Is there any reason that enhancement combining can fail?

[Monos King]

 

I had a conversation with someone a bit ago about the echo's of capitalism in City of Heroes design. I disagreed that what we were talking about was something motivated by monetization. But surely this old mechanism totally is, right? D-Sync can only fail because Hami's and the like can fail. Do we actually need this to mechanic to still exist? I'm of the opinion it's only around to further manufacture the grind. Was curious on people's thoughts on this.

[Greycat]

It's always been a *chance* to combine. Nothing about monetization there - you're trying to do something to get higher power. That's not being done for free - the cost is the *chance* of losing one of those enhancements. But it will, as I recall, always be the lower power one.

 

Yes, it should still exist. You want a guaranteed result, pay for a booster and use IOs (which *also* have a cost, either on the market or to craft.) Or hit the "upgrade" button, at least for standard enhancements.

[Ston]

I'm of the opinion that this does not need to exist.

 

It doesn't take into consideration that you could lose 500m on one roll, but only 250k on another. You already have to do so much activity in game to afford some of these enhancements.. When they fail to upgrade it is extremely defeating. 

 

If you could just add 5 boosters to IOs, that would be great. If you could pay some amount of influence to make the odds of upgrading 100%, sure. But until then I really don't think this is a necessary mechanic.

Edited March 30 by Ston

[JasperStone]

It's been a while since I played DnD online, but there is a chance of failure when crafting, depending on your level. I could be wrong.

The same Elder Scrolls, I think.

 

This is fine.

Next up would be making all powers auto-hit.

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, JasperStone said:

It's been a while since I played DnD online, but there is a chance of failure when crafting, depending on your level.

Yes, in D&D and Pathfinder, no matter how high your crafting skill is, if you roll a 1, you botched whatever you were crafting. However, players can offset that by taking 10.

 

I kind of have to agree with @Greycat on the matter. However, I am also of the opinion that something can be made available in the game to improve your chances of a successful combination. Even CO had catalysts that you could use as part of your creating (merging 3 into the next higher tier) to reduce the chance of failure.

[lemming]

It's always been there.   Getting rid of it would instantly make the lower level ones more valuable since you wouldn't need to worry about failure.  Would this change break anything, probably not of much significance.

[Faultline]

The chance to fail is based on the relative level between enhancements. It's there to prevent you from buying low-level HO-equivalents (I think they start at 30 with Eden/Hydra?) and combining to get a 53 HO on the cheap. Yes, even back on Retail you could combine a Hydra/Titan with a HO.

[Monos King]

4 hours ago, Faultline said:

It's there to pre vent you from buying low-level HO-equivalents (I think they start at 30 with Eden/Hydra?) and combining to get a 53 HO on the cheap.

That makes sense. D-Sync is 50 and above only though right? Maybe anything that's 50 or above gets to retain 100%. Edit: Ah, I remember that all of them can fuse with each other. And Aeon is 35+. Not sure if that changes things.

 

This is hardly something that I consider egregious or a priority, but it did occur to me "wow, not everyone is rich in game and they can just casually lose millions on each individual role". Seems somewhat needless at this stage. 

Edited March 30 by Monos King
HOs can fuse with Dsync

[Monos King]

1 hour ago, Rudra said:

I kind of have to agree with @Greycat on the matter. However, I am also of the opinion that something can be made available in the game to improve your chances of a successful combination. Even CO had catalysts that you could use as part of your creating (merging 3 into the next higher tier) to reduce the chance of failure

That's kind of a cool idea. If we let existing enhancement catalysts be used to remove chance for failure that would be interesting. I wonder how that would affect the price of catalysts.

[lemming]

17 minutes ago, Monos King said:

That makes sense. D-Sync is 50 and above only though right?

Probably 35+ since Aeon is that level up.  Though in theory they're less valuable, in order to get one, it's just as much of a hurdle.   Though maybe making it so that if both enhancements level 50+ are 100% to combine would drop the painful bit.

[Monos King]

7 minutes ago, lemming said:

Probably 35+ since Aeon is that level up.  Though in theory they're less valuable, in order to get one, it's just as much of a hurdle.   Though maybe making it so that if both enhancements level 50+ are 100% to combine would drop the painful bit.

Ah, I've been washed into thinking it was only 50 only due to the star run demands I always see. I feel like the second half of what you said shouldn't be too much of an issue. 

[Bionic_Flea]

I wouldn't complain if all combinations were 100% but, on the other hand, I also don't mind a chance to fail that increases the further apart the levels are.  That kind of makes sense to me, maybe because I've seen it done that way for almost 20 years.

[tidge]

The argument about "buying low level HO/D-Syncs" doesn't seem particularly strong: Is it not the case that the Homecoming Auction House buckets them all, so that the price of any given level of an HO is the same as any other HO?

 

 

[lemming]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

The argument about "buying low level HO/D-Syncs" doesn't seem particularly strong: Is it not the case that the Homecoming Auction House buckets them all, so that the price of any given level of an HO is the same as any other HO?

No bucketing for non-craft enhancements.

 

Otherwise, one could just drop a ton of level 5 SOs, sell on one char, and buy level 53s on another.    No reason to combine even.

 

My argument is that a lower level HO takes as much effort as a level 50 HO.  (Maybe moreso if you don't have incarnate powers to use)

[Luminara]

4 hours ago, tidge said:

The argument about "buying low level HO/D-Syncs" doesn't seem particularly strong: Is it not the case that the Homecoming Auction House buckets them all, so that the price of any given level of an HO is the same as any other HO?

They're bucketed by level and direct match (Acc/Mez, for example, is just seen as Acc/Mez by the AH, even though there are five different specials which boost Acc/Mez).  If you look at the Endoplasm HO at level 48, for example, you'll note that the number listed, the number of bids and the recent sale prices are all identical matches with Graviton, D-Sync Binding, Synthetic Endoplasm and Calcite of the same level, but examining different levels of Acc/Mez specials shows different numbers listed, bids and sale prices.