I like to offer the following series of wild proposals (I specialise in those). I propose the following as a thought experiment, if all these proposed systems are implemented in game, how do you guys think it will work? How do you predict the players will behave in game (both hardcore and casual players)? What intricacies of the game have I overlooked? Feel free to offer your thoughts/criticisms.

Warning, epic wall of text incoming.

Of course all the numbers I offer below is purely a blind stab in the dark and subject to balancing adjustments.

Gist of the proposals

It has been stated by Citan that the aim is to have three mods per piece of equipment, lets just make it so that all equipments pieces have three skill mods, regardless of colour/rarity. The colour/rarity will instead increase the effect of the mods. So for example, a white/normal tier item will have 50% of the effectiveness of a gold/legendary tier item, a green tier item 60%, a blue tier item 70%, red tier item 80% and purple tier 90%. Max enchanted items will offer additional effectiveness, say 10% extra for a total of 110% for a gold item, instead of an additional mod. Equipments will automatically have a generic mod and an endurance mod, and those will scale according to the rarity of the item in the same way as skill modifiers.

This will mean that a level 10 gold tier item will have perfect damage modifiers, why would anyone upgrade their equipment? That leads us to my second proposal. The level requirement of items will instead increase the intrinsic properties of the item. For example, an full suit of armour with level requirement of 10 will give only 100 total points of armour, and only gives very slight amount of combat refresh. A full suit of armour with level requirement of 80 will give 800 points of armour and combat refresh appropriate for a level 80 character.

Amulets and rings, main hand and off hand items will all need to have equivalent upgrades accordingly. So for example a level 10 sword might only offer +10% increased slashing damage, but a level 80 sword has + 24% increases slashing damage. There are already amulets in game that gives increasing stat that are divided into tiers, for example the amulet of max health +10 is the first in a series that goes up to +30. What I propose is that for example, the level 10 version of amulet of max health gives +10 health, but the level 80 version gives +80 health.

I further propose that we add more intrinsic stats to armour pieces to differentiate between metal/organic/leather/cloth armour pieces. The current system is that the different armour pieces have relatively small differences in absolute armour value (in my opinion), but a big difference in combat refresh values. I propose that we add another stat to the armour pieces, metal armours grant extra taunt, leather armour grant evasion, cloth armour grant negative taunt, and organic armour grant reflect damage. These all exist in game currently in some form but I propose they are made uniform so that all metal armour grant bonus to taunt, all leather armour grant evasion, etc. An alternative which can be combined with the above suggestion is to make the full set boni (bonuses) stronger. So wearing three pieces of metal armour will grant + 50% taunt, to incentivise wearing mostly one type of armour to fulfill a particular role.

Augmentation will still exist and remain a way of adding an additional skill modifier onto equipments, so that you can get a maximum of 4 mods. The effectiveness of the mod you apply through augmentation will match the tier of the item you extracted it from, rather than the tier of the item you applied it to. So to extract a full 100% effectiveness mod you have to sacrifice a gold item to get it, and to make a best in slot max enchanted 4 mod piece of equipment with maximum effect on all the mods (110%), you have to extract the mod from another max enchanted gold item.

Transmutation will also still exist in game as it does now, and you can obviously use it to roll non-gold tier items to get the mods you want.

I have an even wilder proposal to make, recently Citan tried the idea of allowing us to upgrade a lower tier item to the max level. I didnt get the chance to try this feature but the idea is incredibly appealing to me. I somewhat dislike the idea of everyone at level 80 looking the same because they are wearing the same armour. There are so many interesting art assets in the game that it is a shame that so many of them are not seen at higher levels (I personally love the aesthetics of the knight armour and helm). There is also the issue of many low level items with excellent intrinsic mods, armour pieces with good elemental resistance, and low level amulets with excellent damage modifiers. I once found an amulet in yeti cave that added 10% to electricity damage, which would be best in slot for particular builds except it only spawned with level 40 mods.

