Recrafting, the cause of, and solution to, all of loot's problems

| Monday, June 21, 2010
Imagine a world where leather drops, a warrior rolls need, and no one calls ninja. Instead the blacksmith in the group sees gold coins falling before his eyes.

Let's imagine for a moment that armor is built up, not merely hammered into existence fully formed. Mail isn't merely metal, but is built upon a foundation of leather. Similarly, plate as well. This provides a bit more cushioning. And it allows the warrior to roll need.

Imagine if blacksmiths and leatherworkers could add, or remove, metal from armor. Using common materials and common training, they could add on sheets and links of metal, or take them off, allowing far greater flexibility in gear choices.

This brings in some work for LW and BS. It reduces wasted gear. It also gives a slight bias to mail and a higher one to plate. After all, they could just wear the gear without more armor, for no additional cost, while going the other direction requires pulling off the extra metal. They would get some bars from it, but I predict a lot of guilds would provide the upgrading metal by taking the downgrading metal.

Obviously this isn't going to happen. Blizzard has made its armor decisions for Cataclysm. Who knows what will come next, but I doubt a more active role for crafting fits into their vision for WoW.

12 comments:

Michael Young said...

I still can't believe that after all this time and all the loot drama that we still have opposed rolls on loot. Why on earth don't they just make it so that when a boss dies, everyone in the group just gets a random bind on pickup item from the guy's loot list?

Rice said...

Leads to much faster (many times faster) gearing and in consequence much faster downing/farming of bosses. Content would not come out fast enough to compensate/make sense (azeroth would look like a total crapsack if there was a crisis every month)

Klepsacovic said...

Simple solution: remove the repair vendor.

Dwism said...

What did tailors ever do to you?

Klepsacovic said...

Fine, tailors can... um... reweave the leather into cloth. Quit crying ya dress-wearing sissies!

SlikRX said...

There's already a *little* of this, but it only with unbound items.

As a BS, if I want to make a green iron hauberk, I have to start with a set of green leather armor.

I believe there are a couple other similar items...

That being said, your take on upgrading an item would be very cool. But it would be a tad unfair if everyone rolled need on everything. *shrug*

Chris said...

Doesn't work... armour classes aren't about the armour granted but about the stats wanted by that group.

Plate wearers are strength, mail are agi, leather is agi.

Realistically what you should be able to do though is uparmour items (since stripping down doesn't really work) making pure plate drops rarer and mail / leather more common.

A BS then has patterns such as Agi-> Str to convert the items up.

Klepsacovic said...

@SlikRX: Why would it be unfair?

@2nd Nin: Presumably this is with either stat conversions or with more standardized stats, such as moving everyone to secondary stats such as ap or crit rather than strength and agility. Perhaps that's overcomplicating things, or alternatively oversimplifying since primary stats are one step removed.

Video Game Philosopher said...

I like the idea, but WoW would never have a system like this. If blizzard were to do something similar, they would just make crafting professions act like enchanters, and unmake the leather/metal armor into component materials.

-VG of http://www.vgtheory.blogspot.com

jeffo said...

I don't think this is such a bad idea. I think it's a much better idea than everyone getting a drop from every boss. And, maybe if this were done right, it would stop the endless whining of the people who want to take away my Spellpower plate.

Pazi said...

Unfortunately I can't remember where I heard of this but aren't there plans to give some professions the ability to modify stats on items in cataclysm?

Klepsacovic said...

@VGP: I'm having trouble visualizing that.

@jeffo: They'd not whine, they'd just take it and tear off the plate. :P

@Yazi: Reforging, but it's a small stat tweak, like converting 10 spirit to 5 int, for a made up example.

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