Some Ideas about Crafting Mats, Fallen Ember, Fast Travel and Item Loot

Wicked Feedback
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Hello,

ive been watching and reading some feedback regarding the breach update and future features and i wanted share my ideas on certain topics.
The whole Attribute point thing seems to get a rework soon anyways, so i dont bother giving feedback on that yet.

Fast Travel:
I think fast traveling with all whispers of unlocking it via “server options” is not the play here as it would become the default “most efficient” way to play and people would feel forced to use or enable it.
We already have tools for a fast travel network in the game. Its possible to port to our houses now and i think thats what could and should be utilized to bring fast travel into other parts of the wicked world. there is no reason for 5 houses in sacrament. why dont we for example get a house in marin village? i heared there is some old guy that doesnt need it anymore. could get it as a quest reward at the end of the marin questline.
same thing for the reed house. maybe he griefs and doesnt want to be around anymore, OR you add a basement to it and he gives you the key because it was her stuff and she doesnt need it anymore? and down there you can decorate and place a porter.
We could use houses as fast travel points across the world. those porters also dont need to be in houses aswell, we could find a ancient cerim ruin like the one in the glades that could have a porter infront of it once you unlock it.

Gathering Mats
Ive seen some push back on the gathering mats 24/7 thing.. wood here ore there…
Why not introduce some sort of “break down item”?
It would give you some mats back from the item → Wood ore whatever.
People that absolutely do not want to farm and gather mats can just break down items as they kill enemies to get some mats back that way to use for city upgrades. Gathering in the open would still be the most efficient way, but people would be able to farm some mats “passively” through playing.

Fallen Ember
Fallen Ember are the main and pretty much only thing people need in masses in order to try out and make new builds and the best way to farm them is doing chestruns in the starter zones… WHY?
the distribution of Fallen Embers needs to change.
Crucible and Plagued zones should give 5-10 embers guaranteed as a reward at the end.
Maybe plagued ichor can be traded in for 5 embers?
Rare mobs like bears or the bats should also have a higher chance of dropping them, maybe even guarantee 1 ember?!
You could give out some Embers with the “break down item” system too. maybe plagued items have a chance of giving embers.
Chestruns cant and shouldnt be the best way to farm embers.

Item Loot
However there is another issue with Embers. why are they so “needed” in the first place?
i think there is a huge issue with item drops in the first place right now. most items are more or less useless in the state they drop and therefore you NEED embers to compensate for it.
If i look ad Path of exile or other arpgs. it takes much longer to get a build going if you just look at ssf. yet its fun to “exalt” items on the fly to see if they are worth using maybe.
in wicked i throw like 90% of items away without even thinking about using embers on them. because its not worth it or its the wrong item skin (btw, i like how you handle transmog. ppl can farm the outfit they want and put the traits they want on it, guild wars vibes).
most of the time you want plagues items. sure there are blue items that have maybe a unique enchant that makes it worth considering, but overall ppl rush for purple. maybe purple only drops in plagues zones or you get a piece or 2 in the crucible? purple is most of the time better than blue. i dont know if that we have a new formula for gear thing rly works out tbh. id just give blue and purple the same enchantment pool and make purple have more enchants. keep the negative if you want. its enabling some builds. i like that.
i havent thought about that too much, but i think fixing loot drops is MORE important than a attribute system rework. if farming items is fun. people will keep playing.. if its boring or too much rng, they wont.

Right now.. making a new build means me running around the starting areas and farming chests until i have enough embers. i think even if you dont like my ideas, we can all agree that this is terrible and needs to stop?!

Well those are just some things that bother me right now. overall i think its nothing unfixable and im sure you will make things right for 1.0 release.

Thank you
Sleepy_S

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Fast travel is also a bummer to me, and I think this is a great idea!!! If we can’t fast travel to all the whispers, at least allow us to get a house in different areas and we could start from there or create main whispers that we can fast travel to and from there we can move to where we want to go. I’m loving this game and so far the thing that I really dislike is the fast travel restrictions.

