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I sit back and think about games today, and remember back to what some would call a hayday. In games like EQ. Yes I realize alot of it wasnt for everyone, but something really stood out to me in modern MMOs, and thats the way gear is handled. Back in old EQ I remember playing my necro. Which was my first character to make it into the higher levels.. My cleric was the first to make it to level 50 Prekunark days. But I remember playing my necro and not really getting my first Magical Item untill i Was like level 11 or twelve.. Many of my item slots actually were filled with unmagical gear up into my 30s actually at which point it became more common. Then I look at games today. By the time you hit level 2 or 3 you have most of your slots filled with gear.. And I am not talking playing an alt later on.. Im talking at game launch. Weapons and gear seem to drop like candy making the magical items seem well not so magical. It becomes a rush for the next blue item because well the green ones arent as good. I fail to understand why we need color coded gear to begin with. Have we been dumbed down to the point in games we cant decide for ourselves by looking at the stats that an item possess what is better for the characters we play? I guess I would love to see a game where Magical items actually seemed magical. They didnt drop off every mob in the game or werent given away so easily. Back on that necro i spoke of earlier. I remember getting my first Flowing Black Robe at level 24 and feeling like WOW this is such a cool robe. It actually meant something. If you were to ask me when i got my first magical breast plate on the character I played in my current game or what the name of it was.. I will be honest and say I really couldnt remember because they throw so many named items that it really doesnt matter anymore. I would love to see a game come out that could bring the magic back to magic items. Get rid of the color codes for Retards. If something was rare the players would figure that out because you wouldnt see many of those items. A game where developers spent more time developing the way blades look then how to tweak out 1000s of different of combos of stat combinations. Imagine a game world where you start off with a fairly bland looking shortsword. but throughout gameplay you could get 100s of differents of styles of the way a sword looks.. Give mundane swords qualities instead of making them all magical.. example of qualities could be like this Balanced, Well balanced, Weighted, Keen bladed, Masterworked make different tiers of those qualities that in game crafters could imbue a blade with upon creation of the blade.. they would be generic qualities not stat effecting ones.. Then yes add some magical blades as well but make them mean something harder to attain, not impossible just harder. Just make the magical ones mean something more. Make it where crafters could take bladestyles they have learned and combine them with different types of hilts and pomels they have learned.. Think of all the time devs have to use to tweak out stats on the thousands of (not so magical) magical items that litter the games we play these days. if they were to free that up with more artistic style, games would look alot better.. Anyway just a thought. |
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Similar experience with DAoC for me. I don't remember having a magical item with some sort of stat boost or resistance till I was roughly level 13 or so. I'd just use well made regular items because there was quality to the weapons and armor in that game and it impacted the damage you did and mitigated. Only after I hit the first dungeon did I start finding magical items that would grant you 1 strength, or 1 constitution, or a weapon that increased your skill by 1. Until that point you'd rely on regular equipment or if you were lucky and knew a crafter he'd make you some high quality items that STILL were not magical. Once upon a midnight dreary, while I porn surfed, weak and weary, over many a strange and spurious site of 'hot xxx galore'. While I clicked my fav'rite bookmark, suddenly there came a warning, and my heart was filled with mourning, mourning for my dear amour, " 'Tis not possible!", I muttered, " give me back my free hardcore!"..... quoth the server, "404." |
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Everything gets old. Your favorite game from 5+ years ago was an awesome game, but it would seem mundane now. It's the same with items. Any method of item distribution will get old eventually. But some methods are better than others. Does this mean it's automatically good to find magic items at level 2? Not at all. It's all about pacing new mechanics. There should be a steady flow of new game mechanics to capture and hold player interest. Once they've mastered the previous game mechanic, a new one should be layered on top. In some cases it will make sense to introduce magic items at level 2. In others, there might be enough game mechanics tossed around that finding your first magic item at level 30 is acceptable (I get the feeling EQ1 didn't provide enough new mechanics up through level 30 for that to be true though. :P ) I may be sorta harsh on EVE, but damn is this a cool trailer (EVE Dominion). |
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You speak of the days I refer to as "pre-epic". I am posting a thread "When Did It Become All About Being the "Elitest"?" I am among the people who can remember back to when people were grateful to have ANYONE for company. Now-days people have to go through twenty questions before receiving an invite. Sadly, the video game providers are catering to the part of the community that appears to be the most vocal: the braggers. I am not trying to step on anyone's toes, brag if you want to. However, the game providers seem to be designing games where the hardcore gamer is idolized; too large of a divide between casual and hardcore. |
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Its roguelike games influence. It improves addictiveness. Removing the boundaries of power with the element of alea. and About colors... its very simple really, just like how mesmerized babies get when they see a diferent color for the first time and such effect remains untill they die. Thats why stuff is not black and white, and if you are complaining now, think that it will get worse. |
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So do tell me, what exactly is so bad about having colored rarities? Is having any resemblance of user-friendliness a fucking sin or something? Not only does separating loot into certain tiers (colors) very helpful for developers but it allows for a player to quickly see if they are interested in it or not. If you're looking for a powerful sword, for example, you don't want to have to sort through a hundred pages of random weapons on a broker or auction house. It also provides a mean for various, and more intricate, loot rules in a PvE environment. Instead of having to roll on every single item (even random trash) you can instead only roll for the big guns, or the big items are a master loot while the trash is just random roll.
