Item ID (Identification) -- (Dev) Replied

Will we have a system for dungeon-found or monster-looted items needing to be identified?
I liked this system in the original UO, as it allowed me primarily to identify anything I found, but also helped provide interaction with other players who did not have the skill, but wanted to find what they found.

This encouraged dialogue with the same players to ask where they had found the items, and provided motivation to travel to these areas in hopes of finding similar treasures.

 

Remember that if your playing single player you need to be reasonably self suciffiant

 

@?Sir Asguard?
you could always have NPC mage types in town identify things for a fee

I love the idea, as it makes the game feel very much like a "Tabletop RPG"

You got your go to NPC, or guy in the party that identifies all of your magic swag. Makes it feel like a wrapped gift.

 

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I could go for this. I'm a big fan of scholarly type skills.. I can see this falling into a couple of different catagories.

Forgive me if this sounds a little weird. I'm formulating my thoughts on the fly.

General and Specific Lore.

General Lore should be more or less easy for PCs to aquire. If you find a sword you automatically know it's a sword. What you may not know is that it's a goblin longsword or dwarven longsword. That would be where General Lore would come in. Simply being able to recognize the general basics of design.

Specific Lore would be more like Elvish Lore or Goblin Lore which would branch off between language and items. This is where you find out that your elvish blade is actually Glamdrin the Foe Hammer.

Generally speaking, I don't think that unidenfied items should be unusable. I think they should function the same whether their properties are known by the wielder or not. Unless there is a specific ability that must be 'activated' by the user.. in which case the user would have to know about it first.

I also think the person IDing an item should have the option of what information to reveal. Essentially they would get a popup dialogue where they choose to unlock general lore or both general and specific lore. Though that's kinda iffy. I almost hate to suggest it since it's a way you could scam people by making them think it's worth less than it is.

Another thought is that if you use an item long enough, that it will eventually ID itself on the "general" level and maybe even the specific IF you use it for a very long time. The idea here being that we accumulate little bits of knowledge naturally every day so it's very likely that we'll find out on our own what kind of an item something is sooner or later without having put much effort into study. ie you pay by a pair of NPCs and overhear one say "isn't that an goblin sword?"

Hmm... I think that's everything.

 

Oh wait that wasn't everything. I had one more thing to add.

A further idea came to me that IDing an item wouldn't necessary "ID" it for the entire world.. but rather just for the owner. This is problematic however as the owner may wish to pass on that information later and I haven't thought of a good way to do that that doesn't seem like it would get tedious. Though it is more realistic to do that.

Perhaps it would be possible to conversely un-ID an item for anyone apart from the owner. Say by leaving it in storage for a couple of weeks.

Or passing on ID info could work through parsing dialogue. The IDer gets the item's name and then say the item's name... If the item's specific or general lore is spoken while the item is within listening range then anyone who heard that statement would have that 'lore' unlocked for them.

General and Specific Lore would have a keyword associated with it.. such as 'goblin' or 'Glamdring'.. However in this scenario those keywords are only checked if spoken by someone for whom the item has already been IDed.

How's that?

 

@Bowen Bloodgood I like the first post on the whole ID tree. I also like that you have thought into the trade and "unIDing" of weapons. If this is plausible from a programming level i think it would make Item ID useful again...
Could we actually have a game that makes Cooking AND Item ID useful?

 

Sure can.. the code for these ideas wouldn't be hard. It's basically a small system of checks against spoken dialogue and setting the right flags if a match is found.

Cooking is a matter of proper balance between useful perks and not making them over or under powered. That might be a trick but just comes down to tweaking as you go.

 

Ugh. Only if it isn't like the Diablo identification system. I hate waiting to identify useless items. That is *almost* the worst part of the game.

 

I would like to see Item ID, more skills the better. And yes find ways to make it very useful to have.

 

<i>Ugh. Only if it isn?t like the Diablo identification system. I hate waiting to identify useless items. That is *almost* the worst part of the game.</i>

Bulk order ID?

 

If identification is a skill, then items that are going to be weak or outdated for you are likely to be trivial for you to identify - you'll be able to tell what they are on your own, then pass them by, assuming your identification skill isn't lagging too far behind

 

Also maybe you could build up a "database" of items you have seen before which would automatically identify or even items which are "close" to items you have seen before.

 

We have not specifically discussed this. I like the discoverability that it adds to the item game but do not see it as core mechanic much like it is games such as Diablo.

 

Thanks B, that is good to hear!