Here it is:
Make one type of orb and fire crystal, and require a certain amount for crafting/heating a piece of gear based on star level.
This will solve a lot of problems, and make every last orb and fire crystal count.
Wouldn't players farm easier levels and still make the same progress on higher level gear?
Well, not really, because enough orbs/crystals would be required so that it would take a long time to get the orbs and crystals from lower levels.
-Pery
So simple, yet it solves nearly every problem with Rarities. As long as OOO gets all of the numbers right then they and Sega can be happy and so can we.
Completely agree to this idea. This way we would have less of these mundane specific items. All these items felt like they didn't put much thought into them. We could also keep the naming of the existing orbs and just make it that the higher level the star orb, the more orbs it will be worth. Like a eternal orb would represent 50 orbs while an elite would represent 40 etc.. Same with fire crystals representing a certain number.
They could make it still drop externals orbs ect but make it were you could break them down into like 5 plain alchemy orbs which you could then use 4 alchemy orbs to create a elite orb, very simple. Sort of like how the fire crystals can level down 3:5 but these would go up and the amazing thing it's just a new item like a costume and some recipes containing this new item.
P.S. Increasing rad rate in stratum 6 would help.
The argument against this is that forcing players to play outside of their comfort zones (in tier 3, for example) is necessary. You might not buy that argument but lets take the current situation as an example-
Getting 4* gear = Play in T2 = learn the basics of the game
Getting 5* gear = Play in T3 = develop a fluid strategy that works
Heating 5* gear = Dreams and Nightmares / late T3 = start to master the game
The only questionable part of any of this is that there is really only one area to farm for radiant fire crystals: Dreams and Nightmares. There is however, reason to believe that more areas of that sort will be coming out.. which means that in a few months there will likely be more missions including some new boss that gives radiant fire crystals, which would also push the danger missions down once more to end at depth 28. That, is the solution that is most likely going to happen.
@Fehzor: You can still make a single fire crystal type/orb type and have that effect. All they'd need to do is adjust the number of rarities that drop in a given area. They could even force a migration/rotation of heavily played areas, by making some areas have greater or lower (lower likely being whatever the new normal is, not actually a lot lower) chances for rarities on certain days, or just randomly for a few hours, so worldwide players don't have biased scheduling issues. Like, oh, it seems to be just raining fire cyrstals in Jelly Land today. Then later it wouldn't be. You might as well play a bunch of areas quickly to see which ones seem to be dropping a lot at the moment, since the influence would likely be felt to a degree in all tiers. Or communicate with your friends who have already been poking around. I like this sort of thing, anything that promotes social cooperation really.
And other things, like crown output or materials, could also be influenced this way, but I feel like rarities are the major bottleneck, and they're sorta more obvious manifestations of energy, and it makes sense for energy to be in flux, like a storm or flood etc. Run-on sentences.
If you do things that way you either trivialize lesser levels (like T2 bosses) or fail to actually bottleneck based on skill. Lets say we have something like this-
5* gear = 1000 fire crystals each level
4* gear = 100 fire crystals each level
3* gear = 10 fire crystals each level
2* gear = 1 fire crystal each level
1/0* gear = level up for free
Lets say you get ~22 fire crystals per 3 levels on the current settings, and that we scale areas based on the above.
Start of T2- 22
End of T2- 10 * 22 = 220
Start of T3- 100 * 22 = 2,200
End of T3- 1000 * 22 = 22,000
Jelly King runs needed to equal the last three levels of one Firestorm Citadel Run- ~100
Does this sound like a fun decision to you?
Alternatively, lets say the ratio was a bit less...
Jelly King runs to equal the last three levels of Firestorm Citadel- ~5
So I do FSC once to get past the mission and where do I farm? FSC is hard for me and I die there repeatedly... Jelly King on the other hand, I can knock out 5 of no problem. Unless of course I can do FSC, in which case we end up with the same situation we had before rarities were introduced, where FSC was the one true level to play on once you got there.
Rotating a strong area to force people to play all kinds of levels is a good idea, but also irrelevant to this discussion.
irrelevant to this discussion
Hardly. It's a solution that heavily incorporates OP's suggestion, and also should solve your argument. Otherwise I wouldn't have described it. I mean really. If you're going to go down the road of "not helping the thread..."
