Customization

[Jaycub]

What is the future of customization in terms of gear for this game? I've seen several posts by staff in a few older threads and recently in the state stabilization one that excite me, specifically the part of me that loves ARPG's. But maybe I am misunderstanding them, or rather over estimated what is implied by them.


On live gear was pretty straight forward. Each tier was a direct upgrade from the last, jewelry afforded some customization but only stat wise. And it wasn't until sov I believe that you got to choose between two different focuses. Some classes like healers suffered the worst pre sov because of DPS gear conflictions.

This server has already improved on this with its scenario set counterpart for every tier, affording different focuses their own set in each step up in gear tier.

Yet ultimately this is just stat upgrades.

Where the biggest possibilities lie, are on unique bonuses afforded by gear. We see it somewhat already in this game. If you look at the t3 sets (duelist/devastator), or epic quest weapons from T4 you will see things like "10% chance to remove 40 AP from target on hit" which is giving a class something it otherwise has no access to (WL in this case). Or on the Axe from elf t4 epic you get something like "5% chance to increase critical strike chance by 8% and damage by 12%".

Both of these fail in doing something called "build enabling" which is a common theme in ARPGS. Both of these bonuses aren't enough to make these sets powerful enough to even be considered over their next tier so the bonuses are ultimately moot. A quick fix that comes to mind would be to change the WL ap removal... into an AP steal. WL's have notorious AP problem, while not unsolvable having an AP steal on the devastator gear could make it competitive with annihilator/mercenary while being objectively worse stat wise across the board.

Yet this still isn't build enabling, it's only keeping lower tier sets relavant in the endgame by solving class based problems. Regardless I think this idea ties into some of the problems presented in the state stabilization thread. mainly the verticallity of gear progression in the game. Having vertical stat progression, but each set having a unique and powerful bonus or risk/reward/build enabling property could solve some of these problems.


Back to build enabling, what does it mean? Essentially what it means is a piece of gear that creates the possibility of an entirely new build that otherwise wouldn't be possible.

For this I came up with an example (obviously to be taken with quite a bit of salt),

Let's say the last boss of gunbad drops a pistol for WH called "The Cursed Dragon". It's your typical t3 very rare pistol stat wise... however it has a bonus effect "All bullets fired from this are now curses, and last twice as long. All hex, ailments, cruses and crowd control effects now last 50% longer on you"

Whats presented here is a risk reward type bonus, that should in theory open up an entirely new build or rather playstyle for WH. mainly their ability to be played in warbands in mass scale fighting as backlines disruptors with outgoing healdebuffs fired from dragon gun. This t3 pistol would remain relevant in that regard even over RR80 pistols with much higher stats. And the drawbacks of course really force the WH into that disruptor playstyle, as you won't last long actually trying to take on any group for any period of time. This could also be an intersting way of adressing class balance, the WH being a good example of a class that really has no place currently in large scale fighting unlike say marauder who has a perfectly viable mass RvR spec in monstro.

What are the possibilities of customization reaching these kind of levels? Or will we just be seeing simple procs like are already in game and straight stat upgrade etc...?

[wargrimnir]

So this touches on what we're interested in doing with the Blacksmith crafting skill that was teased a long time ago. Upgrading gear to give more unique/specific bonuses. But that would all need to be built out be a dev, and I think it's a Londo thing. Currently, even without the patcher, we can add all sorts of effects to all sorts of things. Pocket items would be the most likely target.

We have also been discussing removing the flat +1 spec bonuses from gear, and adding those to pocket items separate from the set. I believe we can make them unique equip and check the ToK for completing a set of gear in order to purchase it at all, like the other tome items currently. This would allow us to add procs as 5th piece bonuses instead of +1 spec, and would alleviate the loss of your last mastery point in the event you remove gear for whatever reason.

I think it is more than likely the state stabilization will more forward. The only real argument against was that people play to grind for better stuff. How the sets will balance out specifically is up the the implementation side of things. If Aza wants to code up a pvp balancer that does things magically, then gear will probably look pretty similar to live. If DB is tasked with building out sets, they will be scaled back to far more reasonable levels up to Sov. You might see a 5% increase in overall stat power in that case.