Enchanting systems. (Silver sword +8)

Putting aside p2w (which has nothing to do with the topic) I want to discuss and see your opinions on enchanting systems and what would you ideally have in an mmorpg. Again, I am not talking about p2w from the official game store.
Nor do I give a f* if somebody decides to meet up with someone inrl, trade their gear and get paid for $. There is nothing developers can do about the second case, except for dumping down the game and making it a boring experience in which in order to avoid p2w go to extreme measures such as 90% of gear being bound on pick up, except for lv 1-5 I guess, making gold non tradable, not having /trade interaction etc etc etc.

In BDO, a game that I think most people have checked out, you can spend time, effort and gold to get your gear to +16 for better stats. Then you could enchant it again and it became "DUO", then again you could take the risk and enchant it to "TRI", all the way up to "PEN" as in penta as in +super five, as in strong as f*.
The problem I have with that game was that for an enchanting attempt you needed:

an identical item to the one you wanted to enchant
gold
more that 30 different enchanting materials taking up space in your inventory/bank doing exactly the same thing( +1 your item), from which at items you needed 1 or 2 or 5 or 10 depending on a number of random reasons all for the same result (+1 your item).

If you wanted to PvP in that game you had to have the maximum enchanted gear. The difference of a PEN player vs anything TRI and bellow was like lv1 to lv100. So everybody was forced to enchant. Not loot, not craft, not discover. Just enchant. You pick the build you want for your class (narrow selection btw) and you just spend the rest of your gaming enchanting that gear.

Another terrible example of enchanting system can be found in ArcheAge Unchained, for different reasons.
you'd pick heavy, robe, leather (+ your weapons) and just be forced to log in EVERY DAY to do the dailies and be rewarded with the enchanting scrolls and enchanting materials. God forbid you missed a day of playing for the DAILIES.

I understand that enchanting should be rewarding
A player that decides to enchant their gear:

risks destroying items in the attempt
puts a lot of effort into gaining superior combat stats
is selfish, instead of spending time helping the guilds new members

It only makes sense that if you go down the path of having the strongest gear there are some drawbacks but it shouldn't be as bad as BDO and AAU.

NOR should having enchanted gear be a massive difference to non enchanted gear. What I mean by that...

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George_Black

My 2 favourite mmorpgs also happened to have the best gear enchant (silver sword +3) systems.
In Tera online if I remember the maximum cap was +12 and the weapons had a red glow at least when I played in the first couple of years. I know I never got to the max enchant, my weapons had a purple glow. I remember I was slightly bellow max, but I could still fight people that had maximum enchant. It was a bit more difficult than other players but IT WAS NOT IMPOSSIBLE to win. Even in lower numbers, a +6 gear didn't give the player that much of an advantage to a +3 or 9 to 7.

Yes it was a bit time consuming, yes it was a selfish path to follow, yes it gave you an edge in combat, but it wasn't mandatory nor would make you obliterate your opponent.

LineAge 2.

The simpliest and best enchanting system of all mmorpgs.
The official max enchant was +16. The chances were lower for armor and jewels than weapons. A +16 weapon in L2 was godlike compared to a +3.
But you know what? Achieving anything above +3 was extremely risky in L2. If it didn't go +4 it went boom. Item destroyed. +5? even worse chances. +16? Impossible. Few did it tho.

For me it was mandatory that I had to get +4 twin swords for reasons I won't go in as to not derail the topic. I also had a +6 armor set because I liked the look of my armor and I didnt want to get higher gear (there were no skins then).
Enchanting any item beyond +3 was a suicide mission. Most high end players would be happy with a +3 or +5 full set. It would give them an advantage in combat, but nothing extreme. It required a lot luck to successfully make it happen, a lot of gold to get your hands on an enchanting item or time to find one, and a lot of effort to craft or loot the item you lost in an unsuccessful attempt.

