Asterdahl Goes over Reasons for Making Mod 13 Weapon Resource Bind to Character

Now that we’ve talked about the new Exalted Weapon Sets earlier today, it’s worth sharing an interesting exchange from the official feedback threads on the Arcgames message board. The required resources to bring the new weapon sets to item level 520, the so-called “Ampoules” that drop from the new “Cradle of the Death God” trial, bind to characters and hence can’t be supplied to other toons. Many players requested changing the bind status to make farming for Exalted weapons easier.

Same Issue as in Svardborg?

It’s indeed a valid point as there are basically two issues with the system. First of all, running the Cradle more than once a week makes little sense. The Soulmonger Ampoule, just like Ostorian Tale Carvings in the Svardborg trial of Module 10, is a weekly reward. There is more loot to get, but players will probably mostly get their weekly completion in and then do other stuff. Plus the general shortage of support toons makes it harder for DPS characters to get their Ampoules once all those healers and tanks have their Exalted gear.

So there are certain concerns that the Cradle and Svardborg will share the same fate. Support toons as highly requested classes will be able to rush their way to Exalted and then all those poor DPS might have trouble finding a decent group. So the question is: Why not make the Ampoules bind to account, and let support supply their alternate characters? That way you would add an incentive to still run the trial and help your DPS friends.

While Asterdahl reasoned why they can’t change the bind status of Ampoules at launch, he promised some short-term solution for alts. Here are the relevant quotes:

[su_quote cite=”asterdahl” url=”https://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/13015145/#Comment_13015145″]Unfortunately, if we make the ampoules bound to account at launch, players with multiple characters who can run this content will be able to finish their weapon significantly faster. Obviously it’s great if you have time to play multiple characters, and we want to make it as painless as possible to have multiple characters, but we also don’t want anyone to feel like it’s necessary to not be left behind on this sort of progression.[/su_quote]

[su_quote cite=”asterdahl” url=”https://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/13017010/#Comment_13017010″]We understand the desire, however, there is no functionality currently that would allow you to transfer ampoules from your main to your alt characters without also allowing a player with multiple trial-ready characters to accelerate a single character to finish their weapons, 2-8x faster. However, we are considering the available options and do not plan to leave them nontransferable forever.[/su_quote]

[su_quote cite=”asterdahl” url=”https://forum.arcgames.com/neverwinter/discussion/comment/13017241/#Comment_13017241″]We plan to implement some solution to allow you to gear your alts, this will probably be in a post-launch update, but we’d like to aim for the solution to be in before week 8.[/su_quote]


What’s you opinion on the Soulmonger Ampoule, alternate characters and the support vs. DPS issue? Should the devs change the bind status or is there a better solution? Share your thoughts on our social channels, in the comments below, or visit the corresponding thread on our message board!

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9 thoughts on “Asterdahl Goes over Reasons for Making Mod 13 Weapon Resource Bind to Character

  • February 15, 2018 at 12:53 pm
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    I do not yet know how hard the raid or trial is, but I do feel like the 10 person runs offer more options for grouping, so even if they favor support classes we can likely have 4-5 DPS per run as well. That is probably fine once people learn the mechanics and level up a bit.

  • February 15, 2018 at 5:06 pm
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    Is he mentally ill?

    • February 16, 2018 at 6:40 am
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      What he says makes sense though. They want the progression for Exalted to last at least ~ten weeks for everyone. That’s why they can’t make the Ampoules BtA. It certainly has pro and cons and it’ll be interesting what their solution is going to look like.

      • February 16, 2018 at 1:26 pm
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        Yes, I see what he and you are saying, but what does it matter? I suppose they are trying to extend the shelf life of the mod by making everything BoP and hard to farm. But most players do not have even a single character ready for the latest trials in Mod 13. How many have multiple Alts that can farm it for their “main” Main? And then, they will want to farm it for their Alts as well, if they have multiple characters able to do it.

        The Uber-BIS are already learning how to burn through everything in record time on the Test Server, as usual. So when Mod 13 goes live they’ll be able to stampede through it with their pre-made groups, as usual. Probably, they are trying to slow down the progressions of those sorts of players. But when those players stop playing for a while because they have everything they need, they actually take a break. They don’t hang around helping under-geared players who cannot keep up on their 110% Siegebreaker Griffon.

        I saw with Mod 10 that certain of the better Zerg Channels (the non-Toxic) just stopped going to Well of Dragons, as they had new and better stuff to farm. That was when I started booning up some dps classes and gave my DCs a rest. Then I caught Alt-aholicism! LOL! And I just rolled a new one! 26% run speed at level 6? How does that work? 🙂 Great fun!

        But apparently SoMI farming has been dead since the Chult weapons came in. Not sure about River District. I’d still prefer BtA as most of my Alts still share the Legendary Twisted weapon sets, a few have the Chult.

        But they will probably do what they have done since Mod 3. When the Mod has reached its Use By date, they will make changes; like removing the Black Ice Resistance for Kessel’s etc, so anyone could get in. I recall people posting that after a day of farming, they sold Mod 10 reagents on the AH for 1,000,000 AD. That was shortly before they reduced the requirements for them and made some things non-tradeable. Now, I can get Ostorian Relic gear and all the reagents except Voninblood in PE.

        Cheers!

  • February 15, 2018 at 6:06 pm
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    Why make them bind to anything? Why not allow them to be sold on the Auction House? True, this would allow anyone who was willing to pay to accelerate the completion of their weapons, but wouldn’t the incentive of being able to make AD keep more players engaged in running the trial for a longer period of time?

  • February 17, 2018 at 4:52 pm
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    What is the problem with having weapon faster for fat characters? They do not need these weapons to beat latest content anyway because they maxed out on other aspects anyway. And they have to upgrade alts anyway, or they will not be able to get goods faster next time. So win is only in astronmical time rather than play time, and it looks fair for those who invested a lot of time or money in the same to max characters. The problem is only for support characters that have barely passable build.

    Obession with delaying on astronomical time in the game just plain stupid. Let people progress with speed they want. Some will go slowly, some faster. The problem is lack of meta-targets in the game beyond amassing AD, if game would have provided meta-targets in addtion to grind, it would have been more reasonable. For example, achievements are disconnected from the game (no bonus for having them). There is no player housing with useful bonuses.

    I really like class approach in FF 14, where there might be a single character that does story progression, but there are many switchable classes. So people do need progress on each class independently, but there is single story progression, so there is no repeated zone grind, and it is possble to equip one class why doing activities on other class. Grind is only on instance content. In NWN it could be implemented by single story for account. Account wide dungeon unlock is small step in that direction.

  • February 17, 2018 at 10:01 pm
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    The drop rate will probably start with a decimal and the epic trial will probably be bugged so that its completers cannot access the chest that drops this bound item.

  • February 18, 2018 at 12:24 am
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    Hm I don’t see an issue in the first place. The problem that DPS might struggle to get that stuff later is just a symptom of an unhealthy group meta. If balanced changed to buff DPS come through eventually this shouldn’t be an issue.

  • February 18, 2018 at 2:06 am
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    In all games that I have seen, there are more DPS-es than any other classes, unless it is possible to switch class (FF 14, ArchAge). It is just difficult to play as tank or heal in open PvE. Tanks and heals also fare worse on dailies and weeklies due to lower DPS. So there will be always oversuply of DPS classes and undersupply of support classes independently of meta. I think that binding grind to character is wrong idea. The story should be account wide unlocks.

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