Raid gear set bonus

[Urthdigger]

A lot of the issues listed I feel only appear in specific iterations of the system, I know it may be confusing but I have/was talking about many different versions at once since I'm not demanding a specific one.

For example you said people will use really old gear because it's better, for the regens or whichever effect/theme. But if you had used power creep or self nerfing to prevent that then the only issue is the player, not the system (in this vision the system would still be vertical). The system is saying "hey its worse, you're making a bad decision" and the player does it because they want all the abilities to be working effects. Now I wouldn't say someone doing that is really that unusual but purposefully letting it happen can start to be messy to balance (not impossible but new challenges). The notice about tome vs raid of course will become harder to tell, because calculating a word problem vs one flat number is of course extra but I don't believe is enough a reason to stop abilities which are far more interesting to me than choosing between accuracy i've capped or more damage stats (in general the choice between the raid vs tome isn't really a choice anyways, its still pretty straight forward one BiS setup). You could promote choice by carefully crafted end result but different journey style abilities on the same piece of gear across the two systems though, so a player would have to choose between a regen buff or a cure buff which in the end do very similar things but its just how you'd like to play (sometimes you'll fail to balance it and the choice will vanish ofc, but that existed as a problem already - I guess it was just easier to think about in the past). Although I'd like to be clear and say I'm not suggesting abilities give you more choice, only if they design for a horizontal system or make abilities so potent that you may want to keep them around outside of their ilvl, or use another system like FFIX (keeping stuff out of their ilvl I would suggest only happens for Legendary like items, but of course that brings up its own pros and cons - which we can just look at WoW to know what they already are lol).

Similar thing I'd say to your rate of dropped items, they do not need to be rarer just because they have an effect. Keep exactly the same loot system and it would be just fine, so long as you don't allow much older gear to supersede newer gear. People will see the ability items in a greater light probably, but so long as they kept the same rate and replacement of gear they don't need to suddenly make getting gear slower -unless you're doing a horizontal system which you brought up but again I've been talking about 5+ versions at once just because I don't really care which version appears, you can make abilities work in a vertical system but it just becomes very important that newer gear replaces the older ones like you'd expect then. Addition of abilities doesn't require items to no longer be frequently received, that decision relies on other systems like horizontal vs vertical and related rewards in said content (like if a dungeon had one good item and nothing else vs a dungeon with all the good items).

I'm not saying the issues you raises cannot be issues, but that they'd only be issues under specific circumstances and visions of systems being used - like the drop rate, it doesn't need to be touched unless they begin to approach horizontal systems. Doesn't have to be "drop" could be token, upgrade, w.e rate - so people don't go insane, WoW is actually using a building % chance on failure for all legendary items now so that'd be another example. Of course certain items in WoW have value longer than one iteration, but again its all about how the systems marry each other.. So to me the issues you brought up are things to be mindful of but in no way prevent ability items from being present, they're just concerns to note while designing the system. Not that I'm suggesting you said that, but it did seem like you were phrasing it like "this is why it can't work" but at least imo, those issues raised (while good) could be accounted for and perhaps that's exactly what you were doing, just raising issues to make the best system possible ~ Me, I was just shotgun firing in hoping SE grabs one of the pellets and makes it happen lol. If you're just sharing concerns and concepts then I actually really enjoy these conversations but I'm not so great gleaming intention from text lol, my concern was like you thought I was saying "this idea is issueless and implement it exactly like this!", everything will have it's pro and con but to certain people it is worth or not .

To me ability effects are so cool I'd be happy if gear choices were made even more linear to make it fit, although I know in WoW and other games (like FFXI) they've allowed some or a lot of choice so I'm not opposed to that either - I only want to see abilities exist and am non particular in how it happens lol- and as you mentioned FFXI has its own issues with the horizontal low drop rate thing.

Like you've raised about the other systems, FFIX has issues we might as well raise too. With FFIX it would become a bit like a free form talent tree system, although I've actually suggested something akin to this as well before because I thought it was pretty cool lol.

