Many have suggested giving the player the ability to reset their attributes, usually so they can try-out different weapons they find. It’s frustrating for a player to get an awesome weapon but not be able to use it.
But the attribute points are what gives the character its’ ‘class’ of sorts. A Diablo player with a level 50 Necromancer doesn’t expect to suddenly switch to a level 50 barbarian without leveling up a new character. But Diablo used to have more issues with this and they made a simple change: lock equipment drops which aren’t usable to the character. This means that there’s more loot the character can use and less frustration from loot they can’t use.
NRFTW doesn’t have classes, so it’s not quite as simple, but it should be relatively easy to restrict weapons/shields based on attribute points: Allow players to disable attributes they don’t want to use.
If a player highlights an attribute from the stats menu they will be able to tap Y/triangle and that attribute will be greyed out. At that point forward, they will be unable to find loot which requires the greyed/disabled attribute (this would not change the attribute aside from having to be re-enabled in order to invest points if desired).
This would remove the the frustration of being unable to use gear while pushing players toward creating additional characters for different playstyles. Not a 100% solution, but should remedy the frustration in most cases.
A lot can be solved by some “try before buy” option.
Create basic weapons (wood sword/ wood spear / carved stick) that can be wielded without any prerequisites to try out the general mechanics of e.g. a spear.
Or remove the wield prerequisites and only scale the dmg.
Or add rings that give +x attribute so you can test out stuff.
Based on this you can already decide if the playstlye fits you and you feel well with commiting into that direction.
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Definitely like the idea of a reward that would allow you to create what you like. A material, when added to the item of your choosing, which would make it a gold item. Would be fun.
I had a slightly different idea when I started my post, but your mentioning of enjoying the random gear at times is part of the reason I landed where I did. With the above idea, you could pick whichever you wanted - so you could still get all items, or you could get items specific to your type of character OR you could get items specific to a completely different type of character.
So you could use your 2H strength-based sword in crucible runs while farming wizard-like gear for your next character, simply by deactivating the non-intelligence abilities.
Definitely like this in conjunction with my idea.
If you received each type of item, with requirement of 10 (so no requirement) long before facing the first boss, it would help let you know what you like. Additionally, if there are incentives (quests/rewards) for using each type, it would force the player to try them all.
I’ve completed all of the current content and I still don’t know if I like 2-handed swords or if I simply took what was offered to me from the first boss and never looked back.