No idea if anyone has mentioned this...so...
In the world of Magic: the Gathering (or some other CCG), an unfairly powerful card with a low mana cost will need something else in order to cast it or have it in play. Sometimes you'll pay health to cast a card, while other times health will be taken from you if you do not do something like "sacrifice a creature every turn"...other cards want you to discard cards, while others outright weaken your creatures and yourself. Cards may give your opponent benefits...
I have always wanted items that do negative things to the player in exchange for specialized positive stuff.
Examples:
- Haste will drain endurance, but with a combination of items that regain endurance and a healer that can give some in exchange for their mana, it can be used when needed to defeat a mob quickly.
- Fire breathing sword has a slider that sets an amount of fire damage for every swing that hits your target, but the sword gives you negative fire resistence and can randomly deal fire damage to you.
- A +100 SV vs Fire ring gives you -100 Cold Resist and deals cold damage to you and snares you every time you take fire damage.
- A very evil, but super powerful sword that gives you the chance of outright dying everytime you swing it.
- A very evil blade works against a character that worships a non-evil god, while a good sword sets a timer that will cause an evil character to blow up when it expires (and it doesn't reset for an hour).
- Equipment for the player that benefits their pets rather than the player.
- Emergency clickie that mezzes a mob for a minute, but casts unresistable mez to you for almost that amount.
- Huge inventory bag that slowly eats your money, and falls to the ground if you have no more money.
- Super high AC armor that snares you and deals crushing damage to you when you take hits.
- A bow that doesn't allow you to cast spells or use skills.
- A tag on items that prevents you from taking them off when a fight is going on around you.
- A piece of armor that resists a % of fear, but casts a short duration aoe fear on your enemy whenever you get hit by fear.
- A belt that gives massive strength, summons beer, but gives massive decreases in INT, CHA, and magic resist.
- A powerful mask that gives you 50% more speed but randomly casts unresistable blindness to you.
- A weapon that randomly makes you attack your party members as if charmed by an enemy.
- A necklace that does bleeding damage to you, but siphons life everytime you attack a non-undead enemy.
- A cursed war horn that increases the amount of your taunts, but gives you an artificial faction hit to every faction, making all NPCs in the game kos to you when you have it on.
- Expensive beer that gives damage resistence and immunity to CC, but creates fake enemies that will try to confuse you by attacking you and lowering a fake health bar.
- A magic staff that is so powerful that it pierces your party members when they get in the way.
So what about spells?
- Nuke that does 500 magic damage to a mob and 600 unresistable damage to you. It probably also costs less than the norm.
- Sacrifice yourself to instantly rez a player.
- Summon a player to your side, if that player accepts...that player then dies.
- Summon a pet that will attack you if you do not feed it a specific item from your inventory every thirty minutes.
- Well, spells usually have more negatives than items...like Cleric's Reckless Strength from EQ.
I know that EQ did do this, but some items just felt negative for the sake of being negative. Sometimes the benefits can outweigh the negatives and its a good idea to give negatives to overly powerful equipment...otherwise what would one lose? Maybe a normal mace should be the norm since a powerful item may be more risk than reward. Fungus Covered Scale Tunic was one of them, but its negatives were nothing compared to its power. The tunic should give negative sta or hp in exchange for its hp regen.
If negative items with powerful effects are not a norm to see then it becomes silly to promote them. There can be ways to combine items to counter negative effects, or people will rely on average loot or average daily grouping. Players can probably counter the effects for you if they are a significant boon. Also, Summoners need a business...sometimes things can just be "good enough" for certain jobs...rather than fill the world with items that spam stats and have no strategic value to these stats.
I don't mind it as long as it isn't too numerous. Having items that spam ridiculous amounts of contrary effects is equally as annoying as purely stat items. It would also be a good thing if the effects were within reason. I have a hard time imagining a use for a sword that has a chance to randomly kill you every time you use it.
You have a creative mind. I think I echo the thoughts of liav.. if you're constantly trying to remember 7 different things that might happen, it starts to become less about the game and more about your gear.
Some games have actually done things like this on a scale that I feel works. Look up some of the engineering items from world of Warcraft and let me know what you think.
Items with a big boost to certain stats (or effects), and negative on one (or more) others are fine IMO. The player can then decide if the item is "right" for the current situation.
However I don't like negative RNG effects on items/spells. I remember my mage in EQ has some spells ("Fickle Fire" line) that could randomly boost your next fire spell, or reduce the damage of all your spells for a short while. Such a spell can pretty much only be used in "safe" situations, in any serious group/raid you wouldn't use it. At least, I wouldn't. IMO that makes this spell line kind of pointless (aka, wasted developer time).
It's an interesting concept, but one better left for the player to decide. Such as if the player wants to use the fire effect on the sword, knowing they will have the detrimental effect on themselves, then that is the players choice (IE: EQ1 Necro spell Pact of Shadow or Corporeal Empathy [Takes Casters health and gives to target]) Random negative effects can be problematic, especially if changing the equipment out mid-fight is not permitted.
