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Offcial Feedback Thread: changes to Item Level system
rgutscheradev
Member, Cryptic Developer Posts: 188Cryptic Developer › Cryptic Developer
Hello everyone!
Now up on preview is a revamp of the item level system. This is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, so as to:
* have Total Item Level be a bit more accurate (but NOT perfect -- that’s impossible!) representation of player power
* have getting new weapons and armor feel more fair in terms of item level received
* have “everything count”: if you get a new thing that makes your character better, it should be reflected in the item level system
Here’s what we’ve actually done (short version):
1) multiplied the amount of item level you get from artifacts x2, and weapons and gear x3
2) added new things into the system: you’ll now get item level from boons, companions, companion gear, mount powers, and insignia
3) rescaled the queue requirements to reflect the new system
If you don’t care about the details, please jump to the bottom to see what kind of feedback we’d like!
Here are some more details on each of the changes:
1) Increased item levels
Currently on live, you get a whole pile of stats from a new chest piece or a new weapon. But upgrading it doesn’t affect your item level much. That’s a bad reflection of your player’s power, and it doesn’t feel great (especially since getting a new weapon or earning a new armor set can be a lot of work!). We’ve increased the amount of gear score you get from these things to bring them more into line with the amount of item level (per amount of stats gained) that you get for things like upgrading an enchantment.
No item should change in the amount of stats it’s giving you (other than the Item Level stat itself). All your items should work the same way as before. It’s just that some items will be giving you more item level.
2) New things count towards item level
Especially for endgame players, a great deal of your player power comes from things like boons, companions, insignia, and so on. As these various things have been added to the game over time, but not (until now) included in the item level system, a character’s total item level has gotten further and further away from accurately measuring that character’s power. We wanted to add these things into the system in part to make it more accurate, and in part to make it more satisfying to gain these various advantages for your character.
Here’s the table of specific adjustments (you’ll also see these numbers on your tooltips in-game)
Boon (normal, per level) 30
Boon (Stronghold, per level) 50
Companions (White) 10
Companions (Green) 25
Companions (Blue) 50
Companions (Purple) 100
Companions (Orange) 200
Summoned Companion gear: as if on you (incl. gems)
Mount Combat Power 100
Mount Equip Power (Purple) 250
Mount Equip Power (Orange) 500
Insignia (Green) 40
Insignia (Blue) 50
Insignia (Purple) 60
3) Rescaling the queue item level requirements
Of course, all this means that players’ total item levels are much different from before. So we had to rescale the queue entry requirements. The goal of this rescaling was NOT to make it easier or harder to get into queues than before. Our hope is that as many players as possible qualify for the same queues as before. Of course, if you were just under, or just over, a given queue requirement, and you happened to have more, or fewer, boons, insignia, etc. than average, you might find yourself on the other side of that queue requirement -- but hopefully not by too much.
How did we compute the new queue requirements? Well, we decided that using real player data was the best approach, so we took some actual player characters from live (of various classes and total item levels) and loaded them into the game before and after the changes. Here’s what we saw:
You’ll notice the numbers fall on a pretty nice line. Almost all players have a new total item level equal to about 2.65*(old level) + 2350. That’s how we set the queues (with some rounding).
Old New
1600 6600
1700 6800
2000 7600
2500 9000
2800 9800
3100 10600
3200 10600
(One exception: we decided that the 3200 requirement for Svardborg wasn’t serving any real purpose, so we lowered that requirement to match the 3100 (now 10600) from Fangbreaker.)
A natural question is “why not just lower the requirements some more, so that absolutely everyone can still make it into the same queues?” We thought about this. But the problem is that lower queue requirements are a double-edged sword. If they are lower, it means some people are happy that they can get in to some particular dungeon. But those people might not have a good experience once they are there. And people who are randomly queued with them might be frustrated if the lower-geared players can’t pull their own weight. In the end, we decided that we would not try to make queues harder or easier to qualify for with these changes -- we’d do our best to keep things (on average) the same.
