27 réponses à ce sujet

[Melcolloien]

I am sorry if this has been brought up Before - there are so many topics in this forum

 

But I was just thinking...and this goes especially for DAII, it really sucks to have all the best items from the very start (I have all the item packs) - I have nothing against DLC's, I love them but I don't want to have lots of stuff from the start - I want to find them.

 

And I want the loot to get better. I mean not all the time, I get that you still will find a random barely any good sword here and there to sell...But for example - the staff Orsino drops at the end of DAII - that should be one of the, if not the very best staff in the game.

 

I really want to keep upgrading my gear as I level up and it feels like you reach a point half way through when you just stop finding stuff worth saving, and that is boring :/

 

For me, a big part of the fun is to keep finding new and better gear as my character progress.

[HiroVoid]

I personally would like it if the best equipment included gathering up rare materials and ingredients like in Dragon Age: Awakenings.  Bonus if some of those materials are one-of-a-kind, and you have to make a choice between what equipment you could get with it.

[Melcolloien]

Yeah, I totally agree. I really liked that in Awakening.

[Elhanan]

OTOH, I kinda dislike finding the best gear near the conclusion; no real chance to use it all except for the last battle. My suggestion is having the first Chapter leading us to finding or creating said gear, spending the remaining gameplay watching it used and possibly becoming enhanced and upgraded.

[Melcolloien]

If you can upgrade it then yeah, but to just have the same equipment through almost the whole game is kind of boring.
I like leveling up both my character and my gear

[Sequin]

I'd like a system where you are constantly building toward getting your best armour set. Something where you can't equip it until it's complete, but you are constantly finding things to add based on what you want to specialise in...

So say you are a rogue. You are told about a lost pair of gauntlets that a famous archer used that are in a cave far away. You can take a party in search of it as you see fit. Thing is, the cave is a high level. So you might be able to get the armour upgrade at a lower level (if you are amazing at luck) ... but it's more difficult and will probably take several hours as opposed to going there later in game and attaining it within a single hour time.

And allow us to customise the appearance of the armour as we build it. So no two sets will ever look alike.

On the other hand, you can complete the game without ever upgrading to the "best armour" if you don't want to waste time with it.

[HiroVoid]

If you can upgrade it then yeah, but to just have the same equipment through almost the whole game is kind of boring.
I like leveling up both my character and my gear

Yeah.  That was actually one of my peeves with Dragon Age II.  I know Bioware wanted to give each companion unique appearances, but I enjoy watching the characters get better equipment throughout the game in a way of progression.

 

On the other hand, you can complete the game without ever upgrading to the "best armour" if you don't want to waste time with it.

On the easier difficulties, sure, but on harder difficulties, I would think its expected that the player know more about strategies they can use and focus on making sure they're well-prepared with healing items, upgraded equipment, etc.

[Hanako Ikezawa]

And allow us to customise the appearance of the armour as we build it. So no two sets will ever look alike.

I know we are able to do this. Bioware has said armor and weapons are customizable, even for solely aesthetic reasons. 

[Vegeta 77]

Better gear near the end is fine but new game + would be nice this time. Playing archer the only gear besides dlc i like is champion set. But you get that for one act.

[Sequin]

On the easier difficulties, sure, but on harder difficulties, I would think its expected that the player know more about strategies they can use and focus on making sure they're well-prepared with healing items, upgraded equipment, etc.

Fair point. I'm just spitballing for the moment. I like for options to be available because of the added challenge, but it would be set up to discourage you from attempting to upgrade until you are ready.

Sorta like the Omega 4 Relay... except not driven by loyalty/recruitment so much as skill and luck. Skill and luck most players (including me) don't have.

[Melcolloien]

I like that idea...to earn your equipment in a way. I always like challenges, and like I wrote in my first post I really don't like just having stuff.
One of the reasons I played Diablo II over and over and over again - and kept playing with old characters - was to find better gear.

And it's fun to leave your "hand me downs" to your companions as well.

[Sequin]

I like that idea...to earn your equipment in a way. I always like challenges, and like I wrote in my first post I really don't like just having stuff.
One of the reasons I played Diablo II over and over and over again - and kept playing with old characters - was to find better gear.
And it's fun to leave your "hand me downs" to your companions as well.

Brings back memories of me constantly giving Sten's old equipment to Alistair during the early portion of DA:O.

Poor Alistair never got to wear anything new.

