Tech Fragment System is godawful, it's not too late to remove it!

3

By the love of god, please remove or deeply reform this system, if this is the last thing you do on the game. It has absolutely invalidated one class and as such it would be a damn shame to leave it as is in the final version of the game (still hoping for a "Director's Cut, though).

I have little to add to what I and others have said on this matter, but to recap:

  • Massive Grind: the Tech Fragment grind is extreme, even after the drop rates tweak, and runs counter to Inquisitor's the design philosophy. I was frankly surprised by the insane gacha-like proportions of it  - even before level 100, my character couldn't upgrade a single construct weapon after running many missions.
  • Completely inflexible progression: once you invest on a weapon set, you're stuck with it since the grind to get other weapons is insurmountable and there's no refund mechanism.
  • Extreme restriction of builds: the system effectively forces you to use single constructs with single weapon sets. This invalidates most fun builds, specially my favorite one using one of each construct type (with "Synod of the Machine God" perk).
  • Removal of item hunt aspect: since the Tech Adept tends to have simple, passive gameplay, most of the fun of playing one came from testing and tweaking different Construct Type/Weapon combinations as you found new items on the field. Now this is pretty much gone, as the class has very simple itemization and is mostly a bore to play.

Note that the only players somewhat Ok with the system were those that didn't need to engage with it actively, namely those that had Level 100 characters before the update (and got their full Level 100 weapon set automatically).

So, what I'm proposing is that you revise the system and restore a semblance of functionality to the Tech Adept. There are a few solutions, requiring varying degrees of effort. To wit:

  • "Correct" solution: go back to the original system. This fixes the problem entirely, but requires a degree of care to restore the original enchant ecosystem of the class. It also suggests implementing some sort of currency refund to compensate those who suffered though extreme TF grinds (e.g., grant n Tarot Cards for each construct weapon level over 100).
  • "Bandaid" solution: allow Tech Fragment refunds and very significantly (I'm talking 10x or more here) increase the TF drop rates. To compensate, you may wish to dramatically increase weapon level-up thresholds over Construct Weapon Level 100. Note that this doesn't fix the inflexibility, single weapon/construct build, nor boring item hunt issues, so it's not a true solution.
  • Alternate "gordian-knot" solution: set the construct weapon to the character level and do away with the system entirely. If needed, add enchants and doctrines to bolster high-level play (e.g., "you Constructs share your Enrage effects"). Note that this doesn't fix the boring item hunt issue.

Finally, some choice quotes and threads illustrating my points:

"For me, Tech Adept was my favorite... I could choose what constructs I like, and I had a flexible build that could use these ones in this mission, others in the next, it was never boring. But sadly, this newly introduced leveling system to construct weapons destroyed 90% of the fun. You're now forced to stick with a single build and construct type because you don't have enough Tech fragments to keep more than two weapons on your character level".

"The non-refundable tech fragments solely kill the fun out of the class. I have one at Level 100, skilled on Cataphron Destroyers, and could not even keep my construct weapons all on level even though I only leveled two of the four available for them. Trying new weapons or even new constructs? Doesn't work, because their weapons are hopelessly underleveled. There is no way to refund them either.

Because of this, Tech Adept is the only class I will never ever level a second one, the grind is MUCH to big. Before they introduced the tech fragments, the Tech Adept was such a funny and versatile class; I had a built that kind of worked with every construct but excelled in none, but it gave me the chance to play with a fresh combo of constructs and weapons every day".

- Athos42

"I started with Adept and loved it. In the season that they made the change to tech fragments I gave it a try but was massively underwhelmed by how restricted it was and my tech points were way behind the level curve to keep them upto date if I didn't focus on a single construct type".

- PyroMancer

New Tech Fragment system greatly hinders Tech-Adept

Let us respec tech priest constructs

P.S.: I am under the impression that this system was implemented to cater to players running ultra-high level missions at a regular basis. If that's the case, note that all ultra-high level builds are "gimmick" builds, and should be balanced (if at all) with "gimmick" enchants/doctrines (e.g.: constructs interacting with enrage, berserk, etc.), not by changing core mechanics. Trying to balance around this use case will usually break the fundamentals, and this isn't how 99% of users play the game.

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Tech Fragment System is godawful, it's not too late to remove it!
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10 hours ago
I don't think the original system was such a pain either, you always had the option to re-roll perks and their values. And since construct gear stops at relic quality, you could keep re-rolling them endlessly.


But I also remember that back then the system penalised TA more than the other classes and I suppose that's where the dissatisfaction came from. The three other classes were simply chasing gear for their own characters, while the TA had to do the same for his constructs in addition to his own gear. And since back then there were no mission modifiers boosting construct module or weapon drops, they were fairly rare.


A lot of the big TA rework was very low effort - my guess is because the TA did not sell as well as hoped for and they saw no point investing more into it, beyond some simple QoL fixes. But that also means that instead of actually solving the issue, they just moved it slightly to the side. I don't think they will ever revisit this, as mentioned below (yo, Neocore, prove me wrong!).

1 day ago
Lankester
Thanks for the research - the findings confirm what I suspected: the grind truly is INSANE.


I didn't find that the original Tech Adept design had any issue - the RNG problem on finding your Construct's weapons was neatly addressed by the fact that you could craft you preferred weapons until finding a decent one (since Construct weapons top at Relic level, you could always get the entire enchant pool with crafting). I found it a nice change and very Tech-Adepty (it makes sense that a Tech Priest would craft his Construct's weapons).


As often happens, the cure was a hundred times worse than the disease...

1 day ago
Oh, this has been discussed so many times over the years and the only change that has happened was the introduction of scaling shortly after the TA rework, and that was it. Tech fragment drops scale up to 700% at +10 difficulty. And it is still not sufficient. Not even close.


Tech fragments were supposed to address the biggest TA issue after the class released, which was its extreme RNG. Since back then you needed modules and specific weapons for your constructs (same system as for your character gear), your chances to get good equipment for them was very low.


However, instead of actually fixing it, the new system ended up simply moving the TA to the other end of the godawful spectrum: from godawful RNG to godawful grind.


Years ago I made a whole spreadsheet with TF drops across 100+ random missions with various modifiers and tarot cards. You can view the simplified chart in this thread. It really is that bad. I don't think Neocore will do anything about it now. Back then Marco occasionally replied in those threads (without any commitments or solutions), now they just ignore them. TA is old story for Neocore and won't bring them new money.


From my perspective, the best solution would be to remove the +10 cap on TF drops scaling, increase scaling logarithmically beyond +10 missions, link TF to weapon slots (instead of individual weapon types) - i.e. primary and secondary slot - and add account-wide TF drops, no matter which character you're playing. That way you could actually enjoy other classes without spending 10 years exclusively logging on your TA if you want to see any progress...