New Expansion: Will Itemization be Ever Be Improved?

The topic of the current cookie-cutter itemization has come up many times in the past, but with the next expansion coming up, I think it would be nice if the devs take notice and start improving the game's poor itemization system that keeps repeating every year. Right now there are 3 tiers of gear for group level drops and 2 tiers of tier for raid level drops; many items are not even worth using and the gear choices are very bland.

For the group drops, the only items worth using are the lower tier non-prestige items (for f2p accounts) and the trade-skill top tier drops. There's basically an entire tier of items that sees little to no use at all and serves no purpose.

Similarly, those who raid generally only want to equip the best-in-slot top tier drops, so what is the point of the lower tier? There are a few rare cases where the lower tier items may have a point or two extra of a certain heroic stat (which doesn't really make much of a difference anyways), but other than this, the lower tier gear serves little purpose.

It would be nice if we could see more interesting gear options in the future, allowing for meaningful choices on what gear we want to use, rather than a significant number of useless items that no one really wants to use.

Short answer: No.

Long answer: We're playing in someone else's sandbox and that person wants things a certain way. The way does change over time, but not in any discernible way that any of us can figure out. The only thing we can be certain of is that if something is deemed too easy or simple, it will be changed in a way that makes in game harder for players.

Until there are personnel changes, your best bet for meaningful change is to say nothing and pray the person slips up for an expansion or two.

And I have no idea why they spend effort on redistributing the heroics on gear each expansion and then adding a token amount to each. It's like a weird specific form of OCD.

As long as Tradeskill is the top, the tier under it that is dropped will have value just in the fact that you don't have to Tradeskill or use Platinum buying the containers and such to make that kind of gear

Until gear actually makes a noticeable difference the difference between them wont matter, so for those who hate Tradeskilling or are light on Platinum it gives an option for gear in the Expansion they purchased

One of the reasons I skip mid-tier group gear is the vendor bought component is so expensive; I make my own TS stuff, so it's basically cheaper to only bother to make the TS stuff as long as I have reasonable filler in the slot already.

I would suggest getting rid of the expensive vendor component.

I think the concept of tradeskill gear being top gear for every slot is also something that should be eliminated. Until that system was put in place, best-in-slot tradeskill gear was mainly limited to specific unique gear that involved long quest lines (i.e. 10th Ring, Coldain Shawl, etc.). The expensive vendor components also seem to just be an unnecessary money sink (along with the expensive type 3 augs that we need perfected distillers to remove or need to rebuy every time we upgrade a piece)

Vendor component needs to go away for visable non TS gear, both for group and raid. It should be the same as EoK armour you just click it, no need for any combine on none TS gear.

I'd like to see more choice of gear. Think Luclin with the different clickies on items. I think Luclin was one of the best eras for gear choice. Lots of clicky toys and TS mods.

The fact that you can most likely beat all of an expansion's group content, depending on group make-up and player skill (missions might prove a challenge depending on how they're designed), using the previous expansion's top gear makes both tiers of dropped group gear irrelevant, beyond the tradeable stuff that usually goes to alts. There's no reason to even equip any that stuff or spend the plat on the stupidly expensive merchant component when you can just farm the tradeskill drops and get the best gear anyway. Maybe use the non-vis gear to fill in gaps until you get the good stuff, and then the no-trade gear is tribute city.

They've been doing cut & paste gear for so long that I don't think they know how to create new, unique items any more...not that they care enough to do so.

At least drop the price of them to far less than 1,000p each. Casual players don't have time and resources to get 160,000p to 192,000p for each tier just to do it again and again and also pay for crafted items on top of it at the end. Wait, do some raids, and it is another round.

I understand it is supposed to be a money sink, but it is too much for casual players, and it is a drop in the bucket for full time box and bot players who often just skip tiers because they will go for the player made upgrade from the get go if they can.

It also doesn't help that a character doesn't actually get the stats listed. Why pay a huge vendor fee for an item that gives little real benefit to upgrade?

That's a huge problem, but part of that is spreading the goods around to various camps with similar drops. I get that part of it. If there is just one uber item, it will be forever camped by bots and boxes.

