Raid path vs non-raid path: why upgrading becomes downgrading?

[amokk]

On 18.2.2019 at 10:23 PM, Grimoir said:

The higher you upgrade your weapon the higher the proc chance. You should notice your dps becoming higher after stage 3.

Not true, btw.

[Kozuki]

2 hours ago, amokk said:

Not true, btw.

Yeah, I don't know why people keep believing in this myth. If GC3 has higher proc rate than A9, then people would not even bother to waste time considering about staying or upgrading.

 

Talking about GC3 vs A9. In general, GC3 is stronger than A9, but with more RNG involved to achieve that. GC3 also loses critical/critical damage buff by default and has to stack up to at least 3 stack to re-achieve what it loses when going from A9. This is really an upgrade despite of downside: overall DPS increase, though may require some luck. Not half-baked Skyshadowed/Shadowforged being weaker (and more expensive to go for cuz they eat blue scales) than A9, and get labelled as an "upgrade", cuz NCSoft thinks it is great.

 

In short, if I already invest materials in an upgrade, I want that upgrade an upgrade and give me better performance, even just slightly. Not half-baked "upgrade" that is a downgrade instead.

[Fufia]

On 20/01/2017 at 12:58 AM, RsSCakes said:

Hello community, 

 

For the 1st year anniversary, I treated myself with a long waited upgrade to my weapon from true Scorpio into serpah legendary 3 stages (I'm a Warlock). I was so hyped and happy about it after the long days and hours and months spent in grinding that gold and collecting materials to then be shocked with the fact, my DPS went downhill really downhill I lost half my DPS, one would think an upgrade would mean things get better but for me, I went from 25-30k dps into 10-20k dps. How ridiculous is that! Not to mention ending up with 3 gem sockets. 

 

Please, someone help me understand this logic. Howcome I became worse by upgrading while logically I should've gotten better. 
And how to solve this? Just spend more time in sad grinding with bad damage and hoping for a carry to then upgrade into more worse stats?

Someone please help me understand why did this happen, and if it's even logical and if there's anything to do about it. 
I enjoy this game, I spend all my time on it, but since then, while it should've been a happy 1st anniversary day it's just been a very bad game experience for me :( 

 

Sorry for the long post, I hope for some feedback. Thanks <3

january 2017 ppl already complained about this. is not the Raid path vs non-raid.

Is the NCS logic that no one can understand. But same ppl like Grimoir does everything to try to excuse.

And because of people like him NCS never Fix anything. 

It's ridiculous ppl spends lots of time and Money and they become weaker.

[Grimoir]

3 hours ago, Fufia said:

january 2017 ppl already complained about this. is not the Raid path vs non-raid.

Is the NCS logic that no one can understand. But same ppl like Grimoir does everything to try to excuse.

And because of people like him NCS never Fix anything. 

It's ridiculous ppl spends lots of time and Money and they become weaker.

Maybe you should quote the entire thread there and not just the selective post that ifts your point of view because in that thread is basically everything explained as to why the dps went down just like i explained here :)

[Lyn Thunderfox]

"free 2 play" path lmao, what kind of bs is this. 

 

Anyway the concept itself is busted anyway, even PvP weapons works in PvE it's just that their bonus are obviously not fit for it. Raid and PvE weapons are the same, it's made to clear PvE content and that's the thing : Raid is still PvE.

So why choose a path with 50% cd on short fuse or 10% on RMB (? not sure) for FM when you can go raid path that gives 100000000000% bonus instead ?

 

They put themselves in a corner in my opinion when they release raid path, I don't really understand why there are 2 paths to begin with now, they should just merge them already.  

[Fufia]

9 hours ago, Grimoir said:

Maybe you should quote the entire thread there and not just the selective post that ifts your point of view because in that thread is basically everything explained as to why the dps went down just like i explained here :)

Are you trying to look smart? because you did the opposite.

Yes continues to say that it is normal ppl spends lots of time and money in upgrades and they become weaker.

And your brilliant explanation is that ppl need upgrade 6 lvl :)  

[Grimoir]

8 hours ago, Fufia said:

Are you trying to look smart? because you did the opposite.

