I’m fine with the enchanting system and ring RNG, but this extra layer of randomness on clothing and weapons feels a bit odd.
In case you don’t know what I’m talking about:
Clothing and weapons have randomized armor/damage/focus gain/stamina cost stats. For example: I just bought 10 Eversol Knight Gauntlets from Fillmore and the lowest armor value was 56 and the highest was 67. No other trade-offs, just a random 20% increase in stats.
Why it does not feel good to me:
I understand the game is still in early access and it’s hard to tell whether these randomized stats will be important for builds later on or not, but it’s going to feel unpleasant for me either way.
If the base stat RNG is important, then the player needs to go through two layers of RNG (base stats and enchanting) to get their ideal set of gear. A lot of weapons are RNG drops already, and you could just end up with a weapon with 20% less base damage and be none the wiser until you compare it to other peoples’ builds.
If the base stat RNG is not important, then I don’t really understand why it’s there in the first place. Enchanting already has a lot of RNG involved, I don’t think having 10 points randomized on top of that improves the loot system since it’s out of the player’s control.
Other than that, I’ve been having a great time and I’m looking forward to the next update. Thanks for reading!
that’s the nature of the genre it’s dopamine inducing to not just get a good roll on affixes but also on the base stats themselves and it does make a big difference the more & more you upgrade it
Calling the base armor stat RNG “build-defining” I think misses the point that ARPGs often force you to have a give-and-take gameplay loop.
Hey you got a godroll on this armor of affixes but it rolled mediocrely on damage or weight do you keep using it? It’s up to the player if they want to focus solely on armor or solely on affixes and IMO if you would throw away a godroll armor piece for 40 extra armor I think that’s dumb but it is your choice. You can also get a mid roll on both armor & affixes meaning you didn’t get bad armor or bad affixes but the affixes might be precisely what you want but not ALL of what you want.
I also want to examine something here yes that’s a 20% variance but statistically you’re not always gonna run a low-tier roll on each and every armor piece. You’re not running a low-tier helmet + chest + legs + gloves statistically speaking, you will average out. Plus another point is this variance can mean a lot but it doesn’t completely crap out a build, eversol knight is plate armor which let’s assume we’re scaling to max 1000 armor points the difference between 800 & 1000 is not so massive that it can’t/won’t be compensated by skill. A random mob MAY need one less hit maybe, but that’s not enough variance to change how easily EK will kill you. If he 5 shots you at 800 armor it’s highly likely to still be 5 shots at 1000.
Souls games buildcrafting is extremely simple it’s literally a linear line trending upwards there’s hardly a give-and-take, your entire build can be determined by rings alone since armor doesn’t have ARPG affixes. I think there’s several lessons we can take from souls but the buildcrafting is not one of them.
TLDR: No I don’t think the variance craps out an armor piece because statistically another armor piece you’re wearing will average it out. Perfect builds are meant to be a numbers game.
I also disagree about the “respect our time” phrase I’ve seen thrown around if you do just the main content which is likely to still be 45+ hours by 1.0 so that definitely respects your time. Us talking about buying 10 sets of the same armor piece for a good roll + enchanting RNG, that’s grinding, that’s endgame farming that’s a whole other conversation altogether IMHO.
I can agree on that yeah there’s not an “end goal” to the buildcrafting currently besides strictly RNG. Even if you get a ring you may get an affix on a piece of armor that replaces it so I absolutely agree with you there and honestly I love this game so much I will beta test whatever overhaul to the enchantment system they want, put me through the ringer.