New Loot System
Rhialto's notes on the New Loot System (NLS), slated for 2018.
The NLS is a proposed change to Wyvern's randomized loot, including weapons, armor, and certain magic items such as wands, rods and scrolls. It is loosely inspired by loot systems in game franchises such as Diablo, World of Warcraft, Borderlands, Dead Island, Dying Light, and Destiny. These games use a now-standardized color-coding system for loot rarity: white (common), green (uncommon), blue (rare), purple (very rare), and orange (legendary/named). Each rarity class is typically at least an order of magnitude rarer than the previous class, so you can think of 9/10 items being white, 1/10 being green, 1/100 being blue, 1/1000 being purple and 1 in 10,000 being orange. These numbers are approximate, but should give you the feel. You are likely to find an orange item only once in a rare while, and perhaps never, unless you play the game a lot.
The goal of the NLS is not to provide "better" items that obsolete today's items and make everyone more powerful -- although the net effect is likely to be that there are better items available for level 30-50 players than you can find today, primarily because today's items were balanced for a max level of 30, where the NLS loot will be spread out smoothly over 50 levels (or more).
You can think of NLS as a smooth progression from today's low-end items (e.g., a plain shortsword) up through today's artifacts, where the wield levels are set so that you will want to discard your current weapon almost every time you level up, or at least every few levels. The drop rates will also be based on your level or your group's average level, so you'll generally find loot that's approximately correct for your level -- naturally, only if you're in an area that's also approximately correct for your level. You won't find level 50 loot in the newbie house, even if you're level 50. If you're in a level that's too dangerous for your character, you might find loot drops that are higher level than you - but you won't be able to wield/wear/use them. You can of course always save them for later or sell them off.
If you find a legendary (orange) item that's around level 45-50 for its minimum wield level, it should be roughly as good as the artifacts today (anywhere from the worst artifacts to the best ones), but it will be a permanent item. If you find a legendary weapon for level 20, it might not be as good as one of today's vendor artifacts, but it will definitely be one of the best items you will be able to wield as a level 20-25 character.
So the difference in NLS loot vs. today's loot comes down to the difference in power between the top-end 10/10 loot items today, and the artifacts today. I haven't worked through the math yet, but I would guess that a high-end 10/10 item, such as a 10/10 heavy club or a 10/10 red dragon mail, might be roughly the same power as level 25-30 purple-rarity item. Let's say it's level 30. That means that you can expect that between levels 31 and 50, you will be able to find loot that smoothly increases in power until you get what the current top artifacts are today.
The top artifacts today (e.g. crimson sorrow, wicked saber, hofud, annihilator, bonecrusher) would correspond roughly to level 45 to 50 legendary items in NLS. An NLS purple will be rustproof and an orange will be no-damage, automatically, without needing the mod machine. So oranges, in particular, will be highly sought after, because they are basically artifacts but they're permanent.
However, they will be extremely rare. More rare than 10/10 cloth items today. You will probably not be able to find them yourself very often -- more likely you will wind up buying them from other players via the eBay-style auction system I'll be launching next year. They will be expensive. Moreover, there will be substantial RNG variability in items at a particular level. If you've played Borderlands a lot, you'll know that just because you find a Pestilent Defiler doesn't mean it's the best one that can be generated. They're all fantastic weapons, but each defiler has its own stats generated by its barrel, clip, etc. You can spend quite some time just trying to find a teeny upgrade for a weapon in the top of its class.
In practice, the stats for a given legendary weapon won't make much difference, unless you're a _collector_. A big driver for the NLS is collectible loot. You may only need one or two weapons for grinding, but many players will want to collect entire sets of named orange legendaries or ultra-legendaries (cyan) for display in their homes. It may not matter to you, but to some player's, that's the endgame. Collecting legendaries.
If you think the current artifacts are crap, then you're in for bitter disappointment, because the only way I'd make more powerful weapons and armor is if I also made more powerful monsters than we have today -- meaning your net kills per minute won't change. I'm not trying to speed the game up.
NLS will have manufacturers, like in Borderlands. It's more or less an extension of what we already have inherited from games like Nethack -- you have elvish armor and weapons, orcish armor and weapons, "regular" (presumably human-made) armor and weapons, dwarvish, and so on. So humans, elves, dwarves and orcs will be 4 out of the 8 or so manufacturers in Wyvern, and all NLS items will be from exactly one manufacturer. Each manufacturer will be highly specialized, whether it's in elemental damage (or protection), or melee damage, or weapon speed or whatever. They will be balanced, so the manufacturer you choose for your build will be based on your preferred playstyle.
Incidentally, I am very likely to make accuracy start to matter again. It's basically only an issue for level 1-5 players today; before very long your accuracy goes to 100% and you never worry about it again. Weapons of +10 accuracy are useless. I'll be changing everyone's base accuracy (for a given weapon skill level) to be lower, so that you all actually start caring about accuracy bonuses on weapons.
Crown-bought artifacts will always remain an option for people who want a temporary DPS/tank boost without needing to go off on a long search for collectible legendaries.
