Why random tracery drops are every bit as bad as they feel, and other LI musings

[Frisco]

For a lot of people who were in the loop about LI changes and had currency stored, the current system doesn't feel that bad on its face. I was one of those prepared people.

But having done some rough math, what it would take for a new player to fully equip just one pair of LI's with the teal traceries they want through running instances alone will take ~316 runs. That's a lot of School. About 30 hours.

Depending on the number of characters or trait lines you have, the Reward Track and/or main/Epic quest lines will do a little to alleviate that grind. If you can manage to collect 6 tracery barter items to get the exact ones you want (and manage to save them until the very last traceries you need) you can cut that grind down to a mere 110 instances.

Compare that with the old Imbued system, where to get the legacies you wanted every level cap would take....0 runs, because legacies never got replaced.

If you compare it to the Empowerment scroll grind--that was ~70 Empowerment scrolls per expansion. And there were many sources of scrolls. But if you just went the Featured Instance route, it was about 35 runs.

So already, if you took the slowest road to max Imbued LIs, the grind to get Traceries is 3 to 9 times as bad as Empowerment Scrolls were. Maybe the removal of Star-Lit Crystals evens that out a bit.

But then there's the Enhancement Rune grind. Every pair of LIs (at 140 cap) takes 230 yellow runes, and eventually 460 purple, 230 teal, and 207 gold. Yellows aren't difficult to accumulate. Purples take the equivalent of 20 days worth of all 23 daily quests. Teal and gold, good luck. That's a lot of weeklies, instances, you name it. Personally, having run a ton of content over 6+ characters since launch, I have ~360. Enough to finish up 3 LIs spread over half a dozen characters (some of which use 4 LIs themselves).

So when we hit 150 (or even if you're a new L140 today), if you have 3 characters and want to upgrade your main 6 LIs with just teal traceries and the purple enhancements, at the current rate of obtaining LI currency expect to run 350 instances and 1,400 daily quests.

LIs have become the main focus of the entire game, even more so than Imbued LIs were, which I wouldn't have imagined was possible. Seems like the opposite of what players have been asking for over the years with regard to a LI revamp.

Something's gotta change. And change big. The Reward Track could be character-specific (instead of once per account) and the rewards character-bound and the grind for a new player would still be significantly more than even building an Imbued LI from scratch. Running a Featured Instance today, I got 1 purple enhancement rune. Out of the 460 I need. Where before you'd get ~2 of the 70 Empowerment Scrolls you needed. Ignoring the arduous Tracery grind (the equivalent of which straight up didn't exist with Imbued LIs) you'd expect the FI box to drop at least 6 or 7 purple/teal enhancements.

It's a new system--I get it. Hard to test out LI advancement in real gameplay situations prior to launch, and anticipating how players will adapt to new things is always a shot in the dark. But we have data now. The sooner this gets fixed the better. This used to be a game I'd try and get my friends to play with me. Now I think if I did that I'd wake up one morning with slashed tires.

[Morgahad]

For a lot of people who were in the loop about LI changes and had currency stored, the current system doesn't feel that bad on its face. I was one of those prepared people.

But having done some rough math, what it would take for a new player to fully equip just one pair of LI's with the teal traceries they want through running instances alone will take ~316 runs. That's a lot of School. About 30 hours.

Depending on the number of characters or trait lines you have, the Reward Track and/or main/Epic quest lines will do a little to alleviate that grind. If you can manage to collect 6 tracery barter items to get the exact ones you want (and manage to save them until the very last traceries you need) you can cut that grind down to a mere 110 instances.

Compare that with the old Imbued system, where to get the legacies you wanted every level cap would take....0 runs, because legacies never got replaced.

If you compare it to the Empowerment scroll grind--that was ~70 Empowerment scrolls per expansion. And there were many sources of scrolls. But if you just went the Featured Instance route, it was about 35 runs.

So already, if you took the slowest road to max Imbued LIs, the grind to get Traceries is 3 to 9 times as bad as Empowerment Scrolls were. Maybe the removal of Star-Lit Crystals evens that out a bit.