There was only one item needed to enchant an item. Scroll of Armor Enchant or Scroll of Weapon enchant.
These items could be looted with a small chance by any player from mobs in certain locations. In other locations the would be farmed with a slightly better chance from a gathered class (from mobs again) or they could be looted by raid bosses or world bosses(epic) for fairly good chances and good amounts per kill.

George_Black

What I find bad enchanting systems are:

the ones that enable players with enchanted gear players to dominate non enchanted gear players, not simple have the advantage.
the ones that are forced to you by linking enchanting to dailies
the ones that force you into this gambling gameplay if you want to be competitive either in PvE or PvP.
the ones that require to have a million items in your inventory or bank, and all they do is this: +1 enchanted successful!! +2 enchanted successful!!

What I find good enchanting systems are:

Enchanting items should be rare and fun to look for, but simple.
Enchanting should give you an advantage but not godlike strength
Enchanting should give you some what godlike strength if it is EXTREMELY RISKY to successfully enchant, like in L2.

What are your thoughts on enchanting process, the gambling nature of it, the fairness of it?

PS.
Enchanted items should totally matter in arenas or any other competition. If you risked getting your gear stronger, if you selfishly looked out only for your self and ignored your guild mates, then yes, I don't mind if you have better chances of beating me in a competition. Everyone will know I did my best against your better gear.

PS. 2
Weapons looking like lightsabers are so silly..
I get the auras to show strength and the color code, but it has to be nicely animated.

Ravudha

What I look for in an enchanting system is having the results be commensurate to the effort put in, so I hate systems like BDOs where it's largely based on randomness.

Some randomness is OK, but the system shouldn't allow one person to gain x enchantment levels in 5 tries where it could take someone else 50 tries; that just creates an arbitrarily unfair and labourious grind.

I think I just don't like the hidden nature of a singular random roll that determines enchantment success; I'd rather see that randomness distributed to more manageable and transparent steps that require player interaction, like when acquiring rare materials.

maouw

If you make the earlier stages of enchantment matter more than the later stages - would that help balance the difference between a +7 player and a +9 player?
I reckon they should be able to fight without +9 completely dominating +7.
+0 deserves to be overwhelmed by a +2, imo.
Still, it would make me question whether it's worth risking going from +11 to +12 if there are diminishing returns. but then ... if you wanna be top 1%...

I have a feeling that this would actually feel pretty good for an enchanting system.

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A huge advantage of using duplicate items in the enchantment system: The economy doesn't get clogged with equipment that won't sell.
This means there is always demand for the equipment because all equipment is being sinkholed into enchantment - and this enourages economic activity.
I know we're already going to have a sinkhole via the crafting system for this, but enchanting is another option.

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Going completely against the grain, my favourite experience was with enhancement crystals in a private server where each piece of equipment could only be upgraded 3 times.
These crystals had 0% failure chance, but instead, the stat bonus was normally distributed RNG (skewed down slightly).
tier 1 crystals added: +1% total damage, 0 - 100 stat bonus (usually you'd roll ~40)
tier 2 crystals added: +2% total damage, 0 - 250 stat bonus (usually you'd roll ~100)
tier 3 crystals added: +5% total damage, 0 - 800 stat bonus (usually you'd roll ~250)

This meant the average t3 equipment wasn't useless (+8% total damage, +400 stat bonus)
The community developed a soft expectation that everyone had +800 stat equipment
The real hardcore people had +1000 stat equipment.

If you weren't happy with how a crystal rolled, you could spend currency from a raid to reset an item to tier 0.
This meant most people were constantly rolling an extra set of gear to ones they were wearing until the extra set exceeded their current set.

t1 crystals were dropped somewhat rarely by low level creatures, but the demand for t1 crystals was healthy so it meant wealth would trickle down to beginners.
Whereas t3 crystals were only dropped by end-game creatures, so you'd always perfect your t1 and t2 rolls before you attempted a t3 roll.

