Guild Wars 2

I wanted to expand on an idea for a new loot concept that might be viable for the future of this game, possibly within a new expansion.

The goals are as follows:

1. To completely separate cosmetic and stat progression.

2. To allow much more customization regarding stats.

I’m going to base my examples off of current exotic gear since that is widely available.

First change:

The visual representation (aka. skin) of an item is now only the “base” for a future item. An exotic skin won’t have any stats in itself but rather the possibility to hold 3 sockets (+ a Rune of Sigil).

No more need for transmutation stones or anything artificial like that. Instead skins can be earned via all kinds of channels, as achievement-rewards, as rare unlocks or anything else conceivable. Impressive skins should obviously be rare, while vanilla skins can be more common.

2. Since the new exotic gear will be stat-less you need sockets to fill them with stats. Every skin allows for the placement of one “prime” socket and two “secondary” sockets.

For example an exotic prime socket might contain 101 Power or 101 Precision or any other stat.

A secondary socket would contain 72 of any given stat in the case of a Chest-piece.

This would allow for a much more liberal gear customization without being tied to pre-defined stat distributions.

These sockets would be treated the same way current exotic loot is handled by dropping from mobs, chests and other sources. They may need to be made a little more common however.

Anyway, an added twist would be that these sockets could contain slight variance. So rather than all exotic prime sockets having 101 stat bonus, they could add anything from 100 to 105.

Secondary sockets might have a similar variance in granting 70 to 75 depending on the quality of the socket. This is in order to create a more dynamic market environment because those perfect prime sockets would obviously be very thought after without making exotic gear in general inaccessible. It would also give hardcore players a long-term goal in trying to get a “perfect” item set without putting anyone at a disadvantage.

Hmm, a number of concerns I have:

1) What happens to crafting? Currently, crafting recipes are all about stats. Blood, claws, fangs, venom sacs, etc., all have specific stats associated with them, and it’s those that determine what type of gear is created. Not saying it couldn’t be done, but in addition to having to overhaul all gear in the game, they would have to also completely remake and rebalance crafting (and salvaging) from the ground up.

2) Adding complications does not necessarily mean improvement. How does this system make the game better? If you don’t like the appearance or stats on a given piece of gear, you simply find one that has the trait you want and transmute the items. Your system seems to achieve a similar result, but the process behind it is way more complex and introduces at least three more items per piece of gear to the economy. This makes it a hassle for anyone who’s levelling and just wants to make a new piece of gear to use. Creating a weapon or piece of armor has plenty of steps to it, as it is.

3) The “variance” you propose in the quality of sockets is introducing more RNG to the game, which in general just annoys players. For a perfectionist, creating a full set of gear where every piece has the best possible sockets is going to be incredibly frustrating and a huge grind. Maybe if you could upgrade the socket’s capacity after the gear was created, it wouldn’t be as bad.

4) Separating stat progression makes it its own thing — it will segregate the population further, both in terms of players’ interests and character power. It will make it harder, more complicated, and more time-consuming to just get gear you’re happy with. Casuals and people who can’t play as often will only have a harder time getting anything decent, whereas hardcore farmers and grinders will just be kept busy on more pointless monotony and in the end be even more powerful than everyone else.

Why so complicated?
Cosmetic outfit slot would solve SOOO many frustrations.

Use as a skin whatever suits you visually and equip items with the stats you like. Mix and match. See LOTRO.

@ Wednesday: Yes that would obviously work too but it wouldn’t have the added benefit of completely customizable gear.

As to Fyrebrand valid complaints I’d say:

1. Well I did say this would only be applicable to a new type of gear. Retrofitting something like this wouldn’t make much sense. Crafting could just be another source of skins. Maybe the discovery system would need to be adapted to cater to the new system since rare skins shouldn’t be available to anyone.

But honestly, I don’t see this as a huge issue. Most items of a certain kind already share almost identical recipes. I don’t see a problem if crafting was left with nothing but the skin for a “basic exotic weapon-type”.

Also, crafting is basically excluded from all current Ascended gear so there’s that.

2. I believe that my system is not only more intuitive but it also adds a lot more gear possibilities. Currently builds and play-styles are limited by the gear-stats distributions available to us. But what if you want a build built around Healing Power, Precision, Vitality? Or you want to build a build that takes you up to 40% Crit, but then stacks Condition Damage and Healing Power?

It opens up so many more options. And more options means a more engaging game and more longevity.

I made a clear point about this type of gear only being available as an “endgame” set as it clearly requires a bit more time and effort to put together. I wouldn’t recommend it for standard leveling gear, just for exotic or higher gear-levels.

3. This is a debatable point. I’ve seen many people ignore Ascended gear because it was only a very minor upgrade compared to exotic. And I don’t think people would get terribly obsessed with “perfect” stats…not until they’ve achieved everything else anyway.

Other games had similar systems and it always worked quite well. It simply meant that the “poor” level sockets were fairly cheap while the “perfect” ones were very expensive.

And again, if you give people the option to buy average quality sockets for Dungeons tokens etc. I really don’t think a such a minor stat difference would get people upset. It’s only something for the perfectionists to work at long-term without making the gear inaccessible.

4. I don’t see how you can reach that conclusion. In fact I’d argue that your average player who reaches level 80 will have a quicker time grasping my system then understanding the best ways to currently get exotic gear and what stats he might be wanting etc.