I think you should craft the item not upgrade a current item, that being said if you could re-melt the blade and salvage a hilt then maybe modify those items then reforge a better one, that would be a way better process. That being said i thought things in WoW like sharpening stones, the leatherworking things you could add to pants, that stuff makes sense, its like wearing chaps over your jeans, or a leather coat.
I don't like the the idea of items just blindly leveling up with you, been done before and MEH.
What could be done however is a hidden trait system that could unlock boons for different gear. Like your swimming across a river when suddenly you get a message that you silver gilded longsword just gained the trait orc slayer. All you know was that you are swimming when it happened, but what actually has happened was that your sword has been used in slaying of 500 orcs, it has tasted the blood of 5 royal bloodlines of orcs, it has delivered the killing blow to a high orc shaman, and finally it has bathed in the blessed waters of trinidine where 200 years ago a great orc horde was defeated. Now eventually the community can discover these steps to unlocking the various traits, but by the time all of them are discovered the next big content drop could be just around the corner and a whole list of new stuff could be waiting to be discovered once again.
Like dorotea, I've played several games where items level up or gain ranks and my experience has been that it always ends up being more of a negative than a positive as well. The concept is appealing, but the implementation is often grindy at best or easy to manipulate at worst. Likewise, as someone who is very concerned about insuring that Pantheon's economy functions well for the long term, AND that there is a place for crafters in terms of generating meaningful usable equipment at all levels, the idea of someone sticking with the same item for a long time generally works against other things that I care deeply about.
However: I'll throw out an alternative here to see what everyone thinks about it. Full transparency: This is an amalgamation of things that have been discussed in several other threads on these forums - I cannot take full credit for this idea. Lots of other community members have had great thoughts and I am totally reusing some of the cool things they came up with.
Item "Achievements"
We are all familiar with achievement systems from many games, both single-player and multi-player. In those games, an achievement is granted to your character when you complete some sort of memorable event. Maybe it's killing a boss, or completing all the quests in an area, or killing 1000 snakes, or whatever. Usually, these achievements give you some very minor reward like a title, or a cosmetic item.
What if your items could earn achievements as well?
Examples:
Kill 1000 orcs with your sword - your item gains the "Orc's Bane" Achievement and gets a small bane damage bonus vs. orcs.
Block 10,000 strikes with your shield - your shield gains the "Swordbreaker" Achievement and now a succesful block has a 1% chance to also disarm the attacker (if applicable)
Walk 10,000 miles with your boots - your boots gain the "Thousand Leagues" Achievement, and now have a 2% movement speed buff applied to them.
... and so on
To prevent items from becoming too powerful this way, the number of achievements an item can gain would be limited. For example, maybe boots could earn a maximum of two achievements, out of 10 different possible achievements. To try and prevent people from gaming the system to min/max their boots, progress against those achievements would be hidden. So you don't really know if you're closer to the "Thousand Leagues" Achievement or if you're closer to the "Firewalker" Achievement for your boots. Or maybe you're far away from either of those but you're about to get the "Snake Kickers" achievement for your boots instead.
I realize that this may not go as far as some folks would like, but I think it adds some interesting flavor to items without overpowering them. You'll still probably get a new pair of boots at some point, even though your old ones had some cool achievements. Likewise, achievements could help increase the value of an item if you're passing it to an alt, or salvaging it for crafting components, or whatever else you might do with something you no longer need to wear and use.
Anyway, I feel like something along these lines would work without introducing negative experiences, so I wanted to throw it out there as an idea for people to discuss.
Very similar to the idea I had. I would like it there to be multiple steps to earning these traits/achievements but also hidden. Something that needs to be discovered, it could be possible that was mostly tracked serverside to keep datamining the info at a minimum so the client would only know if a trait was active or inactive. Keep the requirements for these traits/achievements high, keep them hidden, but keep the rewards significant but situational and it could be a very rewarding feature.
I like the idea of eventually getting intelligent items like from old school dnd into a game, either through finding them, or created through some event. I think it would be cool to have a piece of gear that while it could do powerfull stuff, it also tried to get you to do stuff, stuff you might not want to do. If you don't do what it wants it might refuse to help you or even turn on you and your party when you least expect it. I think there is more than enough technology to do stuff like this really well now, that hasn't been done as well as it could of in the past. Imagine a weapon possed by a demon that wants you to attack townfolk and not help party members do something good, when you do murder and bad things it casts spells and nukes things down almost like a seperate entity. But when you refuse it stops helping you and starts whispering other players to come and take it because you aren't worthy... and flags you a temporary pvp where they could potentlally kill you and take it. Or maybe you are fighting a big evil boss and it decides it would rather be owned by that bad guy so it casts it's nukes on your party instead...
Just a bunch of ways to make items more meaningful than a collection of numbers.
Tanix said:DracoKalen said:Tanix said:DracoKalen said:I'm kind of tired of the cycle of trash weapons. This one was great 2 levels ago and now it's obsolete.
I'd love to see something where the weapon had a baseline of some sort then you could get gems/inserts that a weaponsith could add to it. Now of course there would be a limit to how much you could add or have on it at any one time.
Consider that the "cycle" in a game like EQ and that of WoW are light years different. WoW was a cycle of upgrades level after level, drop after drop while it was not uncommon in a game like EQ to hold on to a weapon for numerous levels. So that cycle wouldn't be like what you are used to.
Never played WOW. But like in EQ2 I would hold on to my old weapons until there was just too many of them.
I would like a system where I could hold onto my weapon and be able to modify it over time.
EQ 2 was very WoW like unless you played release. The cycle of upgrades was quite a short interval there.
EQ, you could spend 20+ levels with the same weapon before you found something that was a sufficient upgrade. Items did not drop like candy in EQ and they were usable over numerous levels (as opposed to EQ2/WoW where you needed to upgrade quickly to stay productive in the content).
EQ2 came out before WoW and all items were tiered. levels 1-9, 10-19, 20-29, 30-39, 40-49, 50.
Only way to get a better weapon in you're level range was to have a master crafted version or quest for a Heritage weapon.
I'll agree that in EQ you could hold onto weapons longer but it wasn't 20+ levels. While not tiered like EQ2 there were changes to weapon types plenty of times, Rusty, tarnished, Steel, Fine Steel, (getting your first magic weapon to hurt willow wisp was always exciting.), blackened steel. that's not even including named items that people would camp for.
FlushingToiletScreamingShower said: Would you rather walk around with the same weapon day in day out for years? Or would you prefer trying new weapons with new graphics and new animations and new playstyles which are instantly recognizable and are a symbol of your gaming achievements, and worth getting excited about?
If the weapon I have is the best weapon available. I dont care how long I have it.
FlushingToiletScreamingShower said: Would you rather walk around with the same weapon day in day out for years? Or would you prefer trying new weapons with new graphics and new animations and new playstyles which are instantly recognizable and are a symbol of your gaming achievements, and worth getting excited about?
Thats up to the player. I myself could care less about the cosmetics. Not critcizing people that do, i know its important to some. If I had a weapon for 50 levels and watch the stats grow I get just as much satisfaction as some do out of the cosmetics. The fact that I worked for that progression gives me even more satisfaction. However, thats not saying appearance couldnt change as the weapon progressed as well.
Keep in mind I wasnt stating "lets incorporate a system thats already been shown to not work in another game." I definitely see how it could be tedious and grindy. I kind of like grinds myself but that doesnt mean there arent alternate ways to achieve what the intent of my post was trying to get at.
