A fair and reasonable mechanism for compensating the change in legendary rune functionality

[Lord Rhett.9360]

On 7/3/2023 at 10:52 AM, DanAlcedo.3281 said:

Dude. I don't need MORE gold. I need something meaningful that I can spend money on. 

Send it all to me

[Marcelo.4210]

Ayo, now thinking after a while, what will happen to same stat runes with different endings that people own? If some have like, let's say rune of the spellbreaker and mesmer(give same stats just change the last effect) in their inventory, they will just, well lose those aswell? This is looking more and more confusing after a while.

[Linken.6345]

38 minutes ago, Marcelo.4210 said:

Ayo, now thinking after a while, what will happen to same stat runes with different endings that people own? If some have like, let's say rune of the spellbreaker and mesmer(give same stats just change the last effect) in their inventory, they will just, well lose those aswell? This is looking more and more confusing after a while.

Well they could just make a berserker rune and that will be both ogre, scholar and deadeye.

So the same runes will turn into something else.

[Wolfshade.9251]

If a car dealership decided to take away the seats of a car I bought years ago and then try to sell them back to me, I'd tell them to... No matter what compensation they provide, they're still taking away old features and asking us to pay for them. I'm not paying them a single cent for it.

What are they going to remove and repackage as expac features next? Weaponswap? LFG? The login button? Nah, I'm out.

[Gazrul.3086]

The solution is simple. Just give a legendary relic to everyone who made 7 legendary runes, and for the rest just make it obtainable by completing all meta achievements in SotO. 

 

Sure, that'd devalue exotic and ascended relics, but at this point it's the best they can do to appease most people. 

Edited July 18, 2023 by Chronardis.4028

[Healix.5819]

20 minutes ago, Chronardis.4028 said:

The solution is simple. Just give a legendary relic to everyone who made 7 legendary runes, and for the rest just make it obtainable by completing all meta achievements in SotO.

Relics are likely going to have another purpose. A legendary relic would only mean having to add another slot for that. If they were going to do that, they would have done an elite rune slot, moving the 6 piece bonus to an elite bonus that only applied when equipped in the elite slot.

What will likely happen is relics are unlocks and legendary runes will simply unlock all rune relics.

12 hours ago, Linken.6345 said:

Well they could just make a berserker rune and that will be both ogre, scholar and deadeye.

The simplest option is just giving them different stats for the 6 piece. Those 3 would probably be vitality, ferocity and precision.

[Luthan.5236]

This imo seems they way they should go. Either no compensation (but Rubi already said there'll be one) - or doing something like OP suggested. The "old" players (that crafted runes before) will get a compensation because the runes lose in functionality. (Technically ArenaNet can change the game - according to the terms of service. They would not have to do this.)

Compensation needs not to be extremely high. Since people still get the other stats. (Not getting the rune only for the last rune special bonus.) And the new system will bring higher functionality (more/individual combinations and the bonus not tied to certain runes and t heir stats.)

The old players already had time to play with the old runes (at their old/full functionality).

Now you can't expect new players to pay the old price when an old player paid the old price and got time to play at full (old) rune functionality + got the compensation.
Would at least need to give the new players that compensation as well - and we simply do that by changing the recipe. This also factors in people that did complete a few runes but did not manage to get the full set yet. (In hopes of the old stats/functionality.) They get partly a compensation for the runes they already have.

For the others they pay less.

Compensation should be that for 6 runes it adds almost up to the cost of a legendary relic. (Can be lower since the players will get more/better options with that.) The crafting recipe price reduction could also be slightly lower than the compansation for existing runes - since existing rune players had a bit of play with their runes at full functionality.

[Parasite.5389]

the compensation will probably just be a Choice box of Relics per rune on the account(similar to how players were compensated for armor when the legendary armory came out)
but ultimately the compensation isn't going to be huge, at MOST you're losing 1/6th the cost of the runes which is around 370g for a full set.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Parasite.5389

[Geralt.7519]

22 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

They would not have to do this

Anet doesn't "have" to BUT if you had a business of your own you'd know not to anger your paying customers when you *can* avoid it.