But then there's the Enhancement Rune grind. Every pair of LIs (at 140 cap) takes 230 yellow runes, and eventually 460 purple, 230 teal, and 207 gold. Yellows aren't difficult to accumulate. Purples take the equivalent of 20 days worth of all 23 daily quests. Teal and gold, good luck. That's a lot of weeklies, instances, you name it. Personally, having run a ton of content over 6+ characters since launch, I have ~360. Enough to finish up 3 LIs spread over half a dozen characters (some of which use 4 LIs themselves).

So when we hit 150 (or even if you're a new L140 today), if you have 3 characters and want to upgrade your main 6 LIs with just teal traceries and the purple enhancements, at the current rate of obtaining LI currency expect to run 350 instances and 1,400 daily quests.

LIs have become the main focus of the entire game, even more so than Imbued LIs were, which I wouldn't have imagined was possible. Seems like the opposite of what players have been asking for over the years with regard to a LI revamp.

Something's gotta change. And change big. The Reward Track could be character-specific (instead of once per account) and the rewards character-bound and the grind for a new player would still be significantly more than even building an Imbued LI from scratch. Running a Featured Instance today, I got 1 purple enhancement rune. Out of the 460 I need. Where before you'd get ~2 of the 70 Empowerment Scrolls you needed. Ignoring the arduous Tracery grind (the equivalent of which straight up didn't exist with Imbued LIs) you'd expect the FI box to drop at least 6 or 7 purple/teal enhancements.

It's a new system--I get it. Hard to test out LI advancement in real gameplay situations prior to launch, and anticipating how players will adapt to new things is always a shot in the dark. But we have data now. The sooner this gets fixed the better. This used to be a game I'd try and get my friends to play with me. Now I think if I did that I'd wake up one morning with slashed tires.

SSG dont want players to have completed perfect LI's. For now most of us have good LI thanks to old ones, and you re right hitting lvl 141 will turn off many of them xD and start never ending farm....

[Neinda]

I believe this system was put in place to reward the raiding class of players in game. The logic being is that the casual player just needs a weapon with DPS and no traceries/yellow and purple traceries are more than enough for landscape and low difficulty instances. I hope their vision builds whatever player base they are aiming for now. One just has to look at LFF and you can see what this has created. I guess someone thought if you make it this difficult to get a weapon, we will be occupied and not worried about content or we will get to the point that we are willing to pay money in the store down the road just to avoid the weapon issues.

Here's a suggestion: The expansion pack could include a fully upgraded weapon set with teal traceries of choice.

[DKenny]

In spite of what those shilling for the new system say, the new LI system is designed to be more, not less, grind than the system(s) it replaced. The key difference from the imbued LI system in particular is that with the imbued system there was a huge hurdle (mostly empowerment scrolls) to get to max. However, once at max, as you say, old legacies never changed. Most of the input from that point consisted of adding a more manageable number of empowerment scrolls, and star-lit crystals, to top off when the tier cap was increased. The grind with the new system is spread out more, but it is never ending due to expiring traceries and RNG. The great saviour was supposed to have been the reward track. But of course it has turned out to be nothing of the kind. Little more than another "roll of dice" in the RNG fest to try to get desired traceries. The other great feature was the fact that they boosted damage for the new LIs compared to max imbued LIs. Well, we'll see how long that lasts.

[Arnenna]

I believe this system was put in place to reward the raiding class of players in game. The logic being is that the casual player just needs a weapon with DPS and no traceries/yellow and purple traceries are more than enough for landscape and low difficulty instances. I hope their vision builds whatever player base they are aiming for now. One just has to look at LFF and you can see what this has created. I guess someone thought if you make it this difficult to get a weapon, we will be occupied and not worried about content or we will get to the point that we are willing to pay money in the store down the road just to avoid the weapon issues.

Here's a suggestion: The expansion pack could include a fully upgraded weapon set with teal traceries of choice.

That just puts weapons behind a paywall. Gear and weapons that are required to actually play the game, should never be behind paywalls. Not if they want people, especially new people, to play the game.

This LI revamp was promised for years, and it took them an age to build something that was supposed to alleviate the old system, which didn't age well, or grow well with players not in it from the starting gun.

