Regarding User Feedback on Itemization

6

Enchant system and item rarity

There's been lots of feedback about this, so thanks a lot, everyone - it is really helpful to have such a dedicated Founding Team. Let's see where we are at and where are we headed about making items and gearing a lot more interesting.

First of all, sorry guys - we accidentally included a bug in the latest update that disabled the weighed drop rates on purples. What this means is that every basic value (attack power, damage, etc.) and enchant has a possible minimum/maximum value, and a purple item should only receive a value from the top 50% of this range. This has been fixed already, but it was a hindrance in the early days following the update.

Regardless of this bug, the remarks made were correct, as green items have a very high acquisition pool, meaning they receive far better values than the purples at the moment. This is why we will do the following:

  • The Shopkeeper: Currently the shop inventory is rerolled with every session, this is not indended. Inventory will change every once in a while, but not as often as it does now. Also, there will be special vendors throughout the Open World, where players will be able to buy some rare stuff. This will limit the green items' acquisition pool (how likely it is for a player to get one) and buff the purple items'.
  • Weighing enchants: At the moment some enchants are very imbalanced, we will have multiple rounds of balance coming in future updates, reducing worthless enchants to the possible minimum.
  • We are planning an option to highlight a primary enchant slot: Greens won't have a guaranteed primary slot, but purples can have 1 or 2, and relics will have 2 or 3. Basic slots will remain the same, accepting any enchant as usual, but the primary slots can only receive enchants from a filtered pool that contains top-tier enchants. We will implement this only when the pool of available enchants reaches 70-80% of the final planned amount - and we are pretty close to this milestone :)
  • Chained enchants: Now this was a good idea, and we will take a look at the possibility, definitely.
    • Chained enchants would mean this: We roll an enchant to the primary slot, and we check if it's a member of an enchant chain. If yes, then the next enchant won't be fully random but the member of the enchant chain with a 70-80% chance. Same goes for the 3rd enchant, with 30-60% chance. There will be 3-5 such enchants in a chain, promoting build-specific gearing.
    • Of course, we have to be careful not to make these super OP, and also be aware to limit items to certain builds fully. We want to avoid items forcing players to use a certain build at all costs. There were examples in the past where the overformalized logic has lead game designers to figure out what builds are playable with those items and then only support those items throughout the game's lifetime.
  • Relic items will receive additional unique aspects, we will swap and mix skills on certain items (relic combo weapons for example), and we will introduce the small, unlockable bonus enchants on these items. These will be +2 weaker, but special enchant slots on these items.

Once again, thanks for your feedback guys, development is a lot easier with such a dedicated squad.

Thanks again,

The NeocoreGames Team

This post was edited 7 years 108 days ago by Megapull
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Regarding User Feedback on Itemization
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7 years 113 days ago
Tsunamisan

Not always a wash. They apply if you put two of the same type of pistol on, so you can stack, say, heal on hit and then buffs to the 1 or 2 keys and actually have them turn out useful. Take a pair of Autopistols and use the... I think it's 1 key ability, the debuff. Use that in a party, and then you'll see they're not useless ability buffs.


Edit: My bad grammar is bad and must be purged!

This comment was edited 7 years 113 days ago by BrotherLazarus
7 years 113 days ago

This  was  not covered her but it does relate to items.  After crafting  item  sometimes you get a item   with  bonuses to the 3 and 4 abilities  as if it were a Rifle  or  2handed but you made a  pistol so these  bonuses are just a wash.

7 years 120 days ago

We'd like to comment (again) that often most equipment found is RARE, and normal and magic (whatever their name is, blue ones) become completely useless during early gameplay.


The way to overcome this and give first 2 item tiers some dignity, is to increase maximum affix value, to become greater than what's found on rares, or artficer's even.


As an example, during our many years of playing D2, we had one blue item for 7 consecutive years - what made it so valuable to us is lucky maximum rolls of 2 affixes crucial to our build. The replacement was never found, so veryvery endgame character relied on it. We think it could've been sold on the market for alot, as many lucky drops were.


The current situation is more or less what we had in VH, and what most aRPGs have and 'solve' with item filter - it's, of course, just wrong to have 1 item tier rendered useless, when it could be used with a chance to roll high values for a key affixes. 

7 years 121 days ago

While I'm kind of surprised the reroll isn't intended (as it's a staple of ARPGs), I'm game with it if the enchant tables work out properly and crafting greens gives a predictably useful result.


For the love of the Emprah though, make sure there's a chance for DR to added to the chain after Deflect chance enchants! We need more survival! *beats the dead horse some more*


That said, once you get further in (CR3 content) the drop tone shifts, and about half of the Artificer gear I received last night was a genuine upgrade, not just an "upgrade" for the sake of a rating.

7 years 121 days ago

Very impressed with you guys...total opposites of the mickey mouse crew over at EC.


Great suggestion Hydra.

7 years 121 days ago
+5

Really good news


  • The Shopkeeper: Needed to be changed - Fully support playing a game to get loot and not logging out of a game to get gear - This should be the standard in all games :D
  • Weighing enchants: Can't wait to see the changes. 
  • Like the enchant idea per item quality, certainly gives a nicer emphasis to which gear is better. 
  • Chained enchants: Like the idea of this provided it doesn't get too restrictive. A nice compromise. 
  • Really glad to hear you are actively moving away from having meta builds and BIS items that end up being the sole focus of the game. This change really deserves a kiss. 
  • Relic items Sounds great! 

After all that i'd like to propose another idea.....  Could an items "Power rating" be determined by the "Quality" of it's rolls - Meaning if you have rolls in the top 10% of damage and stats on the weapon, then the weapons attack rating should also be in the top 10% - This would help mitigate the issue of players being disgruntled by exchanging good items for bad ones just to progress in power level. At least they would be swapping good items for other good items.