New hooked player with 1.0 , discouraged by Forge and relics

[warm jetty]

Title
How can you compete with people with already 100h into the 1.0 ? The gap will increase the more time the 1.0 is released.
It switchesClearly the whole supervive experience, for me it is not a game based on skill, Positionning, Knowledge and awareness only anymore. It is some kind of gacha mechanism that excludes esport right away.
I saw one item from 40% power in lvl 2 to 60% power in lvl 3. Those gaps are insane.

How will you manage that ?

[mint ocean]

You have to wait next season everythings reset

And quit your job when season come, to be the first to get ahead and have the unreachable advantage

[wintry lily]

They are allegedly releasing "comeback mechanics" for this.

We are yet to know what they are, which makes me somewhat reluctant to say I believe they will fix the issue.

[warm jetty]

Jokes apart that's not how to maintain an healthy playerbase.

[mint ocean]

I know but's that's the actual statement. When ppl have 3 stars items bc they spam you can no longer reach them bc even if you'r better a man with a grappin 3 will (almost) always win vs another one with grappin 1. So you lose the game, get no prisma, can't upgrade... just wait until reset

[shy flax]

Grapple is like 100%+ power increase per rank

[placid pebble]

Game seemed so fun to just pick up and play along side my main games, but a lot of my character's (crysta) power is gaited behind 2-star or 3-star Diadem so it's grind or be useless. I cannot imagine a world where enemy's Infinity Edge just gives 20% more crit than mine so I autolose in League of Legends, thank god most games don't do this shit.

[proven knoll]

besides some noticeable differences in some 1 star and 3 star items, which the devs could adjust, I think the comparison of having 20% more crit it's not accurate

even if you get the 3 star diadem and Crysta together it will not guarantee you a win, spamming more ults does not mean you're gonna land them. On the other hand, not having 3 star diadem does not mean auto lose, since there is so much outplay potential, it is amazing QoL for sure, for a character like Crysta

for a bad player like me I know 3 star items won't carry me to victory if I don't learn how to juke abilities, kite effectively, and dunk people over the abyss

one issue I see with the armory system it's how bad it's presented, it gives this perception of unfairness where player only focus on the items and not improving their skills

TLDR: items won't carry you to legend

For the devs:
nerf the outliers, for example, Shiv + vive infusor

close the gap within 1 star and 3 star items

improve armory presentation

i'm not saying anyone here is a bad player, i'm not gonna discuss about that

[placid pebble]

Even 1% difference in strength ruins the competitive integrity of ranked IMO. Also 3-star Diadem gets to spam ult on objectives and take them more than twice as fast. No skill required to click R on a boss and that's way more than just QoL

[proven knoll]

securing an objective with ults, i could see the problem, maybe they could buff monsters hp or damage mitigation

1% difference matters if everyone's playing at the level of gods

I see games like these like chess, even good players throw

[desert marlin]

spamming more ults does not mean you're gonna land them
but it does mean you can spam ults more, control more space, etc. even if you only hit 50% of your ults, being able to cast ult 2x as often as someone else means you will inherently do more of whatever it is your ult does than someone else with the same hitrate, assuming all else is equal.

rather, the fact that you are able to cast ult more often than someone else is a threat in and of itself.

[placid pebble]

It's not about winning or losing. I win some games I lose some games, that's totally fine. My loses are from being bad, not from armory I agree 100%

BUT if my opponent got to move their pawn 3 spaces on t1 instead of 2 in chess because they'd played 100 extra hours the game would be shit 😂

Also to the 20% crit example, Sword of Seven Suns goes from 10% flat damage to 20% flat damage at 3 star, that difference in damage is more than 20% crit would give in league fwiw (yes the item is kinda bad, but example stands)

Ofc 1% matters, if there was a bundle in the store that was 20$, you deal 1% more damage all the time people would be losing their minds

[proven knoll]

not gonna deny it will improve your odds, eventually you will kill with your Xth ult

therefore you try to punish the player who misses their ult

the best battles are the ones where you win with odds against you <- this is not relevant

[placid pebble]

This is just so cope it's unreal. I just want to play a fair ranked ladder jfc

[proven knoll]

look i get it and I'm not here to convince anyone, i want to show that armory have a presentation problem

even I get all the items, it won't secure me a win, for me, at least

[desert marlin]

therefore you try to punish the player who misses their ult
yes, and my point is partially that the punish window for missing ult is smaller if their ult cooldown is shorter for any given reason.

that is why Void ult cooldown is so long and has literally always been: to ensure he has a very large punish window in return for having an ult that is basically fight winning on its own.
Now imagine a world where Void ult has a 30s CD instead.
Punish window is significantly smaller / Void himself is punished significantly less for missing.
He doesn't need to hold his ult for the "best" opportunity because "good enough" is now readily accessible; even if he only ever hits 1 guy with his ult, so what because it only has a 30s CD. One disengage worth of time later and his ult is back up.

