Serious Debate: Was The Pre Gavel Item System Better?

That's true but now it seems pvp and builds are everywhere and you can't chill on the forums or the servers without sounding asking you if you're selling something.
Pre gavel you could play the game in peace, now it's impossible.

The economy was fine before gavel, barely anyone bought the collectables because there were so few and not everyone had the money.

But now you have to get a rainbow or a fairly balanced build if you don't want to get stuck in parts of the map because of elemental weakness

 

Yeah, it's more apparent now, but it's still people selling stuff, just with more items. It's only really intrusive in Detlas/Corkus City, but that's not much of a surprise.
I only see all the "pvp and builds" stuff on the Wynn, class builds, the trade market, and the SB. And for the Wynn section, they're usually contained in that thread.

@captainganon

That's more of a current issue more than anything, I know poor Selvut is working his ass off trying to find ways to balance Rainbow tanks.

 

Most of my builds have a pretty crippling defense to some element and that hasn't really limited me...
My assassain has like -500 air and -300 water =P

 

I've been mysteriously wrapped into this discussion so here's my short thoughts

I preferred the old system. That's because I'm stupid and have no idea how the new one works, because I'm nostalgic as hell, and because I don't play this game anymore.

TL;DR it's just my opinion and i'm gonna leave the discussion to you folks
oh and the economy still wasn't fine yuno and you know it

 

TL;DR : I don't like feature creep, the overuse of numbers and the amount of menus you need to get through to get something.

Hello, annoying nostalgic and formerly cringy 12-years old here.

I totally agree with you. I personally prefer the old system. Usually I like change (like the combat update), but the series of updates were too much for me. Sure, the team worked INSANELY hard on all the new portions of the maps, quests, texture pack and everything. Many people now love Wynncraft and I'm really happy for them, but to me it lost a bit of its charm and roots and made me quit.

A well-known Minecraft mod developer known as Vazkii (hope that's not advertising) had a philosophy when they were developing their mod : no numbers or GUIs, as she felt as it was destroying the immersion and encouraging players to min-max (means getting the most op gear possible even if you have to spend 1000 hours on it), which was not the point of the mod.

Same thing here. I'm not saying there should be NO numbers, (tolerance and moderation > abstinence and denial) but just to reduce them a bit. Now it seems all the high level players just want to get-rich-even-if-I-need-to-ruin-my-whole-life-for-this-game. I mean, it's not really immersive to have a nice wand that says "+ 738 health". How can any lore survive all that?

Don't get me wrong, I loved the new builds, quests and everything else. Just the new player base overly competitive mindset and the item tooltips taking up the whole screen kinda ruined it for me. (Yes I know I can fix that with GUI scale but that's not the point, I just think there's too many menus and not enough world interaction.)

If you like it that's perfect, I don't.

 

I get why people are nostalgic over the old item system, but as others have said b4, it really was just bland and couldn't stand in an MMO setting. While some people felt that the new item system screwed over PvP, the Content Team never focused on PvP on the long term, which I feel is the real root cause of PvP being dead (besides mythics). Balancing of course is always going to be an issue with this system, but what makes it 10 times better than the old system is that it's unique and interesting because you don't know what you can get and use. Where as in the old system it was pretty linear and boring and there was no real use to using your money other than vanity items.

That's just my two cence on it

 

It was a hell of a lot better.
It didn't have so many problems.

I agree with vazkii, I'm more of a jaded cat person but they are similar in that sense.

I'm the old system fits perfectly in an mmorpg, not everything needs elements.

 

Before gavel there was no economy, there was one endgame and that was the only thing people used. So there was no reason to buy stuff from eachother.

 

People bought endgame armor, ct, Bob's weapons, wisdom potions and collectables

 

I think the current item system WILL be better once many things are fixed, but it currently fails to achieve that potential in a few areas.

Old System:

• + Game Balance. 1 endgame set leads to level playing field.
• - Diversity. There is 1 endgame set. It's uninteresting.
• + Independence. You can get good enough gear way more easily just by grinding, due to low importance of id variability.

New System:

• + Diversity. So many options due to increased id variability.
• - Diversity to lesser extent. Clear power imbalance due to failed system implementation leads to a few well-established metas that a significant portion of the playerbase(albeit not the majority) abuse.
• - PvP Balance. The system doesn't account very well for many differences as a result of Diversity.
• - Independence. Specific id requirements make it way harder to easily get gear without the Trade Market.
• + Independence. Dungeon and Merchant items make it well possible to get adequate gear on one's own.
• + Potential. Lots of problems can be solved through a Code Revamp.

Notes:

• A large portion of the new system's problems can be fixed through the Code Revamp, albeit with large player input, while there wasn't much of a cure for the old system's.
• Both versions have severe game-changing bugs.
• I don't consider Mythics a result of a new item system. They could have been well-implemented in the old one with minor changes.

 

This one could also be good as it creates a market.

 

Explain why then it fits better than the new. While there are some aspects of balancing issues, the new system heads a ton of variety and play style. There's exploding, thorns, negative ids, and elemental defenses and weaknesses that force the player to think about their build and how to play. Under the old system, it was so linear that it really didn't matter what you wore and there was no variety for how to play. Sure, you could argue about mythical, rainbow tanks, and cactus builds, but keep in mind the old was no where near perfect either. Remember how life steal made you invincible? All you add to beat the game was to grind for a day or two at the end levels to get your legendary gear or buy it cheaply and finish reincarnation.

 

The old system was better because it didn't turn the player base into a rude bunch of toxic people

 

On my old account I played like 2 years ago and I kind of like the new system

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It was actually on my old account that I forgot my password on so I made a new account

 

I feel the player base hasn't changed that much. Sure you get people that are salty about pvp or other issues, but it was way worse when almost everyone was salty about when Gavel was going to come out. Players come and go, but really there hasn't been more toxic players than b4. People were still shitting on suggestions, getting into fights (remember when guilds cane out and the drama that followed it?), and scamming each other.

 

Even then we were less toxic than now

 

Explain how then. You can't blame players being toxic just because of the item system. People in general can be selfish and rude by themselves, and they were before the item system came out. If you really want to blame a feature, blame guilds because they created the most toxicity I've ever seen on this forum.

 

The guild toxicity died down, the toxicity from the new item system is just so well spread you don't notice it. Cause if everyone's toxic, no one is.

 

Just because they add more variety to items and play styles doesn't mean that it made people worse human beings. The reason why guild toxicity died down is because they became so broken and there was no real benefit to them that most people disbanded them or simply stopped using them. Your claim that everyone is toxic, no one is, doesn't make any sense. First off, not everyone is toxic, and that's pretty wide sweep to call every active person the forums toxic. Second, people don't talk about the item system or fight over it all the time. People playing forum games, shitposting on VIP plaza, suggestions ideas for wynncraft, hanging out with friends, have nothing to do with how the items are. It's like saying because items are better now, it made people who play the Dungeon and Dragons campaign more toxic. Or that the new item system was responsible for people creating gender threads. You didn't give any examples for how the item system itself made the playerbase toxic either and keep ignoring other factors, so there is nothing to go by your claim. Third, people do notice when they are rude to one another. If everyone was toxic to each other, this would be more like 4chan and a lot of current players couldn't stand it. I've been here pre-gavel, and I still notice the same suggestions and their responses, the same kind of memes, and the same kind of people.

 

^
That, and almost all claims about community toxicity is usually perspective-based. If a player only hangs out in the guild part of the community, then they're probably going to have a very different opinion of the community than someone who mainly joins fun forum games.