Author Topic: Enchants generation general discussion  (Read 16226 times)

Offline x4000

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #15 on: February 28, 2012, 01:31:46 pm »
Sure, hopefully they will chuck most things that are completely irrelevant, but they'll still want to keep some extras around in other colors or whatever for specific situations.
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Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #16 on: February 28, 2012, 01:53:36 pm »
Potentially possible to burn old enchants to get a few enchant points back in return? Might be a way to encourage less hoarding and you don't end up with your inventory or your settlement ground full of icons that way.

Offline Oralordos

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #17 on: February 28, 2012, 02:01:48 pm »
Wouldn't getting rid of your enchants make it so that you can find that enchant again? I think I would mostly just orginize my enchant menu to keep the ones I would want to keep near the bottom. The rest I can ignore, they're just there to keep me from finding one of them again.

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #18 on: February 28, 2012, 04:01:34 pm »
If the enchants generate based on your Civ level then you won't have to worry about re-getting old enchants that you've thrown out because you've outleveled them. And with random generation the chances of getting exactly some old enchant you already have had are pretty limited anyway. I think it would be neat if you have a 5% jump/speed enchant and find a 10% version and can then take the old one and put it in a blender and get X% of the enchant points that went into it back to build towards your next enchant (probably a small amount, this is more a token thing for fun than a system where you burn up one and get another one immediately). If that makes it too easy to get new enchants just balance on the back end and make higher levels get more expensive so you're still unlocking at the same rate overall but with occasional chances to rush towards something new if you burn a lot of old enchants. That way the player can feel more involved in the process without really changing up the speed of acquisition too much.

What this sort of sounds like anyway is a purchase system. I mean one could argue that's what it already is. You collect 20 enchant MacGuffin pots and trade them in for one randomly generated enchant. Sure, you're not going to the vendor and trading them off, but from a mechanics perspective that's still pretty much what is happening. All that the ability to melt down enchants will do is give you a way to 'sell old gear back to the vendor' so to speak. And adding in the potential to select between a few different enchants when you reach an unlock plateau is just giving the 'vendor' more store inventory.

Other potential ideas would be to make players actually go back to the crafting bench or Ilari stone or whatever to actually initiate the exchange of enchant points for new enchants. Gives a bit more reason to go back to town, if such a thing is desirable. You could also give the option of swapping to a new set of choices if none of those generated initially catch your fancy. This would probably allow only a single, or a limited number of swaps, and not let you reverse the decision to swap, to keep the choices interesting. You could also have a (low) random chance of generating an enchant a tier or two above what should be available at the level you're currently at, the equivalent of a rare lucky drop. Bonus standard RPG trope points for making increasing rarity colors for these enchants. (in green, blue, purple, orange...)

And this may be unrelated, but was it the enchant system that was going to add cosmetic options to spells? I may be conflating some different concepts here, but I seem to recall talk a while back about being able to change the color of spells, or something like that. Or was that crests? (Or what in the world were crests? Did that idea get dropped? Was that even a thing or am I making stuff up?) Anyway, cosmetic changes as random additions would be fun. They probably wouldn't take any points out of the enchant's overall 'budget' but just appear as random freebies from time to time.

Offline x4000

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #19 on: February 28, 2012, 04:05:16 pm »
Crests were basically like enchants that you could slot a single spell into.  I don't think they'll be coming back, enchants do basically all they did.  In terms of cosmetic options I hadn't planned much on that, but it's a general possibility.
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Offline BobJustBob

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #20 on: February 29, 2012, 11:47:10 am »
On the enchant tier stuff, I don't like the idea of having hard limits on what enchants you are allowed to find. Knowing that you're always going to find tier 1 enchants until you reach a new continent or find X number of enchants takes some of the fun out of it. To me, the appeal of random loot generation is the possibility of winning the lottery and coming up with a great item. Even if it's extremely unlikely, the possibility keeps you going. And along those same lines, you need a dud every once in a while too, to make you appreciate the good-not-great items you usually pick up.

Maybe you could have a "current tier" which is determined however, and that's the tier you expect to find. But there's a small chance of finding an item of another tier, maybe 10% for one tier higher, 1% for two tiers higher, etc. You could tweak the numbers so that the intended progression holds in the majority of cases while still allowing the occasional lucky drop.

Offline zebramatt

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #21 on: February 29, 2012, 12:37:01 pm »
I actually think that's an argument for gating, not against it, Bob.

Consider: you're getting enchants all of a certain level and suddenly you stumble over one that's great by comparison. You're elated and it makes it into your stable for the rest of that gate level. Then you get to the next one and it's still pretty good but you're seeing more stuff on a par. Soon enough it's been relegated out of your main kit in favour of fancier, shinier things. And then bam, another awesome-for-that-gate level one comes along and the cycle repeats itself.

So yeah, it'd be nice to have a chance to get cool stuff earlier - but only slightly earlier. There's nothing like the feeling when you realise your once-awesome stuff wasn't actually so awesome after all. 

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #22 on: February 29, 2012, 12:41:32 pm »
So yeah, it'd be nice to have a chance to get cool stuff earlier - but only slightly earlier. There's nothing like the feeling when you realise your once-awesome stuff wasn't actually so awesome after all.

That's progression in a nutshell. If it's a little better, great! If it's a lot better, it's great for now, but it's boring for the next 10 hours when you never find an upgrade to it.

Offline Terraziel

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #23 on: February 29, 2012, 01:06:53 pm »
This is where laying out loot systems get complicated, rather conversely, I have spent ages using otherwise inferior equipment because it has a specific ability on it that I want (as far as D2 is concerned usually high resistances), the basic point being that what the game thinks is a good enchant and what you think one is can differ quite a bit, so whilst from the games point of view tiers are very distinct things, from a player perspective they are almost certainly very vague.

Offline BobTheJanitor

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #24 on: February 29, 2012, 01:22:10 pm »
That's an item budgeting issue though. If enchants have an internal budget of X points to 'buy' their abilities at random off a chart, and tier 2 enchants get 2X points and so on, you usually guarantee a good progression. It's when you get those special one off abilities that things get confusing. Instead of linear increase of numbers, how do you value a random chance to shoot rainbows out of your ears? Is that worth a lot or nothing?

Offline Eagleheart

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Re: Enchants generation general discussion
« Reply #25 on: April 24, 2012, 01:47:27 am »
I don't like the whole save up for a better enchant later idea. That just seems to make it unnecessarily complicated and hard to balance.

I am really for the choosing one from two or three randomly generated selections each time you get a new one though. It would make it feel more like you're building your character and get you more interested in them.

I would also prefer enchants resetting on character death too. I don't feel like you're punished enough for dying at the moment. Then again, I haven't really invested a thousand upgrade stones into a character yet...
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