Thread: Give us socketable gear!

This comes from a desire to build and experiment, because all of us have faced itemization issues at some time or another, and the easiest way around it is to have socketable items with a few stats on them (like +122 might with several open sockets), and let the players complete the gear. The items used in socketing should be obtained from rep, crafting, instancing, PvMP, etc.

Thoughts?

I do not think the game can support socked gear. Remember in order to do sockets for Legendary items, all the customization got put on the Character sheet via LI panel. I am thinking the reason for the six or eight Legendary Items limit is that Turbine does not have the memory budget on their server to hold all that information for regular gear. You see the memory constraints in:

1) We have very little inventory space.
2) Legendary items are strictly limited via the LI panel.
3) Cosmetic slots which only have a few stats like the appearance.
4) The fixed path for the few upgradable items.

The entire game designed around a table driven system. Each item has a master entry with all the stats on the server. I carry item 34,654. It is the same as all the other 34,654s.

Doing it this way has a couple neat features:

1) It is difficult to end up a corrupted item via repeated character loads and saves. As long as the item number does not take a bit error, all the rest of the stats are regenerated via the master entry on the world server.

2) Balancing player builds is easier. No need to worry about people coming with a creative combination of stats by modding various items. All you have to worry about is how the players put sets together from single pieces. Or how they hot swap the custom sets in combat.

Turbine had a lot of problems with issue 1. Bit errors on save and loads especially in their older games. Turbine had interesting problems in this game with players optimizing traits, skill rotations, legendary items and their gear.

I remember being slightly annoyed when Turbine decided to do away with the Captain Rallying Cry cooldown reduce stat on higher level Captain class sets. If you doing content where there was a continual supply of prey animals. You never had to worry about the group dying. The Captains were always ready to raise their Lawn Darts. Library at Tham Mirdan was so easy. Run in circles with your Captain. Have your buddies kill the Craban at a nice steady pace.

Originally Posted by Yula_the_Mighty

I do not think the game can support socked gear. Remember in order to do sockets for Legendary items, all the customization got put on the Character sheet via LI panel. I am thinking the reason for the six or eight Legendary Items limit is that Turbine does not have the memory budget on their server to hold all that information for regular gear. You see the memory constraints in:

1) We have very little inventory space.
2) Legendary items are strictly limited via the LI panel.
3) Cosmetic slots which only have a few stats like the appearance.
4) The fixed path for the few upgradable items.

The entire game designed around a table driven system. Each item has a master entry with all the stats on the server. I carry item 34,654. It is the same as all the other 34,654s.

Doing it this way has a couple neat features:

1) It is difficult to end up a corrupted item via repeated character loads and saves. As long as the item number does not take a bit error, all the rest of the stats are regenerated via the master entry on the world server.

2) Balancing player builds is easier. No need to worry about people coming with a creative combination of stats by modding various items. All you have to worry about is how the players put sets together from single pieces. Or how they hot swap the custom sets in combat.

Turbine had a lot of problems with issue 1. Bit errors on save and loads especially in their older games. Turbine had interesting problems in this game with players optimizing traits, skill rotations, legendary items and their gear.

I remember being slightly annoyed when Turbine decided to do away with the Captain Rallying Cry cooldown reduce stat on higher level Captain class sets. If you doing content where there was a continual supply of prey animals. You never had to worry about the group dying. The Captains were always ready to raise their Lawn Darts. Library at Tham Mirdan was so easy. Run in circles with your Captain. Have your buddies kill the Craban at a nice steady pace.

Rally cry cooldown is stilla legacy, and the perserverance PvMP set still has a defeat response cooldown...

And how about we don't worry about the implementation details and let Turbine do so, becaus neither of us have access to theri codebase... unless you're admitting that you ARE a Turbine dev, at which point you've prolly just broke an NDA because you are shating confidential information with the public.

So, that wall of text has what exactly to do with the OP, other than be a fancy way of sounding negatively, faux authoritative, and express extreme doubt at Turbine's coding ability.

I'd enjoy what you're suggesting, and have made vaguely related suggestions on crafting customization myself. However, the "wall of text" Yula posted is just bringing up two perfectly valid points:

• Turbine has personal inventory issues due to the way the game's architected. This is not news. Keeping most stuff in static tables (so it becomes just an item index and dye index) is one way to "streamline" the inventory. The converse, allowing many items to be sigificantly customized, would increase personal inventory resource requirements (which we know is problematic for them).
• The balancing work involved in managing socketable gear everywhere (and not just in weapon slots) would be quite a bit higher than now. Turbine has a history with "extreme templates", and knows it's difficult to avoid balancing issues when customers have lots of choice about how to build their characters and gear. I don't like the implications of that either (and argued for a skill-based instead of class-based game back before it released), but whether I like it or not... it's a valid issue.

Khafar

I must be tired, I read this as having socks as gear.

No! No! No! and NOOOOOOOO!

Now, for you freaks out there with only 1 toon, sure, it sounds great, until you realize exactly HOW Turbine would implement this.

First, socketable items would be available in the LOTRO store (500tps) and from instance drops, probably on the same drop rate as star-lit crystals, maybe a little higher since you have to mix and match to get the ones you actually want. So to get a fill all the sockets in your armour (2 per?) thats 14 socket items. At roughly 1 drop per every 5th 6-man instance, * 6 (the other players rolling too)... thats 420 instance runs (give or take)... Even with only 1 toon, that would take forever... Us poor saps that raid with 3+ toons are already in enough trouble...

Oh, and of course they won't be retrievable from your armour when you move to another set unless you buy the removal item from the store. (300tps)