Enable Caphras force-enhancement?

I am sure that many players regarded the news that Caphras stones can now be obtained via exchange of artisan's memories with enthusiasm as it promised to save months of tedious grinding, be it lifeskilling or mob bashing. However, those who happily rushed to invest their accumulated pearls into caphras bump these days against the fact that trying to force-enhance a TRI-TET item when it's 100% level 20 of caphras enhancement fails with a message "Item cannot be enhanced", be it a boss weapon or standard gear. After a bit of research I found this thread, to my greatest surprize:

http://forum.gameznetwork.com/threads/force-enhanced-with-caphras-stones-doesnt-work.225967/

where Kolka says "it's not a bug, it's a feature".
Trying as I could, I cannot comprehend it. Why build a wall where there's none on retail? Why deliberately deprive newer players of an important means to progress? Why, for Ellion's sake, give now a possibility to obtain caphras for pearls at all, if the very essence of this system - safe upgrade - remains disabled? Let's guess who would be the only ones who benefit from this... aren't these the older players that already have PEN gear where caphras stones are only good for? Who have way more of spare pearls to invest and make themselves even more powerful now, making the gap even wider? Recently, there has been much talk on this forum that PvP is dead on Gamezbd. Disabling safe caphras enhancement is not going to improve the situation, it's doing quite the opposite as newer players could have geared faster to provide a worthier challenge and liven things up a bit. Instead, they are artificially forced to stick to TRI gear for a long time, playing the goddamn RNG enhancing game where even the retail provides another option! Yes, silver is earned here much faster than on retail, but getting a full PEN set from AH still does not seem a feasible task at all. And another question - why isn't this fact mentioned anywhere? It should be at least written in big letters in the server description - "folks, you can get tons of caphras stones here, but it's only PEN gear where you should stick them, and no, we won't help you get it, you're worse off with enhancement options here than on retail". It's one of the most important current game mechanics that allows people that are sick and tired of RNG risks to play slow but safe. The primary goal of the whole caphras system is to provide a secure way of going up from TRI, not just giving an extra boost to gear that's already PEN. I had it more than enough making my way to full-TRI even with simple greenhorn gear like Grunil, let alone boss pieces. Now I am... not a little bit discouraged, to say the least. So, a poll is offered, since I suspect this issue concerns many. Maybe the devs will listen?

 

"Private server should not be worse than retail".
So on retail you can collect up to 4800 pearls per day which means 100 artisans which means 1000 caphras just for free? What does it mean? I guess you dont.
Ofcourse it means upgrading eq just for doing nothing. If money, enchant materials here isnt easy enough to get, you also want free 100% chance enchants just for doing nothin. Disabling caphras enchantment was best decision kolka could possibly do.

I also dont like certain decisions that was made here. But with this condidiont, unlkocking caphras enchantment would totaly destroy this server.
"Why should i farm anything, when i can upgrade all my shit just for doing nothing"

 

4800 is a theoretical maximum. Not everyone can allow to have their PC turned on 24/7, although I admit to run the game for a day or two in a row occasionally for fishing quests. The average real numbers are much less.
I may be wrong, but the very idea of a private server is to have EVERYTHING that retail has to offer PLUS something more, is it not? Giving something extra while at the same time taking away something else is controversial at best.

In what is this decision the best, could you elaborate?

The devs are free to do whatever they like and I do not contest it. But this feature of disabling core caphras mechanics creates an essential difference from retail and shall be brought explicitly to everyone's attention from the very start, that's all. Now I'm stuck with a TET weapon at caphra lvl 20 not exactly knowing what to do with it as the only reason I did it was safe enhancement. Extracting stones costs silver and cuts 15% of the stones inserted. Such things should be known and not discovered all of a sudden.

Well, it was the devs idea to offer caphras for pearls, was it not? But what good does it do for an average casual player that does not have a single piece of PEN gear? In this form the system resembles the proverbial carrot hung before a donkey. I think this update is completely superfluous as it creates obvious disparities and disadvantages leading to even more imbalance - PEN players become more powerful, others are left where they are. Traditional Caphras farming (mobs - gathering - creating from ancient spirit's dust) is quicker here but still tedious enough to be left as the only source (given that force-upgrade is enabled as it should!).

Well, you said it "Caphras for pearls" does exactly this - get something for doing nothing, rendering active play even more unnecessary as it is, as you'll never get the same amount of caphras from gathering within the same time. The situation is that the whole server already seems to be AFK horse training than doing anything else while the auction house looks like a barren desert. People hoard silver but have nothing to spend it on. Oh, wait, there's a zillion of caphras stones there now
So my say is - cancel getting caphras for pearls and enable force-enhancement for non-boss gear. It would give both a good way to progress, an incentive for more active play, and the aim for the future.

 

Well, nobody seems to care. Alright. But still I would like to ask Kolka and everyone else who believes that easy enchantment is an evil that would destroy this server and it will die and shall never be allowed. What's so bad in becoming full-PEN early in the game? Is fiddling with failstacks, sharps and hards ALL that this game is about, then? Grind for the sake of grind, failed enhancement as a kind of perverted entertainment that is supposed to keep you engaged and drawn to the game? Full-PEN is not an ultimate end in itself where you reach the "kingdom of heaven" and leave the game to fly into another world. It's the point where real game just begins to keep you for years if you do it right. It's only a tool that allows to concentrate on things that are really interesting and not boring as hell. And speaking about Caphras, that's only about halfway to PEN. EVEN with the easy "caphras for pearls + unlimited force-upgrade" option it's going to take MONTHS to fully stuff 7 pieces of gear (armor + 3 weapons) with Caphras from TRI to PEN, given that you need tens of thousands of them. And you still have as many accessories where Caphras don't work which is enough to satisfy any grind and RNG aficionado many times over. If someone would read it, then tell me where I'm wrong.

 

I too would agree that disabling the Caphras-Enhancement in the current time was a bad decision.
New players don't really profit from the free Caphras, as, at least on EU, there are ~180k of them sitting on the market. Selling them is not really a viable option, so no profit for the newbies, meaning no chance for them to push their gear up easily.
The market's mostly dry as a desert, so it remains up to the newbies to farm whatever they need, which is not wrong at all, yet the Caphras-Enhancing would make the experience a ton less bothersome.
Perhaps it'd lead to the market being a little more filled again, but who knows.
And, as Kobasun said, PEN Weps/Armor is, if anything, the start of the journey. Accessories are the real pain, and Caphras are most certainly not the medicine for that.

 

As a veteran player and a supporter of Gamez for many many years now, I have to disagree with allowing caphras enhancments. It's actually pretty easy to pen gear. It takes some grinding, some failstacking, and cronstones. But non of these are out of the question. The rates for the server are extremely high. If you've played retail for at least a year, you'll easily see that what took you a year to do on retail you can do in a couple of days on Gamez. I would however suggest allowing a partial caphras enhancement for accessories though. Those are incredibly hit or miss, a ton of people will blow up 100+ gold accessories in less than 30mins starting at 35fs and ending with (do the math). Granted they now have several very high Advice of Valks, but it doesn't change the fact that they just blew all their hard work and now have to grind for another 2 weeks.

 

Try to start playing BD(Gamez) from scratch...been struggling to get anything,like armor. Everytime I go World Boss,BANG ganked... again and again...
Waste of time to go there.
Even with premium I cant start playing and say: it's worth playing here,very good...bla bla.

After so many times I just want to give up from this project.

 

How do you exchange Artisans memory for caphera stones??