[D4] Why gear evolution

Here’s too much complain about gear upgrades in D4. Generally, I agree with it, as gear upgrades should NOT be simply larger number, but deeper connection with build instead.

Somehow, we should have an evolution system for gear (legendary only). It’s something like Pokeman. Similar to a child fire dragon finally becoming a huge dragon, a legendary item would have 3 - 4 levels, and each level has not only more fancy appearance, but also an additional legendary affix than the previous level. A bit like sets in D3, but only one legendary is needed. It won’t restrict variaty.

How to upgrade an item to the next level? Killing monsters with that item provides little experience, and essense produced by destroying duplicates of that item provides much experience (more with The higher level of duplicate). Essence might be found in loot or dungoen award (very small chance). Also, duplicated normal affix on the essense and the item can be merged, producing a stronger one (upgrades will be harder near the upper bound). Much more experience is needed for higher level.

An example: Windfore
1)basic level: hits back enemies and deal 50% damage
2)advanced level: critical chance + 15% to enemies hit back in 3 seconds
3)final level: any critical hit to vulnerable enemies with energy comsuming skills has 50% chance to fire a same skill from that enemy. It can be triggered sequentially.

With this system, we won’t get bored when we already have a Windforce, but will stay motivated to upgrade it to final level.

Not sure about gear evolution, but I like idea where you can ungrade level of items. Many game have like destiny 2, outrider, you can upgrade a lower level gears to higher level via materials/gold.

I also like the idea that find a good gears is only the beginning, & the gears can be further enhance. This make a gear more personalised.

Like in D3, where you can augment it
In D2, you can socket item & add a rune, gems/jewel
In PoE, you can corrupt(high risk, high reward modification of gear), enchance (add a special affix), & improve quality of gears.

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That is just legendary affix power creep imo.
By multiplying the amount of legendary affixes you can get, you devalue each one you choose. Like instead of each one being 1/10 of your total legendary affix power boost, it becomes 1/40 (in the scenario where a llv 4 legendary got 4 legendary affixes).

That said… I think there is plenty of interesting value in item upgrading. That is where I would put most of the crafting stuff in an A-RPG. We should not create new items, we should enhance the items we have found.
By upgrading the affixes they already had, or maybe add one extra normal affix, etc. Dont multiply the number of legendary affixes to the point where they lose all meaning.

Btw, best item upgrade system I have encountered was in Pillars of Eternity. Unique items that had like 3-5 steps in an upgrade path, that was basically their own little quest series. Sometimes it as just sime as: attack enemies X times with this weapon, or “proc the chance-based affix X times against enemies”. Other times it might be “travel to this spot in the game world” or “beat that dragon with this item equipped” etc.
Now, those specific examples would hardly be interesting in an A-RPG, but combining a quest series-based approach, with traditional crafting materials and XP, could be interesting.

yes i want item to evolve into inteligent person with unique personality evil neutral good and start talkin with owner or with surounding pc npc about things he likes or dislikes mabe even cast his own skills at will with cd . if person get evil inteligent item it can betray owner at critical moments

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I understand your concern here, as legendary affix should not be too many. What I suggest is to add new function to a legendary, and it’s properly called enhancement, but not new affix.

Just something like: hit back → enemies hit back will also hit other ememies → hit back makes vulnerable. This will provide several choices to players, since some player do not have a vulnerable build and thus do not need to upgrade it to level3. They gain one more normal affix in return.

Since legendary has basic / holly / ancestral level in D4, this evolution system is meant to replace these levels, and make it more motivating to hunt for end game gear. Now that basic / holly / ancestral is simply increasing number, I may not want to spend much time hunting for ancestral if I already have a basic one.

And yes, the evolution should have more variety, too. But it should be more logical physically than it is in POE.

