Greetings, glorious adventurers! If you're joining in our Alpha One spot testing, please follow the steps here to see all the latest test info on our forums and Discord!
Options
Items stats for the same item (Silver Sword). A discussion from Decembers Q&A
George_Black
Member, Intrepid Pack
In the latest Dev Update @Hakaiju asked if the same item, for example a Silver Sword, will have a chance to have different bonus stats each time you loot it.
And Steven answered yes, but then I got the impression that he went a bit beyond the actual question.
Obviously Steven knows what systems will be in place, we don't, so we don't have the same clarity. We only have past experiences and sometimes opinions of "what might be".
I think it is a bad design for the same items, such as a Silver Sword to have different random stats, as you loot them in the open world. In ESO for example players would farm for hours for the "Advanced Yokeda DAGGER" with penetration stat.
Critical chance, defence, magic, healing DAGGERS were all an RNG disappointment, and they kept farming until they got the penetration stat.
What do you guys think about looting a Silver Sword with +81 Stamina while playing a Bard and some other lucky guy looting a Silver Sword +81 Stamina while being a Fighter?
What do you guys think of RNG stats?
And Steven answered yes, but then I got the impression that he went a bit beyond the actual question.
Obviously Steven knows what systems will be in place, we don't, so we don't have the same clarity. We only have past experiences and sometimes opinions of "what might be".
I think it is a bad design for the same items, such as a Silver Sword to have different random stats, as you loot them in the open world. In ESO for example players would farm for hours for the "Advanced Yokeda DAGGER" with penetration stat.
Critical chance, defence, magic, healing DAGGERS were all an RNG disappointment, and they kept farming until they got the penetration stat.
- If we loot the Silver Sword with +81 stamina, can we change it to +81 strength? Will it be an expensive or lengthy process? Will we rage against the RNG and keep looking to loot a strength or an intelligence Silver Sword. Should we give up and try to craft it with the stat we want?
- Shouldn't it be better that all Silver Swords have no bonus when being looted, so that crafters have the honor (and profit) by adding the +81 Stamina or Strength stat?
- Shouldn't it be better for all Silver Swords to provide +81 Stamina, while Moonlight Swords provide +81 Intelligence? (Silver Sword and Moonlight Sword are both the same tier but one is better for true fighters and the other is better for magic fighters)
What do you guys think about looting a Silver Sword with +81 Stamina while playing a Bard and some other lucky guy looting a Silver Sword +81 Stamina while being a Fighter?
What do you guys think of RNG stats?
2
Comments
Worlds of Warcraft went off the rails with their system. Having a person capable of killing the same encounter as I did but get an item many levels above mine in power was dejecting. I am not a fan of "random". I think the kind of loot is random enough for me. I do not need to also have the same items potentially be different. A player should know that when the Silver Sword drops that it has the same stats as the last silver sword. It should not be capable of becoming the Super rare, I rolled a 1000 out of 1000, Titanic, Gem engraved, Silver sword of Aka'non, that when wielded allows me to ride a Mech Gnome for a mount.
The RNG gods hate me. And I hate them back. I don't mind random stats, per se, but as long as it's not ridiculous. If there's a chance of one of three armour sets dropping, in one of three armour types, with one of nine different stats, then that gives me a (it's 01:30, forgive any bad maths...) 1 in 81 chance of getting the drop I want, assuming that all drops are equally weighted. And that's just crap.
The caveat with that to me is that for the most part, the desirable items in Ashes should all be crafted, not looted. You run the content to loot specific materials to have items made, rather than running content to have specific items drop.
There was a chance for higher stats when crafting within a certain tier
There was a scarcity with certain gathered materials that gave those stats both weight if successful in a craft and incrementally increase in value.
Drops were still very much based on luck and sheet turn over of loot.
In classic and Vanilla you could see an item drop. A ring for example might drop and have 2 int and 1 wisdom this time and next time be 1 int and 2 wisdom. 1 is good for healer other good for mage but it also allowed you to customize your toon the way you wanted to with stats.