I propose we introduce the ability to upgrade an item to the next level (in 5 level increments) using the breakdown product of augmentation. For example, you can upgrade a level 50 sword to level 55 using a recipe that consumes 100 medium main hand beads. But to upgrade it from level 60 to 65 will consume 100 large main hand beads. Taking it a step further, potentially we can upgrade item tiers as well for phlogs. For example we can upgrade a blue tier level 80 sword to red tier by paying 200 quality phlogistons, but upgrading a red tier to purple will cost 500 phlogistons and upgrading a purple tier item to gold will cost 1000 phlogiston. This allows an alternative way to getting gold tier items for players who do a lot of soloing, but it is less efficient than just straight up farming and getting it as a drop.

These are my predictions on how such system will affect player in game behaviour and decision making.

Pure DPS and support character that has reached level 80 for the first time will try to continue using their level 70 gear, which they have invested time an resources into transmuting/augmenting. It will provide them with equivalent damage and healing as level 80 gear, but it will not give as much survivability or sustainability (due to lower combat refresh). There is still the incentive to replace what they have with level 80 gear, but only once they found level 80 gear that matches the rarity of what they have.

Tanking characters by contrast, will try to upgrade to level 80 gear as soon as possible for the greater survivability. They are willing to use red/purple tier gear because it provides them with acceptable damage output to hold aggro (because they are wearing metal armour and have a bonus to taunt, and they possibly also have mods that grant extra taunt), but they will still try to get level 80 gold tier gear to provide extra damage.

Players who have builds that allow a degree of flexibility (like me!) have an incentive to have multiple sets of gear. I might have a unoptimised set of level 80 gear that allows me to be a tank, I can hold aggro well because of the bonus to taunt I can get from metal armour; but I still have my level 70 perfectly rolled gold tier gear. If I don't feel like being the tank today, I can just slap on my old level 70 gear, I can do top tier damage but I have to be careful that I don't outdamage the tank and draw aggro from the tank. I can still contribute to the team in my old level 70 gear and have a good time.

A player who first hit level 80 area after grinding his way through level 70 content will face some hard choices when upgrading their gear. Lets say they have perfectly rolled and augmented level 70 gold equipment, that are not max enchanted. They find a purple level 80 chest piece, it provides more armour and combat refresh than their existing equipment, but it does less damage (assuming you invested the phlogistons into rerolling it) and it has one less mod, so it is not an upgrade and it is placed into storage. They eventually find a level 80 gold chest piece. They spend the phlogistons to reroll it until they get all three mods to be the ones they want, and they dig out the old purple chest piece they rejected earlier, extract a mod from it, and apply it to the gold chest piece. But the mod extracted is only at 90% effectiveness because it came from a purple item, so they will need to get another gold chest piece, so that they can upgrade that final mod to 100% effectiveness. They can sacrifice their old level 70 gold chest piece to get that augmentation if that particular mod they need exists on it, but there is a chance that that particular mod is one of two mods for that skill (remember you have three mods on all items, two for one skill and one for the other) so there is only a 50% chance of extracting the correct mod in that case. A hard decision has to be made as to whether you want to risk destroying your old level 70 gold chest piece for 50% chance of upgrading your new level 80 chest piece.

Players will start hoarding gold items regardless of level for the purpose of potentially using them for future augmentation. In the example given above, if they don't already have a gold chest piece they can readily sacrifice, instead of farming level 80 areas for a second gold chest piece, they might consider farming Sebule Crypts, get a level 30 gold chest piece, then use crude phlogiston on it until it rolls the mod you want to extract, then extract it using small main hand beads. Much more economical option but more importantly it is something you can do solo, instead of having to find a level 80 group to do The Wintertide.

There will be less equipment sold to vendors, as everyone will be breaking down a lot of items to get as much beads, baubles, ornaments, contraptions and phlogistons as possible to fuel their upgrading needs. This will probably end up removing a bunch of councils from the economy, which I view as a positive.

Examples of pathway to get the best in game items.

To get the best in slot chest item, it will be an epic journey:
1) You have to craft max enchanted gear until you hit an gold item
2) You may have to keep crafting if the item doesn't have a favorable distribution of mods (say for example you prefer two mods for skill A and one mod for skill B, but unfortunately the item you rolled has one mod for skill A and two for skill B).
3) You reroll the mods on your max enchanted gold item until you get three mods you want.
4) You keep crafting max enchanted item until you get a second gold item.
5) You reroll a single mod until you get that elusive fourth mod you want.
6) You extract that mod (taking the risk that if in this case there are two mods of the skill you want, you have only 50% chance of getting the one you want).
7( Enjoy your best in slot item. Now repeat for other slots.

