Discussion upcoming season (SSSU,Features,quality of life)

[InvokeList]

TL;DR - I agree with the basic idea of both OP's suggestions.

2. Re-spec.
Since I first played d2 and LoD I felt that re-spec should be easy. The Akara quest is a great idea versus d2, I'd like to see it become a reward that can be used over and over instead of one per difficulty.
Maybe the re-spec facility could activate at level 120 provided the quest has been done in all 3 difficulties.

When I first started playing MXL I kept going to SP to "try a build" and once I got it, the thought of going back to ladder to level a character (that would soon end up in non-ladder) was... well, I never went back. Eventually I just played in SP now and again over the course of a few seasons. When Sigma hit I had to re-level all my SP characters if I wanted to try a build.

For me, the re-spec thing is the biggest barrier to playing on TSW.

Also, in SP I have items I found in other seasons and sometimes the stats are different to the latest versions (like set items and SUs). If I throw them away then I have no gear to use if I want to go and try a build in SP, if I keep them and use them for testing then I'm not really testng the build I'd actually get on TSW.

Lastly, on TSW I tend to hoard stat and skill points because I'm afraid I might make a mistake and I'm unlucky with bellas so I'm usually playing a character that's not operating at 100%. Eventually I hit a limit, get bored and go play another game and maybe come back for the start of another season.

Maybe better than a full re-spec would be if there was a +/- button next to each skill and stat so we can fine-tune?

Bellas will become useless if this happens and also goes to decision making in skill planning, Skillplanner tool maybe needs a fix.

[Goodkidscc]

I love how whenever someone posts an idea on here that isnt ben, marco, or anybody from the "in" crowd, they just get shit on for multiple pages with little to no constructive conversation.


Literally happens every time.

[Marrt]

I love how whenever someone posts an idea on here that isnt ben, marco, or anybody from the "in" crowd, they just get shit on for multiple pages with little to no constructive conversation.


Literally happens every time.

I am interested in your definition of constructive conversation. I see a post that proposes some ideas and I see people saying their opinion on the proposed ideas. I don't understand why you think that there is no constructive conversation, just because most of the people disagree. Ideas that are proposed are not always good and I find it normal that people disagree with them (you call it "shit on" though). I have seen threads with good ideas which have positive feedback from people. What I can't see is the reason behind your post.

[ParticuLarry]

TL;DR - I agree with the basic idea of both OP's suggestions.

1. Crafting always seemed too hit-and-miss to me. It seems better to farm up the ingredients for a craft and then mix them in the cube so as to get more control over the final item.

You can make it as hard or easy as you like to get the mats for each craft (and maybe different tiers of the mats so as to produce different levels of craft for each item as people go through the game). And there can still be an element of randomness, just less variation. For example you could add a cube item that when cubed with a shrine guaranteed +skills on the craft. A higher level of that reagent guarantees +3 to +5 all skills. That lets you have 10 goes with the shrine. Or you could make the reagent go in the cube when you do the craft so that you only get one craft roll with it. I'm just making these variations up off the top of my head, lots of ways to do it, but the idea of more control over crafting sounds good to me.

That would allow people to craft as they do now, completely randomly, or to gain some control by farming up some (optional) reagents. Or you could make it mandatory to use at least one reagent and a shrine... and I'm sure there are lots of other ways to do it.

As things are, someone who's just found their first shrine and one base can get lucky or another player can spend a whole season trying for an item and getting frustrated. I get bored and just make runewords because I have some control over the item I get.

Partly I like this idea, partly I don't. But your idea gave me a different one:

How about creating a new item, that's essentially a base shrine that's completely blank. And once you cube it with a certain material it gains the benefits of the current shrines. For example you cube it with an "abandoned holy water" (name still in progress) and thus turn it into an abandoned shrine, which you can use to craft. Gheed could sell those materials for 100.000 gold each. This change would make gold slightly more valuable and decrease the time you need to get a good craft, since you can actually choose which shrines you want and don't rely on randomness to get the one of the 16 shrines you need. Of course you could in turn adjust the drop rate of shrines since you get more of the ones you need.

[Marrt]

TL;DR - I agree with the basic idea of both OP's suggestions.

1. Crafting always seemed too hit-and-miss to me. It seems better to farm up the ingredients for a craft and then mix them in the cube so as to get more control over the final item.

