The "Hrmm that has become the META ... lets break it!" mentality of Devs and how did you come to that?

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

I personally think that DE should take a look into how Riot balances league of legends. 
They release a patch every 2-3 weeks that addresses the current state of the game, anything that’s under performing is brought up, and over performing down.

But, and most importantly, they tend to always give compensation with a nerf, unless something is horrendously over performing.

Sure, league of legends only has 150 champions, there are a lot more weapons in warframe compared to champions in league. But the champions are significantly more complicated. While Riot’s balance might not always be perfect, just about every champion in the game hovers around a 50% win rate.

If you transferred warframes balance into league, 80% of the champions would have a 10% win rate, and the remaining 20% would be at 90%.
 

The game needs a far more hands on approach, riven disposition changes every 3 months is not enough. 
 

My two cents.

[ebrl]

44 minutes ago, xxswatelitexx said:

But the answer is a 2 way street, because a lot of undertuned things desperately need help which are ignored like Convectrix which I have not seen a single person use in 4 years.

The Convectrix is an extremely serious contender for very best weapon in the game right now.

[_Anise_]

On 2021-03-14 at 11:01 AM, Narcissa said:

So making the meta items worse to use by nerfing them into the void so we can diversify into the crap we didn't want to use anyways seems like a poor logic choice to me

the logic is simple, its easier to break the 1% then fix the 99% not saying its good logic but at least I get it,

[Corvid]

58 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

cheers, old fellow. May our kind always be beacon of wisdom on the internet.

Maybe tone down the pretentiousness? Treating other posters as if they are idiots who need basic things explained to them (after they have already stated that they know what you're talking about) is an expedient way to end up on the ignore list.

[Dunkelheit]

vor 18 Stunden schrieb Teljaxx:

You have made the mistake of assuming that playing a single game for thousands of hours is a good thing. Its not. Because the only way to get to that point is to basically become addicted. To start treating it more like a drug, than a hobby. Something that you HAVE to get your daily hit from, or else.

This is why the only way games like Warframe get people to play for so long is to use all kinds of psychological manipulation, like FOMO, Pavlovian conditioning, and Skinner Boxes, to keep people going long after they stopped actually having fun with the game. And yeah, I admit, I fell for it too for a while. But that's why I am so critical of Warframe at this point. I know first hand how horrible this manipulative crap feels, and yet how subtle and sneaky it can be, too.

The entire reason I can come back to a game like Doom over and over again for 25 years, despite doing the same things every single time, is because I don't ever get burnt out on it. I can simply play it when I want to, and not play it when I don't want to. The Id Devs accepted that their game is finite, and that trying to force people to play it forever will only cause more problems, and piss people off.

Same with No Man's Sky, despite also being a "live service" like Warframe. I have played it for a couple hundred hours over the last year or so, and that's perfectly fine. I have done what I wanted to, at my own pace, and can come and go whenever I want. So I have never gotten burnt out on any of it, and still enjoy playing it from time to time. Because it doesn't have all the Necessary Evils that microtransactions always bring, they don't actually need to keep people playing forever to survive. The one time entrance fee (which is regularly half off) is plenty.

Meanwhile, I have basically not played Warframe at all since Railjack first came out about two years ago. And only now am I actually starting to finally feel like maybe I want to try again. I'll probably wait for the next big Railjack update first, so there is actually some (hopefully) worthwhile new stuff to try.

Steel_Rook said it quite well:

For an example of this, lets examine the process of acquiring and fully upgrading a weapon in Warframe. I put it in a spoiler tag, because this is stupidly long:

  Unsichtbaren Inhalt anzeigen

First, you need the blueprint to build the weapon. This either means farming credits to buy the blueprint, or farming the blueprint drop itself. The latter also means having to first unlock the area or game mode that the blueprint drops from.

Then, you need the resources to actually build the weapon. So again, you need to unlock the areas that the specific resources you need drop from.

Then, you have to wait 12 or 24 hours for the weapon to build.

Once its built, you now need to level it up. So you bring it into missions and get affinity. But, simply maxing out its rank doesn't actually do anything for you by itself. So now you also need mods.

You probably collected a few mods while doing the rest of this stuff. But they were most likely just the basic, and not very useful, common ones. To get the actually useful, rare ones, you need to go find the specific places with the specific enemies that drop the specific mods you want, and then farm them until you get that 0.2% drop chance to finally happen.

