Engame Changer - Objectives Preview
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Hi all,
here comes a preview of Endgame Changer before the official blog post. This preview is focused on objectives - what are we trying to achieve here?
ETA for the arrival of Endgame Changer: by the end of this month. It's largely ready, but requires a TON of testing. More news will follow.
1) All character builds should have similar requirements in terms of different attributes strictly needed, while at the same time all other attributes should be potentially useful to them.
- Currently: everyone needs CON, which in itself is bad. Beyond that, a mage only strictly needs INT, while non-mage builds require multiple attributes. Moreover, most attributes are completely uninteresting to builds that don’t use them for ability scaling.
- After Endgame Changer: mage vs warrior balance and more build freedom for everyone.
2) Enchanting equipment should be equally important for all player builds.
- Currently: there’s little reason to enchant (give +1/2/3/4 to) staves, 1-h weapons, and light armor.
- After Endgame Changer: more incentives to enchant, without creating an excessive power gap.
3) PvP fights should be fun and balanced disregarding the amount of players participating.
4) Given a similar level of ability power and equipment in a PvP fight, it should not be possible for one of the combatants to kill the other in a couple seconds with a damage burst. Conversely, it should not be possible for both combatants to outheal damage and make the fight endless, unless it’s an extreme scenario (e.g. healer vs healer).- Currently: we’ve reduced the burst-fest to some extent. However, high resists, abundant sources of (self) heal and lack of mana often mean failed burst = fight is over.
- After Endgame Changer: diminishing returns on CC and focus fire in group PvP allow us to increase the base power of many spells, making small fights more fun while keeping large ones balanced.
5) There should be a good reason (reward-wise) to take part in end-game PvE challenges, current and upcoming, and future end-game PvP events.
- Currently: you’re better off farming Ogres than running an Ultimate Legend challenge.
- After Endgame Changer: unique rewards from legends and more incentives for T3 imbuing make legend farming rewarding.
6) Each character build should have at least a couple of options to choose from when it comes to T2 armor sets.
- Currently: full set bonuses are ultra-specific, often suitable for a specific build only (e.g. Ranger), sometimes for a gameplay style only (Hunter), sometimes… for no one.
- After Endgame Changer: reworked full set bonuses and equalized resistances (within the same weight class) mean multiple options for most character builds.
7) The choice of mount and consumables adds variety to character builds and is particularly important for high-level characters.
- Currently: the consumable and mount systems are uninteresting and incomplete - they feel like placeholders.
- After Endgame Changer: drink potions and catch new mounts with revamped mounts stats (the best are very rare!). Each type has a unique ability, but they all must be replaced when they die of old age (RIP mount).
Do you think something important is missing - aside from having more end-game PvE events and have PvP events in general? Let us know!
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@Prometheus So when can we expect this? In a week, a month? What kind of mounts are we looking at here?
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@Nehsi said in Engame Changer - Objectives Preview:
@Prometheus So when can we expect this? In a week, a month? What kind of mounts are we looking at here?
ETA for the arrival of Endgame Changer: by the end of this month. It's largely ready, but requires a TON of testing. More news will follow.
Just added to the post, I always forget a part of the post
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healer vs healer is a thing.
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@Prometheus To be honest, I really hate the idea of mounts dying from old age. I rather they be durability based like other equipment, even though that isn't a great solution either. When you search for those rare mounts or search for the one with the perfect stats just to end up with a stupid timer on it limiting your use, it just makes me feel like there isn't even a point to acquiring them.
Adding durability to them would be better, especially for countering the horse tanking people do when pulling enemies.
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This post is deleted!
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Here's to hoping we see some good changes and not more pvp favoring ones. The pvp isn't interesting nor fun for anyone, much less PVE only players. Should have arena, jousting, or some form of pvp that's along those lines and not just open world. Let us have territories with colliseum style matches/events that bring in that sense of gambling too by betting on players to win. That alone would reduce the massing gold amounts and give some fun low risk pvp (only durability risks pretty much) with good rewards (split prize pool?).