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TLDR

  • Ancient items are back in the game Sacred/Ancestral = Ancient items 2.0 - This is disappointing imo.
  • Change Sacred/Ancestral into crafting materials that can upgrade found gear.
  • Allow all tiers to upgrade and Make each tier Common, Magic, Rare, Legendary, Unique change/“Evolve” in different ways when upgraded.
  • Allow Legendary Powers to be placed on Common, Magic, and Rare.
  • Eliminate Legendary tier imo as it is now is not appealing. Possible upgrade path below.
  • These changes give players more choice between more item tiers. Currently you really only choose between 3 Rare, Legendary, and Unique. Really only Legendary and Unique, since you change rares into Legendary.
  • some things below - “new” item tiers that could be added, no damage buffs on legendary items

Honestly been thinking about this really hard lately.

I typically try to take the ideas the game already has and alter it from there. So they have this (Normal → Sacred → Ancestral) System. Which is really just Ancient items 2.0. Which is honestly just disappointing for me. I find this kind of system just a meaningless grind for the same items to be a cheese way to add item progression. To find Sacred/Ancestral you have to go to a higher difficulty. I’d alter this in a couple ways.

  1. Make it so instead of finding these items you upgrade the ones you have. From Normal → Sacred → Ancestral. In that order. With materials you can only find in the higher difficulties.
  2. All items can be upgraded From Common → to whatever the highest tier is.
  3. To take what OP was talking about with “Evolution” make each item tier react/evolve differently. So common items would change when upgraded differently compared to a Magic or Rare.
    (Note - You could still allow for finding these items, but the easiest way would be to upgrade the items you have already.)

This kind of creates a path in progression. You have the early stages where you build the foundation of your character. Skill tree and finding all the base gear you’d like. Then when you get far enough you are developing your paragon boards and upgrading the gear you’ve gathered along the way. Plus you can still add some RNG to some of the upgrade paths of the items. Like some items gaining random new affixes when upgraded.

I will try to keep the examples short but hopefully with enough detail to describe what each item tier would be good at. Normal → Sacred → Ancestral.

  1. Common - Highest Innate stats → Boosted Innate Stats → Boost to Socket effects. I’d also balance out the items to allow for all items to have at least 1 socket. So like boots or bracers having a socket.
  2. Magic - Highest potential affix values → Adds new random unique proc effect (Example- 10% chance to cast extra fireball on cast.) → Improve the proc effect.
  3. Rare - Highest amount of possible affixes → Add new affix with new extended affix pool that can add things like (attack speed increased by .5% per 100 points of dex) → adds another additional affix.
  4. Legendary - Imo Eliminate this item tier and make the power drop on its own. Also allow the power to be applied to any of the previous item tiers, not just rares. But I do have a path for them as well despite my previous opinion. Has a power → Adds a 2nd random power (can no long have a power removed from the item) → Boosts the power of 1 of the 2 Legendary effects. (Note - I’d also remove Damage increases from Legendary effects as imo they should be ways to alter how you use a skill and not just some way to increase damage.)
  5. Unique - They are unique → boost or max out affix values → boost Unique power effect. (these still remain awesome build around items as their effects can’t be transfered and can still remain the strongest in the game.

The idea would be to allow for different tiers when upgraded to have different purposes that not every build will require. This opens up player choice a lot more with build diversity. This would allow for new item tiers added to the game to have a upgrade path created for them as well.

Say we add in…
Set items - This one is easy. Set items get bonuses when having them equipped together. Make the bonus stronger when you upgrade individual items. Example you have a Wand/Offhand 2p set. It increases the attack speed of Fireball by 10% Each piece you upgrade increases the bonus by say 5% for a max of a 20% increase when both items have been fully upgraded.

Mythic - In 2019 they talked about Mythics (Items that had 4 legendary powers randomly rolled) Honestly I’d rather replace current Legendary items with this but only rolling with 2 powers and no normal affixes → 3rd power added on upgrade → 1 power is boosted on final upgrade. (Individual powers could still drop as items though like in the description I had with Legendary items.

