Cost of +25 talis

[Tusakano]

Good thing you don't have to do PvE in this game.

You have to if you want BiS gear in this pvp game, more so with almost every patch it seems.

Give specific examples, because other than BS weapons being (arguably) BiS everything else is either from PvP or you can buy with gold.

Just say you don’t know bro lol.

[Rubius]

Hey there! I was a big proponent of introducing a new end-game grind once we had agreed to reduce the cost of the Tri/Vic rings, so I wanted to take a moment to add some comments in.

One of the key goals of this design is to create something that requires skill from players across all parts of the game. The recipe intentionally blends in PvP, PvE, and even crafting as we wanted it to encourage players to do a bit of everything. (If there had been a special currency for Scenarios at the time of concept, we might have added that in too!)

Naturally, this can lead to some upset as we have some players who would prefer to purely PvP for their BiS, and maybe even another handful who might be pure PvE enjoyers who don't have many War Crests. To help address this, we made the talismans tradable, which has the bonus effect of creating a player market surrounding them.

Many of us as players have no-lifed this game for years, and some of us have many tens of thousands (or more) War Crests saved up, so we knew that wouldn't be an issue. The Champion's Marks already have some very good prizes to trade for, and some people (like me) spend them quickly, so we wanted to get word out about the recipe to make these before they arrived, so people could start to stockpile the ingredients in advance.

The final step was (and is) to increase the options for players to earn those Champion's Marks. You can now earn ~20 Marks just from Dungeon Achievements per character, and with Lost Vale's addition to the Speed Run list, the weekly amount you can earn on top will jump from 3 to 5. There will also be additional achievements and ways to earn more Marks arriving this year.

Totally get the feedback that some players would prefer to be able to get these purely from PvP, and in general I expect we'll see some natural growing pains as the team begins to shift away from "War Crests for everything, everywhere" and back into specific types of content being required to earn specific things. (Scenarios, as an example, will be the next to move back in this direction soon.)

I do personally think this is the right approach long-term though, with these Talis meant to represent the very top of that pyramid, with fairly minimal stat gains awarded to those who are willing to do a bit of everything to earn them. As always, we'll continue to watch, listen, and potentially adapt or offer more options in the future, and we appreciate the feedback!

[Kyouaku]

I run 23 talis on my chars anyway, I think +25s is only about ego and is a useless upgrade. +26 would still be bad for all those crests, I think they went to conservative with 25s

If they did +27s it would only be 30 stats ha

They should let talis be upgraded that are in armor too, super lame if they dont.

[Kyouaku]

Hey there! I was a big proponent of introducing a new end-game grind once we had agreed to reduce the cost of the Tri/Vic rings, so I wanted to take a moment to add some comments in.

One of the key goals of this design is to create something that requires skill from players across all parts of the game. The recipe intentionally blends in PvP, PvE, and even crafting as we wanted it to encourage players to do a bit of everything. (If there had been a special currency for Scenarios at the time of concept, we might have added that in too!)

Naturally, this can lead to some upset as we have some players who would prefer to purely PvP for their BiS, and maybe even another handful who might be pure PvE enjoyers who don't have many War Crests. To help address this, we made the talismans tradable, which has the bonus effect of creating a player market surrounding them.

Many of us as players have no-lifed this game for years, and some of us have many tens of thousands (or more) War Crests saved up, so we knew that wouldn't be an issue. The Champion's Marks already have some very good prizes to trade for, and some people (like me) spend them quickly, so we wanted to get word out about the recipe to make these before they arrived, so people could start to stockpile the ingredients in advance.

The final step was (and is) to increase the options for players to earn those Champion's Marks. You can now earn ~20 Marks just from Dungeon Achievements per character, and with Lost Vale's addition to the Speed Run list, the weekly amount you can earn on top will jump from 3 to 5. There will also be additional achievements and ways to earn more Marks arriving this year.

Totally get the feedback that some players would prefer to be able to get these purely from PvP, and in general I expect we'll see some natural growing pains as the team begins to shift away from "War Crests for everything, everywhere" and back into specific types of content being required to earn specific things. (Scenarios, as an example, will be the next to move back in this direction soon.)

I do personally think this is the right approach long-term though, with these Talis meant to represent the very top of that pyramid, with fairly minimal stat gains awarded to those who are willing to do a bit of everything to earn them. As always, we'll continue to watch, listen, and potentially adapt or offer more options in the future, and we appreciate the feedback!

That is kind of you to let us know early

Do you think +25 may be too minimal for most people to care? Even +27 would only be 30 stats, which atleast is something...think they can be 27s instead?

And do you think we should be able to upgrade talis that are already in armor? Or be able to remove talis without them being destroyed for this?