Yes continues to say that it is normal ppl spends lots of time and money in upgrades and they become weaker.

And your brilliant explanation is that ppl need upgrade 6 lvl :)  

|At stage 6 you will see a raw damage increase. Before stage 6 you will only see a damage increase once your weapon stacks are up. People do not get weaker with upgrades, the weapons itself are stronger, weapon effects are stronger, however it is all dependant on weapon proc stacks. stage 6 basically provides a raw damage increase without dependancy on the stacks too much.

 

 

[Fufia]

2 hours ago, Grimoir said:

|At stage 6 you will see a raw damage increase. Before stage 6 you will only see a damage increase once your weapon stacks are up. People do not get weaker with upgrades, the weapons itself are stronger, weapon effects are stronger, however it is all dependant on weapon proc stacks. stage 6 basically provides a raw damage increase without dependancy on the stacks too much.

 

 

You keep tell how the system works in the game. Does not change the fact that it is a bad system

The important thing about your comment. "People do not get weaker with upgrades" "however it is all dependant on weapon proc stacks" (a little contradictory dont you think)

 

Basics about video games. When people upgrade stuff they should feel rewarded/stronger.

In BS when people upgrade stuff most of the time they feel pointless/frustrated

 

Sorry to have mentioned your name. But look what you're doing. You are literally fighting against a dictionary. To justify a poor system.

(And no i dont go quote a full dictionary. You can continue to make insinuations)

[Grimoir]

1 hour ago, Fufia said:

You keep tell how the system works in the game. Does not change the fact that it is a bad system

The important thing about your comment. "People do not get weaker with upgrades" "however it is all dependant on weapon proc stacks" (a little contradictory dont you think)

 

Basics about video games. When people upgrade stuff they should feel rewarded/stronger.

In BS when people upgrade stuff most of the time they feel pointless/frustrated

 

Sorry to have mentioned your name. But look what you're doing. You are literally fighting against a dictionary. To justify a poor system.

(And no i dont go quote a full dictionary. You can continue to make insinuations)

Because its not a bad system.  People just dont understand it.

Each weapon is stronger than their previous path but you also have to look at the big picture here.

Lets name the paths \(i will take the raid ones as example)

Raven

Aransu

Grand Celestial

 

Now each of those paths has 9 stages.  When you go from one stage to the next, so lets say Raven 9 -> Aransu 3, the aransu 3 may feel a bit weaker but thats because its stage 3, each weapon gets strongest in their path at higher upgrades.

you should not look at it as previous weapon was better, well it did more damage because it was higher in its path. When your new weapon gets higher you will get stronger. thats the rewarding part of upgrading. You upgrade a weapon within the same path but when you switch paths you evolve the weapon to the net tier not upgrade it. you upgrade it after you evolve and the higher you go the more rewarding your dmaage output will be.

 

In BnS the weapon evolution is different than other games, mainly cause bns itself is a different game than others. So you cannot compare it to other games in terms of upgrading and strength. its like comparing pvp in revelation online with PVP in blade and soul.

 

[xDuckYx]

But thats the case....an upgrade from raven 9 to aransu 3 should already give you a good dps boost because your wep reached the "next" stage and i dont even wanna talk about the costs of the upgrade and that for nearly no reward?

[Grimoir]

56 minutes ago, xDuckYx said:

But thats the case....an upgrade from raven 9 to aransu 3 should already give you a good dps boost because your wep reached the "next" stage and i dont even wanna talk about the costs of the upgrade and that for nearly no reward?

but thats what i mean, people see it as a "next stage upgrade" whiule no, its a evolution to the next stage, evolution = / = upgrade. you upgrade the weapon after you got to the next evolution stage. And the weapon itself is a reward and the weapon becomes stronger within its path.

