Timeless/Reverse Weapons Balancing Issue

Hi,
I don't know if you just read the latest discord announcement but we have confirmed that these equips will be "untradeable after equipping" in the future. Please check discord for more info.
Mirrors

 

Suggestion 3 has been taken into consideration and will be implemented.

 

Weapons level 5 times, not 6. And getting +2 attack rolls 5 times isn't viable for anyone, the probability is (.333 ^ 5), or .41%, so whoever chases that should be prepared to try to level hundreds of perfect weapons. Even getting a claw to 67 attack will take dozens of perfect claws to level, which will no doubt take many months to farm. It's also necessary to kill PB to access either the crafting or the weapons themselves, which in itself will be a frustratingly difficult task, so having the content be powerful is how PB continues to be a rewarding boss to kill for the end game. It's bad to compare NT to PB because we already know what happens when that's the scaling used, from release NT was more or less dead content after a couple months, and it took buffs before people really considered doing it regularly.

 

Taking into account the above changes to the original Lampion, a clean REVERSE lampion will have 56wa max and 4 levels.
I doubt it won't be too difficult to try and hit +1 wa from one of the levels.
If so, that REVERSE Lampion is now 57wa - similar to a max att NT claw, not taking into account the other 3 levels and LUK progression.

Requirement to craft:
- 45 piece of time - no doubt might be difficult to hunt, but as we all know, it is just a matter of time before someone does, and ToT is an open map free-for-all
- NT claw - which u can just buy a trash one
- some ores

Compare this to the arduous task to complete prequests in NT, perform daily bossing to collect 4500 coins, and getting the ingredients (no doubt plants may be cheaper now), crafting a REVERSE weapon seems much easier than making an NT claw.

There is a reason why a 57wa is still expensive in the current market because 4500 coins is not actually easy to obtain, and crafting service ranges from 35-45m just for coins.

I don't have anything against TIMELESS weapons as they are the final end-game reward that requires actual Time Rocks from pinkbean, but REVERSE gear crafting seems too available that NeoTokyo weapons will pretty much be overshadowed pretty soon.

I like how TIMELESS is released and its the reward for killing PinkBean but I think REVERSE weapons are pretty unnecessary.
Either remove them or make it harder to craft. That way, players are left with two options:
1. Scroll a craven/sleve/NT as usual to do regular bossing before taking on PB at end-game stage
2. Buy a Timeless Lampion or Time Rock for a ridiculous price when they enter the market

This way, cravens/sleve/NT weapons are still made COMPLETELY relevant to gaming prior to PinkBean stage, and no dead content will happen. Otherwise everyone will just flood ToT now and its just a matter of time before REVERSE weapons flood the market and NT weapons will just die. I don't think that is a necessary future.

DISCLAIMER: no, I did not WS a +7 NT claw, nor I have a perfect clean claw for sale. I do not gain financially or benefit from this suggestion at all. I just don't want to see dead content unnecessarily. TIMELESS weapons are now the new end-goal, rewarded by killing the toughest boss in the game now, at a scale much higher than Horntail. They are untradeable once levelled, which promotes exclusivity.

REVERSE weapons are really, unnecessary, and spoils the current stable market of other weapons in the game.

 

I'm just going to copy paste what I posted in another thread. It is very easy to get a reverse weapon that outperforms a NT weapon. With the current attack range of reverse weapons you will end up with a claw stronger than an NT weapon with a ~40% probability. This means you're looking at about 2-3 attempts for most people to get this end game claw.


They already released the claw ranges within that pink bean thread. Let's ignore how broken timeless weapons can be because at least they are gated by pink bean at the moment. If we shift our focus to reverse weapons, to me it feels like they are still overtuned. A reverse lampion has a range of 51-56. Let's stick to averages here. On average your lampion will end up 53-54 att and will gain +3 att over the course of leveling 3 times. This means you will end up with a 56-57 att claw, if you are slightly lucky then GG you have already outpaced the power curve of an NT claw, something that cost >800m just 2 days ago. The cost of these claws seems to be negligible as all you need is a shitty NT weapon and the time to farm 45 time pieces.

