Hello there!
I would like to share my opinion that all honing materials should be roster bound/roster wide instead of character bound. There is no way the opinion that I am about to share is one of a kind. There is also no way that I am going to be the first to share this opinion. If I took the time to look through posts on this forum I am sure I could find numerous posts that share the same sentiment that I’d like to discuss. Nevertheless, I wanted to share my experience in the hope that adding one more voice to the crowd will increase the likelihood that a change is implemented, so here goes:
What is the thought process behind what items become character bound and what items become roster bound? I understand the value of both types of items, but I believe that there are far too many honing material rewards that are character bound (or become character bound when you open them). I believe it is a very common, possibly ubiquitous, experience for a player to reach the next tier of content with thousands of character bound materials that become useless the moment they receive gear for the next tier. In particular, tier 1 and tier 2 shards are items that every player must have an abundance of. I just started a new alt today (partially my motivation for creating this post), and I was frustrated when I was reminded that the 100,000 harmony shards that I have on my main are completely useless even though they would be so valuable to my new character. I do not think there would be a downside to making these materials roster wide.
I also struggle to understand why honing materials that you receive when you open a chest are character bound. For example, dreamgull island provides a large amount of tier 1 honing material chests. As long as you don’t open them, you can freely move these materials between characters, but you open the chests the materials become character bound. This is rather inconvenient. I struggle to see a logical reason why it is a better idea to make these materials character bound once the chests are open, especially since you can only complete island quests once per roster. I think changing the game so that these materials are roster wide would greatly improve the player experience.
One reason I have considered as to why so many of these materials might be character bound is that the developers don’t want players to progress to quickly on there alts. This reason makes some sense. Of course they want us to play as much Lost Ark as possible, so making progression take a bit longer allows us to play more. However, I do not feel that the additional time I have to spend leveling up my alts is more enjoyable than the time I would spend playing the game with higher level characters. I am all for playing more Lost Ark content, but I do not want to play the same content too much. Forcing me to grind for tier 1 and 2 honing materials even though my other characters have a surplus makes me feel like I am being forced to replay content that I have already completed. It feels like I have wasted time playing to earn materials for no reason. This lowers my opinion of the game.
All honing materials should be character specific. There is no reason that excess materials should become useless when a player reaches a new tier.
I hope that sharing my opinion helps to persuade the developers to enact the changes that I have outlined. I want this game to be as good as possible so that I enjoy it enough to play for thousands of hours.
I would love to talk about this more, so I look forward to any comments that I receive
Sincerely,
Zalami the Gunlancer