Ok. So I’m bored at work tonight, and for the first time in a long time I feel like typing up a manifesto. HUZZAH.
So like most of you, I like battleborn. Maybe too much, as my steam history for the last few weeks will show, but yeah. I like it. However, like many of you, I feel like it has flaws, and many of you have made posts regarding those flaws like matchmaking, microstransactions, character balance, on and on and on. However, I’ve seen few posts about what I consider to be the games biggest flaw - it’s loot system.
I’ll be sprinkling these in throughout, but just to put this post in a nutshell- TLDR; The Item System is Really Bad and needs some thorough, ground up rework.
Let’s start with something that I have seen a few bitch posts about, Legendary items. For those of you who don’t understand the gripes about legendary items being underpowered or useless, I’ll explain in a few words. Every other item class from common to epic, has a price scale that goes down with the quality of the item. For instance, a green power glove that has +7% attack damage will cost less to equip than a green power glove that has +7.3%. Legendaries do not, they are capped at an 1800 activation fee, despite not all of them having the same stats.
Now that seems like a pretty fair trade off considering that they will have two stat upgrades and one “unique” upgrade that changes how you play, or at least functions as a different stat upgrade.
The real problem of cost comes when you factor those stats against epic items, who typically fall in the 850-1050 activation cost.
You see, those epics can have two primary stat boosts as well - they won’t have the tertiary, but it’s perfectly normal to see them walking around with two very useful stats at their much cheaper price range. In addition, they can be very cheaper to equip if they have a negligible drawback (- helaing power, + recoil come readily to mind) into the 700 range, which brings us to the crux of why some legendaries are great and some are goddamn near unequippable.
In order for a legendary to be on cost with even epics, it needs to be able to provide two substantial buffs and a tertiary effect that is at least as good as another buff.
Otherwise, it’s pointless, because if you’re wasting one of the effects or if it isn’t good (or really, great) for your spec, then you’re paying 1800 for the novelty of having a legendary on your loadout, rather than an actual increase.
This is a problem because many legendaries have buffs that are hard to quantify or rate (-cc duration, +middling health regen, +healing recieved) vs buffs that are very obviously good to have (attack speed, attack damage, etc), which is why items like Vow of Vengeance are so prized - they have three very real effects that stack very nicely.
This isn’t even taking into account items that have effects that don’t appear to affect the crowd that they are intended for - see the recent bitches about the change on Vyn’s quiver from a slow to health regen, or the heal locket that lowers all cooldowns… every time you deal 2000 damage.
Which brings me to the next problem within the system, that being that the secondary effects on many green and blue items are… well. Too weird. Everyone knows that “5% attack speed after you hit with a melee attack” is probably a good thing. But things like “+reload speed after you reload”, “+shield regen after you create a buildable” or “-buildable cost while your shield is depleted” are… weird? To say the least. Yet these increase the equip cost of these items greatly.
Another problem we see here are with buffs that seem good, but likely don’t add a lot with the items given. For instance, cooldown reduction has been hotly debated as great or useless, because the game only doles it out in 7% increments which don’t quite seem to make that big of a deal, nevermind the 3-5% that can see on non primary stats.
This also leads to a problem that GBX has been trying to resolve for awhile now (mostly because I think it was a stupid fucking idea in the first place) - 0 cost white items. If you don’t know already, many items spawn with a defect which will lower the activation cost, but do something bad to you. This can also occur on white (common) items, to bring the activation cost down to zero. If you can find an attack speed item for instance that adds to heal power and your character is not a healer… well then you basically just gave them 7% attack speed for no cost save an item slot. If you see someone packing a white, it is either a new player with no other options orrrrr someone abusing this minmax to get a freebie item.
I get that this activity was (probably) intended, but it leads to issues because of the sheer amount of buff types in the game and the difficulty of players of varying skill levels to determine how important the stat is. In short-
“Minor” buffs and debuffs on items vary too widely between “god mode” and “useless” and add too much to the weight of the items cost.
This leads to a lot of what we saw in the last patch, which is that this forces devs to nerf/buff items to try to show off these lesser abilities without dealing with the underlying problems.
