Gear and Looks vs. stats

[Roros]

When it comes to these games, me and all of my friends are guilty of one certain thing; we tend to wear armor and sometimes even weapons based on how it looks, rather than their stats. Within reason of course.

It makes us wonder though why these games are so strict on not allowing us to interchange stats and visuals as we please, and the only answer I can think of would be that it's not "realistic".
I could see this being an issue in a competitive game or mmo where you need to be able to read someone's class and level just by looking at them, but I always felt singleplayer/coop arpg's could be more lenient on it.

I'd really love if there was a system that let you merge two pieces of armor or even weapons together, and have the product take on the attributes of one and the visuals of the other. Whether this would be an extensive crafting undertaking or a simple click of a button wouldn't be important to me.

[Renevent]

It's because then those items loose their identity. In TQ, every item was hand crafted, and all the uniques/sets/legendaries were uniquely crafted and designed..and they were designed around what they were. So a Kraken's Fist looked...well...like a Kraken's Fist and so on. On top of that, most of those items had stats based around the unique item.

I really really hate the idea of having items nothing more than visual place holders where the player is free just to mix and match stats and looks.

[GermanZombie]

I would like a way to upgrade weapons, to make them on par with other basic weapons of my respective level, but I still want special weapons that look unique, ie Kraken's Fist mentioned above.

[yerkyerk]

Myeah, I think both POV's have some merit, though I'm leaning to Renevant's position, the items will loose part of their uniqueness if it's just about stats.

If they added some options for coloring the armors/weapons and such, than the player has abilities to customize his looks somewhat, without giving up that unique attribute of the weapons.

[GermanZombie]

If they added some options for coloring the armors/weapons and such, than the player has abilities to customize his looks somewhat, without giving up that unique attribute of the weapons.

One of my favorite surprises of TQ was that I could dye my clothes with inks, I think some similar system would be awesome for armors to an extant, maybe like a gilded upgrade, or some slight color tweak system for trims or something like that. I am still thinking about physical armors like plate and chain-mail, but with more modern stuff dye could be done on lots of armor and things of the sort.

[shawnmck]

Could weapons be customizable (built) ?
Say for example, that in addition to the numerous weapons & armor pieces that could be found, that drops could also include pieces. Each piece having it's own unique ability, property, look. That way players could combine pieces in any order they choose to creat something unique to their tastes.
Such as a sword hilt + blade = unique weapon....or stock + barrel = unique gun.

???

[Roros]

Neverwinter Nights let you compose weapons in that fashion. Not exactly in a way where you had to find each piece, but when you crafted them you could freely pick between blades and hilts and whatnot.

As for gear losing it's uniqueness if you get to choose it's visuals, I feel it's one of those things that's more an mmo issue when you want gear to have a certain trophy/status effect attached to it. Though I can understand if that's how people feel about it.

Hopefully the game will be moddable enough and I can just go in and edit this stuff myself. I remember in Oblivion I thought the higher end armor looked so goofy that I went ahead and made myself some regular clothes with the armor stats on them. For TQ I had a few full sets collected, but never wore them since I thought some of the random monster armor just looked a bit niftier.

[yerkyerk]

I think it's not too hard to edit the TQ clothes into the ones you want. Should be easily do-able with the Art Manager.

[Llama8]

What about having an NPC do it in-game for the randomly generated gear Yerk? If you don't like the particular item graphic for an otherwise excellent item, take it to the NPC & have it changed for a fee. It'd also be a gold sink, and one that doesn't unbalance the game.

[paulusx]

Diablo 2 had a small degree of customization with socketable Armour etc depending on the type of gem first inserted. Not a bad idea IMO but don't think it would/could work with GD

[paulusx]

What about having an NPC do it in-game for the randomly generated gear Yerk? If you don't like the particular item graphic for an otherwise excellent item, take it to the NPC & have it changed for a fee. It'd also be a gold sink, and one that doesn't unbalance the game.


Be ok for basic items but would prob detract originality from Unique's

[Delysid]

One feature in an MMO I play gives the ability to fuse two items together. It keeps the appearance of one and rips the stats from the other.

[yerkyerk]

What about having an NPC do it in-game for the randomly generated gear Yerk? If you don't like the particular item graphic for an otherwise excellent item, take it to the NPC & have it changed for a fee. It'd also be a gold sink, and one that doesn't unbalance the game.
Yeah, I can live with that :)
As long as they don't use the unique meshes..

[k4llu5]

I'm wondering what kind of diversity we will see in regards to unique meshes for loot. This is one thing that bothered me about D2 in that too much stuff used the same model with only color changes. For me it ruins the appeal of high power items if they share the same model with normal equipment. TQIT had an absurd amount of variety, more so than any ARPG I know of for that matter, so I don't expect to see that level of variety in GD.

[yerkyerk]

Nope, wouldn't expect that either. Especially with the smaller scope and the limited team. Although it might amount up to as many unique models somewhere in one of the DLC's though. I'm pretty sure it won't be as bad as Diablo either.

[Llama8]

Yeah, I can live with that :)
As long as they don't use the unique meshes..

Yeah, I was thinking that if models/textures 1-10 were for the randomly generated loot & 11-20 were for uniques, you'd be able to convert any items that used models/textures 1-10 to any other model/texture 1-10.

[Renevent]

I disagree even then...you shouldn't be able to take the stats from a steel cuirass and put it on a leather jerkin.

