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SoulBound Items, good or bad?
grratch
Member Posts: 49
So, a lot of topics get discussed on these boards but one I never really see are the increased prevalence of soulbound items in games. Generally these items are recieved from quests or are Bind on Equip (thus becoming soulbound).
Do you think they should have these types of items in a game or should items just be.... items. Where you can unequip your current gear and give it to an alt if you so chose. Or do you enjoy recieving items from killing random useless monsters and from every single quest you complete? I only ask because to me, having items non soulbound and only drop from named monsters brings back some of the epicness of recieving said items. In WoW or any other game now, items with decent stats drop all the time and it feels as if it trivializes the worth of these items. Half the time it's better to just vendor the items than sell them to other players.
Not only does it trivialize the experience of looting a good item but it decreases the amount of trading between players creating an economy that is generally resource based (instead of equipment based) because other people can just as easily find their pauldrons of the epic strength they needed. The only Items that should be soulbound or No drop are raid items. But this is just my opinion.
What are your opinions on the subject?
Comments
Probably the main reason why items are soulbound in WoW is so that people cant resell every single item that they loot.
There might be random drops that people sell in AH, but no where near as much as there would be if people could sell everything they've equired on all there characters. The idea is that theres a kind of balance between looted items and crafted, as not everyone will craft there own armor or weapons, they probably dont want to pay through the nose for them either, hence the looted stuff.
Since WoW is completely centered around obtaining new gear, they want to make it a time consuming event, if you got everything you needed for your char, then your alts, you'd had nothing left to do, cuz your either pveing for armor or weapons, or pvping for honor for the next set of weapons and armor. Thats the ongoing content really.
Bad.
I see such systems as a timesink, a way to force players to put in the extra hours/days to earn such drops, instead of the mere seconds it would take to purchase them. It's all about wasting the players time to make the total hours spent add up to even more, and of course time = money.
Personally I would prefer to see (a) better difficulty options while leveling and (b) tight control over player capabilities while leveling. This would cause player decisions to matter more (since you'd be able to choose harder difficulty if you wanted, which would yield better rewards; and you couldn't break that intended difficulty simply by buying a bunch of non-soulbound items for your character.)
"What is truly revealing is his implication that believing something to be true is the same as it being true. [continue]" -John Oliver
Depends on how important crafting is in the game and what effect soulbound items or lack thereof will have on it.
Velika: City of Wheels: Among the mortal races, the humans were the only one that never built cities or great empires; a curse laid upon them by their creator, Gidd, forced them to wander as nomads for twenty centuries...
I enjoyed the fact that most items in EQ were tradable. That always helped with immersion knowing that just about every weapon had a history. I remember the handing down of weapons to friends and family in EQ. A family member graced my froglok paladin with a Centi Longsword when I hit level 20 as part of my “Coming of Age” if you will.
I'm sure the devs have their reasons I guess.
But how cool would it be to craft a weapon and send it out into the world and run across it again someday. Of course, to really appreciate that, you would have to be able to write or graft a message or date of creation on the weapon. Just a note, Vanguard did something remotely similar in displaying the first person to create/discover an item on their website.
Likewise, I prefer the EQ way of doing items. It made more sense. Some items were no drop, once someone got it that was theirs for life. It made those items worth having. Everything else was fair game to be traded. I also felt it kept a little sense out there in the way equipment worked. The really good stuff didn't need a required leve of 45 to use. It was simply in a zone you couldn't enter until level 45, and it was no drop.
Some muds took the crafting an item and seeing it again thing beyond putting a name of who made it on it. They let player crafters get makers marks, so that player knew when they saw their mark in an item that they made it. Some times I wish mmo's would do something like that. Just a little blurb in the item description saying what the mark looks like instead of made by X. That way only the real craftsman would know who made it.
If I had to give an answer on the spot, I am for it. Their are pros/cons, but I think the pros outweigh the cons.
Seen too many people fighting over loot for their alts, when a persons main needs the item. I know nice/good people don't do this, but most of them seem to succumb to it, especially if they are a alt-aholic.
Personally I hate it. SoulBinding, Instancing, anything that limits gameplay sucks tremendously in my opinion. I like to be able to sell what I want. SoulBound items just makes it feel like their's no economy at all, and you can't farm item drops for cash.
I can understand why mainstream cookie-cutter MMO companies might want to do it though. Because it prevents people being able to buy gold and obtain items without completing their crappy raid content.
Make good item drops less frequent, and scrap SoulBound. This way as more of the items are entered into the economy, the price will reduce.
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Currently playing: Black Desert Korea (Waiting for EU)
Always hating on instances in MMOs! Open worlds, open PvP, territory control and housing please. More persistence, more fun.
This isn't a question of feeling, enjoyment or preference. It is a rational game design decision.
Sole reason for Bind-on-equip/pick-up items is to supplement missing item loss. If the items were not soulbound, their supply would accumulate, making the item worth(price)less.
This is stressed even further in a game where there is level based progression which makes the issue even more complicated.
Unless you come up with decent item decay or loss system, supported by crafting/loot design, soulbound items will keep their role and rationale.
Depends of the game realy. If endgame is mainly raiding i think SouldBound system is a muss, because there would be overflow of epic items, making raiding less significant.
On the other hand, not having soulbound items is needed in any FFA PvP game.
Honestly I prefer stats to mean less, so a piece of gear can last 30 levels. Compound it with lower drop rates and no instanced dungeon gear loot, and I'd be happy. I could even be fine with only end game stuff being Bind on Pickup, but not while leveling and not the first end game dungeon tier. That's what tradeskills that sponge gear like WoW's enchanting are for.
Hell I remember in Everquest, how Jbots, still commanded high prices 4 expansions after vanilla. the mob spawn was just that rare, and the effect was just that good.
FFA PVP isn't related to soulbound mechanics in anyway.
Again, this isn't about player preference, it is about game design.
If you make items lasting for '30 levels' and have no soulbound, there will be extreme abundance of low level items making any rare drops, quest items and all together low level content meaningless.
In all honesty, you might think that would be the case but if the developers do it right, it takes a long time to get an abundance of these items. Generally these great items drop in a high level zone. They drop off named/rare monsters, which have a long spawn time and are more of a rare treat if a group comes across them. These items are pretty decent for high level players, so some of them who get it will use it. Others will sell it for a premium price so that someone else may buy the item for an alt of theirs.
Will the prices get depleted over time? Of course they will. But it generally takes many months to a year for that to occur because of the rarity of the spawn. And generally, by then, new expansions or content has come out and players will not be farming that area for equipment anymore, thus the market on those items would plateau.