Diversity and alternative gear

A lot of people, including me, have been complaining about the lack of diversity in builds.

I think what keeps us from experimenting with other builds is:

1. Every single build other than the one meta is too weak.
2. In order to make a build at least usable, it has to be crafted, which takes too much time.

So, here's the idea how to deal with the ^ two issues.

• Make other builds actually viable. Oh yes, call me captain obvious.

But here's the thing. DSO is a long term game. You play for years, you slowly grow.
So by design, you're being pushed to choose ONE build (unless you're a DK maybe) and you spend 2 years farming the pieces, cores, gold; upgrading, crafting, etc.
Once you're done, ... oh wait, you're never really done. But ok, once you're quite satisfied with your crafts, your build is suitable for pretty much every kind of battle.

Now, since this takes so long and it's so expensive on resources, you don't go experimenting with anything else. Your friend told you this was the best build, and so you do this and not that.

Due to this, even if other builds were made viable and cool, you would still pick ONE and build that one and nothing else.
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• Make upgrading / crafting way faster.

So if it was possible to make a fully crafted build within say a month thanks to the crafting table not being a casino machine, cores not being required in such huge amounts, and so on, we could start experimenting with other builds.

Now this sounds crazy. If we could make a fully crafted build within a month (or so), what else would there be for us to do in the game?!

Well, what if our fully upgraded gear were only OP in certain battle situations or super effective only against certain bosses?
Then we would need more different builds, similar to how DKs often have a 1-hand and 2-hand build. We would need (or we would be better off using) 5 different builds, 6, or whatever number.

You could for example make your first build which would be OP in 20% of all dungeons. In the rest, it'd be average or under-average due to enemies' elemental resistances or due to enemies using attacks that harm you more than if you were using a different build.

Then you could make a second build. This one could be using a few pieces of the first build, but the main pieces would have to be crafted anew.

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Thanks to faster crafting table, less required cores, etc., it'd be much easier (or faster) to make more alternative builds, which would have significant pros and cons in specific boss battles and dungeons.

The different builds would also require different play style, because each build would be boosting different skills. There would be no more ONE universally effective play style.

Of course, even if you only had one build, you could play all dungeons and bosses, but as mentioned above, you'd be OP against some, but pretty crappy against others.

Suddenly, you would feel the progression. Yes, you'd know you're not universally OP, but in certain areas, you would feel like a king pretty quickly.

The long term progression would be preserved. Gems, runes, wisdom, ... what have you.



So, in short:

Issue:
- Lack of diversity

Cause:
- Only one OP build.
- Upgrading takes ages.

Solution:
- Sets are reworked, so many alternative builds are made viable.
- Each possible build has significant pros and cons in different contexts. This would give players incentive to have more than one build.
- Crafting is made much faster by removing/reducing randomness, reducing amounts of cores required, etc.​

 

And what about those gems, runes, jewels? Would you need 5 sets for the 5 different builds? Or need to pay (both time and gold) to move those gems each time you wanted to shift to a different build?

For me, as a weak level 55 (just beginning to try Fatal in scaling dungeons; knocked back down to only Painful on PW due to revamped / souped-up bosses), I can't handle the gold costs of crafting equipment, let alone paying constantly to shift gems from build to build. I'm still melting pinks and above, selling (or crafting) blues & greens, which mean I only make about 50 gold per scaling dungeon, maybe 150 per PW Q.

And, despite what some on this forum say, gem drop rates are horrendous, at least at the difficulty levels I can manage. I only have a few Flawless, no Sacred let alone a hint of Royal gem of any kind. It will take years to work my way up to even two full Flawless builds.

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Your idea has some merit, especially to true end-gamers, but to the rest of us, even a single meta build is a pipe dream.

 

Every build should be viable. It is completely pointless and useless to create uniques for every Q and dungeon that 99.9% of the players will simply melt upon getting them.

Just look at all the worthless rings in the game.

Who is wearing Grimm boots or those lazuri (or whatever they are called) boots?

Now if the dev's were better at copying the big popular games, they would see that sets should propel a character, not be a waste of time and resources to gather.

 

The key part of the idea is, that making a fully crafted build would be a matter of a few weeks. That way, you could make multiple builds.

As of now, not even the strongest end gamers can afford to make alternative builds. And if there are some such people, they don't have any reason to make them.

It is important that no build is perfectly suitable for every kind of battle. The existence of a universally OP build would make this idea pointless.

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As for gems, you've got a point. It would be quite fiddly and also expensive to switch gems and runes between the different builds.

The only solution I can think of at the moment, is that you could have like presets. Somewhere above the window where your char is displayed, there would be arrows or buttons with numbers. You put "build 2" gear on you with all the gems and glyphs etc., and you assign this setup or build to the button II. Then you switch gems and glyphs and wear different gear, you assign this to button III, and so on, and so forth.

Then upon pressing one of the I , II, III, IV, ... buttons, your character would instantly switch gear along with gems and glyphs.

Perhaps this could be either for free, or for a few gold (like 5 or 10 or something, depending on the level) - not sure about the prices.

 

as well as world loot items. In the game that I play the most these days those kinds of drops are just as important as boss loot.

 

Presets would be a solid solution, if they aren't too expensive. I wouldn't even mind if BP relegated that feature to Premium membership; as it stands, from my perspective (based on my experience with 3-day Fremium passes over the years), the benefits of Premium don't justify even the minimal real-world cost.

 

Im adding this thread to my compilation of ideas. This is what this game really needs the most.