[Astralporing.1957]

6 minutes ago, Geralt.7519 said:

Anet doesn't "have" to BUT if you had a business of your own you'd know not to anger your paying customers when you *can* avoid it.

And people with legendaries are far more likely to be in that "paying" part of the community.

[Geralt.7519]

1 minute ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

And people with legendaries are far more likely to be in that "paying" part of the community.

Actually anyone buying xpacs is a paying customer, but I agree legendary crafters are much more likely to buy gems on top of it considering the huge amount of gold required.

[Luthan.5236]

Of course. But you also should keep in mind that there might be a lot of players that have work (not much time to play per day ... but they earn money to buy gems) - paying a lot with gems for convenience upgrades and maybe skins. That is not necessarily only legendaries. (They are only a small part of the game.)

While they can help to not anger the legandary owners by giving compensation ... it would still be better to give no compensation vs giving compensation and forgetting about the players that do not have legendaries yet (which might still have played the game a lot - and paid money).

Slapping them in the face by giving compensation to the owners of legendary runes and not adjusting the price/cost for players that yet have to obtain the legendary runes ... would probably be the worst. Let's hope they can take care of eveyrone. (In general the previous changes always seem to have made it easier for the players that caught up with stuff later. Not giving them a hardre time. So I have good hopes that they don't just gift someting to the rune owners without adjustingt he price/recipe as well.)

The legendary players with more money - are probably the ones that buy gems for real money. Trade it to gold. And then purchase the legendary 1 weapons from trading post.

Edited July 19, 2023 by Luthan.5236

[Geralt.7519]

2 minutes ago, Luthan.5236 said:

Slapping them in the face by giving compensation to the owners of legendary runes and not adjusting the price/cost for players that yet have to obtain the legendary runes ... would probably be the worst

I agree, that's why I believe making a legendary relic as a reward for crafting a full set of runes is the best solution.

You give current owners of a full set a functional equivalent, you don't ignore those who only have a partial set by giving them a purpose to finish it, and you don't ignore those wanting to craft runes in the future by giving them exactly the same reward of those who did them before, while not needing to adjust the costs.

 

[Redfeather.6401]

I don't have any legendary runes, but I play warframe and know that in this case digital extremes would without a doubt run a script to partially refund materials used to create the item. They have done it many times in warframe when they lower crafting costs of things to increase accessibility!

If you google, warframe script to refund materials, you'll see how many times! It's a lot! 😲

Edited July 19, 2023 by Redfeather.6401

[Geralt.7519]

59 minutes ago, Redfeather.6401 said:

They have done it many times in warframe when they lower crafting costs of things to increase accessibility

That's really nice of them! If Blizzard did the same for training costs I'd be a billionaire in WoW lol 😄

Edited July 19, 2023 by Geralt.7519

[Mistwraithe.3106]

OP's suggestions seem good to me.

I suspect the main issue Arena Net are dealing with right now is that they didn't plan to have Legendary Relic's available in SotO. The easiest solutions to the problem involve giving Legendary Rune owners partial or complete funding towards a Legendary Relic, but if they don't exist then that solution isn't feasible. So they are stuck and it might already be too late to put Legendary Relic's into SotO since release date is very soon.

As an aside, I personally feel that the gnashing of teeth over Legendary Runes is a bit overplayed from some quarters, I get it's a problem but the world isn't ending. Meanwhile, the wailing that Relics are vertical progression or pay to win seems ludicrous to me (relics are on par with any other stat/skill affecting system in the game, including the fact that a full set of matching superior runes, which costs resources to arrange, is far better than minor/major runes or having mismatched runes).

[Astralporing.1957]

5 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

As an aside, I personally feel that the gnashing of teeth over Legendary Runes is a bit overplayed from some quarters, I get it's a problem but the world isn't ending. Meanwhile, the wailing that Relics are vertical progression or pay to win seems ludicrous to me (relics are on par with any other stat/skill affecting system in the game, including the fact that a full set of matching superior runes, which costs resources to arrange, is far better than minor/major runes or having mismatched runes).

