Ouch, just got the news that my application to work for Intrepid got rejected, that means I will literally have no spare time to keep coming up with ideas and concepts based on my previous professional experience, but I'm pretty sure you'll do just fine without me. Anyway, I wrote this stuff yesterday, and improved the design concept for the loot table some more (I hate it, wouldn't use it like this, but like I said, don't have much time).
1. When there's a considerable difference between people's MAX gear level (like in WoW), the lower geared people would gain the option to 2x roll for an item in a dungeon.
So if you do a dungeon and a Bind on Pickup item drops, and there are 2 mages in the team, one with a high item level and one with a low item level, if the item level difference is extreme, the lower geared mage can "need roll" 2 times, and his highest roll will be considered his main entry, while the high geared mage can only need on it once. It can be limited to moderate level gear, not talking about endgame raid level gear here; and again "main gear" is the key word, not mounts or greed based items.
2. An idea for later implementation when people will have alts:
Bind on -account- gear you can farm on your main, in endgame dungeons, to gear your alts?
Similar to the Heirloom system in WoW, but you would need to actually play and farm for them if you hate leveling, and in a way power level yourself.
It would be nice to have alt run dungeons, in certain dungeons where you can only need roll for alts you have actively created on your account. People could even create an alt run with "Need for alt" being the only rolling option.
This would increase the chances people would play alts, as they could farm them a full gear set for every zone, or every fixed amount of levels, so they could power level themselves and not be stuck on replaying the entire campaign, or quest in a traditional way, to reach endgame with an alt.
More alts = more in game time spent.|
Leveling an alt traditionally is time spent in game, but most people burnout pretty fast when it's about replaying the whole game.
3. The loot table could be a scrollable list, in a similar way I have designed this concept (image attached to this post).
I find your current loot table simply copy + pasted from all the other MMOs, nothing special there.
I have designed a plain white background, but the background of each item could be something representative to the item: e.g. A chain mail background for metallic weapons and armors. A leather background for items made for leather armor wearers, etc.
The loot table could be a scrollable menu:
Item5
----
Item4
----
Item3
----
Item2
----
Item1
Stats
Pass Need
4. Double Greed on greed only items:
Loot concept:,
For the secondary loot list you have the following:
A list of items
Mushrooms Pass Greed x2
Flowers Pass Greed
Fish Pass Greed x2
Potatoes Pass Greed x2
Perfume Pass Greed
--
Pass all Greed all
Let's say you have 1 specialization active, in this case it's cook.
Notice how only the items used in cooking (your main profession) have the 2x roll option.
That doesn't mean that by default you would win. Only that you have an extra chance to obtain the items that you actually need, to use in your profession, rather than someone who would only sell then on the market for a slight profit.
OR:
Another concept would be to have the x2 roll option on Every single greed item, but if you Greed X2 on something , you must pass on all the other items that dropped (all the other Greed items, to be clear):
Silver spoon Pass Greed x2
Mandrake roots Pass Greed x2
Vial of acid Pass Greed x2
Yeti fur Pass Greed x2
Cat whiskers Pass Greed x2
Pig tail Pass Greed x2
--
Pass all Greed all
So you only increase the chance to win the item you truly need, while automatically being locked out on rolling on the rest.
This feature would be cool if endgame professions had reagents that are non-tradeable, and can only be obtained as a small drop chance in your daily first dungeon run.
Then the x2 roll chance would truly show its value.
Either way would work, and make the game more interesting and more rewarding for YOU, rather than making it "fair" for everyone, and having you frustrated that you raided for 2 months and you still didn't get the "silver spoon" you needed to create your profession's transmog Hat, and being untradeable others went full Greed on it because it can sell for raw gold as a trash item. Horrible example, but I think you get why I made this suggestion.
This is the more dynamic loot table I mentioned above:
Before I go, I have 1 more suggestion for the devs that is not really related to this post but it could be valuable:
Mount rarities (qualities).
Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary, etc.
Now, every mount of course looks better based on its quality, and costs more in the shop, BUT the legendary mounts would also have an animation or benefit ingame.
Like: You have this Bulldog + goat mount you showed us on facebook last week I think. Make it slow down a bit and pull the player in the direction of a hidden treasure or open world boss.
Make the gaming experience seem more realistic.
Like, it starts barking and pulling you towards a boss. You get a genuine experience, and get some emotional investment into the said mount, like you're along your actual pet.
Everyone should get a Legendary mount whenever they start playing the game, as an incentive, then design some water mounts that find treasures underwater, etc.
Those treasures shouldn't be something valuable, so people won't call it pay to win; mostly cosmetics. Or make the chest loot valuable but let every f2p player have a chance to obtain a free mount of each category.
I will definitely play the game when it comes out, and be cheering for the devs to nail it with this MMO, as it might be the last hope for the genre. I do feel regrets for not making it into the team as I'm sure I could have contributed many concepts based on my previous experience with all the MMO communities. Good luck y'all, make us all a great game!
What did you like and what didn't you like about how stats were displayed on equipment?
- I think you nailed the most important aspect (group acceptance of loot rule changes).
Regarding equipment and looting UI, while ours is a work-in-progress, what do you think other games do well?
- Make sure loot voting is paused until post combat, to avoid frentic "I need to consider wether I need or greed this item, and that takes priority over healing my buddies" situations.
There were some discussions in this thread that I wanted to provide some clarity to.
The moment during one of the recordings, in which a piece of gear is not tradable, is a bug in the build version they recorded on. The bug made items untradable. Most of the items in Ashes of Creation will be tradable, with some exceptions, which may be items such as some questing items, for example.
The Titanbark armor set the team looted is an exclusive cosmetic set for players who purchased that pre-order pack. Items with those identical appearances will not be dropped in-game. Instead, they are costume ensembles that players can apply over their entire character. This goes for all of the pre-order pack cosmetic pieces that may be seen in the monthly Development Update Livestreams.
Finally, there was some feedback regarding balancing, such as the drop rates of materials, or even gear, off of the mobs. These have to do with design and balancing passes that have not been implemented into the game. The team will hone in on finalized balancing during the Beta stages of the game's development.
I hope this clarifies what was seen during the January Development Update Livestream!
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akabearMember, Braver of Worlds, Kickstarter, Alpha One
What did you like and what didn't you like about how stats were displayed on equipment?
+ the ability to sort and filter
- didnt see bag slots, these are a nice feature, both for economy and monetization (buying bag slots)
- stat name like "physical disable chance" this will require an ingame wiki and/or tutorials for the sake of "dont make me think" paradigm. Do we mean a stun/silence/stagger, give me language I'm familiar with already? Also, we use "chance" here but for crits its "rating", will we have both in game (I mean will there be flat chance on items or will all be going through "rating" caluclations as for these I'd want to see what does this rating translate to for mobs of my level)?
Regarding equipment and looting UI, while ours is a work-in-progress, what do you think other games do well?
Guld Wars 2 does it well with the "loot all", "looting stuff around you" and spawning reward pouches at your feet in the large scale pvp (world vs world) with the option to get "auto-loot" for those as a progression reward.
