Display MoreDear Evro, I hope you read this.
I don't think you ever hit high enough level to speak about it...
If people had to rely on mostly drops or items from auction house, 95% of the players would be hard stuck farming Cassi at 120 level. Even those who are 200+.
And forget about Underworld, which was beyond difficult for those 180+ before we got set of new affixes in Britannia update, no one wants to spend 100 rubies and 60 potions to finish single Underworld Hard in a game that's been around for 19 years.Indeed, I have never reached level 180+... but here is what you are failing to understand: at level 180, you would have 4 forged items equipped. Would you really be unable to clear the more advanced expeditions with that? Tell me, since you are a high-level player, when a new expedition or dungeon unlocks for you, is that boss completely clearable? I am going to bet it is, because you are wearing the best gear for your level. Increasing the difficulty of these bosses would mean raising their damage and HP, but doing that makes no sense right now because the real issue is that players already have flawless items. Regarding the Underworld, that is just the game being pay-to-win, which isn't the core of the issue here. Or do you think it's perfectly normal to suffer multiple defeats against someone 25 levels below you?
What do you think level 220+ players been doing prior to release of new affixes? Farming level 200 expedition? Hell no, they've been hard stuck farming lower bosses due to lack of options to improve the gear.It is true that when you finally found the right items—whether in the auction, dungeons, or expeditions—the satisfaction of defeating that boss who pissed you off was immense. Reminding you once again, if you actually read my post or if you plan to read this one, since at no point did you counter-argue my proposals and instead just attacked them: with 4 forged items, wouldn't the game be the same as before when you couldn't forge anything, or would it become easier through strategy combined with the auction "trash"? If 20 levels is too much of a gap, let it be 15 levels; if that's still too much, make it 10 levels—proper balancing would determine that.
To touch anything about the items, limiting forge, this and that, game would need an actual rework, meaning full structural and mechanical rework + full wipe, nobody is going to do that mate.
That would only kill already low player base, marketing is almost none, you have to literally look for this game to find it in the internet, because chance of finding it by ads it close to zero.It depends; the proposal wouldn't even need to affect old servers. It could apply only to new servers, or currently forged items wouldn't be removed from players, only new ones moving forward. In the most extreme case possible, Gladiatus could just wipe the red items of players who haven't reached the max level yet and compensate them with the forging goods from that broken item + a tool that grants a 100% success rate for each broken item... Or any other method they chose. Look, with the introduction of new affixes, a lot of people came back to play, so why would an update make people quit unless it was poorly handled? What I see in the game right now aren't active players, but bots running 24/7. Marketing is practically non-existent, true, but remember that nobody has time to dedicate to a game nowadays, so a passive-style game like Gladiatus is actually attracting more focus from these people. People just want a decent game at the very least, not a cycle of just swapping gear in and out until level 1000.
For "meta" builds, that's how almost every online game works, no matter what you play. Even if you look at the best ARPG out there like Path of Exile - endless builds, yet every league there are few meta builds people keep using over and over, why? Because it makes life easier and just works.
What even is the meta build in Gladiatus? Is it just capping 50/50 forever until it's no longer possible? You mentioned Path of Exile, and you will see that countless builds exist there. Now tell me, how many builds does Gladiatus have? Let's look at the idea that a player at level 180 can forge 4 items. They will forge the exact same 4 items as everyone else. They will still have 5 item slots left where they have to scramble to find pieces that fit. Eventually, players will figure out the perfect 5 items for those slots. But some players won't have those items, so what do they do then? Let's say the best items for levels 180-189 are a Baurus' Weapon of Murder, 2 Aulus' of Hell, and 1 Sebastianus' of Fortune. This setup would max out all main stats, except for Constitution and Charisma, which would sit at 935 and 1358, respectively. But here is the catch: they wouldn't hit the maximum block and critical caps, forcing them to figure out what to do, and that is where strategy comes in. Take the character "PAPANOOB" from EN 51 as an example; if you set the weapon, gloves, boots, and chestplate to red and the rest to purple, he would have 41% critical hit and 43% block. From this perspective, tons of different strategies could emerge, where some players might prefer to sacrifice block to boost crit, while others would trade off damage and crit to focus on block... And even then, they would average 1000-1250 damage. Are you telling me that with that kind of damage, you wouldn't be able to beat Caratacus?
When it comes to Forging items itself, it already got harder for newer players because of Battle of Britannia update affixes are so dominant if you drop an item with old + new affix, materials distribution will favour new Britannia materials by like 90-95% of the entire pool.
Meaning old, very common materials back in the day, like Crystals, Amethysts, even Soul Essence, became a hell to farm and you barely get any of those now.
You used a game bug as a justified metric for the difficulty of low-level forging goods, which is a bit bizarre, isn't it? Clearly, they just threw those goods together any old way and forgot to balance them... but let's be real, the game truly begins at level 100, forget low levels. At level 100, with a purple build and an orange Antonius sword, you can already put together an okay build and clear expeditions/dungeons smoothly. By level 110, you can easily maintain an orange build with a red sword using the crystals you acquire along your journey—and if it's just orange, that's fine too. This is without spending a single cent, just using the gold the game provides. So, while I agree it is harder to help a low-level player get red items, a viable build to clear expeditions and dungeons is still totally achievable. Those who spend real money don't even fall into this bracket.
As the game is already. You can EASILY beat the game up to level 120 with blues purples, especially since first expedition in Britannia barely do anything.
Cassi does less damage than expeditions below 100.
After 120, you just need forges, you need caps, simply because:
A - Underworld - this game revolves around UNDERWORLD COSTUME, nothing else, so you want to efficiently finish UW to get the costume.
B - You start needing gear and caps for expedition 130 and forward.
You are never comfortably beating the expedition you unlock after 130, no matter the gear you get, you will lose some, or in come higher level cases, you will lost most fights.
As example of my character - 193 level, top gear, fully trained skills - still farming Togo (170 expedition), why? Because 180 expedition still gives me random losses wasting my points and 190 expedition is just 20-30% win rate.
It's just bad game design, always been, and that's just Expedition part, Dungeons are much, MUCH harder, considering you have to gear not 1 but 5 characters.
Material distribution with Britannia affixes isn't a bug. That's how they made it and that's how it is. We had patch in April or May fixing the new affixes, if that was a bug, it would be fixed back then, since people been complaining about it, a lot.
For the builds, you can throw anything and do 50/50 caps, but that doesn't mean the build will be any usable.
You need armour, A LOT of it.
You need damage, hardening is also nice to have, having 1/4 chance to avoid crit is amazing. When you put all these points together, there is not much you can choose from, so obviously people try to forge best of the best.
As a person who's clearly deeper into the game than you, let me explain you this...
Currently in the game, you have around 70000-ish possible affix combinations, you can build anything you want with it, will it be good? In 99% no.
When you shortlist the useful affixes you end up with very small pool of combinations ending at around 2.5-3k combination that matter and that's for entire spread from level 80 till 350+, when you look at them per X level, you barely have anything to chose from.
That's why it looks like everyone wears the same stuff, it's because of bad game design, unbalanced affixes, which most of them being very insignificant if not straight up useless, but it's also a browser game that's 19 years old.
To play around limiting how many forged items people wear, to force people relying on auction house, this and that, game would need deep rework, not only around the itemisation, but combat mechanic as well, and sorry, this won't happen, we are lucky we've got the Britannia update after so many years, because the game clearly went into idle business model - keep it alive till it brings any money, clearly it doesn't make enough to pay for staff that would create content for it, and especially fully rework it.
At the end of the day, you can play the game however you please... I have a guy in the guild who's above 100 and never trained his skills from base 5.
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