As much as I dont want item crafting to be a thing in D4, I like Grim Dawns solution of having 1 specific item slot (Relic slot) that is all about intricate crafting. I’d like to see that in D4 as well.
Could do the same for trading. A single item slot with items that can be traded, while nothing else can.
Heck. It could be the same slot. A relic slot where the items are craftable and tradeable. You cant get them as drops. But the stuff needed to craft them would be drops. And so would the recipes needed to craft them.
Both the Relics and all crafting mats which were only used for the Relic crafting (so not mats used for other things as well) could be tradeable.
You might get the mats for one Relic, craft it, and trade for mats you need to craft the other Relic you wanted, and so on.
Note; the recipes would NOT be tradeable, so if you got a rare recipe, you could craft something that a lot of others could not, to trade those. Making it a bit like Crafting professions in MMOs.
And how will the game tell the difference between a BiS rare and a trash rare, so allow the latter to be traded, but not the former?
It kinda has to be all or nothing here. If rares can be BIS, which they should be, then no rares can be tradeable.
And even harder, to determine which affixes synergizes well with each other, and skills/attributes/etc.
Only way you can classify an item as BiS mathematically, would be if the itemization was insanely shallow (like if the game had Attack rating and Defense rating and nothing else).
For example, in WoW, determining BiS is quite easy, since the affixes are very shallow, and there are nearly no character build choices.
thats not the point
its a subjective decision and part of the whole point of the game
as a dev you cannot decide for people which rolls they wanna have on an item and which not
the whole point of this genre is that you gotta make that up for yourself
that creates a player made economy around “good” and “bad” items
Really? Because that’s the case in just about every game I ever played. Of course you always have a choice to go non meta, but there has always been a “best” way to allocate stats.
thats probably because you look up guides other people made for you and try to play max dps builds
i am generally using other items that the rest of the crowd
but thats not the point
the point is that even if there is a mathematically best way to play, which ofc there is
its the point of the game that the players will find out
if items are marked as “the optimal item to use” from the beginning of the game you are cutting like 50% of the whole gameplay
In any decent itemization system, item X will be best for one build, item Y best for another build. Not to mention, better and worse for different tasks. And so on for 1 trillion other items and builds. You cant say that either of them are better than the other.
You can have two items, used for two different builds, that are mathematically nearly equally strong. But if 100000 times more players want to play the first build, then that item will be worth more.
If you make the first item untradeable, and the latter one tradeable though, suddenly build B will be effectively better, since it will be much easier to make.
Look at Diablo 3. The items zDPS want to use are wildly different than what dmg dealers want to use, and the zDPS items would seem pretty terrible in any purely mathematical DPS model, since their goal is not to be effective in a traditional sense.
For a solo player sure, but they are mathematically great when you factor in 3 others. And I can’t imagine zDPS will be a thing in D4 since no one seems to think they are a good idea even in D3, devs included.
God I hope that will be the case. This is Blizzard though. They seem to have embraced zDPS in D3.
That is my point. In a decent itemization system, when you factor in everything (if you could do that in any realistic way), then all items are potentially BiS, for some build out there.
Not that you can factor in everything. Blizzard would not exactly struggle with balance if they could.
Even in the extremely simple itemization in WoW, they cant get things balanced.
Not to mention, balance changes over time. The item that has X usability today, might be a lot more useful tomorrow due to some change in the game.
point is, its not up to the devs to decide which items are BiS
its up to the players
it would even be a waste of time for the devs to create a system that determines the value of an item to make it BoA because its literally part of the gameplay for players to decide
Player dictates if an item is Best-in-Slot or not and that does NOT depend on only one stat but a combination of different ones hitting certain thresholds. When looked like this the items that deserve the BiS title is pretty low and scarce inbetween let along to be Bound on Account.
Your imagination is not a parameter on practical appliance of algorithm in the market.
Just because an item gives you +200 main stat and rolled 5 other crappy stats, it will not a Best-in-Slot. Main stat can be important but it’s not everything, there are issues like min damage and certain rates you need to stack first before main stat. If some item increases your crit rating, skill damage, crowd control also grant your some defensive traits then it’s debatable by stat ranges that rolled. The problem is item rolling all required crucial stats in a combination but it doesn’t stop there.
The issue is, how do you exactly determine such stat ranges to turning item to Bound on Account any fair? Some items can roll one out of three wanted stats lower than 100 and be the Best in Slot, some items can roll all three barely over 50 and still be used by player despite being objectively trash. Remove random roll ranges and you destroy diversity of the characters and perhaps loot hunt.
I remember buying trifecta gloves pretty cheap at D3 AH, because they don’t give you enough power to break through and most crappy trifecta gloves and amulets still lacked defensive affixes. If something gives you mad amount of damage, it’s not a Best-in-Slot at all unless it’s one kind of a weapon.
An armor that increases your offense abilities to cause a jump in dps, would only make you a glass cannon in the end. Too defensive pieces would largely dent your damage output as well. The coined term Best-in-Slot largely depends on players’ cognitive abilities to sniff optimized pieces out.
We were talking about how rares were underpowered 50 posts ago. They won’t be the best in slots at all slots, looking at how legendary and uniques would evolve to have legendary powers.
If they gonna be overpowered then solution is simple as not adding extra affixes to their combinations. If you think Rares would be BiS, then best option is leaving them as they are right now and not buffing them.
Oh, I agree sadly.
I meant, they should have the potential to be BiS, and it is a design flaw if they cant be.
If that design flaw is fixed (larger difference in number of affixes, more max sockets), as it should, then rares definitely should not be tradeable.
Different topic, but imo stat ranges should be drastically reduced.
A good/bad item should be because it has stats you want/not want. Not because it rolled good or bad.
An item with low rolls is always bad, an item with a specific set of affixes might potentially always be good for some.
D3s large stat ranges is RNG for the sake of RNG and nothing else. Kill it with fire.
Like, dont have +5-10% crit chance on an item (just a D3 example, crit should not be that high). Make the range 9-10%
If you flatten out the stat ranges then the moment you find ONE good item, most likely the loothunt would be over on that slot for the player. Game supposed to have loot hunt and reducing range is counter productive for it. Reducing the range to a reasonable degree is something you can do but the result wise it’d be more or less same if you widen it.
It would be like in Diablo 2 but as I always say, it’s a trickle of gears turning within’ each other. Itemization has to be planned with that notion in mind from the start.