itemization
Latest
Tree of Savior delays closed beta, talks classes
Classes are the hot topic for this week's Tree of Savior community Q&A, with many of the questions concerning the different roles that players will assume in the upcoming title. The Q&A was coy on a few specifics, such as which class only has five skills, but was more open on other topics. The Alchemist was singled out as a class that synergizes well with crafting, the Wugushi was noted as a class with a strong poison bent, the Pardoner was shown to be a scroll-producing Cleric, and the Peltasta was revealed as a sword-and-shield fighter. For those hoping to get some beta action in this summer, we have bad news: It's been delayed. "We focused on the development so that we can launch CBT within this year's summer, but more time was needed than we had expected on the overall balancing of the game so we think CBT will be delayed a bit," the devs wrote.
Tree of Savior Q&A 10 talks item customization and more
Korean publisher Hangame has yet to announce whether or not Tree of Savior will be localized for the Western market, but developer Hakkyu Kim continues to post lengthy blog updates in English. So that's something. Q&A #10 is now live, and it details everything from item grades and set bonuses to jewelry additions and other attribute tweaks. Read all about it, and feast your eyes on some gorgeous game assets, on the official Tree of Savior blog.
Bonus Armor and the Flexibility of Gear Design
One of the things I like to do is read up on how gear will be designed in the future and really consider how it will play out. We know that Warlords of Draenor will be a vastly different game in many respects, including gear design. One of the ways that's showcased for us is in how bonus armor will be applied as a tanking stat. Not only will bonus armor be a stat you only see on certain slots (rings, trinkets, necks and cloaks), not only will the stat itself be greyed out for non-tanks (so a DPS warrior or paladin wouldn't get bonus armor from an item with that state, while a tanking warrior or paladin would), but also, bonus armor items will have both strength and agility on them, and the one you get will be based on class (so a monk with a bonus armor ring would get agility, a death knight would get strength). This isn't just fascinating in and of itself, but in what it reveals about what is possible for gear going forward. If bonus armor items can have strength and agility, then it's feasible that all Warlords weapons could have strength, agility and intellect and only display the one that's useful for the class and spec using it - a 1h mace could have strength for a DK, agility for a shaman, and intellect for a priest. It's the flexibility of the potential design that's the most interesting, and obvious, departure from the original game.
Diablo III's 2.0.4 patch makes resplendent treasure feel more resplendent
Blizzard has patched Diablo III to version 2.0.4 in the Americas. There are a decent number of class tweaks in the patch as well as an adjustment to the drop of unique legendary crafting materials. They've been "significantly increased," if you're wondering. There are a few itemization changes, too, including an adjustment to to treasure drops from resplendent chests. "The treasure from Resplendent Chests has been improved to feel more resplendent," Blizzard says.
Why did we have to squish stats?
The item squish is a hotly debated topic on the forums. That's not really surprising. It's a pretty big change. Any time you're talking about any sort of reduction to character power (which, it must be restated, the item squish isn't, but it can appear to be) people get nervous. Part of the problem is calling it an item squish at all. It's not merely that, however - the squish is taking place across the board, to monsters and NPC's and encounters as well as our gear. And it's happening in a broad way, relative to the expansion endgame spikes of level's 60, 70, 80, 85 and 90. It's not a surprise that endgame play tends to introduce gear of escalating power, nor is it a surprise that as the next expansion comes out, we tend to see a gradual increase in mob health and damage and gear so that by the max level cap of said expansion, everyone's essentially shed most if not all of their endgame gear from the last expansion only to see a new cycle of gear escalation. This isn't really in dispute. However, looking at the chart above, you can see that the steepness of the player power gain was getting ever sharper, and the projected 90 to 100 jump magnified the already high 80 to 85 and 85 to 90 curves. Why did gear start expanding in power so much more dramatically after level 80? Why were both the level 85 and level 90 endgames such steep climbs in power at endgame? Let's take a look all the way back to Wrath of the Lich King to answer that question.
