109859-itemization-no-tldr

== Content ==
			
Why is it even important to get right? 
 
I'm a casual WildStar player. Besides the point why. But I am not a casual mmo player. It would feel disingenuous for someone playing 6-10 hours a day to make claims to be casual. It would feel disingenuous for someone in top gears in every mmo played claiming such nonsense. 
 
Those who play a few 5mans every week cannot understand. I've told many people why are they whining about gear, what's wrong with just enjoying. Why? Because they were barely a couple of times through any 5man vet and already complaining about loot. At least enjoy your first dozen runs, how sad. 
 
But if you have played that many hours as I game every day, you will hit that wall eventually. You will become that guy/gal who can do that dungeon in your sleep. The day comes to all of us. Raids, dungeons, it always comes. 
 
This is when itemization becomes crucial. You have to have reason to run. Items you can sell, items to upgrade your loots, bis amazeballs item that is a rare as heck drop, etc. 
 
I've quit two games because of itemization. I have had a couple of years to filter the superficial reasons I originally gave but it was itemization. 
People need that rare shiny that will make them come back for the 50th time killing the boss. People need to have items that are easy to get, medium hard to get, and then super special motherflipping holy grail. We need all of those! Keep us in content, keep us wanting to play with the new guildies cause you know in the long run people will come and go. 
 
Itemization mistakes. 
 
Making gear too easy. Examples. 
 
Ddo. Gear placed in dungeons that you could solo or chest farm with friends. Getting your item in before you ransack the chest (max number of pulls from a chest per week before quality of dropped loot goes down a level). Loved having better loot than most raids I had farmed for two years. Then weeks later realizing you don't want to run said raids cause you've done them 100 times and you only want something from two raids from a dozen. Boom. Most old raiders gone in a few months. Achievement. 
 
Gw2. This will shock some as gw2 is a mat system for getting pretty gear. You craft great gear easy and dungeons are just for the pretty. Hey, for many looking bad arse is very important. Many hardcore of pvp and PvE flavor care about looking "badass" direct quote. 
So what could they do wrong with tokens? For months tokens could be farmed by spamming the same boss. Too easy. And sure way to burn you out on the game spamming these few bosses for a month. I got my swords and I wanted to lynch my gm whenever he begged us to go back to get his sick looking man dress lmao. Easy loot, spamming loot, burn out. We could have had fun taking on all the bosses but hey always want your shineys easy lol. Players are predictable beasts. 
 
WildStar. I can buy ap gear for a couple Plat. I don't know what those crafters had to do to get that gear done but it's cheap. If I wanted to be perfect, it'd be a few more Plat. For someone who hardcores this game, I'm sure the price is insignificant. And then go into 5mans, loot drops and it's not an upgrade especially when you have to redo runes for a downgrade. Devalues the dungeon loot. 
 
Rng named loot. 
 
Named loot is something you put in your list of "dream rollout". (one pre raids, one post) 
It cannot be that if there is nothing that makes it special because stats or rune slots are rng! Named loot can come in tiers... Easy, medium, hard. You need the hard low rng named loots that everyone salivates over and will still run a year later to grab. It will not be desired or liked if once you get it the stats and slots are rng and you can't change them without farming again and again... For the same thing. 
 
Ddo is one to do it well and bad. 
Bad. New raid loot had shit stats. New raid loot with rng stats. 
Well. Loot with special abilities and powers that people still farmed even with newer raids. Like mana leech on hit, like crafted token gear that put many things on one slot and had special things like mana leech or strong rng attacks that actually went off at a decent pace. Weapons that rewarded crit builds, etc. Raid items with abilities not find anywhere else. 
Mistake: putting the abilities on random gear and then having to Nerf ability and destroy the nice unique rare raid items. 
Mistake. New token gear that had 100% random stats. Nobody ran the content until they out in a few items with fixed nice stats and abilities. 
 
What to do. 
 
Named loot should come in tiers. 
 
There should be easy to get, get you excited. Replaceable. 
There should be medium hard to get that you keep for a long time. 
And then the special stuff made of dreams. 
Named and crafted combination should get you in the door and the other stuff are things you want in your dream load out and motivates you to run that 100th time. 
 
Rng should be about drop levels. 
 
Maybe you can keep rng on type of rune slots, but rerolling shouldn't be a one time thing. Learn from the Asians. People will farm mats and money out of their nose to re-roll perfect stats, ahem Tera and pso2. People will just be pissed to have to go back to looking for that rare loot cause rng hated them. Make people excited to get a new upgrade, not dread it. 
Be warned. You are a western mmo. Don't be surprised if your audience will lynch you if you do re-roll stats on weapons like Tera did. 
 
Make the super rare items, some in dungeons, some in raids, have special abilities that will make people want them three updates from now. 
I hate when mmos kill their old content by completely overpowering old gear. It gives longevity to not just funnel people onto the latest dungeon. Items can help this. On top of making the content active from the get-go. 
 
Who would be too burnt out to help their guildies if there was an amazing unique shiny in that skullcano?
 
Those are just some of my ideas.	
----
			+1	
----
			I don't see any issue with Itemization that isn't already going to be addressed shortly... The new rune system should fix any if not all this issues. I don't see the reason to write this long post about it.With that said resurrect PvP carbine plz	
----
			You're not using the term "itemization" as the majority of the community does. The term your post is describing is "power creep" or "ilvl bloat." Itemization generally refers to the spread of stats on an item; bad itemization led to STR on cloth armor in vanilla wow for example, or in wildstar's case weird stats like Tech on AP gear for engineers.	
----
			I'm pretty much going to link this thread whenever itemization and RNG come up.  After all the bandaids are applied, I hope they implement something like this to take the randomization out without starting a balancing fight between crafting and dungeon drops.  They can cohabit.	
----