One other thing worth mentioning: the new queue values in the above chart were calculated WITHOUT counting guild boons. In other words, players who are in small guilds, or even no guild at all, should qualify for queues (again, on average) just as much they did before. Players in very strong guilds might find they are better able to qualify for queues than before. We did that because we didn’t want to penalize anyone for being in a smaller guild -- after all, you can go out and earn a few more campaign boons or get a better companion to increase the other parts of your item level, but you shouldn’t have to change guilds! We believe there won’t be “pull your own weight” problems from this, because those Stronghold boons are pretty good, and anyone getting the benefit from them should be in good shape when doing queued content.
How You Can Help Us
Item level is baked pretty deeply into Neverwinter’s systems. So these changes are more complicated and more far-reaching than they might at first seem. Here are some things we’d love feedback on:
* Did any of your items change functionality (for example, give different stats)? If so, that’s a bug.
* Are the tooltips showing all the new item levels (on things like boons) correctly?
* Are you wildly off on any queue requirements (in either direction)? If so, please provide details. Are you qualified for more queues? Fewer? How far off are you? Is there anything about your build that you suspect causes the problem? Don’t forget to have your best companion summoned when you check, because companions (and their gear) count now!
* Any other level/item related craziness? (For example, some things I found and fixed on a first pass were problems with Mulhorand gear, and with the player level scaling formulas.)
Thanks for any help you can give!
UPDATE
Known Issues
* Relic and Frostborn gear does not give its full stat values when empowered.
* Relic gear base pieces don't have the updated item levels
* Certain gear that used to be salvageable no longer is, or salvages for the wrong values.
* Companion numbers are incorrectly set to 30/60/90/120/150 instead of the correct values above (10/25/50/100/200).
* "Fast Striding" mount Equip Power fails to give iLevel
* Artifact Powers are giving an extra 4 item level (Primary) or 8 item level (Secondary). (This one is actually a pre-existing bug; you can see it on live now).
* Player powers are doing around 10% less damage (even though all associated items look fine). This was a tricky one -- thanks to thefabricant for discovering it!
* Mount slots (just the empty boxes themselves) are giving an extra 4 item levels per mount.
* Set bonuses are giving lower stats than before.
* Runestones don't display their item levels, which used to be fine, but with the new system they should display their iLevels.
We have fixes for all of these incoming.
Now up on preview is a revamp of the item level system. This is something we’ve been wanting to do for a while, so as to:
* have Total Item Level be a bit more accurate (but NOT perfect -- that’s impossible!) representation of player power
* have getting new weapons and armor feel more fair in terms of item level received
* have “everything count”: if you get a new thing that makes your character better, it should be reflected in the item level system
Here’s what we’ve actually done (short version):
1) multiplied the amount of item level you get from artifacts x2, and weapons and gear x3
2) added new things into the system: you’ll now get item level from boons, companions, companion gear, mount powers, and insignia
3) rescaled the queue requirements to reflect the new system
If you don’t care about the details, please jump to the bottom to see what kind of feedback we’d like!
Here are some more details on each of the changes:
1) Increased item levels
Currently on live, you get a whole pile of stats from a new chest piece or a new weapon. But upgrading it doesn’t affect your item level much. That’s a bad reflection of your player’s power, and it doesn’t feel great (especially since getting a new weapon or earning a new armor set can be a lot of work!). We’ve increased the amount of gear score you get from these things to bring them more into line with the amount of item level (per amount of stats gained) that you get for things like upgrading an enchantment.
No item should change in the amount of stats it’s giving you (other than the Item Level stat itself). All your items should work the same way as before. It’s just that some items will be giving you more item level.
2) New things count towards item level
Especially for endgame players, a great deal of your player power comes from things like boons, companions, insignia, and so on. As these various things have been added to the game over time, but not (until now) included in the item level system, a character’s total item level has gotten further and further away from accurately measuring that character’s power. We wanted to add these things into the system in part to make it more accurate, and in part to make it more satisfying to gain these various advantages for your character.
