Did you ever wonder Why all the Rare items you find are just bad? or Why should you care for Normal and Magic items, if you already have all your Rare ones?
No?
But I’m going to talk about it anyway! So just relax and enjoy your reading with a note of caution, as it can contain bad writing!
. What problem I’m trying to solve?
To just put it out of the way, I think the current Craft System is one of the best I saw so far, and the problems I’ll describe aren’t as big as other ones the dev’s are currently working on and are just things I wish could be done in another way.
What I’m talking about then?
Well, right now the way rarity work is:
We have 3 craftable rarities – Normal, Magic and Rare, and they are basically distinguished by the number of affixes on the item, and the amount of FP it has.
We have Exalted with non craftable affixes and the most amount of FP in the game.
And we have Sets and Uniques, that can’t be crafted on, except that Uniques can be turned into legendaries.
For me the problem is on the way Normal, Magic and Rare items are distinguished between themselves. Right now, the difference as stated before is on the number of affixes and the amount of FP they have and because of that, finding Magic or Rare items can stop to be interesting too fast, as they start to appear early and can be made early as well. Furthermore, they don’t have a big enough difference by themselves, to make you want to choose a new item over the one you currently use, if it doesn’t have equal or better affixes or potential. In addition to that, an even bigger problem for me is that it also makes Normal and Magic useless too early, as they don’t hold any value or potential besides the affixes they have, and once you have the right affixes, you don’t need them anymore.
. What is my idea then?
My plan is to make the rarity of this items rely instead on the implicits of the item, by making it stronger depending on its rarity.
Didn’t get it? Let me exemplify:
A gladius is a Level 1 sword and the first one you can obtain in the game. It has 10 flat melee physical damage as it’s implicit and loses his ground pretty early on cause is not very strong.
So, with the implicits getting stronger as the rarity of the item increases, a Magic version of the same sword could have something between 11 – 16 melee physical damage for example, and a Rare one even more with 15 – 25.
But is not like every implicit would be getting stronger, because every implicit has his own rarity.
Another example:
The Solarum Greaves are high level boots with its 3 implicits being Armor, increased Move Speed and Fire Resistance.
So, a Rare item should always have at least 1 Rare implicit, in this case the Armor one could be a Normal, the Increased Move Speed could be a Magic, and the Fire Resistance could be a Rare one. Or could be 2 Normals and 1 Rare, or all 3 Rares in the best case.
This change could make players look out more for the Magic and Rare items, to at least see how strong are the implicits, also make rarity more meaningful by itself cause just the increase in rarity also brings a substantial increase in power. And this would also make players more excited to see a Rare dropped on the ground by a Boss or Rare enemy.
. And what about crafting?
The craft part of this changes should be the one to benefit Normal and Magic items the most.
Right now, when you craft on gear it will automatically increases its rarity (except for Exalted gear) as you put more affixes on it. With these changes you would be able to make a Normal item with as much effects as a Magic or Rare, but you would still have as much FP as right now.
Then what’s good about it?
The good news would be the ability you now would have to increase yourself the rarity of the item, and with that further craft on it, by using something like a Rune of Ascendency.
One more example:
Using the same item as before, the Solarum Greaves, after you use all your FP on a Normal item, you now want to increase its Rarity by using a Rune of Ascendency you just found. What would happen is now at least one of your implicits turns blue, and you now have a Magic item, and with that all your FP would reset and reroll with the same amount a Normal item would have, and the same happen after you try to increase your item rarity once more, now turning at least one of your implicits golden yellow.
And what’s so good about this?
To begin you now would have the opportunity to craft an item from the ground, as you would have a lot more FP in general if you craft from Normal to Rare.
It would be easier to fine tune this way than to find a good Rare item, as you would have 2 fases to try and roll the best affixes without concern about losing all your FP.
At the same time, this would probably be a lot more expensive, as the cost to upgrade would be a Rune of Ascendency or something similar, and hard to find. Making it more of a choice for people wanting to min-max their gear.
. And what about Exalted?
For me Exalted items should fit somewhere in between the others, where it doesn’t have as much power as a Rare implicit can have nor as little as a Normal implicit can have.
And I would like to be that way to balance out the fact that Exalted gear have a huge advantage over Rare ones right now, as they have affix Tiers higher than we are able to craft. Having a Rare with a higher implicit would make players think if it would be worth it to change.
. Other changes:
With all these changes another thing I would like to see, is a difference in the way those items are dropped. Probably because of the way rarity works right now, Magic and Rare items become common drops pretty early on, because they start dropping from normal mobs in the early-mid game. So cool to see Magic and Rare items dropping mostly from Rares and Bosses, at least until the player could get to the end game.
Another change I would like to propose, but don’t know if the devs would agree or if it would fit the plan they have for the game, is in the way the level of the items influences in how much they will be used until they are judge worthless. So right now, as I said before, a Gladius is Level 1 and have a base implicit of 10 Melee physical damage, and it’s much worse than a Dawn Blade that is a Level 75 item with 48 Melee physical damage as implicit. These changes could brought them much closer to each other, by making a Rare Gladius closer to a high roll Magic Dawn Blade, and with this make it less of a bad taste in the mouth to find an item with good affixes but bad implicit. Items with more implicits could be balanced by having for example less Melee physical damage for swords, as well.
. Final considerations:
I hope you all enjoy reading about my ideas.
Again, I don’t think they are necessary, especially with the number of other things that still need some improvements right now, and with multiplayer coming near to release and probably needing a lot of adjusts as well.
But still, I think this would be a cool thing to have and would bring some benefits to the crafting and loot system of the game, cause as good as they are, I still think they are lacking in some cases.
Thank you devs, for had developing a phenomenal game and I hope you guys can keep bringing more content and further polishing this incredible experience you had delivered to us.
And if you read until here, let me hear what your thoughts are! Did you like my ideas or do you think they are bad or not worth it?
Just let me now, and until next time Travelers!