Rare items: need to be justified with stat?
 

Should rare items be justified with higher stats than normal items? Should they be minor adjustments or major? Apparently the rarity of the weapons makes the better stats balanced out...

I have personally always thought that the rarity of an item will justify the item's value by itself. I figured people will love having 1 item when there are only 4 out there, having a custom skinned weapon... something others don't have. Sure, bonus stats are good but if they are, I think they should be forgettable. Perhaps a reason to get a rare weapon over an identical normal tier weapon, but not over a higher tier normal weapon.

So, to what degree do rare items need to justify obtaining them?

Make it look good :3

Rare hats. Perfect example. No function. Just pretty.

when you spend days/weeks/months trying to get one item to get the giant bonuses it presents, and while using it you have a chance to lose that item to any player trying to PK you/defend themselves from you, that's what makes for epic game play

epically frustrating, this is the most idiotic idea for a game imaginable.

Does anybody remember the black and white graal's from Graal Classic?
One gave you infinite bombs and one gave you infinite arrows? They followed you around and if you got killed somebody else could pick them up. And if you logged off with one then it disappeared and randomly respawned somewhere else?

I always wanted to remake something like that.

don't hate the game because you suck at it. this is the most idiotic post in a thread imaginable :rolleyes:

depends on the gameplay

you're babbling pure bull****. Spend months obtaining an item to lose it when you lag out or get disconnected? Do you even think before you write?

I doubt you could find another person on the forum who would say "holy **** man, yea that'd be a great idea that you spend months grinding the best item ever to get ganged down by some dude and 6 of his friends"

EDIT:

Here's another great idea for a game (but I get full credit for this one), make it take 3 months to complete some introductory course and the moment you finish, you are warped to where max level players are and you're only 1/60th as powerful as they are. If you die at all during the game your entire character gets deleted and you have to start all over again from the beginning.

wow, you assumed quite a lot from one paragraph that i wrote. lose the item if you lag or disconnect (when did i say that?) grind to get the item only to lose it from 6 guys (i said "chance to lose" not "you will most definitely lose this if it's not a 1 on 1") and that idea of yours is all yours: your "reductio ad absurdom" falls short, my friend, since it's overly retarded just like the post you made

a game i used to play (who's name shall remain unwritten) would have you spend hours at a time collect the byproducts for what could turn items into legendary ****. when you PK'd people, however, you became black-named and anyone on the server could kill you, resulting in you dropping all of your items, and (if killed a second time) all of your equipment

i'm not saying that it was easy to just kill anyone, even when you had 6 or so friends helping you out (especially when they worked hours and hours to obtain items which made them super powerful) but that isn't even the point: the fun in the game play came from the fact that you could potentially lose all of your **** in the process of PKing somebody. it's the potential to lose your items that puts you on edge: graal's dying system on any server is always something that just sort of annoying - it's not like you really lose anything from dying. i mean, if everyone can just get the sweetest items and they never lose them, then what about it makes it rare?

sure people will get discouraged in losing their items: that's inevitable. but it's also fun unlike some casual bull**** grinder game that's been rehashed over and over again. if someone quits over losing all of their ****, then that only fuels the fire of the person who owned the hell out of them. of course, not everyone will quit when they lose their legendary items: they'll want revenge, they'll start playing more, they'll start formulating plans to get their items back, hell maybe they'll create a guild with the specific purpose of crushing the guild of the person who took their items

if that isn't "fun" or "appealing" to you, then go search up "free MMO" on google and find some crappy 3D rehash to grind at

You don't have to explicitly say lag or disconnect to the lose the item because it is sort of implied with the territory of online gaming. There is a chance on any online game that your connection will not have a 100% uptime which can lead to your death. In most games that is frustrating enough alone, but you are throwing in the added benefit of losing your hard work to other players.

Your very first post suggesting it take months to obtain this item suggests nothing short of a "casual bull**** grinder game" except this time you spend months working for something so someone else can have it. Sounds like tons of fun to me.

The black and white graals aren't such an awful idea because they take very little time to obtain, but honestly, you're suggesting spending a huge amount of time getting an item only to have the potential to lose it quickly would be entertaining? Have fun with the 3 other people you might be able to find who'd be interested in that gameplay.

if you don't suck at the game you can utilize the bonus's given by working for such an item that you won't lose it easily. you seem to be in fear of losing the time spent on the game: that's the entire point. you don't want to lose, do you? well you better be able to fend off your loot

or you can flip it around. go and take someone else's stuff so you don't have to spend the time on making it yourself - it'll be hard to do so, but if you are successful then you get a great item

you're putting all your cards into most people quitting when they lose their stuff. from my experience on MMOs, the opposite happens: they start playing more after they lose their stuff. perhaps you're just the type of person who quits in fits of rage when they lose?

hiro i think u need to host such an item on 2 servers incase one crashes

In the end this would be appealing to very few players, I don't see how it's so hard for you to understand this. As far as skill goes in online games, suck is an extremely relative term. I'm sure someone from the #1 guild in WoW would say I suck at WoW even though I'm supposedly in the 25th best guild or something like that.
this only seems to encourage a wild numbers game where a select few will eventually acquire all the power. Again, not very fun for the typical player.
in what MMO does this happen? I can't think of any because it's a clear cut formula for financial disaster.

The guy that plays for 100 hours doesn't deserve a rare item nearly as much as the guy who's played 1000 hours.

The guy who plays 1000 hours deserves to have their computer smashed into a million pieces. Thats just unhealthy. The guy with the 100 hours obviously knows the importance of time.

You're mistaking rare items and good items. Rare items don't have to be any better than more common items.

I'm not. Most servers allow you to get rare items through events. There have also been occasions where I have seen staff auction off rare items. Here take these examples.

