Everyone knows what this is aboue based on the title. The RNG is bad and requires massive grinding.
What are the chances that a weapon from the armory drops at base level 380?
What are the chances that the specs on the weapon match your desired specs?
- Not enough Max Damage, Warp Resistance, Max Ammo, Collateral, Stopping Power, Finesse…
What are the chances that the refinements are level 4?
What are the chances that the blessings are tier 4?
- Granted, you can earn blessings, but the upgrade-locking only further reduces that chances of a decent weapon.
With this in mind… A massive overhaul of the weapon/crafting system is needed.
Keep the same logic to RNG the weapon specs, but keep in mind that these mechanics may bring about meta-weapons and -builds, but everyone should have fun, even on auric.
Got a weapon at level 361 with some decent specs, tier 3 refinements, and tier 3 blessings?
This should doable for an RNG weapon.
Go to the crafting and attempt to level up the weapon. Oh no, it’s level 1 and I need it to be level 19/20 to boost the base stats.
Play some games with the weapon to level it up. But the allocated stats aren’t that great.
Go to crafting to re-allocate specs to maybe bump up the damage from 61% to 70%. Oh, it needs to be level 5 before I can re-allocate specs and it’ll cost at least 10k ordo dockets, and 200 plasteel and 100 diamantine to re-allocate each stat point. The higher to 80% for any refinement, the more it’ll cost to specialize that weapon.
Let’s do special condition missions to get more experience and ordo dockets.
Several games later…
My gun is now level 370 with decent re-specs. Probably took around 200k ordo dockets and 2k combined resources.
Now time for the blessings…They’re tier 3 already, nice… but it’s locked due to the refinements being changed. That sucks, now I can never have tier 4 blessings.
This is where the leveling system would be nice. All blessings from RNG weapons start at tier 1 or 2, and requires conditions, weapon level or resources to advance the blessing’s tier. As a result, you can eventually get tier 4 refinements, blessings, stats, and have it fine-tuned.
Does this sound OP? Yes. Will it break the game? Probably.
Solution. Re-balance the game like you’ve always been doing.
Except this time, the players don’t get constantly screwed over by the changes.
Oh, this weapon deals less damage or has a slower fire rate?
Let me fine-tune it, swap some blessings, and refine it.
Oh, I don’t have that other blessing to tier 4. Let me level up another weapon I got from RNG and then earn that blessing… Now my main weapon can finally be useful from the update nerf.
It’s the little things like this where grinding and effort don’t go to waste that you can actually get a loyal player base who play the game longer and buy into the MTX business model.
Leveling up should be the grind. Not RNG