Recently, the devs locked down the stats for character lore legendary gear. They should do the same for all the gear.
We can still have the same random mish-mash of stats. A +dmg punchy glove with +health after building a buildable and -healing. Yes, love it. Keep it. And every other strange combination.
I’m proposing that we just lock down the specific percentages.
TL:DR - everything above this
“But wait,” I hear you say. “I like being able to fine tune my gear by equipping slightly better/worse items to optimize my shard spending.”
Me too, strange voice in my head. Me too. And luckily, we already have a system for that.
You’ve probably noticed that each stat item actually has several different items. For example, +HP vests have Cellular Condenser, Haute-Couture Kevlar, Tuf-Stuff Combat Mesh, and Eldrid Bio-Weave (do the rogues just hate HP??) Right now, these only dictate any secondary/tertiary bonuses or negatives. But they could be more.
These could be tied to the base stat and cost. Eldrid obviously value HP most, as they lack shields, so all Eldrid Bio-Weave vests would have max HP and cost max shards. I’d vote Jenneret second, they all have melee. UPR 3rd, as standard military garb. LLC last, it’s more fashion than function… but that’s all flavor and mostly unimportant right now.
Rinse and repeat for all the gear. You could keep the factions relatively balanced -each faction having a “best” item or two- or let imbalance fill in some characterization. The UPR seems very middle of the pack, while the Rogues get by on cheaper items and the LLC are all spendy … but I digress. The exact details can be hashed out later. The important part is to lock down all of the random fluctuations.
This will save time for every player, by preventing them from having to examine each item and evaluate their 6.23% boost vs the 6.32% boost and the 3 shards they’d save. The differences between items would be distinct: 40-50 shards at least, and power levels to match.
This will also prevent “negative cost” items. I have several zero shard items with the same stat lines, but different values. How can you charge the same price for two items with different values?? They both cost zero, yet one gives me 5% cool down, the other 6%. The negatives are of equal value (-healing for Orendi, for example), so you’ve completely eliminated any player decision making. Instead, one item is objectively better, and if you got the worse one, sucks for you.
This will also create a finite number of gear pieces. Once you figure out that number, gear banks can be expanded to the correct amount and duplicates can be auto-sold, like taunts and skins.
And finally, this will be absolutely necessary if you ever hope to garner an e-sports scene. The very first time a match is won or lost because one player rolled slightly better stats than another player will be the very last time.
But e-sports is just one reason, as I’ve laid out. It’s good for the hard core and casual gamer. It’s good for the gear hoarders and completionists. It serves the lore, and helps distinguish the factions. And it eliminates any objectively better/worse items, keeping the player in control.
And perhaps most importantly: the less time we have to spend evaluating microscopic discrepancies in gear, the more time we can spend killing each other!
