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Gear and appearances
I really like how Astellia handles gear appearances, so I thought I'd explain it.
Each character has six gear slots: armor, weapon, and four accessories. Your armor and weapon give much larger stats than your accessories, so it's really two main pieces of gear, plus some relatively minor side ones. Accessories don't affect your appearance.
Your armor and weapon do affect your appearance. Unlike a lot of games where "armor" is split among many different slots, in Astellia, it's a single armor slot. Thus, instead of a random mish-mash of spare parts, you always wear a complete set of something. For appearance purposes, "weapon" is considered fairly broadly. For example, on a warrior, your "weapon" is your sword and your shield, not just the sword. That makes it so that you don't have to look ridiculous to grab the best stats from various gear pieces.
Meanwhile, it preserves the aesthetically pleasing effect of getting some new gear and trying it on. You don't get the Champions Online effect of getting some great new piece of gear, and still looking exactly how you did before. Well, other than accessories.
This also allows players to look very different from each other all the way through. In some games, there might be, for example, the standard level 50 set of gear for a given class. Most players of that class, or maybe even of several classes, end up dressing about the same way for that level range. Then they switch to the same other set at level 60, and so forth.
In Astellia, there are twelve armor designs for each class. Each has three coloring options, for thirty-six possible appearances in total, but it's only really twelve armors plus recolorings. There are also that many weapon designs for each class.
As you level up, at particular levels along the way, you can get particular armors from various bosses or from crafting. At the level cap, you can get a max level version of any design from particular dungeons or crafting. Thus, if you really want (for example) a Coronet armor for your mage, you can look it up and then go farm Sansara Fortress to get it.
But excluding dungeon bosses and crafting, any mob can drop any armor design. Any particular design that you see another player wearing could be anything from a top tier legendary with excellent random stats all the way down to a level 5 common that randomly dropped off of a kiyo.
That means that you don't have to wait until endgame to get armors that look good, unlike games that try to make your armors look stronger as you level up by making mid-level versions look wimpy and low-level versions look pathetic. You can get armors that look like good armors almost immediately. Well, unless you play a female character, but that particular can of worms is not the point of this thread.
A lot of games have gear skins that you can equip to change the appearance of your gear. Astellia does that, too, so if you really like the stats on a particular armor but hate the appearance, you can make it look like something else. There are skins available in the cash shop, and you also get at least one from a random box pretty early just by playing the game.
Another problem with the gearing system in a lot of games is that the low level gear just doesn't matter. You'll wear it for a bit, then level past it, then have to get rid of it as obsolete. So if you get a lucky heroic drop from an early boss, within several levels, it will be obsolete and gone.
Astellia avoids that by allowing you to raise the levels of your gear. If you enhance a piece of gear up to +7, you can then evolve the gear to raise its level by 10. Enhancing gear basically requires using enhancement stones from disassembling other gear. For gear below level 50, enhancement is guaranteed to always succeed.
Thus, if you really like some heroic drop you get from an early boss, you can repeatedly raise its level and keep it all the way into the endgame. And the gear can absolutely be viable all the way into the endgame. It won't be as good as the legendaries you can get at the level cap, but it will be competitive with anything shy of that. If you like your gear, you can keep your gear.
Each character has six gear slots: armor, weapon, and four accessories. Your armor and weapon give much larger stats than your accessories, so it's really two main pieces of gear, plus some relatively minor side ones. Accessories don't affect your appearance.
Your armor and weapon do affect your appearance. Unlike a lot of games where "armor" is split among many different slots, in Astellia, it's a single armor slot. Thus, instead of a random mish-mash of spare parts, you always wear a complete set of something. For appearance purposes, "weapon" is considered fairly broadly. For example, on a warrior, your "weapon" is your sword and your shield, not just the sword. That makes it so that you don't have to look ridiculous to grab the best stats from various gear pieces.
Meanwhile, it preserves the aesthetically pleasing effect of getting some new gear and trying it on. You don't get the Champions Online effect of getting some great new piece of gear, and still looking exactly how you did before. Well, other than accessories.
This also allows players to look very different from each other all the way through. In some games, there might be, for example, the standard level 50 set of gear for a given class. Most players of that class, or maybe even of several classes, end up dressing about the same way for that level range. Then they switch to the same other set at level 60, and so forth.
In Astellia, there are twelve armor designs for each class. Each has three coloring options, for thirty-six possible appearances in total, but it's only really twelve armors plus recolorings. There are also that many weapon designs for each class.
As you level up, at particular levels along the way, you can get particular armors from various bosses or from crafting. At the level cap, you can get a max level version of any design from particular dungeons or crafting. Thus, if you really want (for example) a Coronet armor for your mage, you can look it up and then go farm Sansara Fortress to get it.
But excluding dungeon bosses and crafting, any mob can drop any armor design. Any particular design that you see another player wearing could be anything from a top tier legendary with excellent random stats all the way down to a level 5 common that randomly dropped off of a kiyo.
That means that you don't have to wait until endgame to get armors that look good, unlike games that try to make your armors look stronger as you level up by making mid-level versions look wimpy and low-level versions look pathetic. You can get armors that look like good armors almost immediately. Well, unless you play a female character, but that particular can of worms is not the point of this thread.
A lot of games have gear skins that you can equip to change the appearance of your gear. Astellia does that, too, so if you really like the stats on a particular armor but hate the appearance, you can make it look like something else. There are skins available in the cash shop, and you also get at least one from a random box pretty early just by playing the game.
Another problem with the gearing system in a lot of games is that the low level gear just doesn't matter. You'll wear it for a bit, then level past it, then have to get rid of it as obsolete. So if you get a lucky heroic drop from an early boss, within several levels, it will be obsolete and gone.
Astellia avoids that by allowing you to raise the levels of your gear. If you enhance a piece of gear up to +7, you can then evolve the gear to raise its level by 10. Enhancing gear basically requires using enhancement stones from disassembling other gear. For gear below level 50, enhancement is guaranteed to always succeed.
Thus, if you really like some heroic drop you get from an early boss, you can repeatedly raise its level and keep it all the way into the endgame. And the gear can absolutely be viable all the way into the endgame. It won't be as good as the legendaries you can get at the level cap, but it will be competitive with anything shy of that. If you like your gear, you can keep your gear.
