Nestor wrote: »

The other issue is, we have a whole entire range of Materials, and more importantly Artwork in Armor and Weapon Styles that hardly anyone ever gets to see anymore. As I leveled my characters I would lament going to upper levels and the Armor and Weapons quite frankly did not improve in looks. Plus, we get those weird hippy flappy things up near L50 somewhere. All this effort of the devs is basically wasted.

No matter what happens to gear levels, we need to be able to use any mat for any level gear. And, have mats spawn say per zone or two. Or have a zone be mostly one mat and a mix of others. But we need diversity of gear that is not covered by Motifs. Plus, Ruby mats and dyes do not work together all that well.

To be clear, my first vote would be to leave it the way it is. But then I saw Nestor's post and he changed my mind..

First, maybe the time has come to get rid of the levelling. Really. But reduce the level of armor or damage increase you get from "higher level" armor set or weapon and instead, make the following improvement:

Allow all armors and weapons to be improved to the max level.

If you were willing to keep spending the tempers (or whatever), you could improve even basic equipment to the max level. So if you had a favorite iron sword, you could improve it to the highest level by spending more improvement mats (kind of like Skyrim - I know, you couldn't get all the way up, but you could get close).

So once you reached gold, you could level up gold again, and again and so on until you reached the level CP160 max level of armor or damage. Obviously, it would be more efficient to improve high quality items, but if you really, really wanted that special steel sword, you could have it until the end of the game.

IF you were willing to spend the mats.

But yeah, the levels don't really make sense anymore if the game is battle leveling us.

Nestor wrote: »

The other issue is, we have a whole entire range of Materials, and more importantly Artwork in Armor and Weapon Styles that hardly anyone ever gets to see anymore. As I leveled my characters I would lament going to upper levels and the Armor and Weapons quite frankly did not improve in looks. Plus, we get those weird hippy flappy things up near L50 somewhere. All this effort of the devs is basically wasted.

No matter what happens to gear levels, we need to be able to use any mat for any level gear. And, have mats spawn say per zone or two. Or have a zone be mostly one mat and a mix of others. But we need diversity of gear that is not covered by Motifs. Plus, Ruby mats and dyes do not work together all that well.

@Nestor

I mean how many times can this come up and be overlooked by the developers. Not even a ....I like the idea comment

I'm still with you on this idea fully regardless

No. This would kill the life cycle of a lot of the content. And as quickly as some of us level and out grow gear, you have put yourself in the shoes of a new player. Some people go at a different pace and everyone has to learn what the progression feels like.

Galwylin wrote: »

IrishGirlGamer wrote: »

If you were willing to keep spending the tempers (or whatever), you could improve even basic equipment to the max level. So if you had a favorite iron sword, you could improve it to the highest level by spending more improvement mats (kind of like Skyrim - I know, you couldn't get all the way up, but you could get close).

So once you reached gold, you could level up gold again, and again and so on until you reached the level CP160 max level of armor or damage. Obviously, it would be more efficient to improve high quality items, but if you really, really wanted that special steel sword, you could have it until the end of the game.

IF you were willing to spend the mats.

But yeah, the levels don't really make sense anymore if the game is battle leveling us.

I see your point. But taking your iron sword, I think if you do that then the game should see iron as inferior to steel so no matter how much you improve it, steel is always going to be better. Perhaps not an unimproved steel sword but iron by its nature will always be 'low level'. That's why I say leave it alone since if gear isn't going to have meaning then the terms iron and steel, etc. shouldn't either. And really, all that work going into something that basically at this point doesn't matter a whole lot. The only thing this is accomplishing is making sure people don't have to search for that specific piece of armor/weapon. It just seems a lot of work for something that One Tamriel has pretty much made a none issue in lots of cases. Except people having to work toward specific armor. Isn't that basically giving free stuff to people so they don't have to work for it? That's what seems to be the desire. I think. Perhaps I'm misunderstanding what's really be asked for.

Yes, you would be correct ... the way the game is set up now. What I talking about it one of two options:

Option 1: Don't fix it, it's not broken. (I'm okay with this; although I'd like the ability to create my own costumes because I like the way some of the lower level armors look ... and I really dislike how some of the higher level armors look ... and don't get me started on the dropped sets).

Option 2: Remove leveled armor completely. Just get rid of it. I mean, it doesn't really even have a purpose now, with battle leveling. It isn't giving anything to new players (except at the very barest level) because the game scales you to the content.

Honestly, others have given it more thought than I, but right now I really don't see what leveled armor adds to a game that levels you to the content.

Pls disregard my choice, fat fingers socks.

One problem I see with gear that levels with you is it defeats the purpose of farming or grinding the world bosses or delves or dolmens for these drops. Currently, we have a healthy population in the zones with those farming and having a blast at dolmens.

So it would actually be counter productive for gear to level up with your level. That being said, we need to be able to change the motifs of any gear if we are max crafting level with said craft. So a max blacksmith would be able to change the motifs for any level of blacksmithing gear. That would definitely alleviate some concerns on gear looks and also increase options on character customisation.

What we need however is two different set of gear for PvP and pve. This way, you don't have cancer meta builds done with pve gear and it doesn't affect the pve scene.

For me the hassle is re-leveling a character after having one already at CP 160+. It should be something like when creating alts you can maybe bypass that or where it allows you to where the gear that corresponds with your highest leveled character on the account.

I really liked how gear worked in Skyrim. Also seeing as how this game is so determined to give players everything they want, gear should be a part of it too. A gear catching up to your lvl doesn't mean is gonna be as good as a high quality mat gear. Like skyrim guys, its pretty nice.