In these games there's choices that need to be made regarding looks vs performance...just like the many other concessions and decision the player is presented with. That's what it's all about...making choices that customize your character and improve their looks/efficiency.

I think this kind of stuff (that pretty much comes from korean MMO's and JRPG's) really kills the soul of this type of ARPG.

I do think item dyes (for non-unique items), and things like that make sense...but the wholesale transfer of item stats ruins the distinctness of the item system.

[k4llu5]

I completely agree that item stats should remain unique to the individual item and not be transferable. What good would a unique item be if you could just use reg stats in its place just for the sake of a cooler looking item and vice versa. Don't mean to sound harsh, but stat swapping does not appeal to me whatsoever.

[ZZSmufa]

I also agree that the stats should not be transferable from item to item. Sometimes you just have to live with less aesthetic items, when you can't justify not using their bonuses. Customization such as dyes would be quite fine though, it was a bit boring in TQ when your tunic would be always buried under your armor, so it made little difference coloring it.

[Malpheas]

I do think item dyes (for non-unique items), and things like that make sense...but the wholesale transfer of item stats ruins the distinctness of the item system.

Yeah, I'd settle for clothing patches.

If that were the case I'd run around with a NOFX CD cover of "I Heard they suck LIVE".

[Skorpion_King]

When it comes to these games, me and all of my friends are guilty of one certain thing; we tend to wear armor and sometimes even weapons based on how it looks, rather than their stats. Within reason of course.
It makes us wonder though why these games are so strict on not allowing us to interchange stats and visuals as we please, and the only answer I can think of would be that it's not "realistic". well, a agree with that "realistic" answer, when I go to a wedding I wear a suit, but if I go to a mine I will not use the wedding suit there.. And the same about combat, if you find the area easy you can use worse equipment but looking cool just to fight like a gentleman, proud of your superiority... but when you (me, anyone) found a difficult boss of course it would be time to change to the "work gear".

If they added some options for coloring the armors/weapons and such, than the player has abilities to customize his looks somewhat, without giving up that unique attribute of the weapons. Great idea!! In TQ we can change the tunic colour (but the armor is covering it), it would be great to change some way the armor colour (maybe not all armors).. or socketing something in weapons make them change colour (and adding some propierties of course).

About repeating the models of gear... i suppose it would be not terrible if there was a clear order, for example, blue color for first level unique gear, red color for second level unique gear, purple color for next level unique gear. But please not random colours for different level gear with same appearance. It would be very confusing.

[Derf]

I disagree even then...you shouldn't be able to take the stats from a steel cuirass and put it on a leather jerkin.

In these games there's choices that need to be made regarding looks vs performance...just like the many other concessions and decision the player is presented with. That's what it's all about...making choices that customize your character and improve their looks/efficiency.

I think this kind of stuff (that pretty much comes from korean MMO's and JRPG's) really kills the soul of this type of ARPG.

I agree that you should not be able to switch one type of armor for another, as in the leather jerkin -> steel cuirass example above, as there is clearly a difference in the quality of protection offered by such different armors. However, using an examples from TQ, there were Greek (and other) style armors in Act I, Egyptian style in Act II, and Eastern style in Act III. One could argue that there is effectively no difference between bronze Greek armor and bronze Egyptian armor. It's simply more of a difference in style.

I think that within limits, the ability to convert armor/weapons from one style (but not type) to another adds more fun to the game, and can also serve as an effective money sink. I do not think players should be allowed to convert unique items to look like anything else, since they are supposed to be unique. I think with a crafting system, if Grim Dawn has different styles of armor similar to TQ, players should be allowed to craft equipment of whichever style they prefer.

I do think item dyes (for non-unique items), and things like that make sense...but the wholesale transfer of item stats ruins the distinctness of the item system.

I agree that item dyes would be a cool addition. I don't think allowing graphical changes to basic armor will ruin the distinctness, as everyone has their own idea of which armor looks best, so in online play there will still be diversity in what people are wearing. If restricted to non-unique items only, someone decked out in uniques will look like it, while others in lower quality gear will be able to customize their style to some extent.

P.S. To further define what I consider "unique", I would also say that in addition to unique items, items that drop from one specific group of mobs, i.e. Batrachos (sp?) Greaves in TQ, should also be unmodifiable.

[Renevent]

I think we just have to agree to disagree on this one...to me transferring of stats to one item to another (regardless if there's limitations on it) kinda makes items into nothing more than place holders.

I guess I might just be a little old school on this...

[TurtleOnFire]

This is my first post on these forums. I recently bought TQ/TQIT and I'm totally addicted. I have over 300 hours into TQIT because the game is so much fun. I'm actually looking forward to GD and given a choice between it and D3, I'd choose GD over diablo any day.

Because I'm new to these forums, I realize that my opinion probably doesn't carry much weight. But I would love to have a feature in the game such as Roros described. One of my biggest pet peeves is having to choose between a piece of gear that matches with my current characters overall look and another piece that starts to make my character look like a clown.

In an ideal environment, I'd like to go to an NPC and have them swap stats on like pieces of gear. For example, swap the stats on one shield for another shield. Or swap stats for one helmet to another. Swapping stats between shield and helmet would be prohibited because they cannot be interchanged in equipment slots.

This would give me a little more control over my look and my stat progression. It would be a source for another gold sink, which are somewhat lacking in TQIT. Also, it would create a use for the gear that the vendors sell, which I rarely ever purchase. These vendor items seem almost like a waste of developer time and having the opportunity to actually use them makes them seem like something more than just rpg environment eye candy.