Yes, I personally am very biased against consumables and decaying items in games, however, if you are a dev, PLEASE do not read the title and immediately write off this suggestion. I will try to argue both for and against this proposal in the fairest manner I can. I believe it has true merit, which is why I decided to make this post.
I will try to keep things succinct. Let's begin
- Proposal:
Adding Lifetime Achievements for collecting X amount (e.g. 100) of Stalwart Soulstones which would grant access to permanent Sentinel Talismans (same stats as the 7 days versions, but not decaying). The reason for having an Lifetime achievement instead of a trade-in option of e.g. 100 Soulstones --> 1 permanent Talisman, is so as to not disincentivize people from using their Soulstones on a weekly basis and thus intentionally "nerfing" themselves for the shake of eventual permanent progression.
How it would look:
and then by going to each faction's library claim any permanent talis if you have the Tome Unlock:
- Reasoning:
A way to provide long-term character progression, without introducing ANY powercreep or additional workload for the Artist team. Will incentivize people to both stick on the same character longer in both RvR and PvE gamemodes, and long term it should provide people who want to main a lot of different classes a way to be able to play them seamlessly, without having to worry about doing X hours of grinding per character every week to maintain them at their desired level.
- Pros:
- For PvE enthusiasts, it will provide incentives for doing Dungeons way past the point where most people stop doing so on their characters. Therefore, it will provide a greater pool of geared and knowledgeable veterans willing to run dungeons which should make the overall experience of finding and running a group much easier as a new player.
- It will bring in interest in less popular dungeons such as Hunter's Vale, whose gear is not always a priority for some classes (e.g. Tanks) and as such are always "problematic" to fill groups for.
- For PvP enthusiasts, it will make them stick on the same character for longer and even promote playing multiple classes/roles every week (to maximize account-wide Soulstone progression from RvR weekly), thus promoting further mastery of the class/role and the game itself.
- It will also provide additional incentives to win LOTD (since you'll be able to get a Stalwart Soulstone per win on a character of your choosing), thus making the gamemode more competitive. Adjusting the trade-in ratio of Golden Cartouches to Stalwart Soulstones could also further intensify this effect (e.g. 1 Golden Cartouche + 60 Golden Scarabs --> 3 Stalwart Soulstones)
- It will greatly satisfy the portion of the playerbase who dislikes decaying items.
- Cons:
- After unlocking this Lifetime Achievement, a player may not do any more Dungeons on that class. The total amount of dungeons ran by that specific character until the player stops playing it (or quits the game) should, on average, be much higher than the what is happening currently. Not only that, but players might be incentivized to do dungeons on other classes after 1 is "finished" since they will be able to maintain their Sentinel Talismans on more Classes with the same weekly effort. And keep in mind that the suggestion of 100 Soulstones can be tweaked upwards if the Devs feel like the number is too low.
- People might decide to form an in-guild/community 6man dungeon team and spam dungeons daily (e.g. HV/BS/BB-Crypts) for a month straight, to finish their grind without having to help/interact with the rest of the playerbase. People who'd plan to do that are already doing weekly BB-Crypt runs in the same manner though, so nothing positive comes out of them already for the average player anyway.
- If the total daily amount of completed Dungeon runs increases significantly, we might see changes to the Economy. However, since Gunbad is the main source of Gold and Eternal seed influx in the game and it does not grant a Soulstone on completion, the changes that could happen would be relatively minor. Think of more LV/BS rings (which is a good thing imo), more BS/LV liniments (which are currently VERY overpriced already) and perhaps more Great Hunt weapons from HV (which are currently BIS for certain classes and are EXTREMELY overpriced/not available at all in AH).
Please let me know your thoughts on the proposal. Specifically if you can think of any ways it could NEGATIVELY impact the game.
I tried to crack my brain and attack the idea from even more angles, but I sincerely cannot think of any other negative impacts it could have.
The way I see it, it could revitalize dungeons and the LOTD weekly event, promote class/role mastery and even help out new players on their fresh-40 gearing progression (which in many cases can be a sour experience for them to say the least). I'd love to hear people's thoughts on the proposal.
