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Yes I understand what you mean (I haven't played WoW but I'm playing Diablo 3 so is similar). I am considering adding a level attribute to items, also restricting the usage of the item based on the level, but have to see if that would take too much time, since in practice I've spent the last 15 days doing "just small tweaks"
Otherwise in my case the rarity is "a global value", and this means that you'll get Rare items only towards the end of game or for particularly important quests. But anyway, when you have a party of characters and not just one (like WoW or Diablo 3) is not like one single rare item can change the game completely the impact is minor than when playing RPG where you only control 1 character.

yayswords wrote:stats are determined (but not revealed) when we accept the quest rather than when we hand it in

I vote for this solution.

Yes, managed to add that and I'm testing different items level. Seems to work, but now I need to tweak the base values...


lol level 21 ring with +73 Defense, +37 Magic and +39 Speed!!

I'm glad you're entertained by your job

Now that you are using item levels, it begs another question about budget. In WoW you could find let's say two swords of the same type, item level and rarity. They would have the same damage but one would have +300 strength and nothing else. Now the other one could have both strength and agility, but how much of each? I bet your guess is 150, but actually it's 200. Else you would just brainlessly stack whatever stat was the best. If it also had intellect*, I believe the distribution would be +150 of each.

My point being of course that if these 39+73+37=149 points were all in one stat, they would grant less than 149 to that stat. Then we could also consider that +1 in a stat isn't necessarily as cheap as +1 in another. Stamina on WoW items gets a 50% bonus; the +300 strength would be +450 stamina. Also, using Loren logic, I would probably just pump up a character's Magic stat (even if they weren't a caster) if I wanted resistances, since that reduces overall magic damage taken, and if it's an actual caster it's bigger numbers too. Oh and more mana, right? Unless of course, resistances are a hell lot cheaper on the budget (or I want a specific resistance, not just overall) than Magic is.

*To the actual WoW players - yeah I know no such weapon exists 'cause no one would want to use it, it was the easiest example :p

Yes the four base battle stats (Attack, Defense, Magic, Speed) have a much bigger "weight" in the random generation than the others. Also, is impossible to have more than 1 resistance each item. So you'll never have a ring with 99 Fire AND Water resistance

That is a good decision. But there's no penalty for all the budget going into one single stat? Not as important an issue as the one you foresaw and fixed, but still

No since are randomly generated, not all "Rare items" are equal. Some are good, others less good. But you never get 1 stat bonus only I think (I need to run more tests).

yayswords wrote:Also, using Loren logic, I would probably just pump up a character's Magic stat (even if they weren't a caster) if I wanted resistances, since that reduces overall magic damage taken, and if it's an actual caster it's bigger numbers too. Oh and more mana, right? Unless of course, resistances are a hell lot cheaper on the budget (or I want a specific resistance, not just overall) than Magic is.

This is only partly true with the new autoleveling enemies. Since if I define an enemy caster with +50% Magic over the party average, surely those better equipped with Magic will still get more defense, but not like in Loren. Another big advantage of this new system, greatly reduces the amount of exploits possible

Hmm, what's the reasoning behind that system? That way you might want to wear worse gear to gimp your opponents. I'm totally fine with leveling up meaning that my enemies do so as well, but upgrading my gear shouldn't be a double edged decision. Unless the system counts your naked stats only.

Plus I find it exploitable. Imagine if there's a really strong caster boss, and now I know he will have +50% magic over our average. I set my party up to have high relevant resistances but as little magic as possible. His blizzards will be a summer breeze.

yayswords wrote:Hmm, what's the reasoning behind that system? That way you might want to wear worse gear to gimp your opponents. I'm totally fine with leveling up meaning that my enemies do so as well, but upgrading my gear shouldn't be a double edged decision. Unless the system counts your naked stats only.

To always provide challenging battles, WHEN NEEDED. I want to repeat, I can still define weak enemies. I can assign a level to enemies relative to the party. So if I want to have a weak encounter, I can.
If you wear worse gear, nothing will change: the relative strength will be the same.
Overall party Magic: 500 - Enemy with +50% = 750 Magic
Overall party Magic: 50 - Enemy with +50% = 75 Magic

Since the damage is calculated comparing the values, in both cases the enemies will do the same damage. Dropping all items won't change the encounter by much, only slightly (and not sure if better or worse).

yayswords wrote: Plus I find it exploitable. Imagine if there's a really strong caster boss, and now I know he will have +50% magic over our average. I set my party up to have high relevant resistances but as little magic as possible. His blizzards will be a summer breeze.

That's what happens in all RPG. Plan a strategy to defeat enemies. In this case it begins even before the battle. But now that I think about it, the boss won't have only 1 elemental attack anyway, and the AI see what is the damage can do. So if he has also a Fireball, or a Dark Magic, or any other attack, the AI will always use those instead of the Blizzard.

I've thought about this system for a long time and I'm really curious to see how the beta goes. I would be disappointed if nobody found an exploit, would be the first RPG in history to not have one, but if is not as obvious as was the first version of Loren (the infamous speed cheat) I'd be very satisfied with my work as game designer

And if you can't beat the challenge, you can't fix anything by getting "better" gear because it will improve the boss too, all you can do is get better relative stats, not better absolute stats. I don't know if I like that

"I got Loren a bigger sword, therefore the boss instagibbed Draco."