Inspired by the item recipe systems of MOBA games like Dota and League of Legends, breeding from the Pokémon series, Persona fusion from the Shin Megami Tensei Persona series, and the good ol' Horadric Cube from Diablo II. I wonder how a system creating new legendary items from existing ones could work in Diablo III's environment.
DISCLAIMER: This system is 100% fictional and is not a feature in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.
Originally I started wondering about an item recipe based system when stash space issues became a widespread topic in the community. I then started expanding on it a little more when players started struggling with finding specific legendary items, namely the notoriously rare ones like Wand of Woh or Starmetal Kukri (due to be adjusted in 2.1.2, but they're still going to be the rarest in their respective item types).
So I imagined a system—dubbed the Item Synthesis system—within Diablo III that allowed players to take a bunch of extra legendaries they have in their stash or on their mule characters and combine them into brand new items. These new items could be synthesis-exclusive, or they can be items you find normally through killing monsters and exploration.
Basic Limitations:
Cannot use two legendaries of the same name (must be unique)
Cannot use unidentified items
Cannot use set items
Cannot use legacy items prior to Patch 2.0.1 (vanilla)
The System
The basic system is simply combining two to six items in any order to form a new item.
Starting from triple combinations (three items used in the synthesis process), one “parent” item can be selected as the core, allowing the player to transfer a stat over to the “child” item. A primary stat can be inherited if and only if the child item is allowed to roll the stat naturally (e.g. a child quiver cannot inherit movement speed bonus). Any secondary stat can be inherited (to be discussed).
This will be UI based so the player can make the decision which stat to inherit. Let's say the synthesized child item normally comes with six random properties (four primaries, one secondary, one legendary power). Transferring a stat from a parent item ensures that one of the random rolls will be the inherited stat. The child item can still be enchanted by the mystic.
The synthesized item depends on the order which items are inputted. Its item type is determined by the final item selected in the synthesis process. Basically, when combining five different items, regardless of the order of the first four items, if the final item is a belt, the synthesized item type will always be a belt. But depending on how the first four items are ordered, it may not always be the same belt (to be discussed).
Example:
A player wishes to combine four legendary items: a Mempo of Twilight (helm), a Storm Crow (wizard hat), an Azurewrath (sword), and a Flying Dragon (daibo). The resulting item could be any of the following:
A helm (6 combos): if the Mempo was included in the synthesis last. Selecting the Storm Crow first, selecting the Azurewrath second would combine the two into a one-handed sword. The third and fourth selections would be the Flying Dragon and Mempo, respectively, and the pair would yield a legendary helm. The first pairing (Storm Crow + Azurewrath) that yielded the new legendary sword would be paired with the second pairing’s (Flying Dragon + Mempo) new legendary helm, yielding yet another new legendary helm.
A wizard hat (6 combos): just like the helm example, as long as the Storm Crow was included in the synthesis last.
A sword (6 combos): as long as the Azurewrath was included in the synthesis last.
A daibo (6 combos) as long as the Flying Dragon was included in the synthesis last.
Using the sixth combo in the example, the resulting “legendary helm C3” can inherit a primary or secondary stat from any of the parent items (Storm Crow, Azurewrath, Flying Dragon, Mempo) selected as the core. However, the primary stat inheritance must be a primary stat that can naturally roll on any helm. If the Azurewrath has attack speed, the child “legendary helm C3” cannot inherit the attack speed. However, because Azurewrath’s chance to freeze is a secondary stat, “legendary helm C3” can inherit that secondary stat. The max value would have to be discussed. But it could be interesting if a player decides to stack freeze chance on every single piece of gear. How would it be calculated, though?
The final part of the system involves combining six different items. If all six parent items are of the same type and sub-type, the synthesized item has a chance of inheriting the legendary power from one of the parent items.
Example:
A player wishes to combine six legendary bracers: Lacuni Prowlers, Reaper’s Wraps, Trag’Oul Coils, Warzechian Armguards, Ancient Parthan Defenders, and Promise of Glory. The synthesized item will be a new pair of legendary bracers. This pair of bracers will come with its own unique power, but it also has a chance to inherit the legendary power from one of those parent bracers. There is a chance that no legendary power will be inherited. There is also a chance that a legendary power will be inherited and still be nothing as Lacuni Prowlers does not have a true legendary power.