Unholy Nation: Auctioned off "Pillow" which was a rare item, for EP in the auction house.

N-Pulse: Event - Win 3 events in a row and you pick any rare you want.

Thats what I am saying.

The guy who knows the importance of time probably doesn't care that he's not getting rare items then, and if he's not willing to put work in to get them then he shouldn't complain about how things aren't handed to him.

I think the rarity is all that's needed too, Dusty. I can see how giving them super stats is easily justified (those who work hardest to get the items get the biggest reward, etc), but these stats are not some last-ditch effort to drive players. People like standing out and showing off, so it doesn't take more than appealing to that part of human nature to make players excited about something!

Plus the whole rubbing it in everyone's face thing is a reward itself.

My only problem with uber-stats on rare items is that it eventually can bite you in the ass in the long-run. If there are 10 items out there that are uber, and 9 players quit... only one player has that uber weapon and they have an insane advantage over other players. The only way to fix this is to release that weapon again or release more uber weapons. It seems like a bad slope to get caught on. Just seems like unnecessary steps to raise the value of something that should already have a high value.

I agree also when someone said make them pretty. If it's rare and rarity should be its own reward, it's obvious that players will want to show it off -- and what better to show off than a weapon that looks kick-ass?

Rare shouldn't mean something that only released once. Rare should mean it's something that you can get, just through alot of hardwork. I believe there's a difference between unique event/seasonal items that you can only get 1 way (these should just look pretty, with average stats or slightly higher ) and rare items with the tiniest drop-rate or have some secret to them, but they can be gotten at anytime.

That's one of the things I can't stand about GK, ALMOST everything you can work towards is average and lower quality than most things old players had gotten from long ago and stockpiled without letting them go.

It's not a synonymous term, but it definitely DOES describe items that ARE released on a per-term basis. So an item that is released during an event once a year is still a rare item. But so is an item that has a 1/100,000 drop rate, but everyone has a chance of getting.

In my opinion though, as far as stats go unique items shouldn't get any special treatment either. Perhaps I'd go as far to say that they should possibly get a few stat bonuses over same-tiered weapons, but only if one or two players can obtain them, and they're passed along the next year(from the old owners).

This is exactly what I mean in my last post about rare stats eventually biting you in the ass. You always have to balance new items with what old players got, worry about how stockpiling will effect the economy in the future and son on. It's just not worth the hassle.

it's hard for you to understand that you do not represent all the players of online video games. YOU don't find the suggestive way of implementing rare items i typed out fun, which doesn't mean that everyone will. saying that "suck" is a relative term for skill based games and then bringing up a non-skill based games such as WoW for an example? i'm sure it takes a ton of skill to press buttons in a certain order, and with no fear in losing anything of any real value from your character, i'm sure you feel like you don't suck in the 25th ranked guild


and again, who said that the item you worked hard for needed to be overpowered? having bonuses won't make it so you automatically destroy the entire server, but it also shouldn't make you a pushover

as for the name of the game, we're not allowed to discuss other MMOs: that said, the game makes money now by selling the byproducts so that instead of having to spend the hours upon hours to get them you can just buy them for $20 and automatically get the awesome weapons. in other words, it ruined the game completely and made a lot of people quit

not if the guy with 1000 hours has been playing 20x longer then the guy with 100 hours, cuz he has proportionaly only played 50 hours.

but the guy with 1000 hours has only been playin' 10x longer than the guy with 100 hours =o

There's a fundamental flaw with this poll. There needs to be some distinction here between 'rare items' and equipment. Not all items are gear pieces.


If you're talking about equipment pieces that are rare but not necessarily useful, prices for it are likely to fall. However, if it's something rare like a commodity item, like items for weapon / armor enhancement or whatever, its rarity would matter. Things like rare equipment aren't good unless they have the stats to back them up.

However, I can definitely say, from a design standpoint, that items purposely made to be overpowered can quickly ruin player-driven commerce. And that's mostly because any piece of equipment put out with better stats will disrupt the hierarchy of item values, and players will demand items of equal or greater power. I picked the 'tier' choice, because it's a good way to make sure there are no unfilled gaps in power, and organizing items by potency is an excellent way to manage them.


Oh, and by the way... Don't do one-time releases. It leads to players spending real money to obtain items.

I played Graal to get away from stats.

It's not even a question. No stats for me.

An items stats should be decided by its value and purpose.

Value normally consists of rarity amongst other things so that will just be factored in either way and won't be viewed as a standalone or separate variable.

If the purpose changes, so should the stats.
Yet, if the purpose changes but the value justifies the change, it should remain.
If the purpose changes as well as the value changes, so should its stats.

Overall the value should be the MAJOR determining factor, mainly when it is initially created. If an item is never touched since its creation, regardless of what happens to its value; it should always remain as-is. Seeing as value on the playermarket will change with time.

If you have people that constantly alter items for that own nimrodic reasons (Era Staff), this all gets twisted and even more complicated.

You take the word 'stat' too literally. It doesn't have to represent numbers. Could simply represent an item way better than what is normally obtainable.

Uh, what. An item's value should be decided by it's stats and purpose.

From my stand point, a rare item should be similar in power to other weapons yet have an extremely unique look or effect.

Yah, I agree with you.

A weapon that's rare is rare for a reason.

Ya, of course it is... but that doesn't mean it has to be what he said. I can release a single weapon, but it can look like crap and be worse than a newbie weapon. However, the fact that I released only one of them makes it rare. Will players bother to try to find/collect it? I dunno, but it's still a one-of-a-kind item.

Well, there are people that wants too collect every one of a kind item (indiana jones?). Mostly too show them off or something.

Rarity needs to have something that'll make people think:
"OMFG, he has a <itemname>! Let's stalk him because he has a lot more hours than we do!"
True story, look at WoW Legendaries.