Gear and Item - Feature Spec No.6

Feature No. 6a [gear/item level (IL) & rareness (Q)]

level of each item and its rareness (IL for properties while Q for hardness for acquire) and its stats

Importance: +++++ / difficulty: +++++

price settings, stats relates to IL

Brief

Vision Canvas: players will get satisfied when upgrading items and skills, finishing a hard quest and beating enimies.

Core Pillar: User has a large choice of cards for weapons, skills and spells which promotes different styles of play.

Items for each player is in each character’s inventory (more in feature 2d, inventory). The purpose of having item IL and rareness is to give some insight about how good an item is, as well as provide some background in designing the stats and attributes. Here consists most specs of a gear item as its hierarchy, stats and attributes. However, there are a large variety of items such as food, potion, quest objects, materials, and etc. These also follows the principle of IL and Q that will be discussed in specs. 

Spec

• Like most MMORPG games, there’s a variation of items and gears a player can collect. Each item (gear) should have an item level (refer to IL at the following paragraphs) and quality (refer to Q in the following paragraphs) related to it. 
• IL refers to the level of the item in corresponds to the character’s level. For E.g. an item IL = 20 can only be used if character level 5 or above. 
• Quality refers to the rareness of the item. In the same IL, high rareness has better stats than low rareness.
• Color related to the corresponding rareness can be identified at the following chart: 

• Coarse gray
• Normal white
• Infrequent (uncommon) green
• Rare blue
• Epic purple
• Legend gold
• Special red

• special means an item does not satisfy the rareness system, but does not mean it is the rarest item
• colors and rareness list may differ from this table at last

• Gear info can be found from the character info panel (details at feature 2f, panels). Similar to gear panel in WoW (as in following picture), gears are separated by parts, such as head / hand / arms / body / legs / shoes / rings / wrists etc. 

 

Each gear should have some of the following stats:

• - Strength: physical attack power (AD)
• - Intellect: magical attack power (AP) / heal power
• - Vitality: health point (HP)
• - Piety: max stamina & stamina recovery rate
• - Skill Speed: reduce the global cooldown of skills and cards
• - Armor: reduce the damage received
• - Crit: crit hit (heal) rate & crit hit (heal) damage boost
• - Dexterity: reduce auto hit delay & moving speed
• - Skills: the skill from this gear (details in feature 6b, gear skills)

all characters have both strength and intellect even his class is an archer (which is traditionally AD based); however, AP for physical major characters can affect spell cards’ power and may affect some skills he has (based on the description of the skill, more in feature 6b, gear special skills). 

The only weapon consists following additional stats:

• - Physical damage / Magical damage: damage dealt by normal attack
• - Hit delay: delay between 2 different normal attacks
• - Hit range: range to perform auto hit

Each gear should have all these additional attributes:

• - IL: item level (level requirements)
• - Q: quality (rareness)
• - Name: item name
• - Class: which class can use this gear
• - Durability: 100% - 0%, 0% durability does not offer stats for the character, low durability offers fewer stats for the character
• - Sell price: the gold you can get if you sell it to NPC. <can’t sell> refer to unsellable items

Each gear can have the following additional attributes if possible:

• - <unique>: can only have one these items (based on UID, more in feature 6d, gear/item index)
• - <binding>: can’t sell on auction board (the P2P trade board, more in feature 5c, auction board)
• - <dye able>: can customize color
• - <not dissemble>: can not dissemble to materials (only for special jobs like Enchanter in WoW)
• - <made by XXX>: only if this item is made by other players

Beats

• Items and gears are dropped by 1. Reward from quests (see feature 14b, reward system), 2. Defeat an enemy, 3. Purchased by gold from elsewhere (see feature 5, currencies), 4. Made by the character himself (see feature 7. Crafts, [undecided])
• The character can see details (assets) by hovering the mouse on its icon / using it quickly by double click it / showing the operation menu by right click it (more in feature 15g, right-clicking menu) / moving it by dragging it. 

Assets

• Icon graphics / 
• inventory / 
• character stats / 
• character graphics / 

Additions

A sample of a gear description panel can be found in the next feature spec: gear skills. 

Feature No. 6b [gear skills]

gears & weapons that has special skills (active/passive)

Importance: +++++ / difficulty: +++++

skills design, effects

Brief

Vision Canvas: players will get satisfied when upgrading items and skills, finishing a hard quest and beating enemies.

Core Pillar: The user has a large choice of cards for weapons, skills, and spells which promotes different styles of play.

