Equipment variety

#1

I’ll start saying that I love this game, was a nice surprise when I saw the demo link on Rock, Paper Shotgun which led to my purchase.

I’ve played a lot, finished everything currently available, but I found one thing quite ‘dull’ personally: The gear.

All items were basically just attack/defense, with no variety at all but higher values on those stats, are there plans to add some variety on them?
For instance, there could be weapons that added extra speed or crit instead of higher attack, or armors that prevent 1 hit kills(relevant for endless mode) or reflect damage, what are your thoughts?

#2

We started with very simple equipment because we didn’t want the game to get bogged down in micro-management, and we wanted to be careful not to unbalance things. As it is, with a large party buying equipment becomes more about - buy a little of the best stuff? Or buy a lot of cheap stuff? And then - who do I give the best stuff too? If every item had 2 or 3 stats and a special effect, this would get really tedious with a potential maximum party size of 37 characters.

The other thing was that we wanted each class to have a clear purpose and we didn’t want to blur those lines with equipment. Ie, if berserkers can equip an ice sword, as awesome as that is, it might completely undermine the purpose of ice mages, since now berserkers are kind of taking over the purpose of an ice mage, and given that their Psi cost is lower berserkers with ice swords could soon become a dominant strategy, ruining the fun. That, and most of the effects-based customization is currently handled through the skill trees.

Those were just our fears during design. Now that the game has been released and we can see how it’s being played, we’re definitely interested in adding some special effects and more diversity to equipment. We basically started off by shooting for as simple and streamlined as possible, and we’ll build from there.

Right now we’re thinking about adding some special effects to the unique equipment as a start, but haven’t made any decisions just yet.

At the very least, a lot of the unique loot is a bit underpowered for how hard it is to get in the game and we’re going to be releasing a patch soon to bump this up across the board to a decent level. Other details will come as we figure things out, but for now nothing’s been decided for sure :slight_smile:

#3

I would love to see a way to upgrade existing unique equipment. Since it can’t be sold and often becomes obsolete pretty quickly, a way to keep it useful would be great. Would definitely add some value to the harder challenges.

-zenchronus

#4

@zenchronous:

We have exactly this in mind, for unique equipment at least. That’s why we don’t let you sell it - the plan so far is for there to be some kind of magic “altar” on the map where you can do crazy stuff to unique equipment that makes it useful again and gives it special properties.

#5

Love it. That would certainly increase the usefulness. And maybe add a second equipment slot for berserkers… something other than armor obviously. Maybe “loincloth” or “amulet” or something more game-specific. War-paint? The effect could be something useful to the class like increased attack speed or crit chance.

-zencrhonus

#6

Hahahaha. For berserkers the following ideas have been suggested by various other fans:

  1. Shoes
  2. Tattoos
  3. Warpaint
  4. “Bling”’
  5. Bandanas

We’ll think of something :slight_smile:

#7

Hey Lars, don’t forget the “magnificent turban of violence” for berserkers :slight_smile:

#8

You could always just make it an accessory slot. That’s a very RPG move. Then you could have boots that increase speed, bandanas that increase crit, etc.

#9

I would also stay away from over-powering equip with specials, as Lars said. The differentiation ought to be between units, not between equipment. If you have accessories that give specials, I would stick to base stats like attack/defense/speed.

#10

More equipment variety would be nice, but I think it would be best to amplify/suppress existing traits rather than outright giving new ones away. One might do less damage, but increase the effectiveness of a berserker’s bleed, one might lower regeneration but increase attack speed, etc. Some might give a lesser bonus with no penalty. That way you can customize in a way that complements your skill tree choices. (And retain some differentiation past the point where you have all skills max’d for all 37)

Additionally, it would be nice if gear stats were a multiplier rather than an additive value. But that’s another can of worms.

More micromanagement = good, so long as it is not mandatory to beat the normal game. Once you have 90gold, 37xL40, and 500000 scrap with nothing left to buy… It would be nice to have options left to tinker with your strategy. :smiley:

#11

— Begin quote from "Syntropy"

I think it would be best to amplify/suppress existing traits rather than outright giving new ones away.

— End quote

Like!

I think this would be the best way to retain an item’s usefulness as you level up. Then, it becomes a trade off - do I want to keep the sword that amplifies my lead zerkers Double Hit skill by +3 but -1 to Rage, or trade it for the sword that adds +20 to Swipe damage without any penalty?

#12

I’d love to see just two changes to equipment:

  1. What Syntropy said - make some equipment “special” in providing a single bonus to either a basic characteristics or to a trait/technique. Good games are about choices. And just as we now have to choose between putting a skillpoint there or there, we could be choosing whether to give the new sword to a highly-levelled berzerker or to a newbie knight, who with it’s +2 to smash wouldn’t be so much newbie.
    This doesn’t aim at autogenerated common, magic and rare items, diablo style. Much simpler - +x primary (attack/defense) and optionally +y something on the side (regen, evade, defense, HP, speed - OR skills)

  2. Give all recruits some common equipment. It really doesn’t make sense when I recruit somebody for 1000 scrap that they’d not have 100-scrap worth staff or something.

#13

There might be some other ways to add character to equipment.

Range and Speed modifiers - Polearm, Arbalist, Staff of Sending might increase the range of a character by 0.2 or whatever, but at the cost of reducing the speed trait slightly. A heavy weapon hits harder, but also affects speed. A staff of war might also increase damage but at a small penalty to range.

These would likely be unique weapons so one could not load up an entire array of champs with them, but could be shuffled out strategically for certain maps.

I also agree with upgrading Unique weapons. If they had more character, it would be worth doing since they would have unique properties.

#14

Arbalest*

Sorry, lit major.