I've been playing some Poe2 here and there and I've been quite fascinated with the way their crafting system works. Before Path of Exile I mostly just played Diablo and wanted to bring in a few things from there onto our crafting system, but glad that I got to play this game now as well as it showed me some interesting things we may have good use for.
The things I disliked about other games, mainly world of warcraft, was the limitation of gear you found at certain levels or gear you crafted. Stats-wise it was always the same. I'm gonna make up random names in this post as I can't be bothered to look up the actual items, but let's say you craft a helmet in WoW and it has its own name, level requirement, class restrictions, etc, it would have the stats:
plate
60 armor
12 strength
18 stamina
requires level 18 to equip
with plate you're aware that only warriors or paladins can wear this item
high armor is usually necessary for those classes and it fits in with plate
then the usual stats that are a priority for those classes, especially tanks, strength and stamina
and the level requirements to prevent lower characters being too overpowered being able to equip this item.
What I didn't like was that every time you crafted this item it always had the exact same stats.
With Diablo and now Path of Exile that's different, there's min-maxing of stats along with tiers, i.e. if you get an item it'll first pick the tier the stat belonged in, then what the min-max was of that specific tier. We can compare this with the previous example by giving you three different examples, one with a higher tier (worse) and one with a lower tier along with bad and good min-max rolls, to really make it obvious however we have to work with higher numbers or decimals, let's assume the item above's stats are x10.
200 armor (tier 8)
40 strength (t9)
60 stamina (t9)
Here we can imagine that the values of those tiers can have a minimum of 180 armor and a max of 220 armor, this is still within the 8th tier but when the item was crafted/found or augmented it rolled a random number between those values. I believe both diablo and poe2 use rng, i.e. u have a good chance of getting the max value the same way you have a chance of getting the minimum value. This is something we have implemented in our creature stats as well, just that the rarities have a much smaller window.
So for a lower tier, i.e. better item, you'd have something like this:
360 armor (t5)
76 strength (t5)
88 stamina (t6)
It makes the item quite a lot different from the other, even though it's basically the same item.
The difficult part with the crafting in these games is to get the stat you wish to have for your specific class along with the tier and then lastly the roll/rng. The difference between WoW and these games is not just that items are set in place, but also the wide variety of stats the item can receive that won't really help your class whatsoever.
For instance, when crafting an amulet as a warrior, you can get unlucky and get stats such as:
+10% crit chance for spells
+8% spell attack speed
Warriors don't cast any spells so this is rubbish, it just takes up a spot of stats on your item now which has a limit to it too, only 6 different stats can exist on an item (at least on the lower level ones, haven't played too much endgame)
For this there are certain augments to try and "fix" the items, but they don't make it easy for you there either because of randomness. You can't pick which stat you wanna remove, it'll remove one stat and replace it with another at random, so if you get unlucky it may remove one of the few stats you really wanted to stay there and it won't remove the stat you wanted removed.
There are some augmentations that let you add specific stats to an item when it still has space for additional stats, and I don't mind that existing either, but I haven't dabbled too much with that to know exactly how it works or what kind of tier it'd provide, etc.
For Holozing, we're already quite limited because all 3 classes are healers.
This means a lot of stats that exist in other games we have little use for, so our max stat slots will have to be something like 4. Some of our main stats for healers currently are:
- mana per minute (regeneration)
- mana pool (extra total mana)
- luck (capture success chance, among other things)
- healing power (increased effectiveness of your heals)
- hit chance
- crit chance
and a few others we have yet to add but will eventually find our way to do so to split up what some of the stats above cover
Among those stats we will also have item class restrictions, however not always. I.e. this item can only be equipped by a Light class healer, not by an Ocean or Forest healer. Then level restrictions, naturally, since levels will have a big role in our game due to our battle brackets. Then equipment and trading restrictions, i.e. if you found or crafted an item it may be tradable, but if you equip it on a healer of yours it won't be any longer. Then account-wide restrictions, certain items you can't trade out from your account, but in exchange you can use them on any healer on your account so it's not "soulbound" to that one specific healer.
To get back to the examples above, we will definitely have min-maxing as well in this game for items, however not tiers, at least not on the lower levels, and there may be one stat that's guaranteed to exist depending on the class restriction of that item.
For instance, finding a level 2 healing gloves that's Ocean restricted may always have the + mana pool stat in it as that's one of the focus stats for the Ocean healer. The others however can be more random, i.e. mpm, luck, healing power, hit/crit, etc. Augmentations in our game will be something people can craft rather than finding them out in the wild like in those other games, although there can be a chance of that as well but a low one (lost and found case).
The idea here is that people who wanna battle at certain brackets, let's say the level 1 or level 10 bracket, are going to want to maximize their gear stats, creatures and healer for those brackets to perform well in them. This was something I found very dull and boring in games like World of Warcraft for instance, where you had battleground brackets but the only items you could really get for a certain class where quite limited. You knew you had to get a shoulder slot from this boss or from this crafting recipe so it was all about getting it and then you could have 10 rogues wearing the exact same item one shotting each other. There was a lack of diversity, basically, which is what the min-max prevents or makes harder to top.
Here you can imagine that when an Ocean healer has the best item, highest level requirement for that bracket, thus item level, the best 4 stats for that class they may still not have the best tier or if tier's aren't on those levels yet, their stats may not be maxed out. There may be players with similar items but slightly different stats and min-max that may change the outcome of a match and season.
It gives players more things to do upon every level bracket than getting those guaranteed items from that guaranteed pve encounter with only the drop chance not being guaranteed but allowing the players to farm the boss until they drop it. Naturally items won't be everything in our game either, so even if you've gotten the best of the best, you may miss a heal or heal and spend you mana too early or get surprised by the enemy roster, creature defenses, damage and heal range, or simply some bad luck, etc.
Salvaging items will naturally also be a big part of our crafting, even though crafting itself may not be in the early game, we may reward early participants with being able to gather crafting material so that when crafting goes live they'll have a lot of mats to play with and level up their professions.
Luck being a stat will also have a part in crafting items, whether it will play a role in how high the quality of an item is or how well its stats are picked is yet to be determined, maybe it'll just be there to help you level up and make sure your craft doesn't fail if your level is a bit on the low side. This is something that was inspired from the game Last Epoch.
We do wanna keep things easy and intuitive, especially for players who've played similar games before they'll be able to quickly see what they should do, and for casuals hopefully easily find out what they should do. I think taking some of the best existing ideas (in my opinion) and fusing them together into this game might make it quite unique while at the same time adding some risk-reward ratio to it.
We do also plan to add different modes that players can play their accounts as, for instance some who don't really care about crypto or nfts at all to not even bother with that and be completely split up from the markets but still able to earn zing* and be able to gather materials and craft stuff with the option to maybe upgrade their account at a later time, along with players who simply don't wanna trade at all to make their journey more challenging. Maybe even a hardcore mode if there is demand, i.e. if a creature faints they will leave your card and be gone from your inventory forever which may make pvp battles quite brutal but intensely exciting for those who dare!
A lot more that can be said about this part of the game, but maybe I'll save it for a future post!
Anyway, thanks for reading some of my thoughts into the crafting system we have planned and wish to implement, hope it gave you a glimpse of what's to come!