Alternative way to get best in slot item without max enchanting
1) Farm low level areas until you get the drop you want (for example farming Sunvale until you get a knight armour drop)
2) Farm a lot of crude phlogistons to serially upgrade it to gold tier (lets say you need 50 to upgrade to green, 100 to upgrade to blue, 200 to upgrade to red, 500 to upgrade to purple and 1000 to upgrade to gold, for a total of 1850 crude phlogistons)
3) Farm a lot of medium and large chest baubles to upgrade it to level 80 (it will take 100 medium chest baubles to upgrade from 40-45, 45-50, 50-55, 55-60 and it will take 100 large chest baubles to upgrade from 60-65, 65-70, 70-75 and 75-80. So you need 400 medium chest baubles and 400 large chest baubles in total)
4) Enjoy your best in slot item. Now repeat for other slots.

Advantages of my proposals

I believe my proposals strike a decent balance between catering to casual players, who can find red and purple items relatively easily (assuming no dramatic changes to current drop rates), and be able to get 80-90% of the damage output of a player who is decked out in all gold tier items. Truly hardcore players will have an epic grind to get the truly best in slot items, they can either go down the crafting route, hoping for two max enchanted items before they can get the best item; or they can get a low level item, then farm for a lot of phlogiston to upgrade it to gold tier, then farm for a lot of beads/baubles/ornaments/contraptions to upgrade it to level 80.

I think the ability to upgrade equipment to level 80 will be welcomed by many players, both those who want more options in terms of ways to obtain high level equipment independent of finding high level parties to run The Wintertide; and those who are keen for a greater range of aesthetics and want a greater range of armour arts to be available at late game.

Predicted challenges

There will be extensive combat rebalancing required, Citan have stated that balancing mob difficulty is not as difficult and I will have to take his word on it.

There will be a requirement to add more "utility skills" to some skills sets. With only three mods available to boost your damage, we will have a greater incentive to take on skills that do not have a strong damage modifier but a good innate effect. For example for my current build of Sword/Shield, I take on multiple range reduction skills plus stun, plus some support skills from shield. I predict a lot of players will start bringing more of these "utility skills" like those, and it is quite likely that some skills will need to be retuned so that they offer more utility. The only example I can think of is that Fire Magic is mostly damage skills and there isn't many "utility skills".

I have written all of the above from the point of view of a player transitioning from level 70 to level 80 gear, but ignored the leveling process. To be honest I have't played at low level for a while and I honestly don't remember enough of the leveling experience to make any useful suggestions/predictions on the leveling process.

Proposed implementation
Like Citan have alluded to, implementing such a large number of changes at once will break the game and probably make a lot of people angry. I suggest the following stepwise plan of implementing these changes:

1) Add more armour types, one of the underlying assumptions is that there has to be an valid option for metal/leather/organic/cloth armour at different levels and there will have to be a lot of extra items created, with armour art assets to go with it.
2) Add armoursmithing to the game, and complete the crafting system so that all these new items can either be found or crafted, and there has to be a way of crafting all the equipment types in the game. For example currently we cannot craft metal armour, we cannot craft level 80 organic armour, and most main hand and off hand items are not craftable.
3) Change the intrinsic stats of the armours/equipments to my proposed system. There will have to be a way of converting old items to the new items, potentially using the legacy item golems.
4) Enable the upgrading of equipment level through use of beads/baubles/ornaments/contraptions.
5) Enable to upgrading of equipment tier through use of phlogistons
6) Bite the bullet and change all items to have three mods. The method of converting old items to new ones will have to be done carefully to avoid breaking everyone's carefully optimised gears. I propose that people wearing gold gear should be able to choose what three mods they get to keep, and maybe those wearing purple gets to pick two mods they get to keep. Keeping their existing augmentation will be contentious and I would advocate we should lose our augmentation to force us to hunt for new augmentations

That is a long essay.... writing this has given me an appreciation of how difficult it is to make any changes. Every change will have ripple effect onto other parts of the game and what started as a single idea actually turned into many many proposed changes in order to make it work...

Is that wild enough for ya all?

Chilton