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Revamped Item Empowerment via Experience System (now with more Wishes!)
ironzerg79
Member, Neverwinter Moderator, NW M9 Playtest Posts: 4,942 Arc User
I'm not going to rehash the hot topics on the forum, only suggest another adjustment to the current systems that works within the devs stated goal of rewarding players for time spent. So with that said, let me introduce a revamped system that utilizes Experience as a resource to help reward time spent with character progression.
The goal of such a system would allow people more freedom to build and advance their characters simply by playing the game. Right now there is an enormously high level of frustration as to how expensive and tedious it is to level your Artifacts and Artifact Equip.
Here is the new system I propose. First, Experience becomes a resource that is tracked on your Riches tab. Collecting Experience begins from day one. You don't need to be 70 to start collecting Artifacts, so you shouldn't have to be 70 to start collecting Experience. A simple mock up is here:
You can see at the bottom the Experience resource is neatly added to the bottom. The currency tab has already been reworked with new currencies added over the last 3 modules, so I don't believe this is a major technical hurdle. Next to the Experience count is the "Use" button, exactly identical to the Black Ice resource.
When a player hits the Use button, another interface is brought up:
The Item Empowerment screen, again identical in function to the existing Black Ice Empowerment. The screen lists your available Experience points you can allocate, and lists all your equipped Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. If something is already at maximum rank, the equipment will be listed, but you will be unable to add more experience.
Now all you do is simply use the slider (or 100% to allocate it all) to decide how much experience you wish to add to the Artifact. If enough experience is added to enable the Artifact to "Rank Up", after the experience is allocated, the 100% button turns to the "Rank Up!" button, and you cannot allocate more experience until the Artifact is refined to the next level. Pressing the "Rank Up!" button brings up the traditional refining interface for this.
Now what's the ROI that justifies the change?
First, it allows players to focus on just playing the game, while still feeling like they have control over advancing their Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. Since nearly everything in this game gives experience, players can chose how they want to play and still make progress.
Secondly, the current experience boosters become more relevant to post-70 play, meaning more players have more reasons to purchase these from the Zen shop. If you want to rank up an Artifact more quickly, you might purchase a large or huge experience booster to double the rate at which you receive experience to help speed up the process.
Third, it turns content that might otherwise be viewed as boring or repetitive into opportunities to earn more experience for your artifacts. Doing existing Campaign dailies even after you finished the Campaign could potentially become a lucrative way to earn experience for your artifacts, as well as running dungeon or skirmish content with friends or new players, even though you don't need any of the drops. However, the experience earned will go a long way towards improving your existing equipment.
Fourth, it's not something that 3rd party farmers and bots can produce and sell back to players. The experience you earned is earned via your own play. There's no way for farmers to monetize this, which takes away from Cryptic, as well as generally leads to less happy experience (via attempts to exploit) for players.
And Fifth, it's more satisfying to know that your power level is directly related to how much you continue to play. And as new Artifacts and Artifact Equipment is released, it's not as stressful to start to replace other gear by simply playing the game...and it also gives you an incentive to keep playing and building and experience pool in anticipation of new equipment.
I even think it's reasonable to make this experience pool account-wide to help (and encourage) people to grow their alts, and not make starting a second, third or tenth character seem like such a mountain to climb
Please keep in mind I'm not advocating changing anything about the current Refinement system. Using equipment, stones and enchants is still a valid path to ranking up your Artifacts or Artifact Equipment. If you feel like you'd rather farm stones, or purchases stacks off the AH, that's totally cool. But multiple paths to advancement to help supplement is never a bad thing.
The goal of such a system would allow people more freedom to build and advance their characters simply by playing the game. Right now there is an enormously high level of frustration as to how expensive and tedious it is to level your Artifacts and Artifact Equip.
Item Empowerment and Making Wishes
Or How to Reward Players for Time Spent Playing
Here is the new system I propose. First, Experience becomes a resource that is tracked on your Riches tab. Collecting Experience begins from day one. You don't need to be 70 to start collecting Artifacts, so you shouldn't have to be 70 to start collecting Experience. A simple mock up is here:
You can see at the bottom the Experience resource is neatly added to the bottom. The currency tab has already been reworked with new currencies added over the last 3 modules, so I don't believe this is a major technical hurdle. Next to the Experience count is the "Use" button, exactly identical to the Black Ice resource.