Additional perks:
Using ancient items in the synthesis process increases the chance for the child item to be ancient, as well. The more ancient items used in the synthesis, the more likely the child will be ancient. If no ancient item is used, the chance for the child to be an ancient item is standard.
Synthesizing rare items (at least those weighted to be more rare through drops) will involve combining one or more rare items in a given recipe. The idea here is that if you cannot find a specific rare item, maybe you had the luck of finding another type of rare item. Some people just don't need Lacuni Prowlers, but they really want a Witching Hour. Perhaps a Witching Hour can be synthesized using several legendaries, including Lacuni Prowlers.
Discussion Stuff
My clan mate ChangBooster took some time to address some of the craziness involved with this system. This is, after all, incredibly broad and bare so there are definitely tons of overlooked concerns. Some things are feasible, others not so much (in fact, not at all), such as having a different synthesized result for every single combination.
Just to give a better picture of things, in a six-item combination, given that the sixth item is locked in place, there are 120 ways to combine the first five items. And that's just for six legendary items. There are nearly 400 unique legendary items in Diablo III. And we're talking two-item combinations, three, four, five, six. And we're not even talking about potentially using synthesis-exclusive items as combination fodder themselves. Does anyone want to calculate how many combinations there are, if there are no repeated results? It's a big number. As a result, there must be duplicate results for different combinations.
So here's ChangBooster's first concern:
The main issue I see with this is the vast amount of combinations. If each combination and order yields a unique item with a unique orange text, Blizzard would basically have to have an algorithm generating icons/skins/orange text affixes. You can't just sit down and design millions (or more) of new items for obvious reasons. So, that is out the window. This leaves us with duplicates. To put it another way, you'd need to have, for example, [[Furnace + Sunkeeper] + Ring] and [[Furnace + Azurewrath] + Ring] yield the exact same ring. And then numerous other combinations are going to yield that same ring. Let's call this the Ring of the Vizjerei (RotV). If I am misunderstanding and this recipe would not always yield RotV and instead yield a random legendary ring, then I guess I am missing the point of having different combinations and the order of said combinations being meaningful. The way you describe it in the video, my understanding is that each combination is a recipe, of sorts.
So there you have it. It isn't feasible to have a unique result for every unique combination (where order before the final item doesn't matter). There must be duplicate results for different combinations. Assuming duplicate results will be a thing:
So, let's say I want to synthesize a RotV with 50% crit damage. I'm always using a ring as my final reagent, so I can just pull that 50% CD through from that parent ring. Because there will be redundant recipes, it really doesn't matter if I used [Wormwood + String of Ears + BK Wedding Band] or [Furnace + Sunkeeper + BK Wedding Band]. Remember, you can't possibly have each combination give a unique result. But as long as I have that 50% CD BK ring at the end and some combination of reagents that yield RotV, I can get my 50% CD RotV. If I understand correctly, I could also get that 50% CD from one of the earlier reagents, let's say one recipe for RotV uses Gloves of Worship, then I can use any BK ring and pull my 50% CD off the gloves.
Yep. He also suggested having "fixed" recipes:
What if you used fixed recipes instead? Let's say Blizz creates 10 (or 20, or 5, or whatever) new items of each slot. Each one has a set recipe with some flexibility. In the last paragraph, I used [Wormwood + String of Ears + BK Wedding Band] as a possible combination for RotV. Let's reduce the specificity of the items down and add an additional ingredient to give us the formula: [Any Staff + Any Belt + Any Glove + BK Wedding Band] = RotV. You could even allow the desired stat to be carried over when the value is too high to roll naturally on the resultant item. i.e. If we want to carry intelligence to our RotV, we could pull the roll from any of the items but if you pull it from the staff or the glove, it could be reduced to be within the appropriate roll range of a ring. e.g. If our glove has a max int roll (750), the crafting window will indicate that our mystery ring (actually a RotV) is going to have 500 int (or max ancient int roll) on it. If the glove only has 736 int, our UI will inform us that the product is going to roll with 490 int, with a chance to roll as a top end ancient roll, should we get an ancient RotV. Perhaps one Sword recipe is [Any Bracer + Any Amulet + Exarian]. This could have a weaker legendary power as you could churn them out with ease. Then maybe we've got a sword recipe that is [Any Ring + Any Boots + Any Glove + Any Shield + Shard of Hate]. This item could be significantly stronger. Maybe cap this system at 5 total reagents to avoid confusion.