This new system, will age even worse. Sure, they filled up current players with LI's that are OP and were easy to obtain through appraisals of their old LIs, but considering the revamp was supposed to address "catch up", rather than moving forward - its failed - already, and as time moves on that will become a lot more apparent.

Players failed to fore-see what the imbued LI system would turn into, until it had been in the game a few years. Some players cannot see what this will turn into yet either, but there are plenty that see it already.

[Neinda]

[QUOTE=Arnenna;8123206]That just puts weapons behind a paywall. Gear and weapons that are required to actually play the game, should never be behind paywalls. Not if they want people, especially new people, to play the game.

It won't be behind a paywall. Everything will be available via the RNG and farming things like School/Library hundreds of times. I think they are banking on people clicking on a mithril coin button when faced with the reality it take months to upgrade a set of weapons. While I agree it is a good system for returning players, the long term for those who stay in the game will be year round weapon grinding or acceptance of lower quality weapons or clicking on a button and spending money in order to have decent quality weapons.

This transition to the new system seems very orchestrated. FIrst, gold traceries are farmable for the raiding class in T2, Sari Surma. The fact that this is still an option says it was intentional. Second, for the more causal leaning players, teal traceries are available in School/Library. Another apparently intentional decision. Now, that people are used to having something nice, what will they do when those easy farming instances are suddenly shut down because "it was a mistake and never the intention of SSG"? The current traceries will expire next cap increase so what will people do? Will they accept lesser quality weapons? Will going from gold/teal to purple/yellow traceries be something they will accept? Once given something nice, people will want to keep that quality so why not offer a pay option at that point?

[thinx]

Players failed to fore-see what the imbued LI system would turn into, until it had been in the game a few years. Some players cannot see what this will turn into yet either, but there are plenty that see it already.

Up next: Virtues.

[Belechael]

It won't be behind a paywall. Everything will be available via the RNG and farming things like School/Library hundreds of times. I think they are banking on people clicking on a mithril coin button when faced with the reality it take months to upgrade a set of weapons. While I agree it is a good system for returning players, the long term for those who stay in the game will be year round weapon grinding or acceptance of lower quality weapons or clicking on a button and spending money in order to have decent quality weapons.

This transition to the new system seems very orchestrated. FIrst, gold traceries are farmable for the raiding class in T2, Sari Surma. The fact that this is still an option says it was intentional. Second, for the more causal leaning players, teal traceries are available in School/Library. Another apparently intentional decision. Now, that people are used to having something nice, what will they do when those easy farming instances are suddenly shut down because "it was a mistake and never the intention of SSG"? The current traceries will expire next cap increase so what will people do? Will they accept lesser quality weapons? Will going from gold/teal to purple/yellow traceries be something they will accept? Once given something nice, people will want to keep that quality so why not offer a pay option at that point?

I think you hit the nail on the head, and it is scary.

If true, they are gambling that the people who will stay and use the store are more than enough to compensate for those that will leave.

As someone who only wants to see the landscapes anymore I just hope they are right in their calculations, otherwise they will close shop sooner than later.

[Uroc]

Yeah this random drop is very bad.

I have strong feeling that this will be huge boring grind. And I agree with people when they say that people think that new weapon is fine because that it is only because most of people had old Li. Our sad Treebeard sever is great example. People farming Sch and SSG don't say anything about it. Not a single word if they plan to improve getting stuff for Li on legendary servers. That is pretty lazy game design.

[wispsong]

Up next: Virtues.

Already there. We had a formula up to 130, player level/2=virtue cap. Since then, running wild.

[Fadil]

For a lot of people who were in the loop about LI changes and had currency stored, the current system doesn't feel that bad on its face. I was one of those prepared people.

But having done some rough math, what it would take for a new player to fully equip just one pair of LI's with the teal traceries they want through running instances alone will take ~316 runs. That's a lot of School. About 30 hours.

How in god's name did you come up with that number? Seriously?
I helped a few friends get full traceries on their new 140 Lis, and it took us an hour here and there for a few days.
Yes a lot of it is rng, but if you do school and instances (where you can trade the traceries, making it much more likely someone will get at least 1 good tracery per run), it goes way faster than you suggest.
Also: you get traceries from epic quests, including a gold cracked Gundabad tracery.

This thread is hilarious: I see the same 2 or 3 people who have posted a hundred if not a thousand anti new LI system posts for months...lol
How about we all wait until the new reward track is implemented, and see if that will make getting traceries more easy for new players/ players who don't have ancient scripts?

[Uroc]

How in god's name did you come up with that number? Seriously?
I helped a few friends get full traceries on their new 140 Lis, and it took us an hour here and there for a few days.
Yes a lot of it is rng, but if you do school and instances (where you can trade the traceries, making it much more likely someone will get at least 1 good tracery per run), it goes way faster than you suggest.
Also: you get traceries from epic quests, including a gold cracked Gundabad tracery.

This thread is hilarious: I see the same 2 or 3 people who have posted a hundred if not a thousand anti new LI system posts for months...lol
How about we all wait until the new reward track is implemented, and see if that will make getting traceries more easy for new players/ players who don't have ancient scripts?

As always, toxic respond.

[Frisco]

How in god's name did you come up with that number? Seriously?
I helped a few friends get full traceries on their new 140 Lis, and it took us an hour here and there for a few days.
Yes a lot of it is rng, but if you do school and instances (where you can trade the traceries, making it much more likely someone will get at least 1 good tracery per run), it goes way faster than you suggest.
Also: you get traceries from epic quests, including a gold cracked Gundabad tracery.

This thread is hilarious: I see the same 2 or 3 people who have posted a hundred if not a thousand anti new LI system posts for months...lol
How about we all wait until the new reward track is implemented, and see if that will make getting traceries more easy for new players/ players who don't have ancient scripts?

For the first tracery, you have a 23/84 (+- a couple depending on class) of getting one you need. When you're on your last one, there's a 1/84 chance it will be the one you need. There are a lot of things that will help a little (most of which I mentioned if you read past the first line) that can turn it from a labour of hate to merely mind-numbing--fellowship trading, Epics,festivals, Reward Track. But if you're telling me you got a full 23 Traceries in just a few hours, I think you're exaggerating. Unless you mean just any traceries of any rarity.

Also, the Reward Track is already released for testing. We know what the rewards will be unless something changes (as I suggested)--somewhere between "okay I guess" and "a tiny drop in the giant grindy bucket that is the new LIs", depending on the number of characters you play.

[Pewpewmidget]

Something's gotta change. And change big. The Reward Track could be character-specific (instead of once per account) and the rewards character-bound and the grind for a new player would still be significantly more than even building an Imbued LI from scratch.

I like the idea of every character on the server being able to contribute to the new RT's progression
but I would much rather be able to claim the rewards on everyone on the server instead of being able to only claim one time only per season.

A group effort should mean a group reward.

[Arnenna]

How about we all wait until the new reward track is implemented, and see if that will make getting traceries more easy for new players/ players who don't have ancient scripts?

I take it you didn't check that out on the last BR build then.

[Arnenna]

I like the idea of every character on the server being able to contribute to the new RT's progression
but I would much rather be able to claim the rewards on everyone on the server instead of being able to only claim one time only per season.

A group effort should mean a group reward.

This is the one thing that isn't very popular about the reward track. Only one character can use it per season. Add to that the humungous amount of IXP it take to progress it, and that it is also all based on RNG reward boxes, and yes, it's extremely underwhelming. Some folk are pinning their hopes on it still though, they have no idea what's coming.

[ElanorFb]

It looks like you get 7 gundabad crack symbols from this. So with the epic you're almost halfway there. Maybe you will get a couple more from the rng boxes. Maybe a couple more from instances. Maybe 3 to 6 months to get 1 character all teal and gold 150. I probably have around half already but I sacrifice my other characters epics to feed gold.

That's the thing. I'll only be doing one character anymore to teal and gold. The others get what they get. With the old LI I did 4/5 complete.

[Arnenna]

It looks like you get 7 gundabad crack symbols from this. So with the epic you're almost halfway there. Maybe you will get a couple more from the rng boxes. Maybe a couple more from instances. Maybe 3 to 6 months to get 1 character all teal and gold 150. I probably have around half already but I sacrifice my other characters epics to feed gold.

