So Relics will be vertical progression, power creep and pay to win? [Merged]

[Sylvyn.4750]

15 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I guess new weapon options are also bad because oh noes now players will need to buy them. 

Yet nothing was taken away first to add new weapons into the mix...new weapons are new content without old content disappearing.

[Finse.8526]

20 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Nothing is necessary, they could leave the game at vanilla state and call it a day. You would never need to grind for anything. 

I see this similar to new stat sets. A new set comes out with better stat distribution for a specific role. Would you rather it never comes out because now you need to grind for it? 

I see this as a great addition. Not even for min maxing but for actual fun. This opens options for so many fun relic effects withou need to design full rune sets. 

I see this crying as partialy strange, its a rpg game afterall, character building is a big part of it and additional options are usually welcome (and its also more or less horizontal). Also partially sad because some people are so self centric they would try to stiffle progress because it will cost them a few gold. 

I guess new weapon options are also bad because oh noes now players will need to buy them. 

I totally agree with how this change will allow for many new relic/rune combinations (and potentially new relic effects that perhaps wouldn't be possible while they were linked to the rune bonus).

But as a player with MANY characters who went through the pain of making legendary gear (including runes) specifically so that I wouldn't have to bother buying gear for each individual character, this feels like a huge step backwards.

Now, I wouldn't mind buying a legendary relic to re-obtain the 6th rune bonus effects that I already paid for, but I imagine many players don't have that kind of gold lying around. Also, we don't know if we're getting the option to buy a legendary relic to begin with.

Overall I like the potential that this change brings, but I don't think it's surprising that players become upset when they lose something that they spent a lot of time and gold to get.

[Astralporing.1957]

43 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

I see this similar to new stat sets. A new set comes out with better stat distribution for a specific role. Would you rather it never comes out because now you need to grind for it?

It's not like that. If it was, we'd get relics for the runes we already have, but would have to obtain new ones. What is happening is more like as if already existing stat sets were split in half, with our current gear (including legendaries) retaining both secondaries (in case of three-stat sets), or one primary one secondary (in case of four stat sets), with the rest of stats moving to a new gear slot we'd have to farm for again.

[Gop.8713]

4 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

It's not like that. If it was, we'd get relics for the runes we already have, but would have to obtain new ones. What is happening is more like as if already existing stat sets were split in half, with our current gear (including legendaries) retaining both secondaries (in case of three-stat sets), or one primary one secondary (in case of four stat sets), with the rest of stats moving to a new gear slot we'd have to farm for again.

So you mean like when they pulled mf off gear . . ?

[Deihnyx.6318]

23 hours ago, Buran.3796 said:

That doesn't sounds like "horizontal progression" at all to me.

Good. The game is almost 11 years old.

Many players have completed gear in either ascended or legendary for years now. Horizontal progression and skin hunting can only get you so far...

I welcome this change even if it means having to work towards it.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Deihnyx.6318

[Astralporing.1957]

7 minutes ago, Gop.8713 said:

So you mean like when they pulled mf off gear . . ?

Notice, that:

1. MF was only on 3 gear sets, so it didn't impact most of the players

2. people with 2 of those 3 sets were offered free respecs for all their affected gear

3. the third remaining gear set (celestial) was extremely new. Although i do agree its owners got the short end of the stick, due to not being compensated in any way. Personally i was then mentioning they should have been offered something.

4. and last but not least, removal of MF from gear at that time was necessary, because its existence created some very negative gameplay behaviours.

Current situation, is, again, very not like that.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Astralporing.1957

[Gop.8713]

5 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

Notice, that:

1. MF was only on 3 gear sets, so it didn't impact most of the players

2. people with 2 of those 3 sets were offered free respecs for all their affected gear

3. the third remaining gear set (celestial) was extremely new. Although i do agree its owners got the short end of the stick, due to not being compensated in any way. Personally i was then mentioning they should have been offered something.

4. and last but not least, removal of MF from gear at that time was necessary, because its existence created some very negative gameplay behaviours.

Current situation, is, again, very not like that.

Idk I have leggy everything and I'm not put out by this at all, just excited about the opportunities it offers. Trying to understand the "but me first" crowd . . .

[Ashen.2907]

3 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

They can, but they should take care to improve features without taking stuff away if it's not absolutely necessary. And in this case it wasn't necessary. Unless the point was not to add QoL/functionality, but force people to regrind stuff, of course. 

