Well - apparently you think aRPGs should be solo games.
When I think aRPGs thrive through community trades.
So … i guess were done here.
I don’t play them solo, I just don’t like trading, i prefer to be able to find my own gear, not someone elses gear to trade for my gear
on top of that, no game i have seen yet has a good in game trading system
Ok ? Well, a lot of people do.
And a case can be made that it does A LOT for player retention and making things more interesting…
…including finding drops.
When the game is based around being able to find everything by yourself, it makes it so the devs are forced to make itemization boring. Thats where we are at.
1 Like
Something like this would be fine honestly
https://forum.lastepoch.com/t/trade-development-update-introducing-merchants-guild-and-circle-of-fortune-factions/51994
little bit of something for everyone
Im totally up for creating a solid trading system. I don’t think it would be that hard. In fact, im sure i came up with a bunch of them back when d3 was being released and we were all having this same discussion.
It should just be a large chat with link - which the buyer then clicks - a window opens where you can drag and drop items you wish to offer. Then the seller views the offers and clicks ‘accept’ when they are happy.
anything that isn’t poe’s system of “hope I find a bot because they’re the only ones who actually trade”
I personally enjoyed game lobby’s and WUGing.
But really, when you got in a good game with someone wanting to trade, i thought it was fun negotiating.
But to each their own.
i mean, have you played poe?
whisper 20 people to get an answer, maybe
I have - years … and years ago.
But in terms of old school d2 - I liked just creating a new game with a title and waiting for people to join. Its one of those things that I completely understand blizzard wanting to streamline or remove … .but its also one of those things that are just weird and annoying enough to be entertaining.
I feel like it could be streamlined successfully, kind like how I just recommended. Like a forum for items. I mean - thats how d2jsp has operated for years, and its plenty successful. Im not sure why blizzard couldnt just create a web api for items and let people talk through trades on their own site and automate trades within it.
Then you have something to do when youre at work, playing an entirely different game when youre not in front of the actual game.
I agree with most of your points (and hope that many of them are just gaps in the current game that they intend to back-fill), but these two are misguided, IMO.
First of all, aspects:
Codex aspects are basically part of the skill tree. They, along with the skill tree itself, define the early-game builds that are possible. I agree that they can I crease the diversity of builds available by increasing the number of these and by doing more to balance the skill tree skills.
Adding them to the tree itself (or creating a similar mechanic where you just have a fixed list of slots and can swap in whatever aspect to them) would be far less interesting than the current system. Having to choose when to imprint, what to imprint, when to forgo an imprint for a bit because you found a great item but can’t afford rejigger your aspects yet, all of these are interesting and fun parts of the progression curve.
Second, level scaling:
Actually, it works the way you suggest. If you had a level 50 amount of armor on a level 30 character, you would be able to tank hits from level 50 mobs like a level 50 character. The level scaling feels bad because
(1) most people immediately power up two skills that they use for the rest of the game, so those skills peak in raw power around level 15 or possibly quite a bit lower if you already have renown;
(2) most people don’t understand the damage mechanics (because they are arcane) and therefore make poor choices about what items to use and what complementary skills to take. Those choices can seem fine while you are still above the curve but eventually it catches up to you.
Being able to go anywhere in the world and have mobs around your level is awesome. It opens up play in a way that is really a good thing for the game. Unfortunately, I think they took it slightly too far. Like your point about the lack of challenges at 70, 80, 90, the issue is lack of variety.
You can run NM dungeons to get fixed-level challenges, but there are no scary areas of the overworld once you have gotten above the regional floors (or the NM/Torment floors). Rather than doing this on a regional basis, I think they should just create character-relative adjustments within the regions.
Have the stuff near the roads be level-1, the packs in open areas be random between -1 and 0, the events be 0 but some of them scale to +1, the cellars be always +1, and the packs that are in out of the way or interesting places or the ends of longer quest lines be mostly +1, sometimes +2. I’m hoping as they add stuff they will at least drop in wandering bosses or beefed-up events at +2.
