@Asros With the Melee+Ranged, Energy+Physical, Energy+Mental, and Mental+Physical damage rating affixes still exist as single affixes as they currently do on cosmics for hybrid characters, and costume cores? Clarifying this may help some people.
Yes, hybrid affixes will still exist for hybrid characters.
Also, instead of 5 random affixes, could we do say, 3 fixed, and 2 random? As in, Health/Attribute1/Attribute2/Random/Random?
Most likely, yes. We are in the process of identifying affix categories(i.e. offensive, defensive, utility) as well as restricting certain affixes by slot as well, so that there is a smaller pool of random affixes to roll on certain items. This will reduce the amount of RNG per item will still allowing for variation.
Past that, the Omega power truly need to be done in trade off style and not pure benefit style. We'll look at the example given for Rocket. Gaz's example as given is pure bonus, and leaves one thinking "Why doesn't the skill just pierce from the start?". So, let's follow that thread, and make the skill pierce from the start, and then change the omega power to "Hollow Point Photon Rounds: Photon Minigun no longer pierces enemies hit, but instead does +XX% damage." This takes the skill from a bonus, which in the end will only provide illusion of choice at best, to something that actually is a choice.
This is assuming there arent other omegas that impact this power in different ways. The example mock ups were used to show the difference in these type of powers compared to current unique procs.
With affixes being evaluated, are you guys going to be getting rid of the "booby prizes"? There are a bunch of affixes currently that are viewed as either worse than the norm or useless pretty much universally. Some don't offer enough bang for their buck, and some are just plain bad. Are these going away, or is the trend of undesirable affixes going to continue in order to intentionally introduce undesirable elements into the RNG pool?
Will the affixes all be useful and relatively balanced?
And I mean actually useful not theoretically so at some point. I know you guys are planning to address CC... eventually... but that's not much consolation when you're still stuffing Tenacity into game items now.
For there to be great affixes, there have to be less useful affixes. If every affix was great for everyone, we would, well, we would be using fighting on everyone like we are now. We don't like that ecosystem, it is bland and pretty boring. The affix pool will have affixes beneficial in some way for a hero, but some more than others. Some builds will look for more of a specific stat than another, so that is up to the player on which stats to look for when min/maxing their omega items.
thoughts/suggestions:
- wouldnt it be better to utilize the current uniques and just give them sockets .then we insert omega powers into these sockets.this give us more flexibility and in the mean time we can still hoard uniques for progress while waiting for game update
I can see where players may think this is the case, but from a behind the scenes design perspective, it is not. It will continue to perpetuate the need for rotating unique updates, balance issues and lack of flexibility with current uniques. With the omega system, if we want to make omega items better, for example, by increasing health, we can do that on the shared health curve and it will automagically boost not all omega items, but also uncommon, rare, epic and cosmics as well. It gives us much more flexibility to adjust and improve items than with uniques, which every affix is hand crafted on them.
turn in 5 dupe zeropoint shields at crafter to get a random omega shield power etc
all omega powers have a tag like blessings (utility/dps/defense)
new item or perhaps relic that give set bonuses based on ^^^ e.g. 2 defensive omega items gives a set bonus of 1000defense
this allows for much more diversity when it comes to itemization and keep uniques relevant and still allow the use of boss uniques
These are good suggestions, but they would all require some significant new technology that would take a long time to build. Omega items are built almost completely using existing tech. But its something we can always look into down the line.
so i wanted octobot controller for my pet guys. so i get to farming, 387 runs later i get one....one. please tell me that with omegas they wont be so hard to farm. i dont have 4-5 classes to gear, i have 50 plus. Only thing that bothers me about this game. Having a hard time adjusting to the fact that i have more then a couple of classes to gear.
There is a lot of confusion in this thread surrounding a specific topic. Some players feel it absolutely necessary to min/max every hero that they have. That is a choice, it isn't required to play all of our content. If you wan't to do that, that is great and we support that. However, that isn't something we expect everyone to do on every hero.