If nerfing normal content to push for groups to favor hunting legendaries becomes the regular, it's going to push smaller groups away from the game as they will struggle to get to the point where they can actually fight legendaries. Not to mention a lot of people just stand around those waiting for someone to summon only to run in and steal the drops. Those drops need to be locked to the party that summons the boss, (Yes, this is fair in pvp too as they can just pk them after and take the loot or die trying). Some random newbie protected account who runs in at the last second and hits it 1 time should not be able to steal the boss drops like they currently can and have several times. Legendaries should be challenging but reward with enough of the T3 imbuement items to make it worth the challenge. Getting 3-4 when imbuing 1 item costs 5 of the mat....is not really worth it for a party of 6+ to fight it. It woulld take summoning that boss at least 15 times for each of them to get even 1 imbuement from that at that rate. It needs some serious focus, heading in a good direction by making it more worth doing, but it needs some work before it's even remotely something to consider farming. They should also be on cooldowns for those who summon it for like an hour or so that way they can't just spam summon it and flood the market with the loot either. Things like that need considered badly on many parts of the game, not just with legendaries too.
Other thing I really want to see is more added to towns. As it stands right now, there's nothing unique to any of the towns. Sure, we have resource nodes nearby (Except Rum Runners which has literally nothing in the territory) and we can have harbors....but there's nothing that makes it any different from any other town with a harbor or ore nodes near them. Ideas like, T3 armor/weapons that can only be crafted in a city that has paid for the blueprints could work for something. But also have it limited to like 5 per town or something. (An addition, without removing or sacrificing any of the basic crafting or T2 sets since a town consists of a wide variety of players and they all have their own goals on crafting. How it was before was extremely limiting and forced players to join specific towns just for those recipe qualities. That was bad simply because most of the cities that had what people wanted were bad cities lead by inactive leaders or had absurd crafting taxes). We just need something to make each town unique in some way. Even if that way is just decoration differences based on which town node the town has called home (could be fun to see varying types of wood on the buildings simply because that's the type of trees nearby, or taverns with slightly changed appearances to fit hotter or colder temperatures.)
Anyway, I do look forward to the potions/consumable changes and hopefully those can bring some balance to the heavy armor builds barely being able to heal with anything other than bleeds. Also lol, tanks would love to have some form of taunt for aggro control too. The way it is currently, aggro is pretty random which is bad for party play as when a squishy gets aggro their instinct is to run....which often resets the boss/mob they were fighting. That sucks when a tank is clearly right there trying to keep it hitting them and it just refuses to stay on them even when they're closer and clearly doing more damage. They really need some kinda taunt, and I'm sure all can agree on that one lol. It's like the one thing I hear most requested from my guildies (they just want a taunt lol)
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A big problem will still be there, it seems. You say unique rewards from legends, but all i hear is "keep farming ogres/whatever the new best coinmaker is and just buy whatever the reward is on the market for gold later". Gold is simply the be-all, end-all, and there is no reason to actually be out there doing the content.
Would be nice if there was some kind of itemization or progress bound to the participating character, that was untradeable/untransferable and, if possible, uncarriable - in the sense of not just "join a zerg of 50 doing the content" or "hop in a small team of veterans carrying you through it in exchange for gold" without you contributing enough to the reward.
While this very much isn't the direction most open PvX (PvEvP) sandboxes with full player economies go, Fractured is still trying the philosophy of "having a cake and eating it too" with having both a PvE side and a PvP side sharing the same game server, so it'll need to pull some tricks from the themepark side of things. Until this fundamental flaw isn't touched, no matter what rewards you pass around, the most metagaming thing will always be to farm gold on Arboreous.
While you can say "oh well, don't listen to tryharders then", you have to understand that, at the moment, if you're neither farming gold nor progressing your character, any other activity will be done purely for "fun". And I think most of us know the feeling of doing something "for fun" while there is something else more productive we could be doing. Ironic to have such a real-life dread be reproduced on a video game.
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@Bancheis lol rare mounts, if they end up having set spawn locations, people are just gonna spawn camp them and control their market entirely making them cost absurd amounts of gold like they are with orbs. I really hope that those will be completely random and not in set locations for that reason alone. (Gotta love seeing some random newbie tame something great and be able to sell it for some gold all while someone more knowledgeable being able to buy it much lower because of that).
