Well, preliminary results are in!
@FatsharkQuickpaw @FatsharkCatfish @FatsharkStrawHat you may find this useful for information gathering purposes.
For Item Acquisition:
14/149 (~9%) say item acquisition is fine
40/149 (~27%) say that weapon base ratings from the shops and gifts are not high enough as their biggest problem
13/149 (~9%) say that blessings available in the shop’s aren’t good enough as their biggest problem
Roughly the same percentage say that Emperor’s Gifts not providing enough are their biggest problem
6/149 (~4%) say that there’s not enough options in the shops as their biggest problem
63/149 (~42%) say that they have all of these problems equally.
For Item Upgrading:
20/195 (~10%) say it’s fine
12/195 (~6%) say blessing/perk types in upgrading are too random as their biggest issue
14/185 (~7%) say blessing/perk tier in upgrading is too random as their biggest issue
58/195 (~30%) say Locks are their biggest issue
27/195 (~14%) say that upgrading being too expensive is their biggest issue
64/195 (~33%) say that all of the problems listed are equally bad to them
What can we conclude from this?
Acquiring items mostly just needs number buffs for the RNG on bases and blessings - people don’t seem to hate the RNG nature of it so much as they are irritated with the low ‘floor’ of what they can get from the shops. Comments mostly express frustration with low base ratings from Brunt’s and Emperor’s Gifts.
Upgrading items has ‘break the locks’ as the runaway winner for single issues, with the expense of upgrading items coming in stronger than I’d have thought. Comments mostly express irritation with the locks as their sole pain point, with a few commenting about the expenses.
This remains in line with the pain points expressed by the community in the forums - that locks are bad, that crafting is expensive, and that RNG in getting base weapons is bad but could be adjusted to be more rewarding.