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Should Best In Slot Exist?
anemo
Member RarePosts: 1,903
Should there be any such thing as a Best In Slot item in an MMORPG?
In a game that cares about player skill only, I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing (but why bother with a levelling system then). There only being allowed to be a BIS item means that the devs can't be evil and make you grind 15 times to get every situational item.
Personally I think a Best In Slot item is pretty braindead, or at least indicative that the devs choose to leave something unbalanced. RPGs should be about building your character and hopefully making them unique, if everyone is aiming for the same achievement and ends up in the same place that's more along the lines of growth instead of development (I'm sure someone will bash me for such silly wording, but growth is just something that happens and development has some adaptation or choice implied).
Or if you do have BIS you should at least provide reason to not want to use it all the time. Could be maintenance costs (higher than some rewards), chance of loss, some sort of fuel cost, or maybe something more creative like NPCs refusing to talk to you.
In a game that cares about player skill only, I guess it's not necessarily a bad thing (but why bother with a levelling system then). There only being allowed to be a BIS item means that the devs can't be evil and make you grind 15 times to get every situational item.
Personally I think a Best In Slot item is pretty braindead, or at least indicative that the devs choose to leave something unbalanced. RPGs should be about building your character and hopefully making them unique, if everyone is aiming for the same achievement and ends up in the same place that's more along the lines of growth instead of development (I'm sure someone will bash me for such silly wording, but growth is just something that happens and development has some adaptation or choice implied).
Or if you do have BIS you should at least provide reason to not want to use it all the time. Could be maintenance costs (higher than some rewards), chance of loss, some sort of fuel cost, or maybe something more creative like NPCs refusing to talk to you.
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And i really don't like the idea i've got something great and rare stuff but i don't want to use it because there's a chance i can lose it in one way or another.
They are also situational and totally dependent on activity and build. I don't know of any game (although I'm sure there must be some P2W crap out there that works this way) that has a one-size-fits-all BIS, which is what you're implying.
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As for BiS I agree qith Quizz, if a single item is clearly the best thing no matter your build the devs are just lazy. That a specific item would be best at a specific situation is fine but not always.
Take a P&P game like D&D, a maxed ring of protection is a great thing to have on your finger but if you get a fireball thrown at you a ring of evasion would be far better. That ring would be useless if someone just slash you with a sword though.
Many of the early MMOs were closer to this, a flaming sword was great against ice elementals but not against fireelementals.
What you fight against, your playstyle and specc should all matter so no thing will be the best overall for your class.
I think games should try to achieve balance between giving gear that's best for your chosen class, specs and role, and giving ways to customize your character further. The best MMO is a game that gives you some customization through items but not too much.
ESO imo does a decent job with this. There is a definite "Top tier" of CP360 gear but it isn't like you have a set for each class that is the absolute best bar none.
There is at LEAST a couple degrees of separation such as Magicka vs Stamina, Procs vs Straight stats, etc.
It's still not AS situational as older games but a step up from the one size fits all BiS you have in most games today.
I hate BiS because I like when everyone is unique and not running around with the same equipment. I prefer rares in every slot, i also think unique or legendary items should be truly legendary and have a very rare drop chance. That's jus tme.
Cryomatrix
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Gear progression is probably one of the biggest issues in this genre. Everyone kind of hates it, but everyone kind of loves [and almost needs] it at the same time.
There is no way to avoid the BiS "issue" unless you make tiered/templated gear like in GW2 - but that comes with some obvious drawbacks.
I think BiS is a great way to get people run content they otherwise wouldn't. This was really useful in EverQuest, because it meant people didn't move off of previous end game content the second an expansion launched. The "BiS" items were so good, that many of them overshadowed drops in the lower raids of the new expansion. This also made it fairly natural to recruit lesser geared players, because you could always gear them up with last-expansions end-game gear without them running into issues trying to get drops veteran members needed. Only the BiS drops posed an issue in this zones (class armor, for example, didn't...). They still did Tacvi even after Omens of War launched. They still did Anguish and ran the non-raid minis for augments after DoDH was released.
I think the issue with BiS, for me, isn't so much that it exists; but that any major content patch or expansion pretty much wipes out your BiS gear. BiS takes a lot of effort to get. I don't like seeing months of farming wiped out in a few hours of leveling - especially when I'm paying to play the game.
I think this manner of wiping out your progress to carrot you along is what has ultimately put me off of MMORPGs as a genre. The games do seem like a massive waste of time, because the developers no longer respect the time and effort you put into building your character.
I remember using my Emperor Ssra robe in EQ on my Mage for about 3 expansions. This would never happen in a "modern" MMPROG.
Not all games do this. Some games intentionally have trade-offs between gear where there are several pieces that a given player of a given class could argue is best, varying by build, situation, or even personal preference as to a playing style.
I realized in WoW, the time it took me to kill a mob was the same at lvl 10 as it was in lvl 50 as it was in lvl 60. My character really didn't get any more powerful, I was just running on a hamster wheel. I feel most theme park MMO's are like that. Hence, BiS kind of functions this way, and I think that gear should be designed to not have one item that is just superior to everyone else. There should be drawbacks and pros and cons to gear to be used in the proper situations.
Cryomatrix
You can see my sci-fi/WW2 book recommendations.
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Yeh .. i don't see how BIS can be avoided. Unless numbers are unbounded, there is always a biggest one.
Maybe it is just because I am a pen and paper RPGer but as I see it being better at some things then others should be part of character customization. A ranger from the north should be excellent fighting yetis and direwolfs but no so great at fighting Djinns in the desert.
I like that you can switch between weapons in combat in some games but I don't like when people carrying around 20 full sets of gear to be best in any situation. A bit carrying capacity limit handles that madness.
A lot of the BiS problem though is because the gear make way to big difference compared to your characters stats and specc. A good sword should certainly be helpful to have compared with a bad one but not so incredible OP as it is in many games.
It's like I were to ask you "What are the best midslot items for a thrasher?" rather than getting an answer you'd get a line of questions "What do you plan to use it for?" "Are you running auto-cannons or artillery in the highslots?" "How big if a fleet will you be flying with?" "What do they fly" "Do you have an idea what your enemy will be flying"
And at the end you'll get an answer, and those answers might even have some similarities, but I guarantee that answer will vary quite a bit depending on who answers your question.
If there is only one way to play through the content, it means playing your class in a specific way which means there will be a mathematical best way to gear your character. I hate games like this. It makes them exceedingly boring as you learn to play your character in that way early on and then never change, simply upgrading your gear every now and again to see bigger numbers. The numbers change, but the experience stays the same.
If a game gives you lots of ways to play and lots of different approaches to content then BiS stops existing. There will remain best gear for specific builds/situations, but no overall best in slot.
This is one of the reasons I loved vanilla lotro. By having 3 dedicated support classes and no enrage timers, everybody approached content differently. Some would "brute force" the content - loading up on trinity classes and focusing on killing stuff quickly. Others would go the debuff route, lessening the strain on healers and making things a bit safer, but taking longer. Others still would go glass cannon - aiming to stack up on debuffs / cc in such a way that DPS went through the roof, but any mistake could spell disaster. As a captain (buffer/jack-of-all-trades) it meant I kept 3 or 4 different gear sets available so I could adjust my playstyle and tactics to suit the group and content. Going full DPS gear would be a bad choice if my group setup required me to focus more on healing. Going full healing gear would be a bad choice if there were lots of adds that required me to off-tank.
I agree that if equipment didn't make as much of a difference there wouldn't be the possibility of bis, but also little reason to find better gear.
1. craftable
2. best for one or a few specific builds, less than 50% of characters
then it's ok.