I do agree that durability would make more sense. Afterall, if your horse falls 15 times, it's definitely not gonna be running the same after. It's also lol extremely rare and sad that any mount in such a world would live to see "old age". Almost every mount brought into battles during medieval times was killed pretty young, which is sad but the truth. I would just hope the rarer mounts are mostly for cosmetics with a very slight difference in performance, otherwise it's just gonna cause more problems. I don't mind searching for a good mount, but if it's to the point where only like 3-4 spawn in the entire map, it's a needle in a haystack. This is especially bad if they're set for a 1 hour respawn timer or something like that. I don't think mounts should be tied to a "lifespan" timer simply because not everyone can spend a ton of time searching for a replacement if their mount is just gonna die while their offline or away at work. (Now, if it's tied to playtime, then that's more acceptible for me as they would be able to see its progression as they are playing and can look for the replacement while playing rather than just log in to their mount being dead because they were away for a week....)
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@Meiki I agree with you on that. Would be nice to have some way to keep them longer. Mounts are kinda like pets. Would hate to see them die... Maybe they can use this opportunity to implement a "gold sink" using the mounts, where they can charge gold to house and feed them in a stable for 24 hours or something like that, returning them to full durability/health.
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I think there should be T3 armor sets with set bonuses/stats focused on PVE or PVP.
-Let the PVErs farm in Arboreus for their endgame T3 sets that focus on what they enjoy doing (becoming stronger in PVE).
-Let the PVPers farm in Syndesia for their endgame T3 sets that focus on giving you an advantage in PVP. The materials to craft these sets could drop off certain mobs or in certain areas which would make these naturally more contested by PVPers wanting to gain an advantage.
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Hi, I'm currently looking for the endgame in the game. The endgame now is to farm gold to buy orbs. But that can't be everything about Endgame. The game currently offers a maximum of 400 hours of gaming fun. The game doesn't offer anything else at the moment. It is essential to work on ensuring that endgame content comes into play otherwise I see black for the game. Without endgame content, players will not stay with the game and no VIP for the future is warranted. And Summoning Legends is not an endgame, there is no content that requires Tier 3 enchantments or is worth the effort.
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@rainbowmesa other games have bosses give armor skins or weapon cosmetic. That could be one idea for a reason to go after legendaries. Make em bound and untradeable cosmetics. Or even decoration recipes (think Ark on that one, where boss heads and stuff became bound craftable trophies or rugs). Some neat decoration rewards that are untradeable would also give a reason to have an actual home rather than a building with a bunch of chests. (Could also do like BDO and make these items give a small 1 hour buff when interacted with and that reduce the item's durability by a small amount). As for a pvp idea, they could give notoriety special decor for those who brave the front of pking a group that killed a legendary recently (track it with a "killed legendary recently" celebration status or something). Or a sheriff killer badge when they take out a sheriff that they can display a broken star on their armor or something. Plenty of ways to add non tradeable stuff to both bosses and pvp without causing a "I can just buy it with gold" problem.
Cause yeah, hate to say it, but as a town owner....gold is definitely never a problem if that town has a harbor. Serenity easily gets 20-40k a day from harbor. Rum Runners same story, easily 5-10k and there's not even resources there. Then look at places like Feyholde and it's location near the volcano and all those crystals....I can imagine that number is higher than Serenity easily. Town owners can just take that gold...and do whatever with it. I hate saying it, but owning a town is too rewarding to bother with going out and grinding that same gold. Why would I go to pvp lands and gather crystals when I can just pay someone else to do it for me, or buy them from a town on Terra who had players that went and got those crystals already. Sure, it's part of the system, but I'm personally sitting on over 300k with my town holding 200k on top of that. (The 300k is a mix of group mob hunts and from town gold that I've used to buy mats with so could make armor/weapons and then resell those for 4 times the price of the mats. It really adds up very quick doing that, and no one complains because everyone involved gets something out of it. It's just really easy to do for a town owner than a common player who will definitely struggle to even get 30k gold). I can literally just sit there....and wait for like a week, take 60k turn it into 400k by crafting stuff with what I bought with the 60k. It's crazy unbalanced. I don't hate it, since I also use the town's gold to help my guildies travel around and gear them out with it, but it is very very high in reward for no risk at all. (The work involved is literally.....farm some fields every 2 days, pack them, put in town hall, job's done. All good for the next week.) I'd like to see something else involved in the process, maybe even with a bit of risk. Let me send out npc caravans loaded with gold to go buy resources from other towns (and yeah on Terra let mobs be able to kill these caravans (obviously pay more to hire npc or even player guards for them to be protected by at a hefty price) and then have the same risk for them to bring it back.) It's a money sink but can also reward the town after awhile too. On the pvp side, they'd be able to kill such caravans there or attack players who protect them for gold payment. It'd bring another source of pvp without seeming like just another gank fest of 5 v 1 newbie who's undergeared. Definitely an idea that could be implemented and fleshed out to become something neat since towns do get a ton of gold. (crafting tax income on the other hand, is almost 0. Nobody crafts in a town it seems unless they live there and have no taxes on their crafting. Seems like it was a silly idea to implement when no one gets any real benefit from it)
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@Meiki @Bancheis
I too hate the idea of my mount dying but I can't bring myself to think of it as equipment with durability either. I would much prefer if we were able to breed them. They would still die of old age but we would have the chance to improve stats and I am sure something can be thought up to keep rare mount breeding from ruining the rarity of the mount.@Bancheis I could live with somethin like your suggestion of a stable.