When a player hits the Use button, another interface is brought up:
The Item Empowerment screen, again identical in function to the existing Black Ice Empowerment. The screen lists your available Experience points you can allocate, and lists all your equipped Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. If something is already at maximum rank, the equipment will be listed, but you will be unable to add more experience.
Now all you do is simply use the slider (or 100% to allocate it all) to decide how much experience you wish to add to the Artifact. If enough experience is added to enable the Artifact to "Rank Up", after the experience is allocated, the 100% button turns to the "Rank Up!" button, and you cannot allocate more experience until the Artifact is refined to the next level. Pressing the "Rank Up!" button brings up the traditional refining interface for this.
Now what's the ROI that justifies the change?
First, it allows players to focus on just playing the game, while still feeling like they have control over advancing their Artifacts and Artifact Equipment. Since nearly everything in this game gives experience, players can chose how they want to play and still make progress.
Secondly, the current experience boosters become more relevant to post-70 play, meaning more players have more reasons to purchase these from the Zen shop. If you want to rank up an Artifact more quickly, you might purchase a large or huge experience booster to double the rate at which you receive experience to help speed up the process.
Third, it turns content that might otherwise be viewed as boring or repetitive into opportunities to earn more experience for your artifacts. Doing existing Campaign dailies even after you finished the Campaign could potentially become a lucrative way to earn experience for your artifacts, as well as running dungeon or skirmish content with friends or new players, even though you don't need any of the drops. However, the experience earned will go a long way towards improving your existing equipment.
Fourth, it's not something that 3rd party farmers and bots can produce and sell back to players. The experience you earned is earned via your own play. There's no way for farmers to monetize this, which takes away from Cryptic, as well as generally leads to less happy experience (via attempts to exploit) for players.
And Fifth, it's more satisfying to know that your power level is directly related to how much you continue to play. And as new Artifacts and Artifact Equipment is released, it's not as stressful to start to replace other gear by simply playing the game...and it also gives you an incentive to keep playing and building and experience pool in anticipation of new equipment.
I even think it's reasonable to make this experience pool account-wide to help (and encourage) people to grow their alts, and not make starting a second, third or tenth character seem like such a mountain to climb
Please keep in mind I'm not advocating changing anything about the current Refinement system. Using equipment, stones and enchants is still a valid path to ranking up your Artifacts or Artifact Equipment. If you feel like you'd rather farm stones, or purchases stacks off the AH, that's totally cool. But multiple paths to advancement to help supplement is never a bad thing.
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Wow, that's great, but you said "wishes"! What about the wishes?
Let's continue to walk down the wonderful path of Experience as an asset. We can solve a couple more hot button issues the community has.
First, don't you WISH that advancing through the campaigns on alt characters was easier? Don't you WISH you had that option?
Well, let's turn to the expert...and who better to ask about granting your wishes than Elminster himself. Allow me to demonstrate.
Upon reaching level 70, adventurer's are directed to see Elminster about some ways to possibly alter reality and use their own inner experiences to fuel additional powers. Upon talking to Elminster in the Well of Dragons (or where ever new content takes him), players are given the dialog option to ask Elminster about granting a wish.
Mechanically, what's going on is players can "buy" a casting of the Wish spell from Elminster. Like in classic D&D, this takes a portion of experience, paid out of the account-wide Experience Bank. For argument's sake, I set it at 20,000 Experience. This Wish is a BoP currency that can be spent in a variety of ways.
The two big ones I've thought of so far are:
1) Campaign unlocks, just like treasures or Genie's Gifts. Each Wish can be used at a campaign vendor to grant enough resources for the equivalent of 1 day's progress in a campaign, including reputation in the case of IWD. The experience bank is shared across your account, so it's possible to bank enough experience on your main character to be able to buy advancement much more quickly on alternate characters.
