Welcome to our second Gameplay Deep Dive!
This one’s a bit special – it’s near and dear to my heart because I’ve spent thousands of hours glued to MMOs and ARPGs. Today, we’re diving into the juicy stuff: loot, the many ways to upgrade your precious drops, and… skills? Wait, why skills? Don’t worry, I’ll explain soon enough.
As always, this is super early in development, which means it’s the perfect time for you to chime in, give feedback, and help shape the game before the first playtests. So don’t hold back – tell us what you really think! Oh, and a quick disclaimer: all the images you’ll see are very early concepts whipped up by a game designer (me) with the artistic talent of a potato. Please don’t blame our lovely artist for my crimes against visual design.
Alright, enough small talk. Let’s dive in!
Step1: Acquiring Gear
Thanks to the reddit user u/wildfire393, you’re getting some insight into how loot will be acquired in Enu. We really appreciate you bringing this up!
Our current plan is for loot to drop randomly from enemies, with different areas potentially having slightly varied loot tables. We also want powerful and unique items to be tied to bosses, allowing for target-farming. Additionally, basic items will be available at a vendor, ensuring you’re never stranded without essential abilities.
While we can’t provide exact drop rates yet, our goal is to strike a balance – having enough drops to encourage experimentation without overwhelming your inventory with underwhelming loot. We want to avoid situations where you feel forced to return to town every five minutes just to manage your gear. Your feedback will be crucial in fine-tuning these systems once playtesting begins!
The Gearskill System: Where Loot Meets Playstyle
First things first: why are we talking about skills in a blog about itemization? Well, because our Gearskill System bridges the two worlds. In Enu, the gear you find doesn’t just give you stats – it comes with skills attached to it. That means every new piece of gear you equip can drastically change how you play. Want to switch from a fireball-flinging mage to a barbarian storming into hordes of enemies? Just swap your gear. You’ll constantly find new skills and tweak your playstyle to suit your mood (or your latest crazy build idea).
Gear comes in three main types, each tied to a specific type of skill:
Auto-Attack
Your bread-and-butter, resource-generating main attack.
Regular Ability
A stronger attack that consumes resources or has a cooldown.
Ultimate
A game-changing, screen-shaking powerhouse skill that you can only use once in a while.
There’s also a fourth skill – your rotation ability – which is tied to your class and can be customized through leveling and other progression systems. Think of it as your signature move.
What’s on the Gear? Let’s Break It Down
Let’s take a look at an example piece of gear: “Level 3, Rank 1: Celestial Strike” Here’s what it all means:
Name
A super cool name for a super cool piece of gear.
Skill
This section describes the skill attached to the gear. For abilities, it’ll also show resource costs, cooldowns, or other key details. Ultimates will display how much ultimate resource is needed per charge. Ultimate resource will be disconnected from your regular resource and will be gained with kills, damage and heals.
Level
The level of the gear depends on your player level when it drops. It determines the base value of the gear – like damage output, healing, shielding, or something more creative. The level also affects the possible range for affixes:
Affixes
Affixes are randomly generated bonuses that can roll on your gear. The number of affixes, their values, and which ones appear are all subject to the whims of RNGesus.
We love a bit of randomness to keep things exciting, but we’re eager to hear your thoughts on how much RNG is too much.
Rank
You can upgrade each piece of gear up to Rank 12. Each rank increases its base value (like damage). But beware: upgrading can fail, and failure might reduce the rank. Don’t panic, though – there are thresholds to protect your gear from dropping too far.
Tiers
Reaching new tiers by upgrading your gear doesn’t just protect it from rank drops – it also unlocks runeslots:
Runeslot
These slots are where runes come into play. Runes don’t just tweak stats – they alter the skill itself. Want your Celestial Strike to have more projectiles? There’s a rune for that. Runes are the ultimate way to customize your skills and make them truly your own.
Runes can also be upgraded to increase their potency.
Tags
Tags help you figure out which runes can affect which parts of a skill. For example, if a skill has the “projectile” tag, runes with the same tag can modify that aspect.
The Big Picture: A Summary
Level: Determines the base value of the gear and the range of affixes. It’s tied to your player level and can’t be increased later.
Rank: Upgrading rank increases the base value (like damage) but doesn’t affect affixes.
Tiers: Unlock runeslots, giving you more ways to customize your skills.
Runes: The real game-changers. They let you tweak and tailor your skills to fit your playstyle.
Final Thoughts
We’re super excited about the Gearskill System and the depth it adds to itemization. But this is just the beginning, and your feedback will be crucial in shaping the system. Do you love the complexity? Hate it? Want more runeslots? Fewer? Let us know!
And remember, this is all a work in progress. The images are placeholder atrocities, the numbers are still being tweaked, and the system is evolving. But one thing’s for sure: we’re building this game with players like you in mind. So don’t be shy – drop your thoughts in the comments and help us make Enu the best it can be!