The just released "Gloria Victis", it has an interesting system:
- items are tiered (1-5)
- items can be crafted with +0 to +6 (where around +3 is the same as a +0 item of higher tier)
- chance to craft higher +X is increased with crafting skill level, workbench level (this can be upgraded in nodes by given nation, later to be downgraded whenever a nation captures the node, with nodes on the frontlines having capacity for higher levels of workbenches)
- higher workbench level also increases chance for quantity in a recipe, so if a recipe says "make 1-10 bandages", a workbench of level +3 will statistically produce more items withing that range than a +1 workbench
- items have durability, repairing an item lowers its max durability and its stats which is the best way for an economy
- players can craft/obtain "equipmen reinforcment kits"(single use) with which they can try to upgrade the item from +x to +x+1 with a chance to destroy the item, also good for economy
- players can enter "loot zone" where on death, another player can loot stuff from you for 30 seconds (until u can respawn), but he has 10 points to "spend" where taking something you wear is 8 points and taking one slot off your backpack is 2 points, allowing the looter to take 1 worn + 1 backpack slot or 5 backpack slots. Other players can cover your body or hit the enemy to break his looting action. This creates a nice dynamic of "fight or loot" while also provides a nice incentive for pvp while not being "full loot" which always ends up in a failed mmo. https://wiki.gloriavictisgame.com/index.php/Looting
- another thing about crafting and itemization is how we discover recipes. Here we have those being dropped by bosses and in map events (for example, when you complete a stage of the event, you get a choice of money, some consumables or a chest giving you a random recipe from given category), players can later trade it in the AH, give or exchange it inside their guild to "get ahead" or learn themselves. Another thing is knowing where you can obtain given recipe. For example, imagine one node developing a given guild to make some recipes available that can later be sold in other places on the map by players in that community for profit.
There were some discussions in this thread that I wanted to provide some clarity to.
The moment during one of the recordings, in which a piece of gear is not tradable, is a bug in the build version they recorded on. The bug made items untradable. Most of the items in Ashes of Creation will be tradable, with some exceptions, which may be items such as some questing items, for example.
The Titanbark armor set the team looted is an exclusive cosmetic set for players who purchased that pre-order pack. Items with those identical appearances will not be dropped in-game. Instead, they are costume ensembles that players can apply over their entire character. This goes for all of the pre-order pack cosmetic pieces that may be seen in the monthly Development Update Livestreams.
Finally, there was some feedback regarding balancing, such as the drop rates of materials, or even gear, off of the mobs. These have to do with design and balancing passes that have not been implemented into the game. The team will hone in on finalized balancing during the Beta stages of the game's development.
I hope this clarifies what was seen during the January Development Update Livestream!
Thanks @Vaknar ! really appreciate clarifications like this one! really nice for the devs to take the time and address some of our concerns
I really enjoyed the loot rules and the vote confirmation feature in the looting UI. High five for that!
Although I appreciate the simplicity of the looting UI, I have one suggestion to make it better. I would prefer if the tooltip appeared when I hover over the name of the item as well, not just the icon. This is just my personal preference because I find it tiring to aim perfectly on small icons. As a player, I prefer having tooltips pop up as I move my mouse around.
PvE means: A handful of coins and a bag of boredom.
I really want the ability names instead of icons since modern monitors are much larger and higher resolution then the 15in CRT I used back when wow was new the need to save space is less pressing I have spent my entire life using words so when I start playing a new game if the ability names are written out I can recognize the words and know what they mean with no transition time to learn a new set of icons
Comments
1. When there's a considerable difference between people's MAX gear level (like in WoW), the lower geared people would gain the option to 2x roll for an item in a dungeon.
So if you do a dungeon and a Bind on Pickup item drops, and there are 2 mages in the team, one with a high item level and one with a low item level, if the item level difference is extreme, the lower geared mage can "need roll" 2 times, and his highest roll will be considered his main entry, while the high geared mage can only need on it once. It can be limited to moderate level gear, not talking about endgame raid level gear here; and again "main gear" is the key word, not mounts or greed based items.
2. An idea for later implementation when people will have alts:
Bind on -account- gear you can farm on your main, in endgame dungeons, to gear your alts?
Similar to the Heirloom system in WoW, but you would need to actually play and farm for them if you hate leveling, and in a way power level yourself.
It would be nice to have alt run dungeons, in certain dungeons where you can only need roll for alts you have actively created on your account. People could even create an alt run with "Need for alt" being the only rolling option.