The future of itemization
I've written long, eloquent defenses of reforging. And this week, I finally snapped. The fact that I have to reforge between my arms spec and my fury spec (and not just reforge, but regem) has finally broken me. I now take it all back - reforging sucks. It compensates for things that are flaws in the modern game, but I no longer find that charming. I just find it irritating that those faults exist and that we have a means to wallpaper over them doesn't change the fact that they exist. In a way, my relationship with reforging mirrors my relationship with the old tanking scheme that existed before Mists of Pandaria - I knew there were flaws with threat generation, but I'd grown familiar with them. I understood that they were there and how to circumvent them. In the modern game, there are significant flaws with itemization, and reforging is that means to circumvent them, so I've been a big booster of and supporter of it ever since it was introduced back in Cataclysm. But I was wrong. Using reforging to sandpaper down the jagged edges where gear doesn't meet our needs doesn't change the fact that gear doesn't meet our needs - it merely conceals those edges. We know that we're going to have two new stats - multistrike and readiness - in addition to critical strike, haste and mastery. None of these are caps in the same way that hit or expertise are (soon to be were) - we'll see how they work, but we already know some talents will affect them or be affected by them, like the upcoming Anger Management talent for warriors. So what I'm wondering is, are we finally going to see a situation where there's enough gear with stats individual classes want that we don't need a system to make up for gear's shortcomings? Or are we just going to have to make the best of bad itemization again, like we did back in Wrath?
Should weapons be more universal?
I admit it, I love talking about the new gear paradigm in Warlords of Draenor because it's such a big change, with so many permutations. But as big as it is, some folks think it's not going far enough. This post over on the 7th Tower discusses weapons and how they could be made more universal, and it got me thinking - should we move away from the era of agi, strength and/or int weapons? There are multiple ways to do this. The easiest would be simply to put Attack or Spell Power on weapons, which would still leave them segregated by role to some extent (melee would want the AP weapons, ranged casters would want the SP weapons, and hunters would still be the only ones using bows, crossbows and guns). A more complicated but perhaps more compelling system would be to have them switch between AP and Spell Power, so that a holy paladin could use a weapon for healing, then switch over and use said weapon for tanking. Still more complex but perhaps even more interesting would be to have weapons retain int, agi or strength and switch depending on which class was using them as well as each role. If you visit the original post at 7th Tower, he breaks down how it might look using Siege of Orgrimmar as a template. The current breakdown of agility and strength weapons would, in either scheme, now be available to a broader range of players. It would certainly fit within the paradigm of broader usefulness for gear established by the changes to armor. The question becomes what are the up and downsides to this?
BlizzCon 2013: Huge changes coming to itemization
In the gameplay and systems panel, Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street just revealed some massive changes to gear itemization in Warlords of Draenor. The fabled item squish is finally coming, stats are being removed, new stats are being added, and reforging is gone. There's a lot to cover so let's get right down to it. Enchanting, reforging, and gems They feel like there is too much modification needed to be done every time you get a new piece of gear: enchants, gemming, and reforging your caps. There will be fewer items which can accept enchants, but the items which can still be enchanted will have more powerful enchants and more choice. Fewer gem sockets, but gems will be much more powerful. No more socket bonuses or metagems. Sockets are a bonus which can appear on gear and do not count towards item budget. Reforging is gone!
The Summoner's Guidebook: League of Legends isn't just one gametype
After last week's edition of the Summoner's Guidebook, I realized that one of the things I sort of take for granted is the advantage of taking many of LoL's different gametypes into account when I value a particular item. For instance, last week we talked a lot about Rabadon's Deathcap, but it (and its sister item Wooglet's Witchcap) has drastically different values in different game modes. It's a lot easier to justify buying a Deathcap when you have easy sources of gold and a lot of time when you're trying to gather it. If you have to fight, more defense becomes an imperative. If you don't play a lot of Dominion or Twisted Treeline, you might not realize that Bloodthirster and Infinity Edge are hard to buy when fights can erupt faster than ultimate skills can recharge. Expensive items like a Needlessly Large Rod or BF Sword are hard to justify when you can get some interim item that provides more balanced stats and will help win the fights you're fighting now. Playing other game modes also gives you a broader look at League of Legends. You don't see the value of certain stats -- particularly HP -- until you realize that an extra 200-500 HP can cause a huge swing in the course of an engagement.
Gear is good. Gear works.
I initially had the intention of refuting Adam's dissertation on why we don't need gear in World of Warcraft with the same length and exhaustive detail he himself used. But I don't think that's the proper course here. By now, many of you will have commented in similar fashion. Instead, I'll go for simplicity and list some reasons why WoW should keep gear. Gear provides a means to tune content for consumption. Right now, dungeons, raids, scenarios and even leveling content is tunable along many aspects of gameplay, including whether or not it's intended for groups or to be soloable, whether or not it's for certain size of groups, whether a healer is intended, and what level of offensive power/healing/tanking ability is permitted by gear. Removing gear from the game means content loses a slider, giving the developers less options. Demanding that all content difficulty be based purely on skill is unnecessarily restrictive to players. Quite frankly, letting groups outgear content is good for the game. It allows groups that couldn't quite get an encounter down for whatever reason to come back later with better gear and try again. It lets groups go down a raid tier and have fun blasting through previously difficult content, or lets players shine in dungeons or scenarios that were once grueling. It even allows players to go back an expansion or two and have fun soloing what once took entire raids to complete. MMO's that eschew gear work best when designed from the start in this manner, and even then they often use things that are gear in all but name. A game that uses enhancements to modify powers, for instance, is just using gear by a different name. So let's talk more about why gear is in fact good and shouldn't go anywhere after the break.
