Unique items design philosophy

Hello everyone,

I've been playing this game for a while and I like it a lot, however I always wondered why are the items so simply deisgned. I mean, a lot of unique items have just + to one attribute and + to another. Sometimes they shorten the cooldowns on skills or provide interesting set bonuses (what I really like). Anyway, in the current state of game everything boils down to swapping the uniques and maxing your DPS and survaviblity by keeping balance between hp/armor/resistances.
I'd love to see more 'depth' in design. The uniques that not only create opportunities for playing with numbers, but also encourages thinking outside of the box. That may change the style of playing and skills we use in major way!

If you still have no idea about what I am talking about let's take look at these. Nothing superbalanced, just giving an idea

The cloak of thunder
(Torso, Armor)
Armor value: 50 (base)
+ 500 hitpoints
+ 500 to lightning resistance
- 200 to fire resistance
+ 1 target can be hit by Chain of Lighting
>> Required level 45
For 2 pieces of set:
-10% fire resistance
critical damage caused by lighting damage inreased by 50%
For 3 pieces of set:
armor value increased by 10% of lightning resistance
movement speed reduced by 10% when ignited
- 50% Lighthing Strike falloff damage

The horn of the gentle flow
(Quiver, back)
Armor value: 15 (base)
Critical hit value: 979 (base)
gems cannot be socketed in this item
+ 100 damage
attack speed increased by 10,0%
critical strikes do not deal increased damage
critical strikes restores concentration points used to cast them
cooldowns on all abilities reduced by 20%
>> Required level 45

The headcracker
(Head, helmet)
Armor value: 409
+ 300 armor value
charging distance of Stun Charge increased by 33%
radius of Ground Breaker increased by 33%
whenever you kill stunned enemy cooldowns on Stun Charge, Ground Breaker and Iron Brow are reset
+ 5% life leech on stunned players
- 50% radius of area of effect abilities
>> Required level 45

Now, let's get back to the talk.

I have a few theories why developers don't want to make a step ahead.

1. They are affraid of making such a unique designed items because, they are extremely hard to balance and can make totally overpowered builds.
My opinion: With proper amount of money and gem slots it is not too hard to exploit the precentage-based values or making some unplayable builds (intended to not work) to work with top-tier gear. For instance life leeching, critical damage and blocking mechanisms are very potent and can make you a god if the rest of gear is proper.

2. They want to keep the experience simple, just wear the new shiny item with objectivly better stats and you're golden.
My opinion: It's possible, but rather unlikely. They've been experimenting with new stats with new uniques. Moreover when you hit max level there's nothing better than a fresh breeze of new possibilities and builds enabled by one specyfic item. They can keep it simple on lower levels to get people acknowledged with the system, and later on spread the wings before players on top levels

3. The abilities are hardcoded and changing specyfic parameters of particular skills is impossible without re-writing whole parts of code.
My opinion: Unfortunately, very likely. I wil not comment too much about it, because if it's true than nothing can change it (with expection of very busy BP team ).

Would you like to see more diversity with uniques in-game? What do you think? Please, let's discussion going

 

When others can make a skilltree as big as the one in Path of Exile and make funny enchants like the ones you spoke of in Diablo, the Devs of DSO should be able to do it too. It would make it even harder to find "The Ultimate Balance", which i would like!
Right now we have many maths for finding the balance we think is best and we prefer. But compared to other games like PoW and D3, DSO is nothing when it comes to build your personal char.

If the Devs want to make new content, then give us more uniques with far different abilities to make the playstyles more variation in the game.

Abilties like slowing fireballs, the higher the rage the higher the chance of critting with a smash, and maybe completely new skills from a unique item itself, would make the game much more varying.
But then again, could the game still hold any sort of balance?

I wouldn´t try the Devs, they must be world-famous by now for being able to mess things up...

 

I have always been, and still am, supporting of such ideas. I love being able to personalize my character, not only by dyes and costumes, but to the extent of stats and special abilities themselves. All we have now is the standard Fireball mage, and the standard Lightning mage.. but with unique items like that (truly unique) we would be able to make much more complex builds and much more fun builds.

I think, if there is anything in this game that needs more attention than this idea, it is bug fixing. But other than that, I would much rather have new unique items and abilities than another boring expansion to level 50 in which we have to grind for a week or 2 just to reach the new endgame... and for what? to have to replace all of our items again as they are nothing compared to the new ones... bah.

Also, I would like to take this time to refer to Rony's idea in the old forums to make dungeons more complex. As in they shift and change each time you enter a new one. And positive and negative area of effect buffs (like the Dragan's Refuge/ Destructor skill-disabling buff) would be fun and interesting to see. They would give this game so much more variety and content without having to add more expansions. I honestly think that's what it needs right now, not more grinding.

 

Lol this is my idea.. but urs its more detail in so many ways.. good job taking the effort to do this.. i rlly hope to see new set building like this soon.