This would increase the chances people would play alts, as they could farm them a full gear set for every zone, or every fixed amount of levels, so they could power level themselves and not be stuck on replaying the entire campaign, or quest in a traditional way, to reach endgame with an alt.
More alts = more in game time spent.|
Leveling an alt traditionally is time spent in game, but most people burnout pretty fast when it's about replaying the whole game.
3. The loot table could be a scrollable list, in a similar way I have designed this concept (image attached to this post).
I find your current loot table simply copy + pasted from all the other MMOs, nothing special there.
I have designed a plain white background, but the background of each item could be something representative to the item: e.g. A chain mail background for metallic weapons and armors. A leather background for items made for leather armor wearers, etc.
The loot table could be a scrollable menu:
Item5
----
Item4
----
Item3
----
Item2
----
Item1
Stats
Pass Need
4. Double Greed on greed only items:
Loot concept:,
For the secondary loot list you have the following:
A list of items
Mushrooms Pass Greed x2
Flowers Pass Greed
Fish Pass Greed x2
Potatoes Pass Greed x2
Perfume Pass Greed
--
Pass all Greed all
Let's say you have 1 specialization active, in this case it's cook.
Notice how only the items used in cooking (your main profession) have the 2x roll option.
That doesn't mean that by default you would win. Only that you have an extra chance to obtain the items that you actually need, to use in your profession, rather than someone who would only sell then on the market for a slight profit.
OR:
Another concept would be to have the x2 roll option on Every single greed item, but if you Greed X2 on something , you must pass on all the other items that dropped (all the other Greed items, to be clear):
Silver spoon Pass Greed x2
Mandrake roots Pass Greed x2
Vial of acid Pass Greed x2
Yeti fur Pass Greed x2
Cat whiskers Pass Greed x2
Pig tail Pass Greed x2
--
Pass all Greed all
So you only increase the chance to win the item you truly need, while automatically being locked out on rolling on the rest.
This feature would be cool if endgame professions had reagents that are non-tradeable, and can only be obtained as a small drop chance in your daily first dungeon run.
Then the x2 roll chance would truly show its value.
Either way would work, and make the game more interesting and more rewarding for YOU, rather than making it "fair" for everyone, and having you frustrated that you raided for 2 months and you still didn't get the "silver spoon" you needed to create your profession's transmog Hat, and being untradeable others went full Greed on it because it can sell for raw gold as a trash item. Horrible example, but I think you get why I made this suggestion.
This is the more dynamic loot table I mentioned above:
Before I go, I have 1 more suggestion for the devs that is not really related to this post but it could be valuable:
Mount rarities (qualities).
Common, Rare, Epic, Legendary, etc.
Now, every mount of course looks better based on its quality, and costs more in the shop, BUT the legendary mounts would also have an animation or benefit ingame.
Like: You have this Bulldog + goat mount you showed us on facebook last week I think. Make it slow down a bit and pull the player in the direction of a hidden treasure or open world boss.
Make the gaming experience seem more realistic.
Like, it starts barking and pulling you towards a boss. You get a genuine experience, and get some emotional investment into the said mount, like you're along your actual pet.
Everyone should get a Legendary mount whenever they start playing the game, as an incentive, then design some water mounts that find treasures underwater, etc.
Those treasures shouldn't be something valuable, so people won't call it pay to win; mostly cosmetics. Or make the chest loot valuable but let every f2p player have a chance to obtain a free mount of each category.
I will definitely play the game when it comes out, and be cheering for the devs to nail it with this MMO, as it might be the last hope for the genre. I do feel regrets for not making it into the team as I'm sure I could have contributed many concepts based on my previous experience with all the MMO communities. Good luck y'all, make us all a great game!
- I think you nailed the most important aspect (group acceptance of loot rule changes).
Regarding equipment and looting UI, while ours is a work-in-progress, what do you think other games do well?