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BLUF - great ideas above. My own are:

1. Embers need to be available in higher quantities well before endgame - an item breakdown system that awards embers in addition to ingots, shards, socketed gem return, and a chance at extracting torn crafting mats is a MUST. And this needs to be on top of expanding their availability in the wild.
2. Plagued zones should have an elevated Ember spawn chance for all dig sites, and most mobs should drop embers…much more commonly than you get Torn crafting mats.
3. If you don’t want to drop loot in the Crucible until the end boss - most enemies should drop embers zone by zone.
3a. Make embers the currency that the Seneschal accepts to buy weapon/armor blueprints to items/ sets which the character has discovered/picked up (and some they haven’t…refresh on rayday). There’s your xmog system. And it will put a renewed focus/importance on equipment crafting and endgame engagement.
3b. Make embers the currency that the Seneschal accepts to buy gems (guaranteed availability, variable selection).
3c. Make embers the currency that the Seneschal accepts to buy rings (guaranteed availability, variable selection).
3d. Make embers the currency that the Seneschal accepts to buy Torn crafting mats (guaranteed availability, variable selection).
3e. Make embers the currency that the Seneschal accepts to buy gold items (guaranteed availability, variable selection).

Each of these can be an “unlock” earned with glimmer.

Commentary
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. Plainly the endgame loop is heavily “into” Fallen Embers being a resource that is out and out mandatory for progression. By the time we get to the Twin Sisters beast and soon thereafter the winged brood twin battos boss fights…the difficulty curve is getting a lot steeper as players pass lvl 25. Regular mobs are doing pretty serious damage (esp. elemental damage) and without a focused approach toward modifying gear to be more viable/survivable people are at a steadily steepening disadvantage that turns straight up abusive/punishing in endgame content.

And yet there is no system which addresses the Fallen Embers resource as an integral part of gameplay progression. That is a huge oversight.

Fallen Embers are nowhere near available enough (through any means) to offer the player meaningful progression in a single realm/single playthrough. Not even close - though I believe that is because there is not a shared understanding of what Fallen Embers are.

Fallen Embers let you perfect gear and opens up the optimized exalt path with torn crafting mats - but how much gear? How many sets of gear? How many times should this be made available (given a tolerance of RNG approximation) in a playthrough? How frequently should it occur in endgame progression? How important are playstyle exploration, completionism, or style/fashion to the game? How important is weapon/item crafting? All of the answers to these questions are driven by Fallen Ember availability, and right now the answers are: very few sets, zero, zero, not at all, and not at all.

Right now I need to farm my embers in chest runs through multiple realms, choose THE ONE piece of gear I need to get rolled into the right enchants (with my handy spreadsheet at the ready) and I need to know each enchant I need before I begin rolling. With luck I’ve rolled a piece of gear into my spec in ~30 embers. Some have taken over 140 (Damage increase vs. Large creatures just did NOT want to roll). Not a “same enchant group” error either. So in real terms sometimes farming the embers you need takes about 35 minutes…sometimes it takes 2-3 hours per piece.

The problem is this doesn’t just occur at endgame. This kind of grinding becomes necessary during the campaign, which halts progression, halts gameplay, and turns a campaign story experience saga into something more shallow and episodic…because it is interrupted handily by the need to progress equipment without a system that provides for this as a natural consequence of player engagement.

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Fallen Embers are certainly a problem. They feel like they are needed right now, but they also kind of ruin the progress as all you want is fallen embers. there is no reason to be excited about loot that drops which is a bit of a shame. i was thinking lately. what if fallen embers would be as rare as Divine orbs for example and the items that drop would be more important. this would also eliminate the need of having a spreadsheet early on as you dont even have the recources to roll perfect items.
as you mentions that would probably need a rebalance for the campaign which in my opinion isnt a bad thing anyways as many ppl struggle with it AND thats a big turn off for many ppl. the big selling point for the game is its art design. its beautiful and i think there a lot of people buying the game because of its art design and then realizing ow shit i get clapped all day and quit.
i like the idea of having embers as currency for some stuff. not sure for what. because making embers the currency for vendors jsut makes them even more important.