In short, the split itself is not a problem. The problem is having to regrind/rebuy the 6th rune bonuses in new form. It's like hearing that the garage you bought alongside your house is now considered to be separate, and to keep using it you'd have to buy it again.

This.

The changes to the system could have been implemented without taking what players had already purchased away in order to sell it back to them.

[blp.3489]

Do we know for certain what is going to happen to runes we already own?  Will they be vaporized?  Will we get a new rune without the 6th rune bonus?  Will we get a relic based on the 6th rune bonus?  Will we get both?  Will existing runes continue to function the way they do now but we can override the 6th rune bonus by equipping a relic?  I didn't see them specifying which of these would happen.  It seems odd to me to presume that they are going to viciously vaporize all our runes.  Given that stats-only runes are likely to be relatively inexpensive, why assume they will give us the inexpensive half of the rune back?  Wouldn't all their players be happiest to be able to continue to use the existing rune functionality and only have to purchase new stuff if they want something they don't already have?  Why assume they want to rip off their customers?  After they gave us the Legendary Armory shouldn't we give them the benefit of the doubt until we know the details?

[DeathPanel.8362]

4 hours ago, Sylvyn.4750 said:

We'll have to see how it plays out, but it could be on par with having Anet remove all your Ascended armor and giving you all Exotics in exchange, then giving you a few Ascended back in return, but not enough to cover all your builds, and you'll have to grind to get the rest of your Exotics upgraded back to Ascended in the stats you need.

It's more like if ANET nerfed stats across the board by 10%, then added a new equipment slot with equipment that raises your stats by 20% which you need to farm for.  It's a temporary nerf in exchange for overall long term buff.

[Ashen.2907]

1 minute ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

It's more like if ANET nerfed stats across the board by 10%, then added a new equipment slot with equipment that raises your stats by 20% which you need to farm for.  It's a temporary nerf in exchange for overall long term buff.

Indeed, vertical progression.

[Buran.3796]

  After reading all the coments, I'm amazed by the level of copium in some of them lets adress some of the problems which I have with the Relics:

   The first thing that must to be said, is that the game already has some clear "pay to win" features. Expansions bring up more content and variety in exchange of money, but that variety provides min-maxing tools to earn gold in more efficient ways (since all content has time caped or date caped diminishing returns, and expansions bring up more way to earn money avoiding those caps). An of course, no core profession breaks 40k dps benchmarks at the golem (a full squad of cores won't even geat perma alacrity or perma quickness;  expansions are power creep galore). So, in exchange for money, expansions bring up more and better ways to earn money and more power; this is not ideal or in line with their original roadmap for the game but at least you're paying for extra content, so is fair...

  1) Now Relics: the change will remove effects we already have in the game and which we earned. There's nothing fun or amicable about that. It was not much but it a honest work and now will be stolen. And since is a global change will affect every player no matter if you're a f2p player or a Baron.

  2) The "variety we gain" argument: There was a time in which you could min-max runes, but ANet chose to nerf them stacking the most valuable features at the last rune. It helped them to homogenize balance since they reduced the interesting iterations Overall, was a BAD choice: meta running players use a rune or two for power dps builds (oftenly Scholar) and the same for condition dps (oftenly Nighmare, unless your condi damage is monochromatic). Same with support. So now we have 5-6 runes in use and vast majority of the others are garbage. Same in PvP: 22 runes available, barely half a dozen has any use.  We had no new runes in EoD; the new relics bring up some new features, but at the ent it will be the same: meta stats for power, condi or support, then the extra effect of desire. For min-maxers t will be the same 0 variety that we currently have. The DIFFERENCE will be that we will have to re-earn the new meta in this "no vertical progression" game...   lol 

   3) A very simple example of how the change is bad.  I have 18 characters; most of them with 2 gear templates, some with 3 gear templates, 1 with 4 gear teamplates, and 8 gear templates in my main. In total  I have ~32 gear templates. Most of the slots are legendary (armors, trinkets and weapons) albeit I din't crafted legendary runes (armors allows to swap runes without wasting them), and runes are of supoerior quality and selected to bring up to the characters the things they benefit the most from the nuilds they run. One of my Guardians has a DH roaming build, a FB celestial roaming build and a condi PvE WB build. For the DH the runes of choice are Trapper due the synergies, for the FB I use Fireworks due the nice extra boons and because moving at 100% pace instead of 125% (at leas) is just lame; the WB runs Balthazar runes because WB already have 25% increased movement speed and Balthy makes us tankier and helps to cap the fire duration. With the Relics I will lose the 6th rune bonus (which are the main reason I made those choices) that I will need to grind/farm again in exchange of the USELESS ability of being able to combine the same final features with any stat points of choice, which is DUMB because those runes ALREADY have good stats that match very well the builds I'm running. And I would have to do this ~32 times for the features I will lose...

