Please, deal with the issues of upgrading Epic/Legendary/Mythic weapon (problematic) upgrades already!

Won’t work out. Some players like casino play style, others hate it. If you now, after several years, alter the affixes that turn reliable weapons into random behavior weapons, those players that intentionally upgraded them for these effects would object. There’s really no way to win this one, except offering players a choice on which upgrades to use. This also includes some other borderline upgrades, like the Bonestorm on Secrets of the Crypt that does more hurt than help depending on how you use it.

I vote fix Watery and Carved on the Doomed Weapons, per @Fleg’s comment. Everything else is just gravy.

Mang is all I ever use in delves. Two casts and I kill most everything with skulls (not Glacyon). I don’t recall a bad beat with it, but I suppose the next poll about why players quit the game could include Mang’s ‘Warm’. :blush:

I suppose that then leaves a more complicated option of a toggle on the affix, but the weapon to still be classed as maxed when first upgraded and remain so with an affix toggled off. I don’t know if this would be easily done and/or devs be willing to push it forward.

For all those I listed - there is a clear and obvious problem of a gem appearing after a cast and interfering. Like some of the event weapons in there creating a mix of 2 colours multiplied by xxx allies having a random gem appear and potentially break a 4/5 gem match.

It’s clear that’s the main issue and that should get passed on ASAP. I would suspect that’s easier to deal with and the devs previously haven’t had a simple list of offenders, just requests. A clear and simple list should make it easily digested.

Will leave it a few days to see if any are missed and then submit if @Kafka is agreeable. At the same time we can ask if a toggle can be done on these weapons; and all other weapons that create or destroy and prepare a list of those.

That should please both sides of that argument. Any debate on it would possibly forestall any response on the gem creation or destruction on cast weapons.

I don’t have all weapons but can probably get all the affixes for them off Tarans. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I wouldn’t hold my breath, this has come up at least a dozen time over the past years. In those cases where the community received an answer the issue always needed “just a bit more thought to get it right”. As much as I remember the weapon upgrade question eventually got banned from Q&A sessions.

Hey, I even managed to dig up one of my rants when the design flaws first became apparent: https://community.gemsofwar.com/t/remove-detrimental-traits-from-weapon-forging/40840. June 2018, almost time for a second “Happy Birthday”.

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I feel like I’m not being enitrely fair here, so I’ll add an @Kafka. I don’t suppose it’s your fault that this whole weapons upgrade issue keeps getting… delayed. It’s just immensely aggravating that we are essentially being forced to buy these upgrades we don’t want in order to develop our kingdom power. I dread every new kingdom power 16/18 opportunity showing up, because it once agains boils down to the question which weapons to “upgrade” into oblivion. Please pass on the harsh words to whichever duhsigner/duhveloper is responsible for this.

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What grates on me is it almost looks like a good design concept, but is different enough I know that wasn’t the intent.

In other games, that a powerful thing has a downside is not uncommon. Sometimes the point of a low-rarity powerful effect is it hurts to use it, whereas the higher-rarity effects don’t have the downside or a lesser. But when this happens, the downside affects something that isn’t the powerful effect.

For a GoW example, we can imagine making a low-rarity Rope Dart wannabe. Maybe this one pulls an enemy to the front and does half armor damage. That’s still pretty good for a low rarity, so we could also tack on “stun myself” as a downside to compensate and for some flavor around “using a clunky, worse version of a good weapon”.

But for it to work like affixes, it’d be like our low-rarity Rope Dart is designed to pull an enemy to the front, do half armor damage, then restore 25% of the enemy’s armor. Since two steps are directly in conflict, it’s not “a downside”, it’s just “trying to hide the ability isn’t as good as it sounds”.

That’s still not quite affixes though: they’re optional. Now imagine if our low-rarity Rope Dart is, “Pull an enemy to the front. Deal half armor damage. If you would like, restore 25% of their armor.” Who in their right mind would invoke the optional “downside”?

But these aren’t low-rarity weapons. They’re not just weapons in the two highest rarity classes, the affixes in question are among the most expensive, final upgrades. That’s what makes no sense. These are the things that should make people impulse-buy daily bundles, and instead conventional player wisdom is “DO NOT UPGRADE”.

The part I don’t get is why every single time this feedback surfaces suddenly the devs play like they’re the dumbest people on Earth. This is not the first time it’s gone:

Players: “An affix should not introduce a downside to a weapon’s main effect.”
Devs: "You don’t like affixes that explode, got it!
Players: “No, that’d be a good affix on some weapons, but it’s not good on these specific weapons.”
Devs: “So you don’t like gem converters, got it.”
Players: “No, look, this setup makes me want to buy daily bundles even less.”
Devs: “So you want in-game ads?”