On the other hand, having two items with different names having almost identical stats is pretty sad in a game like this. Creativity left the building long ago like a dead Elvis.

Casuals can easily making 200k a year just spending some time running around during launch picking up collects. They ALWAYS sell for inflated prices at the beginning and people are always willing to buy them. I've made millions upon millions of plat just off selling stuff that will eventually be cheap 6 months in.

Collects, TS components, etc are easy money at the beginning of each expansion.

Look, it's seven different rings!

https://www.raidloot.com/items?name...=&source=&prestige=Include&order=-&view=Table

And seven different earrings!

https://www.raidloot.com/items?name...=&source=&prestige=Include&order=-&view=Table

Etc.

I agree. I think the plat cost issue is a small issue here.

The main point I wanted to bring up was the lack of creativity and variety in items and the fact that a majority of the items are a useless waste of space. It would be nice if we actually had some type of option to choose to improve our build in some way, giving some room for customization or at least unique items to chase for, rather than just adroitness/brilliance/vigor which barely differ. It doesn't help that the heroic stat choices to make are limited to a few choices, and then the alternative gear they give only varies the heroic stats by a few points, which makes almost no difference at this point of gear inflation.

The blandness of weapon choices is an issue in itself as well. The procs on them have constantly been following the same formula and there are no longer any unique weapon procs (i.e. knights get their rune proc 1hander, or direct damage 2hander and that's it). Older weapons had some fun procs on them, buffs like avatar, unique recourse effects, slow effects, lifetap bond etc., which could be used for utility.

It seems class specific gear has been pretty much completely eliminated as well. The class specific weapons from RoF were a good idea, and it's too bad that idea never got reused. Although the devs stated they would never do epic quests again, putting class weapons behind achievements in the RoF format shouldn't be too difficult.

The problem is the item dev has limited time and resources. So when big chunks of those are basically wasted for tiny returns the player base doesn't like it. You can't be an ER doc and spend 25 minutes with each patient equally like you might have when you worked as a primary care dr. Being that you have limited time and resources instead of making 5 tiers of gear and 15 rings pretty sure that can be narrowed down to 3 and 6 freeing up more time to address tuning or other item stuff. But that isn't going to happen.

I think it should be simplified even further than this. There shouldn't even be 3 tiers of gear fitting a bland and cookie cutter format. They should cut out this tier format altogether, cut down on the number of items significantly and instead put some creativity into the items that drop, giving a few different options for each slot for raid/group respectively. Gearing up in the early days of EQ didn't have this tier format with every item following the same naming pattern, the drops were more interesting and engaging.

The plat cost issue might not be much of an issue on Live, on TLP....Different story.

It's not about creativity at all. The previous expansion's t3 group gear is better the t2 gear until max level-1 assuming a level change expansion. Since we are forced to beat the expansion in order to level our character, there's no point in the t1/t2 gear. If they want the t1/t2 gear to be thought after, they need to remove the dependency of progression for levels and lower the required level to max -4

On the non level expansions, the t2 gear isn't a significant improvement over t3 of last years expansion.

I agree.

The only real upgrade for a toon in full t3 gear from one expansion is to get full t3 gear from the next expansion. The t1/t2 stuff is totally irrelevant and only useful for passing along to alts that don't get played very often in order to keep them "up to date".

I would prefer to see 2 tiers...one non-prestige and tradeable set and then the tradeskill stuff. Make the vendor component for the armor no-trade to make people buy the expansion in order to use the gear.

If they're not willing to do real itemization and continue the cookie cutter "cut&paste" strategy, then it's a waste of dev time to make a tier of items (t2) that are non-tradeable and are not an upgrade over the previous expansion's t3 gear.

So you are saying that casual players are supposed to take their limited time and scavenge for the other players? Methinks you don't understand the time constraints of actual casual players.

Also, you say 200k in a year is easy, but that is 150k-200k for EACH tier. That was the gist of my post.

It isn't just that. Raid gear is so OP compared to group gear, and let's be frank, the game is tuned for raid gear players. T3 group can play, but raid gear makes group gear look like it came from two expacs back.

You’re supposed to buy a Krono, that’s the point.