PoF Feature Discussion: Gear Identification

Since the post which garnered so much discussion on the old forum will not be able to be migrated over I am re-starting that discussion here to make sure those voices don't get lost to a forum shift.

So, to ensure this is a productive post I ask that everyone be both respectful of the opinions shared and that those that did some of the heavier math on the subject (if they are so inclined) could please re-share what they discovered/worked out regarding both drops/drop rates and cost benefit to ID-ing loot as opposed to the new system.

Full disclosure: I was not in the camp that enjoyed it, but felt that lowering the cost by half and/or splitting the rarity of the un-identified loot would be the best work around as I understand Anet needs a gold sink.

I have no issues at all with what I saw in the previews.The price is not steep and the drops are not in any way all locked behind an id system.

I am fine with the system for the most part, my one gripe is the convenience factor. I'm not a fan of having to redo a heart each day just to ID my loot. Initially it won't be an issue as at the start I will be doing it in the normal days gaming but as more chars get map completion/finish the story redoing the hearts over and over just for the sake of ID'ing loot will become annoying. I really hope that ANet has plans to release a copper fed Infinite Use ID kit or something along those lines.

I despise the cost of the blasted thing to id the items, and the fact that i have to redo a heart every day. Other than those two things i dont mind though.

I understand the primary complaints regarding this feature (cost, heart requirement, single color stack). I'm ok with the system as a whole, but it could use some tweaking, I feel, to make it more player friendly.

Obviously just my opinion regarding the heart necessity: The only reason I didn't hate on this aspect too much is that it gives the hearts a bit more of a reason to not forget them, which may keep more players interacting with the world while on a map, even if its just one heart after the end of a run. Basically keeping some maps from going dead, which is good for new new players to the game.

I won't be buying PoF until this "feature" is fixed (removed or made more granular).

This is one thing I didn't try in the demo. Not sure how I feel about it. I think I'd prefer to id everything and salvage what I choose, but that might end up too costly. The possibility of stacking up a large number and maybe vendoring once a week sounds intriguing. Time will tell.

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:Obviously just my opinion regarding the heart necessity: The only reason I didn't hate on this aspect too much is that it gives the hearts a bit more of a reason to not forget them, which may keep more players interacting with the world while on a map, even if its just one heart after the end of a run. Basically keeping some maps from going dead, which is good for new new players to the game.

I was fine with that too; however, there are some people that just don't do those things. They do other PvE components, but heart clearing isn't something they enjoy. And I can understand that. If you've done one heart, you've done them all sort of thing. Its the same general feeling with static quests. Granted, it's not hard to complete hearts typically, but we have enough things that make us go out and do hearts (collections, dailies, etc). I'd be ok with them adding a few vendors (1 per map maybe?) that could do the IDing without needing to do a heart. Maybe have them locked behind a story step or stuck in some remote region of the map. Then you have a bit of a trade off that not 'too easy' for either group.

There are better ways that can bring people back to maps, so they don't appear dead to new people. Ways that typically don't result in players just mobbing whatever the easiest heart in the map is. That doesn't really look good either.

@LanfearShadowflame.3189 said:

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:Obviously just my opinion regarding the heart necessity: The only reason I didn't hate on this aspect too much is that it gives the hearts a bit more of a reason to not forget them, which may keep more players interacting with the world while on a map, even if its just one heart after the end of a run. Basically keeping some maps from going dead, which is good for new new players to the game.

Very true. Originally when I first heard this was coming back into the game I assumed we were getting a kit similar to the salvage kits that we could use at our leisure that would cost about as much as salvage kits do now.

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

@LanfearShadowflame.3189 said:

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:Obviously just my opinion regarding the heart necessity: The only reason I didn't hate on this aspect too much is that it gives the hearts a bit more of a reason to not forget them, which may keep more players interacting with the world while on a map, even if its just one heart after the end of a run. Basically keeping some maps from going dead, which is good for new new players to the game.

I'd had that thought too. In the original thread, it was one of my suggestions to deal with it being locked behind a heart vendor as well as with cost. Give us another kit we need to purchase and lug around with us. Knock down the price per ID and make it portable, the trade off is you have to replace it every 'x' uses and it takes up inventory space. Just like salvage. People didn't like that either.

The idea is sound, but the implementation needs polish. It fell prey (probably intentionally) to the fallacy of "theoretical value"- we simply don't know if the item is worth anything until its ID'd; but at the same time, the interface makes it extremely easy to salvage all of it (along with potential rares) with the a few habitual clicks. Which brings us to the crux the implementation.... if we separate them by rarity before the ID process, trash tier items have no incentive to identify; and even becomes a waste of coin since it costs money to ID them. While this would streamline the system substantially, the ability to ID low tier items would only be considered "worthwhile" if they tie it to something that forces it.... like collections (which I can see happening, and want to establish right now that its a bad and beyond wasteful of an idea).