You also try and mention the rarity of certain items. Well, why can't we just have some really fucking rare items if you want that? You don't need to have everyone running around with garbage bags for armor while the three guys who were lucky enough are running around with a beast weapon. You can still have that crazy rare weapon with an abundance of "normal" magical items in the game world, it simply means that that weapon is rare because it is, not because it is magical.
This is the one thing I had to point out just because of how fucking hilariously wrong it is. I understand most of what you wrote was opinion based, but this is just incorrect. For one, you realize that the stats on all of those thousands of random "green" magical items are just that, right? They either have random, pre-determined modifiers pop up on a weapon (of the wolf, of the bear, of the owl, ect.) or they have a random assortment of stats on the weapon. This is done through a formula often times based on what the items level is and also what its rarity is. So, for example, say they have it set up so a green weapon can not get more than +6 in any stat at level 20, and has a maximum of +12 it can get. So a weapon could have like +1 str, +6 dex, +5 con or whatever. They also generally set up parameters so that useless stats don't appear, like a magic based stat on an axe. The other misinformed part of this is that the developers who are coming up with the stats for the weapon are in no way the same people who are doing the design for the weapon. Maybe in a very small indie studio you might get that, but in general you have your developers and you have your artists (2D concept art, 3D art) and your programmers, ect. To think that just because a developer is doing a bit more work means that the artists can't come up with cool weaponry is just a foolish excuse.
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I find the color coded rarities used in some games somewhat annoying as well, but as the last poster pointed out, you need to have some way to identify weapon quality, for the broker/auction house if nothing else. I play EQ2, it doesn't use color codes but it still has tiers of rarity, going from common to Treasured to Legendary to Fabled to Mythical. The actual quality of the items varies of course, and often a lower tier item is better for a particular character. If you didn't have some kind of identifier it would make it a nightmare to find what you're looking for. As for your basic theme - people like magic items. If you want to play a game where magic and magic items are downplayed, I'd recommend Lord of the Rings Online - it certainly is the closest you're going to find. Most of the items you find and make are not overtly magical, and those that are are usually quite powerful. -------------------------------- |
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See i watch color coded items cause false inflations of certain items... IE you might have a level 50 green that is actually better than a level 48 blue stat wise but the blue sells for 10 times the cost the green does... Base it on level and let the players decide... I have never said either to take magic items out of the game I said make them less common so the ones that are there actually mean something. Instead of giving stat bonuses on every item in the game give some weapons qualities like the examples i listed. I realize not everyone would agree but at least we can agree to disagree, no reason for anyone to start getting insulting though in the disagreement. |
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That's actually very simple to understand why. A level 48 player can use that blue weapon, they can't use the green. In a game like WoW where they do PvP by brackets that blue may even be worth a lot more due to the lvl 48 weapon being on the upper end of that 40-49 bracket, and thus being a very good weapon. Plus, the rarity. That blue item is still rarer than the green item. There might be one or two of the blue on the AH, and there will probably be like 20 of that green item (variants, usually, but still.)
I still disagree with that though, and I never said that you wanted to remove them completely. I just think that having magical items with random stats on them gives at least a little bit of choice at the lower levels, especially in deciding equipment.
Honestly I find it more interesting to try and figure out what is better between two similar green items, but with a different assortment of stats, than just getting a fairly obvious progression like you suggested. Having things like "masterwork" crafting items is great (and Aion actually has those, where you have a chance to "crit" a craft and get a better quality crafted item than what you were making) but I think having stats on gear is the way to go. It just makes it more interesting I find than the traditional things like " +1 Broadsword ". I only got "insulting" (and I never actually did go outright and just insult you personally, by the way) when you started to state some incredibly wrong "facts" to back up your idea.
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