Diablo III plans itemization changes
Because Diablo III is such a loot-centric game, players pay attention when the developers start talking about making significant itemization changes in the upcoming months. The first part of Blizzard's future itemization philosophy is to more strongly equate rarity with power. Legendary items will drop less frequently and become a lot more powerful, and there will be a greater amount of diversity across the board. "It will take time, but our goal is to try to provide players with compelling alternatives to trifecta items when talking about what items they want to acquire," game designer Travis Day writes. Other changes include reducing the drop rate on rares, making gold sinks more exciting, and giving players better reasons to farm mobs instead of merely camping out at the auction house.
LOTRO's Update 10 revamps loot systems and gear set bonuses
Lord of the Rings Online is getting some pretty major itemization updates with Update 10. Specifically, the patch will be affecting the loot in scaling instances and the way set bonuses work. Bosses in three- and six-player spaces will have a chance to drop equipment, and raids will have equipment hooked up to each boss chest. Challenge modes will now come with a complimentary challenge chest. Moreover, the types of gear you'll find have been massaged a bit: Instance clusters will focus on a handful of gear types, so a DPS character will likely be running different instances than a tank in order to grab the appropriate gear. Players will be able to mix and match their set bonuses more after the update. Sets will have either stat bonuses or skill modifying effects, in contrast to the recent trend to have sets that do both. Additionally, skill-modifying effects will on the two- and four-set bonuses, giving players more customization options. As a final treat, each class will have access to two new Erebor sets for all three of their trait lines.
WildStar Wednesday discusses the importance of items
WildStar's developer dispatches all have a theme: "Play the way you enjoy playing." That's borne out in the latest installment of WildStar Wednesday, in which Economy team leader Jeremy Wood discusses the ins and outs of the game's reward system. Wood explains that his team is responsible for making sure that players have the rewards needed to keep them playing, and in a game focused so heavily on differing player paths, that can be a tall order. WildStar will allow players a hefty amount of customization for items, including a dye system and modifications to existing equipment. Players can also expect to receive rewards of attractive and useful gear through every path rather than to be limited to one or two endgame pursuits. Even once you reach the top tier of items, there won't be a single "best" piece; the game will offer several different items for different playstyles. Take a look at the full article to get a broader picture of what the game will offer players to keep them invested to the endgame and beyond.
The Summoner's Guidebook: Balancing League of Legends' offense and defense items
Last week, we talked specifically about building League of Legends' attack damage champions and the multiplicative effects the various bonuses have on these heroes. Building attack items is fairly cut and dried. The good attack damage items (IE, BT, PD, LW) are common to most pure AD builds, and there's not a lot of reason to heavily deviate from building them. Defense is another story, however. In Dominion, defense is more heavily itemized than in Summoner's Rift simply because irregular engagements happen constantly. On Summoners' Rift, there is more structure to specific engagements, and a single champion getting spotted out of place either results in an epic bait or a brutal gank. In those situations, defense doesn't help much. However, it's important to itemize defense in any game mode, and in Dominion, it is outright critical. Building only damage items will cause your champion to get melted by enemy attacks very early on, while building defense allows you to play more aggressively and capitalize on damage opportunities with less risk. Building defense is also important for bruisers who must close the gap to melee range, which inevitably means taking more damage than normal. Want to know all about the best time to start building tank? Read on!
The Summoner's Guidebook: Items and runes for League of Legends' attack damage champions
Attack damage is a universal thing for most League of Legends champions to build. Even characters that do not normally build AD are commonly played as AD in "joke builds." AD champions also have some of the widest variety of items available. There are a fair number of caster and tank items and a handful of hybrid items, but items that bolster physical attacks are everywhere. This can cause some confusion in what to build, and today we're going to talk about what gives you the most bang for your buck. This article will focus heavily on offense rather than defense for AD champions. We'll cover defense in a later week.
