Jimmayus said:
If you're talking about a static loot drop that has variable stats, I guess that's sort of ok. It's an arpg concept used heavily in Path of Exile. I'd hesitate to make it wholly random like in that game, however, because you can obtain loot much faster in those sorts of games. If such a system were to be implemented, I would prefer to see a scenario where, for example:
- You obtain loot drop from boss, loot drop is not fitted to you so it only has % of max
- You need x amount of materials from the same and other content to perfectly fit it
- If it has slots for bonus abilities (auto-rez on a timer? % bonus to some spell? environmental res?), the items that fill those slots are obtained from other sources as well
That way you could vary the base loot's unimproved stats, so a lucky roll would mean you need less of X materials to max it, but the end result of the effort would be predictable and understandably impressive.
Yes this is what I meant. The same thing would drop,- the wolfskin pants would drop- and my idea was they would have variable stats, variable effect, variable attribute from a certain set of shaman desireable things, more of one or bits of all three so each time the pants would drop, but each pair would be unique.
Manouk said:Jimmayus said:
If you're talking about a static loot drop that has variable stats, I guess that's sort of ok. It's an arpg concept used heavily in Path of Exile. I'd hesitate to make it wholly random like in that game, however, because you can obtain loot much faster in those sorts of games. If such a system were to be implemented, I would prefer to see a scenario where, for example:
- You obtain loot drop from boss, loot drop is not fitted to you so it only has % of max
- You need x amount of materials from the same and other content to perfectly fit it
- If it has slots for bonus abilities (auto-rez on a timer? % bonus to some spell? environmental res?), the items that fill those slots are obtained from other sources as well
That way you could vary the base loot's unimproved stats, so a lucky roll would mean you need less of X materials to max it, but the end result of the effort would be predictable and understandably impressive.
Yes this is what I meant. The same thing would drop,- the wolfskin pants would drop- and my idea was they would have variable stats, variable effect, variable attribute from a certain set of shaman desireable things, more of one or bits of all three so each time the pants would drop, but each pair would be unique.
I think that would be a HUGE database filler and it would be hard to sell things to other players. When someone agrees to buy a wolfskin pants from someone, they are looking for certain stats. It would be a ***** to see 15 players selling wolf skin pants and none of them are what you want. If they each had a different name, like Mighty Wolfskin Pants and Fiery Wolfskin Pants, maybe, but still a database killer.
But, I like the idea.
Liav said:philo said:I, like others, enjoy creative raid design.
I would like to see more raids where you have the option to accomplish the task in a numer of ways. If you take the easy way out you get lesser rewards.
Maybe you kill all the waves of adds instead of moving past them. Maybe you don't do something that negates elemental damage etc. Completing the challenge in a certain way affects the rewards. This allows guilds to gain some smaller rewards while they are working towards beating the moe challengging parts of the content. This also extends the life of a raid. Maybe it is beatable the "easy" way this exapansion but once the next expansion comes out and people are a higher level and better equiped they can go back and beat it the more difficult way and get better rewards.
Another example of a raid design that I thought was creative and interesting...(bear with me it has been awhile, some of my facts might be off). There was a worm in Luclin in a cave that started out small and untargetable. It grew little by little in size and power each day. Eventually it became targetable but didn't drop anything after a few days. It took 1 week for it to grow from its smallest form to full size. I believe if you killed it on the 6th day it dropped loot...but lesser quality loot. On the last day it grew to full size/power and dropped the best possible loot. It was an interesting mechanic. I enjoyed being able to see it grow and know exactly how long we had until it was full grown.
Raids have had hardmore counterparts for a very, very long time.
In your second paragraph, the raid you're describing was The Burrower Beast event. You kill several waves of small mobs that increase in power and eventually spawn the "end" boss mob. This is a ring event, another mechanic (like hardmode) that has already existed in MMOs for many years.
Besides the lag it created and the terrible bugs at first, I loved the Public Quests that EQ2 brought in with Velious. I farmed those things all day long. From what I hear now, they suck. But, they were great at first.
A small event would start With a few mobs. The more players that showed up, the bigger the fights got until eventually you spawned the top raid version. The further you got in the event, the better loot was available.
It was a great way to get people together. You didn't have to be part of a group or raid to participate, just join in.
Beefcake said:Besides the lag it created and the terrible bugs at first, I loved the Public Quests that EQ2 brought in with Velious. I farmed those things all day long. From what I hear now, they suck. But, they were great at first.
A small event would start With a few mobs. The more players that showed up, the bigger the fights got until eventually you spawned the top raid version. The further you got in the event, the better loot was available.
It was a great way to get people together. You didn't have to be part of a group or raid to participate, just join in.
Yeah, I remember the PQs. The one with the giants and the other one near the docks with the Rime guys.
They were fun but the novelty shortly wore off. It's really hard to design challenging content around randoms. PQs were basically just loot pinatas, and that was my biggest complaint with them. You show up, attack some mobs, and it poops out some decent starter gear.
I question the efficacy of events like these. They exist in GW2 as well, and even still, they just exist as an easy means to get stuff. If you set the participation bar too high, the content is inherently probably too challenging for a large swarm of randoms to complete. If the participation bar is set too low, the content is just a low effort loot pinata.
That's the biggest downfall of this kind of content, in my eyes.