recipes in a new way

I don't understand how would making that lower level chests more rewarding actually help new players. Nowadays I vendor most lvl 40 epics. For good items, the prices will still be expensive. For bad ones, it will be vendored. Only fix I can see is more in game shops. Even then, the pre-40 gold gain is so bad that they need to sell items at 200~500 coins each.

Actually, now to think of it. Even if you don't have the abysmal gold gain. If you know that your pre-40 won't won't matter in 10 hours of play, would you still spend thousands per slot? If you buff them too they matter, then they are either BIS or near BIS, in which case they would be expensive.

 

It will help new players immensely. XP gains have been buffed since the original days, so people level quite a bit faster, and all the experienced players are around to give advice on efficient levelling. What this does, however, is leave people comparably undergeared to the old days when they get to 20+ on the starter civs or 30+ on the premium.

Truth be told, buffing pre 40 chest drops or number of chests from the old quests, or upping treasure spawns and droprates in these old quests could all work for equalizing that! However, these changes also increase supply of all this lower end gear, further shifting value towards the endgame.

The change I think Start is wanting, is using some of these pre40 items as a material in level 40 crafting in order to pad value of the lower end stuff that way in order to encourage some market activity in pre40 and pre epic gear and plans.

In the long run I'd prolly be inclined to ask for both, but I think Jeinx's stance and where the devs are looking to focus first would be the best way forward.

 

The market would either be cheap enough that it isn't worth it, or expansive enough that new players cannot afford it. The gold and EP gain on pre-40 non-repeatable quests are really bad. Let's face it, if all they can afford per piece is $200, would you waste market slots or trade channel spam for it?

 

It's not a real market with levies and supply-over-time-finiteness, eventually prices would settle to the point where undergeared level 40 players would be incentivised to farm these things. Heck, you can farm standard skirmish ai at 40 for things like alligator hide chiton now. I get the arguments about needing more gold sinks so newbies aren't worse and worse off over time, but they're coming

Buffing chest drops would actually avoid all this too, as the newbies don't need to be so dependant on the market, now argos/babylon/skirmish/other easier quests might actually be worthwhile to hit up to gear up as well as level.

 

It's not even gold sinks. The discrepancy between gold rewards for pre-40 and post-40 quests itself is enough to cause this problem from day 1. On top of which, new players would not know how to farm and abuse the market even if they should get that lucky drop. Like, if they have a Looking Glass drop today, what's the chance they would know to sell on the market for 50k? I am taking about a genuine new player, not someone like us starting our 7th civ when the Romans come out.

 

Personally I levelled with pvp, so I can't comment on that, beyond mentioning my experiences in other MMOs and in RPGs. The scaling between starting and endgame rewards does always carry across to currency gains, but you may be right, in that gold in legs needs nerfing, or early game quests and repeatables need gold reward buffs though.

Heroic hour pvp seems more worthwhile than the original pre40 questing and repeatables for gold (other than maybe in Babylon), but it's pretty heavily eclipsed by elite and legendary gold rewards.

 

I will add this ancedote: When I was restarting a long time ago. I could find many upgrades pre-lvl 40 from in-game shops. I bought very few of them. Partly because I didn't really need it. Partly because they were way too expensive. If those vendors starting selling at 1/5th the price, that would smooth out the pre-40 curve.

Edit: Sorry to OP for hijacking the thread, but I am trying to point out that making pre-40 gear more abundant solves none of the new player problems. If you want pre-40 gear to be actually endgame gear out that's effectively out of reach of pre-40 players, that's a whole other can of worms.