Below is my suggestion to help with current early game progression and some issues I have with Aspects/Dungeons. Comment below if you have any particular thoughts on this idea or if you feel like there is something that is not well explained.
What problems can be solved?
- The sense/speed of progression in the early game is a point of contention
- Players complain about ‘itemisation’. Affixes on low level items feel irrelevant, prompting the desire to rush to endgame
- The game has a dearth of relevant item types to reward the player with. Most rewards are materials that are auto-pickups that have no weight. Tempering recipes and glyphs are one-time unlocks. All other rewards (except runes) fit into the 9-12 slots on their character’s paper doll
- The aspect reward offered by dungeon completion is largely redundant and it is becoming worse with each season introducing new, drop-only aspects. Not only are there a significant number of aspects that cannot be obtained except through a lucky drop, but the dungeons that do reward Aspects only reward the lowest quality which makes running them feel like a waste of time
Proposed change, in short
- Legendary items no longer drop with an Aspect. Both rare (which only drop in pre-Torment levels) and legendary items drop with an ‘empty’ Aspect ‘slot’
- A new item drop is introduced: Aspect Crystals. There is an Aspect Crystal for each current Aspect. Picking up an Aspect Crystal puts it into your main inventory tab along with other items. Salvaging an Aspect Crystal at the Blacksmith will add the Aspect to the Codex of Powers. Aspects are added to rare/legendary items at the Occultist as it currently works
- A new material is introduced: Aspect Shards. Salvaging an Aspect Crystal at the Blacksmith for an Aspect of the same/lower quality that you have already unlocked will reward Aspect Shards. Aspect Shards are used in the Codex of Power to progressively unlock tiers of the Aspects of your choice
- All existing dungeons no longer reward with a specific Aspect unlock. Instead, dungeons reward an amount of Aspect Shards that can be used to unlock/upgrade the Aspect of your choice
Other Specific Suggestions:
- Use the space this change creates to rethink the current early game item affix power. Many affixes at low levels could be increased quite a bit to make early drops more interesting without changing later affixes
- Aspect Crystals should drop displaying the name of the Aspect (e.g. ‘Aphotic Aspect’)
- An indicator should display on the item label to indicate before pickup whether an Aspect will upgrade the Codex of Power on salvage (e.g. ‘Aphotic Aspect+’). They should also preferably have a unique color for their item label to distinguish them from other drops
- Aspect Crystals should only drop up to the current non-Ancestral tiers. The extra tiers that currently are found on Ancestral gear should instead be tiers that are unlocked in the Codex by spending acquired Aspect Shards material
- First-time completion of a Dungeon rewards an additional bonus amount of Aspect Shards. It is therefore optimal to complete as many different dungeons as possible while still rewarding the player for completing a Dungeon they have previously completed
Benefits
- Because Legendary items and Aspects are separate drops, the pace of rewards of each can be adjusted separately to create the best feeling of progression. Keeping a lower Legendary item drop-rate would make those drops feel more special without also affecting the pace that players accumulate the desired Aspects for their build (which are the real source of power and customization in early game)
- Players have a clear path of progression at the start of a Season: complete Dungeons to acquire the necessary Aspect Shards to unlock the specific Aspects that bring your build online
- Provides a future-proofed solution to Dungeon rewards feeling redundant or uninteresting and for acquiring drop-only Aspects feeling like a tedious lottery
- There are less impediments if you would like to introduce an auto-salvage feature to the pet since you no longer have to worry about players auto-salvaging an Aspect upgrade
- ‘Adds’ 2 new reward types (Aspect Crystals and Aspect Shards) without making the game more complex
- Revamps the existing Codex of Power progression system to one that is more player directed
- Gives developers a better ability to control the pace of progression of Aspect upgrades and makes Ancestral-tier Aspect upgrades something that is earned rather than potentially traded for
How much work is involved?
- There is already art for the Aspect Crystals from the launch version that could possibly be utilized to save time. The Codex of Power also now has unique art for each Aspect which could be borrowed
- The code for adding Aspects to the Codex of Power is already present. Legendary items need only be modified to function as Rare items currently do (i.e. with an empty Aspect ‘slot’) while the new Aspect Crystals retain the Codex upgrading on salvage that Legendary items currently have
- Thought should be given to the reward experience of Aspect drops (i.e. what sound does it make? what color is the item label? best solution for indicating an Aspect upgrade while it’s on the ground?)
- It would be useful to add an indicator to the item card when there is an ‘empty’ Aspect ‘slot’ that can be filled. This indicator could easily just be a special Aspect with no effect with a description that prompts the player to use the Occultist to add an Aspect to the item
Thanks for reading.