You have a point saying that having the best items in the game with 4lp would be a turnoff. I doubt it has been done yet because they are close to impossible statistically, but they are possible. The same goes for 3lp.
I don’t mind having a limited recycling system, with max lp based on the item or make it much harder to get deterministically than the current random version. That would allow low level items to reach 4lp and be used more.
What really bothers me right now it’s something already mentioned before: that this would discourage gifting items, because this gives failed uniques some value to you, unless you don’t care about said unique.
It’s kind of what happens with exalted right now, you can choose to quietly keep them for yourself because they might be useful for current or future characters at some point.
I think this is another reason to increase the requirements for this kind of recycling, so it would only make sense to keep the uniques you are looking for upgrading because you would need to gather a lot of them and spend maybe hundreds of hours just on that. For example let’s say it takes 30 Last Steps without lp to recycle them for 1 with 1 lp. No one would keep them unless they were trying to get it with lp.
All of these topics are just more ways to power creep. It does nothing. People want exclusive gear. If everyone can get the gear, it isn’t exclusive and no longer chase. On top of that, the game is forced to be balanced around the inevitable 4LP-unique-in-all-slot players. With trade coming at some point, that is made even worse.
Just to reiterate for those that don’t understand. EASIER HIGH END GEAR DOESN’T MAKE THE GAME EASIER. It forces balance changes and ends up being a net neutral in power, while making the gear less exclusive/exciting.
I didn’t see anyone saying that they wanted this kind of possibility to make the game easier.
What I think people that share my POV on this matter, is that it will make the game more fun as it will increase the feeling of progression made on the quest to legendaries.
Game design is about fun before being about balance.
I’m not saying that balance is not important, is it.
But if some balancing changes are needed to make systems that make the game more fun for the majority of people. I think that it is a possibility worth considering.
But it won’t be more fun. It will just be a different kind of grind that people will complain about and ask for shortcuts on. The slope is slippery. People just THINK it will be more fun because they view the specific gear in the context of the current game. The context would change though.
Since when is progression in a hack n slash end game not the primary source of fun.
I’m not saying that it will make micro second that you spend in the game more fun.
BUT, it will allow people to feel that the time spent in the game is rewarded on this topic.
You are talking about shortcuts, but that is not the point that I am making. What is important is that you need to feel that you are progressively making your way to your objective.
Small results by small results, you are getting there. It is the basic principle behind motivation.
And this is way keep people playing.
If you need to play hundreds of hours without any results because the damn item won’t loot with the appropriate amount of LP that you want. You just feel like you are waisting your time and are complete victim of the RNG.
If they are already possible in the game, regardless of possibility (which is never 0), wouldn’t their mere existence (due to extreme RNG luck) already break the game? Enquiring minds want to know. Hell, you could argue it’s even more game breaking if such items do happen to drop (in the existing system), because then those anointed by the RNG Gods would have a huge (arguably unfair) upper-hand, that couldn’t really be easily overcome.
Sure, there would be more 3 or 4 LP items, but you could prevent saturating the market by preventing trade of items modified in such a manner, so only the creator-owner would benefit. You could also time gate them with various methods. But, the point being it gives a player a defined goal to work towards. Whether it takes 1, 3 or 6 months, the player would see progress towards a goal. Not just constantly thrusting into a dark void, hoping to hit pay dirt.
Besides, with the popularity of seasons/leagues, what’s the real worry? Everyone starts fresh with the next season, and would have to build their 4LP items back up from scratch anyhow.
It should already be balanced around. Getting a good deal of 3LP uniques isn’t impossible currently. So if they aren’t balancing around these possibilities, then the game is broken for anyone who gets lucky, or puts in the time right now. How is that better? “Hey, we really didn’t balance the game around a person getting 4 or 5 3LP items, so that guy who is 50million arena levels above everyone else should just be ignored, the game is broken for him and noone stands a chance of catching him… our bad” .
Video games feeling like a job doesn’t sound fun to me and that is usually when I quit games. This is one of the reasons daily quests are so bad. It starts to make it feel like you have to log in.
The “hack and slash” is supposed to be the primary source of fun. The “progress” is just a carrot on the stick to give the illusion that you aren’t just doing the same thing over and over.
Maybe I’m just bored with games that ask too much time and I feel like that time can be better spent elsewhere.
Yes, but at the moment, the chances are such that I dont think more than a half dozen people are ever going to get the gamebreaking items. I cannot recall (And dont feel like finding the old posts on the topic), but the odds are astronomically against it for some items - like stars in the visible universe level. So yes, its still technically possible that someone will get them one day but its not gonna break the game because only one or two people have the items and managed to get exalteds to make perfect 4lp legendaries.
Its how the devs are balancing things already - its so hard to find that even if they exist they dont effect the game for 99.9999% of players. I.e. why are we even bothering to discuss it.
If anything makes it easier to earn these items then that will have to change.
Standard leagues in LE have no end, so seasons items dont affect it. someone could pump 5k hours into the standard league and season items just become standard items anyway - nothing is lost. So over time, there could potentially be a lot of choice items if it were easier to get them - in a deterministic fashion.
Thats a question for the devs. Do they want their game to have this kind of item level progression. After many years of MMOs with gated progression and item grinds I can say that I would prefer it not to be in ARPGs. I have no jealousy toward someone praying to Lady Luck and getting a brilliant drop vs me grinding away for 200h trying to get a Maw with LP and double that trying to find an exalted to match with it (something I have done in LE).
