Unsealing Charms rarity/design choices

[Magique]

So, I'm level 22 now, and ran out of charms on the last piece of soul shield, the epic one you can get from the first dungeon. Started my research, discovered I can craft or buy, or wait till I can get more from daily chests (low chance as I understood). Surveys? Done everything. The spinning wheel you can spin twice/day? Exhausted it, will be weeks until I reach the next Hongmoon Charm.

 

So from what I know, I remain with either crafting or buy from vendor/AH, since they're basically same price, approx 10 Silver. Which... is more than I gathered up to now. As for crafting, turns out I'd need some mats that are again way too expensive for me, and I have nothing of real value to vendor/sell on AH. Farming? Mobs drop nothing, and even epic weapon drops are 1 Copper. Questing? Sure, but they reward just a few copper, 10 or so.

 

Unless I am missing something, I see no way I can unseal&equip my last piece of shield unless I spend all my money on a charm, which seems unwise, or keep questing, and end up making the shield irrelevant by outleveling it.

 

This to me seems very bad design. Now, just to make sure, I understand and agree that people should work for their stuff; however, gear should be equippable when it drops. I can see some benefits for such mechanics at the endgame where there are methods to make money (I assume...), but during leveling? Why?

 

I should be able to target an Unsealing Charm with gameplay: first dungeon of the day, 1 charm at the end. First 15 quests, 1 charm. Things that I can do and earn my stuff.

 

The fact that I am staying with the last correct piece of shield sealed in my inventory, unable to use it, it's just purely depressing and one very worrying sign of badly F2P implementation. Had some hopes this will be a Wildstar type of F2P, but hey turns out I was wrong. 

[2501]

- Only unseal breakthrough items.

- Only unseal valor soul shields (available from coin exchange merchants, ie: jadestone/yehara's).

- Everything else is worthless, salvage it, or use to evolve (literally thousands of useless items in-game).

 

I have about 30-40+ keys/charms left, level 30+.

[Magique]

24 minutes ago, 2501 said:

- Only unseal breakthrough items.

- Only unseal valor soul shields (available from coin exchange merchants, ie: jadestone/yehara's).

- Everything else is worthless, salvage it, or use to evolve (literally thousands of useless items in-game).

 

I have about 30-40+ keys/charms left, level 30+.

Yeah, well, I used a few charms before reading into the issue, but not that many. It's impossible to research every aspect of an MMO that you play for the first time, and one shouldn't have to. I have like 20 keys, and I still get them from quests, if this was the charm design, I'd be happy.

 

Also, isn't the purple shield from Blackram Narrows better than the one from the Vendor, at least in early level 20s? Logged out and can't check now, with the huge queues, but the stats were better from what I remember.

 

Anyway, the charms are just bad F2P design, with traps and without warnings. Just make them obtainable through gameplay. I don't care if they are behind a tough boss, I welcome challenge. Just don't make me go through 10 crafting steps or spend all the money I earned to 22 just to unlock a single item. 

[2501]

You're right: Useless Items, not meant to be unsealed, should be unsealed to begin with, or not equipable, to use as fodder.

 

[Darkshana]

You think this is bad design? The original game separates sealing charm by region, meaning charm of one level do not work for the next. Water Moon charms sold at 1 gold a piece at vendor and 50 silver in the market.

 

At level 22 there should be no reason for you to run out of sealing charm. sealing charm can be also crafted cheap through profession, most people just put it up there in high prices of 10 silver because they know there is a low supply currently.

 

The current unsealing, repair, and key system allows the items to be universal, thus cheaper to make and to sell. Vendors are there when there are really no way of obtaining it by any other mean which is nearly impossible.

 

by level 50 these charms will be sold at 5 silver or less which is cheap since the average amount of gold gain is triple of lvl 45.

[Magique]

32 minutes ago, Darkshana said:

You think this is bad design?

Yes, very bad. 

 

The thing is: I have a full Blight Soul Shield that I farmed. I was able to unseal and equip 7 pieces, and I ran out of seals. now I am already 24 and have in my inventory 2 locked pieces of the correct type that I cannot equip, and I will overlevel.

 

What's even the point? Gear is made to be equipped.

 

As I said: 

 

Put it behind a tough boss - I don't care. I raid Mythic in WoW and also in Wildstar - give me challenges to overcome, at appropriate level, so I can earn my gear.

 

Crafting is not an option BTW. I'll be level 35 by the time I might have enough silver and mats to craft them, and the shield will be overleveled.

 

The idea is to let people farm their stuff, I don't care if it's hard, stop it with the time-gating, 0 difficulty, 100% frustration design. If I miss an item, I should know where it drops, so I can go farm it. There's no reason that I should be unable to equip a LOW LEVEL item which I already farmed and bid for (yet another stupid concept alien to EU MMOs).

[Darkshana]

 

11 minutes ago, Magique said:

Yes, very bad. 

 

The thing is: I have a full Blight Soul Shield that I farmed. I was able to unseal and equip 7 pieces, and I ran out of seals. now I am already 24 and have in my inventory 2 locked pieces of the correct type that I cannot equip, and I will overlevel.

 

What's even the point? Gear is made to be equipped.

 

As I said: 

 

Put it behind a tough boss - I don't care. I raid Mythic in WoW and also in Wildstar - give me challenges to overcome, at appropriate level, so I can earn my gear.

 

Crafting is not an option BTW. I'll be level 35 by the time I might have enough silver and mats to craft them, and the shield will be overleveled.

 

The idea is to let people farm their stuff, I don't care if it's hard, stop it with the time-gating, 0 difficulty, 100% frustration design. If I miss an item, I should know where it drops, so I can go farm it. There's no reason that I should be unable to equip a LOW LEVEL item which I already farmed and bid for (yet another stupid concept alien to EU MMOs).

Did you even read the entire message before saying this? can you imagine spending 18 gold to unlock that piece of junk shield? The unsealing charms they give you are already luxuries, they were never given originally. You had to kill 100 monster to maybe get 1 or two of the things and now your complaining?

 

The game was originally a subscription only game so they made so that its as grind based as it can be.

 

back when this game takes a week for you to hit 20 maybe it was a good choice to do so but now its a really poor idea to use unsealing charm like this.

 

What you are doing is just doing an extremely poor investment in the items you given for free. Those charms were suppose use only to open break through items not for you to unlock black ram soul shield which isn't even remotely good comparing to the Viridian Hero set which do not require charms and gives more HP, Crit, and hit. Black ram soul shield is so bad that Ncsoft in Korean took off the achievement for the set completely since no one even bother with it.

 

I'm at level 45 and I never ran out of sealing charm until I had to reopen shields over and over again because they offer different stats. But at that point I earn 8 gold a day and buy charms is a joke.

[Magique]

Well, I guess I'll just forge through max level then and ignore everything till then. I guess it's just the usual pitfalls of being new to an MMO.

 

I can swear that when I moused over the Viridian shield on the vendor it looked bad vs the epic one. I shall return and get it and ditch this one, costly mistake, but without any warnings, how could I have known. Both require lvl 20, one is epic another rare... one is a dungeon drop, one is a vendor set... so counterintuitive, sigh.