How to increase the longevity of player equipment in MMO-RPGs?
Many MMO's have a problem with items. Items players get before reaching max level are usually discarded pretty quickly, and even when a player likes the look/feel of an item, often they are forced to change to a newer model a few levels later.
This breaks a bit of the immersion. For example: A player that wants to be "a warrior with a big 2h-sword" might be forced to swap to an Axe later, just because he did not find a new (better) sword in a long time.
What are some ways this can be improved?
Objectives:
- Make items found before max-level to be more relevant, to encourage exploration and "having fun" instead of just doing the content that will bring a higher level item.
- Allow players to keep items they like longer.
@Mr.NobodyItems that can level up
[draft]
Lore: weapons/items absorb life essence from vanquished enemies. At certain power thresholds, boss-type and/or rare materials can be used to upgrade the item. This also helps make sure heroes aren't carried by other players, since the items need to be upgraded before progressing.
But how can normal found items compete with epic items find in a rare location? How to make both types of items compete on equal grounds? And how to make both items represent their strength visually (so players can still see how strong enemies are based on their items).
- Allow players to keep items they find and level them up over time so they can keep them longer.
- Make items have a default starting quality. For example: [white-item]
- Require certain resources, crafting and/or quests to lvl up to different qualities [enhanced], [magically-enhanced], [epic] etc.
- As the item levels up, it changes in looks, but keeping the original item as basis (make it shinier, add a spell effect etc but don't change it's shape).
Advantages:
- If items can be leveled up, players can keep items they like.
- Players can build the hero they want. They can keep a very 'classic hero' visual like a paladin, without being forced to use weapons with a crazy look (sometimes dev's exagerate with epic weapon's looks, a player might just want his paladin to have a simple sword that matches a paladin.
- player leveling can be halted as long as items don't reach a certain level, forcing players to run dungeons or do certain quests before they can continue leveling [efforts to avoid lvl boosting] and related to the post: Levels: How to implement best?.
- players who wish to lvl up a low level sword, will need low level resources, which can help the economy.
- Players can be remembered by the weapons they wield.
- More diversity, which helps our 1. Principle.
- if we accept "no player levels" as a solution, it is interesting to replace the character lvl progression with item-level progressions. Higher level weapons can unlock higher level skills and abilities, which helps new players ease into the class.