Note - I had mentioned about not having damage buffs on legendary powers. The upgrade paths that involve boosting the effect for powers could simply alter how the power works or add a new effect to it. This could also be a reason that you’d want to use a legendary item is that upgrading them is the only way to get the evolved effect. or allow for finding the upgraded powers if the legendary tier were eliminated. or if eliminated don’t worry about upgraded legendary effects. :man_shrugging:

First of all, items should not decide character development and skill usage.

It’s not a good idea if you first have to collect high-end equipment, which you can’t even get together if you’re unlucky, in order to then be able to play some build of the character and use certain abilities, which are then only strong enough.

This is already crap in D2, e.g. with the Caster Necro with teeth, spear and bone spirit.

But it also needs an incentive that not everything is completely irrelevant and requires no effort, or a certain level of specialization.

Only it should revolve around the talents and the associated story and, very importantly, a depth related to the world, the whole development in connection with the associated structures such as guilds / order houses, clans, groves, churches / monasteries, Necropolis, hunter camp or whatever associated clan you take. This must of course be authentically and credibly linked to the world and, depending on the class and specialization in the respective class, clearly and distinctly from the rest.

Just depth.

And then there are items as a bonus. They are fun, but the player is not overwhelmed with them.
Weak standard items also have to remain more inconspicuous in terms of color and not obtrusive, so that they are not perceived as overly present, even if they drop a little more often.
Rare things have prominent colors and are rare and not that all 20 mobs have one.
And then we have set items that are hard to find and can also be earned randomly distributed in the world more targeted. They have unique powerful bonuses for the class and specializations and are just fun because they are just more tailored.

Then we have unique items. They are very rare and finding them means a lot of luck. But they have the property of bringing strong bonuses exactly for the slot and are more flexible to use.
So you like to keep a small unique item, because it gives a second character a powerful bonus in that slot at the right time.

Then we can bring scrapped items. Here you can do many things with and also offer upgrades, which is probably one of the most fun and can keep the professions useful for a long time.
If you can upgrade your low rare items, set items again 1-2x, that is quite fun.
The question is, how intensive is the material search.
Then you can also build items yourself, which can fill gaps especially in the beginning, such as Manaleech ring, which sinst nix can, but is very helpful at first.

In D2 LOD with the runes you could have made more meaningful things earlier.

But never exaggerate with item drops.
It is absolutely inflationary, if items drop in mass constantly and you are only trading. That seems totally meaningless, as D3 shows.
Items should drop less often and the useful ones even less and the really good ones even less.
Rather restrained, than a sea of scrap.

Nevertheless, the game world is and remains the be-all and end-all. If this is flat and gray, the game will not develop any power and a flood of items at the end and I run one Ini after the next and kill one world boss after another, this will never be able to catch up.

Game world + character development of skills linked to the world and depth and broad and slow…

But when I hear you can continuously re-skill… I do not understand how the creators keep making the same mistakes and do not understand that it is very important to draw hard boundaries on such things… Otherwise the game has no value because everything doesn’t matter anyway. And if that’s the case, it’s worthless to play it and go one way… RPGs are like that… They are not item swapping games in some sports game and number wars endgame scenario… That’s exactly what destroys these games over and over again…

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Some disagreement with the points presented.

It’s okay to have uniques and legs giving special power to a skill.

Otherwise gears will be boring stats sticks

What I can agree is, a skill must be useful even without legs or unique powers or gears.

One major criticism I have of d3, is using legs power to fix skills, instead of fixing the base skills.

As far as ancestral, sacred. They are more like d2 elite and exception items. It can roll for all item rarity

The interesting it seems the same people that complain about d3, you can gear in a day! Are same people that complain you cannot gears fast enough, and need to find better gears of higher tier……

For a loot base game, you want to extend the loot hunt.

Just because a game is about something, it doesn’t mean that thing has to be dragged out endlessly. Pacing matters. Especially the pacing of a core aspect of a game.

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