You can make it as hard or easy as you like to get the mats for each craft (and maybe different tiers of the mats so as to produce different levels of craft for each item as people go through the game). And there can still be an element of randomness, just less variation. For example you could add a cube item that when cubed with a shrine guaranteed +skills on the craft. A higher level of that reagent guarantees +3 to +5 all skills. That lets you have 10 goes with the shrine. Or you could make the reagent go in the cube when you do the craft so that you only get one craft roll with it. I'm just making these variations up off the top of my head, lots of ways to do it, but the idea of more control over crafting sounds good to me.

That would allow people to craft as they do now, completely randomly, or to gain some control by farming up some (optional) reagents. Or you could make it mandatory to use at least one reagent and a shrine... and I'm sure there are lots of other ways to do it.

As things are, someone who's just found their first shrine and one base can get lucky or another player can spend a whole season trying for an item and getting frustrated. I get bored and just make runewords because I have some control over the item I get.

Partly I like this idea, partly I don't. But your idea gave me a different one:

How about creating a new item, that's essentially a base shrine that's completely blank. And once you cube it with a certain material it gains the benefits of the current shrines. For example you cube it with an "abandoned holy water" (name still in progress) and thus turn it into an abandoned shrine, which you can use to craft. Gheed could sell those materials for 100.000 gold each. This change would make gold slightly more valuable and decrease the time you need to get a good craft, since you can actually choose which shrines you want and don't rely on randomness to get the one of the 16 shrines you need. Of course you could in turn adjust the drop rate of shrines since you get more of the ones you need.

We are currently relying on every item getting farmed manually, so I'm not sure whether this idea is acceptable, but it is certainly an interesting design, because you will be able to consistently farm shrines using a gold farming build. The transition into the game would probably be more gradual. People who can afford to buy shrines will still be able to buy them, however people that can't afford it will be able to farm the desired shrines themselves. It wouldn't hurt the shrine selling too much too. It will be more like farming crystals and signets, as these are guaranteed drops and despite that, they take lots of time to farm and it's best to just buy them, just like it would be with the shrines if you could buy something to create them.

[MagnuS]

About the respec... The OP idea is to make it more acessible to newcomers. It's an interesting proposal, but once you make it easier for newbies the veterans will eventually find a way to exploit it for some ubers which can cause some balance issues in game and on the market inevitably.

I see the state of the bellas drop pretty fair as you need to keep in mind that you are playing an rng based game.

It's like the mf discussion: people start some threads to show what you can get with high mf values. I played two season where I had around 500 to 600 mf. Couldn't get a lot of tg from it. The investment didn't payed off. This season I went to another direction and farmed some specific trophies. Got a better profit from it.

I could go and say to myself: this game sucks because mf mechanics are thrash. It should be changed. But, hey it's a rng game. You can get a Tyrael with 0 mf or with a thousand. And tbh, I like it because it's a balance between how much you want to invest in the game VS how much you expect to accomplish.

Probably people that beg for a Bella didn't have the patient to farm the places where it drop more often for more than 10 min. It's true you can be very unlucky, but that's covered by trading.

I don't commit that hard in this game because I don't want to... So I don't expect to get to the end game's effort prize.
I don't get pissed because I couldn't kill Samael or Deimoss or even I couldn't get a Bella drop for an eventual respec.

[kris441]

About the respec... The OP idea is to make it more acessible to newcomers. It's an interesting proposal, but once you make it easier for newbies the veterans will eventually find a way to exploit it for some ubers which can cause some balance issues in game and on the market inevitably.

The Veterans or most of them have more than 1k tg so now they can buy as much bellas as they wannt ant exploit the game if they wannt to do so.
My idea was something like the ideas above , to be added ingredients like sacred heart and sacred candle that cost like 250 000 gold = 1 sunless sea run for example so for 1 respect i know that i have to farm for gold , no rng but still i have to do something that takes 5min or so...

The above ideas with new shrine mechanics sound really interesting.Sometimes the rng is just brutal i've burned more than 30 shrines to roll a crystal sword and nothing.. I think that sometimes could out performed su and ssu but u have to be stupid lucky

[MagnuS]

30 Shrines isn't a brutal investment tbh. Also, respec via gold still a balance problem on the aspect of some builds being good at farming and bad at bossing and the other way around.

[kris441]

30+ self found shrines (it takes a few runs...) and in the end nothing :X

[Diaco]

30+ self found shrines (it takes a few runs...) and in the end nothing :X

crystal swords, along with scepters, have the biggest affix pools in the game, and thus take a ton of shrines and luck to get what you want. if you were crafting a 2 handed sword 30 would be a lot, but not for crystal swords