[Chaos]

but the whole stat thing aint the point

the gear is

you reach the top in one or two days and what're you supposed to do then
you already have the bestest of best things you can get

it boils down to repetitive pvp with everyone donning currently one of the three-four most optimal builds
and rp

not much of a need to further engage in PvE. some might see that as a good thing, i sure do dislike pve, but it caused issues like having absolutely nothing to sink money into. before, you atleast had that desire to pump money into getting a sword with a different quality that fits you a little better

-snip-

This is why MMOs tend to lock the top tier stuff behind some pretty damn huge time sinks, and then make better gear every now and then that's locked behind yet another huge time sink, and so on and so forth. I'm honestly not sure why we haven't cracked into that yet; the Colossal Tower looks like the perfect foundation for a character-improving time sink.

That aside, you do make an excellent point about a lack of money sinks, which should be a Balance Fu topic of its own. There are players stacking up 6~7 digits, if not more, of Mura, thanks to people being able to grind without having to worry about spending a single drop of gold. (You can thank the Food system for bankrupting Inns on that one)

[Skullcatrons]

Implement sleep system.

[Rendar]

6-7 digits? 6 digits of murai is easy (and Trex showed me just how easy it was by buying every tool from the discount tool shed once for like 200k to resell)

7 digits is viable too, as the person running Fortune's Favor can easily attest to. (I sold them about 150 garbage items and got 300k+)

Money sinks are great and all, but there aren't exactly anything 'cool' about them. Especially since you can tower-of-power grind in 2 rounds and get 350 murai every 30-45 seconds if you do it alone. (More if you sell grinding services for murai)

[Sarinpa1]

mentioning the item/mat laundering business is not exactly a suitable example of standard money earning within the game but yes, i grind only when necesary and am terribly rich already

curbstomp sources of murai? nah
include rare stuff that's actualy /RARE/ ? boy howdy we on the right track

[MakeshiftWalrus]

I agree whole-heartedly with Sarinpa's post. I dislike how easy it is to immediately get the most optimal gear possible in the game, via both the material change kits and the quality change kits. The former I've largely attempted to avoid for the reasons mentioned in the above post. There's no prestige in getting a cool drop at all, because chances are, the hottest PvP Chad has the exact item, but overtuned with all the most optimal bling.

It used to be that the ultimate dodge armour was a Good Fit Leviathan's Heart Breezecloth Ninja Armour, of which there were three in the entire game. Anything else was almost as good, but those were the best. The de-facto best item for the specific purpose. Not only could you not enchant a Levi Heart onto anything, the quality was random and so was the material. The chance to get it was absurdly low, to say the least. So you bet your biscuits those few that had them were the top dogs.

And I miss that. 10* are supposed to be rare, but they're about the most common items in the game now given how easy they are to get with any amount more patience than a hamster. It's gotten to the point where Insect Remains Armour of Eyes is just about the best armour in the game, giving you benefits like reduced damage from the occasional crit, a boatload of free, passive hit and all the benefits of Light Armour from the various classes that use it. Heck, with the updates to Evasion, it might even get to be staple in mages now instead of just basic-attack builds.

I also don't think LE'ing has lost its relevancy at all, quite the opposite. The meta right now is all about stacking as many stat points as humanly possible onto oneself as you can. You might only have 210 base points to spend, but God knows the most optimal builds approach 280 when they really want to. And that's not counting active skills like Ki Awoken and Death Knighting either. Hell, from Fugu Katsu alone, you get (effectively) 22 extra stats across the board, which is insane. Curry, a thing you can buy for like, 30 murai gives you 11 stats for the coming fight.

So filling out a book, you get +12 from all the inks and +3 from extra Trait points you get to spend. These take up no additional inventory spots, skill slots or the usual pool of trait points you usually spend.

These are just related to LE'ing, too. There are more items in the game that give extra stats than I care to count, of all slots and materials. Passive skills in classes that just give extra points in specific stats and then of course the active boosters like enchantments and religion. And as one of the abusers of this system, I think it's gotten stale when, as Sarinpa said, the most optimal builds are just copied down to a recipe and passed around like Fredburger's not-so-secret-secret-sauce.

So what can we do?

A good question. I don't think the game is, at all, in a state where it's possible to move back from. I don't even necessarily think it should, because I'm sure what the future holds will eventually leave this a dry memory. But what I'd like to see, is the game moving away from bonus stat Hell it's become lately. I'd also like to see items that can't just be created, or be changed into the most optimal versions possible within 10 minutes because you have 'That one friend with Alchemist level 6'.

These aren't changes that can happen overnight. And maybe they never will. But so be it.

[MegaBlues]

SL2 is mostly a system of Horizontal upgrades; mostly everything aside has its niche, aside from a few absolute garbage items.

Adding in new items that are strictly better than others, without making equivalents for every kind of build sounds like a good way to further imbalance the game.

[Sarinpa1]

because qualities were such a gamebreaking difference

[GSM]

God, I make one satirical thread for a bugged game mechanic that has thusly been removed, and it auto-details to "go pre-GR without any provocation, RNG didn't bolster players by pure coincidence even though it did, everything is [strike]semi-[/strike]balanced let me be a murderloli waaah."

If Dev really considered redoing everything he worked his precious time on reworking in the first place, you'd think he'd have just made a test build, seen if people wanted it and/or preferred it, and stuck to it or dropped it based upon the mythical thing named opinion.

Sure, people make cookie cutter builds. But, you can easily say the same for something like Dark Souls, where a single weapon or spell or whatever is busted, and therefore you exploit the shit out of it. Everyone has a unique playstyle for a more casual experience, but the meta is always going to lean one specific way.

I could go even more cringeworthy and say something something Pokémon videogame tournaments are the same way, everyone uses a predictable roster of Pokémon in the meta, and when a new Pokémon/move/strategy/item is sent in, then boy howdy, they get to shuffle that around in the meta. If you don't believe me, watch any masters championship or at least look up their team setups. They're always the same during a specific year. But that doesn't change people from using a crappy Pokémon for some sentimental value, or some love from three generations ago still raging strong.

What I'm trying to get across is that it's just a casual experience that people can take ridiculously seriously. As soon as a new Potential drops, people decide whether it's worth it or not. Is it worth in the meta? Is there a way that people can exploit new weapon X or new skill adjustment Y? Just how overpowered can something be if you build exclusively for it as a gimmick?

And there's the "problem" people see; build variety is limited because of the meta for some, whilst for others, it adds in a layer of new, casual fun that can be had. Those not wanting to deviate from the PvP-centric core won't do much, whilst the others freely experiment and see what matches them, even if it means they lose every fight. So if people stop exploring the meta and instead explore what they want to have fun with, then this entire debacle is over, isn't it?