With the move to the difficulty slider system to control content difficulty, the main reason to min/max your item is to continue to a higher difficulty, where the rewards are better items to help you move to the next difficulty, etc. We wont be locking content behind difficulty, but instead, boosting rewards for players who do higher difficulty. It is a curve, how much damage/health/x it takes to complete content on x difficulty, then how much damage/health/etc it takes from the items in x difficulty to complete y difficulty. The items are tools to do this, not requirements to do so. That is one of the main things we don't like about the current ecosystem with boss/any-hero uniques. Those items are so powerful to specific builds that players feel that without them, they cant play how they want. That's not great. Omega items and their associated powers will be there to enhance how you play, not determine how you play(even if others may say that they are required).
@Asros Could you please explain how you guys intend to make this omega items compete with old uniques with only 5 afixes and without breaking the power creep? I think it's the most important information.
Completely starting new with a new affix pool, brand new curves and lots of math. This is also something that is not just related to new items, but also power changes, omega system/infinity system changes, etc.
Oh, pretty sure the power creep will be broken. But with the difficulty slider, we will actually have USE for that power.
I don't agree that power creep will be "broken", but with the difficulty slider, there is more of a reason to get BIS everything and well rolled everything if you like the challenge of harder content.
Problem with MH power creep was that the content never kept up. So basically we had so much power that we did boss fights that were designed to be 8-10 minutes to be 1-2 minutes.
We are the first to agree with this. Defeating a boss using 1 signature power isn't a great feeling. This is something we are continuing to iterate on with the content being created. We are in the process of identifying baseline difficulty for the new slider, which means reviewing stuff like this. More info on that with the Difficulty Slider blog.
Are any of the 'fun' and flavorful procs, like Cap summoning The Human Torch, Wolvie summoning Sabretooth, the various stuff on SG's Great Lakes Avengers T-shirt, or vaporizing baddies like on Dust of Death going to stick around in the system anywhere? Maybe on Traits or powers? These don't feel like proper Omega affixes for the most part, but I like a lot of that stuff when it adds flavor to the heroes.
We do too. We are finding places for those things to go where they makes sense.
@Asros, What's going to happen with Hightown Patrol boss drops? Will uniques be replaced with omegas?
We are in the process of reviewing loot tables as a part of this system update, but the short answer to this is, no it wont be a 1 for 1 replacement with omega items. A lot of it will be dictated by your difficulty setting in the difficulty slider. However, things like the guaranteed unique per wave is unlikely to remain in Hightown. That being said, we will be reviewing all loot tables to make sure that they feel rewarding to players. This includes TC testing and feedback as we always do.
What about the random unique boxes and bounty boxes from logins with guaranteed uniques, and others with a chance to drop uniques, such as the Mystic Mayhem boxes or the Coffers? If those will switch to omegas, I'll want to hold on to them for now. But could they also not work anymore if uniques are removed from all loot tables?
Still TBD. I will tell you that they will not just switch to be Omega items. We want Omega items to, at least at first, be items obtained mainly from going out and playing the game. We don't want to give players who stockpiled old boxes to have huge advantages over players who didn't. I would suggest opening those now, especially if you have unique related achievements that you want to complete. (I am also one of these people!)
I don't really understand the vision/direction on this.
- Why keep tiers of slot1-5 gear (rare/epic/cosmic) that are somewhat useful for leveling, but quickly lose all relevance?
I answered this in a previous post, but it merits answering again. We are restructuring item progression while leveling so that you don't get cosmic items at level 10 and then don't worry about itemization at all. We want items to matter for you while leveling. Certain rarities will only start dropping at certain level bands, same thing with certain affixes on those items. We are working hard to also improve the functionality of RIF, which this plays heavily into.
Why grandfather unique items?
