Special System Preview: Item Awakening

[Carapace]

Here's some thoughts on the re-roll issue...

Back when we had gems, you had to keep trying to get grand gems, and then finally when you would get them, it would be time to upgrade your gear to newer gear and start all over. So for the 1+ year that we had gems, the price stayed pretty steady.

Now we have jewels, which do not have a re-roll, and which can be transferred to future gear. And we see what has happened to the prices of them. I can remember when a cracked chaos jewel sold for 15k. Even 6 months ago a cracked finesse jewel was 4-5k. Now these jewels are all under 500 gold. If the system is left in place longer, at some point they will be worth less than it costs to list them in the auction -- and already some types of jewels are like this. I just liquidate them since you cannot even sell them.

The system where you re-roll all slots at the same time is better. Yes, some rich players will continue to re-roll and re-roll hundreds of times until they get exactly what they want. And that will keep the cost of these gems high, which means for farmers it will give us something good we can sell. Last season I used to earn 50k per day farming jewels along with my daily quests. This season I'm lucky if I can earn 5k per day from jewels. It would be nice to have something that I can farm in regular non-elite dungeons that drops on a regular basis and has some value. This new gem is it!!

Honeslty, I'd love to reach a point where the only way that is left for me to upgrade my gear is though jewels and this new item awakening. However, I am far away from that place as I imagine most players in AL are. So instead of worrying about re-rolling your weapon for a few extra stat points, instead farm and craft these new gems, and sell them in the auction for profit. The rich players will buy them and the gold will help you to upgrade your gear to the best gear and buy better pets. This will help you to close the gap with the rich players far more than having a single slot re-roll system would.

This more or less accurately sums up our overall design idea for these gems. If players can lock awakening slots then there is an absolute goal which will be obtainable through the locking of slots. This in turn reduces the value of said items over a long period of time because every Arcane Weapon will only be worth anything if it has all Damage stats, or whatever the most valuable stat combination at the time is. The full blown re-roll reduces the odds of this existing exponentially, and this ensures when you get that ideal or close to ideal roll the secondary market value for that item will always be worth something due to its rarity because you have something special.

The desire to have the stats you want, as cheaply and easily as you want, for your personal weapon works great for a single player experience but ultimately creates a long term problem for farming and rarity in a multiplayer driven secondary market for these items. Once again, this is a supply and demand issue and as everyone can see from the recent Egg Event, a large influx of the thing everyone wants does not make it worth anything to those that farmed it or hoarded it because it was no longer special. Preserving some integrity through these re-rolls is important for this as a new system added to Arcane Legends.