The reason for this being, with the small loud out size in battleborn, dev’s obviously have to try to make some way for lesser stats to seem as good as others. Take gloves and swords for instance - both have a very simple task, upping attack speed and damage respectively. Helmets and Wrenches however, have the exceptionally ■■■■■■ job of lowering cc costs and lowering buildable costs. Useful? Maybe? It’s hard to judge because no ones every going to put the ■■■■■■■ things on when they could be buffing their damage output or defensive capabilites.
Basically, and I’m going to bold all this, because it’s the crux of everything here - Typically, the goal of a loot system is to provide an outlet for player customization and provide long term goals for a player to strive to (like farming a legendary). It should be diverse enough that a player can experiment as they wish, yet restrictive enough to keep gameplay in both PvE and PvP from feeling one sided. As such, I believe that the current system doesn’t quite do a good enough job of that.
So. Wat do.
One route to go is the way that GBX already is - changing items based on the meta to either upgrade or downgrade their value. It’s a way to go, for sure, and is necessary in part in any real meta to keep some items from going apeshit. That being said, considering how much diversity is already becoming a problem (given the recent nerfs to attack speed and attack damage), I don’t think it’s the right answer for battleborn just yet. What is that solution?
I dunno.
Well, I have an idea. But it’s crazy, and involves a lot of evisceration to the games current loadout and loot systems. If you like it, say so. If you don’t, or you have an alternative plan, fire that away too. That’s why we’re talking about loot.
My proposal would be as below.
Step 1. Lower activation costs for all items by roughly 25%.
This seems drastic, I know. And more in line to just reward players. However it goes a long way to making a lot of legendaries more playable, and more importantly, it allows you to do the next crazy thing…
Step 2. Add a fourth loadout slot.
See, I said it was crazy. But it’s not all madness! I promise.
Step 3. Create three item subsections.
Basically, this step involves taking the existing item pool and dividing them into three groups - Primary, Seconday, and Utility.
Basically, instead of the current loadout system, you would have an additional slot, but would be restricted in how you could equip items to those slots. Think “guns, armor, relics” from borderlands.
Slot 1 would be Primary Items, items that are character defining. Attack Damage, Skill Damage, Attack Speed, Heal power, Damage reduction. These would be the primary things that all classes rely on or choose to rely on.
Slot 2 would be Secondary, or things that are important, but not quite as astonishing as your primary stats. Shield Pen, +Shield Capacity/Recharge Delay, Reload Speed, Movement Speed, etc.
Slots 3 and 4 would be utility items, which would include some of the more unique things like recoil reduction, speed recharge rate, -cc duration, -buildable cost, etc.
This step actually does a lot for the game. It first of all puts a cap on offensive and defensive gains while pushing some of the game’s lesser used items to the forefront. Now that being said, I can already hear some players griping about “giving the illusion of choice, but really taking it away” which is why this next thing is a must-
Step 4. Revamp all utility items to have a reduced power primary or secondary stat
Bamf. Take that one in the mouf, item diversification.
You’d think the next step is profit, but we’re not done quite yet.
Step 5. Analyze and buff or replace underperforming stats
Probably would take a few weeks of metadata to bring this online, but this system would probably give a better idea of whats doing well and whats not at the moment. Also would pit certain abilities against each other to get a baseline of what a stat should be at to be considered worthwhile.
If you buff it a lot and no one still likes it, it’s probably a sign it should die.
Then again, while we’re at it.
Step 6. Use metadata to hotfix the activation prices of legendaries week by week.
This last step does a few things. It firstly encourages players to branch out of “cookie cutter” builds and into weirder, lesser used items. You like VoV at 1350 to activate? Great. This weird +heal recieved legendary isn’t doing so good, so this week its like, I dunno. 700 to activate.
Honestly, you could go a long way by just using metadata to determine scores in and of themselves, and give the items proper activation weight to even things out.
Step 7. Profit
I think this system would greatly increase interest in lesser liked items and boost overall interest in legendaries, making them easier for players to work into their inventory rather than deal with the steep costs associated now.
Anyway, that’s my batshit crazy plan.
Curious if anyone has anything different.
