Think about it with me. Imagine a world where your player level (not stat levels) doesn’t restrict you from wearing any armor or equipping any weapon.
All competitive play would be at max level anyway, so allowing a player to wear armor that’s above their level wouldn’t matter because it’s not making them any stronger than a max level player can achieve.
Players will be rewarded for finding dandy stuff in early game by being able to demolish things. Isn’t that one of the joys of an RPG?
Of course, we’d still need to make it so that the level can’t be upgraded at a blacksmith beyond the current level, (though I’m not sure why the blacksmith shrimps out on you based on your level lore-wise), if you could upgrade all the way to max level if you had enough galleons, that’d make it too easy, because upgrades are fully in your control.
We’d also need to make players able to obtain these things, and I’d say that simply making the random loot items rarer when you’re below their level is a fair compromise, allowing players to still get them, but not get handed them on a silver platter while they’re still fighting Jaw Pirates.
Restricting trading to a certain level may be a good idea, but I’m not too sure. It’d be cool to give a low level a fully upgraded calvus piece and watch them incinerate Shura, but again, it’s just too far in your control, making it not nearly as special when you’re rewarded with such a thing, and making the early game too easy.
So technically equipment levels would still exist, they’d just be not nearly as restrictive to what you can do before balancing really matters.
I was considering how chest loot works. Like I said above, we could just have items gain rarity if they’re above your current level, maybe even multiplicatively.
So, remove level restrictions on equipment, and allow higher base level items to drop at any time? I don’t think that’s a good idea.
Economically, it’d mean more galleons generated from higher level items dropping, and less galleons leaving from upgrading equipment.
The best way to get blasted items would become taking a level 1 to the keep and have them get charts there, and deleting the character at 80 when it’ll start giving charts to anywhere, which probably isn’t how it is meant to be.
Challenge is important. A player may find the game too easy, or they may not develop the skills they need when the challenges catch up to the level cap due to being carried by lucky loot.
There is a lack of agency. Currently, if you want higher level loot, you can unlock that by leveling up, so you can get those fair amulets to start dropping for example. Under this idea, it all comes down to luck and luck alone, so there’s nothing to do but start opening chests.
Alright I’ll give it to you straight, you missed the part where I said,
which inherently means almost zero change to inventory loading.
I was stupidly expecting you to then go back and read it to see that bit, which is honestly my fault.
I think a good system would be to let you allow use higher level equipment pieces if you are above their base level, and their stats will be scaled down to your level, so once you upgrade your sunkens to 140 for example you can actually use them on 130 files