It might be interesting if this were tied to your skill level such that starting out, you struggle more with some of your powerful spells or wielding your more powerful items.
I'm thinking along the lines of the monk Bind Wound skill in EQ where, when you were first learning the skill, you could get a critical failure which damaged you rather than healing you.
If I recall correctly, there was an ability Wardens had at one time in LOTRO that made them indestructible for a short amount of time, but also dropped their HP to exactly 1. It was used in those moments when it became a race between who would die first - the MOB or the tank (and effectively, the group) - and every bit of DPS was needed to win the race. Warden would pop the ability, shout in group to stop healing and unleash all DPS, and just pray the mob would die before the skill wears out.
Those are the kinds of negative effects I'm all for. Items/skills that have some kind of 50/50 chance of either wounding or helping, not so much. I want to know exactly what the negative effects are going to be, and then use my judgement of the situation, and of my group, to decide whether the risk is worth the potential reward. In a game like Pantheon, with a (hopefully) stiff death penalty, that has the potential to create some damn memorable moments.
Angrykiz said:I like the idea of cursed items and would go so far as to even hide some of those adverse effects from the players until they can be revealed through various means.
Kiz~
I like the idea of cursed items and that the curse might not be immediately apparent. IDK if there will be a "loremaster" skill that gives you insight on what an item's enchantments are or if it will be tied to the Perception system, but it would be nice if players had to invest in one of those or risk curses.
Another thing that would be nice is if certain cursed items could not be unequipped until you find a way to remove the curse, e.g. pray at an altar to a certain deity while having enough standing with that same deity. For players with insufficient standing, there could be an alternative way to break the curse with an added penalty, such as having a different deity destroy the item.
Players should be able to ask other players to identify items for them, for instance by using a trade window but without actually trading the item. Players with high loremaster/perception could make a bit of gold offering their services to others.
Celandor said:It might be interesting if this were tied to your skill level such that starting out, you struggle more with some of your powerful spells or wielding your more powerful items.
I'm thinking along the lines of the monk Bind Wound skill in EQ where, when you were first learning the skill, you could get a critical failure which damaged you rather than healing you.
That's a great idea. The higher your skill level is the less chance you have of activating the adverse reaction.
Tradeoffs should be common place, items should not have only bonuses. That said, the tradeoff should be 1) easily identified and as consistently applicable as the positives and 2) The negatives canot be 'junk' or throw-aways on stats that have no importance, like a +10STR sword that has -10INT on it...as if any warrior gives a squat about his INT score. A warrior might think twice about a +10STR sword if it had -10STA on it. All this would preclude the 'lets add some randomly occurring negative in the hopes that it doesn't make the ridiculously overpowered always-on benefit seem ridiculously overpowered' it would. If you really insist on random negatives on an item, like some proc-effect, then make the positive also a proc effect.
Consequeces, right?
I think in general, if you cut it down to it's most simple form, they already exist. For example, back in EQ, my ranger could invis (outside). But that invis might last the full duration, or might drop 2 seconds after I cast it... which made running through mobs that couldn't see you when you were invis an always iffy proposition. But I think you are looking at a deeper sort of consequence - a known negative with a known positive that will ALWAYS happen (even if that always is a chance, such as your weapon that gives you 50% speed but will cast blindness on you from time to time).
What do you think about special, class specific items that you can only equip one of at a time that strengthen you in one way, but weaken you in another. For example, maybe there is a class (like a ranger) that can be proficient with bows or proficient with swords... and perhaps there's an item with a "sharp arrows, dull blades" effect which increases your ability with your bow, but lessens your ability with swords. Or maybe as a better example, perhaps a Wizard has an item with a "Slow talker" effect that makes spells take longer to cast, but makes them more powerful.
My thought is that there would be a variety of these for each class - each providing a benefit at a known cost.
I think this might be interesting because not only does it give you the opportunity to specialize your character at a cost... it also might be a way to create some very compelling gear choice decisions. For example, maybe the item with the most powerful druid effect is also in the same slot as a highly prized other druid item... or maybe the effect on the item is the ONLY thing on the item, causing yo to decide to forego stats in a slot to pick up the effect.
This post is more or less off the cuff and not something I thought much about - but I thought I'd throw the idea out there for consideration.
Good topic. As others have said, I like that it gives players more interesting decisions to make. It helps prevent one item from being obviously better than another. I think that also helps prevent power creep. Developers have more options when designing new items than just simply cranking up the numbers or adding new stats. The presence of both positive and negatives inherently encourages balance.
I would not be the least bit surprised if this is a common aspect of situational gear. Like the item that increases fire resistance but decreases cold resistance. This way, it's not a penalty to a major stat that will always effect you, but it's still something that could hurt you if you're not paying attention to where you're going and forget to take it off. I don't think it would make sense for all items to be like this, especially in lower levels. I'd also leave off the part about being snared and stuff. Too many combined effects can become over-complicated and therefore should be relatively rare. Same for random effects. That way it's easier to understand the consequences of your decisions. Ultimately, there should be a logical reason for putting a negative on an item. Not just for the sake of being different. But in general, negative stats are certainly a fair way to spice up situational gear a bit and make things a little more challenging and dynamic.