   So, I don't see a single reason to implement Relics in the game (a game which din't release any new rune in years and homogenized into irrelevance 80% of the ones that still exists) unles they plan to monetize the Relics in any sort in the Black Lion Game Store the same they made the gathering tools a pay to win feature included all those tools with better speed animations and ultra-effective glyphs for farming.

   So anyone thinking that this move will made the game better hasn't been payin attention...

 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Buran.3796

[Barraind.7324]

5 hours ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Special bonus = anything different from a +x in stats. Especially summons and stuff like that. Not sure how they +x duration and stuff like that is handled.  Some are in the earlier slots - for some runes. With last slot also having this. And there is damage reduction.

You can somewhat assume the things that will be kept as the 6th line for runes is anything thats a flat/constant +x or +x%, and the other stuff is what will be moved off.  And whatever doesnt have something like that will get a similar bonus to its 4th or 5th line as its 6th line (some runes follow the 1/3/5 2/4/6 pattern, and some have a 1/3 2/4/5/6 pattern). 

 

As an example, monk runes will either keep the 10% healing as the 6piece, or itll also be transferred off and the 6 piece will be 10% boon duration to match its 2/4 piece.  Most of the condition duration runes will probably (but who knows!) keep the condition duration on the 6piece, since its also on their 2/4, but Firebrand runes would probably have a completely new 6piece, since its conditional on doing something and not a straight bonus. 

 

I'm sort of assuming they're using this as an opportunity to clean up all the 6pieces nobody gives a crap about (anyone ever use  something like Grove in a serious way) or are just 2 normal 6pieces squnched together, and just keep the ones that offer meaningful choice, but thats a giant leap based on what we've seen so far. 

Edited June 29, 2023 by Barraind.7324

[DeathPanel.8362]

 

2 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

1) Now Relics: the change will remove effects we already have in the game and which we earned. There's nothing fun or amicable about that. It was not much but it a honest work and now will be stolen. And since is a global change will affect every player no matter if you're a f2p player or a Baron.

Literally every single balance patch where a skill is nerfed or effects from the skill are removed does this.  By your logic, ANET shouldn't be making any balancing decisions like that ever.  That logic is totally unworkable in an MMO where balancing decisions must be made.

Runes have been changed many times during GW2's history where 6-slot effects were removed or revamped for balance reasons.  This change is no different.  This is a balance change to allow players greater control over their builds.  

Unless relics are prohibitively expensive which I seriously doubt the bar will be so low to get the relics you need that P2W doesn't even come into the picture.  And I'm saying this as someone who has 32 characters to gear with runes.

[DeathPanel.8362]

40 minutes ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Indeed, vertical progression.

By that logic, a balance patch buffing a skill by 10% damage would be vertical progression.

[idpersona.3810]

19 minutes ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

Runes have been changed many times during GW2's history where 6-slot effects were removed or revamped for balance reasons.  This change is no different.  This is a balance change to allow players greater control over their builds. 

Personally, I think this misses the point a little. After all previous changes, Runes (legendary runes in particular) still filled their intended function. After Relics come out, said runes will no longer fill the function they previously had. And Legendary runes in particular will have their function split off into a new item.

[Buran.3796]

15 minutes ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

Literally every single balance patch where a skill is nerfed or effects from the skill are removed does this.  By your logic, ANET shouldn't be making any balancing decisions like that ever.  That logic is totally unworkable in an MMO where balancing decisions must be made.

Runes have been changed many times during GW2's history where 6-slot effects were removed or revamped for balance reasons.  This change is no different.  This is a balance change to allow players greater control over their builds.  

  I paid 0 gold to re-learn the traits or skills after the changes in each balance patch. Relicswon't even be remotely close to being free.

