Gratification in Acquiring Epic/Legendary Items

I would have liked class specific legendary weapons. I think it would have added a lot of flavor to the various classes.

I would have liked class specific legendary weapons. I think it would have added a lot of flavor to the various classes.

Piggy-backing on this(oink oink!), I'd like to see class-specific items that are actually quality items even if you aren't a member of that class. (That isn't to say ALL of them. I just want to see these instances, as opposed to never see them.)

 

For example, maybe a weapon grants you additional Focus gain if you're a Cipher, but isn't just "Hmmm, if you're a Cipher, this is totally worth it! But if you're not a Cipher, this sword is OBVIOUSLY SUB-PAR to every other sword I've ever found! u_u"

 

A lot of games do that. "You really don't want this item for any other reason than because it boosts a certain class's capabilities a bunch."

More important to me than how powerful items are collected, I do want to say one that I'm in the Gary Gygax, 1st ed. D&D, Dungeonmaster's Guide, camp regarding artifacts. There should be a cost associated with wielding world breaking power - an ersatz fantasy nuclear bomb. Whether that cost comes in the form of corruption, life-force being drained away, you must sacrifice a companion, etc. These things should freak me out a little bit when I find them and make me scared of their side-effects.

 

So however or whereever they are acquired, the most powerful items should hopefully fill me with equal parts trepidation and excitement.

I like this idea, reminded me of morrowind's sunder and wraithguard. If you just happened upon a powerful weapon and all willy nilly picked it up without knowing its history, might be a bad idea. 

First, I'm hoping not to see weapons put into categories such as seen in MMO & ARPGs, it adds another level between the player and immersion.

 

There should, in my opinion, only be two "levels" of weaponry, non-magical and magical.

 

 

 

Semantics aside, I believe that the most powerful items should be placed where realistically they might end up.

e.g.

King's armour

Dragon's hoard

In a statue's arms at the bottom of a long dungeon filled with monsters and traps

 

Agreed, on both points.

 

I think items should be "unique" or "legendary" by virtue of simply being magical, but of course, that really depends on the setting. Eternity doesn't exactly sound like a "magic is rare and mysterious" world so I would understand if the game had a lot of magical items. Just my preference.

 

Outside of a clearly loot-driven RPG like Diablo, I don't necessarily want to have to kill/farm bosses for the best loot. A big scary dragon... is exceedingly unlikely  to poop out a Radiant Sword of Buttkicking upon its death. But a legendary warlord's sword? Okay. They should be obtained in ways that make sense. e.g., I would be happy undertaking a difficult quest to craft a truly epic item from something pulled off of a boss's body, like in the Witcher.

Clearly, the only legit way of acquiring a legendary item is sweeping the whole map pixel by pixel with your mouse curser until you find that one hidden ring under a random tree outside of the friendly arm.

1. I personally thought the crafting of the Black Sword in Forge of Virtue was handled quite masterfully.

The acquisition of the Guarda Revanche in Betrayal at Krondor was very satisfying, mostly because of all I went through to reach that point.

Arcane's Valour in the first Diablo was also quite nicely implemented.

The acquisition of Lilarcor drew me in, despite it being designed for Minsc to counteract his cerebral shortcomings.

Both the Nameless One's arm from the Lost incarnation and Justifier were similarly satisfactory in that one had to *know* them, rather than just acquire them, though the acquisition was quite nice. Thematically sound.

The crafting in Arcanum was very nice on the whole, from stumbling on a fine revolvers makings at the crash site to reshaping Vendigrothian wonders, which i'd collected from all across the continent.

The teleporter pyramids of Divine Divinity were an intriguing mechanic, that was nicely introduced, along with the holy weapons and silver armour of said game.

A strange thing to say but I thought the lost and difficult to find weapons and armour of Sacred were also quite satisfying, Jason's panoply etcetera.

Raven's Armour from the first Witcher, Aerondight, the Moonblade and Gvalchir were all very well introduced, though sadly rendered into trash in the sequel. That said I personally became more attached to the Red Meteorite steel sword I acquired quite early on in the game, powerful, useful, and quite hard to acquire the necessary ore.

The family sword in Dragon Age was quite nice to acquire and keep, though obviously that necessitated enduring the sickly sweet and yet generically dull Cousland origin, and the weapon and shield quickly became irrelevant. The introduction of the Aeducan shield was far more satisfying in the superior Dwarven noble origin, a pity the Duster had nothing similar.

