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]

Originally Posted by yerkyerk

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