Note about campaign unlocks. They would only be purchasable for "old" campaigns, and not the most current campaign
2) Stronghold Resources. Wishes can also be exchanged directly into the Mimic Coffer for Heroic/Conqueror/Adventurer/Dungeoneer Shards of Power, Campaign Treasures or Influence. This gives people another alternative path to challenging other content to help fill in gaps in their Stronghold resource gathering.
And I know the players here WISH for a lot of things, so what you could do with this currency is really unlimited.
But ultimately the goal behind a system like this is to not replace the Astral Diamond system, but compliment it. Astral Diamonds are a great currency to use as a means to purchase items which may help increase the speed at which you level, increase the power of your character (such as buying equipment or enchantments from the AH), or exchanging for Zen. Conversely, it's also very important to have a lot of valuable ways to spend AD in game, from unlocking boons to marks for refinement, etc...so that AD remains a valuable resource that motivates people to buy Zen to trade for AD
However, the core advancement of the game, while requiring Astral Diamonds, should not feel wholly gated behind them. Players should be rewarded with opportunities to advance by spending more time game, playing the game, and not being overly focused on grinding out personal fiscal wealth in the form of AD. I think a lot of unhappiness and discontentment has existed and still exists because players feel like they're forced to generate wealth, and then play the game in their spare time, versus enjoying the great game play and stories that Neverwinter has to offer, without feeling handcuffed by not necessarily earning max AD/hour.
In short, reward players for playing the game. And they'll reward you with their business.
At the end of the day, playing customers are paying customers.
Overflow experience! You still get Overflow Experience which counts towards extra rewards, but Overflow should ALWAYS reward a power point until you're maxed out. Always, always, always.
Thanks for the reminded. Consider that included in the thesis above.
Stuff like that helps reinforce that it's part of D&D lore. Really, I think a lot of the game could be improved just by better tying it to its roots, without a whole lot of actual gameplay adjustment.
Hmmm... overflow always offering a PP sounds nice-but actually, what if overflow experience was instead removed, and you could just use your wishes to boost power points? This is well in line with Wishes effects in Dungeons and Dragons, where wishes could be used (for example) to increase ability scores.
Speaking of which, a wish to let you increase one ability score by up to +1 would be super nice~
Oh! Oh! Oh! What about wishes that allow you to customize artifacts? Like, my belt gives me Int/Cha, but I'd prefer Int/Wis.
Stuff like that~
OTHER THINGS THAT MIGHT BE ABLE TO BE DONE WITH WISHES (rather than just supplementing the refining system)
Super Dailies: consumable powers that are stronger than daily attacks, but otherwise similar in functionality. As a wizard, it is an absolute travesty that I don't get to cast Meteor Swarm or Wail of the Banshee.
Ranking up companions.
Player housing (HA HA HA H-okay, now I'm just trolling).
Contingent Resurrection (EG a scroll of resurrection type effect)
Shifting one type of enchantment into another type of enchantment of the same rank
(Why should Greater Vorpals be worth as much as Pures of others?)
+1
"In short, reward players for playing the game. And they'll reward you with their business.
At the end of the day, playing customers are paying customers"
+1
I spent the most money, when I felt I could actually progress by playing. As they slowly took the ways away, I slowed and then stopped. Why. Because I felt and feel this is not the approach, this company takes; it wasn't just how I felt, you could see it by their actions.
Fox Stevenson - Sandblast
Oh Wonder - Without You
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
- Dylan Thomas
But we can dream, can't we?
Okay zerg. So, step one: get Strum on board. Step two, he gets the devs on board. Step 3: it gets lost in development hell because Underdark. Step four: There is no step four.
DAMNIT! We need a new strategy!
Maybe a +1 takes you 100 wishes or something.
Really, anything. I took inspiration from the PHB, and there's lots of great ways you used wishes in tabletop to improve your character. No reason those couldn't at some point be added to the game.
A.) Ability score increases are defined effectiveness increases that are not tied to your existing gear score.
B.) IT takes a looooooong time to max out the bonuses, but you're getting persistent improvement in effectivness.
C.) You're getting improvement in multiple areas instead of just one area, so it's not like the guy who has +30 stats is dealing +30% damage, no he's dealing +5% damage and has +5% recovery time.