On average a reverse weapon will already be as strong as a perfect NT weapon. To me, that seems problematic. Crafting NT weapons results in a 9% chance to end up with something with perf w.atk (lets just ignore the luk stat for the sake of argument and if my numbers are wrong here please correct me; I just assumed it works the same as dragon weapon crafting). I feel like if the probability for a reverse weapon to turn out >NT weapon was 20% or lower, then yeah you could make a case for balance. At this point, perf NT weapons seem to have been made completely worthless when you have a >40% chance that any random reverse lampion you craft will end up better than an NT claw.

The truth is you don't need to min max in order to end up with a reverse weapon that is stronger than an NT weapon. If you look at the numbers it is simply just too easy; chances are you will end up with something slightly better or even significantly better with just 2 craft attempts.

EDIT: Link to probability table: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vo8nzhNFIi9rtoxpkoSCAnLieYRe1O7gGF_01rMJFKg/edit?usp=sharing

Looks like 40% chance you will end up with something stronger than an NT weapon just by crafting a reverse lampion.

 

Just wanted to say y'all are significantly underestimating how long/expensive getting 45 pieces of time will be. It was just an initial test but I grinded at obv4 for about an hour and found 0. A friend on my BL had similar results.

If Pieces of Time are 1-2 per hour (highly doubt it will be any where close to 3), then it will take 20-40 hours to farm enough to make 1 weapon. 4500 coins is much much much much much easier to get then 20-40 hours of grinding not to mention you need a NT claw to begin with.

 

You make some valid points but you really can't dismiss piece of time drop rates without testing. You can buy NT crafting service for 35-45m and as it stands right now pieces of time will likely go for at least 5-10m EA (no one is going to grind in a suboptimal exp low drop rate spot and sell for less). That means in order to craft one reverse you are looking at likely 200-400m + a nt claw. I'll be happy to eat my words if pieces of time are cheap but the drop rate is too low and the demand will be too high. Add on the fact you can't sell any of the claws you scroll and it seems pretty close to balanced imo.

 

Not sure how the interaction is, but you should be able to sell scrolled pb weapons as long as you scroll it with that skill~ (I think)

 

I'm not sure if that's what the devs intended but even if you can do that it's still not the best since 52-54 att reverse could easily end up with less than 57 total attack if you don't level before hand.

 

Prices may go up (unlikely) but pre patch the stones were 1-4m and the plants 5-10m. Not much. I also don't think supply will ever meet demand for reverse because like I said farming tot is pretty bad. NT was shitty to farm as well but it was offset by boss coins/drops.

 

I disagree. The demand will be constant for a long time and not many people are going to farm tot if the mesos per hour is less than selling leech (which it easily will be even if the pieces sell for 5-10m). I'm not really sure where you think this supply is going to come from. Demand will be insane for a long time.

Edit: and the reason Nano plants dropped in price wasn't because supply finally met demand - it's because they buffed the drop rate.

 

I believe we'll have more hindsight in the following weeks, though after reading this thread I personally think it would've been better if Reversed gear wasn't released and only Timeless was. This way only people who actually defeat PB would have access to a deserving and differentiated from NT, endgame gear.

Reverse does seem easier than NT, doesn't require much besides owl+mesos for NT weapon and enough time (or again, mesos) to get Pieces of Time.

 

I'm not sure how you could read this entire thread and come to the conclusion that reverse is easier to get than NT. Its not even in the same ballpark.

 

It is easier. There’s already been like 40 pieces of time in FM today. PoT is the only limiting factor for the craft. There’s tons of low attack speargrave/flairgraves around for fairly cheap.

 

Yea 40 for 5-10m EA. Also low att graves will def go up in price no question.

 

2 hours in I’m at 1 piece of time. I really do not think it’s easier.