Gears come along with its unique skills (an existing example of this genre is from Divinity Original Sin 2, as pictures follow)

A character’s skill list consists of 

• 1. Normal common skills for different classes (common skills, more in feature 2h, character common skills), 
• 2. Gear granted skills, 
• 3. Skills from special places/buffs. But the effect and damage (heal) from a skill, either common or gear granted, are based on the corresponding stats of the character

Spec

The skill panel of each gear (separate from the stats and attributes panel) should be like the active skill in DOTA 2: 

 

Each gear can have active skills (or multiple active skills) and passive skills (or multiple passive skills). These skills should be written separate from the stats and attributes panel and inform about these entries:

All active skills should have:

• - Name: skill name
• - <active>: to inform that this is an active skill
• - MP cost: cost of character’s MP
• - Description: the effect of using this skill
• - Cool down: the cool down of this skill. If it has no cool down then it equals to GCD
• - Cast time: the time needed for you to cast the spell
• - (if applicable) class restrictions: the only class(es) that can use this skill

All passive skills should have

• - Name: skill name
• - <passive>: to inform that this is an active skill
• - MP cost: cost of character’s MP
• - Description: the effect of using this skill, and its trigger condition
• - Cool down: the cool down of this skill. 
• - (if applicable) class restrictions: the only class(es) that can use this skill

After the character equips a gear that has active skills, the corresponding skill will occur in the character’s skill book (more in feature 2h, character (common) skills, skill book); so the player can drag the skill into the action bars and assign the hot key (or not). 

The demo of a skill: 

[1]

• - Name: echo shield
• - <passive>
• - MP cost: 200 MP
• - Description: grant character a shield that blocks 316 points of damage once character’s HP drops below 20% and MP is enough.
• - Cool down: 120 seconds
• - Class restrictions: all classes

[2]

• - Name: Fell Cleve
• - <active>
• - MP cost: 500 MP
• - Description: use your hammer to punch the enemy’s head, deal 439 points physical damage and stun the enemy for 4 seconds. All your damage towards this enemy boost by 15% during his stun time. 
• - Cool down: 40 seconds
• - Class restriction: warrior / paladin

Beats

• After a character equips the gear with skills, this skill (either active or passive) goes into his skill book. 
• The Player fills this skill to his action bar by dragging this skill from the skill book to his action bar. 
• A character can direct use the active skill by using the corresponding hotkey / click on the skill icon in the action bar. 
• If all criteria (MP is enough, not in cool down, not being controlled by the debuff, the target is legal and range able) meet, deal the effect as in description, and then this skill enters cool down; all other skills enter GCD. 
• If a character unequipped a gear that has an active skill, then the corresponding skill in the action bar turns gray and interactable. Delete the corresponding skill in the skill book. 
• No matter what, available passive skills are always in the skill book. Availability and cool-down information can be shown in buff/debuff slots.

Assets

• Icon graphics / 
• skill book /
• character stats /
•  battle resources /
•  cool down

Additions

A sample of a gear description panel

 

 

 

Feature No. 6c [gear/item graphics]

physical appearance & glyph in inventory

Importance: +++ / difficulty: ++

-

Brief

Vision Canvas: the player will feel enjoyed when collecting good clothes and card graphics

Core Pillar: Users can create and customize their own character using visuals and class and weapon choice

Each item and gear should have its icon that can be shown in the player’s inventory, but as there are too many items and gears, similar items (with distinct UID) can share common icons (such as wolf’s meat and pork can share an icon). The idea or principle of these icons is to coarsely distinguish between different types of items. To make sure that characters eat apples but not magic wands. However, the detailed menu should be displayed when the player hovers over those icons. 

Spec

• Types of items should contain:
• - Food/potion
• - Craft material
• - Quest-related item
• - Gears (unequipped)
• Cards and fragments are not counted as items, they rather appear in the players’ deck manager
• Cards follow the hierarchy of Q (rareness) and IL (item level) (more in feature 6a gear/item level (IL) & rareness (Q))
• Gears are followed with both icons and actual models. The same part of the gear may share similar icons, but different sets of gear should have different actual models (like buying clothes in a shopping mall). A complete set of gear should share the same prefix (like Bahamut’s Head / Bahamut’s Arms / Bahamut’s Heels). The complete sets of these outfits should represent some value from aesthetics and outfit design that can be distinguished from other normal gears; however, players should be still capable to modify the combinations or dye colors (if applicable).

 

^ outfit preview

^ in actual gear panel

Beats

• Items and gears are dropped by 1. Reward from quests (see feature 14b, reward system), 2. Defeat an enemy, 3. Purchased by gold from elsewhere (see feature 5, currencies), 4. Made by the character himself (see feature 7. Crafts, [undecided])
• .by right-click it (more in feature 15g, right-click menu) / move it by dragging it. 

Assets

• Icon graphics / 
• inventory / 
• character info

 

Feature No. 6d [gear/item index]

UID (unit id) for each item

Importance: +++ / difficulty: ++

Brief

This feature is not based on some kind of gameplay or pillars, but the UID for each item can categorize different items from each other. However, this UID should not be seen in ordinary panels. Only if the player is designing macros or debugging some issues can see this UID. Also, UID helps a lot in developing games and debugging some bugs. 

Spec

• Each item should has its unique UID that is different from any other item. UID should has its naming method such as in a “XXXXXX” number UID, the first two characters refer to the type of the item, the third digit refers to its rareness, last three digits are named a sequence of all items fulfill this category. 
• UID should not be seen in the UI system; however, UID can be seen through debugging mode (like developer mode in Android).
• The database should contain all UID corresponding to the actual item. This makes search and debugging easier. 

Beats

• After entering the debugging mode, the UID of each item (skill) should be seen at the description panel.