This has definitely been at the top of the suggestion board for too long! Lets see if we can get the ball rolling on this. Probably will take a while to get all the different kinds of items sorted into tiers, but I can at least add the engine support to get this started. What do you guys think of the following tiers and colors?

Junk
Common
Uncommon
Rare
Exotic & Artifact

Rare & Exotic, and Uncommon & Artifact look way too similar to me.
Have colourblindness issues though... maybe others can comment.

Paladin,

Imo stick to the colors most other MMOs use to make it easier for the (new) players:

Junk
Common
Uncommon
Rare
Exotic / Epic
Legendary (might want another name for SS on this tier)

Good point, those colors are probably better.

Agreed if theres a color scheme that seems to be the standard lets use that, we should make as many things as possible be familiar to players of more well known mmos.

So, borrowing whats been said, what do you guys think of these? I think 4 tiers of gear fits what we have in-game pretty well, though I like the thought of distinguishing ruin gear.

Junk
Common - AI base
Uncommon - Dropped gear
Rare - Medium Build / Rare drops
Artifact & Exotic - Hard Build and Ruin gear

Looks good.

Paladin,

Came up with these:

Junk == Grey
Common == Green
Rare == Yellow
Exotic/Heroic == Red
Legendary/Artifact == Light Blue/Teal

Junk is crap. Includes most AI base items.
Common is mostly crap. Includes some AI base items and things like Mallets.
Rare is decent. Stuff like non-Primal UZ gear. Mid tier.
Heroic is good. Moderate builds, named boss drops (Marco, etc).
Legendary is awesome. Hard builds, world boss drops (RNF, etc), and all Artifacts.

Special Artifacts are the same strength as Non-Special Artifacts. The difference is the Civilization's "Preference".

Ex.
Unt Faranji Gatling Laser == Tech 20
Faranji Splashing Orchid == Tech 20

What about modded gear which is not neurobound?

I actually thought about this a bit further and I think you can go deeper with it. What you have atm is fine but there's already tiers of useful/valueness in the game.

An example I came up with is the ares energy line which goes as follows:
1. Damaged Pretender Ares Energy - I'd probably list this as Common
2. Pretender Ares Energy - Slightly rarer drop so Uncommon
3. Bloodstained / Heavy (Pretender) Ares Energy - First tiers of builds so I'd list them as Rare
4. Heavy Bloodstained Ares Energy - Next tier of the build Epic
5. Heavy Bloodstained Mars Energy - Enhanced and highest version of the tier line Legendary

Artifact is the internal SS word for Ruin.

I'll stick to the WoW theme then

I don't think artifact would fit well in the game with ruins existing. I would go with a word that generically means that it is good.

Mallet = Common
Hammer = Rare
Striker = Heroic
Maul = Legendary

That's how I concluded.

For something like the HBME, I figure it goes like this:

Damaged Pretender Ares Energy = Common
Pretender Ares Energy = Rare
Bloodstained Ares Energy = Heroic (Light Fighter)
Heavy Bloodstained Ares Energy = Heroic (Heavy Fighter)

@Shawn

Artifact is the word the devs use to refer to ruins.



/viewtopic.php?f=94&t=43805&p=523175&hilit=artifact#p523175

Grrrrr

/churchillangry

Yes, artifacts are the items extracted from ruins, which is what I meant with an artifact tier.