[The Baconer]

If there's no New Game + then no thank you.

[Jawzzus]

I like getting new/better gear as I progress, I really like loot and changing everyones gear up with each new dungeon I clear.  I don't like getting awesome/badass toys like right before the final boss fight though, the OCD horder in me has to keep them, but then it never gets used anyways.  Also I wasn't a fan of awakenings method of creating the good gear, I don't think I ever made one thing because I couldn't ever find or figure out how to get grandmaster runes.

[NoForgiveness]

Thats my problem with preorder/dlc weapons, they are always better then anything else until about a thirdish through the game.

[Gamemako]

I highly disagree that items should be held back. In fact, the very method of loot scaling suggested here (that is, no loot scaling at all) is rather undesirable. I'll pull a few posts from another thread here. Due to length, I'll put it in spoilers:

Spoiler

 

Ideally, you should have the option to use whatever type of item suits you. This isn't always totally feasible, but let me give you an example of where a game tries very hard to meet that ideal.The equipment balance in Dark Souls is far from perfect, but I can wear this set, a mix of one mid-game drop and 3 pieces from different classes' starter sets, and still not be totally crippled. Yeah, I could straight up do better than this set, but it's a lot better than most games do. Dark Souls can design around this as a single-player experience based largely on upgrading. You can't really do that without a robust upgrading system, and you often don't really want to as armors are as much a sign of progression as they are a functional or aesthetic piece. In DA, most unique/named items are generally high-tier or top-tier already. This is an attempt to allow players to keep using the cool stuff they find and not be slammed into the steel bookcase of generic heavy armor (something the poorly-conceived scaling of DA2 did to players). This is a tough thing to manage, especially if your opponents scale independent of the equipment you find. DA2 DLC attempts the alternate method of scaling equipment with the player due to how poorly static armor setup turned out.

Er, why only weapons? I want there to be powerful stuff, otherwise why go to the effort of acquiring it? The loot in DA2 was a snore-fest--I liked the DLC gear just because it meant I really didn't have to mess with the silly stuff any more. The only thing I cared about was whether it looked halfway decent, the stats were close to meaningless.

And I don't like "you must be this high to ride the ride" mechanics viz loot. If I managed to defeat the effing High Dragon at level six I better not be getting some crappy level six scaled loot that I'll be ditching in 10 minutes for some boots I pulled out of a pile of garbage on the side of the road. If I want to make a beeline for the best staff in the game so I can demolish everything in my path that's my business.

You go to the effort of acquiring it so you can meet the challenges ahead. That's the entire point of progression in an RPG. You meet the progression of challenges with your character's increasing strength.

A lot of that comes from the decision to use non-upgradeable unique items. There are many advantages of having an upgrade-heavy equipment progression system. The developer is not stuck holding on to all the fun stuff until the end of the game, since early unique drops don't have to be irrelevant at the end. You also don't have to leave game-breaking drops where the player might fall on them and completely trivialize a good chunk of the game (though it's better to be overpowered early than overpowered late). The player also doesn't have to give up the equipment they like for the sake of efficiency (e.g. Ancient Elven Armor).

I want *significant* gear. I want single gear items that you will do an entire character build just to use, not boring "oh it has 1% more crit chance than the dagger I already have, yawn". That's not *significant*. Significant items are like finding the *one weapon* in the game that has a 36% chance to stun on hit or the *one staff* that does multiple types of damage. It has nothing to do with whether the item is "upgradeable" because the bonuses it has are *unique*. If you don't it so the difference between low-level and high-level stuff is a matter of 1 to 1000 versus 1-3, you don't have to worry about "upgrading" because the unique bonus will maintain its viability and you don't care about the tiny bit of raw damage difference.

...

Additionally, unique factors do not necessarily make a weapon overpowered, nor are unique factors unscalable. Taking the stun weapon example, you can scale that factor through the game as well as across difficulties. Many early mooks may be vulnerable to hefty stun abuse, but those opponents become increasingly scarce as the game goes on, modulating difficulty. With upgrades, you can add to stun duration or resistance penetration, making your stun stick retain its usefulness in every situation at the cost of upgrade resources, or you can leave it as a niche tool for certain opponents. You can also have casual difficulty get 2x stun duration and Nightmare get 1/2 stun duration and 50% stun resistance -- this is actually somewhat necessary to maintain balance with other tools in the first place, because stun is less valuable when you kill in 1-2 hits on Casual and overpowered when fighting a war of attrition on Nightmare. Again, you still need that one staff and you need to upgrade it with that one unique resource you found, but it doesn't break the game.

