Item Value & Importance

[Mighty Byte]

Alright, I've been reading around the forum about different suggestions about different things concerning D3 items: identification, trading value, gold value, item leveling, durability, pleiad of item modifications, ... While reading those threads, I some kind of "item philosophy" that unifies some opinions.

I've played D1 and D2 and what I felt about the items (and economy) in the game is that there was only a couple of items that were truly (emotionnally) valuable.

What I mean by valuable is that you were happy/satisfied/thrilled to find one of those, to try and win it in a trade, or else. A valuable item is also one you will like to keep around long, care for, ... A valuable item should then have some kind of "soul", history that the player could modify/affect or even build from the beginning.

I think what D3 would need is higher and varied "thrill" value for items one finds. I feel it would add to the game experience to care for items about something else than the fact that the items "kills uber fast". Suggestion I saw in the forum to do so was:
- Leveling items;
- Identiying items; make identifying expensive/related to the value of a given items. Hence one will be supper thrilled to know what is the item he/she just found.
- Durability; make uber strong items that break quickly and make repairing expensive;
- Currency ; this top has been turned upside down a lot of times... my opinion is that there should have an economy system where items don't cost 99999999999999999999999 gold to buy... I think rarity is so much entertaining than quantity, so a (WoW based) price of 3g4s something may be good ideas.
- Rare items ; I would be nice to have "realistic" percentage for items: 0.00001% for finding unique items (so that they are "really" unique), 0.001-0.1% for rares and 1-5% for magic. If would be nice if players would find some items just months after the game release, thanks to low drop rate and rarity.
- Normal items ; I think "normal-plain-white" items should have more importance. It would be nice to see high level characters wearing strong items, but not necesserally uber-magic-items.
- Customization ; again this subject is really popular. I will just add that customization would give additionnal value to normal items.

I am just throwing out my ideas about item importance, maybe they've been already seen in the forum. Anyways, I'd like to know what you guys think of this "importance & rarity & value" issue for items and if my suggestion stick to the diablo spirit.

Thanks,

Mighty Byte

(long post, sorry...)

[tommerbob]

Originally Posted by Mighty Byte

What I mean by valuable is that you were happy/satisfied/thrilled to find one of those, to try and win it in a trade, or else. A valuable item is also one you will like to keep around long, care for, ... A valuable item should then have some kind of "soul", history that the player could modify/affect or even build from the beginning.

you suggesting the idea that we're given an item at the beginning and it stays with us through the game? If so, I don't like it. Too simple, and it takes some customization away from me as a player.

- Identiying items; make identifying expensive/related to the value of a given items. Hence one will be supper thrilled to know what is the item he/she just found.

I agree with this. Uniques should cost more to identify than magics, if identification is gonna be in the game at all.

- Durability; make uber strong items that break quickly and make repairing expensive;

Not sure if I agree with this one. I don't think items should break easily. That just creates a lot of hassle and micro-management for the player. And it would require players to run back to town more often, which unless I am mistaken, blizz is trying to avoid that. As far as repairs being more expensive, i would only agree with it if durability-damage was a penalty, rather than a necessity. It would be a small gold sink, true, but in my mind it just makes more hassle for the player.

- Currency ; this top has been turned upside down a lot of times... my opinion is that there should have an economy system where items don't cost 99999999999999999999999 gold to buy... I think rarity is so much entertaining than quantity, so a (WoW based) price of 3g4s something may be good ideas.

I agree. First of all, the currency should be accessible to all level players, so that there is no more of this HR-only-high-level-avid-players-can-get-anything-good bull ****. The D2 economy was incredibly exclusive and not to mention duped. D3 needs to have an economy/currency that is both accessible and understandable to both the avid and casual player.

- Rare items ; I would be nice to have "realistic" percentage for items: 0.00001% for finding unique items (so that they are "really" unique), 0.001-0.1% for rares and 1-5% for magic. If would be nice if players would find some items just months after the game release, thanks to low drop rate and rarity.

I agree, but with a stipulation: drops have got to be more realistic! If I'm running around in hell difficulty, I really don't give a crap about finding a low level unique item. Drops should be respective to both chance (reduced from D2 style), and quality (I really don't care about finding a regular leather armor in hell difficulty).

- Normal items ; I think "normal-plain-white" items should have more importance. It would be nice to see high level characters wearing strong items, but not necesserally uber-magic-items.

Yes, all items in general should have more purpose than just vendor-stuff. Why would the blacksmith want that low-quality sword in the first place?

- Customization ; again this subject is really popular. I will just add that customization would give additionnal value to normal items.

This ties in with the last quote. They could go hand-in-hand. What if you could melt down a magical sword, and add its magical properties to another weapon that you DO want to keep?

[Doctor Salvador]

I definitely agree with you on the plain white items having some more importance. Maybe make a couple items that are very powerful when they are just plain, but have a very low chance of becoming magic/rare/unique.

[Rashiminos]

Originally Posted by tommerbob

I agree, but with a stipulation: drops have got to be more realistic! If I'm running around in hell difficulty, I really don't give a crap about finding a low level unique item. Drops should be respective to both chance (reduced from D2 style), and quality (I really don't care about finding a regular leather armor in hell difficulty).

I think I tried to say this in the other thread, but the forum ate it several times. Getting that leather armor drop in hell means you failed to roll all armor classes above it. Changes would be either failing to drop anything below a certain class or a minimum base item to drop. Both now prevent that monster from dropping a wide range of items, which would now have to be acquired from lower-level monsters (for little exp).

[Srikandi]

There HAVE to be bad drops, if you're gonna have high-end drops have any value. And lots of em.

I've seen some nice features in other games that can make low-level drops less annoying. For instance, let the player sell em off cheap from inventory (lower price than from vendor), like Sacred 2. (Or transmute em into gold like Dungeon Siege, variant ont the same idea.) Or combine em to repair other items of the same type, like Fallout 3. Or use em as a reagent, for instance in a summoning spell, like Diablo 2 or Dungeon Siege 2. Or as a variant, transmute in a cube-type deal to something more useful.

I actually think the Fallout concept, where you use em to repair like items, is the best.