In my opinion Itemization is the most important part of this game. It’s more important to me then working raid scripts. Group and raid mobs can be made killable after release, but itemization is normally not reviewed by Beta Testers and is all but Never revamped after release… so we need to hit it early and hard. I hope I don’t need to get into the most basic of itemization tenets, like Risk verses reward, and items need to have a progression from easier content to harder content. Exemptions can and should exist but I think they should not be “Game Changing Items”. I should not have to go into these basic itemization rules but since I feel that this thread needs to be made and talked about… I probably should go into them and more in-depth topics also. I am not claiming to know everything about Itemization; I just want to layout my thoughts and start the conversation for the community to talk about so “We the Players” can bring our Expectations to the Development team BEFORE Itemization is locked in stone before Beta ever starts. 1st – Risk verses Reward – basically, the harder content that you are killing the better the reward “Should Be”. This “Normally” means that most Solo and Duo content is going to give gear that has lower reward then 4-6 person content, and 4-6 person content will give lower reward than 12-24 person content. There should be exceptions, like where the Challenge Duo Zones give better gear than 6 person and even most 24 person content. This is because the Challenge Duo Zones have higher standards and is harder than most group/raid content. Any Out of Tier content like these Challenge Duo Zones, I think NEED to be made to be able to be run by all classes… and that’s a Thread for another post…. Having Rare items that are out of tier is fine, but making them 1 in a million chance is not feasible, at that drop rate it might as well not exist. 2nd – Item Progression – just like Risk verses Reward the items from one tier to the next need to have a progression of stats. All of the stats on the old tier need to show up on the new tier AT Least, there can be an added stat, but it’s not needed. If there is a proc or set bones on that item on the old tier it needs to be represented in some way so the new tier is actually BETTER than the old tier item. This principle goes for all ranges of gear from solo to group to raid… it needs to work ALL the way up and down. 3rd – Proc’s – I know there was a lot of talk to address procs and give the players a way of knowing what WILL and what will not stack. Now within a tier of gear… like from the same mob or just a few mobs later; don’t give us the same proc/ability that will not stack with itself. Like an ability on a nice new Ear just to find the same ability on the Cloak from the guy 2 mobs later. 4th – EM vs. HM – I know this gets into zones but I am talking about the itemization side of it. Where there is a HM version of an EM mob and we have to choose EM or HM, the HM “Should” drop better versions of the EM item slots, maybe plus some new slots. If the HM drops a different slot than the EM then the EM slot becomes unobtainable after the HM is killed and before the HM of the old EM slot is killed, so people that need that gear slot from EM cannot get anything. This may mean that there needs to be more HM fights like there was in DoV, or more slots dropping per HM than EM… I don’t know or care. Just don’t stick guilds in the place where we cannot get any Legs without not killing a HM that we have on farm. 5th – Drop Rates – being that I personally went about 6 months of my raid guild killing 2 Shoulder mobs without seeing a single raid shoulders … then seeing 3 drop in a row… the drop rate of what drops needs to be addressed. I think with the talk of going to armor patterns “Should” help with this. I think there would be 4 patterns and as long as there are 2 propping at a time it should be ok. 2 out of 4 gives everyone in raid a 50/50 chance of getting what they need each armor drop.
I still haven't seen HM cleric shoulders off oligar or cleric chests from drinal so I couldn't agree more with your whole statement.
Good points on the first 4 things listed, but #5 stands out to me. Healer crate, tank crate, scout crate, mage crate. Do away with tank plate and tank leather drops. Do away with healer plate, healer chain, and healer leather drops.
from what i understand they are planning on making 1 Crate for each Armor Type not Archtypes. the crate should have Offensive and Defensive sets for each of the class groups that can use the crate. again this is they way i have heard. I think if they go with the Archtypes Crate then they run into the problem still that the tank crate would be only needed by 3-5 classes in raid where the Healer crate would be needed by 7-8. if they go with the Armor Types Crate then the plate would be needed by 6 classes and the Leather would be needed by 5 classes, the chain would be needed by the most at 9 classes the cloth at 6. Either type of Cratering would be MUCH better then they way armor is dropping in the current zones. I also hope they use the Crates in the Heroic Content also.
The way they did it in VP was pretty good. If memory serves there were 6 crates that could drop and each one had a piece for 4 different classes. Of course there were only 24 classes back then and there will be 26 when the expac hits. Adding a fifth piece to two of the crates could work though. Slightly unfair to the 10 classes in those two crates but better than doing it by archetype or armor type.
Making it all pattern based would only work for 7 slots. It wouldn't adress 2 pirate king bows on splitpaw ever, nor 0 fighter wrists on pk on splitpaw ever. It wouldn't stop the mass streaking of items (pk mage 2h going for near minimum plat bid to alts for months). A way of trading loot as mentioned before by a dev is what we need. On more general points, gear can't just keep being slight increases with stats benefitting some classes more than others due to things like focused casting or wizard myth buff. Clickies that act as new damage spells that crit, unique effects and things that stand out will be important. On HM vs EM in SG the hm drop the hm loot in addition to all the easy mode loot, which solves that issue.
Yeah, all this stuff is fairly basic and solutions were covered at SOE Live. Assuming everything from those panels is followed through on I don't think these items are going to be an issue in ToV. Just curious what the system will end up looking like to combat RNG streaking.
And I still haven't seen druid shoulders off the stupid monkey in AoA, even though there is nothing in the zone, aside from shoulders that anybody in the raid needs.
I hope you 2 are right and nothing i have covered is a problem, but looking back over the Xpac releases i can remember these are the major points that i think the dev teen loses site on the most. If there are other itemization points that you or others think needs to be talked about please lets talk. I understand the purpose of having Rare items in all content but they need to have something in place to deal with the RMG that has been talked about at length all over the boards. having the named drop 1 token for the number of non armor drops they where going to drop. the group/raid distributes the tokens to the ppl and when you get one you go to a merchant and get the item for that slot that you want... I am not sure if this is the best way to do ALL non armor drops but it would be better then the way it is now.
I've only taken notice of Skyshrine and CoE beta, and to be honest the experience of that is that you can't tell what itemisation is going to be like. You don't really know until the content hits, and that's a mistake.