Some things I see that would be nice to immediately adjust for is A. would things like +20% attack speed on critical be shared with things like Naul's Spear Cannon ability swap? It might be beneficial to create a sort of slotting control so players don't go obnoxious on either type or be forced as much. Doesn't have to be this but for example a sphere grid, where you drop in your earned abilities through the FFIX like system;however, in the specific spheres have specific restrictions like "ability" "stat" "on hit" "legendary affix" and in this way SE allows you to customize and has an expectation of what will happen. This is also means expectations for the players too - you won't be forced to have all stat spheres, all ability spheres, or have more than one legendary. It wouldn't be end of the world if you could just AP up and no restrictions, but it might lead to scenarios where you may be significantly lopsided, an issue to some more than others. The other issue is that if you put a really great ability behind content and that content is now really old, its a bit like where you were talking about in a horizontal system if the drop rate was too high then players would be SoL. Of course as I responded to before this is more of a concern than a permanent problem, for example you could make it so around the time a content dies new more easily obtained items have that ability on them too (like buried in a beastmen series, crafted, NPC quested).

C. One of the harder things to fix would be player expectation "why dont you have Naul's Spear, Gaius's dwarven hand cannon, Leviathan's Scales, and Omega Pew Pewer???!?! Vote kick!". It would be a bit like what SE is trying to get away from with the whole "you don't have fast cast....? wtf?" lol. Now of course that's not an issue to some people, but that issue would be harder to dodge - doing things like the gear in other content once that content is dead would help but you'd still get people who didn't grab them. Its why I think an aesthetic FFIX/Sphere Grid/Merit/Talent system would be great though, things to do and collect, but ultimately doesn't matter if you didn't go get them before.

Whatever SE does it can't be random, but abilities can work in a strictly vertical, horizontal, rare, common, perma, temporary system that's all I'm really gunning at. There is no reason besides development time and people wanting simplicity that abilities couldn't work (simplicity as in do I want 5 more parry or 5 more accuracy, not what is the power usefulness of "15% shield for 5 seconds when a monster casts a knockback effect" I dont know if I should use that or +20 parry halp!??). Oh and while I like set bonuses I would be disappointed if that's the only time ability traits appeared on items.

Well, it's less of a "This idea is stupid!" and more a "Game design is complicated and this is why they can't exactly just put in effects like this easily."

You're right in that they COULD implement things like this into a vertical progression system. A lot of the cons that I mentioned only crop up if gear doesn't get replaced, that's what causes newer gear to be invalid upon release and leads to horizontal progression schemes that require low drop rates to keep people still doing content. The problem is that when you add in ability augments the balancing becomes MUCH more difficult to do, especially since you may need to not only balance the new gear coming out to ensure it's an improvement over the lower level gear, you ALSO need to keep an eye on balancing low level gear that may have some unforeseen synergy with newer equipment. Adding in such a system not only makes items harder to balance on an individual level, but also increase how many items they need to balance at a given time. I know when the difficulty of balancing has been brought up before, people tend to say "Well just do your damn jobs and work on it SE!" I don't think they're quite grasping how much harder it is. And the unfortunate downside is if they fail to balance it properly, it leads to all those downsides I've mentioned before.

Now, as far as the ability sharing in the FFIX system idea, a thought did occur to me. Considering that these abilities would come off of gear, an easy solution would be to have each ability still tied to the slot that piece occupies, and only be able to equip one piece per slot. So, in this sort of system, if the +20% speed on crit and spear cannon swap both come from weapons, then they wouldn't be able to both be used at once.

As an aside, I actually really enjoy debating about this kind of stuff. Game design fascinates me. However, I also understand that development time can be a limited resource and game design can often be an ungodly mess even before adding in additional features. So, I tend to err on the side of solutions that are easier to implement, and try to help my fellow players understand why certain much asked for features might not get implemented very soon.