Items: 3 modifiers?

[FlapJacks]

Now, I'm not sure if it's too late in the development process to ask about this or not, but seeing as it's still pre-alpha, I figured I'd give it a shot.

I think something that would be really cool to see in this game and would make it stand out from other games of this sort on the market would be to allow items to have three modifiers, i.e. "Hale Raspacious Mace of Thunder" would give strength, health, lifesteal, and lightning damage, based on TQ's system. This could mean mountains more combinations and variety, and allow for some very powerful non-uniques, perhaps comparable to uniques of their same level, so that more people are using a wider range of cool randomized items that no one else is likely to have, not just the same incredibly buff uniques for 10+levels. Thoughts or comments about this?

Also, it always warms my nerdy heart to see an item with a name like "Stormcaller's Bactrian Claw of Reckless Power". The more ludicrously long the name, the better!

[mamba]

Certainly like this idea

[Kluga]

I've gone with options 2 and 3. It has the potential to be equally awesome and messy which is where my reluctance stems from. In my mind, the best way to do this would be to continue with TQ's method of doing this.

If I remember correctly, modifiers were split into prefixes and suffixes so a particular modifier would only appear at the front or end of an item name. In this situation, I would imagine having a set of "third affixes" which is exclusive from the prefix and suffix sets would be the cleanest and easiest way to balance this.

[FlapJacks]

Maybe the easiest way to do something like this would be to make the new modifier always be a possessive adjective? (Forgive me if this isn't the right term.) i.e. "Mordiggian's Bloody Shortsword of Pirating", making it so that the second suffix can't ever be possessive at the same time, in order to avoid awkward names with multiple possessives.

Anything else constant would work pretty easily, but this is just the first thing that came to mind.

[eisprinzessin]

Yeah, naming could be tricky. But wouldn't that imbalance the game? A triple-affixed item would outshine any zero-/single-affixed item. And you had to make every affix a bit weaker to avoid. medierra argued similarly, when he was asked to allow more but two rings.

When I compiled Armor and shield and Affixes it occurred to me, that GD might only have up to one affix per item. GD has four additional item slots (pauldrons, belt, pants and medal) - so that it might be necessary to discontinue double affixed items for better balancing.

I'm sure that I'm wrong here - but I'm curious. At the end of the day the TQ system has worked well and changing it only eats up resources. Time is better spent on coming up with more original affixes for GD.

[ZorusX]

I don't understand the point of this. If an item that generates randomly 1-2 affix/suffix mods it is of a certain quality. (uncommon) If an item had 3 or more randomly generated affix/suffix mods, it is also of a certain quality (rare). Item quality was a way of telling you what sort of stats you can expect on an item. If an uncommon were to generate 3 mods, it wouldn't be uncommon, it would be rare, which it already is if you use the existing system. Instead of that 3 mod item being classified as uncommon you may as well make it drop as a rare to avoid confusion of quality.

Now, TQ handled things a bit differently than Diablo 2. There was an additional level between magic(yellow) in TQ or magic (blue) in D2 and rare (blue) in TQ or rare (yellow) in D2. This was greens. confusingly, greens could be one of 2 things; either a powerful magic item with either 1 or 2 mods EXCEPT that the mods available to choose from contained multiple attributes. OR they could be monster-specific drops which is an item with preset stats that only drops from a certain type of monster.

In the first case of greens in TQ, you essentially have the 3 (or more) mod item. I don't know if the loot class system will be identical to TQ. It is probably on the forums somewhere.

it occurred to me, that GD might only have up to one affix per item. GD has four additional item slots (pauldrons, belt, pants and medal) - so that it might be necessary to discontinue double affixed items for better balancing.

Not necessarily. But you're likely going to have to make the maximum allowable value for any given stat lower to limit player power. Or you can buff monster stats. Its all about...
balance.