But, simply collecting the mods you want to use still isn't enough. Now you need to level the mods up, too, if you want to get any actually useful stat bonuses out of them. So now you need Endo, and more credits. So you go hunting for Ayatans, and convert all the copies of mods you have collected into Endo. And once your mods are all fully ranked up, you will now realize that you can only fit like three of them on your weapon. Because now you need a Catalyst.

So, you either farm Nightwave standing to buy one with Creds. Or, you hope a blueprint shows up as an invasion reward, which means unlocking where the invasion is even happening first. And if you get the blueprint, that means farming even more resources, and then waiting 24 hours for it to build.

And again, the Catalyst alone isn't enough. Now you also need Forma to polarize your mod slots.  So now you need void relics. So you either farm open world bounties, which of course means unlocking the open world areas in the first place. Or you farm syndicate standing until you can buy void relic bundles. Then once you have some relics, you need to open them. So you have to unlock enough of the star chart to access the nodes the fissure missions are on, and play those until you get enough Forma from the relics. And, if you end up getting any Forma blueprints, you have to build them as well. Which means more resource farming, and an entire 24 hour wait for every single one you need to build.

Now you can apply a Forma to your weapon to add a polarity. But, you can only do so after getting the weapon to max rank. And every time you add a polarity, it resets it to zero, so you have to level it all over again each time. And since you'll probably need anywhere from 1~5 extra polarities to get a full build, this can take a while.

Now, finally, you can go for the final step to fully maximize your weapon: Getting a Riven mod. First, you need to get a Riven, which again, means unlocking one of the places they can drop from. Or, waiting for DE to hand one out after a Devstream or something.

But again, simply getting one isn't enough. First, it has to be the right weapon category for whatever you want to put it on. Then, once you get that, you have to unveil it by completing the challenge. Then you have to hope its actually for the specific weapon you want it for. This can take many, MANY, tries before you even find one that is useable.

Then, once you finally get one for the specific weapon you want, you have to get stats that are useful. That means farming Kuva. So you either play Kuva Survival, which means playing all the quests and everything to unlock the Kuva Fortress. Or, you grind more Nightwave standing to buy it from the Cred shop. And again, this can take many tries before you get a good roll.

And finally, after all that, you have successfully fully upgrades a single one of the almost a thousand weapons in the game! Now do it again. And again. And do it for all the Warframes. And all the Companions. And your Necramechs. And your Railjack.

And this doesn't even include all the extra steps for special weapons. Kitguns also require extra steps to build, and gild, them. And Kuva weapons require extra Forma to reach their maximum capacity. And if its a primary weapon, you'll also want an Exilus Adaptor, which means fighting Sentients, and yet another Forma.

Sure, you don't need to do every single one of those steps every single time. You will eventually get a nice stockpile of resources, and mods only need to be found and ranked up once to be used on every weapon you have. But its still pretty absurd. Especially when you compare it to any of those other games I mentioned. You know how you get a new gun in Doom, or Dusk? You pick it up in a level, and use it.

But, the absurdity of it all is really the entire point. It serves two purposes. It keeps people playing, by dangling an endless stream of carrots on sticks in front of them that they can never realistically hope to reach. That way, there is always some next goal to work towards, even if its just one tiny step at a time. Or it makes them find ways to skip parts of it. And that's where the monetization comes in. Almost every single one of those steps has a way to use Platinum to skip it, or make it go faster.

Even when there isn't an officially DE sanctioned method to speed things up, players will still find other ways. Like passively turbo leveling on Hydron, or Draco, or whatever the current META spot is.

But that shows the problem with this whole system. The simple fact that there is so much value in skipping it shows that it isn't really fun. Because why would any sane person ever pay to do less of something that was fun?

And that's why it causes burnout. Its the equivalent of having to do chores before your Mom will let you go outside and play. It turns a huge portion of the game from being entertainment, into work. Because really, the entire concept of getting burnt out on a video game, aka, something you play 100% voluntarily because you enjoy it, is absurd as well. It should actually be impossible, unless you actually do suffer from a serious addictive personality disorder or something. And yet here we are, in the middle of a market saturated with games that are designed to cause something that should be impossible.