...DA2 whiffed spectacularly on a lot of things, and that is one of the biggest parts it screwed up. It felt like progression went backwards as you were forced into random drop items due to poor scaling, and the DLCs fiddled a lot with encounter design.

I will attempt to briefly summarize as well. Non-scaling loot essentially forces the developer to hold onto everything of consequence until the end due to balance needs. That is more or less what you suggest here. That leaves the player stuck sitting in lamesville for the bulk of the game. All of your gear is crap, and if you like how it looks, tough ****, it's gone when you get to the end anyway unless you want to severely gimp yourself. That basically means that many players are dissatisfied early with poor choices and many others are dissatisfied late when they have to discard their Ancient Elven Armor for some abominable mix of light armors that is vastly superior.

I think one effective and practicable method is to continue to introduce new items through the game, but also build upgrades of older items to keep them relevant with the increasing power of opponents as you progress. You can go through the game using all the new toys you find, or you can spend your resources on upgrades for your favorite one from the last generation. By continually introducing new upgrade materials and requiring the next tier of upgrade material starting from when you receive the item, you can keep unique weapons and armor to a roughly equivalent tier as you progress through the game.

[Falcon084]

Not the end so much as if you only have the best armor for the end boss it seems like a waste.

[Al Foley]

I really wish that people/ games would take a better look at MEs approach and especially ME 3s approach.  ME 3 you had certain weapons that did certain things and certain bits of equipment which did similar things.  Where some weapons did some things and other weapons had other attributes, some weapons were really powerful but really weighed a ton, and some weapons did a descent amount of damage but you could still use powers.  My point is, why not create a whole wide pethora of different things you can do with armor, different stats, different rune slots that way a piece of armor is better in one aspect but maybe not so much in another, but its still great armor, and maybe it looks good and fits your aestetics, or you have gotten used to it, so then you have to throw it away when something better comes along?  I hated throwing away my Ensalin armor and the Bow I was using in DA 2 at the end of Act 2/ beginning of 3 because they just weren't that good anymore and the star system let me know how bad my equipment was so I felt I had to upgrade in throw my stuff away for being ineffectual and what not. 

[fchopin]

If they save the best till the end then they should not bother creating them.

[Melcolloien]

My point in this was never that the very best things should be dropped at the very end (as for the thing with Orsinos staff...I have so many things to say about that fight really...but I just used that as an example cause it's a cool looking staff, dropped by the first enchanter and it's barely medioker)
 

What I want is to steadily upgrade my equipment as I level up and evolve

[Fetunche]

I like the dlc packs because I can give everyone the best equipment which levels with them, I don't have to bother with locked chests or buying stuff or hanging on to a certain thing because I might need it. I hate micromanaging the inventory and crafting I just want to get on with the game.

[UltimateGohanSS]

I like the dlc packs because I can give everyone the best equipment which levels with them, I don't have to bother with locked chests or buying stuff or hanging on to a certain thing because I might need it. I hate micromanaging the inventory and crafting I just want to get on with the game.

My man

[OctagonalSquare]

Normally, I'd object to this. However, we know that we'll be able to keep playing after the main story is completed. If we also have post-story content/missions, I would be fine with this.

[kasanza]

I've never understood why all items don't level up with your toons. Take DA2's opening where you're killing darkspawn while escaping Lothering with weapons while you're level 1-3. Those weapons were able to kill Ogres and other darkspawn then, but if you were to keep those same weapons and try to equip them to kill darkspawn you run across in Sundermount at level 20 or so, you'd probably be out of luck. Leveling is just your character improving mind and body through combat, thus acquiring new ways to handle enemies, but how early a weapon is found in your battle-hardening shouldn't change its inherent effectiveness. I loved the fact that companions' armor and a few weapons (Fadeshear increased the stats it had with your leveling, which is logical) leveled with you, but really hated that some of the best gear for my particular skill set became useless as I leveled (like a machete turning into a butter knife because I ran around and found some ingredients for a chemist and some lost swords for a hulking foreigner).

 

I think DAI has some fixed-level enemies, so I'm not sure if items will stay as you find them or improve, but in the future, I would love it if items would run a formula for improving with your level the way companion armor did in DA2.