As Noaani said is kind of a moot point here as most is crafted and if crafters can stats around or if different materials provide different stats then we are only talking about 1% of completed drops, maybe on the high side.
Even if you got something with trash stats, you could at least roll it to decent.
A much more interesting system would be one where there is co-dependencies.
For example
Miner> Raw materials
Melter> Raw materials into workable materials.
Weaponsmith> Workable materials into weapons
Enchanter > Add stats to weapons
I thought it would be necessary for AoC to have random stats and stat values, because you can use every type of weapon on every class (so a healing dagger might even be used). Furthermore it will probably not become a grind, because every weapon will be tradeable, even after it got equipped. Sure, the more sought after gear will be more expensive, but thats fine in my opinion.
If we do it this way, they can balance items easier because the base stats will clearly go for certain classes but we are allowed to customize them to our playstyle. I don't think RNG stats are a BAD idea (especially with processors being able to deconstruct and rebuild into something we DO want with a crafter). On the off-chance you DO get that perfect combination.....then woohoo! You win haha.
This right here. What I was thinking as well. I want the blacksmiths, weaponsmiths, armorsmiths and what have you, to be able to apply their craft as much as possible, and to be able to depends on the smelters and miners so that us who are looking for a specific stat in our gear to go to these guys seeking their expertise.
I'm also not a fan of RNG.
At least with the POE approach to things you can kind of plan ahead to try and fix a potentially good item. With the way ESO does it and, WOW was doing it. You just got to farm the same item over and over. Not nearly as rewarding as a chaos orb.
If I had more time, I would write a shorter post.
Alternatively:
Give crafters the Ability to reforge the stats by adding base components provided by gatherers and processors.
- Helps the economy circulating
- provides crafted and dropped items with the same customizability.
- makes drops more interesting to everybody, due to the full customability
Oh please no. There is nothing better than getting a nice item after beating a boss. Dropping only materials would be beyond lame.
Most of the items I believe will come from crafting, otherwise crafting is not important. If you can get an item by just doing a raid, why pay a crafter?
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Crafting
Recipes
Crafting in Ashes of Creation is recipe based, not RNG based.[23][24]
Within a crafting recipe, there are dials (based on artisan specialization) that are used customize crafted items, such as:[25]
Increasing one stat at the expense of another.[26]
Making an item more magical versus more physical.[26]
I think Star Wars Galaxies had a great crafting system... The resource gathering and the crafting system altogether as a whole really was I think way beyond its time. That's kind of the direction we want to go, where there's choices to be made in the crafting system and those choices change what you end up with... It's not just about doing X recipe to get Y item. You know, there's actually thought involved in it and there is you know a market to be captured based on those decisions.[27] – Jeffrey Bard
https://ashesofcreation.wiki/Legendary
There is a small RNG chance of looting rare and legendary items or crafting materials from mobs based on the level, status and type of mob. This also applies to harvesting resources with a gathering profession.[1]
There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value.[2][3][4]
Legendary equipment is only dropped by Legendary world bosses.[5]
At each stage from Gatherer to Processor to Crafter you are required to have certain prerequisites before those elite types of materials can be essentially gathered, processed, or crafted.[3] – Steven Sharif
I bet it burns undead at the touch.
I would hope so how else am I meant to punish people if not to kill them then raise the and make them suffer. Its the little things I enjoy
Crafting will still be important regardless. As someone who usually focuses heavily on gathering/crafting for my various guilds raid parties people will always need/want crafters even when you can loot items. Like, the opposite can be said with this too: If you can just pay a crafter, why do a raid? Some people will do the raid, others will fork out the cash. Either way, as a fairly hardcore crafter I'd hate if I was killing stuff and it didn't drop cool stuff. It's part of the thrill. Sure, I could make money if I was the only source for an item, but then that opens the door to everyone just crafting/gathering for themselves lowering the market once again. Offering various ways to get loot helps the economy overall because it allows people to achieve goods in a variety of ways.