Now the next concern ChangBooster had was this:
Moving on the the second system. What you essentially have here are two different systems. The "anything goes" system and the "combine 6 items of the same type" system. The combine 6 items system is based on carrying over a legendary property. Only have one recipe (product) per item type. e.g. Six Wizard Hats always yields a hat called Jaetch's Ninja Mask (JNM). Because our goal here is to bring one legendary property from the original six, the additional legendary property on JNM can't be too OP by itself. Our result gets four primaries, JNM's natural orange text, an orange text from a reagent or a blue text secondary from one of the six hats used. Let's say we want the Swami property on our JNM. This is only giving us a 1/12 chance of getting the affix we want. But we can do it every time we find a Swami and five other hats. One could conceivable craft a Swami'd JNM pretty often. A dedicated player could craft a good (i.e. good primaries) Swami'd JNM every couple months, perhaps.
The idea is that trying to get a six-combo synthesized item to spawn with double legendary powers will be ridiculously hard to do, let alone inheriting the legendary power you actually want, on top of whether or not you care if the synthesized item is ancient or not. That's tough if you want perfection. I think that's a good thing, though. And like ChangBooster said, a dedicated player could probably synthesize a good one every couple of months. Probably.
Moving on, his final concern is this:
My final thought is that I think this would have a negative impact on stash space. People are going to be saving up all these items to use to make, say, a Bracer with the Strongarm property. A way to alleviate this could be to store the reagents at the mystic. For those of you who have a seasonal char that has been rolled over to NS on the PTR, you know your message box is full of all the items that were in your stash. It's basically an alphabetical list categorized into "legendary," "set," "consumables," etc. (we wouldn't have those categories since we are only dealing with legendaries) I propose you take an item that you know you want to use as a reagent to Myriam and irrevocably add it to her bank of reagents. This destroys the physical item, it can no longer by equipped or salvaged and, most importantly, removes the item's unique ID from the database since it's now just text strings of the affixes in the bank. It now appears in an alphabetical list (that can also be sorted by gear slot) and it can be added to any applicable recipe, at which point it is removed from the bank. You can add items straight from your inventory to a recipe or pull them from Myriam's bank. If you realize you added an item you don't want in your bank, like if you already have a gg RotV, you would be able to discard an unneeded staff. The bank would have finite space of perhaps 200 items. The interface warned you that you can never get the item back when you added it to Myriam's bank, so no one can complain that your only option is to destroy it forever. Maybe it can refund a forgotten soul just for the QQers.
I thought about this as I was making the video. While one of the goals for this system is to free up stash space, I could also see players hoarding even more in order to maximize their chances to synthesize an awesome item. The Strongarm example is a good one, considering how powerful its legendary power is. So for anyone wishing to synthesize specific six-combo legendary bracers, they may end up hoarding a dozen Strongarm Bracers. And that's just one piece in the synthesis recipe. They'd also need five other like bracers.
This is a situation where the proposed solution could in fact make the original problem even worse!
But those were ChangBooster's thoughts. What do you think?
I have some of my own concerns, too, such as whether or not making any secondary stat transferable to a synthesized item. It could be ridiculous. Having max resources in all 13 item slots? Having chance to freeze, blind, stun, etc. on all pieces? Sounds fun, but it could be game-breaking.
Again, this is just a Christmas wish. Could be something worth exploring. Could definitely be tweaked and adjusted, and definitely simplified a little.
This is amazing! I was playing Lichdom:Battlemage the other day and thought about how great a synthesis system would be in Diablo.
I think I would be hording less if I knew that I could burn some of these items into better gear. I also might not pick up as many legendaries if I know that I'm focusing on only upgrading one slot at the moment.
In regards to transferring secondary stats, I wonder how game breaking it would really be overall. It could open new build opportunities tied to secondary stats that we have not thought of yet. I also think it would be cool if you could give up all secondary stats on the synthesized item for rolling a guaranteed affix. It would still be a random outcome, but you could ensure that you get what you want by sacrificing all the secondary goodness in the gear.
In regards to transferring secondary stats, I wonder how game breaking it would really be overall. It could open new build opportunities tied to secondary stats that we have not thought of yet. I also think it would be cool if you could give up all secondary stats on the synthesized item for rolling a guaranteed affix. It would still be a random outcome, but you could ensure that you get what you want by sacrificing all the secondary goodness in the gear.
In most cases, I don't think it'll be a huge issue. But then when you're stacking +10 Discipline on every piece of gear (let's say that brings you to around 170+ Discipline)... geez. Same with other classes. A wizard with 300 Arcane Power?!
n most cases, I don't think it'll be a huge issue. But then when you're stacking +10 Discipline on every piece of gear (let's say that brings you to around 170+ Discipline)... geez. Same with other classes. A wizard with 300 Arcane Power?!
For the Discipline, they'd have to completely change the function of that set from Blizzcon, because the damage you would be able to get would be pretty insane. So if they want to be able to have mechanics like that (and also Meteor: Star pact), you'd probably want to remove +resource from places it's not already allowed to roll.
As for the original topic, I like the idea of synthesizing a bunch of the same item type to get a predefined legendary power + one from the reagents used (as long as the predefined one isn't too massively overpowered). I'd also like to see a feature that lets you take some number of the exact same item and combine them to get a fresh random roll. It's really annoying to get like, 5 of the same item and they are all total crap. If I could take them and combine them to get a 6th one that *could* be better, I'd totally do it. It still leaves you at the mercy of RNG, but if you have 3 Tall mans fingers that are basically the worst, what's the harm in getting another chance at a decent one.
A system like this could open up a lot of ring options that currently don't exist, but then have we simply removed important choices, or are we breaking something? It would take a lot of work to get the system just right, but could be fun.
Well, yeah, it would be a great spot to just dump creative ideas. Each season lasts for X months and that's usually when new items get introduced, else in a major content patch.
This is a pretty cool idea. I've been saying we need something like the grinder from Borderlands but your system adds a lot of depth. Nice work, maybe one day.
I really like the idea. I'm not sure if it's feasible for Blizz' eyes but even if you can just basically trade two undesirable legendaries to one desirable legendary, i'm all up for it!
If your system is grabbed with some refining, i think it would even be better. depends on blizz, really.
Nice idea. I dont think the order you add items (aside from the last item) should matter. It just makes the system overly complicated.
The idea in this entire thread doesn't exist and will in all likelihood never exist, so there is no point announcing ways or suggestions in which parts of it should be dumbed down......
It's thinking like that that lead to the creation of this thread, and the many like it before, in the first place;
The desire for MORE options and MORE exploration and MORE possibility. Not LESS. Role-playing games only exist because ideas are expanded upon over time. dungeon and dragons alone peppers players with piles of text books to explain rules and lore. Personally I'm absolutely stunned that Jaetch and god knows how many others. Others have managed to remain SOO optimistic for SOO long.....
Awesome amazing spectacular IDEA hopefully this will make it to D3. This is exactly what this game needs and I know it would be lots of work but if they could pull it off man would the rewards be great.
Thanks Jaetch for the awesome video and the Item Synthesis System.
We are all praying that the Diablo gods will listen
this is amazing and the video is really good, are you a game developer? or just a diablo fan with a lot of time and faith in the game?
Nope. Making videos and playing games are my hobbies. I work 40+ hours a week and whatever free time I have at the end of the day, I mess around in-game. This video took me two weeks to make.
This is an awesome idea. I'll start with my two main concerns, both of which have been touched upon by ChangBooster:
1) Stash space. It won't free up stash space, but will make my need for stash explode. I will farm and collect every single Tiklandian, Mask of Jeram, and other voodoo masks I can get to combine those two effects. Same for Madstone and Laws of Seph. Or imagine combining multiple immunity amulets, holy crap! So many items I salvaged would be useful to keep with this system.
2) Balance. Every new item takes forever to be introduced because of the thin line between "useless" and "overpowered". If you have hundreds of possible combinations for each item slot that makes thousands of possible combinations on gear, and it makes it virtually impossible to test them all. The question is how reliably you could re-create combinations that others have made. If there's just a guide on "how to create my awesome bracers of OP-ness" and everyone would have that item within a day, then this system would kill balance in an instant. However, if the randomness of item creations would be so huge and the realm of possibilities so large that along the way of trying to reproduce such an item you might come across even more powerful items, this could add an insane depth to the itemization system. However, as I've said, it's a thin line.
My biggest "yay" for this idea, however, is the fact that people want more legendaries (remember how everyone went crazy and liked the 2000% bonus legendary buff on PTR, which I think was completely insane and detrimental?). With a system like that, you can never have enough Strongarm bracers, or Leoric Crowns, or Furnaces, because you always want to have more of them to be able to combine more and experiment with more, new recipes. Again, it would require plenty of more stash space - we're talking about more than doubling it, otherwise it'd be impossible to play more than one class. But a system along those lines could fuel the game for a long time without the (imho quite unimaginative) 30% ancient item increase.
Yep, most of the feedback I've gotten involved either the endless possibilities (as much as people would like endless possibilities) or the inevitable imbalance that would come from these items.
Then the debate comes down to:
"We want a more complex, in-depth system!" vs. "A system like this must be simplified!"
Very very cool idea. I would love it if they would develop a system like this. I love the thought of having so many possibilities and the chance to have a creative and unique gear set. I'll ask Santa for this too! Lol. Thanks for sharing this bro.
I'm not so sure this would OP items compared to others, even if the resulting items would be "buffed" as other posters suggest. Sets will always be more viable than a large, optimized Ancient Synthesized mish-mash of pieces assuming that Synthesis added more bonuses than leg effects. The current Synthesis idea as well as Ancient wouldn't break legendaries, but rather place them on par with set items, even giving rise to non-set sets/builds, like coupling Leoric's Crown with a Jeram, or Ice Climbers with Irontoes, even Schaefer's with Jace's.
A great idea, though as Bagstone noted, stash space will be imminent ultimately. The "hoarders" out there will never find a reason not to hold onto pieces, even at the prospect of "legacy"ing old items again. This just gives rise to holding onto more pieces for rerolling/alts. And a reason actually to hold onto items like Irontoes? A reason to keep a Dagger of Darts? What?! Awesome!
"We want a more complex, in-depth system!" vs. "A system like this must be simplified!"
Hm... I disagree, or maybe misunderstand you. For me it boils down to:
"We want more variety" vs. "we want a balanced game". And those two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, they're just incredibly hard to achieve both at the same time as they both take a lot of time for development and refinement. One of the reasons why StarCraft became probably one of the best RTS games ever is because it struck this balance incredibly well: there was a lot of variety - units and concepts of other races weren't just carbon copies but entirely, fundamentally different; at the same time, the game was incredibly balanced (probably more balanced than any other game ever).
What you describe though, "complexity vs simplicity", are definitely two opposing factors and you can't have both, at least not when talking about the same aspects (you can have complexity of items with very simple game mechanics, for example, or the other way around - but you can never have an itemization that is both complex and simple).
Looking back, many of similar player ideas have been implemented (looking at paragon, monster power, enchanting, legendary gems, and so on) - so I wouldn't say "this will never come". It is definitely more on the complexity side of that scale you mention, and as such it immediately offers variety. However, and this takes me back to my first point, variety and complexity takes time - and at the same time, I think striving for balance was one of Diablo's strengths once (which certainly wasn't true the past three months); adding balance to a system like this will add even more time.
I could see a similar system (one that offers developers a bit more control to avoid overpowered items) being implemented in the next expansion pack. Many players are crying for the comeback of runewords (me included), but Blizzard won't copycat their own system - they want to make something surprising, something new, someone no one anticipates. Why not an item synthesis system. I'd be thrilled :-) But it's certainly nothing we should expect with patch 2.3 ;-)
Notes: I hope the forum software is on Santa Clause's Naughty List. It's driving me crazy...