Mists of Pandaria Beta: The evolution of itemization
Let me introduce you to the Massacre Sword. It was, and still is, a solid leveling green with a rather good model. I point it out to you to show you the odds of getting one with stats you'd actually want on a warrior, paladin or hunter (the three classes that would be using the sword at the time the game launched) and how likely it was you'd get, say, a Massacre Sword of the Boar or Whale. Granted, you could get a few fairly useful combinations (one of Strength or Agility, say, or a good two stat combo like Bear, Tiger, Eagle, Monkey or Gorilla depending on your class. This was a green drop, of course. It wasn't meant to be the best of the best, just something to pick up and use on your way to dungeon loot. It's hard to compare it to what it would be replaced by nowadays, because a lot of that gear was re-itemized when Cataclysm came out and the dungeon levels were adjusted up or down. I remember replacing it with Lord Alexander's Battle Axe, followed by a Demonshear and an Arcanite Champion, before forays into Molten Core and Blackwing Lair. It's fascinating to consider how itemization works as a tool in driving players forward. Bad itemization, while baffling at times when encountered in game, actually serves a purpose in the hands of the developers. An item with too good of a stat spread can actually serve as a hanging burr, sticking to your character long after it should have been replaced. I mention this because, to my mind, Mists of Pandaria is the first expansion to really know this, forwards and backwards. This is the expansion that will use gear design to motivate you better, more skillfully, and more expansively than ever before.
Ready Check: The loss of itemization in Cataclysm
Ready Check helps you prepare yourself and your raid for the bosses that simply require killing. Check back with Ready Check each week for the latest pointers on killing adds, not standing in fire, and hoping for loot that won't drop. Questions, comments, or something you would like to see? Email me at tyler@wowinsider or message me on Twitter @murmursofadruid. Like it or not, there's one constant about raiding. No matter what your reason for raiding is, and no matter what joy you happen to get from it, there's only one thing that matters at the end of the day. Obviously, I'm talking about loot. Loot is the one thing that makes the raiding world go 'round. Sure, we raid for story, we raid for friends, we raid for challenges. All of that is well and good and makes for a nice, lovely, non-selfish story that we can tell the world. Who knows? It might even be true -- but there's no avoiding that loot is the result. Maybe that's why raiding has popularity issues. Maybe it isn't the experience so much as it is the reward. I suppose we'll never know -- at least, not from this Ready Check. No, no, instead there's there one part of loot issues that I really want to get into, the problem that has been plaguing Blizzard for this entire expansion: the lack of loot.
Champions Online 'ambitiously' re-itemizing the game
As the groundhog pops up to see his shadow, so too do the devs of Champions Online pop up with their monthly UNTIL Field Report, dishing out the plans and proposed future updates for the game. This month's report is rather lengthy and kicks off with a promise about upcoming "ambitious" re-itemization of all items and rewards in Champions. Currently in testing and on deck for the near future is a '90s Iron Age costume set, alerts, zone balancing, and a look at why them women folk walk so dang funny (apparently arms and legs are moving out of sync on female characters). Players also have a new travel power -- Distortion Acrobatics -- and specialization trees to look forward to. There's also some good information in the report as to why some features and concerns have yet to move from low to high priority, such as the "lukewarm" feedback of team duels and the difficulties of balancing XP gifting. As the next update for Champions Online nears, Cryptic promises a more in-depth series of dev diaries detailing the changes.
RIFT details upcoming Expert Mode dungeon changes
RIFT's patch 1.7: Carnival of the Ascended is bringing with it some pretty neat things, such as in-game marriage, PvP improvements, and the eponymous Carnival of the Ascended. But long-time, high-level players are probably most curious about the changes coming to Expert Mode dungeons. Tier 1 and tier 2 Expert Mode dungeons are merging into a single Expert tier. What this means is that all players with tier 1 gear will keep that gear (which will be improved by item changes being introduced in the patch), but it will never drop again. The upgraded versions of tier 1 gear will drop in its stead. Previous tier 1 dungeons have had their difficulty increased to be more on par with tier 2 dungeons, and Trion Worlds has also "turned the dials up a bit higher on some encounters to keep things interesting with your flashy new gear." For the full details on all of the changes coming to the Expert Mode system and the endgame gear system, just click on through the link below to the RIFT official site.
The Tattered Notebook: A wish list for EQII's 'phase two'
EverQuest II has had quite a year, but I was recently thinking about a comment that Executive Producer Dave "SmokeJumper" Georgeson made regarding the future of the game. In a recent interview, he discussed plans for "phase two," which is an ongoing list of things the team wants to do to improve the game but don't make it to live. With all of the new changes to the game, the team usually comes up with lots of extra ideas, and Georgeson said the focus going forward will be to knock out some of those ideas on the "phase two" list. I thought it would be fun to put together a list of things I'd like to see on the phase two list, and since it's the season for wish lists anyway, the timing is perfect. Read on for a look at a few things I'd like to see in EQII next year, and then share your ideas below!