[Nihilu]

I think we should look past the semantics of words like evolution / upgrade, as in game terms these can be used many different ways, but looking at it more from a game mechanics stand point.  One of the thing that drives people to play games is the feeling of advancing their characters (one of not only).  This I would believe would be the key component that most developers base their gear tiers off of.  You always want players to be chasing the next "carrot" to keep them playing content, for as long as they are playing they are invested in the game (increase income / better gaming atmosphere).  So for players to feel like they are investing resources / time and not feeling an increase in power can be a huge draw back for players, and in some cases the upgrade from Aransu to the next tier can cause some major dps loss for some classes (WL's I am thinking of specifically), due to the increase in crit rate taking longer to reach the previous tier.  I don't have enough data to speak for if GC is an upgrade to aransu in most cases, so I wont.

 

Looking at her NCsoft designed the upgrade table it does not look like the developers actually consider the raid tier = non raid tier (or close even), the reason I say this is the cost to switch between paths and how it is done.  To switch to Raid path from non raid path you need to dish up a descent amount of the raid mats you would of needed to that point, and then you will change to the same tier in the raid path (not to mention needing to get to tier 6 first).  While the only way to switch from raid path to non raid path is get to stage 7 then pay a decreased cost in dungeon mats to upgrade to the next tier in the non raid path, compared to going from stage 7/8/9 of the non raid path to stage 1/2/3 of the next tier non raid path.  For Aransu 9 to Shadow forge 3 it is 30 less onyx fragments equivalent and 5 elements less.  This feels more like a cost to switch between paths then an upgrade in comparison to how much it costs to go from non raid to raid path.

 

Next for another argument would be ease of access, how easy it is to upgrade through tiers should be considered.  While the non raid path can be tiresome trying to get weapon drops/dungeon mats, it would be easier to organize 6 players to do dungeon farms then 12 to do a raid.  With also including in weekly lockouts, and needing to progress to final boss, it would be considerable easier to actively upgrade weapon through non raid path then raid path.  So just considering not switching between tiers the non raid path would cost less gold, less time spent waiting, and less effort (coordinating raids/getting people together, not talking about buy runs) then the raid path.  So for developers they would need to create some nice reasons for you to stay/go to the raid path rather then leveling up purely through non raid path, or else the raids would die out fast.

 

So instead I want to ask, what should be the equivalence of the raid path versus the non raid path? at best I think tier three of the next tier up should = tier 9 of the raid path, if for no other reason then switching from non raid path to raid path will cost more then upgrading to the next tier from the non raid path.

 

 

TL:DR: cost/time/effort are drastically cheaper per tier for non raid path then raid path, and cost to switch between paths seem to indicate that the tiers should not be equal.

[amokk]

The whole raid/non-raid path discussion is stupid anyway.

It's only good if you have the patience to gather all materials to go from raid path -> next non-raidpatch -> raid-path again, as the non-raid path, even the next weapon, is weaker than the raid path.

The only real viable class that can go non-raid path is earth destroyer. 

 

But the fact remains, that the each weapon is an upgrade if you stay in that path. (even Aransu9 -> GC3)

[Kozuki]

On 2/22/2019 at 12:09 AM, Grimoir said:

but thats what i mean, people see it as a "next stage upgrade" whiule no, its a evolution to the next stage, evolution = / = upgrade. you upgrade the weapon after you got to the next evolution stage. And the weapon itself is a reward and the weapon becomes stronger within its path.

Can you stop limit your own thinking in a dictionary term? If you look past the dictionary term, it always make something become more useful.

 

Evolution in gaming has very loose meaning and ties closely with upgrades. When you hear "Evolution", you always imagine your item/character becomes stronger. l. If it gets weaker in some aspect, it will become better in other to offset.

 

Job changes, for example, is a type of evolution. Let take job changes in Lineage 2: a Fighter can become either a Knight with weak offense but very hard to kill and ability to tank, or a Warrior that can dish out much better DPS, but cannot take much punishment. Then the Knight can "evolve/change" into Dark Knight with a pet to help with DPS but with less prominent defense, or a Paladin that is pure-tanking. The Warrior path can become a single-target DPS but suck at AoE, and vice versa.

