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Named items, to me, are a sign of accomplishment. If you kill a boss and end up with the Cloak of Awesome, well cool and good for you. In the end its a symbol of either your luck or ability to camp and grind.
Something I would find interesting is true Ultra Rare or Unique gear. Ultra Rare would be a piece of gear that limited by the size of the population on a given server or even global population.
Example: Sheild of Terminus...could have the opportunity to drop from any boss level mob. The drop rate is 1:1000. So for every 1000 players on a server only 1 will drop.
Likewise if the Shield of Terminus were Unique only one would drop per server regardless of population.
Now, in order to make these items attainable they would need to have a Half-Life. If a player obtains the Shield of Terminus and equips it, once they unequipl it, the Shield goes away, disappears from their inventory and goes back into the loot pool.
Unequiped, the Shield can only be in a players possession for 2 or 4 levels or make it an unrepairable item. Once it breaks its gone and returns to the pool.
Updated: Had an additional thought.
Instead of the item disappearing completely at the end of its Half-Life it becomes dormant and turns into a quest item that can be turned in for a reward such as a title, skin, rep, whatever. So when the Shield if Terminus breaks it can still be turned in for a reward. If you are say a Hard and don't need a shield you could still turn it in for a reward.
Once dormant, the item returns to the loot pool.
As such items could also be turned in for rewards the unique or ultra-rare item should not he tradable. From a lore perspective, it would be a great dishonor to pedal such an icon.
So yes you can conceivably have a Level 1 player with the sheild until they don't 3 or 5. Or a max level player with the sheild until it breaks.
I do think there is a great benefit to having unique looking items, or items with unique abilities, that players want to collect and show off.
I am really not a fan of "limited time" items. A lot of games these days that lack content tend to try and entice you to keep playing by offering up these short term events with rewards that will never be seen again (I'm looking at Destiny 2 very hard), but what it really ends up accomplishing for me at least is a feeling that I'm less and less interested in playing because I keep missing out on all the unique rewards for various reasons. The first one you miss feels really bad. The fifteenth one you miss makes you realize the game is just using skinner box tactics to keep you playing instead of adding compelling content.
I also really don't like unique items that give a serious advantage to players who were able to obtain them. An edge or a situational advantage is fine, but if the best item in the game is only available if you farm Captain Dingus in the Snooze Dungeon for 196 straight hours, it really makes pursuing those kinds of things not worth it.
So, Yes: cool special items. No: constant limited time events and overpowered unique drops.
I'm going to offer a different perspective.
I hate over-dependence on the RNG monster. I really hate it. I also hate competition in a PVE game. If I wanted competition, I'd pick a game with that in mind. I want my achievements to be mine, and not dependent upon beating someone else.
So my take on this -- yes, I like distinctive loot. There was only one Oracle Robe. There was only one Siren Scale Robe. And I don't mind if a particular item has an exceedingly low drop rate if it's not a game-changing or class-defining drop.
I would much rather have game-changing and class-defining drops come from significant quest lines, but please see comments about my advancement not depending upon your lack of advancement. Required mobs with 3-day or 7-day respawn timers SUCK. Spending literally months hoping to catch the mob, only to lose the required drop to someone else is deeply disheartening, and I didn't necessarily like it when I won knowing that meant one of my friends lost.
If you ARE going to require a particular slow-spawn mob as part of a complex quest line, then the quest should advance for everyone working on it that is involved in the kill. If the Green Sphere of Desire is required as part of a class-defining quest, then it should be bind-on-pickup and drop in sufficient numbers to satisfy everyone there. Or you get credit for helping with the kill. Or for touching the corpse. Or SOMETHING that means I don't have to wait several more months (or longer) for my next chance to lose the drop to someone else.
TL;DR Version
Pure RNG is definitely the least desirable rewards system. I would prefer a quest that explicitly requires I kill 1,000 enemies than a spawn that has a 0.1% chance of dropping the item I want. Rewards feel better when you have a clearly-defined path with an expected end result. RNG-based rewards just feel like an absolute waste of time with the added effect of feeling cheated out of my time when purely by chance it takes me four times as long to obtain something as it did all of my friends.
I am reading comments where people think it is either one or the other, Quest vs RNG. Who says you cant do both, and do it fairly.
You can have both Quest and RNG rewards, you can make RNG items similar (not exact, but different slightly) to Quest rewards and obviously give it a different name. The better the item quality should also make it harder to drop. Epics though should be group quest and no RNG drop should be comparable.