(edited for clarity)
I think its great to have items that have a balance. Sure, when you hit with that bow you hit like a truck, but it's just generally kind of inaccurate. Makes sense, provides gameplay balance, and gives the player a choice. Do you want consistency? Or do you want that chance at a battle-changing impact? Do you use the bow to pull with the hopes of starting the fight with a nice big chunk of the mobs health gone, while taking the chance they come in full health? Is that worth it?
Its valuable to not only give the player that tactical choice but also give them oppurtunities to compensate if the chance they took doesn't pan out by swapping to another weapon/tactic.That's the heart of emergent gameplay that VR has stated they embrace.
I think this goes back to populating zones with NPCs and items. In MUDS when a builder was building a zone for a particular level the level range of the zone came with a total amount of points that could be spent on items.
So +1 str could cost 2 points and you only have 10 points to use per item. Introducing negative stats would allow more points to be used to create an item.
So an item could have +5 str and use 10 points or be +6str -10hp(Minus 2pts) and still be at 10 points total.
The negative stats would have a cap limit as well so maybe the max points per item is 10points and 4 negative points, per item for basic content and Boss drops could add an additional 10 points, etc etc.
Points system is used to balance item creation across content of the same level so the developers can have guidelines when populating the zones by creating stats for items and stats of the NPC like hit damage and hp values.
I'm sure Pantheon has a system in place for creating items and also npc stats etc.
Zeem said:I think this goes back to populating zones with NPCs and items. In MUDS when a builder was building a zone for a particular level the level range of the zone came with a total amount of points that could be spent on items.
So +1 str could cost 2 points and you only have 10 points to use per item. Introducing negative stats would allow more points to be used to create an item.
So an item could have +5 str and use 10 points or be +6str -10hp(Minus 2pts) and still be at 10 points total.
The negative stats would have a cap limit as well so maybe the max points per item is 10points and 4 negative points, per item for basic content and Boss drops could add an additional 10 points, etc etc.
Points system is used to balance item creation across content of the same level so the developers can have guidelines when populating the zones by creating stats for items and stats of the NPC like hit damage and hp values.
I'm sure Pantheon has a system in place for creating items and also npc stats etc.
I've called design like that a weighted point-buy style. Most of the time I think that would be a good idea to use. However, there will always be areas where you may want to break the rules for a special item that would be an exception to the rule.
bigdogchris said:
I've called design like that a weighted point-buy style. Most of the time I think that would be a good idea to use. However, there will always be areas where you may want to break the rules for a special item that would be an exception to the rule.
Of course, always a final pass on items.
Zeem said:I think this goes back to populating zones with NPCs and items. In MUDS when a builder was building a zone for a particular level the level range of the zone came with a total amount of points that could be spent on items.
So +1 str could cost 2 points and you only have 10 points to use per item. Introducing negative stats would allow more points to be used to create an item.
So an item could have +5 str and use 10 points or be +6str -10hp(Minus 2pts) and still be at 10 points total.
The negative stats would have a cap limit as well so maybe the max points per item is 10points and 4 negative points, per item for basic content and Boss drops could add an additional 10 points, etc etc.
Points system is used to balance item creation across content of the same level so the developers can have guidelines when populating the zones by creating stats for items and stats of the NPC like hit damage and hp values.
I'm sure Pantheon has a system in place for creating items and also npc stats etc.
I think a system like this for crafting items would be kinda fun and add a rather unique twist to item crafting. Could even go as far as adding charged based procs or clickies to items by having a caster "enchant" the item with whatever spell you wanted on it. Also, these procs/clickies could be recharged using some reagent by the crafter and more spell casting by the caster. This idea came from fizban's staff in dragonlance that was enchanted with many charges of various high level spells, which made the staff extrodinarily valuable. We could have each proc charge cost some points based on level of spell.
daemonios said:Angrykiz said:I like the idea of cursed items and would go so far as to even hide some of those adverse effects from the players until they can be revealed through various means.
Kiz~
I like the idea of cursed items and that the curse might not be immediately apparent. IDK if there will be a "loremaster" skill that gives you insight on what an item's enchantments are or if it will be tied to the Perception system, but it would be nice if players had to invest in one of those or risk curses.
Another thing that would be nice is if certain cursed items could not be unequipped until you find a way to remove the curse, e.g. pray at an altar to a certain deity while having enough standing with that same deity. For players with insufficient standing, there could be an alternative way to break the curse with an added penalty, such as having a different deity destroy the item.
Players should be able to ask other players to identify items for them, for instance by using a trade window but without actually trading the item. Players with high loremaster/perception could make a bit of gold offering their services to others.
I like these ideas (also OP's idea as long as it's limited to a small % of items)