What's the point of always "changing" the tomestones?

[zeth07]

It's been years now, we get it. At this point why bother changing the names? At least they stopped on Poetics, but shuffling around the others serves no purpose.

If they aren't going to inherently change the system, just name them 3 things and move on. The name changes now have served no purpose whatsoever.

We have Poetics for all the old gear, and 2 other types for the middle and max. So next expansion is Poetics just going to cover 50-70? Are they going to add a 4th set of tomestones at once so it's Poetics 50-60, Something 70, and New things x2 at 80? Or are they just going to continue the cycle of 3 tomestones?

As the game is now why not just settle into the 3 tomestones and leave the names alone?

- Poetics = Old stuff
- Something = New stuff 2000 cap
- Something else = New stuff 450 cap.

And just never change it again cause we are already stuck in the same gameplay loop for the last 5 years. Giving it a new name doesn't change anything and at this point it is a joke.

[Skivvy]

Yeah, it really makes no sense to me either as they always end up converting the tiers to the newly-named stones. I've decided SE just likes to make things overly complicated for no good reason.

[Rangar]

It's called a rat race for a reason

[Rufalus]

I guess the transition phase might be a consideration, like if the new gear was going to use an existing tome you could buy 2K worth right from the start. So switching to a new tome makes everybody start at zero again for a new tier and they control your pacing a bit that way.

[Skivvy]

It's called a rat race for a reason

But the race wouldn't change at all. You'd still be grinding out 3 sets of tomes, they'd just stop wasting their time renaming the tiers every 6 months.

I guess the transition phase might be a consideration, like if the new gear was going to use an existing tome you could buy 2K worth right from the start. So switching to a new tome makes everybody start at zero again for a new tier and they control your pacing a bit that way.

The transition would make sense, at least when viewing it from SE's eyes. I get that SE wants to keep everyone at the same progress level, but it really wouldn't hurt to come into a patch 2 weeks ahead of the game had you been stockpiling your tomes.

[InkstainedGwyn]

But the race wouldn't change at all. You'd still be grinding out 3 sets of tomes, they'd just stop wasting their time renaming the tiers every 6 months.

No, because as was already said, anyone saving up would be able to buy 2k worth of gear at 6am or whenever the servers go up. They already trickle our content to make sure we're being strung along, being able to save up 2k tomes skips ~5 weeks of grinding.

[Vaer]

They don't want you storing "Something else" to 2000 when they release the new gear so you can buy things immediately. Other games got around this by simply converting them to the lesser currency automatically.

The SB stuff will be changed to poetics when the new expansion comes out. They don't care about poetics because it's not the new "gear" and there's no way to jump ahead of someone like someone storing 2000 can, vs someone who has only 100 since you can grind it uncapped.

They would be 3+ weeks ahead and there would be some metagaming involved on how to save the currency before the patch comes out, etc. (i.e Resub a couple weeks before gear reset to cap every week to get to 2000)

Forcing the transition makes everyone reset properly since they don't seem to have a method to do it automatically.

[Fyce]

It's probably out of habits. Like, we call it "creation gear" or "mendacity gear". Well, for that to stay as it is for the whole expansion, they need to shift the tomestones and get new names.
It's also a good psychological game design tool to reinforce the feeling of progression. "New name = new stuff".

So, while it doesn't really have any gameplay reasons, it still has some perks of its own. And since it's probably quite easy for them to do, might as well keep it.

[MistakeNot]

It's been years now, we get it. At this point why bother changing the names? At least they stopped on Poetics, but shuffling around the others serves no purpose.

It does serve a purpose - or two actually - to change around the tomestones on a regular basis.

First of all it makes sure people can't save up to buy the latest and greatest gear - they have to earn the new tomestone currency first.
Secondly it makes the older stuff easier to obtain after a change, since it will then be easier to obtain the needed tomestones.

Note that there are actually 4 types of tomestones in the game. Poetics for the old stuff now, and 3 types for level-cap gear. One of the types can't be earned anymore, but can be exchanged (at a lousy rate) for newer tomestones. That obsolete type will then be removed completely when the next tier is introduced.

But really, the only actual problem with them introducing new types of tomestones on a regular basis is that someone has to come up with a name for the new type - and that is a problem for the developers, not for us players

[KisaiTenshi]

I guess the transition phase might be a consideration, like if the new gear was going to use an existing tome you could buy 2K worth right from the start. So switching to a new tome makes everybody start at zero again for a new tier and they control your pacing a bit that way.

This is the only reason. However it would have been nicer to leave each tomes for each major patch (2.x, 3.x, 4.x) separate so that they could separate the dungeon and roulette rewards so people don't spam MSQ/POTD for poetics for HW gear. Like I get why they fold it in (one less currency to deal with) but perhaps it's time to just make a permanent currency that only buys the retired gear and set a cap on the number based on MSQ progress (Eg 2000, 3000, 4000.)