Here’s the table of specific adjustments (you’ll also see these numbers on your tooltips in-game)
Boon (normal, per level) 30
Boon (Stronghold, per level) 50
Companions (White) 10
Companions (Green) 25
Companions (Blue) 50
Companions (Purple) 100
Companions (Orange) 200
Summoned Companion gear: as if on you (incl. gems)
Mount Combat Power 100
Mount Equip Power (Purple) 250
Mount Equip Power (Orange) 500
Insignia (Green) 40
Insignia (Blue) 50
Insignia (Purple) 60
3) Rescaling the queue item level requirements
Of course, all this means that players’ total item levels are much different from before. So we had to rescale the queue entry requirements. The goal of this rescaling was NOT to make it easier or harder to get into queues than before. Our hope is that as many players as possible qualify for the same queues as before. Of course, if you were just under, or just over, a given queue requirement, and you happened to have more, or fewer, boons, insignia, etc. than average, you might find yourself on the other side of that queue requirement -- but hopefully not by too much.
How did we compute the new queue requirements? Well, we decided that using real player data was the best approach, so we took some actual player characters from live (of various classes and total item levels) and loaded them into the game before and after the changes. Here’s what we saw:
You’ll notice the numbers fall on a pretty nice line. Almost all players have a new total item level equal to about 2.65*(old level) + 2350. That’s how we set the queues (with some rounding).
Old New
1600 6600
1700 6800
2000 7600
2500 9000
2800 9800
3100 10600
3200 10600
(One exception: we decided that the 3200 requirement for Svardborg wasn’t serving any real purpose, so we lowered that requirement to match the 3100 (now 10600) from Fangbreaker.)
A natural question is “why not just lower the requirements some more, so that absolutely everyone can still make it into the same queues?” We thought about this. But the problem is that lower queue requirements are a double-edged sword. If they are lower, it means some people are happy that they can get in to some particular dungeon. But those people might not have a good experience once they are there. And people who are randomly queued with them might be frustrated if the lower-geared players can’t pull their own weight. In the end, we decided that we would not try to make queues harder or easier to qualify for with these changes -- we’d do our best to keep things (on average) the same.
One other thing worth mentioning: the new queue values in the above chart were calculated WITHOUT counting guild boons. In other words, players who are in small guilds, or even no guild at all, should qualify for queues (again, on average) just as much they did before. Players in very strong guilds might find they are better able to qualify for queues than before. We did that because we didn’t want to penalize anyone for being in a smaller guild -- after all, you can go out and earn a few more campaign boons or get a better companion to increase the other parts of your item level, but you shouldn’t have to change guilds! We believe there won’t be “pull your own weight” problems from this, because those Stronghold boons are pretty good, and anyone getting the benefit from them should be in good shape when doing queued content.
How You Can Help Us
Item level is baked pretty deeply into Neverwinter’s systems. So these changes are more complicated and more far-reaching than they might at first seem. Here are some things we’d love feedback on:
* Did any of your items change functionality (for example, give different stats)? If so, that’s a bug.
* Are the tooltips showing all the new item levels (on things like boons) correctly?
* Are you wildly off on any queue requirements (in either direction)? If so, please provide details. Are you qualified for more queues? Fewer? How far off are you? Is there anything about your build that you suspect causes the problem? Don’t forget to have your best companion summoned when you check, because companions (and their gear) count now!
* Any other level/item related craziness? (For example, some things I found and fixed on a first pass were problems with Mulhorand gear, and with the player level scaling formulas.)
Thanks for any help you can give!
UPDATE
Known Issues
* Relic and Frostborn gear does not give its full stat values when empowered.
* Relic gear base pieces don't have the updated item levels
* Certain gear that used to be salvageable no longer is, or salvages for the wrong values.
* Companion numbers are incorrectly set to 30/60/90/120/150 instead of the correct values above (10/25/50/100/200).
* "Fast Striding" mount Equip Power fails to give iLevel
* Artifact Powers are giving an extra 4 item level (Primary) or 8 item level (Secondary). (This one is actually a pre-existing bug; you can see it on live now).
* Player powers are doing around 10% less damage (even though all associated items look fine). This was a tricky one -- thanks to thefabricant for discovering it!