  Most of changes in runes in the past barely affected the meta, which has been static and focused in half dozen of them for most of the liufe of the game, specially in instanced game modes and PvP (by the way, in PvP most of runes has been remover/nerfed so hard that the main rule is "use the least bad ones" and that's the main reason why everyone uses the few  same).

   Relics will be as static as the runes in the current meta, but you'll be forced to start it over. Best case scenario, it will be a convoluted way to force players to grind and remain attached in a game famous by content droughts; in worst case scenario they'll find out a way to implement paywall shortcuts to speed up that grinding as they did with the gathering tool system.

 

[DeathPanel.8362]

3 minutes ago, idpersona.3810 said:

Personally, I think this misses the point a little. After all previous changes, Runes (legendary runes in particular) still filled their intended function. After Relics come out, said runes will no longer fill the function they previously had. And Legendary runes in particular will have their function split off into a new item.

No.  Moving the 6-slot effect off of a rune is not functionally different than patching it to not have that 6-slot effect like what happened to many runes in the past.  In both cases said rune will no longer fill the function they previously had.  It's a de facto nerf while making up for it elsewhere.  Literally every single balance patch does this. 

[Ashen.2907]

12 minutes ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

By that logic, a balance patch buffing a skill by 10% damage would be vertical progression.

Do you need to progress to get access to that skill or do you already have it.? What you describe is power creep, not vertical progression.

 

An increase in power that you need to progress to get is vertical progression. It is also power creep.

[Astralporing.1957]

34 minutes ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

Literally every single balance patch where a skill is nerfed or effects from the skill are removed does this. 

But we're not paying in order to get those changes reverted.

If they were planning to nerf runes, it would be one thing, but they don't - they are just trying to sell us a classic gear progression masqueraded as a systems change.

[Ashen.2907]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

But we're not paying in order to get those changes reverted.

If they were planning to nerf runes, it would be one thing, but they don't - they are just trying to sell us a classic gear progression masqueraded as a systems change.

This.

[Buran.3796]

2 minutes ago, DeathPanel.8362 said:

No.  Moving the 6-slot effect off of a rune is not functionally different than patching it to not have that 6-slot effect like what happened to many runes in the past.    Literally every single balance patch does this. 

   That's not true: in the past a nerf in a given set of runes would mean that at worst, you'll need to replace it by a new set, and the most expensive ones didn't push beyond 18 golds x piece, which means 108 gold coins for a 6 piece set (126 includig underwater).

   I'm entirely sure that a single Relic won't be as simple to get as paying ~20 goil coins to recover the honest work you already did. If that wpould be the plan, albeit still abyect, Ruby wouldn't have been as vague in their latest "clarification".

   Again: in a game as full of bugs as currently GW2 is, I don't see a reason to implement a 19th gear slot and make all even more spaghetti-codded with the risk that inply UNLESS they plan to cash plenty of money with it.

[DeathPanel.8362]

Just now, Buran.3796 said:

  I paid 0 gold to re-learn the traits or skills after the changes in each balance patch. Relicswon't even be remotely close to being free.

  Most of changes in runes in the past barely affected the meta.

Wrong.  You had to pay plenty of gold and other currency to replace runes that were modified by patches to replace them with others.  The meta was massively shifted by the change to many runes in the past. (ie. Perplexity changes, durability runes when they were introduced, etc)  

6 minutes ago, Buran.3796 said:

Relics will be as static as the runes in the current meta, but you'll be forced to start it over. Best case scenario, it will be a convoluted way to force players to grind and remain attached in a game famous by content droughts; in worst case scenario they'll find out a way to implement paywall shortcuts to speed up that grinding as they did with the gathering tool system.

Unless relics are made prohibitively expensive which I seriously doubt the bar will be so low that it's a non-issue. 

[DeathPanel.8362]

7 minutes ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

But we're not paying in order to get those changes reverted.

If they were planning to nerf runes, it would be one thing, but they don't - they are just trying to sell us a classic gear progression masqueraded as a systems change.

You literally are paying to offset nerfs from balance patches every time you get new gear or runes or sigils to modify your builds.

[NaconFour.2705]

What happens to specialty runes like the Rune of Durability?  Will they get a relic too?  Are all the obscure runes being grandfathered in?