I have attempted to say this before and there is nothing huge changed by doing it.
CHANGE PROGRESSIVE 5-STAR GEMS TO RANK 4 NOT 5
Nothing is lost by doing this other than allowing people who do not or cannot spend a fortune to feel that are achieving something. Check how many left before they got any to Rank 5 should answer that in your records.
Nobody is going to gain any change or extra anything other than continuance of: “I need 5? Screw that, I will never do that, I’m quitting”. I have seen this a LOT. This goes because they can see they have chance (that hasn’t changed) to get their gems to 5. So they persist instead of having two and realising it will take 6 months. It probably still will, but at least they feel some kind of progress.
as you were.
3 Likes
As a F2P’er myself, with a Rank 4 BSJ, the upgrade from 4 to 5 needs two rank 3’s and one rank 1, i.e. I would need 5 rank 1 duplicates and 250 gem power. The cheapest BSJs on my server’s Marketplace are around 60,000 plat. One star gems (for the gem power) are going for between 550 and 650 plat, so say 600 plat each on average. So, that’s (5 * 60,000) + (250 * 600) = 300,000 + 150,000 = 450,000 plat.
Trying to earn that from Codex plat (300 a day) and selling unbound non-legendary gems… well… it’s tough to make 10,000 plat a week (I know, I’ve been buying Dawning Echoes since the patch) but let’s say you could. That still leaves this Rank 4 to 5 upgrade as a 45 week long effort, i.e. almost a year for a single gem rank.
Making that a progressive upgrade, of five stages each, would at least see some progress every 9 weeks.
Bassdude, I apologise, as the forum software only allows me to give your post one like.
2 Likes
Absolutely because it only takes 1x5star gem and 60 gem fragments for each upgrade (from doing it) 
The above said it took a really long fricking time to get the 5star to rank 5 needing 5 of the same gem once you hit rank 4. Doing it one at a time provides INCENTIVE. That’s the word I missed that I wanted BLIZZARD to take onboard. It’d be nice if they listened but sadly, I never count on it.