But I can tell you the reason they're doing it this way right now.... its simplified design is to mimic the gambling aspects of loot boxes, but is addressing one minor gripe- opening lots of them. They won't easily give up obfuscating rarity, because its the only way to get the "ID as a gold sink" concept to work with the psychology of GW2 players. Its not the only thing in play.... but its the biggest player facing aspects that will end up making the system feel awkward. After all, the idea of ID scroll (at least as far back as Diablo) was to force you to go back to town to sort out your inventory on a regular basis. Going further back to PnP RPGs, it was supposed to add an element of mystery value to an item.... but unlike PnP RPGs (which award a handful of noteworthy items after major encounters), MMOs typically drop literal mountains of trash loot on a constant basis, and assign value to it via salvage. That critical difference in how we sort through items alters "everything" when you consider the difference in volume between the two implementations.

In PoF's case, this is unwittingly trying to push the envelope on an already bastardized concept, doing more of the thing it wasn't doing a good job of in the first place. Looking back at Guildwars 1, the relationship to salvage had a lot more intent. Your primary goal was to salvage valuable components from the bulk of things, since common materials weren't of high demand. With rare materials, there was also specific intent, looking for particular items and using more expensive kits for that purpose. In GW2, we salvage EVERYTHING, because the game does a better job of utilizing materials..... but it has a different problem in that the salvage process (like gathering) is the least productive in most cases, and only works on a global scale. Thats why ideas like the Leather farm are fundamentally ludicrous to the game's design, because of the volumes it would have to generate to serve its "intended function" .

I actually don't mind keeping a stack of ID gear in the bag and doing a single heart once every couple days to identify it all in bulk. What I do mind however is that ridiculous price effectively halving (if not worse) profits. And for what? To reduce inventory clutter? Too bad I've already fixed that problem by buying additional bag slots and salvage-o-matics. Why do I have to pay extra for something I've had for free all this time? How does this new feature enhance my gameplay in any way imaginable?

On the surface, the ID system looks like a good idea. In practice, it is anything but.

The basic idea is "you can salvage/sell loot real easily without filling your inventory full of junk sigils/runes but also getting no Luck or rare materials, or you can choose to have your usual loot."

If it actually worked this way, it would be a great system.

The problem is the absurd gold sink and heart merchant qualifiers. It turns it into "you can salvage/sell loot easily without filling your inventory full of junk sigils/runes but also getting no Luck or rare materials, or you can pay through the nose and spend another 5-10 minutes to have your usual loot."

The coin cost is definitely the much higher issue, but this really is something that should be doable at any merchant. Coin cost, however, is not acceptable.

ID'ing loot is just a step backwards. It might be less annoying if the unid. stacks were sorted by rarity (so a rare unid. stack, exotic unid. stack, etc).

I can't make a true judgement until I've lived with it a bit, but my initial impression was dislike. The heart doesn't bother me, but the cost does. Deciding to ID or salvage - neither choice felt good, no matter which route I took. I was second guessing my decision. Like I said, once I get in there and really live with it a while and see what IDing actually gets me, I might have a different opinion. But your bags still fill with random loot that will drop sigils as you salvage so I'm not sure this is going to help a ton with inventory management. If that was their goal, then rethinking the sigil situation seems a more elegant solution. If it was to reduce the luck drops which are worthless to many players (but not the majority, I'd bet), then addressing the luck situation would be a better solution. And honestly, when I think of IDing stacks at a time, my brain hurts. I just think of all the juggling I will have to do to ID only so many at a time to fit my bag space, salvage, sell off the junk, repeat ad nauseum. I didn't run into that problem in the demo, but I'm not imagining it to be a fun process.

Since I'm not sure what problem they were trying to address with the unID gear, I'm not sure if it's a good solution.

i wonder if the Salvage Kits will be updated to by default, NOT salvage UNidentified items. and also be given another option in the drop down menu, to salvage UNidentified items, for those who wish to salvage the items without IDENTIFYING them.

PS: i don't remember from the preview weekend if this suggested feature was implemented or not.

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:Since the post which garnered so much discussion on the old forum will not be able to be migrated over I am re-starting that discussion here to make sure those voices don't get lost to a forum shift.

Considering this is a new forum and the influx of returning players we got with PoF, could someone please explain this new system? I wasn't around for the beta and the older topics about it aren't that easily found anymore.

