One of my biggest things against WoW and other games, like Diablo 3, was item color classification. The worst of it was in WoW when people would refuse to replace a purple item with a blue, just because the item was purple. Then, over time, purple lost it's meaning altogether...you'd get purples for just looking at a boss in a dungeon. And this leads me to this...a world without color!
Item color just seems totally unneccessary. You, as a smart player, know whether or not an item is good based on it's stats and abilities and functions...not because of the color. Or...maybe you don't know if something is good...so you put it in your bank until you figure out if it is good or not. Color can mislead people into thinking that something is good just because of it's color, and on the other hand, make someone think something is worthless because of it's color. I've also always felt the name of an item should have more meaning than an item's color, and if you take color out of the equation, I see that as being closer to reality.
I saw on the stream last night that some items have color and I hope Pantheon doesn't go into the Diablo 3 mode of thinking. Item color and loot spam made me quit that game, and so far I love that Pantheon appears to be avoiding loot spam, but I'd hate to see this game follow those footsteps into item color, or worse, item level. Replacing items should require more thought than "purple better than blue" and "486 better than 462".
As someone who truely loves the mystery of discovering the value in things that they find while playing MMOs, I believe keeping color out will help achieve that.
Without things like level limit and the need for horizontal gear for certain enviroments i dont think we need to worry about this too much. if you look at eq which is an insperation for this game some times items found at level 30 would be awesome even for max level raiders.
Totally agreed, Dreake! Eliminate the item colors and have us decide an item's value based solely on its stats.
Edit: And badass appearance!
I totally agree with this, I would rather have no item classification of gear. Just give us a comparison windown and let our brains try and figure it out, for through challange comes creativity and many times have me looking an item and reading its stats and specs lead to some of the most fun and wierd build of a character.
Some might say "how will we know it is a legendary item then?", to that I say, not through a colour telling you it is. Let us, the community decide if it is legendary, the only real "hint" I would like is if the item has a specific name like "Super awesome sword of swordness and swording".
While we are at it, can we get rid of the entire concept of gearscore/item level (not the required level of an item, this refers to the items statistical level so to speak), I am not sure if this was a World of Warcraft specific thing but I really dislike it as it leads people to look at the number at the bottom the the item instead of trying to figure things out in any fashion.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Think of having an item such as a weapon drop, you loot it and then look at it, the two scenarios here could be.
You loot "The Mildly Cool Looking Axe of Oddity", it is green, oh well that sux, I was hoping for something better. You are now mildly dissapointed about the whole thing.
Or you loot "The Mildly Cool Looking Axe of Oddity". You look at the item and now try to see if it has stats that are better than you got, no? But you notice that for some reason it has an absurd amount of attack speed and start thinking maybe you can do something with that.
It just engages you more with the game imo.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Color generally dictates rarity and source. At no point was it ever intended to stand for how powerful an item is, as far as I know. The name and stats on an item have always existed independent of what color it is. If someone refuses to replace a purple with a blue then they're probably an idiot anyway, has nothing to do with the color system itself.
Vanguard had color coding on items. Purple generally indicated absurd rarity. Mara's Kiss, for instance. The number of purple items in Vanguard were very few. Raid items or items from extensive quest lines were generally red. However, at no point in my entire several year career playing Vanguard did I see someone refuse to replace an item with better stats based on the color of the name.
Are you conflating item color/rarity with gear score? I'm puzzled.
Many games I've played which use the colouring system have been that any two items of the same level, the higher rarity/colour one would automatically be better. And I do find having something to indicate the rarity of somehting be a bit pointless if they are all stat sticks.
//Voices of Terminus' Youmu Svartie
Yeah...no color coding in EQ and it was just fine. Let people do the work on their own when looking at an item. A magical treasure would not be colored differently to let you know it was special. That was sometimes part of the fun in EQ...tons of random items and you never know what was worth what or could be used where or was good for something super rare. If I can craft regular armor from iron, rare armor from rarely found mineral X, and super rare armor from extremely rarely found mineral Y, then let me do it without color coding the items. I will know that the stats are great and i will know the material is rare anyway just through how hard it is to find.
I like the idea of colorless items for the most part. One color I would like to see would be a different color for vendor trash. Back when EQ was new, I wasted so many inventory slots on items not knowing that they were just basically vendor food. A tag about an item being just merchant sell loot would work as well.
No color coding in EQ, and it was fine. Color coding in Vanguard, and it was fine.
I guess it doesn't matter either way. I liked it, but it's irrelevant.
I didn think about item color codes much so far, but it could be cooler without colors thats true. But i did not like difficulty codes on mobs solo, 1 star, 2 star, elite, boss just didn like it. It felt to me EQ had just 1 star maybe 2 star mobs and nothing else beside some occasional Nameds.But the difficulty of mobs didn vary as much, like for solo and group mobs in newer games out today.
Ondark said:I didn think about item color codes much so far, but it could be cooler without colors thats true. But i did not like difficulty codes on mobs solo, 1 star, 2 star, elite, boss just didn like it. It felt to me EQ had just 1 star mobs and nothing else beside some occasional Nameds.
I liked the colors on items in Vanguard because it was at least, usually, semi indicative of how much effort was put into getting it. Red almost always meant an extensive quest, or a raid drop. It didn't determine quality, it just hinted at the source.
For that matter, I think the same argument could be applied to the way an item looks physically. If stats are all that matters, why not make all swords look the same? Why should my epic weapon have a cool particle effect?
In EQ, pretty much all mobs were a static difficulty depending on their numeric level. Outside of nameds and raids, yeah, they didn't really vary in difficulty much. A level 56 trash mob in Old Sebilis was about as easy as a 56 trash mob in Luclin.