I believe the Wicked open world should not play like crucible and the crucible should not play like the open world.
So what am I getting at? As much as I like the game RNG plays too much of an impact in the open world. Keep in mind I’ve beaten the games available content with only white gear, it completely doable and still fun.
That said there are too many rogue like elements to the open world and now that we have an actual rogue like adjacent aspect of the game somewhat fleshed out I wanted to get these gripes out there. Yes we had crucible before but there wasn’t a strong indication of how it would be used within the game. Now we have blessings from the Olympic Gods… Oh wait I mean echos… And honestly I love it. Still some tweaking to do there but I enjoy the idea and I think it’s a great place to house a lot of RNG mechanics, something new every run to make things interesting.
That said the open world still plays as it has and my issues with it directly stem from the random nature of interactions in Wicked. Before the inevitable “this was the crucible patch dude”, I know. This is more of a wish list for upcoming changes, I’m not at all disappointed with the amount of content this far. I’m here because I like the game and look forward to what’s to come.
So right off the bat, do I want RNG, a huge aspect of many ARPGs stripped from open world? No
What I do want are core changes to the players interaction with the world to make it rewarding and allowing RNG to play as the dopamine kick and not the wall in the way of progression with respect to player interest.
What I’d like to see:
All weapons and armor base types available in Sacrament from vendors. Are most of them, yes. Let’s just make it standard. A basic form of any weapon to use. Let recipes and crafting be for exciting things while always having the back up of vendors with basic items. This way, if you have some silver and you want to attempt an upgrade via RNG you can make use of the games “crafting” and say a prayer. That also means no split attribute items, looking at you butcher knife. Imo split attribute items should not be considered basics. Also have a post on split investment items here. Feedback: Scaling Attributes
Recipes for all items in the game not found in vendors excluding legendary. Building on the previous idea, weapons are all unique in wicked from the animations to the runes. Even among weapon types… People will have favorites. Giving players a direct means to play how they like provides a rewarding experience. If you really like a particular weapon I feel you should be able to target farm/gather the bases for crafting. Simply a rewarding experience for players.
Selectable rewards. I’m not convinced we need a purely RNG experience in open world. Definitely the campaign and possibly dailies could stand to gain from more player interaction. I’ll reference PoE and how based on class you’re offered a selection of skill gems to play that archetype. Can you deviate from this and play something out of the archetype, sure but these help you get started on a fresh season. But we don’t have archetypes in Wicked, true, but it doesn’t mean we couldn’t pull rewards from a range of weapons/runes/armor. The current crucible plays well because while the buffs may be randomly available but we get to pick, giving player interaction on top of the RNG. Adding selection to a rewards system will allow players some tangible progress as they move through the game.
Meaningful crafting. I keep putting crafting in air quoted because let’s face it the game doesn’t have it yet. We have a wishing well, nothing more. The devs have spoken a lot about “new” and working to improve a stale genre, and I love this idea because they’re right. But when it comes to crafting, what we have isn’t “It”. The group to get it right was the LE team. You have item drops that can scale higher than crafting while being able to craft what you want. D4 thought the system was good enough to copy… Not saying we need this apples for apples but they got the idea right. Material are abundant for your time spent in game and it allows players to stick to a weapon style as their progress and search for improvements in their build.