(Helping GGG in) Creating a unique item: a breakdown of the breakdown

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I have been kinda sad about PoE balance lately, mostly regarding the top of the tree

Chris confirmed that the top of the tree is being improved in the latest podcast. That is part of the many passive improvements for the upcoming expansion.

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kasub wrote:

Chris confirmed that the top of the tree is being improved in the latest podcast. That is part of the many passive improvements for the upcoming expansion.

Yeah, I am hoping they make some good changes. :o
I basically only play witch and shadow casters, so I might really get back into the game if the changes are awesome! :D

I dont know how others went about this but while I am designing my uniques, I make it a point NOT to ever think about balance or get myself involved with it. One of the ways I do this is to only give stats like +Life without specifying an amount, because if I did specify an amount it would require me to do a whole lot of work (similar to the amount of work Lyralei might have done for some of his stats). I know the end result is GGG will probably just end up tweaking the value anyway which would probably only end in disappointment.

Ive seen it talked about a lot in this thread, and I am pretty confident that trying to both balance your own unique & create it only will cause frustration. I think you should view balance & creation to be mutually exclusive (and for the $1000 you paid you are only creating it and not balancing), for instance if my uniques (both current & future ones) happen to get nerfed, I dont think it would impact on me at all.

I am going to talk about why GGG introduced the pay to create unique items option. Basically GGG wanted their game to have MANY unique items, indeed so many unique items that they couldnt possibly have them all created upon release. That is where supporters come in, GGG offered supporters a chance to create their own uniques and have them added to the game, pretty much a win win situation where GGG satisfies their own goals as well as making extra cash on the side by getting others to come up with interesting ideas. It was never an idea thought up to make a profit per unique, because it is a job they would be doing anyway had they not implemented it. In terms of the program being a failure based on satisfaction of supporters, I wouldnt know much about this as Charan, but I supported GGG while assuming that all of the above things I talked about were a given. Maybe my own personal views are too bleak, I dont know.

As a supporter ($1000 one) it is important that you take the time to make sure you are satisfied with your unique, and if you arent then I would suggest starting from scratch, if necessary, no matter how much time you put into it already. Just be patient & make sure you communicate to GGG what the important concepts behind your unique are, its pretty obvious that GGG are a bit backlogged (since they removed the create a unique option from other supporter packs), but just because they have a lot to do, dont let this pressure you into speeding up your decisions on your unique and ending up with something you arent happy with.

Sadly this comes back to the lack of clear parameters, Metro. Of course we're all going to approach the process differently, and of course GGG, in their endless desire to accommodate, are/were flexible in this regard. Had they simply said, 'for X dollars, you can choose the name, the flavour text, the base item, a theme and give feedback on the art', the sheer range of results would be much less impressive -- but at least everyone would know where they stand, and GGG would have complete freedom to balance as they see fit without the issue of the supporter feeling like their item has been short-changed.

I would never consider that an option, however. There are simply too many smart people out there happy to pay inordinate amounts of money to make their mark. The limitation of slots would have been smarter, but that horse has bolted, found a new herd, made babies and died of old age. Don't bother shutting that gate.

Barring the degradation in communication and the resulting frustration, the custom unique program is indeed win win. It's just that the core promise of 'you will be happy with the result' hinges on that communication.

Your distinction between 'creating an item' and 'balancing it' is fascinating. I think it's a very, very blurry line between the two, and to try to pin it down as otherwise can lead to a lot of problems further down the track. There is no way that we're not seeing the balancing process as part of the creation process, and there's no way it's a bad thing. Perhaps key to this is trusting GGG when they say 'no', but I've unfortunately learned first-hand that a) they're human and b) sometimes I can be right and they can be wrong. Given they're the professionals and I'm just a jerk with a thousand bucks, this is very...very hard to reconcile.

It defies logic, but only until you figure out which bits they were wrong about, and which bits you were right about. In my case, it was a stat that I wasn't going to let go, and forced GGG to work around. I've let go of plenty of other stats, other builds, other drafts, but in that one case, I really put my foot down. In that one case, I was thinking 'creation' not 'balance', whereas of course 'balance' was their sole motivator to modify my 'creation'.

The outcome was worth the effort, worth my obstinacy. And I'll admit -- once it works once, you're probably a little less shy when it comes to sticking to your guns the next time. On the other hand, maybe it was a fluke.

Regarding the nerf/rebalancing: like I said, it's less about whether it would affect you and more about the sort of courtesy we've come to expect from GGG. There is a relationship forged when you design an item, and the strength of that relationship could well hinge on how involved you were at the time with the design (and the balance). I think this one parameter they probably should have set, however. A terms and conditions checkbox: once the item is created, GGG reserves the right to alter the item as necessary to conform with game balance, etc etc. Would that have stopped any of us from going Diaternal? I doubt it. Because we'd know that the likelihood of such an alteration being necessary is quite low.

I don't think GGG assumed that such a condition applied, but obviously they have to do what's right for the game.