 

I would have liked class specific legendary weapons. I think it would have added a lot of flavor to the various classes.

Piggy-backing on this(oink oink!), I'd like to see class-specific items that are actually quality items even if you aren't a member of that class. (That isn't to say ALL of them. I just want to see these instances, as opposed to never see them.)

Just bear in mind they have already said all classes can use all weapons and armor.... so it would be sort of odd to say only a Fighter can use this particular sword!  If they have items that do give bonuses that really only help one class but can still be used by others than that is okay.  It would be nice if they do it in a way where the weapon isn't total trash to anyone not of that class, like Lephys said.

 

 

First, I'm hoping not to see weapons put into categories such as seen in MMO & ARPGs, it adds another level between the player and immersion.

 

There should, in my opinion, only be two "levels" of weaponry, non-magical and magical.

You do realize those "categories" only exist so you can tell how powerful the weapon is (relatively) at a glance without actually having to go to it in your inventory, open it up, and look at the details?  It is just a method used to let you know that you have picked something up that is worth taking a look at.  That said it is also there for loot driven games where you are looting something like every 5 minutes.  It probably isn't needed in Eternity simply because I doubt you will be pulling out magic axes off every other guy you kill.

I would like to have a few highly powerful weapons present in the game. I would absolutely not like them to be as common as they usually are in current games.

I think acquiring one should be a special event. Distributing them with random loot is not much fun. Fighting a big powerful plot-important meanie to walk away with his sword can be fun, but that's what you do like, in every cRPG ever so I'd prefer they do something a little different, at least some of the time.

Some ways of gaining special weapons that I've enjoyed:

• Hunting for them by following clues in Morrowind
• Finding pieces to assemble them like in BG2
• Sacrificing to a god to be granted one, like in NetHack
• That one badass sword on top of the pyramid in Gothic 2 that I had to sneak like mad to get
• Betraying and killing all your companions to bind their essences to something that used to be called the Scythe of Chauntea like in MotB

So yeah, that kind of thing.

I would have liked class specific legendary weapons. I think it would have added a lot of flavor to the various classes.

that may be more difficult with this game. if any class can fulfill virtual any role, it will be much more difficult to make viable class-specific weapons that is genuine useful. 

 

*shrug*

 

am preferring for uber-weapons to be rare, but we observe that have whelm, wave and blackrazor be the three legendary weapons is meaning that if you ain't a hammer, trident or sword wielder, you is kinda up p00p alley. am not certain why the legendary weapons, if they is rare, cannot be scripted so as to be appropriate to the main character.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

am not certain why the legendary weapons, if they is rare, cannot be scripted so as to be appropriate to the main character.  

 

HA! Good Fun!

That's an excellent idea. Blizzard recently revamped loot drops (but not all of them) in D3 to be tailored to your class and its really improved things.

To be honest, the only game that comes to mind in how "best" to do it is TES:Morrowind. Been playing that game for over 2 years now and since i dont look up locations but i have looked up the gear, ive found maybe a 3rd of all the arifacts and unique items.

it had a nice blend between gaining said artifacts from questing, coming across it somewhere out away from civilization, killing innocents, etc etc.

A few comments to various questions and concerns:

 

* Treasure/unique item distribution will be IWD1/BG2-ish overall.

 

* Treasure is sometimes randomly selected from a list, but no items are created randomly.

 

* Weapons/shields/armor have a general bonus value generated by their quality (Standard/Fine/Exceptional/Superb) and by magical properties they may have.  This value roughly correlates to where we place them in the game relative to the expected level for characters in that area.  There is no other "player-facing" stratification of items like you might find in Diablo II/III or World of Warcraft.

 

* The crit path is not the most difficult content in the game, so the most powerful items of any given type are generally not on the crit path.

 

* We have a few "quest-made" items.

 

* We have class-specific items.  However, class-specific items are not weapons because, in my experience, players tend to have very strong feelings on what weapons they want their specific character to use most of the time.  If the "best" class-specific item for them is a weapon that goes against that concept, it can generate Bad Feels™.  A minor concern, but worth considering.

 

* Several companions have unique items that come with them (e.g. Pallegina's breastplate).  The player is not prevented from taking those items and/or enchanting/modifying them.

 

* You can add enchantments to unique items that you find.

Can some items "grow" with time? Legendary items? Weapons become "famous" and can add to minor NPC reactivity?

