devtrackers.gg
Here is a visualization of the current progression curve and what the issue is, and how we can address the issue for maximum player retention of the more dedicated part of the player base, who conceptually are more likely to spend money on MTX due to emotional attachment/time investment.
When we are in the late-game gear min-maxing stage of gameplay, LP uniques are almost always involved and when you get a LP unique for your exact build it first gives you hope that you could get upgrades but if it fails to land, not only does it psychologically invalidates the time you spend playing from the last time you had an upgrade to the time when you get the LP item to drop, also it also consumes a usually high power-level exalted item while we are at it as well, and this is exactly where the frustration comes in, because it's layers and layers of RNG(from dropping both the LP unique and the fodder base and crafting of said fodder base) gated by a final layer of RNG that gives you negative progression(consumed items in a case of a fail)
Now we can also establish that the current monolith already gives a lowish reward for climbing corruption (according to Mike), in addition to the difficulty of T4 dungeon being relatively low(usually achievable when a build is capable of doing 3-400c), the pay off you get from gear progression at late min-max stage(which results in you either being able to farm a given corruption more efferently or enable you to farm at a higher corruption) is very low. As a result, the upgrade we get from gear progression is already mostly for personal fulfillment rather than tangible rewards.
We have now a full picture of the cache system, a slam gives you seemingly powerful upgrades but is negated by low rewards given by the game itself, which means low positive outcomes. On the other hand, we have in the case of a fail, a negative progression consuming 2 good items at the same time, resulting in a high negative outcome. This is exactly why it feels unrewarding grinding a long time.
Now this all comes back to my proposed solution to the problem, which is to introduce an ultra-rare crafting mat that allows you to revert a legendary item to unslammed base unique, which acts like a consolation prize that gives players desperately needed comfort and hope in frustration of a failed attempt. We also do not introduce more determinism in the system, which would make it optically broken. The scarcity of the crafting mat can be engineered to make sure that it does not globally give easier access to power level at all stages of progression, aka it can have a capped drop rate in consideration of added rarity and it can be gated behind a high tier dungeon boss, a certain corruption threshold, a certain arena wave number, or even a random encounter in high corruption monolith, etc, which gives players a reason to push their build aka playing the game in the first place.
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