Limited reroll - a difference in feeling of "get to" vs. "need to"

Wicked Experimental Branch
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From someone with a B.S. in Psychology/Sociology, who has been gaming since Pong, probably 350-400 hours in previous builds, probably 30-40 in the experimental build…

(I realize this may get moved into other limited re-roll feedback, and that’s fine. Just think it may justify its own thread/thoughts.)

I’ve been considering how I feel about items I get in the experimental build vs. current live. And I’ve come to the conclusion it feels very different, and not really in a good way.

I’ve just hit end game plague invasions, level 26 I think. In all my time on the experimental/test build getting an item has felt very different from before. It’s not exciting and hopeful like the previous builds, and it took me until just now to figure out why. (Wild guess around 30-35 hours spent in the build.)

Get to vs. Need to

With the previous and current live builds I had a feeling of I get to try to spend popcorn to make an item better. I’d be excited getting another popcorn and getting to try again.

With the current build I feel like I need to seriously evaluate an item to determine if it’s even worth spending any popcorns on. Especially if it’s purple because in the previous builds I’d easily spend 10-15 getting the negative trait to a point where I feel it’s not completely and totally crippling to my playstyle. With the experimental build 99% of the time I’ve spent nothing on a purple and it’s gone straight to the vendor because it’s not worth the risk compared to it becoming bricked and losing what I spent.

My fear of things getting bricked in bad or only meh state is much higher than my previous level of excitement of ‘maybe this next roll will make it good’ or take a good item to great. I’ve gone from a feeling of hopefulness with a drop to a feeling of fear things will just get worse.

How can this be fixed?

For me I need the feeling of excitement and hope to return to get back to where I was on item drop. So I’d suggest two changes.

I would absolutely want options, so I feel like I have some control or influence. So, instead of just BOOP a thing is replaced by a new random thing, you click the thing you want to change, then a window would pop up with 3, maybe even 5 choices. I then get to pick which I want to replace it with. Sure, if I’m going for a specific build there’s still a high chance I won’t get an ideal choice, but if they are all bad at least I have a feeling of hope and some control of it being ‘less bad’ than before, or choice A is less bad than B or C, so I may accept that.

Increase the reroll limit to at least 10, maybe even go to 15. Off the top of my head I’m tempted to say it’s 5 right now. I guess ignore this point if it’s 10 as long as point 1 goes into effect.

Conclusion / TLDNR

Previous and current live builds I was hopeful when spending popcorns to reroll. I was excited to see an item that was close to something I’d love and hoped I could make better. Purple negative stats always felt really extremely brutal to my builds, but spending 10-15 I could often get them to something that seemed maybe tolerable and at least try out the item before vendoring it.

With the current build I’m judging if I want to spend ANY rerolls because the odds of not getting a better roll seem really high. And with only 5 total rerolls on a purple, if it has even 2 positive ones I’d need rerolled it’s not even worth trying because the odds of the negative being just as bad or worse on reroll is far too high and I’d burn out of rerolls on the negative before I even got to trying to reroll positives I wouldn’t use.

You guys do you. It’s your game. :slight_smile: With so much time dropped clearly I’m addicted and for me this is the best ARPG ever already. :smiley: But I’d prefer tweaks to improve the new system. (Especially now with the new aspects you can’t reroll at all sometimes making an item undesirable for your build before you even look at enchantments.)

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Together release feedback
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I’m studying psychology, I also really like to think/interpret on game design in these terms.

There has been a lot of talk about this problem lately, and I continue to recommend everyone to read this topic: The RNG Problem, Enchantment System Vs Gem System (Refined)

Even though I wrote it before the rerolls were limited, It still works very well as a solution to the RNG problem.

The only thing I would like to specify is that even if the topic demonstrates that the gem system can completely replace the enchantment system, I think it would be a good idea to have both.

So as to maintain the roguelike aspect of the enchantments but at the same time have the security of the “advanced” gem system that I proposed in the topic.

In the topic, I also notice how the gems make you think in the context of the game, how they make you plan how you might use them, and then also give you something to look forward to when you return to Sacrament.

And I criticize the “lodopathic” implementation of RNG, and how and way is intrinsically unfair.

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Woah, how did I miss you can remove gems from items now? :open_mouth: I’m pretty sure I don’t have any flaming ones for weapons, but my go-to is flaming sword. You can’t beat the traditional flaming sword for coolness. :smiling_face_with_three_hearts: (Also flame seems to do the most single target damage, while having a small chance to spread. Plus I add fire throw for ranged damage, so building into fire overall is good.)

I suppose though that’s something that’s better for people who will only ever play a single character, and likely after the class change this likelihood would increase, since now when you outgrow a thing you just yoink the gems out and put it in the new thing as opposed to saving it in a chest for an alt.

I don’t know if it’s been addressed with changes since your original post, but I do think enchantments have a lot more they can do compared to gems. I do have one fully gemed item on my character though. (Someone once upon a time had a massive chart of what all the enchantments were, grouped by their categories of roll, and all the gem possibilities.)

That does make me wonder if maybe there could be a hybrid version between gemmed and not gemmed. Like with blues they can have 4 spots, but can drop enchanted with only 2. Maybe instead of that 3rd spot being forced to be enchanted and the last being gem, those pre-rolled 2 are enchanted slots, and the other 2 slots can either have gems OR use a popcorn to add enchantments to them. Or, when you go to the enchanter she could enchant a thing to blue while only affecting the ‘open’ slots. Like if you get a fully open item, slot 2 gems, then she’d enchant those last 2 slots to make it a blue item. Or maybe you put in 1 gem, then she affects 3, or 3 gems then she enchants the 4th. This might be too complex on the coding side though.

Like I do feel I NEED to have weight reduction on plate pieces (good god you have do push stats to get into even just a plate chest. I think it’s around a like 25 encumbrance with chest reduced and I’ve got reduced mesh legs, then leather hat and gloves and I’m barely squeaking into medium weight.) So for plate items I’d always like that, and for my main bloodsoaked blade I want fire on there, but the rest I’d go for random because they can get some really cool rolls gems can’t do. (Like crit chance I think is one that’s big for me.)

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Agree, the Fire is consistent and reliable and deals a lot of damage, rewords aggressive play, and is cool, and if you use a slow weapon you dont’ have to attack again the enemies that remain last hit.

Yes enchantments have a variety of different effects while gems don’t have them, but it’s not because gems can’t be complex, but because the devs are focusing on enchantments, if you open the topic you look carefully there is a list of reworked and new gems, (obviously there are no new enchantments that were added in the beta).

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To demonstrate that the gems and enchantments can be at the same level of complexity and that it is something that can be done.

I know There’s a link in my topic (lol) NRFTW Warlan's Sheet - Google Sheets

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Cool, maybe you can take an enchanted item and discard the enchantments you don’t like and put a gem in its place!