There is also another side effect from all this, that is particularly relevant to this thread. Because of how much time, effort, and money you have to put into getting every new piece of equipment, it better not disappoint. Its not worth it to go through all this for something that just ends up being inferior to what you already have. This is what created that binary attitude that every new weapon DE adds to the game is only worth keeping if its the new META. Otherwise its just mastery fodder, and not worth putting more than bare minimum effort into.

So this whole overly complicated, and massively drawn out system is a big part of what has caused powercreep to become such a problem, while also turning so many people against ever actually fixing it. Again, its a self defeating system.

You can write an entire universe of pages as long as you don't get one simple thing: Perspectives are different for different people.

At first you tell us how Warframe needs to be  better, that balance is needed or the force will destroy the universe or whatever.
Then I tell you that you have 1.8k hours in the game and that it cannot be that bad.
Then you pull an argument out of your rear end how it is bad when you stick too long with a game, because you are an addict.

What is it now? Is Warframe bad, because it is addicting or is it bad, because you don't want to play any more and it has lost its appeal?

I can tell you the answer, because I know guys like you and your way of argumentation: Depending on my point of view, I can pick either or, whatever helps you most. And pulling discussions away from the original point to new levels, just because you can't win in one level is a bad way of arguing. We have talked about how Warframe has become bad in your opinion. If Warframe or video games in general are addicting is a whole other discussion and has NOTHING going for it in this thread.

Then you bring up "No mans sky" as an argument, let me quote you:
[quote] Same with No Man's Sky, despite also being a "live service" like Warframe. I have played it for a couple hundred hours over the last year or so, and that's perfectly fine. I have done what I wanted to, at my own pace, and can come and go whenever I want. So I have never gotten burnt out on any of it, and still enjoy playing it from time to time. Because it doesn't have all the Necessary Evils that microtransactions always bring, they don't actually need to keep people playing forever to survive. The one time entrance fee (which is regularly half off) is plenty.[/quote]

How is that any different from Warframe? And how does it make a game good or bad if it has micro transactions? Is No Mans Sky suddenly a bad game, because you can buy a cosmetic upgrade of your ship? Is the world bad, because you can buy new and better looking pants? And how do micro transactions keep you from playing Warfame at your own pace?

Please do not bother answering, because I am only 2 paragraphs in and I am already bored. Try to focus on the dicussion at hand and don't drag it whereever you see fit.

But one little newsflash for you: EVERYTHING causes burnout if you do it for too long. Yes, even your praised Doom. If you deny it, you either don't know what you are talking about or you are using some rear end arguments that you think help you in your cause.

[Dunkelheit]

wow, not double, but triple posting

[Dunkelheit]

double posting

[Steel_Rook]

15 hours ago, Teljaxx said:

And ever since then, I have only become more and more aware of just how often game designers are intentionally wasting my time, just to keep me around for as long as possible. And at this point, my tolerance for pointless grinding is extremely low. Which sucks, because it means there are very few new games for me to play anymore. I feel like I'm burnt out on them before I have even started playing. Though, its also why I appreciate the recent wave of retro FPS so much.

If we ever get a Live Service bubble burst, this is going to be the reason. Video game monetisation - hell, video game design - seems to exist in its own insulated zeitgeist. A new fad shows up, it suckers in those of us who don't know better until it pops, then we move on to the next fad. I strongly believe that this will get less and less effective over time, however, as the overall video game audience ages up. See, I remember the 80s and 90s, where the bulk of what constituted "gamers" was made up of either children (like myself at the time) or people from tabletop and other gaming backgrounds. It was new, we were still learning. That was 30-40 years ago. The original adopters grew up and went through the ringer of monetisation and design. We've seen enough to start noticing trends and call exploitative behaviour when I see it. This is one of the things that's making me feel old before my time - the fact that I can casually say something like "Hey, I played this game for 8 years some 10 years ago, so I know how this goes."