You are missing the key point of why people call it a vertical progression system in disguise. The nature of vertical gear progression lies not in you getting stronger and stronger. That's only an illusion the game tries to persuade you to believe in. The real nature of vertical progression is that you get weaker (relative to the game's baseline), and then have to grind to get back to the state you were before.

Now, doesn't that sound familiar to you? If so, it's because it's exactly how the Relic change will work.

[Geralt.7519]

7 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

the wailing that Relics are vertical progression or pay to win seems ludicrous to me

I agree saying they're P2W is absurd but they *are* vertical progression, in not that they give you more power, they don't, but they do invalidate your current progress.

Today your build is complete, at Soto launch your set bonus is being removed making your build incomplete, and you have to grind a new piece of equipment to get back to where you are now. That's what vertical gear progression is about, it affects everyone, not only those with legendaries.

[Lord Rhett.9360]

If you don't use a relic, you're underpowered, so you have to have one.

They did say you can craft unbound runes, so hopefully they're like infusions and are literally never bound. If that's the case, then I imagine they'd end up actually being fairly inexpensive in the long run, which is a very nice gesture. Except for expansion relics, which... yeah that sucks.

Edited July 20, 2023 by Lord Rhett.9360

[Mistwraithe.3106]

18 hours ago, Astralporing.1957 said:

You are missing the key point of why people call it a vertical progression system in disguise. The nature of vertical gear progression lies not in you getting stronger and stronger. That's only an illusion the game tries to persuade you to believe in. The real nature of vertical progression is that you get weaker (relative to the game's baseline), and then have to grind to get back to the state you were before.

Now, doesn't that sound familiar to you? If so, it's because it's exactly how the Relic change will work.

OK, I guess that is fair.

But, it's very mild. A player without a relic isn't going to automatically lose to someone who does have one. And you get given relics as part of the upgrade so you are immediately back to the same level of power for at least one build per character. We don't know exact costs but it's hard to imagine that acquiring a few more core relics is going to be a significant expenditure for most players. Acquiring the new expansion relics could be a lot more work but then that is the essence of an expansion - to provide more content and things to do. Similarly Legendary Relics could be a lot of work but they are going to alleviate that somewhat by give a boost for anyone who already had Legendary Runes.

Compared with what is meant by vertical progression in other games like WoW (where new expansions raise the power bar to the point that characters who haven't reached the new level cap have no chance at all) and the difference is night and day.

So it's worthy of comment, but I still don't see it as being worthy of the vitriol that has been produced from some forum posters.

[Astralporing.1957]

8 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

OK, I guess that is fair.

But, it's very mild. A player without a relic isn't going to automatically lose to someone who does have one. And you get given relics as part of the upgrade so you are immediately back to the same level of power for at least one build per character. We don't know exact costs but it's hard to imagine that acquiring a few more core relics is going to be a significant expenditure for most players. Acquiring the new expansion relics could be a lot more work but then that is the essence of an expansion - to provide more content and things to do. Similarly Legendary Relics could be a lot of work but they are going to alleviate that somewhat by give a boost for anyone who already had Legendary Runes.

Compared with what is meant by vertical progression in other games like WoW (where new expansions raise the power bar to the point that characters who haven't reached the new level cap have no chance at all) and the difference is night and day.

So it's worthy of comment, but I still don't see it as being worthy of the vitriol that has been produced from some forum posters.

This is just the first step. Its importance lies not in how big it is, but in it even having been made. That's because it breaks certain precedent and sets a different one. It does not open the doors to vertical progression insanity wide yet, but it does let Anet set a foot in that door. And, if we won't manage to shut it straight in their faces now, they will attempt to step forward through it in the future.

