I would like to share an idea for improving the Masterworking experience. To work towards your dream masterworked outcome, instead of resetting ranks to zero every time, a more reliable means for the player is to have specific masterwork reset checkpoints at Ranks 4, 8 and 12 as shown below.
Right now, masterworking feels overly punishing for the item’s journey. To maintain a similar cost, Masterworking Reset Cost will be adjusted accordingly. In the end, the goal is to make Masterworking a more enjoyable experience.
Certainly not the first person to float this idea. Certainly wont be the last.
I think it is important to keeping the idea on their mind though. I think its a fair compromise on the grind. Still has the “chance” or “luck” aspect but your gear is slightly more deterministic.
If they did this, to maintain a similar gold & materials cost, resetting from 8 to 4 would need to cost at least 4x or 5x the normal cost of resetting + getting back to MW4, depending if there are 4 or 5 affixes.
Then resetting from 12 to 8 would need to be at least 16x or 25x what it currently costs to reset and get back to MW8.
Even that would be such an appealing deal they probably ought to be significantly higher, like at least 1.5x as much. There should be a fairly high price for certainty - considerably higher than what it would likely take to get under the current system.
I don’t think it should be the only option though, sometimes depending on the gear I don’t mind much what crit I get - especially when I don’t have lots of mats and am more concerned with getting the guaranteed 5% increments on everything. Crits are the last thing I tend to worry about. But when I do, at least the first time I want to reset them all and start from scratch for the current price.
Technically there may be an issue that the item doesn’t currently care what order the crits occurred, but I don’t see why they couldn’t add that data stored on the object to facilitate this.
I think there should be a “go back one” option and a total reset option. I think the total reset should be cheaper for sure, but like I mentioned above, I don’t think the costs should increase that dramatically.
As resetting currently costs 5,000,000 Gold, I changed Reset Cost at MW Rank 12 to be 10X multiplier, which is 50,000,000 Gold. Needs to be prohibitively expensive.
I would honestly give away all my gold to not have to do this game mode as it currently stands. It is terrible game design. Currently, I rather trade an upgrade than going down the tempering/masterworking roulette again.
Sure, they don’t need to. But not increasing the costs by at least 4/5x and 16/25x respectively would work out cheaper and become a no-brainer late game. Maybe that’s fine, maybe not.
I’m only stating what they would need to be in order to maintain a similar overall cost to how it is now. It isn’t unreasonable for it to cost even more given the certainty and amount of time saved.
If those prices seem too high I think that’s a sign they should reduce the cost of the full reset and then calculate partial resets based on that. But the multipliers are representative of what it might typically cost at the moment.
Not for what is effectively a reset followed by 2 guaranteed crits. In fact compared to the current reset price, 100m is far too low.
If it really seems too much, that’s a sign the current reset cost is too high. If they reduced that to say 1m, then the 12-8 reset should cost at least 16 or 25m.
They will implement this as part of next expansion pack, along with a huge NERF to master working, or they will simply remove the crits - either way it will only come with a huge NERF because that’s all Blizz knows how to deliver.
The costs for 5-8 and 9-12 would still be there. Resetting and having to use mats would still be expensive.
Maybe it’s important to know my perspective so we know what roots we are addressing with our different takes on cost: I don’t think the end game should be chasing down gold and standing at the blacksmith. I upgrade the gear I have now should get me to a higher difficulty to get better gear, upgrade it, and keep that cycle going. I don’t want my gameplay to be bottlenecked by gold and have my next step be crossing my fingers in town that I don’t have to do that for a 5th time.
They would - but what you are paying for is the guaranteed 25% or 20% crits, which on average (law of LN) would take 4 or 5 attempts respectively each time. The player would need to cover the cost of those 4-5 attempts, plus a further charge for the convenience and guarantee.
So getting the first crit guaranteed should cost at least 4 or 5 times whatever the base cost to reset and re-MW back to 4/12 would be.
The same applies to going from 12-8 except now one average the 2nd crit would require 4-5 attempts, and each attempt required 4-5 rolls at 4.
This is what players are paying, on average, as it stands. It just looks like a horrible deal when you lump it all onto a single payment. Usually players are doing this in chunks not all at once.
But, they are managing it. So those prices are apparently affordable.
Well, if we are going to have currency at all then at least one of those currencies needs to restrict how much we can afford. I believe Blizzard wants both Gold and Obducite to restrict how many MW attempts people get.
I agree with not spending time at the blacksmith hitting reroll/reset over and over but those single steps only become mostly meaningless late game when you’re trying to get the perfect crits. Until then they probably are upgrades of some sort and you can only afford so many.
If they did impliment his, it would be primarily for those who are at that stage and are happy to pay an extra premium to get out of town with an upgraded item.
