[CONTROVERSY] Random Item System

[oom]

I hesitate to even say this for reasons already mentioned. I realize the tons of time that went into the system and I am extremely grateful that any work is done on this game.

If I'm being 100% honest, the random items are so bad in general that they actually decrease the enjoyment I get from the game. For the first week or so, I did find it enjoyable to lore stuff, and browse around at the merchant. I found a couple of items that I considered good enough I put in my pack or vault just in case. Overall though, it's just mini disappointments one after another. I stopped loring most of them unless the name directly corresponded with the shaman class(because there is no shaman gear in this game compared to other classes). As is stands now, I can't imagine the system is working as originally imagined. I am very hopeful that it can be tweaked to at least inspire some excitement when an item is loaded. Perhaps getting rid of 95% of the items loaded and then making the 5% left at least hit some floor of semi-usefulness. In it's current form though... it honestly just depresses me when I load them.

I'm sure I come off an entitled and ungrateful but that really isn't my intention. It was said to expect tweaking and I am hopeful I'll end up loving the new system. But right now.. that 90% that is pure junk worse than shop gear in many cases(very low apply worn/very high weight wielded) just needs to go (or at least have some minimum floor).

[Lloth]

I can't imagine every piece of gear you find is bad. Maybe your expections are a little too high for this *supplemental* system.

Imagine running an entire zone and killing the big bad guy at the end. You examine the corpse and see...... nothing but a pile of coins.   Well, that sucks.

Now you run the same zone again and examine the corpse of the big bad guy and.....what's this? A new item to lore!

Now, many factors go into what stats roll on that item. It could be a resist heat by 7 resist gas by 8, detect_good hand damage.....but that same item could be 1 dam, 5% damage done and immune_disarm.

The caliber if item directly corresponds with the difficulty of the mob. Now, based on that kill, you could get a wide range of stats for that item. Yes, most of them will be sub-par. But there's always that one chance you get an amazing item.

We are aware of the timers, rent cost and other issues with the items.  If finding new items to lore lowers your overall experience with the game, don't loot them and pretend nothing loaded. Pretty simple.

[Chisul]

Frankly, this system rocks.

[oom]

It's just my honest feedback, I'm not trying to offend you.

[Kholos]

Great responses from the immortals, and good feedback from the mortals. We intentionally left the nuances of this system vague. There is definitely room to improve upon this system, and expect it will happen. We wanted to start cautiously, as injecting thousands of new items into the game in one go could be disastrous. Note that these items are not all going to be good, but there is potential for these items to be great. These items are not "rare" in general, based on the shear volume of items that can load. However, mobs that load higher versions of the items are rare based on the low volume of "elite" or "high" level mobs.

No timers of existing items were harmed in the making of "chaos" items.

[Jorake]

I like the new system. Yes most things are trash. I've gotten a few cool pieces though. I think someone said they got a +slot item for cleric. +5th or maybe even 6th. I don't remember.

The weapons is 1 thing i would look at though. Some of them are absurd. We found a 4d3 2hander 52 weight weapon. That is hilarious. Item names are legit though. All in all i think it's pretty good.

I would maybe add in more mundane stuff. Like +stat or hitroll or some such. Haven't seen much like that. But like i said in a previous post; I found a pretty cool pouch. I got the stats wrong but thats ok. Its 6hp 1cl resist 5 magic, not -2ss. Waist worn for mage. Pretty legit.

[gulca]

It seems like its a matter of managing expectations.

Here we have one side saying it’s there, go out and find it and the other side saying we’ve been out there and we don’t see it.

Since this sounds like a diablo system, why not implement the full system?

On drop, one should be able to tell if an item is regular, magical, exceptional or artifact level. Make it ansi color coded.

Next step is have a special shop that id and lore these said items for much lower costs.

I haven’t seen what the names are like. The diablo naming convention is pretty good. Names represent stats within a range. You can tell what the type and the potential of an item just by the name itself.

So, let’s see what we have done here.

For people who hate picking up so call trash items from corpse, now you don’t have to. The color of these items while in the corpse should prevent false hope and ultimate disgust when you lore it in town. However, if a golden colored  item shows up, you won’t be disappointed cos you know it will be something good.

As for cheap id and lore of these chaos items, people who doesn’t mind the ultimate stats of the items would have a blast collecting and checking the stats for half or quarter the cost.

As for the chaos items themselves, i would suggest the following types of items.

Low single stat items.
Low set items that gives bonus when you wear the said sets
Special base items that have no stat. Can be enchanted. Depending on quality of items, bonus of the enchanted items will vary. The effect of enchantment can be a list of +stat +effect. Go crazy here.
High set items.
High exceptional items that accepts chaos gems for socket enhancement.
Chaos gems loads only on high end rank mobs.

There. So much potential.

[Anista]

On drop, one should be able to tell if an item is regular, magical, exceptional or artifact level. Make it ansi color coded.

We did add internal support for this, but a lot of clients (many popular ones) do not support extended ANSI codes. Ask the imm staff: I tried a number of options. We backed out of it for now. We're still looking at options for ANSI colors, but we'll make no guarantees.