...The sad thing is this is all somewhat tangential to most of what I said to begin with, and concerns Bringer of Rain much more than the Goddess. I think if I hadn't been so intensive with creation-as-preemptive-balance, there's every chance that my gripe would be different. And probably less tenable, given that my core issue is with the impossibility of the situation wherein custom designers are not told the limitations of what they can do not because GGG wants to limit them, but because the game, fluid at best, volatile at worst, demands that even an item mid-design be constantly considered as part of the greater whole, a whole the custom designer may not be able to see, and probably shouldn't have to, especially if 'creation' and 'balance' are to be held mutually exclusive.

The problem with mid-design balance is a matter of insider information. Because you are not privy to such information as a unique designer, it becomes difficult to just sit there and accept with no questions asked.

You know that there are concerns, but you don't know why and that causes a rift in communication by no fault of anyone. Its a catch-22 situation where they cannot disclose material information and you need to know why your unique is being adjusted or not accepted.

Personally, I know a hell lot more than I'm supposed to know, some of it with economic value. But not every diamond supporter out there is going to not take advantage of the little insider information that they're given hence the noticeable reluctance to discuss even remotely minute changes to the game.

is there some list of who created each unique? for example crown of thorns - ggg, etc etc

I know the wiki sais that about each unique but I cant be bothered clicking on each one individually :P

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andkamen wrote:

is there some list of who created each unique? for example crown of thorns - ggg, etc etc

I know the wiki sais that about each unique but I cant be bothered clicking on each one individually :P

ignarsoll tries to credit all supporters for their work, so check out his unique item list. :)

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Lyralei wrote:

The problem with mid-design balance is a matter of insider information. Because you are not privy to such information as a unique designer, it becomes difficult to just sit there and accept with no questions asked.

You know that there are concerns, but you don't know why and that causes a rift in communication by no fault of anyone. Its a catch-22 situation where they cannot disclose material information and you need to know why your unique is being adjusted or not accepted.

Personally, I know a hell lot more than I'm supposed to know, some of it with economic value. But not every diamond supporter out there is going to not take advantage of the little insider information that they're given hence the noticeable reluctance to discuss even remotely minute changes to the game.

Not having participated in the process (yet, I hope GGG opens this option up again when they are caught up with the back log), I can't speak to many of the details in this thread, though I do find them enlightening and helpful.

Personally, I would consider the overall theme or purpose of the weapon the significant part, followed by the look of the item and its flavour text. I wouldn't be too interested in the final stats, unless they interfered with what I hoped the purpose/niche was for the item.

As an example - Stormbringer is the most powerful sword in fiction that I know of. It has many abilities, some of which are rarely manifested. It's key ability is to devour souls and feed a portion of them to the user, so the user can slay even more. It's purpose is to bring evil to the world. Its method for achieving the purpose is to guide its user to ever more evil deeds, and to isolate the user by killing off or alienating the user's friends and love ones. The strength given and the isolation and guilt drive the user to depends on the sword even more.

So far, I have found many of the supporter created uniques to be very enjoyable to use. I think the game would be quite drab without the variety they bring, especially those that are more niche or unusual it what they do. Its a good example of why diversity of thought is important.

Anyone who writes a sentient weapon owes Moorcock at least a nod.

Every stat on the Goddess, any form, is thematically consistent. My problem is I'm not creating a representation of someone else's weapon. I'm doing one I created, and so approximation is much less satisfactory. In fact, some of the details concocted for the Wraeclastian form of the sword have affected the source.

The big problem for me is, thematically, the Goddess is badass. Stormbringer, Excalibur, Anduril. You can't half ass these. Legendary weapons demand pretty much unfair stats. On the other hand, no one gets one for free. Stormbringer is cursed, Excalibur is stuck in a stone, Anduril had to be forged from its predecessor. Crafting gave me the avenue to indulge that idea of removing chance but I was sadly not allowed binding, even though the base item is not. As I said, I suspect GGG do not always keep in mind that Unleashed is legendary. Why should they? It's my creation, not theirs. Still, there's some hype and from players who likely get Scorned better than I do. I feel a crazy amount of pressure to not let them down.

Like or not, that means taking balance into account. I hold no illusion it'll last, but at least at release, this sword has to be something else...but still conform to GGG's standards. I see my role in the dynamic as one of doing a one handed, no off hand sword justice, in a game where both 2h and sword are on the retreat unless used as a faux throwing weapon.

That all said, I know that "Unleashed" is about as meta a name as you're going to see in this game (until my other item, maybe) and that the leash IS the very thing that made Scorned possible.

So that's my concern. That the loss of the leash is done right.

@DalaiLama If I remember correctly there was a post a while back saying that the option to create a unique is removed "officially" to stop a lot of people from getting one, but if you write to them and express desire to do it there is still a chance that they will say yes. (They will tell you that they are backlogged and it will take quite a while before your item is ready though)


so maybe there is still hope if you really want to go that route