I think having a WC sink that only appeals to an extremely small demographic that has loads of gold(DOnt mind buying new +24s to upgrade, when people like me who play a lot, only have 23s ha) and provides zero noticeable benefits, leaves me thinking that this isnt something worth doing for me. If you want the perspective of someone who plays a lot, but plays off and on and doesnt have a massive glut of WCs ha

[Keula]

Another armour tali nerf incoming huh. I mean yea armour is listed as 0.25 stat cost so in that way makes sense, but still makes it really hard sell vs stats. I guess this time it's at least an "expected" stat and doesn't get random negative modifier applied to it, like iron twilights tide rings have.

96/100 armour vs 24/25 stats is touch sell for armour, 24 initiative is 1.2% anti crit 0.72 parry and dodge after all and some stealth detection if meme WH warbands ever return. Even toughness might be better than armour at that point, but idk the math on that.
Also when the renown point changes come, there is no way anti-crit or avoidances will remain as cheap as they are currently, which also makes initiative even more valuable stat.

[Rubius]

That is kind of you to let us know early

Do you think +25 may be too minimal for most people to care? Even +27 would only be 30 stats, which atleast is something...think they can be 27s instead?

No problem, and good question! I can explain a little bit about why these are only +25s. There were two key reasons:

- The first is that a +1 stat jump (or even a +8 total) isn't such a huge difference that most players will feel like they have to earn it. Players without these talis can still easily beat players who do have them, provided they play better, have better team comps, etc. On the other hand, it also gives players something optional to grind for once they've finished all their sets if they want to invest the time in and get a tiny stat bump.

- The second reason we've kept them at +25 is that going higher can widen the gap between a full BiS player and a bolstered lower level / fresh 40 further, which is generally not the direction we want to go. +8 isn't much, but as we approach +16, +30, etc, it does start to become more noticeable, and that's why we haven't made them stronger. We also expect the Tri/Vic ring cost moving down to 2000 will help significantly on this front too, which is good.

And do you think we should be able to upgrade talis that are already in armor? Or be able to remove talis without them being destroyed for this?

I think having a WC sink that only appeals to an extremely small demographic that has loads of gold(DOnt mind buying new +24s to upgrade, when people like me who play a lot, only have 23s ha) and provides zero noticeable benefits, leaves me thinking that this isnt something worth doing for me. If you want the perspective of someone who plays a lot, but plays off and on and doesnt have a massive glut of WCs ha

I'd personally love a way to pop out existing +24 Talis to use, though this is often more complex than it sounds and can result in people not realizing their talis were unslotted. No plans for this currently, but if that changes we'll definitely let people know.

For the last part, also fair feedback! Just like with the gap between +23s and +24s currently, you're correct that this is a fairly minor stat gain for a much higher investment of effort and time. Depending on how the player market shakes out, we might even see some people opt to keep their +24s up front and sell their +25s for large amounts of gold... time will tell!

[Mandodlenn]

I expect we'll see some natural growing pains as the team begins to shift away from "War Crests for everything, everywhere" and back into specific types of content being required to earn specific things.

War crests do not allow to get everything, PvE is needed to get money to buy Annulus or Talismans, to get Bloodlord weapon, to get BiS options with LV or Darkpromise gear.
From you message could you confirm that PvE will be even more needed later?

[Rubius]

I expect we'll see some natural growing pains as the team begins to shift away from "War Crests for everything, everywhere" and back into specific types of content being required to earn specific things.

War crests do not allow to get everything, PvE is needed to get money to buy Annulus or Talismans, to get Bloodlord weapon, to get BiS options with LV or Darkpromise gear.
From you message could you confirm that PvE will be even more needed later?

Yep, happy to clarify! PvE Dungeons never really changed their reward structure (if anything, like some of the things you listed, we expanded upon reasons to take on more challenging PvE content) but RvR, Forts, Scenarios and even Cities all got mixed into the unified "you get War Crests for everything" payout system some years back. While it's certainly very convenient, the end result is that you lose some of the motivation to tackle harder content or do specific types of PvP if you get the same currency everywhere.

So in the future, you may start to see more motivation to do specific types of PvP for specific rewards, with Scenarios being the next to step up on this front. The Scenarios team have been working really hard to both increase the payouts (already live) and motivation for players to jump into Scenarios lately, so I'm excited to see where they land with it.

[Lescargo]

Personally, I’d stick with the +23 talisman.
I change builds—and therefore talismans—too often to already justify using +24, so +25 with such an insane cost ? No thanks.

I just see this new feature as a totally artificial grind; sure, it might be a way to sell off our Warcrests, but given the cost, what will the price actually be?

Will people really want to pay a fortune for a few extra stats that don't add much, aside from the feeling of having "completed" their character?

[CountTalabecland]

I have yet to see anyone on here ask for more PvE.

To the contrary, the vast, vast, majority (myself included) only play this game for PvP.

So why would the devs double down and continue this unwanted course of action?

As Rubius said himself, a lot of ppl here have been no lifing this game for years, so why not listen to those ppl who have knowledge and experience that are telling you that this is the wrong direction(just like with MDPS rework)?