@Akarikari I agree; it would have to be tied to play time or most folks would have a dead mount every time they login.
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Not sure which place is best for this discussion, so I'll repost what I sent in the discussion thread here as well, @Prometheus.
- Currently: everyone needs CON, which in itself is bad. Beyond that, a mage only strictly needs INT, while non-mage builds require multiple attributes.
I think CON being important is normal—has always been normal in all games since increasing a character's life force has always been important unless they have viable ways to evade or defend themselves from attacks with a low health pool.
What could be an issue is how much health CON gives per point as in it provides too little health with a big investment. This issue also coincides with other builds requiring Attribute Points to be spread too thinly across many other attributes achieve "success". However, if CON has to go at some point, I wouldn't be opposed to it being merged into STR.
Another issue... at least to me... are martial abilities requiring mana to be used which means they need INT and/or WIS. They need their own resource that scales with DEX and STR called "stamina"—a resource I went in-depth about here.
This would help them not need to rely on magical attributes, unless they plan to use spells or want willpower, and focus more on the core attributes that their build truly needs.
- Currently: the consumable and mount systems are uninteresting and incomplete - they feel like placeholders.
Mounts do feel very uninteresting. As they are now, they are simply cosmetic "stat blocks" that give your character an additional set of legs until dismounted.
There is no way to interact with mounts, and they can't be killed. I'm not opposed to mounts having an age if it's reasonable (as in they don't die fast or have severe stat penalties).
Also, pack mules and animal husbandry please.
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@Bancheis I agree overall with the idea that if you have something standard like a horse or something of similar powerful level that it dying of old age is tedious. I think rare mounts being powered in a way that they're nice to have but not feel like a "must" or there's an impossible power difference is the key here.
Maybe the rare mounts have a tiny advantage/convenience. Something like more health, speed up a little faster, or increase your carry weight slightly. Something not game changing but more convenient. Maybe some that increase cart speed specifically. Things that make life easier without giving a crazy tactical advantage.
That being said, no advantage mounts should be given infinite or a very long lifespan relative. Let us choose to participate and put the grind in or not. The game is plenty grindy already. Should also provide us a way to store them and the most important is that spawns of mounts need to be spread out much more/made more prevalent. Just my two cents!
Longer term, I hope they'll look at making group farming more relevant so we can have small scale skirmishes and promote more pvp opportunity in the world. Otherwise, we're still going to run into people farming outside of pvp areas almost exclusively as long as burst is king.
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Dear Jacopo, caro Jacopo....the true endgame changer will be to give us the tool to properly socialize and build the community, thats the most importanti thing of a sandbox game.
Give us:
-friends list
-looking for party
-whispering/private chat
-fun city events specific to each city/planet
-some guild activities
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@Yeff1 The biggest problem I have heard from people on this is that T3 enchants are not worth doing because gear and gear sets are too fragile. Why invest so much time and money into armor that tears apart like tinfoil when you don't even get knocked down by a group of monsters? My top tier gear currently loses like a good 5-10% of durability per hour of farming. Durability should have higher losses from being downed, but less durability loss from just being hit to balance this out. Not saying it should stay pristine if you are not downed, but it feels bad to spend 20-40k on an armor set just to have it wear out in a couple days of serious farming.
If they made gem imbuing worth doing by adding gem slots to gear you could remove them from to reuse, then it might be worth it.
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We need things worth fighting for more than we need to balance fighting.
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@Prometheus said in Engame Changer - Objectives Preview:
- The choice of mount and consumables adds variety to character builds and is particularly important for high-level characters.
Add a consumable slot for this please.
