Can’t say I am a fan. If anything, dropped items from monsters should be better than crafted items, even if you could craft those very same items.
Imo, crafting should focus on enhancing items you found, rather than making new items from the ground up.
As in, runes/“runewords”, adding sockets, adding an extra affix (Grim Dawn style), slightly increased the value of an existing affix, maybe even a very expensive recipe of replacing 1 affix (nothing like D3s mystic rerolls silliness) etc.
Yeah, dont end up like this I really, really hate that about D3.
yea, i also think that the idea of crafting in an ARPG should basically be to enhance a very good item that you think you will keep for a long time so you will invest in it and use your very rare mats to make it slightly stronger
This is a good point and you are right. I think ‘corrupted’ item is way better than ethereal in that case. However i would make only white items be craftable and ofc 1 item = 1 try, even if it’ll roll blue +1 hp. I am closer to cassual player with my free time nowdays but i want to grind end game item for weeks. I don’t want any rain of legendaries or any Headrig’s gift.
we are on the same side here
its just important to keep the balance between different item tiers, not devalue any of them in late game and also make the experience enjoyable and satisfying after the long grind for something powerful
while i never played that D2 mod and have no experience with corrupted items it sounds like items with a downside which makes them something special and could definitely be a thing
but i dont think this should be the main idea of crafting in D4 because it would be cool to do something to all of your powerful loot that you hunted for weeks or even months
but some kind of “corruption” on white items to make them very powerful with a twist would be super interesting
Honestly, I don’t see an issue with players being able to craft items (be it players being able to craft magic/rare/legendary, or even an entirely new rarity). Of course, that’s assuming that crafting is mostly inferior in comparison to getting your items from killing monsters.
However, can’t be the only one who doesn’t like the first part, come on
Items should probably drop at a nice/moderate rate but be harder to acquire overall… i.e. instead of kill one boss 200 times or whatever, that boss should probably be about/at-least 10 times less killable (but at least have one nice semi/guaranteed drop overall, might not drop exactly what you are looking for but no (successful ?) boss “run” should be in vain either
And yes, those kinds of quests/routes should probably have some cost (either initial or increase per repetition) and not be spammable overall
well then the activity would mainly be there as a compensation for bad RNG and not actually to enhance your experience/items with something new, which would be way more fun
Depends. If items don’t make up over 60% of a character’s power, and most builds don’t require having a certain item just to be functional, then I wouldn’t have any issue with certain rare items being hard to get.
No disagreement. Ideally, if you wanted to craft let’s say 25 wands, you’d both would’ve needed to have farmed a greater amount of times and found a greater number of wands from killing monsters before you’d be able to craft that many. So again, crafting wouldn’t be the main source of item acquistion.
its still a compensation
its “oh no i farmed for hours and everything was crap so let me salvage all of that stuff and roll the slot machine another 10 times before i return to killing monsters”
it doesnt enhance your loot
it gives you 10 extra rolls that you dont have to kill for
its a recycle mechanic and i already hated that in D3
If that’s how you see it, then so be it. I see it as giving players alternative methods on acquiring gear, which isn’t bad imo as long as said methods doesn’t beat the original method of acquiring gear from monsters.
GrimDawn has one functionality of “crafting skeleton key” to unlock a dungeon with certain boss… IDK if say some act-bosses are locked that way but what I know for sure is that the end boss is locked in that manner
So I’d expand on that even further, have like 3,5,6,7 types of keys that may drop (each for different “subset” of dungeons), don’t make them craftable but make them a relative rare but highly random drop (ofc. will be in “tier 2” elite or mini boss, but still not “farm same boss” or “farm same area” material)
Point being, “item quests” should be “bonus stage” material, that shouldn’t be the main quest, the main quest should be whatever your main quest is and even if you’ve beaten everything there can be “event” quests afterwards… Those (or even open-world-anywhere) journeys should have some small but still applicable chance to have such a key dropped
Have several types of those and have those keys be expendable… IN RETURN you have a semi/guaranteed good loot drop (should you make it all the way to the end), but “rotate” in drop and rolls so the loot acquired this way is always useful but hard to acquire rather than skip 5 (or 15, depending on size/randomness) chambers and boom, another boss
Me neither, but i’ve seen them on twitch etc. It works something like this: you put Unique item into cube (don’t really know if it works only with uniques) + consumable item and mix them = you can get extra +1 super stat e.g. Vipermagi armor + 4s or something less/nothing special or you can turn your Unique into rare/blue worthless item.
Think D2 had it fine with sockets = runes, superior = imbue, i.e. items that look bad on drop have the chance to become good ones once quest X (or Y or Z) is completed but instead of static i.e. once per dificulty have some “tokens” drop so you can either use immediately or store for more late-game impact overall
So the important part is the OPPORTUNITY for (almost) each item to be useful afterwards…
In general, items that have both positive and negative affixes could be fun imo. Too few A-RPGs have played around with that.
Not just +30 dex, -30 int or whatever. That is not particularly interesting. More in the vein of negative legendary affixes. Like ‘deals 20% more fire dmg, but takes 40% more cold dmg’, or '+50 dex, but sometimes when you dodge you are crippled by fear, reducing movement speed by 80% for 1 second" or whatever.
Another example, although not gear based, is some of the major nodes in PoEs passive skill tree.
Yeah, that is the direction I would go too.
Not crafting items, but “crafting”/buying quests, treasure hunts etc.
Creating a quest with some boss that is guaranteed to drop gloves with + fire dmg or whatever. Kinda similar result to crafting, but it is still tied to going into the game world and killing stuff. Instead of merely clicking an NPC in town.
For hidden/secret/optional bosses sure. Nit for main campaign encounters. I wouldn’t mind an attunement if you will by finding items to forge a key, or with my lore journal proposal of unlocking enough lore to get bounties for champion mobs, and a themed dungeon for unlocking all the lore.
Optional stuffs with rare or hard to find items are good. WoW had some neat secret mounts. That may be too much, but something that not just a check list on the way to completing everything.
I liked some of the Torghast anima powers. Elethium Diffuse inflicted 40% of all damage taken back as shadow damage but you can no longer walk backwards. As a tank walking backwards to kite is a huge disadvantage but 40% reflected damage is worth it. So maybe something like a pair of boots that reflects a decent amount of damage but you are no longer able to dodge.
Another is one that doubles your HP but you are slowed 2% every second you stand still and rooted for a few seconds when you reach 50 stacks. Great defensive buff at the risk of losing a lot of mobility or you have to constantly move. So now, you have to really pay attention and hope you don’t get trapped or stunned and lose speed.
As pointed out above stuff like +50 dex, -50 int is boring and there is no real decision to weigh if you are a dex user and need more to hit a passive bonus breakpoint. Give me something fun and OP at the expense of something that would kill me if I make a mistake. Items like this should be very high risk/reward.
It is boring in D3, in D2 it was helpfull and in D4 it can be very interessting, mainly because every stat will be worth, not only main one. There is one thing i would change in D4 stats system: main stat boosts dmg… it is too simple and too obvious to put most of points in here.
I really, really hate that about D3.