What kind of sick game is this?

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Ahhh, I was wondering about that. I thought it was nuts that the fully upgraded Summer’s Fury seemed to be WORSE. “I must not understand how it’s working.” So I DID understand how it worked and the last upgrade actually DID make the weapon a lot worse.

I thought this was something a newbie didn’t get.

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Yes, exactly this! Fix the terrible and bad category ones at least. If a weapon converts/creates gems as part of the spell, the affix should never destroy those same gem types or create something different that can cancel out what was created by the spell.

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Hopefully passive traits can be applied to this, as well. Like weapon upgrades, they have their own menu and are individually selectable when going to use the resources to activate each. Being able to toggle those off once you pay the resources for them should be clean in the existing UI. Some passive traits are detrimental to what you want to do with specific teams, yet like weapon upgrades the game encourages you to get them for kingdom power.

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Is this a response to the suggestion that Essence of Evil apply the transform before the status effects? If so, I respectfully disagree - it would definitely fix the issue with that weapon. I’ve never once been pleased when the transform hits, and EoE is the first weapon I would downgrade if we were given the opportunity. It’s not that the frog is particularly powerful (though mixing up party order can easily cost you a delve), it’s that I’m counting on that first troop to be entangled, frozen, etc. I’d very much like to be able to count on that with a level 10 EoE as much as with a level 9.

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No sorry, it was in response to creating a new feature to allow upgrading/downgrading etc to compensate for affixes players don’t like instead of just designing weapons with affixes that make more sense or solve the root cause of the issue

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I agree forging to “undo” an upgrade is bad design. It’s like saying “whoops! We spilled milk, and now we’ll just sweep it under the rug rather than clean it.”

But! I would also like to reiterate, just in case this has been lost above, that the suggestion mentioned for the ability to toggle things on-and-off isn’t.

Because off/on toggle-ability isn’t the same as craft/uncraft.

As an example: Storm affixes. These are in the grey area of “some like ’em, some don’t.”

To take them away altogether by replacing them with something “better” would hurt some in the way the Sunspear alteration did. Leaving them in hurts those who don’t like them—or hurts the person who doesn’t want a particular Jar of Eyes team to have an icestorm on, even if ordinarily they would.

Enter the toggle-ability: it’s good game design because it gives players options and the ability to optimize. Some might turn off the storm permanently. Some might always leave it on. But many, I’d bet, would turn it on when they wanted a storm, and off when they didn’t.

That’s player-agency, and I for one would be excited to see that sort of feature be implemented :+1:

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Would be nice if we could toggle affixes on and off after upgrading.

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Just adding my voice to the choir.
Please let me upgrade without triple checking every affix.

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This! 10000 times!

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I think the best solution would be not to introduce any new mechanics like toggleability, but simply to change the traits to never be detrimental, i.e. change the transform to happen before the curses for EoE, replace all the gem creating traits with something else, etc. This way the game won’t get more complicated and everyone should be happy they got a new advantageous trait.

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Except not everyone always agrees what’s advantageous :man_shrugging:

As Mithran pointed out above, some are clear choices that all would agree to. No one would complain if Essence of Evil transformed before applying statuses (this is a fix they should definitely implement!). But for other affixes—the “grey areas”—a toggle would actually be the ideal situation.

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Toggling seems the smart move. Reworking all the negative affixes will take longer and it’s a guarantee that some players will not like the amendments. We are used to these weapons and their pitfalls so we can toggle to our hearts content with minor coding changes by the programmers. Definitely the most practicable solution. Count me in.

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Toggling would take far longer than changing the affixes, I know it sounds so simple, so I just wanted to point out this is actually a huge feature request, because the affixes you have unlocked tie into the entire Kingdom progression system as well as your Team Score and your overall account progression. It would probably also touch the daily deals as well, and possibly at least one other system I’m not thinking of right now.

I know it sounds so easy to just say add an on off switch but this is one of those things where we can’t just change a little number and then be done.

I’m just explaining that to give you all some context. I have passed this request on for consideration.

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Then why, when this was originally pointed out many moons ago did the devs ignore the feedback and exacerbate the issue by repeating the mistake over and over again since?

EDIT.
If affix changing is the simpler option then why is nobody doing anything about it? I am sure most players would settle for an adjustment that does basically nothing rather these ones that can instantaneously cost you the match.

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