That's the thing. I'll only be doing one character anymore to teal and gold. The others get what they get. With the old LI I did 4/5 complete.

When you have to sacrifice everything alts earn, just to keep on top of what your main needs - it's broken. I miss the days when you got an honest reward for honest work.

Take my hunter to X region, do content in that region, gear up in rewards from that region. Move onto minstrel - do the same, not earn rewards on minstrel then have to pass them back to the hunter.


Its why players play less alts now.

[Braer]

Here's a suggestion: The expansion pack could include a fully upgraded weapon set with teal traceries of choice.

Does include!

As a devotee you buy the big expansion and if you have a modicum of sense use the valar on you main to obtain traceries enough to get you to the next $120/140 expansion. As a devotee you might of course squander it on it's "Advertised" use or with the mass of exp bonus item perks plod on and out of their usage limits.

P.S. I have to laugh when I hear the valar level upper addicts highlight their "main" as not having used a valar, like "I didn't cheat on this char", when it's use on the char would be the choice making most sense.

[Laurelinarien]

It looks like you get 7 gundabad crack symbols from this.

I just wanna point out that the LI reward track has been nerfed and you won't be getting more than 2 Gold Tracery Tokens off maxing it. It's even more irrelevant a feature than it was in build 1.

[Landara]

Compare that with the old Imbued system, where to get the legacies you wanted every level cap would take....0 runs, because legacies never got replaced.

I was a returning player from level 75 and missed pretty much all the imbued LI's but i can tell you with certainty that the old system was really bad for someone who had zero resources banked up, I struggled with a wimpy LI from 75-130 and ended up buying the DPS upgrades with mithril. The new system lets you have your DPS upgrades with just gold at reforge, the traceries are just icing on the cake. Any traceries seem to make do while you are levelling if you are going out of your way to replace traceries at each tracery level cap its just silly , people dont do all previous raids as they level just to get the best armor, LI's are the same make do with what drops and sort it out at level cap.

Your complaint is that you cant fully max out all your LI's in a Day. And thats how it should be. Do you need a fully decked out set of LI's with Legendary traceries to be effective in your class? Not really, I still get around with a couple of rare traceries in my LI's and I've been able to do all the content including T5, It doesnt make my class unplayable in any way. Having another second on a skill Cooldown might be nice, a couple thousand mastery or mitigation points would look pretty but really does it matter? Same goes for enhancement runes, maxing the slots makes you feel all fuzzy an warm but its a bit meh to be honest.

My only gripe is with the word of craft traceries (WoCT), multiples of the same type with different names, i find them very lack lustre. I am going to guess that out of all the WoCT, people are only using a few of them, Ascendent Flame, Lightning, Grand Willpower, and one other which name escapes me. Single stat increases and set bonuses on only a few, these all need to be revised IMHO. Maybe make them unique and offer better better stats so people may consider some variety.

[Fadil]

As always, toxic respond.

As always complete lack of arguments.

[Braer]

The LI changes came about not because of the grind complaints but because so many of us could instantly max them out using our resources. Now we get to Instance grind to max them every 10 levels. Or fail to do it and remove yourself from in-game sources next time around, due to huge stat loss. The bribe of appraisal to defer the backlash and a bunch of streamers to guide you into early adoption without appraising the system first. A Player-base fixated on buy it, unseen, now (pay for it later) has kept them running for years.

Maths has never been high on SSG's nor the current players' expertise pool so hardly shocking few get the diminishing returns from RNG mechanics; I guess from Lotr's literary rather than technical roots.

[Fadil]

For the first tracery, you have a 23/84 (+- a couple depending on class) of getting one you need. When you're on your last one, there's a 1/84 chance it will be the one you need. There are a lot of things that will help a little (most of which I mentioned if you read past the first line) that can turn it from a labour of hate to merely mind-numbing--fellowship trading, Epics,festivals, Reward Track. But if you're telling me you got a full 23 Traceries in just a few hours, I think you're exaggerating. Unless you mean just any traceries of any rarity.

Also, the Reward Track is already released for testing. We know what the rewards will be unless something changes (as I suggested)--somewhere between "okay I guess" and "a tiny drop in the giant grindy bucket that is the new LIs", depending on the number of characters you play.

