"Re-Trait" NPC

Rafishul

For the multitudes of us who have horrible luck with regards to getting a specific drop in a specific trait, I wonder if it wouldn't be worth exploring making a new NPC somewhere that gives a quest. This quest would likely have a very high gold tax and require a great deal of time and effort to complete, but at the end that NPC would assign any of the possible traits to a single dropped item of your choice, allowing us to turn those Defending turds into Sharpened machines.

While the two series of games are certainly not analogous, an example would be the relic weapon quests from both Final Fantasy XI and XIV. Both took a great deal of time, removed a great deal of currency from the game, and served as a good way to integrate min-maxing with the lore of the game.

Thoughts?

Lenikus

Unless that would involve destroying teh created item, and re-creating, i guess you could do that... but then again, you just go to teh station to do that, you don't need an npc for decon stuff.

Oh you meant droped sets? Good number of them have fixed traits. tough luck.
Oh you meant farmable drops? well, gud luck next run, it seems.

Attackopsn

Could even be implemented with a cruel amount of legendary material needed to do it, but I'd easily drop that to re-trait certain items

Attackopsn

Just keep the Atmas out of the re-trait process 0.0

Rafishul

Yeah, those were horrible. But you get my drift.

Turelus

There have been a few ideas in the past for retraiting items.

The one I always liked was letting player do it themselves but it binds the item to account when done.

It would cost a large number of trait gems with a crafting skill to reduce the cost (much like tempers).

Sallington

It should require a drop/gem from the last boss in Vet dungeons, as well as some gold. Make the gems BoE.

danisonfire1994

Changing enchantments is well enough for me. But if they ever add 're-trait' on this game, then there will be no RNG system anymore, and the loot excitement will be remove. basically turning the game's loot mechanic *** and not fun at all.

InfaM

Re-traits would be a good idea and a good implementation with the following limitation to keep it controlled and not let people abuse it :

1- Only people with all 9 traits in all professions should be able to do it (kind of a reward for the months/money spent researching all traits) , and being a master crafter would now make sense.

2- If you re-trait an item it should then turn into a bound item, to limit the impact on market and to make it so you still have to invest time in the game to come to that result, and not take shortcut by letting a master crafter change the traits for you

3- The process of re-traiting an item should cost no less then 100k , so people won't abuse it and re-trait every item they get their hands on.

Those are the 3 that comes to mind to make such a system viable but I'm sure there's more that can be added to makes it fit perfectly with the game as it is.

efster

I like this idea. I've always found it a bit bizarre that we can re-enchant at will but traits are fixed even though we're able to learn them all (except Ornate and Intricate/whatever their new names post-patch).

I don't agree it should be restricted to people who have 9 trait on everything, but perhaps the number of traits you have learned on a particular type of item could lead to a dialogue option in the quest (or whatever) that removes some of the time or effort required to re-trait an item of that type.

I think this discussion is already about items that are bound in the first place. If Maelstrom weapons or Spell Power Cure or Scathing Mage were not bound, them dropping with crappy traits would be much less of a problem for people, since they could just buy the "right" trait from a guild store. In fact, maybe this should be restricted to only work with bound items.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

I am for anything that allows for a trait change. I think it is the fundamental problem of the current RNG system. You can farm for months to get a perfect set of something like scathing, but you end up with garbage traits. It is essentially useless because the baseline is comparing it a crafted set that will always have perfect traits. In this example, even though scathing will give slightly more spell damage on average, if your traits stink, you are talking about almost a 5% crit loss so its worthless.

I really dont care how they do it. As you suggested, I don't think it should be trivial. A few Ideas:

-A quest like you suggested would work. It would probably need to be a daily or a weekly so you couldnt just do it all at once. Also, this game could certainly use some gold sinks, so make it spendy.
-You could also just add it to the Cryo vendor. Let him change one item a weekend for 200K or something.
-I really like the idea of giving the ability to crafters. You could introduce an item that would unlock the trait on something. Said item could have a small chance to drop from bosses, gold keys, pvp rewards, and crafting writs. Again, something that is pretty rare. A value of 100-200k seems about right.
-At this point, they could just stick it in the crown store and be done with it. Smells like pay 2 win, but the system is so bad as it currently stands, that I just dont care anymore. I have about 10 items that I would LOVE to change the trait on. I would easily pay $20-30 a pop or several 100k gold a piece.

Rafishul

Yeah, I definitely hope it doesn't come to options two or four @Oreyn_Bearclaw . Working crafters into it would have to be done carefully, but yeah, maybe some combination of a quest with a gold sink, an item that can only be produced by a max trait crafter, and an item that can only be purchased with AP. Force people to incorporate every aspect of the game to achieve the optimal end result.