* Mount slots (just the empty boxes themselves) are giving an extra 4 item levels per mount.
* Set bonuses are giving lower stats than before.
* Runestones don't display their item levels, which used to be fine, but with the new system they should display their iLevels.
We have fixes for all of these incoming.
Post edited by rgutscheradev on
4
Comments
For reference, my 4.3k HR without guild boons is at around 14k IL with this. Back to gear score world we go.
Also in the build: New SH gear sets, new Masterwork gear, and Loadouts.
Question - the bonus for orange companions/mounts - does this apply to the main one only, or the 5 in the stable/active? Because active companions don't have a bonus going from purple to orange, but according to these numbers I'll get more Item level from them.
This seems very nice!!!
Tough there is and will always be the dillems i hope for the best, from reading this, my opinion:
Insignias: It would make more sence to me to also avaliate insignias contribution to IL not simply by insignias but by complete bonus, i can have 3 insignias with no mount bonus and the mount bonus is oftenly more powerfull than the stats granted by the insignias inside.
There are boons more powerfull than others, for example:
Ilusion shimer = 3*400 = 1200 deflect while forbiding piercing = 3*100=300(just assuming stats at 0), this is very relevant, 1 regular r12 enchantment will be worse than the the diference between these 2.
Frozen reflection better than -> Fey thistle;
Healing warmth better than -> Burning Guidance (specially with it's "intregging behaviour" on paladins *cough**cough*);
Boons IL is very, very relevant so i think at least some of these IL should be reconsidered.
This may seem weird but a thing i also think it would be important would be the amount of r4 powers contribute to IL, something like each r4 power count as 50 to IL up to 10 (to grant at least a single and multi target rotation), having r4 powers is important and IL is not considering that.
Companions:
Multiple legendary companions will make no difference on the player, so the extra 100 from 4 legendarys companions will be irrelevant;
Bonding runestones are much more relevant than 82 IL points, i've already posted this picture, but it's the perfect example:
Bondings are worth at least 500 IL points each.
P.S: Also Weapon and Armour enchantments are far more relevant than other enchantments.
First, I agree with the previous comment about bonding runestones - they are underrated, and should be worth quite a bit more than they are now.
Second, green insignia give too many points compared to purple ones, considering the difference in stats - how about 20/40/60, instead of 40/50/60 ?
Third, I am still downloading the patch as I type this, so I haven't checked it yet, but what about enchants in utility slots - do they give the same amount of points as enchants in offensive/defensive slots ?
Fourth, what if you have multiple orange companions? Do you get 200 points for each? That would seem...off - I would think that it made more sense to give 100 points for any purple/orange companion + 100 extra for having at least one orange. Unless, of course, this is meant as a subtle encouragement to people to spend AD on upgrading all their companions to orange for no extra benefit ?
But, as I said, overall, this looks very nice - more or less exactly what a number of people (including myself) have been asking for.
2) Bonding Runestones should give more IL. They already have more power/defense than other runestones of similar level when worn on an augment, and the stat sharing makes a considerable difference on a well-geared companion and increasingly so for each Bonding Runestone rank.
3) That said, maybe augments as well should be slightly more valuable than other companions of the same rarity?
You guys missed a lot of sources of stat / item level inflation ..
What about Temp potions from praying sun, storm ,blood ,steadfast, foehammer etc ..stat potions / Elixirs and summer event food buffs /guild food / winter event scrolls tymoras lucky coin / pocket pet etc those add tremendous value to Item levels as well... even the campfire buff does + 1 to all stats ... with all of these ingested I calculate a further 10-30% increase that you must account for ....
Also anyone going onto preview who isn't too shy about their gear score if you post before / after and any guild boons (since you won't have them on preview) we'll get even more data points. Since requirements used to end at 3,200, we're really looking for non-BiS like < 3,500 data points in order to get interesting results. I know I could just strip etc, but it's hard to simulate natural progression so a sample from the community would be more helpful.
passively . and I am sure there are other similar ones for other classes
also hybrid enchantment (2 or 3 stats ) eg crual brutal savage etc give more stats as well and are not accounted for
EDIT: this requirement for the level70 pvp.
