Dark Souls-style loot is entirely possible within the GD engine, but, frankly, Dark Souls is hella grindy to get what you want.
If you want the top notch itmes - yes. But you can beat the most difficult bosses without them. In gd not so much. This is why it isnt compareable to me.
Lul, any git gud can and even sometimes will beat the game with any of the early drops (Longsword and knife ftw).
So Souls is not a good example for balance. What it does suggest and it is something I would like but will never happen is the option to upgrade your weapon.
I want to say that I generally agree with your ideas, except for 5 preventing the farming of equips for other characters. Overall, though, 1 seems to be the most helpful and 2 or 3 seem like good ways to at least give the player some control over the end result of a grind. 4 is still rng on what you get, but not how frequently you get rewards. Maybe 4 is really just what the crucible should be doing, in an abstract way. At least, that’s how people already use it.
Souls is the best example for balance of a skill based game - because as you said, you dont need any special equipment to beat it. The only thing preventing you form doing that are your own skills.
If you try to beat gd without good items you will be wrecked in a2 elite at the latest.
Well… grinding it’s not always a good thing but not always bad either.One thing is sure it’s the fact that it’s better than Diablo 3 X-MAS drop rate where you drop legendary everywhere at fast rate.
It’s my personnal thought 
After 350 hours, i haven’t completed any set or obtained desired MI’s with good rools. Thus it is same for GD. It is very very grindy. Of course if you have a char for crucible, then it a little bit more faster but still then probably you already completed your build to complete gladiator, which again is paradox because you probably have all the items you are looking for many of your chars.
I’ve considered something like this before, and I think it’d work well and still be fairly balanced if the items were expensive enough to craft. X amount of hearts/brains/blood with a manticore eye or two tossed in for good measure, perhaps. You’d still have to “prove yourself” by finding the item in the first place, but it cuts out the tedium necessary if you want to make a second build using the same item or simply get a slightly better roll.
It’d also be a good way to free up storage space, since people who don’t want to horde items can simply craft them when they need them.
Same goes for Epics, I suppose. I imagine the crafting menus might be a wee bit on the long side by the end though. :rolleyes:
- This can actually be a good idea to make a use of each blacksmith bonuses, and make the Duncan/Angrim choice a bit more meaningful, because that’s one part of the crafting system that I feel it was the most underused.
Although, this can also bring some issues of it’s own, like the list of crafting choices being oversaturated (but this can be a minor problem since you can hide categories).
- Or maybe a lot of Iron Bits.
3 & 4) Don’t have a strong opinion on these, but I don’t think these are necessary.
- Bad idea. This would make even less likely to find a Legendary that you could use in another build, or a item that you could use but you are using a different type because you have nothing better. Example: One of the Legendaries you want is a piece of regular armor, but you are using heavy armor at the moment, making heavy armor legendaries being more likely to drop.
As said, you can always cheat and make whatever items for yourself. For me the grind is what makes the game. I would’ve quit long time ago out of boredom if i just got everything i need fast and easy.
I’m now about 640 hours in GD and i’m at the point of if i get a new item i haven’t already found, i’m like yayy and it really makes my day ^^ I only have 3 legendary sets completed (many of them missing 1 piece though) but i’m not complaining. You don’t really need full sets to effectively clear most of the content, depending on builds of course.
I know this ideology of i want it all and i want it now is more and more common nowadays but i really hope that not all future arpgs are going more to D3 direction.
You struck a nerve on the ideology bit at the end, so I have to retort.
There’s a difference between wanting something you think you deserve and wanting something for the sake of having it. I want it all and I want it now isn’t a fair characterization of the ideology of someone moving to eliminate a time sink part of an otherwise enjoyable game. I simply don’t have the time irl to farm in game. I don’t mind a barrier, but that barrier literally only being a time-based one is what I mind. If I know that my character is capable of clearing the content I’d clear for the sake of farming, that to me shows a sense of deserving, and so for me personally, I’m fine hacking in something, but I don’t see what additional “deserve” status I or my character gets from doing the content 30 times.
Should a lot of work arise from at least something resembling content, fine. I’d even take a crafting system requiring lots of materials if it was at least faster than grinding and had guaranteed results.
I just want to note that there is more justification behind this than pure spoiled impatience.
Good explanation. Game creator medierra even said he does not want his game to be pure grindfest but yet failed to achieve that. In 1000 hours not even complete 10 sets for some players are proof of that.
Kinda depends what those players are doing for those 1000 hours. Our wonderful forum friend powbam has over 8000 hours in the game (some of which were spent afk…) and has never beat Ultimate.
How many endgame legendary sets should he have completed, by your argument?
You are giving an example of someone who is a game or mod tester? Probably more than half of it was game testing which contributes nothing to argument.
In epic you can almost drop every legendary since item level 75 is the highest ;). In elite, dungeons scale to that level. In addition to that, There are lots end game legendaries that are level 60ish also.
Response to the concept of the thread after skimming the first few pages:
I’m more against the idea of uniques. That there is a specific “best in slot” for specific builds is what’s really annoying to me. Instead of the current system of rarity tiers, I’d rather see a rarity rating/score system, say 1-1000 (higher numbers mean stronger stats but have lower drop rate), maybe you get a 750 rarity helm that’s got just the right stats for your nightblade, better than any 900 rarity helm you’ve ever seen would be for the build. This way the best in slot item drop is some disgustingly horribly unreachable low odds, and there is also a much larger number of “viable” builds.
The rng grindwall though, I agree it’s a detriment to the genre. I’d be for solving that with crafting rather than guaranteed drops. That is, an extremely flexible crafting system - a crafter that could freely attach prefixes and suffixes and create an item of any strength given the right materials/cost. Then we’re just grinding for mats, but that way there is probably a much more tangible time-cost for getting sufficient gear. Mat requirements would probably mean running same areas over and over again tho (as they do now), so they would need a more even distribution system to maintain the variety of gameplay. Perhaps revamped dismantling with more agency in determining the end result.
Not bad suggestion.Crafting suffixes and prefixes may be a good solution if the mats are not very rng dependent and don’t have much pool as items. Thus, it could be more efficient and fun to grind if the pool is smaller.
I think main problem is the pool and its not considering duplicates for uniques.
The fact i honestly think that i deserve a bj from Scarlett Johansson (for me being the greatest person of all time) doesn’t mean that i’m objectively deserving it.
Just sayin’
/S
I like the idea. Could hit the sweet spot between farming and crafting
Indeed it all really depends how you spend your time. If you spend most of your time leveling new characters (and don’t even finish ultimate with them) and don’t do much farming in the “end game”, you can’t expect to have it all.
What annoys me the most though are those crazy MI’s. They are just impossible to get without trading. Unless you really spend thousands of hours farming them…I have tried farming them quite a bit and tried crafting some rares too, but haven’t got a single usable high tier MI or rare item yet.
The trick is to farm the crucible, doesn’t have to be gladiator crucible either. The upside is that you’ll net the highest sheer number of MI’s this way, so you’re bound to get a few good ones. I’ve yet to find an MI with two rare affixes, but I did get a Stonehide Solael-Sect Legguards of the Badger, which was good enough for me. MI’s with a single good affix are good enough; you don’t need those ridiculous double rare MI’s to do crucible, but they obviously help. The more you think you NEED them, the more frustrated you’ll be. Even affixes like warding, ordered, prismatic, of attack, of protection, and of vitality are fantastic finds on MI’s.
And don’t get too hung up on farming the perfect MI yet anyways, the expansion is coming which will raise the level cap and make your level 70 MI weak compared to the level 90 version. :rolleyes: