11/18/2008    |    Devlog    |    Lum    |    Discuss

In any RPG, and MMO’s especially, a large source of character progression is through items.

Items can be anything. They can be swords and magic wands, they can be starships and sailing ships. They might provide you some statistical advantage, or they might give you something entirely cosmetic. In all cases, they provide you and your character ways to change and improve.

As Isildur said in his devlog, the AvCom Revision has changed all player stats, and player power is significantly different that the old system. This means that every Avatar item in the game has to be revised and rebalanced to fit the new system. While I’m at it, I’ve taken on the enormous task of adjusting all the outfitting and consumables to make a more cohesive item set for players to use. I’ll go over the ways things have changed, and how items are going to work in the future.

Creating and Maintaining Items

In Pirates of the Burning Sea, we have a lot of items. One trend that’s cropped up in our game is that the relative power of items compared to each other can vary quite a bit. This stems from the fact that different teams make different items for different purposes. I might make some basic swords, and a mission designer might make a specific sword that fits the setting for their mission. Over time, this means that we have had many different item standards for what a sword should look like, and how powerful it should be.

As part of the AvCom Revision, Isildur and I have worked to create a broader set of item formulas that can be easily applied to all our Avatar items. All items are assigned an item budget; this is a point value based on the level of the item, as well as the item quality. All stats have a specific cost, so if I add Damage to a weapon, or Dodge to a piece of armor, I have to deduct points from the item budget. These point pools help to establish common, agreed upon values for all stats so that anyone who makes a new item can easily fit their creation in with the rest of the game.

Another way I’ve gone about updating items in the new system is a visual one: item names! In the old system, it was often impossible to tell the relative power of an item compared to another one. What’s the difference between “Heavy Cutlass, Fine” and “Gleaming Cutlass”? Now all items have a more consistent naming scheme, so it should be easy to glance at the name of two items and know if they’re of a similar power.

In addition to re-writing the names of items, I’ve worked to make item quality more obvious to players. In patch 1.7 we added Rarity as part of item descriptions, now we’re adding two levels of item quality to help us further distinguish items from each other. In the past, we had three levels: Common, Uncommon, and Unique. Now we have five: Common, Uncommon, Exceptional, Unique, and Special.

During my item tuning, I noticed there were many items that were set as “Unique”, but weren’t really unique enough to warrant the Unique rarity. For example, “Steam-Launched Boarding Planks” is a unique item with interesting flavor, but other unique items, like “Teak Armor 4”, don’t have that same flavor to it. Now we’ll call those items Exceptional. It allows us to tell you an item is “Top Tier”, and more powerful than an Uncommon item, without overlapping on the more interesting items we have in the game. Soon, you’ll see Unique items less often, but they’ll stand out more. The Special rarity is for seasonal items, special rewards, and other items that don’t fit the normal item classifications. Together these new quality levels will make your inventory more colorful and hopefully easier to use.

The next thing I’m striving to improve for our Avatar items is accessibility. Previously you may have had to wait quite a few levels between upgrading your gear. Maybe there were no good mission rewards; or maybe a new sword didn’t drop. Now there will be a broad selection of swords and pistols at regular level brackets, all available at your friendly neighborhood Swashbuckling Trainer.

Nerfs and Changes

One weak point in our old item strategy was that any item could have any stat. You could get gloves, boots, and belts all with Initiative Regen on them, allowing Players players to stack a specific stat for much greater than normal expected benefit. In the new system, that’s no longer an option. Specific stats only appear on specific item slots: Initiative Regen will only appear on Gloves, Guard Regen will only appear on Boots, and Damage Resistance will only appear on Torso slot items.

That’s right, no more stacking Damage Resistance on all your items! This has been a common complaint of many players in the last few months and it hasn’t been something we could easily address without a more comprehensive tuning pass on the items. Damage Resistance is more expensive in the item budget, which means there will be less of it on a given item.

Along with restricting bonuses and slots, I’ve added a new stat to some items: a damage multiplier. This new stat will increase your damage by the percentage amount shown. Here’s what it’ll look like on an actual item:

I’m always looking for more ways to make items more interesting, and more useful, and this new stat is a step in that direction.

Flavor

One of the other ways I’m trying to make items more interesting is with flavor. I want to make more unique, fun items. Part of this is the tone of the name and the description, but a bigger part is in the weapon models. The custom weapon models that we attached to items from Bey’s Retreat and Fortaleza de Luz added variety and uniqueness to an otherwise standard set of swords. The majority of users surveyed said they were an positive addition, with only 11% of you saying that you would choose not to use those weapons. That, coupled with the unanimously positive feedback we received from our onsite play tests gave us some pretty significant data to guide our process.

With that in mind, we had our fantastic art team create six exciting new weapon models for the AvCom Revision. You’ll see them in game soon, with more to come in the future. I’ll end this Devlog with a few shots of some new models, and items I’ve attached them to:

Overall, I think you’ll all be much happier with the way items are organized, and balanced. And as always, the tuning is ongoing. Just as Isildur said, I’m having a great time with the new system, and we think you’re all really going to like it.

P.S. We’ve had a great response to Fraxl’s Devlog, and we’re still looking for players to help us test out the new AvCom!

11/18/2008    |    Devlog    |    Lum    |    Discuss