"I hurt my finger at work and have trouble playing, it should lower my IL !"
Don't forget that they give on R12: 1.95* Companion Stats - not only the power/defense stats. Usually the bondings should depend on the amount of stats your companion has. A R12 bondings + best in slot companion can easily give you 10k+ stats.
Team buffs should not make a increase to the IL as what is needed to avaliate is the player capacitty, in that case potions should increase the player IL, after all potions are just similar to a overload enchantment and EF potion can be used to reach the entry requirments for dungeons with EF DR requirment.
What you really need to calculate is not one, but two separate item levels, one for PvE and the other for PvP.
The PvE level should exclude the the PvP boons.
The PvP level should exclude companions.
Otherwise this just isn't fair.....in PvE, PvPers would get an unfair advantage, as in having a higher IL (and thus be able to access PvE content earlier), even if their PvP boons make no contribution whatsoever to PvE performance.
Likewise, if you ever use the IL for PvP matching, people with good companions would get an artificially high score.
Not fair - please, again, make separate PvE and PvP scores. If this is too complex to implement, just state that IL is for PvE purposes only and exclude the PvP boons from it.
About the PvP matchmaking-system, pets can be a problem to accurately evaluate the character power inside domination, SH or gauntlgrym. The matchmaking system does not only take item level into consideration, it probably also looks for past performance statistics to make the match. Needless to say experience shows it's very flawed and often leads to totally unbalanced matches when it could've done much better.
4x100 IL for something that gives literally no benefits >.>
It would be better as 100 IL for legendary companion and 500 IL for having legendary bonus active.
on another note should set bonuses of equipment count for item level as well then
pants shirt combos neck belt artefact combos
I agree with kacezet. It has no difference if you have an epic companion or a legendary one in your active slot. It is exactly the same use. It is only an ilvl push. We have already had the same problem with the old gearscore. People could increase it without becoming stronger and this here is exactly the same case. Itemlvl should be an indicator for how strong someone is and not how much AD someone additonally paid.
tl;dr legendary companions in active slots shouldn't have a higher ilvl then the epic version
SH Overload enchants currently grant like 1 point, when in fact they can contribute pretty significantly to combat effectiveness
My GF is 3,333 (4% over req) on live and 11,897 (12% over req) on preview, which means I qualify for all content, not even counting SH boons, by a larger margin on preview. So not a particularly interesting data point.
Still calling for volunteers to help collect more data.
@rgutscheradev a couple challenges and a couple bugs for you:
Could you share the anonymized ilvl data behind your graph? I'd love to compile a larger dataset and test it against known dungeon requirements to see what the effect of the change is on access to content
Help me find my phantom 20 ilvl. I was able to get down to 300 ilvl (eventually 50 ilvl w/ bugged bonus) I:
- unequipped everything
- respec'ed
- swaped out mounts to ones with no insignia
- made idle all companions
There were 2 sources I couldn't remove:- 30 ilvl: Glory Seeker Domination Boon (I don't have the other 2 "checkbox" boons, but I suspect that they wouldn't reset with a respec either)
- 250 ilvl: Purple mount active bonus (which I actually eventually got rid of, because one of the equip passives is bugged to not give ilvl)
That still leaves 20 ilvl I can't account for. Anyone have any ideas? It's not a huge deal, just curious.Equip power "Fast Striding" (I think from Stormraider Clydesdale) doesn't contribute to ilvl
Currently companions grant 30/60/90/120/150 ilvl for white/green/blue/purple/orange, rather than the stated 10/25/50/100/200
boons and insignias for instance add a lot to your characters usefulness but some of this seems off to me.
This for instance
Insignia (Green) 40
Insignia (Blue) 50
Insignia (Purple) 60
Green insignia = 25/50 stats , Blue = 50/100 , Purple = 100/200
When each tier doubles what you gain from them shouldn't that be reflected?
It's just math so if you are shooting for consistency aim harder.