 

Or let say about evolution in Disgaea. Reset a class into higher tier will make them go back to level 1, losing all levels. Of course, they are very weak at this state. However, their stat growth becomes better, thus by the time when they regain their levels, they become stronger than their former tier.

 

Look back to BnS so-called "Evolution", what exactly does it offer to players?

 

-It makes a non-raid weapon much weaker than previous tier of raid-path, and it takes you a lot of time/costs just to regain the loss of DPS you have. Is there anything that makes your life better meanwhile? Does your weapon earn stack much faster? Does it become more convenient and improve your quality of life in some way or other? For most classes, the answer is no. Non-raid path is suck, and always weaker than raid path of previous tier. Nothing helps you to offset it.

 

-If you want to find a good point of non-raid path to offset the subpar performance, it is the fact that non-raid can be used to bridge into raid path, saving you some raid mats. Yup, it is the only point for this non-raid path. But... what if you don't have a raid and just play casually? You will spend most of the time running dungeons, so non-raid mats would not be an issue. The issue is that... your non-raid weapon is weak. There is literally no point upgrading into non-raid. You can just grind some gold/events to get VT mats and stay A9 until they start to make sealed TT mats.  That makes the existence of non-raid path a question: Why wasting time developing a disposable path? Maybe you can just make a cheaper but more grindy alternative for raid path, just like how they use Void Fragments in baleful/seraph one year ago. This will make it less a trap path for new players too.

 

In the very end, whether it is "evolution" or "upgrade", whatever term NCSoft uses, it should have make your item stronger. Maybe not vastly stronger in DPS, but it should be at least equal or have something else to offset if it becomes weaker. Overall, it should follow this formula: Current raid path >>> Current non-raid path > Previous raid path.

[Amarathiel]

Let's look at it this way. Raid path gets its power from elemental damage mostly, since its a constant and has almost 0 rng you will not receive much dps loss when you evolve to the next raid path.

On non-raid path there is no elemental damage boosts, that damage has been shifted into the 5 stack effect of 5700% additional damage on hit for 5 hits in total. That part is totally 100% rng. Sometimes you get huge dps boost, sometimes you get worse dps. That's rng. Raid path also has the effect but its about 4-5 times weaker. The main thing is, when a weapon is at stage 1 you have the lowest chance of getting any kind of stacks. highest is at max stage. So by upgrading from raid path to non-raid path not only makes your dps into rng, it also makes you not benefit from elemental damage that much. Therefore you notice a huge dps loss. Not too much if you go from non-raid to non-raid path.

One could argue the chance to get stacks should stay the same when evolving from max stage to next path stage 1. However depending on how that is done, it could break the weapon and make it more powerful than intended. Imagine if the chance increase in every stage is cumulitive. At some point you would get high enough chance of getting stacks that it would make the non-raid weapon stronger than raid weapon. Obviously that's not intended so they reset the chance to original chance at stage 1 to preserve the balance. Those 2 reasons are pretty much why you think the upgrade/evolve makes the weapon worse. It kinda does but at the same time it doesn't. The weapon has stronger effects, that means its stronger just the chance of getting the effects goes down until you upgrade the weapon back to stage 6 or 9.

[Ryunosuke Takahashi]

On 2/20/2019 at 7:58 AM, Fufia said:

january 2017 ppl already complained about this. is not the Raid path vs non-raid.

Is the NCS logic that no one can understand. But same ppl like Grimoir does everything to try to excuse.

And because of people like him NCS never Fix anything. 

It's ridiculous ppl spends lots of time and Money and they become weaker.

It actually takes less time and money to do the non raid path, then switch over to the raid path when you are able. I mean for example who in the hell wants to farm 60 hive queen hearts to go Aransu 6 from Aransu 3 when they could go exalted or storm dragon to stage 6 then switch over for 24 considering the price on zulia for sealed hearts being 40-80g per. Especially if the person doesn't do VT on the reg.

 

@amokk you could also go non raid path for warden as it offers much better cooldown on blade ward which some may argue that 21 seconds is good enough if you have full VT Soul Shields. While you may lose damage lets face facts, as a tank warden far exceeds others when it comes to holding threat.