As I have heard many many complaints about the lack of originality in each new update, we found out that PL is running in to limitations that so much memory is used by all textures and items in the game. I was thinking about a way that maybe the amount of stuff could be efficiently reduced to allow more growth in new areas of the game.
My main focus is the amount of "junk items" in the game. Grays, yellows and green items that don't have any value are quite numerous in each campaign.
To lower the amout of memory they use:
Get rid of them! Consolidate them in to basic items... (heres an example
Instead of having 10 different Green level 5 robes, just have one... call it "Basic Cloth Robe" and it has basic level 5 stats. (Call the yellow ones "Cheap Cloth Robe")
Instead of having 10 different green level 10 robes, just have one... call it "Basic Cloth Robe" and it has basic level 10 stats.
Do this at all levels to drastically reduce the amount of junk in the game.
The majority of these items are liquidated immediately and don't add value. This would presumably reduce a large amount of load from the game. If all "Basic Cloth Robes" looked the same, it would be a smaller amount of unique textures. Also, it would reduce the complaints about how all of these "different" items are recycled.
I propose that pinks be unique (which they already are, for the most part. maybe scale back the amount of them in AO, Skeller, Swamps) and that purples have a little more variety, but maybe scaled back to, in some campaigns.
I think that this reduction in items would also help new players distinguish good items from junk, by being able to simply identify which items are junk.
If you might think that too many "of the same" item would then drop from bosses, then maybe we could program bosses/minis to have a gold drop (not a huge amount of gold, just the equivalent of what the liquidation price would be for a cheap item).
I think that most people would be onboard with this if it meant that new content would be more original and reduce the games footprint.
Bookmarks