I also think they should use the strongholds as fixed-level challenges from like 22-50 (1 stronghold every 2 levels), then reset and beef them up when you go up a tier (NM strongholds going from 56-70, Torment from, say 76-90), so there’s a fixed progression of static challenges (and also more renown… wheee!)
Perhaps what players should understand is that almost all of Blizzard’s current games are built on the hope that players will play in a certain way they expect, rather than hoping to see players play in a certain way after launching the game. It seems ingrained and that’s why these issues arise, but at the same time they think it’s cool. This is what they most need to change.
Yes, sadly I’ve hit level 80 on my Druid… and I’m not sure I want to grind out the last 20 levels. I run NMs over and over, do Helltides, World Bosses… and 99.9% of the gear I get goes to salvage/selling because its garbage. The rest goes in the stash if it has an aspect I think I might need later. I should be excited when I see a rare or unique drop and I’m just not. Especially considering many of the uniques are meh and none of them support my Trampleside build.
I don’t even feel like I can try new specs out due to costs of upgrading a bunch of new armor (and trying not to gimp yourself) and the tedious and expensive respec of the Paragon board. Plus, skills and their uniques are so poorly balanced, it doesn’t feel like you can do much outside of a few meta builds. Skills with Unstoppable are pretty much required.
1 Like
Re: moving aspects to the skill tree debate
If all aspects were part of the skill tree, perhaps. Some aspects are fairly useless at low rolls though, so they should be normalized for this to work. However, an even better approach would be moving them to the skill tree and allowing multiple points in most cases. This would also synergize with +skill gear, allowing you to further increase them.
I honestly don’t know why they didn’t go deeper with +skill gear, and instead chose this awkward “close damage”, “ultimate damage”, “core damage” etc. Why not + core skill ranks, + basic skill ranks, + ultimate skill ranks, etc. Shako sort of aligns with this, and is considered the most desirable item in the game. If other gear followed suit, but with less ranks, it would feel so much better.
Re: level-scaling debate
As for level-scaling allowing you to roam anywhere you want, I agree, this is nice. It can be achieved via the torment system without level-scaling. This mainly applies to early-mid game since end-game players end up in max torment regardless. Areas would progress naturally with you in general, but if it’s too easy or too hard, you can change torment levels for some obvious benefits (clear speed vs “loot-find”). This brings about the concept of “early torment 4” vs “late torment 4”. And perhaps “Max Torment” has fixed level across the entire map.
EDIT
One other thing worth noting in regards to level scaling, is that once you reach T4 (ie. current max torment), your level # itself is no longer a factor in most game systems besides scaling mob power. It actually becomes more of a detriment with how gear level requirements keep scaling along with you, while the relative power of the items themselves remain the same as they were at level 60. Ruins trade. Ruins alts.
If you really think about it, level 60 is basically max. Beyond that, leveling is a moving numeric goalpost with no real gains. Paragon points are there simply to maintain your relative power in lock-step with the enemy growth of each level. That +10% dmg node on the paragon board is making up for the +10% hp the mobs got when you leveled up. All things being equal, a fully-geared level 60 will notice minimal difference to that of a fully geared level 100. 60 is to 100 what 100 is to 140.
It keeps the game feeling “samey” past a certain gear-threshold, rather than you leveling past the difficulty curve and feeling like each level makes you more powerful. Some may argue this is good, but numeric scaling is not challenging, it’s an illusion of growth like it was in D3. Going to a previously difficult area and dominating feels awesome. Going from area to area, dungeon to dungeon, boss to boss, and everything feeling nearly identical feels hollow. Areas you struggled with become memorable.
One may argue that (apparently) level 85+ is where the “best” uniques drop, giving your level # a purpose, but they’re too rare for this to matter either way. Level 60 is max since that’s when you can theoretically have the best gear practically attainable. This means 120 paragon points are, in essence, net zero to your character growth. Kinda sad really… demoralizing af.
1 Like