@starlinvf.1358 mentioned GW1, but only in terms of salvaging items... however, in addition to the salvage kits, we also had to have identification kits because many items were unidentified - especially if they were uncommon or rare. And as others have noted, it's a popular feature in many other games so I can't say I'm surprised we're going that route as well.As for the repeating hearts element... personally, I was really hoping that wasn't going to be a thing in PoF. But as I say, that's just my opinion - I personally do not enjoy that sort of repetitive content. I prefer the original dynamic - once I've completed a heart, it stays completed while I move on to a new area.

I wasn't keen on repeating hearts either at first... but I have to admit they're growing on me, at least some of them. I don't know if I'd call any of them fun to repeat, but some - like the EB skritt one - are at least easy to do without any higher brain function. Hopefully PoF will have a range of vendors, some that will be easy to complete when you want to Id your stuff.

@Erasculio.2914 said:Considering this is a new forum and the influx of returning players we got with PoF, could someone please explain this new system? I wasn't around for the beta and the older topics about it aren't that easily found anymore.

One of the complaints people had with the loot system through HoT was that blues and greens drop so often and fill your bags. If you salvage them, your bags get filled with minor sigils, which are vendor trash, but not actual trash to all be auto sold with the 'sell trash' button. And with the Hot type metas, your bags will fill quick and often you're not near a vendor when you're following a quest chain to advance the meta. Also, there are several different bag types that drop, each taking up an inventory slot and give you essentially the same loot, so again, we're talking about inventory clutter.

In the PoF beta, a new item was introduced - unidentified gear. You have the option to salvage it as is (you get wood, ore, etc, but no sigils and no luck) or take it to a heart merchant to identify it. The cost of doing so is completing that heart, and then paying money (I think a silver and some copper each) to identify it. The arguments from the playerbase for the new system boiled down to convenience, ability to sell/buy on TP (items seems to have a better ID rate the higher your magic find % is). Arguments against it seem to be that the cost is too high monetarily, the fact that we have to do a heart each time we ID is an annoyance, and that there could be rares and exotics hiding in our gear but no guarantee on return for the cost of IDing it. We don't have enough data for drop rates yet, so we're not sure if this will reduce the amount of rares and exotics that drop overall naturally - is the gear supposed to replace some of those drops or supplement it?

There's probably more, but that's kind of the jist of it as I recall.

@Erasculio.2914 said:

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:Since the post which garnered so much discussion on the old forum will not be able to be migrated over I am re-starting that discussion here to make sure those voices don't get lost to a forum shift.

Yep, as was stated the crux of the issue boiled down to both the cost (1s 68cp) for each item to be identified and having to re-do a heart to even get the things ID'd. The argument against the price is that in all the cost to ID an item usually cost more than the item you ultimately received and so IDing anything amounted to a net loss in gold with the usual added annoyance that came with salvaging low tier loot. The problem of course is that Anet made those unidentified items a new gamble/rng game that might occasionally give you somrthing that wasn't full on junk or might even be needed for a collection, so not identifying them meant not getting those things. Also, if you reflexively salvage all blue/green items as you go, you will salvage those items you might have planned on getting identified.

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:

@LanfearShadowflame.3189 said:

@PookieDaWombat.6209 said:Obviously just my opinion regarding the heart necessity: The only reason I didn't hate on this aspect too much is that it gives the hearts a bit more of a reason to not forget them, which may keep more players interacting with the world while on a map, even if its just one heart after the end of a run. Basically keeping some maps from going dead, which is good for new new players to the game.

I really do NOT want an ID kit... I don't have to ID things now and I am really not a fan of having to do it. I've made most of my frustrations and irritations with the addition of this known in my previous posts but to recap. My arguments boil down to: The initial maths show that the rate of drops do not match the added expense which means it's a useless gold sink. It will serve as an annoyance for new players who will start with main Tyria and then all of a sudden have to pay gold to for stuff they can get without gold currently and it's added annoyance of doing hearts to ID. The entire system seems to be an attempted call back to GW1 without a care about how the current game SHOULD continue to differ from the old game (ie if you wanted to play gw1 you would be).

As I've still not heard anything about whether or not Anet is taking this into account, I'm still debating getting a refund.

Ok let them implement this new system, we'll see in long run.But can somebody answer one question for me? Was it anywhere confirmed that this new system would be adapted to whole game, core and HoT?Because if not I don't see the point.

@Pixlboy.5296 said:Ok let them implement this new system, we'll see in long run.But can somebody answer one question for me? Was it anywhere confirmed that this new system would be adapted to whole game, core and HoT?Because if not I don't see the point.

I don't see them implementing this is core or HoT without also completely revamping the way loot drops on those maps and what those loot tables look like. So far it appears to be a uniquely PoF thing, which is ironically yet another strike against it in some ways.