Many opinions have been given on this subject. Here is mine.
It might be too late for Shadowlands, but nevertheless I want to get my thoughts out there. I’ve bottled them up and given fragments about them for a long time now…
This gearing system is radically different from the one we have today.
I am not going to talk about the art design. I think Blizzard perfectly know what to do in that regard at this point. The feedback they have gotten has been very clear and concise.
Goal:
Gear should…
- be appropriately challenging (or not) to acquire depending on its strength.
- be understandable.
- feel as if it belongs in the universe, i.e. characters (not just players!) should be able to understand it at a mythological level.
- have interesting and varied effects.
- be fun to tinker with and/or move around.
- be socially interesting.
Current issues:
- The mathematics of gear is very complex. The stat scaling changes via what approaches a polynomial function of the other stats you have, making it virtually impossible to tell what is and is not an upgrade and in which situation.
- Gear has a ton of affixes on it that are completely arcane. They come bottom-up but do not connect top-down.
- Items feel meaningless. What is the story of the Whispering Eldritch Bow, and why does Prophet Skitra have it?
- It is not always clear exactly what an item does.
- When talking about an item, one must talk about how it was acquired.
- Items state how strong they are, but are always wrong about it. (item level)
Making loot identifiable:
In today’s game, items are very frequently defined in terms of their item level. Whether the equipment you are wearing is powerful or not generally does not depend on which item it is and the history of that item. Instead it depends upon its item level and corruption effect.
This makes gear significantly less socially interesting and harder to understand. If I tell someone that I have Seabreeze, I can have anything from literally one of the best items in the game to literally something I got 2 days after the expansion came out, and which is completely worthless. Nobody bats an eye if I just say Seabreeze.
Instead, I have to say things like “I have Seabreeze with a socket of item level 475 and it has Twilight Devastation of rank 2 on it!”
At this point I am no longer talking about Warcraft. I am talking about game systems.
So how do we solve this?
Simple: There is exactly one version of Seabreeze, or indeed any other item, and if it’s relevant for the current tier, there’s a good chance people know what it is, especially if it’s a good item.
There are no random procs on top. It can’t Titanforge, socket, Warforge, get corruption effects, or anything else like that. The item simply is what it is. Maybe it does have sockets and corruption effects. Good for it.
For me, one of the most exciting items is Hyperthread Wristwraps, because every mage knows what it does, it’s highly sought after, and it really doesn’t scale much with item level.
“But how about Mythic+ and raid difficulties, then?!” you might ask.
Well, what about them? The items already look different in the different raid difficulties. Is it really that weird to just give them different names as well?
As for M+, change the loot table as the key level increases. Every level, a few items leave the loot table and a few new ones come in.
That means some items in each M+ dungeon run may not be exactly the same iLvL as any other, varying within a few item levels, but because of stat scaling, this is no different from today.
With the advent of a new M+ season, do not lower key levels. What’s the point of that anyway? Just extend with new items at higher levels and give people a higher base key level and allow them to drop the key to get lower level items for transmogs if they desire.
If you get feedback that an item that disappears at higher M+ keystones remains BiS, simply extend the possible range in which it can drop.
More unique effects:
If we’re going to have static items, we might as well do something interesting with them, right?
Well, various items can do various things. Today, items have a tendency to be a little generic with the 4 basic stats and the two main stats. It doesn’t have to be this way.
It is perfectly okay to have items that increase the maximum mana pool, or items that make you move a little faster, or items that only have sockets, or items with set bonuses, or items that interact with other items on other players in the vicinity, etc. etc.
An item being unbreakable is kind of boring when it happens on any random item, but if The Scythe of Death is always unbreakable due to the story that Death is eternal and therefore his weapon is, too, then it’s suddenly a really cool attribute. The attribute is not just useful - it weaves a tale in the Warcraft universe by its mere existence.
I think BfA has been doing a better and better job of this over the course of the expansion, but there’s still a long way to go.
