Itemization Discussion

[Axcell 4]

Moving this to its own thread, so its not in the old/outdated one.

 

On 4/9/2019 at 1:14 PM, Tragedy said:

I think the problem with item binding is that once you're done with an item it's completely worthless. Every time you get a small upgrade the only thing you can do with your old item is throw it in the trash. It just doesn't feel good, and binding items doesn't really solve anything in the long run. Equipping an item only for it to be bound to your character is throwing away money and allowing players less capital to make large trades in the future - this goes against everything item binding is trying to solve: improving the longevity of the economy.

But again, we go back to: none of us know enough about your itemization system, or even how currency/items are obtained to offer actual criticism.

I'm unsure whether I've ever explained the plan for itemization system, so ill go ahead and do that. So there are 6 levels of rarity Common, Standard, Specialized, Prime, Prototype, Eternal.

 

Common, Standard and Specialized items will be in the loot tables of pretty much all enemies enemies.

Prime items will be obtainable at a very low chance from enemies and mainly from Daily/Weekly quests and instanced content.

Prototype gear will be obtainable by doing top-tier hard-mode weekly quests and/or instanced content (Dungeons, Raids, etc). Technically the top tier gear.

Eternal items will be in very very low numbers in the game, i haven't exactly decided how and what but there won't be many of those.

 

The reason behind binding something after a period of time is to retain the exclusivity and relatively moderate numbers of some items, at least Prototypes and Eternal and not have them flood the marketplace and degrade their value over time. So you can actually choose whether to keep the item for yourself or sell it for a hefty amount of credits.

 

On 4/9/2019 at 1:14 PM, Tragedy said:

If low level gear is so useless that nobody bothers trading it, why even have it? Usually the reason nobody trades low level equipment is because the economy is dead, not because low level players don't want to buy better gear to* ease the grind.  

However, as stated above - we simply do not know enough about the game to make these types of decisions currently.

I was thinking of adding vendors with leveling gear (possibly Standard) available every 10 levels essentially (10, 20, 30, 40, 50) so that's why i was thinking about blocking those from the marketplace. But, i could also turn that down to only levels 15 / 30 / 50 and allow them on the marketplace.

 

On 4/9/2019 at 4:25 PM, Dax said:

If you make it so that the binding is an optional process that you can only do to the highest tier gear, perhaps even costing currency or a small amount of resources. This way, you can try out and use the item as much as you like, without accidentally causing it to bind to you, but you also wont have the benefits associated with the binding. That would remove the requirement for you (and the user) to track arbitrary conditions and usage time, while giving a benefit in return to offset the inability to trade that item any longer.

If you think about what binding means, aside from the non-trading aspect, it means making the thing yours. Making it work better for you specifically. It would need to be meaningful enough that it's desirable at the endgame, but not so much that it's absolutely required.

Benefits could be as simple as a flat % buff to stats, or if you have durability, maybe it degrades slower. But whatever practical benefits binding gear provides, I think that requiring the gear to be bound before allowing cosmetic customization options like skins/paint-jobs seems like a good fit. That before customizing something to you, it's required to be bound to you.

Hmm, that's a very interesting point. Giving a % of buff when bound would make it quite OP, but actually not allowing it to have mods, have less durability and skins is a very interesting concept and i will be definitely consider this approach.

[Dax 1]

Pitch:

Eternal items are inhabited by an AI that optimizes the item and are automatically bound when acquired. There can only be one of each Eternal item at a time. They have infinite durability, as the AI causes the item to self-repair, but instead require to be continually used.

For example:

• Weapons might require you to kill, each kill adding points to a counter relative to the difficulty of the kill.
• Jets might require travel, and the distance covered adds points to the counter.
• Armour might require you to take damage and recover, adding points to the counter.

Each day you own an Eternal item, it's gathered energy counter ticks down by a certain amount. The longer you own it, the larger the daily energy upkeep rises. Eventually it will be impossible for the player to maintain and the AI will leave the item, reducing it to a pretty decent, but otherwise normal Prototype tier item. Once this happens, the item re-enters the loot pool.

Each Eternal AI should have its own personality and voice lines for extra specialness.

 

I would say that making the fixed-stat vendor-bought and quest reward items untradable is a good thing. You're right they'd just clog up the market with nobody buying them as everybody would have one.

[Axcell 4]

It's another interesting concept, which could be pretty easily implemented, although it might end up feeling very grindy to sustain even just one item like that. Also have to consider ways to push the Prototype item to Eternal status and also what happens after its energy depletes (ie. should you be able to power it up again? -- because if not, it's pretty pointless). This system does give you a sense of accomplishment once you get your item to Eternal status but also when you finally do it you begin a grindfest journey to sustain it which can be pretty unfun.

[Dax 1]

Hmmm, yeah. Perhaps just a fixed requirement that could be accomplished with perhaps 30 mins of play and set a cap on the amount of energy it can hold at a time, such as 3 day's worth. The whole AI leaving the item thing is so that the Eternal Item goes back into the loot pool for other people to find and use when the current owner goes inactive. It might be better if Eternal items only dropped through loot, assuming there is only 1 of each type in the game, rather than be upgraded from Prototype items.

However, you could separate it out and have an AI Module drop and be attached to a compatible, bound Prototype item. E.G. the Shogun AI Module could only be attached to a max-level Prototype Shotgun.

[Axcell 4]

Ah, your concept is based around the fact that there is only one item of that type in general in the game and it just pops here and there around the game. In that case it makes sense but i dont think i will be implementing that. They will be in the hard-mode raid drop pool.

I want Eternal items to feel separate from normal loot and not feel like just an upgrade or just a higher stat version of some normal gun, they need to be very rare and hard to get but I want players to keep every item they earn, especially something that will require a lot of effort to acquire.

Finally getting an Eternal and then having it taken away from you after a short period of time is some ragequitting material (at least for me) -- having to play on a daily basis just to keep an item that i worked hard for (and having it taken away later on anyways) would be quite meh.