[Terk]

Haven't seen any of these items, but I played for a few minutes and looked at the world merchant and even with "list tricks TM" had a hard time reading that list.
If it's true that you can't tell how good the item is at all based on the short description in the list, then I would say you definitely should think about making all of those items, no sell. To compensate, I'd have a spec to cash them in for their value. This way they won't clog up the world merchant with items with random stats (kind of confusing for a new player).

More broadly, I generally think that the name shouldn't sound cool if the item is junk--because that's kind of lame and also hard for a new player to interpret. But I didn't load any such items to know one way or the other in my journey to level 5!

[Anista]

Haven't seen any of these items, but I played for a few minutes and looked at the world merchant and even with "list tricks TM" had a hard time reading that list.
If it's true that you can't tell how good the item is at all based on the short description in the list, then I would say you definitely should think about making all of those items, no sell. To compensate, I'd have a spec to cash them in for their value. This way they won't clog up the world merchant with items with random stats (kind of confusing for a new player).

More broadly, I generally think that the name shouldn't sound cool if the item is junk--because that's kind of lame and also hard for a new player to interpret. But I didn't load any such items to know one way or the other in my journey to level 5!

Why do people, even previous overlords, feel the need to butt in and give worthless feedback when they have no knowledge of systems?  :)  <3 Terk

[reed23]

The reality of the gear situation of the mud is that there is SO much good gear, that seeing worthless items drop is just, underwhelming.  Having a consolation price of item X dropping (instead of killing Lord Verm and only looting a pile of coins) and that item being utter trash is not a consolation prize.  It's almost worse than nothing dropping at all.

I'm not saying do away with the system, but if you are trying to provide a system where players are still possibly rewarded for doing fights and not left empty handed, then don't leave them empty handed.  It sounds like the quality of items dropping needs to increase substantially or the overall premise of the system, the way i understand it, is not working.  Having a 1% chance of loading a somewhat relevant item from Lord Verm is a worthless system that provides no benefit to the playerbase other than disappointing them the other 99% of the time when they lore this Lord Verm drop that is +2 moves and resist negative by 6.

[Chisul]

Ok, as a far from expert player, this system has had a big positive impact on my play experience.

I don't have discord and/or the links that many people use to check item stats. I don't have game knowledge sufficient that I can load the type of gear TT players store on alternate characters. I don't care to spend hours doing repeat coin runs.

I'm 100% the casual player.

That said, I have two lvl 18 chars right now and I have arguably the best EQ I've ever had on that low of level character. I loaded it solo, running two man exp and rank zones that I do know.

Sure in past wipes (see good old days) when I was clanned and played hours a day and had the #1 or #2 scout in the clan I got crap tons of gear loaded for me.

I love the variety of gear loads now.
I love that I can snag some easy coins selling off the equipment that my two chars can't use.
I love completing otherwise strictly exp zones to see what might load on the end mobs. EVEN if the item only nets me 500 extra coins.

Let's all slow the roll here and let this system play out for a while. Not everybody is going to turn their noses up at 2dex 2HR apply 7 gaunts. Being able to snag stuff like that at mid level is crazy cool in my opinion.

[Lloth]

The system is not meant for people to be geared out by killing mobs like Verminaard over and over again. It's for people like Chisul who is having an excellent time enjoying the game and loading some items he can use.  I really don't care if the elite players feelings get hurt because they couldn't load that 20th damage item.

"The reality of the gear situation of the mud is that there is SO much good gear"

You're right. There's enough gear already, that's why this system is a lottery and sometimes you hit it, but most times you won't.  So thankfully, as you stated, there's plenty of gear to go around.

Again, we will be looking at the stats and possible load %s and adjusting as we go forward.

[blackmagus]

I've got to say I've really become enamored with this random loot system. In the sixteen or so hours of game time, I've seen items drop from simple ghost children, all the way up to mid level bosses in low end high level zones and enjoyed the additional excitement of finding something new. Now, not all the items have been useful, or rather only two out of a couple dozen, but the coin they're worth has really come in handy. Considering these are on death loads, they've not replaced loot I've hope to find and I'm grateful for that.

Out of the box, the system has been incredibly cool. Can't wait to see how it evolves over time. Thank you.

[eddiex]

The system is not meant for people to be geared out by killing mobs like Verminaard over and over again. It's for people like Chisul who is having an excellent time enjoying the game and loading some items he can use.  I really don't care if the elite players feelings get hurt because they couldn't load that 20th damage item.

"The reality of the gear situation of the mud is that there is SO much good gear"

You're right. There's enough gear already, that's why this system is a lottery and sometimes you hit it, but most times you won't.  So thankfully, as you stated, there's plenty of gear to go around.

Again, we will be looking at the stats and possible load %s and adjusting as we go forward.

Lloth you seem to be taking this personal instead of taking the criticism constructively.  I don't think anyone is expecting to gear themselves out on Lord Verminaard.  RISE has more dams then we know what to do with so we don't care if the system works or not from a personal gain standpoint.  I will speak from my own perspective and say that I don't care that shit items load but I like the idea and would to like to see it developed.  The issue for me is not that elite items or significantly useful items don't load often.  It's that the likelihood of loading something that even warrants wearing at all (+stat specific to class) seems to be significantly less than getting absolute garbage %wise.

I can summate the gripe that some players are having here with this:

Raise the floor, keep the ceiling where it is.