I would rather that progression happen in the character stats, skill, level, XP wise etc… item loot becomes the cherry on the top for me in ARPG games - its that magical feeling that you cannot predict, you cannot plan for. Everything else is the job to get your character leveled up with XP… As I said above, progression beyond that takes you into MMO territory and I dont like to mix my drinks (games)… Thats just me… Each to their own.
I agree - some kind of “horadric magic” would be fantastic - combining your found treasures to something new - be it good or bad - or to use found things to create advanced gear or perhaps even items that can’t be obtained otherwise would give a strong emphasis on long-term-motivation and replayability.
Well, it’s a design decision. Plainly put, is the design unobtainable carrot, on an endlessly growing stick? Or is it actually allowing players to obtain these items, that they have put in the game?
There’s a philosophy around playing with cats, and their toys; At some point, you must let the cat catch the toy, or it loses interest, and stops playing. Oddly enough, in all my decades of cat-ownership, I’ve never had a cat lose interest in playing because he caught the toy too much. However, you can’t make it too easy, so it’s not a challenge… but you have to make it a realistic challenge.
It would take a lot to achieve it but it would be fun, not intrusive with other systems and just another thing to play for… game won’t be made easier this way for all the dummies out there criticizing this.
It would, especially after they implement trade/CoF. Plus there are some relatively common uniques that have a low chance of getting LP due to the significant amount of power that would add that this would negate the rarity of the LP.
How is that fun? I don’t get it. To me I translate that to hours needed or even worse gold needed in the future. The simple fact that LP is not deterministic makes LP “optional”.
Imagine I dropped a 2lp bastion right now. I would be ecstatic and immediately start trying to find a good shield to use with it.
Now imagine in your system I dropped 3lp bastion. Strictly better but now I’m excited but probably won’t want to use the LP on that item at all because it just saved me 1/5 of the farming I needed to get my 4lp bastion which is much much much better than a 3lp bastion.
It basically nullifies unique drops that aren’t already 4lp and converts them all into “almost-4lp” uniques. They’re currency now instead of items and that sucks.
I mean you can almost say the same thing about trade.
As I said in my previous comment I think this could be solved if the amount of required uniques would be much higher than I initially proposed and maybe leaving certain lp items out or just make it almost impossible number wise. That way no one would keep lots and lots of said uniques just in case, it would be impossible to manage that kind of stash without sacrificing other things with the amount gold we earn right now, and I say this as someone with around 90 tabs in multiplayer.
I do think you and others make a great point about what’s fun and giving grinding more importance might be the wrong decision. I wish that currently there was some way to balance better drops between full party and 1-2 players, and the Factions seem like won’t solve this issue either because it’s still going to give full party the most advantage.
Wouldn’t increasing the number of required uniques make people hoard more? Or do you think that it would discourage the less-willing people from hoarding?
Not necessarily. You have to consider the time investment as well. Sure, it’s 1/5th, but it’s still how many Bastion’s away from being 4LP? 400? 500? Who is going to farm up that many? Hell, I’ve been playing for over 3 years, and have 3 of them. And, who can afford to buy that many?
There’s so much hysteria about how the game would suddenly be flooded with 4LP versions of the rarest uniques. But you don’t even consider that with all the players in the game right now, with all the drops that have happened in the game’s lifetime thusfar, there probably haven’t been enough rare unique drops of each kind to even make 1 4LP version with any of the above suggestions.
This system would mainly help those lower level uniques, that don’t add anything other than their required bonus…getting more resists or health. It might also see some of the lesser-desired unqiues get some usage as well, since their bonuses could be brought closer to par with the rares that would usually end up in those slots. Rarer uniques would probably get into the 2LP range, but I seriously doubt you’d see anyone hold onto the rarest ones, just to get them to 4LP months and months and months and months down the road…if ever.
I wouldn’t hoard uniques except those 5 or so I was really farming for. Let’s say it’s 50 0lp boots for 1lp, then you need at least 1 stash tab for that. If you want multiple uniques with multiple lp values then it takes a lot of stash and gold.
Another thing I just thought of is that instead of all this stash management there could be a special storage system for this mechanic, but restricted to only one or two uniques account wide, so if you want you can target farm them better but you are not going to hoard other uniques. Or just make it so this is something you have to decide earlier and your progress resets if you change your targeted uniques.
The bastion is a bad example because of its rarity. Personally I would always use a LP bastion if it dropped (because I’d be playing CoF) but if trade was completed a 3lp bastion becomes selling fodder because it’s not 4lp. The nature of the LP system makes 4LP always better than 3LP and it’s significant enough to want to wait to ensure success.
If these were bleeding hearts (which occasionally drop with 4lp) the problem increases ten-fold. Any bleeding heart gets sacrificed to the trading post or stash tabs until you have enough combined to make a 4 LP. I just think being able to deterministically acquire LP on an item in this method would prevent items from actually being used.
Or, they’d be used like the currently are. Why is it necessarily better to “hold onto” LP until you have an exalt with enough useful stats, that you don’t totally brick your LP-unique? I mean, this practice already happens in the current system, a system like this would actually allow for more forgiveness in this area. People might be more willing to craft a more common 2LP unique, knowing it’s not that hard to replace… or to use as a filler while they craft a 3LP/4LP version for usage later, when they have a corresponding exalt to use with it.
All the current system does is force players to wait until they have a well rolled exalt to craft with (so as to get a useful stat), or raises the level of frustration when the LP craft bricks, because there’s no telling when the next LP unique (and exalt) will come.
Actually now that I think about it I think EHG said something about improving target farming for uniques, with the drop blessings I think, in which case restricting this system to a couple of uniques wouldn’t make any sense. The whole thing is a number balance issue around RNG, so if they balance that right in the first place it shouldn’t feel frustrating to target farm uniques.
