Equipment Drop System

I've been thinking about this for awhile. I don't know when, or if, the equipment rebalancing will ever come about, so I will propose an alternative system here.

The problem:

Equipment is distributed in such a way that it tends towards two extremes: You have enough and have no real need/there is no other EQ around for you to get. You don't have enough, but there is still no way to get what you want to fight the people who outgear you considerably.

Raising the rare count devalues the EQ, overpowers the combat mechanics (values are too high), and strongly benefits the "burst" players (people who play (aggressive) characters that are online for many hours in a short time, but don't last very long in RL terms).

Lowering the rare count inflates the value of armor and strongly benefits the "unkillable" players (those who play so cautiously/are so powerful that they can't be reasonably killed without extremely good gear).

The premise:

We need a system that still has 'rare' and 'unique' values, but ones that are not absolute yes: the armor is in, or no: the armor is not in.

One solution:

Randomization of EQ values and rarity. First, you make all gear available at all times. Second, you give a percentage for a mundane, rare, or unique piece of that gear to spawn on the mob. Then finally you create a system of random effects to be added to the piece of gear, depending on its spawned value.

Take for example, the emerald sword. You go the draconian king and it will always be there, every time. It will always look the same. However, after you pick it up, you might notice that the stats are slightly different each time. There is a high chance you will just get a normal emerald sword, no socket, nothing special. If you are lucky, a rare one will spawn with some random attribute (for example +2 avg damage, socket, some kind of weapon flag, hit/dam bonus, whatever). If you are really lucky, a unique one will spawn (again, more powerful attributes). If you keep killing the draconian king, eventually you will get a rare/unique weapon, but you will never know exactly what it will do until you have it.

This would have some huge effects in the game. Instead of doing a gear run and locating all the gear and planning who gets what, you wouldn't know what you wanted until you IDed each piece and saw what was better/worse than the stuff you are currently carrying.

Every time you went to grab a piece of equipment, at least you know it is there, even if it is not an ideal piece that you want. This means you don't just look around at some mobs and log out if it isn't there. It encourages you to stay and keep trying.

On the other end of the spectrum, nobody would ever get an ideal suit. It would take much longer than now. So even people with 'good' gear would still have things to look forward to try to get or improve. Most gear runs would only drop a few 'rare' pieces, for example.

When you loot somebody, you don't know how good each piece is, so you can't just get all and start saccing or loot efficiently. It may very well be that her ring of accuracy is trash but her scourge cloak is uniquely awesome.

When fighting, you don't know exactly if that emerald sword is nodrop, noremove, burnproof, or what...you can't just look at the EQ and decide your exact strategy. You would know that it tends to be one way, but you would never know for sure without trying.

Building:

The builder builds the basic stats of the item at the rare level. Mundane drops would have something lowered/taken away, whereas uniques would be slightly boosted. Also some small variation of the stats on each spawn.

This is the beauty of our PB - it is so rich of ideas that you just have to give it a general direction and its creativity will burst out.

Celerity, while able to create completely sh!tty ideas while using 1000+ words, can sometimes come out with absolute gems. This is one.

I can't explain how much I love this idea.

Just one small thing I would like to add - there should be bonuses to wearing whole (and even partial) sets of EQ.

For example the mithril set:

You wear two pieces => +1 hit

Three pieces => +1 dam

Four pieces => +1 svs

Complete set => double of each individual bonus.

This will help for larger variety immensely, especially if coupled with Cel's idea.

Also, one more add:

Rare and unique items can be coloured differently.

For example non rare mithril vest will be normal color.

Rare mithril vest will be dark yellow.

Unique mithril vest will be golden yellow (bright yellow).

PS. WTF happened with the rumor idea?

So... we are playing Diablo 2? Not bashing, I still play D2... just curious if that is what you are driving at.

D2 is the ****

Trang'ouls full!

D2 is the ****

Trang'ouls full!

Yeah... or you could have eq worth a damn... either way...

I feel like this idea, along with the other idea about X amount time having to pass before a mob appears, would do little but encourage the bad *** group of nastiness to just camp out the elite equipment... it creates a huge incentive to never PK or even be alone.

Longer respawns on rare-holding mobs? Instead of it being 2-3 hour ticks IG, make it more like 12-24.

Also, I think that if there can be much better stats, there should be a chance it has worse stats as well.

And I think that it shouldn't change the color, but there should be some sort of way to tell that it's better/worse than normal. Maybe when you lore/identify the item, it says if it's below/average/above normal.

Longer respawns on rare-holding mobs? Instead of it being 2-3 hour ticks IG' date=' make it more like 12-24.[/quote']

What would that change anyway?

Not like you kill adeptus every 5 minutes.

Also, I don't think both systems should be implemented together, because that might just make things worse than they are at the moment.

