Why is there a lack of unique gearing?

[erapago.4387]

1 hour ago, Artemis.8034 said:

Thats horizontal progression in a nutshell. Once you have the best ie legendary everything there is no where to go. Its a blessing and a curse,many people dont want to have to vertically progress gear all the time, but otoh without some form of progression things tend to stagnate. There has to be a middle ground,  we get new content but never have to change our gear. Maybe the answer is a gear reset on expansions, not on patches but on full expansions. Maybe a level increase to 85 or 90 with new gear sets.

Sounds like a normal gear treadmill to me.

Edited November 24, 2022 by erapago.4387

[Danikat.8537]

11 hours ago, Tails.9372 said:

Except GW2 does not have "horizontal gear progression" at its highest rarity but "no gear progression at all". If GW2 actually had horizontal gear progression then people would be talking about the gameplay related pros and cons of various legendary weapons in different scenarios which there is obviously no point in doing so as they are all the same.

They don't specify legendary weapons because there's no reason to do so, but there are frequent discussions about the best builds for different professions and activities, including which weapons and which stat combinations work best. If you look up build guides they all show ascended/legendary tier items so it doesn't need saying in every single discussion; it's assumed that if you're up to the point of theory-crafting builds you'll be using ascended or legendary equipment, and will know that if you want to design your own builds legendary is more useful because you can change the stats more quickly and for free. Also when someone is considering making a legendary weapon, especially if it's their first one, they're always advised to think about which weapons they use most and pick from those, rather than just picking the one they like best.

That's what horizontal progression means: you reach a point where instead of chasing the next tier of the same thing you've got a range of choices which are equally powerful and progression comes from finding the ones which work best for you or finding ways to have a range of options available to you (which legendaries are ideal for since you can change the stats whenever you want).

Edited November 25, 2022 by Danikat.8537

[b k.1648]

This game is not a gear grinder. There is a degree of progression but it's intentionally easy to reach the maximum power level, because the game is intended to be one where you learn how to play well and enjoy the gameplay experience, not one where you progressively try to boost your power by chasing diminishing returns on gear stats.
If that's your thing, maybe Diablo 4 will be an appealing game. Looks pretty solid as an open-world game, and being a Diablo title it's definitely going to have a loot focus.

[HnRkLnXqZ.1870]

On 11/24/2022 at 1:37 AM, Milo.3840 said:

I know prefixes, armor runes, and sigils give decent amounts of diversity, but it feels like once you hit max level and get exotic gear, getting cool items seems nonexistent..

 

I have multiple legendary items but they feel lackluster outside of their convenience of stat selection and sigil changing.. I wish items in the game had some sort of cool effects on them that felt like true progression without breaking the game. Probably not as much as gear sets like in WoW or the Witcher but something like having "built-in" minor sigils of Air etc would be neat

"without breaking the game"

We have a total of 4 weapon slots and 12 armor/trinket slots = 16 legendary gear slots in total. Touching combat-stats would definitely break the game, so that is a no. But we have stats/effects which do not impact combat, such as:
- Magic Find
- Gold Gain
- Experience gain
- Reward track progression
- Map bonus progression
- Gathering chance
- Karma gain
- Cricital Harvesting
- Critical Crafting

So I would increase those stats instead of combat-stats. There are a few options to do that. The most basic idea would be to give a static 1 % boost per gear-piece you have equipped. Magic Find is capped the other bonuses in that list should have a cap as well or a cap should be added before this change is done. Just to make sure we do not accidentally break the game.

Another approach would be to use a dynamic stat-increase, similar to how the Superior Rune of Divinity works. The more Legendary gear pieces you have equipped, the higher the stat bonus is for the next one. This would motivate people to collect more pieces and boost the demand for trinkets & backpieces. I would favor this option. 

Then emerge two problems:
1.) Which stats do we boost? Specific ones or a small list of stats? 
2.) How do we visualize it without clogging up the UI even more? Another buff is definitely a no. 

Variant A
We have a list of stats that are boosted by wearing the Legendary pieces - depending of the number of items we use at the moment. That stat-increase is only visible in the equipment/stats-menue in the Hero Panel. 

Variant B
We only boost a specific stat that is selected by the player directly. In that case I would go for the Guild Enhancements, which you can only have one at the time. The stat-bonus is visible in the tooltip of the buff-icon. Normally it is 10 % from the guildhall. In our example it would be 13 %, because the character has 2 legendary pieces equipped (first one gives 1 %, 2nd one gives 2 % = 1 + 2 = 3). Again, I would favor this option, because it would save a lot of resources to just modify an existing buff instead of creating something new. 

But if all the stats are capped anyway, wouldn't such a bonus be pointless?
Currently we have to pull a lot of strings to reach the bonus-caps. For Magic Find you have to stack up plenty of different effects and be in a special map. The boosters gained from Legendary gear would allow a player to be more flexible. Higher level of convenience if you say so. They would be in a position to skip certain effects and still reach the cap. For example the map-specific MF boosters. 

Some of you may scratch your head now. Didn't we have this already? We did! In the early stage of the game there were rune-sets which boosted Magic Find. The feature was removed because of reasons that would derail this thread completely.  

[kharmin.7683]

On 11/24/2022 at 6:07 PM, erapago.4387 said:

Sounds like a normal gear treadmill to me.

Really? What gear, then, follows after ascended?  Legendary has only the QoL benefit.  What BiS gear comes next?

[Cyninja.2954]

2 hours ago, kharmin.7683 said:

Really? What gear, then, follows after ascended?  Legendary has only the QoL benefit.  What BiS gear comes next?

I think he meant the suggestion sounded like a regular gear treadmill.

[Cuks.8241]

I think it could work in OW. 

But the unique gear should not have boring stats like +150 condi dmg. It should be about fun and a little convenience. Like  race elites.