Doing it this way, suits those who prefer a definite way to attain a item and those of us who want to know grinding certian mobs be it 1/10000 has a chance to drop special loot. It doesnt mean every quest reward should have a comparable RNG drop, just some.
Besides limiting it to just quest rewards only, has to much of a linear feel.
I do hope we can weave small non essential lore into the game, that doesnt directly hint at very rare items, but ties in with it. Example, Part of a zone called Roenick's rest. "The final resting place of a very clumsy ranger" Where certian tough mobs in the area just happen to have a very slight chance to drop rare item with the name Roenick on it.
DagnyStout said: I was listening to someone recently comment about how memorable items are from EQ. 15 years later and people can still name many items and maybe even their stats.
So true. Can’t think of any item from any game since that I remember as well as things like the Flowing Black Silk Sash or Dwarven Work Boots. Not only that, but I remember some of the players who had them, and that is pretty amazing all these years later.
I think this gets at why rare items are essential to games where there is a social/community aspect. They serve as both an accomplishment and a source of character identity. While not a “social status” per se, having that identifiable piece of ultra rare great just feels good when interacting with others. That may sound silly, but when an item is identifiable and people know what it took to get it, there is a status attached. This is why making these type of items non-transferable has value, although buying an item like this in a player economy doesn’t necessarily detract from the social value, it just represents a different kind of achievement. Just my thoughts.
I'm all for truly unique items (X per server, possibly 1 per server). However, I think it's a good option to add lesser versions that can be acquired by anyone (given enough effort). For example, say as part of a GM event a boss drops a Peerless Sword of Shocking that has a 20% chance on hit to blast the target with 250 electrical damage. You could then drop a bunch of crafting patterns for Fine Sword of Shocking that has a 15% chance to blast the target with 200 electrical damage. Then anyone could get the mats and have one of the crafters that took part in the event make them a lesser version of the unique sword.
So, I am absolutely a fan of the concept of ultra rare drops, or even limited drops where only a certain number can exist. However, I am also cognizant that we need to Pantheon to be smarter about how these things enter the world, in order to prevent people from bottlenecking on specific camps or mobs. Thus, I would recommend:
1) Each zone or distinct population within a zone has a shared loot table with most of the nice things. Normal mobs have a very small chance to drop something, named mobs a slightly higher chance, and boss mobs a higher chance still.
2) Named mobs and boss mobs can have a second shared loot table with nicer things, that works the same way. Named mobs have a very small chance to drop, boss mobs a slightly higher chance.
3) Boss mobs can have unique (to them) items that drop a very small percentage of the time.
4) Named mobs should have multiple potential spawn points and randomized spawn times so that they cannot be easily camped within an area.
5) Boss mobs should have specific trigger conditions to get them to show up - it should not simply be a matter of waiting 60 minutes after the last kill, or whatever.
6) For any given effect or bonus, adventurers should have multiple options across the world to achieve a comparable effect or bonus. So, if you have an item from a boss mob that's a 22% haste belt, then somewhere else in the world, there should be 22% haste boots, and in a third location there's a 22% haste cloak, and so on. That way, you have less chance of a bottleneck on any single camp or spawn.
Those are just initial thoughts. There's probably a lot more nuance that could be applied here.
I swear, one of my oldest memories in starting MMOs was farming for ultra rare gear. I will never forget the feeling of farming Ceremonial vestments (CV) from EverQuest Online Adventures, later buying (I forgot the name of the blue robe), I wish I would have run into the all black robe hehe. I'm putting all my chips in Pantheon when it comes to coming home from working, building my toon to the best, and playing with my wife and her healer, finally looking for a chance at that Ultra rare drop.
If anyone at Pantheon is listening, please add that to the game, farming that robe, or able to farm and sell things for years to be able to afford that.it was just such a status for those dedicated players.
Only my 2 cents, I know others may feel different, its just what I enjoyed and remember.
I wish VR the best!
Love ultra rare mobs that drop loot that only 5% of player pop has. I think this is key for player investment, but I would recommend it being scalable so that it makes players return to older zones, and if they fail, a appropriate level spawn wanders the zone until someone kills it.
I still remember getting suddenly eaten by that griffon in commonlands.
”it appeared out of nowhere!”