If you have ever leveled a character from scratch, no alts nor nothin', you'll quickly see how arse-stained the current gear system is. CP 1-30 mats? Utterly useless. It only takes, what, thirty minutes to render three whole months of an artist's work void.

As usual, we have lads whining about not being able to see progression, like we did with levels. That's just lads feeling icky about balance getting in the way of their Dynasty Warriors sim; feels good to slay non-CP dudes with your triple proc gear, I guess.

And why should quality dropped gear be rendered moot, just for playing the game for a few hours? It's just bad design.

I can think of a couple alternatives to the current, archaic, straight-from-the-NES-era gear mechanic.


1. Up-level a piece of gear through applying the mat tiers. If you were level 14 and looted a gold quality Shadow Of The Red Mountain sword, you'd be pretty miffed with the current system. Instead, we should be able to use the next level's materials to increase it's level.

So if our sword is a level 12 iron sword, we'd have to spend iron ingots to level it up to 14. We'd then have to spend steel ingots, to get it to level 16, and more steel ingots again to get it to level 18. And on it goes. To keep in line with appearances, an iron sword that's been leveled up to rubedite will still have the appearance of an iron sword. We'll finally be able to adopt the sweet, sweet mercenary-ish look of the lower level gear, at the cost of expending a rather large number of materials.

This is more in-line with One Tamriel, an illusion of a level playing field; sure, your stats and all are scaled to CP 160, except for the fact you have to level up your skills, attributes and morphs to be on even ground with a proper CP 160 dude.


2. Remove gear levels altogether. Somehow found a rubedite sword at level 30? Congratulations, you've got yourself a nice weapon.

Super simple, and really, if we're playing a sandbox, that's how it should be. Akin to how you can get a new player, shove a few ballistas his way and we got ourselves a decent team member, gear him up and we got ourselves a halfway-decent soldier.

NewBlacksmurf wrote: »

Remove CP gear levels but keep 1-49

Agree. My Lvl 49 Character jumped to CP 105, making the gear/weapons I had obsolete. At least some modification may be necessary.

Not staight forward and there is lots of collateral.

1. material levels
2. vertical progression (power)

Options.
1. Armour styles are tied to location via a local crafting station that requires the use of local materials to create the local set.
2. Horizontal progression. Lots of build options and easy alt transfers are instantly opened up and grind/frustration removed.

It goes back to the argument of ..exactly how many times over do I have to grind or pay for the same thing ?
Why is once not enough ?

My rain coat still works as a rain coat unless it gets really old and starts to fall apart.
Buts thats degradation and not able to perform at the same level rather than performing better than the original.

A the end of the day it comes down to vertical vs horizontal progression.
Easy choice and multiple accessable options vs power and power gaps.

I would advise replacing LEVEL with AGE.
That way people still have to replace gear and keep the economy/crafting moving.
It also gives the people a chance to change build while they are at it

I envision a system where gear can be repaired often (usage/repair) but never quite reaches the full stats it had when new (age/degradation).

Maybe make it possible to upgrade gear in level aswell as in quality at the craft station could be a solution for this if alot of players want that. I personally don't see the problem it's not that hard to get anything in this game anymore besides maybe tempering alloys lol.

side-note:
i personally hope they will not make any big changes for at least a year and focus on fixing what they have now as it's really really necessary to focus on quality instead of anything else atm IMHO.

It's the only way to get anywhere imo since adding and changing everythign just makes the bug list bigger and bigger.
Eventually they'll get overwhelmed and abandon it at this rate.

ValkynSketha wrote: »

Well lets just remove the game, while we are at it.

Some veteran players use the same build in the same gear which is capped.
They buy nothing new and change nothing.
So what exactly are they doing with their gear game wise ?

New players have to change their gear.
In fact they have to change their gear rapidly when climbing CP ranks.

So do you mean....lets just remove the game (for new players) /sarcasm... because I am fine at vet level and dont have to do it.

Is this more of... I had to do it so you damn well will (regardless of if its right or not).

A lot of the votes on this are going to be no. Sadly, it's obvious that not many of the actual players even come to these forums, just the disenfranchised hardcore who're pushing ZOS to make the game how they want it (which is the mirror image of what happened with Champions Online, leading to that title's ultimate death).

Even teso-rp.com is gone at this point. I think with the world bosses and duel changes, ZOS took a step too far down the same sordid path that Champions Online did. I'm going to stick with this game for as long as it's around, but really, they need to connect with their players with in-game polls (they do have an interface they can pop-up to get the attention of players) to find out what most people really want. If they don't, I worry they'll follow a hardcore path and that'll be that for ESO.

Most players these days just want to play their own way, they want to have fun. That's why a large amount of those who'll play the single player Elder Scrolls games just won't touch ESO. I see people saying it on forums all the time. They just don't want to play a grindy MMO. It's not what they're into. They want to have fun.

The disenfranchised hardcore will just shut everyone down though by calling it an "I win" button. If ZOS listens? Well, it'll be Champions Online all over again.

I watched exactly this happen to CO. And we tried to warn Cryptic, too.

We really tried to save CO.

At this point, I'm just feeling kind of jaded. I think it's going to take more failed MMOs and terrible business decisions before the suits learn how to make a popular MMO again. ESO will just be another corpse left along the wayside of that journey if it doesn't change and adapt. I'm worried though (with the world bosses and duelling changes) that they're just sticking their heads in the sand and consuming barrels of remember berries.

Sometimes it's hard to watch because ESO, like CO, has so much potential and I'm going to be really sad to see it go when it does. And I'm going to know exactly why it went, too. It's really frustrating.

if youre worried about gear sets while leveling you're doing it wrong. It doesnt take too long to level to 50, just make sure your first toon is CP 160, and you're golden