

My current goal is to get my health up to 1500 which would allow me to solo two ancient dragons at once based on the math of my skill dmg + heals and health. need that buffer for the big hits.

 

And you should get benefit for high skills. Character development should be a big part of this game; it shouldn't be all about gear. I suggest you try using base gear (no bonuses) to see just how much power you get from gear vs skills.

 

Just a suggestion that in my view would mitigate some of the salvage issue. What if we could use lets say 5 completed/albeit trash chest pieces to craft one new chest. Perhaps the straps and bindings could remain needing new mats, but just the ore savings with salvage use in producing new pieces would use up all this trash quickly and cause costs/prices to drop for good gear. No longer would I dread crafting for Execptionals and ending up with 19 regular and one exceptional with the ore all used up. Perhaps a recipe for usage of three regular chests to enter the normal rng for production of a new chest. 5 chest combo perhaps would up the rng and give a greater chance for exceptional. Then third choice, combine 8 regular for a 100% chance for an exceptional...... Something along those lines.