First you wait a week for an item to reappear then you get an item that is weaker than the normal thing. Not to mention if someone else gets it before you.

Perhaps Cel should have mentioned the percentages she has in mind for such normal/rare/unique items to appear, but I was thinking something along the lines of 60/30/10.

I'm all for this idea.

Oddly enough, I'm not up for that much chaos. This system is more of a benefit to us older players still. What an item is is what it should be. Where's the point of putting in all this time to share knowledge and organize it when this would just make all that work nearly worthless?

I would implore patience for the overhaul of the current system. The equipment still does not make the PKer. This would, in the long run, create an even bigger learning curve for newer players.

All I know, is that with the current lack of rares on mobs, and the often 1 - 2 people on in the 50 pk range during my play time...that there is NOTHING to do, so I find it a yawn just to login.

Yeah, this just seems to make it even harder to get rares in all honesty. It's a great creative idea...but I think functionally it would be more of a headache.

...but I think functionally it would be more of a headache.

I don't know what you mean by "more of a headache".

If you mean it will be harder to implement, then yes, I agree.

Both yours and Cel's ideas are good and they should at least be considered. And while I personally prefer Cel's idea, yes, it will take more time and effort to implement it, while on the other hand your idea will take like 1 hour.

More of a headache for players. Rares are hard enough to get as it is....why make it even more frustrating to have to worry about spending an hour to get to Adeptus only to find out its the "****ty" random drop?

I also would like to point out that this further blurs the line between what's "viable" to PK in and what's not viable. It would create more dissent than anything in the end.

More of a headache for players. Rares are hard enough to get as it is....why make it even more frustrating to have to worry about spending an hour to get to Adeptus only to find out its the "****ty" random drop?

How do you know the normal non rare stuff will be ****ty?

I mean, we haven't discussed stats at all. Just because they will be a bit less powerful than the original doesn't mean ****ty.

I would still prefer wearing a non-rare titanium fullplate to mithril vest.

because in the idea it states the random drop may just be a mundane item or it might be special.

It states the item would be similar (but weaker) than the normal rare stuff and it has an example with the emerald sword.

Once again, how weaker the normal stuff compared to it's rare/unique cousin will be is up for discussion of course, as anything in any general idea/suggestion.

It states an emerald sword could drop with no socket, etc.

I am left to assume that its just an emerald sword with no stats. (mundane)

Meaning a piece of adeptus could drop with nothing (no hit/dam no stat bonuses) but its normal ac

As Valek said, this just seems like too much chaos.

It brings some fun, sure. but at the end of the day people are just gonna get pissed because they are "wasting" their time doing eq-trips that don't bear any fruit because they didn't get what they are looking for, but someone who can play enough to run the trips all the time ends up with their god-suit (or at least a suit 2x better than most others) still

It states an emerald sword could drop with no socket, etc.

I am left to assume that its just an emerald sword with no stats. (mundane)

Meaning a piece of adeptus could drop with nothing (no hit/dam no stat bonuses) but its normal ac

Well, the emerald sword has no bonuses anyway (other than being socket), so it seems pretty logical to me, that if you want to weaken it a bit you could drop the socket slot and 1-2 avg damage for example.

Assuming that something like this:

Object 'Adeptus's Torso' is type armor, material ?clock parts?.
Extra flags: hum noremove burnproof nouncurse.
Weight is 70, value is 2, level is 50.
Armor class is 23 pierce, 26 bash, 25 slash, and 22 vs. magic.
Affects damroll by 5.
Affects hitroll by 2.
Affects str by 4.
Affects dex by -3.
Unique item.
You have a vauge feeling this item can be used somehow.

can be dropped down to something like this:

Object 'Adeptus's Torso' is type armor, material ?clock parts?.
Extra flags: hum noremove burnproof nouncurse.
Weight is 70, value is 2, level is 50.
Armor class is 23 pierce, 26 bash, 25 slash, and 22 vs. magic.
Affects dex by -3.
Unique item.

just seems like an attempt to speculate to me.

This is an example of what the non-rare adeptus torso might look like:

Object 'Adeptus's Torso' is type armor, material ?clock parts?.
Extra flags: hum noremove burnproof nouncurse.
Weight is 70, value is 2, level is 50.
Armor class is 23 pierce, 26 bash, 25 slash, and 22 vs. magic.
Affects damroll by 3.
Affects hitroll by 1.
Affects str by 2.
Affects dex by -1.
Unique item.
You have a vauge feeling this item can be used somehow.

Of course this is just an example that came off the top of my head and does not necessarily mean anything.

Also, the part about wasting your time...

All I know' date=' is that with the current lack of rares on mobs, and the often 1 - 2 people on in the 50 pk range during my play time...that there is NOTHING to do, so I find it a yawn just to login.[/quote']