In my opinion Unique effect sources (only exists on one item and that item is rare) is terrible for game design and balance. These special items almost always become the center point of community drama and infighting due to their relative value. Any gains of having something “special” to collect and work towards is heavily out weighted by the damage to the integrity of the game system.
This concept is also why Named Item itemization also leads to mudflation and the general item merry-go-round. Eventually the game will get to the state that all of your item slots need to be one of the “special” items and each update will slowly add more “special” items which will quickly devalue all other items to an extreme degree. The carrot needed to encourage players to tackle/buy new content needs to keep getting bigger otherwise they might just choose to ignore the new content.
A while back Magic the Gathering introduced Mythic card rarity. Originally these were being pitched as relatively the same strength as rares and would not be must haves for competitive play. The value was supposed to only be for collectors who enjoyed collecting super rare cards. Fast forward a few sets and now all competitive play decks contain at least 50% Mythic cards with only special support cards being uncommon and rare. Named Items in MMOs will always follow the same pattern if the standard itemization model is followed.
The Compromise
Instead of having Unique Items consider instead to have statistically very rare combinations of attributes and appearance skins. This would require all items to be the output of a specific combination of materials, enchantments and item skins. Certain base materials would have a different chance of being used by a specific mob group. Each material type would then have a relative likelihood of different enchantments on it (best if it is enchantments plural as that massively increases the number of possibilities). There have been many magic items systems based on rune crafting that the combination of runes ends up being the source of the final attributes.
In addition to the crunchy stats of an item each of the mob groups would pull from a specific cultural style for the gear they drop. The overall range of skins that they could possibly drop could range from a rusted look up to a polished masterwork look, different color maps could appear on the base items as well. A tribe inhabiting a ruin could even randomly drop an item from the original culture of the ruins to signify them finding and using a historical items.
No matter what though even if it is a very rare (1 in 100,000 drops) powerful materials or enchantments could show up on an item of the appropriate tier.
This design has the added effect of being a fantastic basis for a very robust and versatile crafting system. The raw materials for the item could either be salvaged or harvested. The subcomponents for the desired enchantments could either be created through alchemy or scribing or could be salvaged from items at the expense of all other results from salvaging. The cultural skins could be learned by the crafter as well through deconstruction and practice. Finally the chance at successfully combining the item would be a function of how compatible the enchantments and materials are as well as the skills of the item crafter (and possibly the players skill at a challenging crafting minigame).
So in terms of Pantheon having its own version of the Fungi Tunic I am heavily against as it leads to terrible item design and hurts the longevity of the game world itself.
Unique as in, you yourself can only equip one of said item, that is ok. Unique as in, only one per server, no thank you. Rare is exactly what I am hoping will be in this game, kind of like how EQ had a common and rare drop for named mobs. Random rare drops from mobs anywhere in the game is a nice surprise as well.
Noche said:I swear, one of my oldest memories in starting MMOs was farming for ultra rare gear. I will never forget the feeling of farming Ceremonial vestments (CV) from EverQuest Online Adventures, later buying (I forgot the name of the blue robe), I wish I would have run into the all black robe hehe. I'm putting all my chips in Pantheon when it comes to coming home from working, building my toon to the best, and playing with my wife and her healer, finally looking for a chance at that Ultra rare drop.
If anyone at Pantheon is listening, please add that to the game, farming that robe, or able to farm and sell things for years to be able to afford that.it was just such a status for those dedicated players.
Only my 2 cents, I know others may feel different, its just what I enjoyed and remember.
I wish VR the best!
I am right there with you. When I obtained the Ceremonial Vestment, it was on my enchanter. I ended up giving it to the paladin in my group and the sheer amount of joy and excitement in his reaction still resonates to this day. I spent months camping the spectre robe for my warrior (the black robe you referenced) but unfortunately, it was removed from the game when my server started. (Proudpine Outpost) -- Of course, that information was never revealed in the patch notes. (I don't think there were patch notes at that time, to be fair.) After spending countless hours trying to acquire the robe I sent in a support ticket asking for a GM to investigate, and learned the bad news a day or two later. When Frontiers launched, the Spiritmaster robe (The blue robe) could drop from phantoms but they removed it from the loot table within a couple of weeks. There are multiple folks working for VR that played EQOA and these robes have been discussed several times over the years. I have no idea on whether or not something similar will end up appearing in Pantheon but the suggestion has definitely been made, and noted!