"We want a more complex, in-depth system!" vs. "A system like this must be simplified!"
For me this generally comes down to more of a, if a system like this were to be implemented, it would have to be simplified at least bit, because the developers goals tend to include avoiding too much complexity. It would, however, be nice if something was added that either made whites, blues, and yellows worth more than crafting mats in the late game, or at least (as the OP's system does), gives options for legendaries that aren't great for much besides breaking them down.
My guess is that some new such system will come along with the the next expansion, assuming they end up making one. In fact, if they are making one, they are probably already working on some new sort of system, and things like ancient items are just cheap ways to add something in the meantime. All speculation, of course.
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The Item Synthesis System
Inspired by the item recipe systems of MOBA games like Dota and League of Legends, breeding from the Pokémon series, Persona fusion from the Shin Megami Tensei Persona series, and the good ol' Horadric Cube from Diablo II. I wonder how a system creating new legendary items from existing ones could work in Diablo III's environment.DISCLAIMER: This system is 100% fictional and is not a feature in Diablo III: Reaper of Souls.
Originally I started wondering about an item recipe based system when stash space issues became a widespread topic in the community. I then started expanding on it a little more when players started struggling with finding specific legendary items, namely the notoriously rare ones like Wand of Woh or Starmetal Kukri (due to be adjusted in 2.1.2, but they're still going to be the rarest in their respective item types).
So I imagined a system—dubbed the Item Synthesis system—within Diablo III that allowed players to take a bunch of extra legendaries they have in their stash or on their mule characters and combine them into brand new items. These new items could be synthesis-exclusive, or they can be items you find normally through killing monsters and exploration.
Basic Limitations:
The basic system is simply combining two to six items in any order to form a new item.
Starting from triple combinations (three items used in the synthesis process), one “parent” item can be selected as the core, allowing the player to transfer a stat over to the “child” item. A primary stat can be inherited if and only if the child item is allowed to roll the stat naturally (e.g. a child quiver cannot inherit movement speed bonus). Any secondary stat can be inherited (to be discussed).
This will be UI based so the player can make the decision which stat to inherit. Let's say the synthesized child item normally comes with six random properties (four primaries, one secondary, one legendary power). Transferring a stat from a parent item ensures that one of the random rolls will be the inherited stat. The child item can still be enchanted by the mystic.
The synthesized item depends on the order which items are inputted. Its item type is determined by the final item selected in the synthesis process. Basically, when combining five different items, regardless of the order of the first four items, if the final item is a belt, the synthesized item type will always be a belt. But depending on how the first four items are ordered, it may not always be the same belt (to be discussed).
Example:
A player wishes to combine four legendary items: a Mempo of Twilight (helm), a Storm Crow (wizard hat), an Azurewrath (sword), and a Flying Dragon (daibo). The resulting item could be any of the following:
First combo:
(Storm Crow + Azurewrath) + (Flying Dragon + Mempo) =
(legendary sword A1) + (legendary helm A1) = legendary helm A2
Second combo:
(Azurewrath + Storm Crow) + (Flying Dragon + Mempo) =
(legendary wizard hat A1) + (legendary helm A1) = legendary helm A3
Third combo:
(Storm Crow + Flying Dragon) + (Azurewrath + Mempo) =
(legendary daibo A1) + (legendary helm B1) = legendary helm B2
Fourth combo:
(Flying Dragon + Storm Crow) + (Azurewrath + Mempo) =
(legendary wizard hat A2) + (legendary helm B1) = legendary helm B3
Fifth combo:
(Azurewrath + Flying Dragon) + (Storm Crow + Mempo) =
(legendary daibo A2) + (legendary helm C1) = legendary helm C2
Sixth combo:
(Flying Dragon + Azurewrath) + (Storm Crow + Mempo) =
(legendary sword A2) + (legendary helm C1) = legendary helm C3
The final part of the system involves combining six different items. If all six parent items are of the same type and sub-type, the synthesized item has a chance of inheriting the legendary power from one of the parent items.
