Controversial Idea: Affix Compression

Feedback and Suggestions
1

:100: here are currently many affixes, most of them are either useless, or redundant. What we need is to combine all these affixes into proper combinations that work well, and open up build variety,. All affixes are ranked from common to legendary. via Rune System

Crafting Affixes

Any gear that drops, will allow you to extract affixes as right now. You will then take these affixes and combine them at a specific ratio, to get a ā€œruneā€. Runes are what you socket into items. An Item can have 4 runes.

The runes are made INDIVIDUALLY. If you want a Mythical Rune of Hybrid Health, you would need to farm all those affixes. Once a rune hits a higher lvl, it requires you to add the affixes you want to complete the craft [upgrade]. The #ofshards required must match the level it would take. For a Tier 2, you would need to insert 2 shards.

Common Rune: tier 1, or tier 2 exp
Uncommon Rune: Tier 2 or Tier 3 Exp
Rare Rune: Tier 3 or Tier 4 Exp
Epic Rune: Tier 4 or Tier 5 Exp
Legendary Rune: Tier 5 or Tier 6 exp
Mythic Rune: Tier 6 or Tier 7 Exp

Common runes: 4 Affixes:1
Allow: 0, 0, 0, 0, 0 ,0 runes

Uncommon: Require 4 [CR]: 1
Allow: 1 Common Rune to be added in addition

Rare: Require 4 [UCR]:1
Allow: 2 CR, 1, UC, to be added in addition

Epic: Requires 4 RC:1
Allow: 3 CR, 2 UC to be added in addition

Legendary: Requires 8 Epic:1
Allow 4 CR, 2 UC, or 1 ER in addition

Mythic: Requires 8 Epic:1
Allows: 5 CR, 3 UC, 2ER, or 1LR in addition

Eg: A Mythic Item has: 4 tier 7 [exp] or 4 tier 6 Affixes, and up 4 tier 5s to 20 tier 1 affixes

Which means you can combine stats from various affixes into a single item.

Affixes Reworked

To begin with: There are to many affixes, even with the above system. Hence I will merge some as an example, uses these as basis when you consider the above runic system.

Dots:

  • Hybrid Elements, are combined with %elemental dmg, base are not combined [fire, cold, lightning]. The new affix: EG: %elemental dmg is increased and you and minions get 8% with lightning attacks.

Some Examples

  • %elementaldamage over time is leached, and %you leach health when transformed.

  • %damageovertime is leached, and you leach %dmgdealt while transformed.

  • %ofdotsismitigated [exp], %nonephysicaldamagetaken is reduced

  • All minions do more damageovertime, increase minion damage variations

Dodge

*%dodgerate, +dodge, +stun avoidance merged

Block

  • Heal of Block, %chance to block, %block effectiveness merged

*+blockmitigation, +endurance, %endurance is merged

  • %relaiate on block, +retaliatedmg, +stunavoidance merged
    *%hastegained on block, Haste Duration Extended, %aoeformalee is increased

Physical attacks

  • +%physical, +Physical with X element [unique affix for each variations as above],
  • Elementaldmg + Elementaldmgdonewithphysicalhits + physical critical
  • %physhdmgisleached + %regeneration +%lichonhit
  • Physical%shredarmor, %sizeofaoehits, +endurance
  • Attackspeed, +%attackspeed, + Stun avoidance

Spell Damage

  • +spellX, +%spelldamage, +%Spellpen
    *%mana regan, manapersecond, +mana merged
  • Experiemental mana pots, +pots, +healthrecovered by pots merged
  • Spellcritical, +spellcritical, +hasteduration

+ To Minions

Combine these in a way that actually makes sense

eg: +4 to [insert minion], +%dmg to minions + %minionhealth, +hybrid minion health
* Minionretaliation, +retaliation, +%retaliation
*minionsleach%, Minions Heal on Hit, %minionstunavoidance

To Skills
Combine these in a way that players use them: Egs:

*+4 to golems, + 2 to skeleton mage, +Xexperimentalminionsontraversal

  • +4 to Smite, +2 to void cleave, +Xtorange
  • +4 to Manifest Armor, +2 to fire, +2to Forge Strike
    *+4 to Acid Flask, +2 to Multishot, +%attackspeedwithabow
  • +4 to cathonic fissure, +2 to Infernalshade, +dotduration

Thanks for reading my book.

2

While I kinda like the idea of combining affixes, I think being able to deterministicly get T6/7 affixes would be too much, combining the affixes is interesting but also probably a fair bit of power creep. I have no idea what you mean by ā€œtier X expā€.

Theyā€™d have to either rebalance the values of all affixes down significantly to account for the expectation that people would be doing this, or massively increasing the hp/etc of mobs

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3

Iā€™m curious why this is the thing that would make them have to (finally)balance things.

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4

If they are rethinking, what is balance, what corruption is normal, what lp/ affix level, we may as well make them consider this too. If doing a clean up, dont leave the dirtiest room untouched

5

That presupposes that they think the current balance is ok, which is about as tin-foil-hattery as the assertion that the devs are deliberately nerfing RNG so that they can profit from RMT or because Tencent told them to.

6

So the idea is to make an effectively whole new system, with mechanics and interface written from scratch, that would probably be even more broken that what we have now.

