Supporter newsletter 50

Issue
This is a copy of Eternal and Diamond Supporter Newsletter #50, published by Grinding Gear Games.

Hey Diamond, Eternal and Unique Item Creator Supporters,

For the next month we’ll be focused on the 1.1.0 content update.

A lot is already underway for it, but there is still a lot to put together. There will be a news post at the end of this week that starts to outline what is in it.

Balancing Unique Items

I thought I’d write a little about the balance of unique items. This is partially in mind because we are preparing to look at doing a rebalance of some uniques for the 1.1.0 patch.

Initially we tried to live with our mistakes in balance, but that turned out to be the wrong decision. Over the course of a 4 month league, players would converge on the best gear for their builds, and having uneven balance between items would make the game ultimately less interesting.

We did make a set of changes in 1.0.0 which did improve things, but there are uniques in the current cycle that could do with further adjustment. I’ll take a few weeks to talk about unique balance, so I thought I’d address one element of balance this week.

Opportunity Cost

Uniques can be assessed, in balance terms, as things that provide costs and benefits. The most immediate cost when wearing any item is what it prevents you from wearing. This is an opportunity cost.

When you have a unique in a slot, it needs to be compared to what a rare in that slot normally can give. So an end game unique in an armour slot will often have to provide life, or some equivalent survivability, or have a benefit that outshines that survivability. Otherwise the opportunity cost of wearing the item is too high. Weapons need to be compared the most damaging rares, jewelry can fulfil a variety of functions, but you can compare a unique to the best general use case.

As well as comparing uniques to rares, they can be compared to other unique items. Is there a unique strictly better than the one we are making? If so, then there is something wrong. Either the new unique is too weak, or the old one too good. Ideally the answer to a question about which unique of two is best in a slot should be “it depends”.

Low level unique items aren’t compared to high level ones, as they fulfil different roles.

One way we can have “it depends” be a more likely answer is to use mechanics that aren’t strictly numerically comparable. I’ll discuss this concept more next week.

Insider Info

1.1.0 will contain at least 25 pieces of 3d art for existing unique items, or alternate art versions of uniques. Here is an image of 3 of them: http://i.imgur.com/DWi3EQd.jpg