Example:
A player wishes to combine six legendary bracers: Lacuni Prowlers, Reaper’s Wraps, Trag’Oul Coils, Warzechian Armguards, Ancient Parthan Defenders, and Promise of Glory. The synthesized item will be a new pair of legendary bracers. This pair of bracers will come with its own unique power, but it also has a chance to inherit the legendary power from one of those parent bracers. There is a chance that no legendary power will be inherited. There is also a chance that a legendary power will be inherited and still be nothing as Lacuni Prowlers does not have a true legendary power.
Additional perks:
Using ancient items in the synthesis process increases the chance for the child item to be ancient, as well. The more ancient items used in the synthesis, the more likely the child will be ancient. If no ancient item is used, the chance for the child to be an ancient item is standard.
Synthesizing rare items (at least those weighted to be more rare through drops) will involve combining one or more rare items in a given recipe. The idea here is that if you cannot find a specific rare item, maybe you had the luck of finding another type of rare item. Some people just don't need Lacuni Prowlers, but they really want a Witching Hour. Perhaps a Witching Hour can be synthesized using several legendaries, including Lacuni Prowlers.
Discussion Stuff
My clan mate ChangBooster took some time to address some of the craziness involved with this system. This is, after all, incredibly broad and bare so there are definitely tons of overlooked concerns. Some things are feasible, others not so much (in fact, not at all), such as having a different synthesized result for every single combination.
Just to give a better picture of things, in a six-item combination, given that the sixth item is locked in place, there are 120 ways to combine the first five items. And that's just for six legendary items. There are nearly 400 unique legendary items in Diablo III. And we're talking two-item combinations, three, four, five, six. And we're not even talking about potentially using synthesis-exclusive items as combination fodder themselves. Does anyone want to calculate how many combinations there are, if there are no repeated results? It's a big number. As a result, there must be duplicate results for different combinations.
So here's ChangBooster's first concern:
Moving on, his final concern is this:
This is a situation where the proposed solution could in fact make the original problem even worse!
But those were ChangBooster's thoughts. What do you think?
I have some of my own concerns, too, such as whether or not making any secondary stat transferable to a synthesized item. It could be ridiculous. Having max resources in all 13 item slots? Having chance to freeze, blind, stun, etc. on all pieces? Sounds fun, but it could be game-breaking.
Again, this is just a Christmas wish. Could be something worth exploring. Could definitely be tweaked and adjusted, and definitely simplified a little.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
I think I would be hording less if I knew that I could burn some of these items into better gear. I also might not pick up as many legendaries if I know that I'm focusing on only upgrading one slot at the moment.
In regards to transferring secondary stats, I wonder how game breaking it would really be overall. It could open new build opportunities tied to secondary stats that we have not thought of yet. I also think it would be cool if you could give up all secondary stats on the synthesized item for rolling a guaranteed affix. It would still be a random outcome, but you could ensure that you get what you want by sacrificing all the secondary goodness in the gear.
Maybe resources could be the only exception.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
As for the original topic, I like the idea of synthesizing a bunch of the same item type to get a predefined legendary power + one from the reagents used (as long as the predefined one isn't too massively overpowered). I'd also like to see a feature that lets you take some number of the exact same item and combine them to get a fresh random roll. It's really annoying to get like, 5 of the same item and they are all total crap. If I could take them and combine them to get a 6th one that *could* be better, I'd totally do it. It still leaves you at the mercy of RNG, but if you have 3 Tall mans fingers that are basically the worst, what's the harm in getting another chance at a decent one.
A system like this could open up a lot of ring options that currently don't exist, but then have we simply removed important choices, or are we breaking something? It would take a lot of work to get the system just right, but could be fun.
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Just kidding, this is amazing and the video is really good, are you a game developer? or just a diablo fan with a lot of time and faith in the game?
Hope anyone on blizz see this and put it in game
gg men!
If your system is grabbed with some refining, i think it would even be better. depends on blizz, really.
