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northrop
grumman
- Joined
- Sep 27, 2005
- Messages
- 10,811
You suck for using yellow color!!The barter system of the economy is a really interesting mechanic, but item trade in values relative to inventory size and barter item "value" basically suck ass, IMO. All white items are worth 1 identify scrap, regardless of size, type, or quality. A small health bottle that takes 2 inventory squares is worth the same 1 scrap as is the ironshod battlestaff that takes up 8 squares. You need 5 of these scraps/items in order to make 1 identify scroll - which are needed to identify/use/get full value for the blue items. Now you *can* sell the blues unidentified, but you will only ever get 1 magic scrap out of them that way. 3 magic scraps can be traded for 1 identify scrap, or if you save 20 magic scraps together, they can be turned in for 20 identify scraps (4 full scrolls). At best, then, unidentified blues have the same value as whites, at worst, they are only 1/3rd as valuable. Now, identifying the blues (at a cost of 5 whites each) does not guarantee you a higher value trade. Most identified blues end up being worth the same as the unidentified, though the ones with the best magical modifiers or the ones with the most magical mods *can* raise the value from 1 magic scrap to 2 or 3. In some rare cases you can get up to 4 or 5 magic scraps from a really good identified blue. Best case (unless you plan on wearing the item) is you make back the same value in scraps as you spent in identifying it. In most cases, you lose 4/5th the value you invested. Now, to aggravate this even further, the player inventory is so small that even carrying a full haul of whites for trade, you'll usually only get 1 - 1.5 identify scrolls. Having to cart in a full load of trash for each item you want to identify is pretty ridiculous, in my opinion.
How I would fix it: I think that most of my gripe with the above could be remedied by making the scrap value of the items relative to their inventory size. If you made each item worth its inventory size divided by 3 rounded to the nearest non-zero whole number, I think you'd get a fairer value for them relative to their cost in inventory size for hauling them around. This would give the following base values per size: 2 - 4 squares worth 1 scrap, 6 squares worth 2 scraps, 8 squares worth 3 scraps. This would carry over to the magic scraps for the blues as well. In case of the higher value blues, their scrap values would be multiplicative (i.e. a 6 square blue that currently gives 2 scraps would instead give 4 scraps. The best 8 square blue in the game would give 15 scraps).
My other big gripe is with the stat allocation system (the "passive skill tree" as it's called in game). For each level up you achieve, you get a bit more health, a bit more mana, and that's about it. Your other base stats remain the same. You do get, however, a "skill point" to spend, but it's more accurate to liken it to what we more commonly think of as stat allocation points. If I want more intelligence, I can "buy" 10 intelligence by spending 1 skill point on a blue circle. 10 strength for a red circle, and 10 dex for a green. There are other stat modifiers you can buy later on, but this is the basics of it. My problem is, that you can not always buy the points you need when you need them. For example, I am playing a ranger, but am also using a few intelligence-based mage spells. Whenever I hit an intelligence deficiency on the spell leveling, I go to buy another 10 intelligence. Last time I wanted to get more, however, the nearest blue circle was behind 3 other green circles that I'd have to buy first before I got far enough down that path to get to another blue section. Now since dexterity is a ranger's bread-and-butter, those points aren't truly "wasted" for me, but i certainly feel they could have been invested better than just serving to unlock the blue section I was trying to get to.
As far as how to "fix" this one - I don't know - I guess maybe the skill tree just needs to be tweaked/redesigned some more.
The other things I find fault with are closer to minor irritants than anything else I guess. The minimap is hard to use, hard to see, and clutters up the rest of your view (unless there are some other options to manipulate its size/location/opacity that I have not run across yet). Level/area design(layout) seems almost "haphazard" a lot of the time. It seems like their random terrain generator could use some tweaking as well. Unless there is a town portal spell I have yet to find, keeping a constant supply of portal scrolls is going to be really irritating (cost 3 identify scrolls). Finally, the quest system is the same uninspired "click past text when you see the exclamation mark" drivel that we've seen a hundred times before. Hopefully the NPCs and their quests will at least be getting some voice-overs done before release.
Now, having said all that, I AM really enjoying the game and think that a lot of what they've done is really neat and fun to play. I especially like the spell gems/socketing system and the fact that it allows anyone to use any spell they want to (to some degree - a fair few of them have specific item class requirements that would conflict with item reqs from other class paths).
Final assessment - not better, not worse - still fun to play, but very different from more traditional ARPGs like D3.
As a mod, you should know that the mobile background is white Anyway, the economy IMO is fine where it is. From where I sit, white items are really only useful for crafting, otherwise they aren't worth picking up. I never ID magical items either, unless I'm after something specific (say, I'm missing a ring, or another item while building my character). The inventory space is adequate too, especially stash (and they don't make you pay for every 14 squares like some other game, that shall remain anonymous
). As for ID scrolls, every time I head out on a quest I find at least 5-10 scrolls in every area, which is enough to keep ID'ing whatever there is worth to ID, so I'm not sure where are you encountering the problem of inadequate number of scrolls. But, that's just my personal take on things. I don't really get your gripe with the passive skill tree, however. It's no different than any other game with similar mechanic. Hell, take D2 for example. If you had 50str, and needed 80 to use your next weapon, a single level up wasn't going to fix that. You can't "buy" 30 points, you have to level up again, and again. With PoE, the wait time to use that next items is equivalent in level ups/time need, but at least you have few 'paths' you can take to get to your destination which will allow you to customize the character the way you want; with D2, it was "well.. shit, I guess my next 5 lvl'ups are all going to str". There are few other things to hate about the system, but that's really not one of them, IMO.
For minimap, there's an opacity slider inside the options panel, and I think you can move it around too, not sure on that one, however. Town Portal scrolls drop everywhere at a similar rate to ID scrolls. Dunno, maybe it's a different play style, but unless you try to pick up each and every item you find, and sell it immediately, then this game isn't for you. I guess torchlinght/D3 is more to your liking on that part, but even then, I don't see the need to pick up everything in those games either.