Rafishul

zmobie_dementor wrote: »

...In fact, maybe this should be restricted to only work with bound items.

100% agree.

Ra'Shtar

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS, IMPERIAL CITY GAME PACK
Exploration & Itemization
General

• Set pieces obtained from the Trophy Vaults in Imperial City Prison and White-Gold Tower can now drop with Sturdy, Training, or Prosperous traits, in addition to the previous Infused, Divines, Well-Fitted, and Reinforced traits.
• Fixed an issue where the set items added to expand the trait selection for Imperial City Prison and White-Gold Tower were Bind on Equip. They are now Bind on Pickup, as originally intended.

Have "fun".

Rafishul

Yeah, all the more reason why something like this would be of tremendous benefit.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Rafishul wrote: »

Yeah, I definitely hope it doesn't come to options two or four @Oreyn_Bearclaw . Working crafters into it would have to be done carefully, but yeah, maybe some combination of a quest with a gold sink, an item that can only be produced by a max trait crafter, and an item that can only be purchased with AP. Force people to incorporate every aspect of the game to achieve the optimal end result.

Yeah, I dont much care for those either, but like I said, I dont care what they do at this point as long as it is something

I do agree that I think it could be cool to make the item required to change trait come from different sources. This would allow people to progress with their gear by playing the whole game rather than a tiny little piece of it. Most people I know basically run three things on repeat. ICP, VMOL, and VMA. Wouldnt it be cool if I could upgrade a piece of scathing gear while PvPing or doing the daily? I think so, but what do I know.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Dear ZOS,

We as a player base love your game, but we collectively have a problem with your current RNG system and the bloated loot tables. We feel the system diminishes any sense of accomplishment or progression at end game, and turns what should be an enjoyable experience into a never ending grind. We would really hope that you could do something to fix the problem with all of your infinite wisdom.

Best regards,

Your loyal customers.






Dear Loyal Customers,

WHAT DID YOU SAY? You want more traits and an even more bloated loot table? You couldnt get what you wanted with three traits in place, so here are 3 more terrible traits. We have outlined a plan that hopefully will make the problem even worse.

ZOS_JessicaFolsom wrote: »

FIXES & IMPROVEMENTS, IMPERIAL CITY GAME PACK
Exploration & Itemization
General

• Set pieces obtained from the Trophy Vaults in Imperial City Prison and White-Gold Tower can now drop with Sturdy, Training, or Prosperous traits, in addition to the previous Infused, Divines, Well-Fitted, and Reinforced traits.
• Fixed an issue where the set items added to expand the trait selection for Imperial City Prison and White-Gold Tower were Bind on Equip. They are now Bind on Pickup, as originally intended.

We hope this finds everyone miserable and upset.

No regards,

ZOS

Cuyler

danisonfire1994 wrote: »

Changing enchantments is well enough for me. But if they ever add 're-trait' on this game, then there will be no RNG system anymore, and the loot excitement will be remove. basically turning the game's loot mechanic *** and not fun at all.

Not removed, shifted.

Rafishul

Cuyler wrote: »

danisonfire1994 wrote: »

Changing enchantments is well enough for me. But if they ever add 're-trait' on this game, then there will be no RNG system anymore, and the loot excitement will be remove. basically turning the game's loot mechanic *** and not fun at all.

Not removed, shifted.

Yeah. You'd get the drop, and then start the process of acquiring the items needed to re-trait it.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

danisonfire1994 wrote: »

Changing enchantments is well enough for me. But if they ever add 're-trait' on this game, then there will be no RNG system anymore, and the loot excitement will be remove. basically turning the game's loot mechanic *** and not fun at all.

I disagree. You still need to get the item first. It is simply removing one layer (the most frustrating layer) of RNG. People farm for months just to get a 5 piece set of something only to have it drop in well fitted. Or they do VMA 50+ times to get the item they were after but its in Defending. The grind would still be there. It would just be a little easier to handle, and people would be way less frustrated.

You could also then open up another aspect of the game by making the changing of gear a meaningful progression that could be done by multiple areas of content. Or we can just keep running ICP on repeat...

Rafishul

Now we just need to get a dev to see eye to eye with us.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

Rafishul wrote: »

Now we just need to get a dev to see eye to eye with us.

I wonder how many Devs at ZOS are capable of running VMA on a live server. I am sure the answer is not O, but I bet it is not particularly high. I use VMA as an example, because I think this is the worst example of the problem (followed by Prison, WGT, and anyone still actually trying to farm sets from wrothgar bosses).

Lynx7386

This should be something added to master crafters as a perk, along with the ability to transmute items to any known style or level appearance.