+3 multiplied by like... infinity infused with the Weave and Shar's tears while Lolth weeps in the distance! Tyché for good measure and blessings of Mystra with Lord Ao's witness and the Seldarine in unison and... *the mage continues rambling off every deity you can think of and countless more you've never heard of, for hours and hours...*
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That is what artifact gear should be, not the staple piece of every player, with this silly refinement system. I mean seriously, where do all those peridots go??? How do I even lift a weapon weighed down by so many of them.
All your posts are calm and informative and full of really good point and ideas!
Kudos to you sir, and for the record...these ideas above are really, really nice - hope they will have some attention with the dev's. Maybe in Mod 8? :*
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However, Cryptic went overboard (as usual) and introduced legendary cloaks and belts, and subsequently artifact sets, which looks like they're here to stay. If just weapons had been artifact equipment I wouldn't have minded so much them introducing new ones every mod but adding cloaks and belts to the mix (and probably rings soon too) was just too much. Cryptic don't seem to learn from their multitude of mistakes...
Not to drift to far off topic, I very much like your suggestions Ironzerg, which is similar to what Ayroux has previously suggested. However, I doubt it would ever be implemented because the new devs have no clue how to work with the coding for NW and this seems like too much work for them to handle.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
I have a ton of mechanics swirling around in my head, with no great way to quickly get them down on virtual paper...but here's what I would do.
Module 9 redefines Artifacts and Artifact equipment. The entire module is built around each class having a major quest line, similar to a campaign, that takes them all over the Sword Coast to collect pieces of a true Legendary weapon and a true Legendary armor. Mechanically, as your progress these two pieces are going to take the place of all the other Legendary equipment: MH, OH, Neck, Belt. The powers on these pieces are going to ultimately be re-rolled into these pieces.
But the goal would be to make these pieces totally unique to each player, even down to the name. That's right...each player, upon completion of the quests, gets to name their Artifact Weapon and Armor, to really make it their own. And then after that, the expectation is that these weapons and armor are going to grow with you, almost like leveling up a second character.
Then instead of having green/blue/purple/gold/teal "ranks" of equipment, you just assign straight iLevels. And you give each piece multiple components to be improved, then empowered. I would imagine improving parts would be multi-step quests that require you to gather materials gained through solo questing, crafting and dungeons. Once gathered, you finish the quest and improve that part of the weapon. You then use experience to improve the power of that specific component.
So improving the blade of a weapon could set a higher potential max damage for the weapon, then it reaches that potential as you slowly empower it with experience. Once it's maxed, you'd have to wait for them to add more quests to improve the overall iLevel of that component to improve it more. But you'd also have content to improve the other components of the weapon. Maybe the one part allows you to improve daily powers. Another part houses the powers that improve class features. A fourth unlocks and improves at-will powers. A fifth allows you to improve encounters. And as the overall iLevel of the weapon improves, you have a set of stats (that you also get to pick) improve automatically.
Then the Armor piece can house abilities like main stat increases (Str, Dex, Wis, etc.), unique abilities like the AP gain from neck pieces, abilities that trigger based on some action in combat (like taking damage or dealing damage), improved stats, etc. Like I said above, I haven't put much thought into how the actual mechanics lay out.
But ultimately the idea is that you thing of Artifact Equipment as very limited, special and extremely powerful pieces...but they are really treated more like part of the character themselves (like the iconic weapons of our D&D heroes) and less like something that's upgraded, then becomes obsolete and gets tossed. I mean, how outrageous would it be for Wulfgar to come out of an adventure and vendor Aegis Fang, in favor of Warhammer +6 that he randomly found in a cave, right?
Anyway, this was all off the cuff and pretty rambling...so sorry about that.
The most important thing in life is to be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.
Leliana C.W. - Opressor CW
Lelian O.P. - Bulwark Paladin
(mod note: fixed quote coding)
One of the key aspects of balancing a game is taking advantage of mutual exclusivity.
Even if it mean that your average player has to spend months or years working on it...there's still a path, and one that's not gated by spending money.