If uniques are no longer able to drop, it seems strange to change their stats and leave them in the game
Imagine not reading the forums or knowing about the update coming, logging in and seeing all of your uniques gone. Thats a horrible experience for players. Also, players have worked hard to get the uniques they have to the level that they have them, enchanted, challenge bonuses, etc. That matters to us. Those items will be very important for players to use in using the new difficulty slider system to start going after the new Omega items.
- Will grandfathered uniques be better than omega items in no, some, or all circumstances?
The plan is "in no circumstances", but we also know that with almost 60 heroes and many builds per hero, some will be. It will be up to us to make good omega items for those rare circumstances.
- Are the "omega powers" fixed or variable on a specific item?
Currently fixed per item.
- How does removing the ceiling only to put a new ceiling in actually address the itemisation issue?
We didnt put a new ceiling. We added a new rarity tier. The beauty of the difficulty slider means that as we add more difficulties, we can add more rarity tiers, like omega 1, omega 2, etc or even a totally different name. So much of switching to this system is about creating a flexible, expandable item system for us so we can create new, better items for you at a faster pace.
- "Mjolnir is one of the most iconic and powerful Items in the Marvel Universe, and it will have an Omega Power tantamount to its status." ... and then it rolled with tenacity. Why is tenacity still in the game after all these years?
This is a perfect point about why we needed to move away from uniques. Tenacity is important for some hero builds, but not for others. Over time, as we change the game, some stats like this become more useful for some heroes and less for others. With omega items, we can adjust stat weights like that much easier than having to go in and completely rebalance all 450ish handcrafted uniques.
Also, like the blog said, those are mock ups. Those affixes are placeholder.
- This system still seems very fluid and in the early stages of iteration, realistically, how close is this system to actually being in game?
It will not launch with the first system release with Talents/Hero Updates, but will release very shortly after that.
Will the value of currently-common affixes be increased to the point where we see 12000+ health or 4500+ CDR on a single item?
I can't commit to specific values right now since we are still in alpha with many things. Balance/tuning happens later than where we are right now.
Are we going to see all the various general conditional effects (procs) available on current uniques added to the affix pool from which omega items will be generated? If not, are we going to see the plain bonus affix values increased to compensate (e.g. if omega items can't have "when you crit, gain CHR and BSR" are we going to see the plain CHR and BSR affix values increased compared to current uniques)? What about affixes like "when you go below 30% health, enter stealth (and get stat bonuses)"?
Some of them, yes. All of them, no.
Are all of the current hero-specific affixes going to become Omega Powers?
No. All Omega powers are being designed from the ground up to work with the changes made to powers with the Talent rework.
Are attribute affixes going to be added to the pool for omega items? If not, are the benefits provided by attributes going to be added as affixes?
Yes, attributes will be a part of the affix pool. Allocations should even be higher than uniques as the attribute changes for heroes to have 2 main attributes to itemize for will mean they are more important to you.
what does that mean for players trying to find a full set of omega items that meets or exceeds a current set of uniques?
It isn't an apples to apples comparison. It is more about relative power. When Omega items come out, we expect that there will be a period of time where you will be looking at some side grades instead of obvious direct upgrades. This will depend on your hero, build, difficulty, omega/infinity spec, item level and other factors. But as you continue to play, you will eventually find omega items that you will equip as upgrades to your current uniques.
Do you really believe players will be happy having to manually examine thousands of omega items for each of the five slots to see if they finally won the lottery and got what they wanted? And then do it again sixty more times in order to equip all of the heroes?
Well, we don't expect most of our players to min/max at that level. We are designing the affix pool to give you useful stats for your hero, but some more than other, which encourages those who do want complete BIS items to keep searching for the perfect mix of affixes. How much you min/max your affixes will be up to the player, but the average player will be able to pick up an omega item, just as they can with a cosmic, or epic, equip it and play the hero.
Loving the upcoming changes
I have two questions,
1) One of the main reasons I go to Hightown is to get uniques then exchange them for credit chests, will there be another way to make 500k so easy?
