One more thing about good itemization

About a week ago Ginger Gaming Mentor released a video in which he reminded me of a very important aspect of well designed (i.e. motivating and fun) itemization in RPGs – arguably the most important one, in fact – that I completely forgot to address in my own recent post on the subject.

Actually I didn’t so much “forget” to include it, I just didn’t have this particular design philosophy on my radar as something worth mentioning, because it absolutely feels like a no-brainer to me, one that any RPG worth its salt should adhere to.

I’m talking about the (supposedly) simple concept of item power not being dictated by item level.

What do I mean by that?

Well, let’s have a look at this pretty well known Diablo II item. These are the Magefist unique light gauntlets, a very good pair of gloves for many caster-type builds in the game. As you can see a character needs to be only level 23 or higher in order to equip them.

This is not to be confused with the level of the item itself however. Each piece of gear in D2 has one, but it isn’t actually displayed anywhere. If you really want to know a certain thing’s item level you have to take note of what kind of monster it dropped from, and where.

Let’s say you find a pair of Magefists in early Act III on Normal difficulty, which is the earliest where they can drop due to their treasure class (another stat the game hides from us). If a normal monster drops them in the Great Marsh, for example, the item level will be 21.

Now let’s look at the exact same scenario, only on Hell difficulty. This time around the gauntlets will have an item level of 80. Quite the difference, no?

Aaaaaaaayy have some gloves for youuuuuuuuu…

Here’s the thing though: for all intents and purposes there will be absolutely no difference between the two. This is because an item’s level has no effect whatsoever on its stats. Magical affixes, defense, and in the case of weapons even damage – none of this is determined by item level.

In my earlier post linked above I said about D2:

There’s always something to feel good about. […] You find useful stuff all the time and at all levels.

I believe the detachment of item level and item power is the main reason for this, because whenever you find a good item, it really is a good item. You will never have to feel disappointed and say to yourself “Why oh why did I not find this on my max level character, it’s no good to me at this ilvl!”.

Goblin toes are always great to have, believe it or not

If a game lets you level your characters up to, say, 100, but is designed in a way that only loot dropped by level 90+ monsters can potentially be good enough to actually use at late game…what’s the point of the 90 levels that came before? Why even bother?

For me personally that’s really the biggest turn-off any kind of RPG can have – an itemization that’s completely item level (or, to use the more modern term, gear score) focused, because it eliminates almost any chance to hit big jackpots along the way. Sure, you’ll find items that are good at and around that particular level, but you’ll always know that you’ll have to replace them sooner rather than later. I don’t know about you, but I can’t derive any joy from that.

I’ll rather take my…err…chances…with these

It gets even worse when the power of items you find isn’t just dependent on monster levels, but also capped by the gear you’re currently wearing.

New World has (or had, I don’t keep myself informed about the game) such a system at endgame, and while I didn’t experience it myself because I didn’t play long enough I almost threw up in my mouth when I read about it over at Belghast’s.

In a nutshell, if you had an item with a gear score of 600 equipped in a specific slot, let’s say the headgear, whenever another helmet dropped it could only have a maximum GS of 602 (I’m making up these numbers, but you get the picture), no matter how high level a monster or chest you got it from.

This is stupid on so many levels that I can’t for the life of me imagine why anyone would think this was a good system. Unless “good” means “players need to grind for a bazillion hours to get the gear they want”, then, yeah, I get it.

Only that it doesn’t just cause gearing up to take a buttload of time. It also forces you to completely screw up your gear choices along the way, because you always have to wear the items with the highest gear score available to you, even if the stats are utter garbage for the build you’re playing. Where’s the fun in that?

Now, even in Diablo II item level isn’t completely meaningless. When stats for magic and rare items are rolled their ilvl determines which affixes are available and how high the bonuses can go – you wouldn’t find a circlet like the one above at level 20, for example. The maximum number of sockets non-magic items can have is determined by ilvl too. Also, quite a few high-end unique and set items just can’t drop at low levels because of their aforementioned treasure class.

And I’m fine with that. I mean, of course levelling up should enable you to find better and better gear, right? I’ve never suggested this shouldn’t be the case. What I am saying is that accumulating your dream gear should be a process that’s stretched out more or less evenly over the whole levelling process, from start to finish, so there’s always something to rejoice at.

Which brings me back to the Magefist gloves. I believe I got these when my sorceress was somewhere around level 30 or 40, and she’s still wearing them at 91. I was happy to find them then, and I’m still happy to have them now. Her weapon, on the other hand, is a Death’s Fathom, which I got when she was already 88 or so, and I’m still waiting for Tal Rasha’s Adjudication to finally drop, so her gear isn’t even finished yet.

In my opinion that’s how a character’s gear curve should look like, and that’s only possible if the level of an item doesn’t determine (all of) its power.