+1 (Destiny)

by Robot Chickens, Thursday, April 05, 2018, 10:03 (2368 days ago) @ CruelLEGACEY

I fell down a bit of a Reddit-hole, and stumbled across this suggestion.

It sounds quite interesting to me, for 3 main reasons. 1) I think I would really enjoy interacting with this version of a loot system. 2) It has the potential to solve several common complaints at the same time. And 3) It is based on relatively minor tweaks to the system that is already in place (in other words, it wouldn't require a complete massive redo of the current system, making it potentially feasible to implement).

I'll copy/paste the text below for those who can't open the link:

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"Three things are lacking in the current loot system: Variety, customization, and vault space. Gear variety and customization pair nicely, more customization automatically adds variety. More variety opens up more avenues for customization. But this leads to inevitable conflict with vault space, the more cool stuff we get, the bigger the vault space issue becomes. Kiosks help a lot but only for static items like exotics, custom gear can’t go there.

Fortunately, there is a solution that essentially uses systems we already have available in D2, no massive rework of the game required. I’ll be using the D1 favorite Doctrine of Passing as an example. Believe it or not, we can actually build a very similar gun using a combination of static rolls and the current mod/masterwork slots. (Edit: naturally this should just be a starting point, lots of good ideas about later improvements are coming from people below in the comments.)

Step 1: Mostly keep the static rolls we have now (no, seriously, hear me out). These serve as the “base model” (or frame) of the gun. The reason we need to keep them is for vault space – this makes it possible for legendary weapon kiosks to exist. Going back to the Doctrine, the “base frame” would be just the scopes and fixed perk. Exotics have a kiosk/collection because they are always the same. You can go grab one any time you want. Static legendaries should work the same way. Go to the kiosk, pull one out. The mod and masterwork slots would be empty, obviously, but at least there’s no more worrying about “do I keep this terrible gun? What if that archetype is OP someday?” (looking at you, pulse rifles). If that happens you can just go to the kiosk and use the base frame to build a new one, as we segue to the next step:

Step 2: The mod slot is where we make the big change - We use it to bring random rolls back. Instead of the worthless mods we have now, this becomes an actual random perk slot. Every legendary weapon will drop with a purple mod containing a random D1-level perk: firefly, perfect balance, shank burn (couldn’t resist), army of one, whatever. It’s on a mod, but otherwise not much different than D1; each weapon ideally would it’s own pool of possible perks so you know what to expect. Your 10th Better Devils is actually interesting now!

One random perk is better than we have now, but 2 is even more better. So what do we do with the masterwork slot? That could turn into whole big discussion of it’s own, so for the moment let’s just say we keep them the same in terms of the orb generation. However, if we also increase the size of the stat bonus to be more meaningful, that becomes another random node. Look at the middle perk slot for the Doctrine: masterworks do (sortof) the same thing - more ammo (extended mag), more range (we’ll call that smallbore), or more stability (braced frame). The only real difference is that the stat bonuses are currently smaller (that and you would have to re-roll the masterwork if you wanted extended mag instead of braced frame but in that case you are clinically insane and beyond my help). I now expertly segue once again to step 3:

Step 3: Gear customization. This is a big one for me. Random rolls are good. But being able to further customize the gear on top of it is great. It epitomizes what D2 should have been, an evolution of the systems we had before.

We also customize gear using these new and improved mods. Again, to keep it simple I’m not going to go in to a long winded discussion of the pros and cons of 15 different ways to do it, but just buying mods from the gunsmith is definitely one of the worst possible ways. The main source of mods should be from our gear. Dismantling gear should give you mod components.

It doesn’t have to be exactly like this, but as an example, let’s say you get a Bad News with firefly. That’s cool, I mean, everything’s better with firefly, right? But you know what would be fucking amazing with firefly? Midnight Coup, of course! But Calus is a dick and won’t give me one. RNG being RNG, I might never get one.

So I dismantle the Bad News and get a firefly mod component. Later on I get some other gun with firefly. Same thing. After I get X number of those components, I take them to the gunsmith, he makes a firefly mod for me. I then give him the gun I want to put in on, and bang, I just crafted a custom gun. It’s “my” Midnight Coup, just the way I want it.

How many mod components, what the gunsmith charges for it, do I need 2 Midnight Coups instead of 1 (I’d vote yes), that’s all up for discussion, feel free to put in your 2 cents below. We don’t want to make it so easy that we run out of stuff to do in a week because we already have a god roll everything. But the concept is the same, take a gun you don’t want and use it to improve a gun you do, without being 100% reliant on luck. You have just a tiny bit of control over the situation.

Unlike HoW-style reforging, no grinding for generic parts and praying to RNG as you pull the gunsmith slot machine. Instead, you have a specific thing to go after: I want firefly. I know that a gun that can roll with firefly drops from the flashpoint world boss on Io or whatever. So I can go farm that like you would have done with Omnigul if you wanted a Grasp. (But if you really like rerolling stuff there’s always the masterwork slot. Personally, I think I’d prefer it wasn’t completely random but acted more like the raid perks where you get to choose but I’m not married to that idea)

Even better, you can stockpile mods to use later. Mods stack in your inventory, so instead of using 37 vault spots for various guns that are either not quite perfect or “might not be terrible someday,” you keep a few stacks of high quality mods to use later, setting up yet another seamless transition to the next and final step:

Step 4: Enjoy all your newly freed up vault space! The legendary weapon kiosk holds modless base versions of every weapon you’ve ever found. Mods are stackable and take up less room. So you don’t need do the things we did in D1 like keep 16 different not-quite-God-roll Eyeaslunas, or hold on to those high impact pulses for 2 years “just in case.”"

Honestly, this is how I assumed D2 would work when they first announced mods.