- Make sure loot voting is paused until post combat, to avoid frentic "I need to consider wether I need or greed this item, and that takes priority over healing my buddies" situations.
Good job!
There were some discussions in this thread that I wanted to provide some clarity to.
The moment during one of the recordings, in which a piece of gear is not tradable, is a bug in the build version they recorded on. The bug made items untradable. Most of the items in Ashes of Creation will be tradable, with some exceptions, which may be items such as some questing items, for example.
The Titanbark armor set the team looted is an exclusive cosmetic set for players who purchased that pre-order pack. Items with those identical appearances will not be dropped in-game. Instead, they are costume ensembles that players can apply over their entire character. This goes for all of the pre-order pack cosmetic pieces that may be seen in the monthly Development Update Livestreams.
Finally, there was some feedback regarding balancing, such as the drop rates of materials, or even gear, off of the mobs. These have to do with design and balancing passes that have not been implemented into the game. The team will hone in on finalized balancing during the Beta stages of the game's development.
I hope this clarifies what was seen during the January Development Update Livestream!
+ the ability to sort and filter
- didnt see bag slots, these are a nice feature, both for economy and monetization (buying bag slots)
- stat name like "physical disable chance" this will require an ingame wiki and/or tutorials for the sake of "dont make me think" paradigm. Do we mean a stun/silence/stagger, give me language I'm familiar with already? Also, we use "chance" here but for crits its "rating", will we have both in game (I mean will there be flat chance on items or will all be going through "rating" caluclations as for these I'd want to see what does this rating translate to for mobs of my level)?
Guld Wars 2 does it well with the "loot all", "looting stuff around you" and spawning reward pouches at your feet in the large scale pvp (world vs world) with the option to get "auto-loot" for those as a progression reward.
The just released "Gloria Victis", it has an interesting system:
- items are tiered (1-5)
- items can be crafted with +0 to +6 (where around +3 is the same as a +0 item of higher tier)
- chance to craft higher +X is increased with crafting skill level, workbench level (this can be upgraded in nodes by given nation, later to be downgraded whenever a nation captures the node, with nodes on the frontlines having capacity for higher levels of workbenches)
- higher workbench level also increases chance for quantity in a recipe, so if a recipe says "make 1-10 bandages", a workbench of level +3 will statistically produce more items withing that range than a +1 workbench
- items have durability, repairing an item lowers its max durability and its stats which is the best way for an economy
- players can craft/obtain "equipmen reinforcment kits"(single use) with which they can try to upgrade the item from +x to +x+1 with a chance to destroy the item, also good for economy
- players can enter "loot zone" where on death, another player can loot stuff from you for 30 seconds (until u can respawn), but he has 10 points to "spend" where taking something you wear is 8 points and taking one slot off your backpack is 2 points, allowing the looter to take 1 worn + 1 backpack slot or 5 backpack slots. Other players can cover your body or hit the enemy to break his looting action. This creates a nice dynamic of "fight or loot" while also provides a nice incentive for pvp while not being "full loot" which always ends up in a failed mmo.
https://wiki.gloriavictisgame.com/index.php/Looting
- another thing about crafting and itemization is how we discover recipes. Here we have those being dropped by bosses and in map events (for example, when you complete a stage of the event, you get a choice of money, some consumables or a chest giving you a random recipe from given category), players can later trade it in the AH, give or exchange it inside their guild to "get ahead" or learn themselves. Another thing is knowing where you can obtain given recipe. For example, imagine one node developing a given guild to make some recipes available that can later be sold in other places on the map by players in that community for profit.
Thanks @Vaknar ! really appreciate clarifications like this one! really nice for the devs to take the time and address some of our concerns
Although I appreciate the simplicity of the looting UI, I have one suggestion to make it better. I would prefer if the tooltip appeared when I hover over the name of the item as well, not just the icon. This is just my personal preference because I find it tiring to aim perfectly on small icons. As a player, I prefer having tooltips pop up as I move my mouse around.