So I recently hit T3 and while my character finally chilled in Punika it came to my mind how much of a struggle and unfun (is that a word?) was to get there.
Honestly, I never felt such a stressful and unfun system as honing. While I understand the purpose, I think the system itself is flawed and rely on the worst stat among everything: luck
It’s not related to skill, not related to progression, it’s only related to luck and wealth.
What I suggest is to introduce something like a Tier Token.
For example, the last guardian in T1 is Tyatlos and for example, he could drop the T1 token needed to upgrade the T1 gear to +15. Abyss dungeon in T1 content could drop more T1 token, so you could advance faster and so on. The harder the content, the more Token it drops.
That way legacy content would have a meaning, people could actually try and learn the mechanics or just skip them and go with the current system and grind the materials.
However, I think a Token system like this would solve many problems.
Tbh, I could even imagine these things with T3 content too, cause currently at 1325 I do not see how would I be able to get enough material to upgrade my gear.
As far as I think: gear upgrade should be always easier with skill than with money and lucky. I mean, yeah… every mmo, even WoW makes it easier if you spend lots of money but that’s only possible , because players with skills are rewarded.
So, yeah… this is another topic on the honing system being unfun. However I think we all agree that the western audience will certainly hate this, except for a minority.