[Jeff]

This may be more of a suggestion, but I also wanted to make it an open discussion. What I would like to ask is, is data kept on the popularity of equipment so as to assist in balancing it? If not, I would like to suggest that at some point in the future, it may be considered that information is logged for developer review, specifically regarding how many copies of each item are fully upgraded by players at a blacksmith. 

Why?

It is very clear to me that several items are incredibly popular, useful and powerful, while many others are regarded as trash. And of course there are many items in between these which can be considered decent, or situationally useful (e.g. Conversion Gloves).

I want to ask the community what you all think are some of the worst 10* items at present, to somewhat augment this idea. The scope of tracking upgrade data would not be limited to 10* items, but it's an easy place to start so we can compare apples to apples. And speaking of apples, here's some low hanging fruit:



Acidic Claws
On Hit: If a melee weapon, deal unresistable Acid damage equal to UL, but reduces the weapon's durability by 1.

Here is a quick fix to make this item useful, especially with so many people running GUI in their builds now.

Acidic Claws
On Hit: If a melee weapon, deal unresistable Acid damage equal to (UL*3)% of your Acid ATK, but reduces the weapon's durability by 1.


There, that was pretty easy. You could even add different things, but you get the idea.



tl;dr:
- Do you think data on item popularity should be kept?
- What do you think are some of the worst items?
- How would you change them?

(As an aside, you could probably do this with classes as well: "Of level 60 characters, what is the main and sub class distribution?" Or something like that.)

[Lolzytripd]

neat idea but....math

UL of 12 x3 is 36% of acid attack

assuming there was an attempt and we have 60 acid attack, 36% of 60 is 21.6 damage.

21.6 onhit acid attack is not enough damage for folks to consider it if 12 isn't.

[Jeff]

neat idea but....math

UL of 12 x3  is 36% of acid attack

assuming there was an attempt and we have 60 acid attack, 36% of 60 is 21.6 damage.

21.6 onhit acid attack is not enough damage for folks to consider it if 12 isn't.

It's just an example, but it can be adjusted as necessary. Point is, it's a trash item that people don't use at the moment.

Still, 36% is pretty nasty if you're using Twin Dance, and unlike the fan weapons' on-hit elemental damage, this damage is unresistable.

[sadbot]

Some kind of data on item popularity would be a powerful tool for balancing. Weapons are in a pretty good spot after the recent changes, but there are still many non-weapon equipment pieces (acidic claws being a prime example) that could really use a change. It would probably have to be moderated pretty heavily though, as there are many ways that the data could be misrepresented by player actions. It would probably have to be data from level 60 characters for a start, to prevent new players/characters from heavily skewing the data using whatever they can find for extended periods.

[Jeff]

Some kind of data on item popularity would be a powerful tool for balancing. Weapons are in a pretty good spot after the recent changes, but there are still many non-weapon equipment pieces (acidic claws being a prime example) that could really use a change. It would probably have to be moderated pretty heavily though, as there are many ways that the data could be misrepresented by player actions. It would probably have to be data from level 60 characters for a start, to prevent new players/characters from heavily skewing the data using whatever they can find for extended periods.

Thank you for the support and feedback. Specifically what I had in mind is tracking items that are upgraded to the maximum at a blacksmith, and I don't think many people are fully upgrading their temporary gear just to perform slightly better in a BDP. It seems to me like that large expense is reserved almost exclusively for items which are part of a person's planned build, and which they intend to use regularly.

But maybe I'm mistaken, and people are upgrading temporary gear. I have no idea.

[Poruku]

Yeah, and what gear people use quality tools on

[Hiazro]

neat idea but....math

UL of 12 x3  is 36% of acid attack

assuming there was an attempt and we have 60 acid attack, 36% of 60 is 21.6 damage.

21.6 onhit acid attack is not enough damage for folks to consider it if 12 isn't.

It's just an example, but it can be adjusted as necessary. Point is, it's a trash item that people don't use at the moment.

Still, 36% is pretty nasty if you're using Twin Dance, and unlike the fan weapons' on-hit elemental damage, this damage is unresistable.

Twin Dance does not work with acidic claws when you consider that two weapons mean taking up your off-hand slot.

You could top it or replace it with acidity or rampage status with a duration of 2 and LV of your UL to make it slightly more rewarding, nobody can reach 60 Acidity ATK unless they're making an 'unga-bunga' basic attacking build and even then a 36% of 60 for just a 21.6 damage doesn't seem to make much difference. Why waste one (more) durability when you can pull off the same thing with Swordmaster Ring+ at roughly the same amount of damage?

The only benefit that I can see is if you're two-handing a hook sword with Acidic Claws and Swordmaster Ring to build up Claret Call as quickly as you can as a basic attacking Ghost (with Fitting Form if you'd like), which I think is something that you can already do in its current state. But I can't think of anything else that encourages you to use it.

[Autumn]

Twin Dance does not work with acidic claws when you consider that two weapons mean taking up your off-hand slot.

I just wanted to point out this very fast, this is not exactly true but I would like to add to the thread anyways in support, to summarize as best as I can:

With Mixed Martial Arts you can twin dance fists/bare fists with acidic claws, this is more notably effective with a few on-hit fists or even grudge claws, but I also want to bring up that it would not be overly strong aside from fists.

I can see no reason I'd use Grudge Claws with this setup over say Seiryuu Tessen (Grudge Claws comes with its own drawbacks), so I see no reason why Acidic Claws cannot receive a buff that ties to acid attack, especially when that would mean the item would require some form of investment, which is much harder for STR builds to feasibly achieve.

EDIT: I never even realized this WASN'T the balance fu forum, woops

[Neus]

Currently information such as an item popularity is not tracked. I agree that it would be a useful metric, but it's a little hard for me to think up a way to store and reference that data within a certain time period, particularly because it would have to track individual characters. I do have ways to simply check every savefile for information, though that takes a little time and requires me to download the files; it would have to take into account last login time to avoid the noise caused by old keys that haven't been played in a while. In short, it's a bit complex.

Usually, I just ask the community if I need any sort of metric.

[Jeff]

Oh yeah, it completely slipped my mind that Acidic Claws takes up a sub-weapon slot.


There is a way that I don't think would be too complex, to log item popularity going forward. I assume you're defining the maximum upgrade level of each value for an item (e.g. some armors have different maximum upgrade levels for magic armor, evasion, etc.). So you'd just request that when that maximum level is reached, something spits out a report to a document you have. You won't be able to log previous upgrades this way, but it would allow you to track from the starting point onward.

But if you feel that community feedback is working well enough, then continue on with that.