Shattered Kingdoms

This might be true. But a lot of players don't know how to get it.
I'm still thinkin that we have to somehow spread the knowledge.

I'm not really talking about gear in general -- and, on that topic, it's probably there for the same reason you'll find Isadora with her gear these days -- I'm talking about specific final rewards of areas that motivate people to complete those areas. When the treasure chests are empty, people naturally won't fight as hard to get to and open them.

Risk/Reward and Scarcity aren't completely compatible design paradigms. That's the point I'm hoping to point out.

If gear is just sitting around as you put it, there is likely a simple reason: it is itemized very poorly, like the several suits of heavy armor that have magical protection endowments. The scarcity of high level equipment is the reason that PvE will never be a "thing" on Shattered Kingdoms. There is no incentive to travel to many zones or fight the harder encounters, if the gear is already taken or reached the limit.

That is also why information is not freely shared and PvE is adversarial in nature instead of cooperative. I doubt you would see many players continuing to raid Highmaul, if (for example) Gor'gah were limited to the first four raid groups that defeated Imperator Mar'gok.

I don't disagree.



Scroll up. We've been beavering away on fixing this problem this past month, in particular.

But mostly it's because there aren't as many players.

And this is the real disconnect between experienced vs inexperienced players.
Telling a newb that he should be swimming in leet gear doesn't really help him actually obtain it. The information usually has to be grandfathered down.

If you were to locate 'super elite halberd of vengeance' found in 'curved corridor', what other way is there to find it if everyone you asked doesn't know?

You literally have to accidentally stumble upon it somehow while wandering around in a dangerous area with people who are just as inexperienced. The amount of elite gear is not as important as its placement in the game.

Lets just pretend the playerbase was wiped and 50 newbies started playing. How many years would it take for them to navigate difficult areas and find this gear without any help?

Is this being done piecemeal? Will there be some sort of announcement when this re-itemization is completed? It is a daunting, time consuming and risky task to randomly tackle some of these encounters only to find out that it is next or further down on the to-do list of changes.

And while that is definitely a worthwhile change, gear scarcity still means that once an encounter has been defeated and the gear associated with it has reached the limit there is no incentive to revisit that area. It is also not to your advantage to share information with other characters (or players). Continuing with my Highmaul example from the previous post, no one would post guides on Youtube if the gear was limited. The information would be coveted and revealing it would likely get you removed from your guild.

I suppose this dovetails with Cordance's post in General Discussion. Gear scarcity is one of the primary reasons that Shattered Kingdoms is not a collaborative game for the most part - it is mostly adversarial.

The playerbase has also shrunk.

PvE in this game used to be huge. There's less players to do things with right now. There's a certain level of coding restriction in higher level areas that is the same as lower level areas. Builders can only make so much loot per area, and then can only make so much *excellent* loot. Some of these areas are unused too.

PvE on Shattered Kingdoms has never been huge. At best, it was a mini-game similar in scope to CRS. Once the incentive and rewards associated with exploring and/or conquering an area is gone (i.e. the gear), there is no reason to go back to that particular area. In fact, CRS and PvE share a lot in common. No one would raid an HQ that they had already stolen the relic from. No one is going to adventure in areas where the gear limit has been reached and there are no rewards for defeating encounters.

I am not against gear scarcity as a model for game play, but I don't understand the sudden emphasis on redesigning gear in what appears to be an attempt to mimic MMOs. The design model for Shattered Kingdoms is adversarial in nature and promotes conflict, which is good for PK and RP. Focusing on PvE would also require a focus on the rewards/incentive to make it popular, which gear scarcity is at direct odds with.