It's thinking like that that lead to the creation of this thread, and the many like it before, in the first place;
The desire for MORE options and MORE exploration and MORE possibility. Not LESS. Role-playing games only exist because ideas are expanded upon over time. dungeon and dragons alone peppers players with piles of text books to explain rules and lore. Personally I'm absolutely stunned that Jaetch and god knows how many others. Others have managed to remain SOO optimistic for SOO long.....
Thanks Jaetch for the awesome video and the Item Synthesis System.
We are all praying that the Diablo gods will listen
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
Actually i will sound like a broken record, but i wish Blizz wold listen to ideas like this.
1) Stash space. It won't free up stash space, but will make my need for stash explode. I will farm and collect every single Tiklandian, Mask of Jeram, and other voodoo masks I can get to combine those two effects. Same for Madstone and Laws of Seph. Or imagine combining multiple immunity amulets, holy crap! So many items I salvaged would be useful to keep with this system.
2) Balance. Every new item takes forever to be introduced because of the thin line between "useless" and "overpowered". If you have hundreds of possible combinations for each item slot that makes thousands of possible combinations on gear, and it makes it virtually impossible to test them all. The question is how reliably you could re-create combinations that others have made. If there's just a guide on "how to create my awesome bracers of OP-ness" and everyone would have that item within a day, then this system would kill balance in an instant. However, if the randomness of item creations would be so huge and the realm of possibilities so large that along the way of trying to reproduce such an item you might come across even more powerful items, this could add an insane depth to the itemization system. However, as I've said, it's a thin line.
My biggest "yay" for this idea, however, is the fact that people want more legendaries (remember how everyone went crazy and liked the 2000% bonus legendary buff on PTR, which I think was completely insane and detrimental?). With a system like that, you can never have enough Strongarm bracers, or Leoric Crowns, or Furnaces, because you always want to have more of them to be able to combine more and experiment with more, new recipes. Again, it would require plenty of more stash space - we're talking about more than doubling it, otherwise it'd be impossible to play more than one class. But a system along those lines could fuel the game for a long time without the (imho quite unimaginative) 30% ancient item increase.
Then the debate comes down to:
"We want a more complex, in-depth system!" vs. "A system like this must be simplified!"
Who knows
Armory | YouTube | Twitter | Clan Site
A great idea, though as Bagstone noted, stash space will be imminent ultimately. The "hoarders" out there will never find a reason not to hold onto pieces, even at the prospect of "legacy"ing old items again. This just gives rise to holding onto more pieces for rerolling/alts. And a reason actually to hold onto items like Irontoes? A reason to keep a Dagger of Darts? What?! Awesome!
So yeah.
"We want more variety" vs. "we want a balanced game". And those two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, they're just incredibly hard to achieve both at the same time as they both take a lot of time for development and refinement. One of the reasons why StarCraft became probably one of the best RTS games ever is because it struck this balance incredibly well: there was a lot of variety - units and concepts of other races weren't just carbon copies but entirely, fundamentally different; at the same time, the game was incredibly balanced (probably more balanced than any other game ever).
What you describe though, "complexity vs simplicity", are definitely two opposing factors and you can't have both, at least not when talking about the same aspects (you can have complexity of items with very simple game mechanics, for example, or the other way around - but you can never have an itemization that is both complex and simple).
Looking back, many of similar player ideas have been implemented (looking at paragon, monster power, enchanting, legendary gems, and so on) - so I wouldn't say "this will never come". It is definitely more on the complexity side of that scale you mention, and as such it immediately offers variety. However, and this takes me back to my first point, variety and complexity takes time - and at the same time, I think striving for balance was one of Diablo's strengths once (which certainly wasn't true the past three months); adding balance to a system like this will add even more time.
I could see a similar system (one that offers developers a bit more control to avoid overpowered items) being implemented in the next expansion pack. Many players are crying for the comeback of runewords (me included), but Blizzard won't copycat their own system - they want to make something surprising, something new, someone no one anticipates. Why not an item synthesis system. I'd be thrilled :-) But it's certainly nothing we should expect with patch 2.3 ;-)
My guess is that some new such system will come along with the the next expansion, assuming they end up making one. In fact, if they are making one, they are probably already working on some new sort of system, and things like ancient items are just cheap ways to add something in the meantime. All speculation, of course.