Half of every gear roll was just a bigger number
This is a progress log. What I changed in gear sub-stats this week, and what I start next.
Every piece of gear rolls sub-stats on top of its main stat. Close to half of those rolls are a flat boost — DMG, INT, SPD or HP — to the same stat the piece already hands you through that main stat. The same thing, thinner. There is no decision in it: on a damage build you take the damage boost, and that is the whole thought.
Those four are out.
What stays
- Armor Rating, Armor Penetration
- Crit Chance, Crit Damage
- Evasion, Lifesteal, HP Regen
Each of those changes how a fight resolves rather than how big a number is. Skill Power and Cooldown Reduction stay as well — they start earning their slot when skills land.
What goes in
A sub-stat has to give behaviour under a condition. The condition is where the decision lives. Four I am trying:
- Mitigation
- Flat damage reduction on top of armour. Armour has a ceiling, and right now there is no second defensive axis behind it.
- Hardening
- Cuts the crit chance and the crit damage coming at you.
- Lock-On
- Drops the target's evasion.
- Execute
- Extra damage against a target that is nearly dead. It fires constantly, because the engine already shoots at the lowest health on the field.
Hardening and Lock-On are the two that matter. They are the first gear in this game that answers somebody else’s build instead of out-scaling it. Until now the only reply to a crit stack or an evasion stack was to build a bigger one.
The trap I am designing around
A full Legendary loadout is ten sub-stat rolls: five pieces with two each. Spread across thirteen types, every type turns up less than once per agent and nothing you build has an identity.
So the pool comes out smaller than it went in, and each slot gets a narrower list — weapons leaning on penetration and crit, armour on mitigation and regeneration, helmets on evasion and the two counters.
Also this week
Reworking the rigs on the 3D models, so a piece of gear sits exactly where it should on the body instead of nearly where it should.
Next
Skills. They are the core of the Medic and the Hacker and support for the Ghost and the Enforcer, which gives the two classes that fight with stats alone a second thing to think about. More when there is something to show.