Also, "mild" is deceptive. The same argument was once used to claim that introducing ascended was not an issue. "because the difference is not that big". Notice, though, that the only reason why ascended introduction ended up being manageable is because the massive backlash that happened in response to it completely stopped Anet's plans to "continue with gear progression on shallow curve".

Notice, btw, that both the Ascended debacle and the current Relic situation happened under the same person - the very one responsible for "definitely raising the level cap" and "gear progression on shallow curve" statements.

[Geralt.7519]

9 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

A player without a relic isn't going to automatically lose to someone who does have one.

That's the equivalent of someone currently using only 5 runes instead of 6, they do lose because they're missing a very important part of their build that's the set bonus.

 

9 hours ago, Mistwraithe.3106 said:

Compared with what is meant by vertical progression in other games like WoW (where new expansions raise the power bar to the point that characters who haven't reached the new level cap have no chance at all) and the difference is night and day.

WoW has always been a vertical gear progression game, Blizzard is not invalidating the core principles of WoW by doing that, while GW2 has always been a game priding itself in not invalidating player progress with new xpacs, no gear treadmill being its biggest selling point, THIS is the real difference and why people are so upset.

There's also the matter of setting a precedent, it started with the jade core in EoD, a new piece of equipment you had to grind on every char, but it flew under the radar because it didn't take anything away from players, now we have relics, that - while being a good system in theory, it's implemented in a way that takes away from players, especially legendary crafters, what will be next?

Do you know the metaphor of boiling frogs?

[Luthan.5236]

It does matter though - what/where they lose. In PvP it won't be a big deal because everyone gets the same gear options. WvW we have big zerging - less of a problem if an invidual player has a not 100 percently optimized build. Same for the normal open world content though. For most content.

My guess is that the majority of players will quickly get used to the new system. The changes should mainly affect the perfectly optimized players - that play in a way that that perfect optimization is required. Raids, fractals - premade WvW guild groups. Where the rule is "use optimized build or get kicked". Those probably also are over-represented in the forums. Cause they care more about the game in depth - trying to discuss about such things. (Though then again: They should have it much easier/faster - cause they play more and probably have a lot of gold saved up already and have efficient ways to farm - to adapt to the new system even if it costs ingame money.)

If you give a newb an optimized build letting them play 1 vs 1 against a pro that only uses half the gear ... pro still might win. 😄 Most important thing with the vertical progression stuff is ... that other games made it mandatory (gear treadmill) to take part in boring playstyle: Having to repeat dungeon/raid A a ton of times to get gear to be available to do B without being 1-shot. Then repeating the same stuff again. (Not only do I dislike raids and "pro"-content like that. I also dislike such grind.)

The legendaries in GW2 feel less grindy cause I can access most of the content just fine without them. (Even exotics are fine for most stuff lol. Ascended can be gotten slowly as needed - when working in fractals. And only the strikes/raids might require at least full ascended by the parties that play them.) So I can just play the game like I want to play it - withoug having to be restricted on most content. And slowly accumulating money to get a legendary every now and then. (Not needing to force myself to straight grind before being able to do other stuff.)

I wonder how some rune changes can be compared to introducing new elite specs (power creep). While rune changes definitely takes away some stuff people previously had with runes (still easy to get it again with the relics) ... there are balance changes. New elite specs. And other stuff - that made the previous stuff worth a lot less. Even if it is just a change in drop rates of some rare items (summoning stones gotten added to daily Soo-Won I think) ... this makes it easier for players that want to buy them. (On the other hand taking away the option to get more easy money by just getting the ones from the weekly vendor and selling them to others.)

Elite specs are not mandatory - especially in core content. People might have the advantage there. Imagine them making some balance changes dedicing to just remove the rune special bonus ... without adding it back in some other newly introduced gear. Wouldn't that have been worse? In a way it seems like players just are angry cause now they can't have the max optimization again without doing work again. And taking away only ... would have felt just like a normal balance change to them. (There it is already possible for different gear to become better if different builds are "recommended" cause of some change - requiring you to re-buy stuff when you don't have legendaries to stat-swap. Or using resources to swap ascended.)