So let's make a realistic scenario: you turn 140 (or apply this to 130). Now you either have some ancient scripts left from disenchanting traceries that you got from questing, which you didnt need, from old LIs, or in the future from the reward track.
You buy a bunch of yellow/ purple traceries. I am dps'ing on my mini (missions and so on) with 2 LIs with only yellow and some purple traceries and that works perfect.
Now you have two options: you can grind like crazy and do school instances, as you describe, which is boring. I don't think you'll need to run hundreds of school instances, but anyway.
The other option is that you actually play the game and get the traceries while doing instances, you'd do anyway.
Each instance drops 1 teal tracery and you got many chests per week. You do the instance with 3 people, so its completely normal to trade them.
It takes you a few weeks to get two LIs full with teal traceries and you don't actually have to grind one second for it.

Runes: same story. As I posted in another thread: I have currently over 650 level 480 runes and some 110 490 runes combined on my two main alts. I didn't grind one day for that, they drop from instances, the weeklies and so on.

The same is ofc true for leveling players. The beauty of the new LI system for me is that you no longer have to spend even 1 second on grinding anything for your LI.
I am leveling an alt, and I get the traceries I need during quests, I can trade them for coins in Gondor, and you get the runes while questing too.
No I don't have teal let alone gold traceries, but why should I, when they only last 10 levels or less anyway.
The fact is that every grind that belonged to the old system has been removed for new or leveling players, and that makes the new system a very good system imo.

[egarthur]

That just puts weapons behind a paywall. Gear and weapons that are required to actually play the game, should never be behind paywalls. Not if they want people, especially new people, to play the game.

It won't be behind a paywall. Everything will be available via the RNG and farming things like School/Library hundreds of times. I think they are banking on people clicking on a mithril coin button when faced with the reality it take months to upgrade a set of weapons. While I agree it is a good system for returning players, the long term for those who stay in the game will be year round weapon grinding or acceptance of lower quality weapons or clicking on a button and spending money in order to have decent quality weapons.

This transition to the new system seems very orchestrated. FIrst, gold traceries are farmable for the raiding class in T2, Sari Surma. The fact that this is still an option says it was intentional.

This is one of the most blatant examples I've seen of Intentionality Bias. Perhaps you missed the stream with Severlin on October 22nd, wherein it was obvious that both Cord and Sev were blissfully unaware that people were farming SS T2 for gold traceries. Now, I suppose one could float a conspiracy theory that they were just faking surprise, but do you really want to go that far down the rabbit hole? Why not just accept that SSG didn't realize that folks would swarm to old content, such as SS T2, like predators swarming around chum in the water? I don't believe it was intentional. I think SSG merely underestimated "BiS-fever", the tendency of certain players to try to min-max to the ultimate extent, even if it means mindlessly slogging through obsolete content, day after day.

Second, for the more causal leaning players, teal traceries are available in School/Library. Another apparently intentional decision.

Incomparable traceries aren't BiS. Big difference. Remember, for the demographic we're talking about, BiS is all that matters. They're blind to everything else

Now, that people are used to having something nice, what will they do when those easy farming instances are suddenly shut down because "it was a mistake and never the intention of SSG"? The current traceries will expire next cap increase so what will people do? Will they accept lesser quality weapons? Will going from gold/teal to purple/yellow traceries be something they will accept?

Objectively, in the absence of BiS-fever, Rare traceries from one level band, are roughly equivalent to Incomparables from the previous level band. Emphasis on "roughly". Typically, a DPS tracery, for instance, will give a percentage increase in damage for a particular ability, and that percentage is higher for Incomparable than for Rare, but at a higher level band, there's also typically a Tactical Mastery or Physical Mastery bonus, which is higher for the higher level band, than for the lower one. So, again, roughly those traceries are equivalent. This is all sub-BiS anyway, so minor differences don't matter. Go ahead and accept the Rare from the higher level band. It will do you fine, and you won't have to replace it as soon.

Once given something nice, people will want to keep that quality so why not offer a pay option at that point?

Not sure where you're going with that, but a pay option is fine, as long as it's truly optional, and doesn't become a baseline requirement to properly engage with the game.