Major downsides to this:

The exponential increase in gear stats meant the stats you got from crystals accounted for 90% of your damage output
people who got unlucky (coz it happens) got extremely angry. Like, world chat had someone typing in all caps every half an hour.

Atama

TERA’s enchant system is dull. Just boring pluses that are so grindy and don’t offer anything more exciting than stats that are a bit higher and maybe a glow. I hope Ashes does something far different; make enchantments be gear-specific augments that do more than boost numbers. I like how WoW did it somewhat, where you had varying different effects per enchantment.

Maezriel

Personally I don't like enchants that are just raw stat or damage bonuses. I think that should be part of an Enhancement system tied to blacksmithing and armorsmithing.

Enchanting should bring w/ it unique attributes like lifesteal or elemental damage/resistance which you can then enhance in a similar method to what you described.

I do agree w/ @Ravudha that pure randomness just feels bad so I wouldn't mind a safety net where if you failed 3-6 times in a row your chances of a success is increased significantly so that at some point you're near guaranteed an upgrade. Of course have it be a stacking tracker for only that one item so that you can't game the system by purposefully failing on a different item to increase your chances for the one you really want.

George_Black

Atama wrote: »

TERA’s enchant system is dull. Just boring pluses that are so grindy and don’t offer anything more exciting than stats that are a bit higher and maybe a glow. I hope Ashes does something far different; make enchantments be gear-specific augments that do more than boost numbers. I like how WoW did it somewhat, where you had varying different effects per enchantment.

That's what the topic is about. Not gear auqmentation (bonus effects)

Noaani

I like the general notion of L2 over BDO in regards to this.

A system that requires an identicle item in order to enchant means would very easily break itemization in a game where gear is not going to have as much of an impact as it does in many others (which is something Intrepid are planning for Ashes).

If I loot a very rare item, it needs to already be better than any more common item can possibly be enchanted to, otherwise I am better off getting many of that more common item and enchanting one up as far as I dare.

To me, there needs to be specific items used to enchant gear - as per L2. I personally prefer it if it is a number of items needed, each item coming from a different activity (an item grown on freeholds, an item that is a mob drop and an item that alchemists make, as an example), but this is for reasons that are not specifically related to enchanting.

I also agree with Atama that pure enchanting systems are a little boring - but Ashes currently (last I heard) plan on having a "rune" system to add effects and such, as well as an enchanting system.

Vhaeyne

I love enchanting systems, but they need to be brutal. I never played BDO because it did not look like a good game at anytime to me. The description OP left of it sounds like a bad implementation of it. From what I remember Tera also really dropped the ball on their enchanting system. You did not lost the item, just the mats on failure. This is really devalues the whole idea of a enchant system. Total Item loss needs to be a risk at all times when Over-enchanting. That is what Lineage 2 did right. When total item loss is a ever present possibility it means that only the biggest clans and richest players will risk Over-enchanting. When it is an expectation like some games than it just creates a grind where you have to OC to be viable because everyone is OC. Also loot drop on death has to be a possibly. The old Eve online phrase "Don't take it out of dock if you cant afford to lose it.". Without these checks and balances to the system the enchanting system is just a pointless feather that everyone will have in their cap. The enchanting system should be their to service the economy by allowing the rich clans and players a reason to buy resources from other players.

AoC is a open world PvP game with an assumed high focus on economy. One of the other systems that AoC will have that most MMOs don't is a more harsh repair system. From what I read, you will be using the same mats to make gear to repair gear. It is not going to be a simple system like WOW where you pop in and pay a few gold. This takes the place of the soul-shot system in L2 where you used the mats from failed OC attempts to get more power out of your weapon. The difference here is that you gear is always at full-power but needs to be maintained. I am very hopeful that AoC stays on the path it looks like it is going where it is closer to Eve and l2, and stay clear from the way Tera,BDO and Archage seem to do things.

I acknowledge that some of that is my own biased speculation.

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