Game Design Partial Mythic Rework

. . . My apologies - I guess I'm just used to being in arguments here and so accept all messages as weighted in some manner.

 

No problem :) I have a lot to work on myself for sure! Life is a journey of learning for me personally

 

I understand this fully - they're the best of items, but in my eyes that means that their rng-based-ness should be even lower than other items, because of their power.

 

I definitely agree with the point about the wealth and opportunity disparity due to the RNG of mythics. Not everyone will have the opportunity to borrow mythics and experience firsthand how it feels like playing with them. As for the wealth disparity, there are some ways around it other than running for mythics such as completing TNA raids, grinding professions and even market reselling. Although some of these tactics aren't impacted as heavily by RNG (such that you would gain a lot suddenly like finding a mythic in a chest), they require a lot of repetitive tasks and heavy time commitment which takes a toll on one's mental state also. As a result, these tactics aren't commonly committed to by the general ordinary player base who presumably play to chill.

With how our society emphasises on capitalism and materialism in our every day lives, coupled with our unique desires to fit in or be the best, it is easy to focus on mythics a bit too much sometimes. I do believe the team-based gameplay is something that runs over our minds a bit, but is a very propelling and powerful factor to success in general. Perhaps we should be valuing more of how much further we can go as a team through collectivism, as opposed to individualism of finding a mythic. These two concepts of collectivism and individualism do work in tandem though, as can be seen through team effort to find optimal loot running paths, which translates to someone finding a mythic, translating to someone using it in team-based content.

 

As for the mythic disparity, I had the idea to rework the Weekly Guild Objective rewards to give a new type of currency (with the exponential chance system reminiscent of forgery), which could be exchanged to have a roll at a categorized wheel of weapon types / armors of your choice.
This way, it can homogenize prices for abnormally priced mythics (Idol comes to mind) and give purchasing power to players less inclined to do standard mythic acquiring methods.

Untrue. There is a skill to effective and optimized lootrunning. Whether its: cycling correctly, knowing your classes archetype mechanics and strengths, ascertaining the best world and conditions (keeping note of timers), creating, updating, notating paths, adjusting to uncontrollable conditions, class building, consumable management, knowing what items to pick up and how much to sell them for; if to sell them at all or hold~ I could keep going...

 

True; while lootrunning does require skills, it doesn't require skills that are useful outside of lootrunning (market flipping, perhaps, but that's it); making money should require skills that are actually applicable in the game (such as combat). You shouldn't have to learn a whole new set of skills just to make money.
(Yes, I know that certain recent changes have made lootrunning less effective and mob grinding more so, but this may be even worse. At least lootrunning requires the aforementioned skills . . .)

 

I agree with all of the issues you are bringing to the table but I do not think you suggested any tangible or viable suggestions.

I don't think a participation award via playtime is an acceptable, skilful, or meaningful way to award players mythic items. I don't think the current method of rng is acceptable either however.

I would much rather have high skill requirement individual challenges like extremely difficult bosses, puzzles, trials, etc. that have guaranteed mythic drop chances but imaginably these are very hard to tune to players skill level and to balance.

 

Of course; the suggestions I made were poor, but the reason that I'm against individual challenges is because it would mean that a select (potentially an already rich) group of players would be able to complete these challenges, and everyone else would be left in the dust, further increasing the wealth gap (especially if it were a bossfight; players with good gear would get a much better shot at winning).

 

I think the best middle ground would be to have really long, class restricted continent or world spanning quests exploring the lore of the mythic weapons where you get less powerful on average but more consistent variants of them upon completion, that way you have to work for the mythics but you don't need to already have a mythic level build to do it. The variants could also be untradable ( like most other quest rewards) and soulbound, that way the market doesn't get flooded with knockoffs and you have to actually do the quests if you want the items on a second playthrough. Having them be class restricted would also at least add some variety between playthroughs by giving you at least a few different quests.

If you've ever played D2, think exotic weapon quests. They take days of real time but give you something really great in exchange for the commitment. I know this community probably doesn't like the idea of timegating but I think this would be a pretty good place to use it.