Seasoned gamers are getting savvy these days. They've experienced MMO subscriptions, phone game gacha bullS#&$, Live Service appointment mechanics, etc. Moreover, they've experienced enough of them to read the tells. Younger players might lack the same kind of breadth of experience, but they grew up with these tactics. While they may not write essays on the subject, but they're smart enough to not fall for these scams too many times in a row. Though it may not seem like it, gamers in general are wising up to the tricks of monetisation, which is why publishers have been in such a scramble to experiment with new methods. MMOs lasted over a decade. Lootboxes lasted what? 6-7 years? The Battle Pass is already seeing substantial backlash. It's only going to get worse. The whole Live Service model does not have long-term sustainability, I don't think, because gamers bring their burnout from one game to the next. You can only go through so many Live Services before you start spotting the things they do to you.

Obviously, a game with post-launch development support needs post-launch monetisation. I'm not the sort of Luddite who'd reject ANY amount of additional cost because "I paid for the box, damn it!" Far from it. However, I'm of the opinion that monetisation needs to follow player satisfaction, not exist despite it. This approach of monetising players well past the point of burnout is generating a cascading mass of mad blood that's not really going away. It may be effective now, but it's unsustainable - and it's unsustainable because it's not being driven by market forces. The likes of EA, Activision, Ubisoft and so on seem to design their games based on projected earnings, and project those earnings based on past earnings. Entertainment made solely to meet a quota and with very little consideration on its entertainment value isn't going to work long-term, I don't think.

But now I'm really going off-topic here. Long story short - anti-consumer design has a shelf life.

[Soy77]

4 hours ago, Corvid said:

Maybe tone down the pretentiousness? Treating other posters as if they are idiots who need basic things explained to them (after they have already stated that they know what you're talking about) is an expedient way to end up on the ignore list.

So does calling people straight up wrong, just because you believe on one part of the truth. It's no secret that when you try to correct people on the internet, they will show resistance.

As well as threatening and attacking them as an individual, as opposed to keeping it within civil boundaries of just attacking their arguments.

I tried to wrote those replies as inoffensive as i can. Even tried to put myself on the same boat as you are. If you're hoping for "oh my god sir you are so smart I was stupid and wrong, thank you" and no resistance everytime you correct people, you're in for a ride. Wonder why you're so familiar with the ignore feature....

Feel free to do what you need to do. I'll be disappointed if i have to ignore a forum veteran and his friends, but I'm definitely not interested on conversing with certain breed of people that this forum seems to never lacks. Would be a shame, but probably for the best.

cheers

[Corvid]

51 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

So does calling people straight up wrong, just because you believe on one part of the truth.

The "truth" is that the definition I gave is accurate, and that the way you were using the term is a backronym and thus shouldn't be treated as if it is the original meaning.

52 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

It's no secret that when you try to correct people on the internet, they will show resistance.

Usually they don't try to insult my intelligence, even if they disagree.

54 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

As well as threatening and attacking them as an individual, as opposed to keeping it within civil boundaries of just attacking their arguments.

Kind sir, please point out where exactly I threatened you. Saying that your attitude will cause people to not want to bother with you isn't a threat, it's a statement of fact.

56 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

I tried to wrote those replies as inoffensive as i can.

I find that highly dubious. Even if there were no insults directed toward me specifically, your responses have been dripping with contempt.

58 minutes ago, Soy77 said:

Even tried to put myself on the same boat as you are. If you're hoping for "oh my god sir you are so smart I was stupid and wrong, thank you" and no resistance everytime you correct people, you're in for a ride.

 

1 hour ago, Soy77 said:

but I'm definitely not interested on conversing with certain breed of people that this forum seems to never lacks.

And there's that attitude again.

 

[Paradoxity]

21 hours ago, PublikDomain said:

What else can they do? They can't do skill-based content, because skill is unnecessary when you can one-shot everything. They can't do challenge-based content, because it's impossible to define what challenge should mean when players are so inconsistent. All that's left is making time-based content: if everything is Mobile Defense and runs on a timer it doesn't matter how overpowered or inconsistent a player is. Warframe is boring and grindy because DE's hands are tied: they're unable or unwilling to actively balance the game as a whole, and as a result the game has gotten away from them and they can't rely on anything but grind. But if DE took charge and toned down player power and made it more consistent then content based on skill or overcoming a challenge could actually be created and we could have content gated behind things other than the same tedious grind.

Well, yeah, that's kinda what I meant, though. Everything- even content islands where we start out fresh, with none of our old armory really factoring in- turns into the same wildly OP power trip the core gameplay is. Everything. To the point, now, where 'challenge' - if it can even be called that- involves whatever we're facing having to either have absurd invulnerability phases or straight up immunity to most of what we can do. 