EDIT: OH maybe you thought I meant make the levels unavailable via rotation? Nono I just mean influence the amount of rarities that drop there. Places would/should always be available to play as players desire...(man, all those "let us make our own areas and gates" threads come to mind). Even if a veteran wants to bulldoze tier 1 monsters, whatever. My issue is forcing players to put themselves in areas they might not want to be...constantly. Well, whenever they want to make new gear and don't want to fork over moni for the components. Which is...often.
The numbers would need some fine tuning, as several of us have agreed. Throwing numbers around that put the idea in a bad light (and wouldn't be implemented by any sane developer anyway) doesn't help the thread. Nor does asking Jelly King runs needed to equal the last three levels of one Firestorm Citadel Run- ~100 Does this sound like a fun decision to you? . This and the hypothetical math behind it doesn't justify the argument against OP, nor does it make sense. The answer is, of course, "heck no," but that doesn't prove anything beyond yes, your proposed scenario is indeed ridiculous. Why not propose one that isn't ridiculous, and helps the idea (like my comment #6 does)?
I'm not entirely sure what stance you're supporting, though. Are you in favor of forcing players to play where they might not want to at all? Or just saying that is is necessary for a game to do that (it's not, in fact, many games prevent/discourage backward behavior)? I think it's a good idea to shine the spotlight (hence comment #6), not make something mandatory. Forcing veterans to play beginner areas (or spend energy/buy from AH otherwise) = bad game design, which is the state we are currently in for Spiral Knights, and one that many people have disliked since rarities were introduced. In a way, this goes back to how uniform energy was, with star levels costing different amounts of energy. But in line with the new mechanics. I guess the current system encourages veterans to help new players, but honestly, many veterans will just bulldoze things solo anyway to just "get it done."
Anyway, I don't feel like getting into the fine tuning of the numbers discussion, as that takes ages and will likely change as time rolls by (even many supply depot sale numbers are not set), but this idea seems very well liked - I hope OOO really sees this one.
It certainly makes a lot more sense and it might actually be easier to heat 5* items and not have 'wasted crystals' of lower fire crystal levels that I never use. *cough10kglowingscough*
That scale wouldn't scale properly I still think making them still drop orbs and regular fire crystals and allowing you to turn them into there basic "fire crystal" form. They would really have to change the price to buy them slightly or it would be less to buy elites and turn them into eternals.
Last reply as you'll clearly never listen to me, regardless of how good/bad my argument is.
I started that paragraph by saying "If you do things that way you either trivialize lesser levels (like T2 bosses) or fail to actually bottleneck based on skill."
I then went on to show you why that is the case. The first example was of what happens if you make it high enough to actually bottleneck players for good- i.e. so that players in tier 2 cannot reasonably farm for tier 3 goods. The second example was of what happens if you don't do this, and make it to where the payouts are more reasonable to one another. In the middle are schemes that trivialize lesser levels and fail to bottleneck based on skill-- I say these things based on how things were before rarities, where the one true "rarity" was energy/crowns.
Rotating a "good level" would not solve this issue, as it would either make it plausible to farm lesser areas (again, destroying bottlenecking) or it wouldn't solve anything. Fun? Yes. A solution? No.
My stance is that the game is fine as is for the most part, with the exception of radiant fire crystals which appear to be in the process of being fixed via the introduction of new missions. This is acceptable, and a much better solution than re-balancing the entire crafting system.
Actually, this could work. More of these things dropping in deeper levels...with a smaller number in shallow depths... yeah. And we'd stop having ridiculous piles of rarities we will almost certainly never use...(we get these piles doing areas that are more worth our time due to crown output). I'm more supportive of the idea for forge crystals. The forge disgusts me in on so many levels, there are better ways to "balance" free elevators economically, if that was even the main reason. But it would work for both orbs and crystals. Gosh. What a simple solution. With some fine tuning of the numbers, this would be a great balance between OOO's design and what players desire.
It's like a true recipe. There are many foodstuffs that take special amounts of special things (spices, etc). But many things require high temperatures to cook (baking, frying, whatever), water, etc. Rarities are these fundamental things to all the fancypants material combinations. Yes. Makes so much more sense to simplify rarities further.