[proven knoll]

now the devs have something they can improve, eventually we will reach a middle ground where the system could improve instead of not being there

i'm not a dev, if punish window is low, that's something to the devs to try and fix

we can only provide feedback

[placid pebble]

If you play 100 or 1000 or 10000 games the difference between 1 star and 3 star items will translate into higher elo if you have higher stars. Any tiny stat difference matters over the pool of all games. They WILL secure you wins given enough games

[desert marlin]

reach a middle ground where the system could improve instead of not being there
ok but part of the problem is that the system is, in no small part, predicated on metaprogression resulting in literal gameplay bonuses by way of being able to guarantee progressively better gear.
that metaprogression is literally the entire gimmick of the Armory system.

[proven knoll]

if a player would get to legend with no armory, what would that say about the system or the player?

this is not gonna be me, I'm not making a challenge nor putting a bounty

but i'm generally curious if it's possible

we don't include in these scenarios that items spawn from enemies and vaults and (even if hard af) you kill someone you steal their items

it will show that the player is a monster for sure

[desert marlin]

playing without the armory =/= playing without items

[proven knoll]

i meant that ofc

my bad

[desert marlin]

having to depend 100% on floor loot for both items and powers is how the item system used to be back in 2023 and it wasn't that difficult to win if you knew what you were doing unless you were vs. the best players in the game. depending on floor loot wasn't a problem even though it was rough at times since some characters kinda needed specific items to work, like Zeph relied heavily on getting literally any mana items/powers because his mana economy was absolute garbage at the time (as in he would cast RMB 2-3 times and be out of mana).
Granted items were just stat sticks back then, but still.

I imagine doing the same now would be strictly possible but strictly more difficult simply by merit of what items do now.
There might not be much of a difference between (this is just an example! substitute damage for the stat of your choice.) 10% bonus damage and 15% damage damage, but there's the difference between 0% bonus damage and 10% bonus damage on whether you do/don't have that hypothetical item and use it; 0% CDR vs. 10% CDR can make a world of difference, even if the item upgrades to only get 12% CDR at the next tier.

[proven knoll]

I want to try to answer to everything you say, it's just that english is not my first language

there is a lot to improve about the system, there are noticeable power increases within item tiers that are problematic, adjusting CDR would be a start

maybe when I get to higher elo Ill start seeing more problems, but I want to think that when I lose that there was something I could've done better instead of "bro had this 3 star item WTF", it will help me sleep at night XD maybe the best state of the system would be when the losing player blames their teammates instead

it was a productive talk, I need to get back to work D:

[brazen lintel]

you can't steal your ennemie's IE in lol, you can't truely one shot him no matter the gear either. you can't just right clic once on his head and win the fight in supervive. that's simply not a valid comparison.

I get the argument of wanting 0 imbalance.
I personnaly don't mind some imbalance coz it feels extra good when you overcome it but i do want them to nerf some of the broken 3 star stuff
but the argument you have no agency when people are litteraly climbing to legend with no use of their own armory, and the game is full skillshot is just really lame. it is still better player wins in most cases

[whole wasp]

Alright bro had a really shitty metaphor but that’s not the point

Crysta becomes so much stronger with diadem 2, & its effectiveness is doubled at 3 star

Crysta’s without diadem 2+ v.s with diadem 2+ are playing two totally separate games

[brazen lintel]

valid argument. his wasn’t and was a gross and unfair miss representation of the game which is kinda counterproductive if you want feedback to be taken into account

[wintry lily]

Correct in both the first and second cases.

[wintry lily]

The fact this is true is a massive problem, so yes.

[wintry lily]

It is important to recognise that lacking arguments lose bite even if their conclusions are truthful, so yes.

[whole wasp]

Lowkey you said you already understood the argument of wanting 0 imbalance my b

I really don’t care much about enemy stars either, but more-so whether I have it available to me as a choice to begin with

I’d like to play the game to its full potential

[brazen lintel]

aye, cringing everytime you don’t receive the correct item for your favourite character does feel unnecessarily bad especially when that can hypothetically happen forever. i personally hate the random aspect of it. I’m either for all items to be in the forge, even if they double/tripple the price, or having a focus where you can pick an item and after X amount of capsules you get it on top of the loots. System is far from perfect but i really do appreciate the itemisation choices much more than the old system.