Basically, DE's hands are tied, yes, but they're the ones that tied them. 

[PublikDomain]

4 hours ago, Paradoxity said:

Basically, DE's hands are tied, yes, but they're the ones that tied them. 

Yep, and they can start to untie them whenever they want. Or more, if they want. The way Scott, etc. react towards this stuff on streams makes it seem like they'd like to change, but either don't know how or other factors are preventing them from doing so. So they're stuck with their reactive, knee-jerk approach to balance where they can only move if it's absolutely necessary. It's a mess.

Edit: Hah, the new Volatile Railjack mode is basically another Mobile Defense. How poetic.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

8 hours ago, _R_o_g_u_e_ said:

I personally think that DE should take a look into how Riot balances league of legends. 
They release a patch every 2-3 weeks that addresses the current state of the game, anything that’s under performing is brought up, and over performing down.

But, and most importantly, they tend to always give compensation with a nerf, unless something is horrendously over performing.

Sure, league of legends only has 150 champions, there are a lot more weapons in warframe compared to champions in league. But the champions are significantly more complicated. While Riot’s balance might not always be perfect, just about every champion in the game hovers around a 50% win rate.

If you transferred warframes balance into league, 80% of the champions would have a 10% win rate, and the remaining 20% would be at 90%.
 

The game needs a far more hands on approach, riven disposition changes every 3 months is not enough. 
 

My two cents.

Out of curiosity, do players level up their characters in League of Legends? If so, does leveling up require building items that allow for leveling up? In Warframe, we use forma to level things up, forma that we end up making.

[(PSN)Hopper_Orouk]

what is nerf? if not love persevering?

[xxswatelitexx]

12 hours ago, ebrl said:

The Convectrix is an extremely serious contender for very best weapon in the game right now.

My point still stands, I have yet to see convectrix used in 4 years that includes uptill today. 

[_R_o_g_u_e_]

4 hours ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

Out of curiosity, do players level up their characters in League of Legends? If so, does leveling up require building items that allow for leveling up? In Warframe, we use forma to level things up, forma that we end up making.

In league you level up per game yes, your champion in a 20-40 minute game will scale from level 1-18.

Their 4 abilities will level up with them, and they can buy 6 items to augment their kits and abilities.

But your account level outside of game doesn’t actually do anything to make you more powerful. A level 5000 player doesn’t have any advantage over a level 10 player besides experience :)

[ebrl]

46 minutes ago, xxswatelitexx said:

My point still stands, I have yet to see convectrix used in 4 years that includes uptill today. 

Your point was that the Convectrix was an example of an "undertuned thing" that "desperately needs help".

The only thing that needs help is that substantial part of the playerbase who is blindly following a handful of mediocre content creators that are stuck four years in the past at best, and outright incompetent at worst.

[(PSN)Yggranya]

1 hour ago, ebrl said:

Your point was that the Convectrix was an example of an "undertuned thing" that "desperately needs help".

The only thing that needs help is that substantial part of the playerbase who is blindly following a handful of mediocre content creators that are stuck four years in the past at best, and outright incompetent at worst.

If people who follow these mooks could think for themselves, streamers wouldn't exist.

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

1 minute ago, (PSN)Yggranya said:

If people who follow these mooks could think for themselves, streamers wouldn't exist.

If DE were able to market their game and be able to teach players how to play their game then they wouldn't need streamers. But DE can't so they do. Oh well.

[GEN-Son_17]

54 minutes ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

If DE were able to market their game and be able to teach players how to play their game then they wouldn't need streamers. But DE can't so they do. Oh well.

I did very well learning and experiencing this game without streamers. The game is nowhere near as "daunting" to learn as it was 5 years ago. Laziness plays a huge role too. So, what were you not able to understand that I was fine with?

[(PSN)DoctorWho_90250]

9 minutes ago, GEN-Son_17 said:

I did very well learning and experiencing this game without streamers. The game is nowhere near as "daunting" to learn as it was 5 years ago. Laziness plays a huge role too. So, what were you not able to understand that I was fine with?

