So everything I’m about to over explain all boils down to I would like to suggest incorporating player hideouts as a crafting hub.
So from my limited experience of hearing comments or reading posts from devs, hideouts are not a thing yet as there is not a strong enough reason to prioritize them. And they don’t want to put it in just for the sole purpose to make players spend money. Which if I understand it a completely fair and valid mindset to have.
That being said once we get the home base I’d be surprised is players were against visual only real money hideout items.
So now I’ll explain the crafting hub idea. I would like to incorporate the main features in this idea. The general idea does not need to have all or any of them specifically this is just my mind baby for this idea.
- unique(as in special not rarity) craftable mechanisms
- achievements and rewarding features from achieving them
- expansion of usefulness of opinion based not so useful items
To start off the crafting mechanisms, I have a bunch in my mind but I’ll try and restrain myself. Before I explain my take if you want a relatable game element think the pal dissembler in pal world. Where u can breakdown your creatures into crafting items. With a bit of a pull from satisfactory and its automation and production elements.
So picture a device that you put an item in and consume it to create materials. The items in this case are uniques and the materials are special crafting shards. Kind of taking the shattering ruin and branching off of it. So if your like me you have used a unique just because of one specific affix on it and the rest of the stats are whatever or just a plus. Picture shattering a unique and getting shards from it, but I don’t want to take away from the original ruins restrictions. So I came up with an idea that expands on an existing system and evolves it into a stronger version but with RNG. Now you may ask where is the rng, and my answer is just like slamming an item or shattering an exalt you’re not guaranteed to get what you want. And I know some players may hate the RNG elements but I believe it adds a risk which will add a weight of should I break this item down or keep it and use it. Additionally I believe this break down should take time to do and depending on the rarity of the item the time to deconstruct the item may be long or instant.
So let’s do an example item break down example. I have chosen mantle of the pale ox body armour for this. The process would be put mantle in deconstruct or and ask would you like to deconstruct you press yes or no. Press yes’s the item disappears and closes the menu and the dissembler now has a timer over it. After the timer counts down to zero you will be able to click on it. And the dissembler will pump out shards kind of like the shard chest or shrine. Now the pale ox has five affixes on it some common like strength and increased movement speed (I know that not common for body but it would be a general movement shard) and the rarer affix’s of +(x) to strength minion skills or damage reflected to minion. I believe the odds of the shards should be weighted and the chance of getting “special or rarer” shards show be lower then common ones like strength. Let’s say strength has a weight of 75 to be dissembled and +(x) minion skills should be 7. With the point being the lower the weight the lower the odds of getting it. This part can be related to the palworld pal dissembler.
Now you may say hey wait you mentioned satisfactory how does this work into this mechanism. And don’t worry I didn’t forget you fellow factory automation lovers. Through achievements you can unlock special additional features. Kill a timeline boss for the first time gain additional dissemblers kill abberoth gain a splitter that lets you get a chance for the item to spit out two types of shards, kill uber abberoth and you get a hopper that connects to a special stash tab that auto feeds the dissembler when it finishes. And (summon the FF fan fair music) we now have a crafting mat factory. Btw if anything I say is already in another ARPG I didn’t know as I stopped playing other ones.
So I just mentioned achievements, so let’s transition to that. I already provided examples of some achievements with rewards and I believe that’s self explanatory. My reason for the achievements is giving the player a reason to actual pursue the different elements and features the devs have spent time on. I believe it’s important to continue to expand on the use of existing content and grow the content as to not become out classed by newer features, which I believe further justifies the previous and future devs work. Plus starting from step two typically is better then starting at zero again I say typically.
I’ll wrap this up quick for point three as this is becoming a dry novel. The comment to make usefulness of opinion based not so useful items. Quick and dirty some uniques have one maybe two useful mods but are out classed by other items, but for some you wish u could combine the two items. So tadah uni shards of which you can relate to set shards.
I know I kind of ended this abruptly but this was a long post and I’m starting to forget what I wrote so that’s a good sign to stop.
I’ll leave you with this you can love all my ideas you can hate my ideas you can pigeon pick parts you like. For example feel free to say you love the idea of a hideout but the rest of the ideas are not for you. Negative feedback if done properly can be just as useful as positive feedback.