Does Haste really have to be one stat? Why can’t we have +critical strike damage on things like gloves or bracers? Why are those just relegated to being “lesser pieces”?
Why can’t items just have a lot of sockets? Why can’t we apply a scroll to an item, similar to enchanting, that actives only when another condition is met - such as enchanting set bonuses?!
Be creative. Stop trying to math your way out of everything. It doesn’t work anyway, as will be looked at shortly. Besides, you always have to tune class DPS after the fact anyway, and you know it. You just did it yesterday.
And I’m just gonna say it: Item sets. Everybody wants them. Maybe have some… different item sets? A little bit of mix-and-match? Who knows. Just don’t do Azerite, that’s too much.
Hide the item level:
As we have had clearly demonstrated over and over again for many expansions now, two items of the same item level are never of the same strength.
Item level is not a useful metric. The item level metric is therefore worthless. Worse still, it is misleading.
Trust the players to find a way to navigate your items. Have item levels internally, sure, but don’t reveal them. We don’t need to know when we know where it dropped (given there is only one version now) and what is unique about it.
Tone down the crazy maths:
You are obviously making items with spreadsheets, and we are solving your items with spreadsheets.
The four basic stats - the staples, if you will… well, they’re boring when they come in these weird quantities. Different kinds of items should have different kinds of stats. This will prevent me from stacking a certain stat to the point where it breaks the game. Sometimes I will have to compare very similar items and purely mathematically find the best one, sure, but it shouldn’t be this often, and I should be able to work it out relatively early on.
Most of the time I should be thinking about what kinds of stats I need in different areas of the game. Maybe +movement speed would be a really useful stat in M+ or PvP? Put it on some leggings and boots and let us pick it!
In this case it’s also clear what the BiS is: There isn’t one! There is no way to quantifiably compare 1.34% haste with 6% increased movement speed. What does that even mean? The only comparison is to work out what you need to defeat an encounter and equip the appropriate item. But there are BiS lists in certain aspects of the game. I have goals to work around! I have BiS lists. How many can I collect? Who knows, but it’s fun to find out!
This gets you all the “interesting gear” and “gear fiddling” and “moving things around” that you say is so much fun, and it is, without all the math.
People will still sim, but there’s a good chance they’ll stop “obsessively simming”.
Let the best item come from the activity it drops in:
In Shadowlands we have a particularly interesting situation in regards to life and death, and this situation can be exploited: EVERYBODY except the players a very limited amount of NPC’s are dead!
So… items that give bonus damage against the living or items that protect you from damage from the living? Make that a PvP reward. It makes the PvP rewards really good for PvP and keeps PvP from being contaminated by some of the most ridiculous PvE items.
Yes, that’s essentially PvP Power. There was nothing wrong with it other than the fact that it was a little boring by name. Give it a nice big spread all over the PvP items. Should keep most of the issues at bay - but don’t forget to make interesting PvP items, too!
This can be applied in many places, but there’s the most obvious one.
Let me use it!:
Items should not be unusable until I have waited a certain amount of time due to time-gating, such as the current Corruption Resistance system or Azerite necklace requirements. That’s ridiculous. When I get an item, I should not be going “OOOOOOOOOOMMMMGGG YESSSSS-oh… oh… ok I’ll be excited in 4 weeks then.”
An item effect is not a buff:
I find that BfA has extremely cluttered buff frames. A lot of this comes from equipped items.
Items are items. Not buffs. Simple.
Summary:
This is a helluvalot of work, but it makes the gearing system so much more interesting.
When we look through BfA, the #1 issue in general has had to do with gear.
It’s the Azerite pieces, it’s the necklace, it’s corruption, it’s having to run islands to become better in PvP because it has more Azerite, and just the fact that the gear was kind of boring, yet massively complicated.
There’s also been some complaints about the story, but beyond that it’s all been about the gear!
So get it right. It’s important. And remember: World of Warcraft is not Diablo. We don’t get infinite drops for farming endlessly. We are exploring a world and the pacing is much slower.
If you made this far, thanks for reading.
