Reminder: the following is based on the limited information that we currently have.
While the new system would add a few good features, other components honestly seem like they were not thought through, which could result in them being really bad.
This for example. Limited potential is just bad. Nobody wants this.
An other problem would be, that players would now be required to actually use a weapon in missions, before they can upgrade it to a decent power level. Not a good idea. It would make for a terrible experience, every time a new weapon family is released. Also, players would effectively be wasting their time, when playing with items that they already have maxed out.
As it stands, it seems like the new system would also lead tho these issues:
- Weapon stats are still random and can be upgraded but not fully maxed.
- The item can not get more than 500 overall power level (combined from modifiers, perks and blessings), meaning that it is impossible to max all stats, take T4 perks and T4 blessings.
- This would automatically be a massive advantage for all weapons that have a dump stat, good T3 only blessings or T4 blessings that barely perform better than the T3 counterpart.
Anyway, i find the ideas to be good in general. They just need a few tweaks.
This is what the system is supposed to achieve:
So with that in mind, here is how i would fix the crafting system and make it great:
Obtaining items
- Works as it does right now. The power lvl of items obtained, is random but losely tied to character level. Modifiers, perks and blessings are random.
- You can still earn blessings by sucking them out of existing items. Earning a blessing this way, will also provide some xp to the related weapon family.
Deterministic blessing unlocks and lock removal via weapon xp
- Leveling a weapon family will unlock cosmetics and award ressources.
- As an alternative to using the item in missions, players can feed diamantine into the weapon family’s xp bar in order to level it up. (maybe this option should unlock at character lvl 30)
- Weapon family lvl 20 and 30 each remove one lock, allowing you full customization of perks and blessings at max lvl.
- Every few weapon family levels, you get points to spend on unlocking blessings for that weapon family (by the time your item reaches lvl 30, the points will not be enough to unlock all blessings)
- When a weapon reaches lvl 30, you can over level it (you get a lvl up, but the lvl number does not go up). Each level up after lvl 30 will take some time, but will award more points, allowing you to deterministically grind for any specific blessing and to eventually unlock all blessings for the weapon this way. If you use a weapon a lot (or spend a bunch of diamantine), you are guaranteed the ability to unlock the exact blessings that you want.
- Once you have everything unlocked, additional level ups will award ressources instead of points (you can effectively buy blessings by spending diamantine, but once your have everything unlocked, the diamantine cost for a level up is larger than the amount of ressources that you get for additional level ups)
Weapon upgrades
- Modifiers are upgradeable. Perks and Blessings can be swapped. It costs materials.
- Your character level and weapon family level determine the current maximum power cap for each upgraded item.
- For each character level and each weapon family level, you gain +10 to your max item power cap, resulting in a cap of 300+300=600. So at character lvl 30 with weapon family lvl 30, you can upgrade your weapon to power lvl 600 (all 5 modifiers at 90%, 2xT4 perk, 2xT4 blessing)
- Any upgrade to your weapon will cost you materials (Upgrading a low quality weapon will be overall more expensive than starting with a high quality weapon. This means that better base items keep some value.)
- When your weapon family power cap reaches 600 (character lvl 30 and weapon family lvl 30), you can upgrade individual weapons for a high cost to increase their power cap to 650, turning the item quality to red and allowing you to upgrade the modifiers to 100%. An item with 650 power cap can have all modifiers upgraded to 100% and all perks and blessings be T4.
This combines the systems that are in place, with the systems that are currently being created.
It solves the issues of “limited weapon potential”, RNG and the need to actually level a weapon in missions, before you can properly use it.
You can upgrade any weapon to perfection, if you use it enough, or spend enough ressources on it.
If you find any issues that i overlooked, please comment them below, so that we can find solutions for those, too.