Perhaps not as extensive as Fable 3 but... but in its most simplistic form, a concept, leaning in that general direction~

I hope that each weapon type has more than one top-tier unique item. It would really suck to build a character around using a weapon type and finding out that the apex weapon was one that is unsuitable for that character, whether thematically or statistically.

I don't want to take Pallegina's breastplate if she's a fun companion for my own godlike dark paladin. I'm really looking forward to this NPC. 

* You can add enchantments to unique items that you find.

It's been a while you mentioned crafting systems-will there be an update in that respect in near future?

 

 

* We have class-specific items.  However, class-specific items are not weapons because, in my experience, players tend to have very strong feelings on what weapons they want their specific character to use most of the time.  If the "best" class-specific item for them is a weapon that goes against that concept, it can generate Bad Feels.  A minor concern, but worth considering.

 

I understand the concerns.  How about introducing class specific enchantment options in the crafting system?  For example, paladins/priests/monks may be able to enhance their weapons through rituals like binding "holy" spirits on them and/or taking an oath while someone like Druid may bind elemental spirits on them (Especially, paladin's case, this option can let the players make their own version of so-called "Holy Avenger").  Rangers may have some additional enchantment related with their animal companions.  Traditionally, wizard has their ways to add additional values on the existing items.  Even fighters can have their specific layer of crafting due to the soul setting although these cases may feel less dramatic, compared with religion/belief-based classes.  It would be nice to have a function where the players are allowed to combine their attachment to the classes of their characters with some unique items they found during adventuring.  I think, the soul setting can be a good excuse for such function.  Just my two cents.

* We have class-specific items.  However, class-specific items are not weapons because, in my experience, players tend to have very strong feelings on what weapons they want their specific character to use most of the time.  If the "best" class-specific item for them is a weapon that goes against that concept, it can generate Bad Feels.  A minor concern, but worth considering.

That's a very good decision IMO, and I'm very happy to hear it. Too often in games you are forced to pick up an item that doesn't quite fit your character because not using it is tantamount to gimping yourself.

 

* Treasure is sometimes randomly selected from a list, but no items are created randomly.

This makes me happy.  This is how treasure should always be done, as far as I'm concerned.  Makes repeat playthroughs more interesting when you don't know exactly what you're going to get.

all of the poll options at the same time

cryptic reference leads to a quest, that needs you to pass some sort of puzzle and fight some enemies and then you kill the boss. somewhere in the boss room there is a chest with the item. doing all of the above is the obvious but time consuming part

 

 

* Treasure/unique item distribution will be IWD1/BG2-ish overall.

 

 

I can rest in peace. BG2 item distrubution was great.

I'd go with a few options combined:

 

For non-set Legendary, make it a extremely rare world drop. (I'd rather not have non-quest World Boss dropping Legendary, it should drop lower tier gears)

For set bonus Legendary, make it acquired through a string of epic quests that leads to killing an epic boss. (i.e. it is not farm-able and cannot acquire multiple)

>By finding obscure references to them in lore and then deducing their location.

 

This. Plus, i really would like this 'deducing from references' part to have at least a small amount of *replay value*. It certainly seems possible to make a riddle of some sort, that really requires nearly all parts of these references to be gathered. The treasure could be randomized, the riddle could be randomized (to some extent) in a way that without getting (more or less) each part of it, there are just too many possible locations to grind through / check.

 

As a bonus idea i think the best *randomized* way getting epic loot would be.... something that's influenced by the hero quests of King of Dragon Pass. (check it out)

Edited June 24, 2014 by Naesh

I'd go with a few options combined:

 

For non-set Legendary, make it a extremely rare world drop. (I'd rather not have non-quest World Boss dropping Legendary, it should drop lower tier gears)

For set bonus Legendary, make it acquired through a string of epic quests that leads to killing an epic boss. (i.e. it is not farm-able and cannot acquire multiple)

 

God no. None of that random Diablo type loot drops please.

Hidden and powerful bosses, mostly, such as the lich from BG2. But I do think that sidequests and "regular" bosses should have them too. Just don't put them in a shop with a 10000$ tag on it.

 

I'd go with a few options combined:

 

For non-set Legendary, make it a extremely rare world drop. (I'd rather not have non-quest World Boss dropping Legendary, it should drop lower tier gears)

For set bonus Legendary, make it acquired through a string of epic quests that leads to killing an epic boss. (i.e. it is not farm-able and cannot acquire multiple)

 

God no. None of that random Diablo type loot drops please.

 

 

Hahaha, i love grinding. Good stuff needs 90% effort and 10% luck. But yea, not many people like it.