It's not laziness. Warframe is designed in such a manner that players need players to teach them how to play. Want to learn something? Go to the wiki, go to Youtube etc. etc. If DE would add stuff to the maingame then it would be a step in the right direction. Except they don't and can't. It's why on discord seasoned players link other players to the wiki, or share vids of Youtubers going over builds. If DE had bothered to do stuff in house, and handle marketing themselves then they wouldn't need streamers. You call players lazy. I call DE lazy. Would this issue have happened if DE had considered the ramifications of having outsourced their marketing and tutorials to Youtubers and other third party sources? Perhaps not. Personally, I think any company or business that outsources their marketing to be handled by third parties are lazy and incompetent.

[Pizzarugi]

On 2021-03-14 at 5:15 AM, Dhrekr said:

You say that nerfing is a poor logical choice, but the alternative that you suggest is honestly ghastly, so I don't know.

Path of Exile's a perfect example of what happens when powercreep is allowed to run rampant. A game that is praised for its build diversity, reduced to only running meta builds if you want to avoid getting 1shot under the cluster#*!% of particle effects you and the monsters spew, getting 1shot by mobs after they die, or getting 1shot by something that shot you outside of your field of view.

We're already seeing DE implementing countermeasures to powercreep in the form of enemies that nullify your powers in one way or another, or outright mitigate it through their baked in mechanics like Nox only able to take serious damage from the head or new Sentient enemies with diminishing returns. This is only going to get worse if we just keep buffing everything rather than nerfing. How much you wanna bet that Nullifiers, Nox, Comba/Scrambus, Energy Leech Eximus, etc wouldn't exist if players couldn't regenerate energy so easily that spamming Saryn's Miasma or Mesa's Peacemakers is a perfectly viable way to play the game while ignoring everything else?

[GEN-Son_17]

12 hours ago, (PSN)DoctorWho_90250 said:

It's not laziness. Warframe is designed in such a manner that players need players to teach them how to play. Want to learn something? Go to the wiki, go to Youtube etc. etc. If DE would add stuff to the maingame then it would be a step in the right direction. Except they don't and can't. It's why on discord seasoned players link other players to the wiki, or share vids of Youtubers going over builds. If DE had bothered to do stuff in house, and handle marketing themselves then they wouldn't need streamers. You call players lazy. I call DE lazy. Would this issue have happened if DE had considered the ramifications of having outsourced their marketing and tutorials to Youtubers and other third party sources? Perhaps not. Personally, I think any company or business that outsources their marketing to be handled by third parties are lazy and incompetent.

The game is 8 years old with constant updates. Lazy is not the term I'd use for the devs. That said, the game tells you how to move, shoot, hide, mod, scan, scan for enemy weaknesses and strengths, equip, travel, what each mission type is, where to trade, how to trade, and on and on and on.

All instructions are summarized in the codex and detailed in the wiki...as it should be. No way in hell should DE have to over explain to the point of spoiling and hand holding. Part of the magic of Warframe lies in discovering and experimenting. The wiki simply explains everything away. This, I knew since playing back in late 2015 and the game has improved since then. So, again, what did you miss that I didn't?

[SneakyErvin]

On 2021-03-18 at 1:47 PM, Soy77 said:

As it evolved, what was once should be a mistake, now has evolved to be a truth.

Meta, the actual word hasnt evolved. There just happened to be an acronym that popped up that exsists of the same four letters. Meta, as in the acronym cannot be used to describe metagaming for instance, since metagaming isnt about a tactical approach that is most efficient, it is about breaking the 4th wall by applying knowledge of the real world to the actions of your character i.e utilizing your knowledge that it is a game. Like say, you play an rpg set in the US during the 60s and you head to the place where JFK was shot in order to stop it, without your character ever actually having the slightest idea about what is going to happen. Or if you play an RPG with Terminators in it, and you know exactly how to kill them since you've seen the movies, but your character wouldnt possibly know that.

Just as meta, the actual word, cannot really be applied to the hierarchy of weapons and builds.

edit: And then there is MetaGMing aswell, where a GM applies his real world knowledge i.e the stats and skills of a players character, in order to set up impossible tasks for the player, even if the player does everything correctly.

[Raso719]

All Metas are bad. Period. If 90% of a game's available content is relegated as being mostly useless to where you have "right" and "wrong" equipment options then something needs to change. 

Period.

Especially if real world money is involved in the acquisition of said equipment.