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Edited by Hylebos: 2/7/2014 3:57:35 AM
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[quote][b]2) The Sub-Exotic Tiers and Standard Ascension[/b][/quote]I first started thinking about this topic back in December when I read about Destiny's equipment tiers in the latest issue of GameInformer:[quote]"Gear is loosely gathered into four tiers: basic (white), common (green), superior (purple), and the coveted exotic items (gold). Characters can only wield one exotic weapon and one exotic armor piece, but you can carry as many as you like, and switch between them at your leisure."[/quote]Miller, Matt. "Destiny." Game Informer Jan. 2014: 59. Print. Initially, I interpreted the paragraph to mean that all weapons and armor belonged to strict tiers with no means to advance them, but the more I thought about it, the less that perspective made sense. In Destiny, Bungie wants each player to develop a relationship with the equipment they use, but how could I develop a relationship with something like a basic hand cannon if I knew that it's going to become obsolete the moment I acquire a common, superior, or exotic version of that weapon? I think it makes much more sense to think of the sub-exotic equipment tiers as less about the final potential of a piece of equipment and more of a descriptor of its current power level. In my mind, all sub-exotic equipment in Destiny would be found by default at basic tier, allowing for maximum user-input into the customization process. To reach higher tiers, a player would need to ascend their equipment, a process that could work a number of ways depending on how formal Bungie wants to make the barrier between each tier and how much investment a piece of equipment requires to qualify for the ascension process. An example implementation of this feature would allow players to ascend any piece of equipment that has been fully upgraded. The player would need to bring the piece of equipment to one of The Last City's weapon-smiths or armor-smiths and provide them with money and a special item that gets consumed in ascension. The item required would depend on what you're ascending and what tier you're ascending it to, think of something like a "Common Shotgun Core" or a "Superior Armor Kit". Functionally, it would be cool if ascending a tier acted as a soft reset for that piece of equipment. The newly ascended armor or weapon would be initially weaker than it was when it was fully upgraded in the previous tier, but as a tradeoff, it would have better stat scaling and would offer better customization choices than before. This would discourage players from mindlessly ascending their gear, and makes the choice to take a piece of equipment to the next level more powerful. It also gives players a natural opportunity to redo some earlier decisions they've made with regards to upgrades without compromising the investment of that item. This is just a very rough and imperfect implementation and many of its details are certainly up for debate, but I hope it gives the reader a basic idea of how equipment ascension might work in Destiny. ...So how do Exotics fit into all of this? [b]Destiny Speculation: Exotic Ascension continues on the next post. [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63605637&path=1]Please click this Hyperlink to continue reading.[/url][/b][spoiler][b]Table of Contents 1) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63605619]Introduction / Original Post[/url] 2) >> The Sub-Exotic Tiers and Standard Ascension << 3) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63605637&path=1]The Exotic Tier and the First Implementation[/url] 4) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63605630&path=1]The Second Implementation[/url] 5) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63605626&path=1]The Third Implementation[/url] 6) [url=http://www.bungie.net/en/Forum/Post?id=63605621&path=1]Conclusion[/url][/b][/spoiler]
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  • I know you said to reply to the main thread, and I have.. but I have one qualm about this one. If I read it correctly, I think you're saying that you'd only be able to find basic level stuff and upgrade it. While I think the colour coded stuff works as a visual to pick stuff up. We've seen in the E3 demo a glowing golden orb, which resulted in an exotic weapon. Now I think we will also see white green and purple orbs. And if upgrading from basic is the best way to go, why did urk say when playing with a lower leveled friend your loot streams will act accordingly. Not giving lower leveled players exotics and not giving higher level players junk.

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  • I originally elaborated more on that point in an earlier version of the thread, but I cut it out when I realized that it diverged from the main train of thought too much and it took too long to explain and justify in full. But since you asked... First and foremost, if sub-exotic equipment dropped at Basic, Common, or Superior tiers, then I'd be concerned about the degree to which players would want to spend resources upgrading basic equipment when they could easily wait for a common or superior version of the same equipment piece to drop. Look at League of Legends' Rune System. Runes are items that players can purchase with currency earned from completing matches, and they are placed into a Rune Page to modify the starting stats of their Champion. All runes are split into three tiers, with tier one runes being strictly worse than tier two runes which are strictly worse than tier three runes. Tier two runes can only be bought at summoner level 10+, and tier three runes can only be bought at summoner level 20+. The end result is that players don't use any runes until they are able to purchase tier three runes at level 20, because the resources wasted to buy those lower tier runes aren't worth the short-term benefit that they provide, it's better to save for the future. Likewise, I'd be concerned that players wouldn't want to upgrade their basic equipment with limited resources like Weapon Kits and Glimmer when they could just save up for when a common or superior equipment piece to drop. That would be rather unfortunate and just as pants on head silly as the rune system is in League of Legends. To counteract that, Destiny could try something like Pokemon. A Wild Pikachu caught at level 5 and raised to level 30 is naturally stronger than a Wild Pikachu caught at level 30, in Destiny, this would mean something like "A Duke Mk.44 that was upgraded from the Basic Tier to Superior Tier is naturally stronger than a Duke Mk.44 dropped at Superior Tier", but that creates the opposite problem. Most players, thinking of the long term, would want to upgrade all of their equipment from basic tier and ignore all common and superior drops unless they wanted a quick short-term increase of power. Unlike in Pokemon, there probably won't be something like a breeding system which allows you to put two Superior Conduit F3's into a daycare only for the daycare man to discover a shiny new Basic Conduit F3 which you can then train up to surpass it's parents in power. Not to mention, just because you are a higher level player doesn't mean that you should be exempt from the same investment progression that low level players are doing. If in this situation players would rather level an equipment piece from basic to superior than just find the superior equipment as drops, then why not just make all equipment in general drop by default at basic? That is why I added that line in the final thread. Naturally this is a very rough idea and it hasn't seen as much refinement as the rest of the thread since I cut it pretty early while drafting, but it's just what makes the most sense to me. The sub-exotic tiers should primarily be a measure of investment, not power, and just because you are a higher level player doesn't mean that you should be able to shortcut that investment completely. I'm willing to discuss this more if you'd like, perhaps you'll have a perspective that I didn't think of.

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  • Looks to me like you are using ideas from other genres, like MMO's and RPG's. I like all of this thread, and agree with your ideas. My only hope is that Bungie puts more of these aspects into the game. They have told us that it will have things like this, ideas from other genres that is, but they also appear to be pretty clear about wanting to call Destiny a First-Person Shooter. I hope your ideas make it in.

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  • I think another way to counteract this problem would to just have 1 set tier for weapons, like for example: you can only pick up a superior duke mk.44 and it won't be dropped as basic or common. This way people who truly loved their weapons won't be wanting to just wait until they get a better version.

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