And all of this to solve:

Maybe instead they just buff / rework useless affixes? A lot less work, less risk to break things, same effect.
Also a side effect of merging affixes would be simplification of the game, and I donā€™t think that it needs to be more simple, it is just fine right now in terms of item complexity.

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7

No, it just means that everything they touch means balance has to be addressed, so thereā€™s no harm in looking at something like this. The fact that ā€˜balanceā€™ would have to be considered, should be not a deterrent to any suggestion(s).

OH NOES! THEY MIGHT HAS TO BALANCE THINGS!!! OH TEH HUMANATEEEEE!!!

The fact you bring up tin-foil hats is about as tin-foil-hattery as a tin-foil hat on the Tin Man, while heā€™s eating a Hersheyā€™s Kiss, wrapped in tin-foil.

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8

See, I thought your post was a sarcastic, ā€œoh, so this is the straw that will finally make them care about balance?ā€, and I laughed.

I think Llama thought the same thing I did, but didnā€™t find it (as) funny, and responded with, ā€œIā€™m sure they know they have balance issuesā€, and then some snark about tinfoil.

And onto the point; they absolutely are going to need to do one of these; affix compression, more heavily curate affix lists based upon item type, start dropping more loot so that there is a non-vanishing chance of getting an exalted item of the type you want (read: implicits you want, dropping with the affixes you want).

I think the simplest thing for them to do is have items have dynamic lists that increase the chances of having affixes that match the implicits. E.g. the profane wand has increased chance to roll affixes that have necrotic or cursed. Possibly link ā€˜cursedā€™ to ā€˜damage over timeā€™.

9

Honestly, it was a bit of both. That balance really hasnā€™t been taken that seriously. And, since thatā€™s the case, itā€™s a perfect time to address things like this, so when balance does finally become a focal point, as many of these kinds of things will already be in the mix, and taken into consideration. Instead of getting balance dialed-in (or at least quite a bit more than it currently is), and then completely upend the entire thing with something as all-encompassing as affix-compression.

10

Odds are good Iā€™m autistic (my eldest certainly is & heā€™s really not fallen far from the tree) and, to my eternal British shame, failed to spot the sarcasm. I will go drink some tea to un-discombobulate myself.

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11

Lib-er-tea!

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12

lol, no! you think?

13

I am not sure if it was tested/ considered or not, as the people on the forums have aluded to a [closed testing? Inside testing] that the devs at one point did for content creators etc to find bugs and balance, but supposedly the result was people hoarding bugs for their own benefit, or just bad testing in general which lead to them ignoring it?

The other option was that the devs lack a proper way to communicate with themselves as i dont think theu have A HQ like other studios. The result was probably a sortment of different devs throwing stuff together into a soup and then surprise surprise each map looks like its from a different game, why the classes have 0 cohesion. They where like, ok bruh. So we got a bunch of different maps, lets have the itern bill figure it out. Bill says. Make it about time travel. Yes ok problem solved. Keep throwing stuff into a couldrom harry potter style

14

Yes.

That would be the QA employees.

It went on for significantly longer than that with a much larger pool of testers than just the content creators. IMO, the presence of the content creators in the CT pool was more to allow them access to a version of 1.0 in order to prepare their content for launch. Thpugh Iā€™m sure some would have found & reported bugs.

That is rather a reach. It (the first part) is also impossible to know but with a sufficiently large pool of testers someone is likely to have found and reported any given bug. Whether there was enough time to fix them all (clearly there wasnā€™t) is a different kettle of fish.

Is also crap, in this day & age. Just because everyone isnā€™t in the same physical place doesnā€™t make it impossible to communicate. Especially post covid and for a company that was always had to communicate online with each other. Plus Iā€™d be shocked if it was even remotely good practice, let alone best practice, to physically write bugs & stuff down rather than use some software to log & manage the data around bugs & bug reports. That was a thing when I was doing some closed testing for Sacred 1 & 2 back in the mid 2000s.

Yeah, no.

Like theyā€™re from different eras? Or different biomes?

Is that how you do your videos? It would explain a few thingsā€¦

15

Acfually sometimes yes lol. I am a single person whos videos are not even monotized. Some times the ideas are so silly i just toss them in or other times down the garbage drain

16

You may find this either shocking or surprising, so please make sure youā€™re sat down.

Real companies donā€™t work like that, not if they want to be able to continue paying their staff.

17

It actually happens a lot more then you think in companies. Most of them are run by apes who cant tell difference between a airplane and a underground bunker as they are full of internal applicants out of pure nepotism. Why these 3000+ people companies can not make a product that a team of 30 people can produce and better.

A lot of it is, just throw a decision until Q1, throw out a bunch of stuff until Q2. Its actually almost exactly like harry potter and the bucket eveyrone spat in at random times

18

You appear to confusing bureaucracy/risk aversion with incompetence. When you have millions/tens or hundreds of millions of insert currency here except Italian Lira or Japanese Yen, people start getting a bit shirty with you when you do a thing & loose most of the money. Itā€™s very easy to sit on the sidelines & heckle compared to being successful year after year after year after year after.

Let me know when youā€™ve created a highly successful company thatā€™s still successful, effective, agile, whatever. Iā€™ll wait.

Itā€™s only nepotism if theyā€™re related to you. Internal promotion can be a good way to keep institutional knowledge and skill while rewarding performance.

Sometimes the people in charge can be apes who are promoted to their level of incompetence. But thatā€™s not all the timeā€¦