Well, being able to get 500k "so easy" as you say is somewhat problematic for the game economy. Because of this, crafting costs are also problematically high to try to drain the excess credits out of the economy. This needs a more holistic review, which is in progress, to bring the economy a bit more back in check a bit. So will there be a way to get these credit chests so quickly and easily? Most likely not, but there will be other compensating changes to different aspects of the economy so those kinds of credit chests aren't as necessary as they may be right now.
2) Ive spent a lot of time doing raids etc to get commendations, will there be a way to refund all my challenge bonus tokens binded to my uniques?
No, we won't be refunding the ones you have already equipped and have been using, but we will most likely make them a little easier to change out once the hero changes go live (for a short amount of time) to let you adjust if you wish. We are also keeping the blessing swap recipe free for the time being so you can adjust those as well with little penalty. However, these wont be permanent changes.
@Asros I know this is not your exact area, but I have 1 more concern. While I love items enhancing powers I am concerned that powers will be designed weaker so that Omega items can buff them. For example, I am pretty sure the current shield bounce has 8 bounces. So 8+3 from Omega would make 11 which is good buff. But if after all the power changes Shield bounce defaultly has 5 bounces and we need the item to get back to 8, that would very much stink.
This is 100% not the case. The item team is building the Omega procs outside of the design process for the heroes. We are looking at the changes being made and coming up with powers that enhance that. We aren't asking the powers team to make certain powers weaker. That would be pretty bad.
I missed the part where they said the affixes would all be completely random and not say, taken from a pool per character/slot basis.
They may even do something crazy like add some weightings that characters / slots might favour either individually or in combination.
Yep. The affixes will be "random", but random from a pool of choices that are worthwhile for you hero. Certain affixes will most likely be slot restricted as well.
@Asros are Omega items going to draw from a hand crafted table of affixes for each item? Do they draw from a single shared Omega table? Are they still able to support static affixes?
Handcrafted affix per item. Can Omega items support static affixes? Sure. Will they? Very unlikely.
Basically I'm wondering about special Unique affixes like spirit on hit and cost reduction, useful proc effects eg Iceman's stats and buff procs, invul and rez effects, etc. These had a palpable effect on build power and sustainability, but the examples given of Omega items just had very generic random gen affixes. Basically I don't want to see Omega items be nothing more than generic stat sticks with one skill modification effect.
Some of these are being added to the shared affix pool, some will not and instead fit better on other item slots. The mock ups were just that, mock ups to give a visual idea of the design. Not final items or design.
As I've said in another post, I'm going to reserve final judgement when I see all the pieces in place, not a part here, a part there and both separate. THAT SAID - with 5-7 omegas per character at launch doesn't SEEM to lend itself towards a lot of "build defining" diversity. Keyword SEEM.
Also with Omega gear having 5 random affixes brings back memories of trying to find a good cosmic item. That was not really fun. It's even worse than trying to find a trifecta now.
Those are my big reservations from what I have seen now. When it's all rolled out and together, it may make more sense and be awesome, but I can only go on what has been posted.
So
@TheArtofRawr and I had a design meeting today, we talked about a lot of the feedback on Omega items and came up with some ideas on how to change them. I won't go in to a lot of them yet because we don't have specifics and want to sleep on them before we take them farther.
However, we agree that random affixes with random roll ranges are too much RNG. We haven't made a final decision, but are leaning towards changing slot 1-5 items (uncommon, rare, epic, cosmic, omega) to not have roll ranges on the random affixes. The roll would be based 100% on the item level of the item.
What this means is that item level is now much more important at end game. Upgrading your items ilevel is something that would require more work than currently(the raid recipes), and would be very tied into difficulty slider (item level would be controlled by difficulty, but you could upgrade your items to higher item level via crafting and other means).
Other things we discussed were the issue of not having enough coverage with 5-7 items per hero at launch and have some ideas on how to address this. More on that as the plan becomes firmer.
We are listening to your feedback and want to make items you want to use. We also want to build a sustainable item ecosystem that keeps you playing and having fun without being frustrating. That is a hard target to hit, but we are committed to it.