About Uniques

Sup everyone :D

Since ZiggyD decided to be the Hero we all needed and lets the "community" create an unique item, I kinda wanted to throw my own opinion of those in here. I am just thinking out loud, please keep this nice and friendly. (Please note that English is not my mother language and that there might be typos, you can keep them!)

So what are the uniques in PoE imo? To sum it up; Wasted potential of the term "unique"
An unique object is per definition something unlike anything else, "having no like or equal". (Given that PoE is a game this should apply to characteristics rather than the number)
But out of the 269 items currently labeled unique half of them are either useless, or "leveling uniques" and the rest is op and boring.

"Wait a minute, there is no such thing as an useless item, you [insert insult]. The creators surely had a purpose in mind, its just a bit nieche!", you might want to write in the comments by now. Then let me reword it, they are underpowered and therefore unused. Or their mods are just too weird, weak or mixed to be made into something of use. Like the Mark of the Doubting Knights, the Chalice of Horrors´ or the Wideswings and Limbsplits, you roll your eyes at if you just got your hopes up from an "inner treasure" or "contains an unique item" mod. (I know you know what I mean....) I mean, did I miss something? Since when is it Ok to let the Goodies, the highest rarity items, the "FCKN YES! LOOK WHAT I FOUND" moments become those "lol, vendor food" or "sigh, anyone want this, they just block my stash tabs" lines in every second party chat???

So what, maybe there are one or two not overly used items, just use other ones! And what´s your problem with leveling items? Don´t be so QQ! Reportet!
Good point, who doesnt like those things that carry you through the content to your "real" build? No objections, you are right, eager reader! But the problem is imo , that they are not more than that. They are just convenient! Nothing more. They are just more powerful than the average rare on that level, those Mightflays and Ungil´s Gauches and Marohis and Readbeakes. Nice to have but do they deserve the word "unique"? Not in my opinion. They are something that could pop up as a NPC dialog, for example, what if Nessa could say (after you bring her the medicine chest): Take this with you on your journey, it served in my family many generations. It holds more purpose in your hands. And the player receives one of those (possibly just rare?) items like a Araku Tiki (The coral amy with the Life regen) or the Karui ward in Act II, with the option to bring it back or buy it for a set/average price. (Never happening, since GGG basically lives of stash tab sales, but let me dream ._. )

In the dev-post about uniques, Chris even said:
"
While Unique items may be used for specific builds, as they grant abilities that do not occur on Rares, the ideal situation is that Rares occupy the majority of item slots on your character.
I like the concept of not having GG/best in slot items (Nerv those Atziri gloves already!), but arent uniques something entirely else? Shouldnt they open new possibilities to a playstyle or be more than an item? The unarmed DMG from the Facebreakers and Headhunters rare mod gain are the only cases i can think of right now. Sure there are mods like "Crits have culling strike", "Traps trigger at the end of duration", "ATK speed while burning" etc, but they are just nice additions to a existing build. (And the other mods are wasted by heavy drawbacks) I would have really loved to see such one of a kind mods as the corruptions, not those 3% additional chaos resistance risks..... (But that is already spilled milk)

GGG has such an amazing Dev-Team, I find it a bit of a disappointment that they are that uncreative. How about a Shield that can be thrown like a Boomerang, or a Belt with Needles that synergizes with the unarmed dmg? Or a magic Quiver that can be thrown and acts as a once per level frost wall to escape behind? Or the "Totems hover around you" idea from reddit? Or an Aggro Ability? Or a shadow clone on hit dagger (with really slow ATK speed or low chance to hit for balance reasons) like the Vaal Double Strike? Just to give you some ideas. Those +1gem and [random buff to make the item fit a theme] items are so incredible boring imo, they are just convenient at the most.(And a terrible Waste of those amazing Art and the epic Flavor Text!!!!) The need for Items with Keystones is reasonable considering the size of the Passive Tree, I´ll admit that.

The high tier items like shavs, soul taker or kaoms are no exception, convenient and op, but at least they are so rare, that most of the playerbase will never own one anyway and are therefore a nice surprise. (e,g: The -mana for skills ring are a much better solution)
To summarize/TL,DR: Make the Unique Items more of Build Enablers than GGG claims they do or at the very least more interesting. More "Hell Yeah!", less "Meh, Vendor Food..." !

Let me know what you think, thx for reading. :D Have a nice day!


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Why couldnt this be posted under the original thread along with the 10 other topics this spawned? Sorry, not hating, just wondering.
TL;DR: More uniques that I can use for the whole game, less 1 chrome uniques.

PS!
Not a bad idea, but it's a long-going subject. Very close to QQ. Too far-fetched at this point; the 1 chrome uniques would be even more "meh".


"Path of Exile needs a Circlejerk Subforum" -cypherrage
"Uniques" has always been a bad term for these ever since they started using it.
the simple answer is that it would require massive amounts of code, so you have a shield that can be thrown. you suddenly need to rewrite a bunch of code to allow this. much simpler to have a dagger with the mods "grants Spectral Throw skill and +40% additional block chance+some resists"
A lot of the ideas you suggested would be simply implemented as a series of things already in the game.
How about the quiver "grants level 3 frost wall, skills in this items are supported by CWDT"
having something like a one use thing is really not worth it as it only can have that one stat otherwise it would be to easy to find problems with or to use. eg if you take the idea of the quiver that you can throw it once per level then it makes sense to remove the stats after you throw it.
the name unique has more to do with the lore than anything, anything truly unique would probably require too much work.
mind you what about the "+%whatever per level unique" from beyond, does that kind of fit the bill?
Personally I like the idea behind the bear trap shield, where it works as a shield and grants the bear trap skill.

most Uniques are deliberately average I think to remove some of the emphasis from them, so the focus is on getting better rares than finding those uniques.

Oh and you can sometimes buy uniques from lvl 8 masters

PS. Kudos for writing that much as opposed to just a simple paragraph that just seems like someone bitching
You are confusing 'unique' with 'better than rares'. All the uniques are in fact, unique. They generally are mods or combinations of mods that cannot appear on a rare item. That is really all a unique is meant to be. Unique artwork not shared with a rare, unique flavor text, and mods or combos of mods that cannot be rolled on a rare.

It doesn't have to be and shouldn't be any more than that.

Also, if you are talking about doing things far outside of what the code can do. What do you want them to do? Rewrite all of the code for a unique? They can only do so much because they are building on a piece of shit engine. You may want to wait for PoE 2 if you want more.
"Danger is like jello, there's always room for more."
http://www.twitch.tv/vejita00
Last edited by CliveHowlitzer on Nov 22, 2014, 10:55:30 PM
"
piece of shit engine

The most simple and crap engine must be a Logo(SPS)
it has 3x basic functions like AND,OR,NOT and like 5x advanced functions like TIMED,RAMP,..
you can do wonders with that.

Compared to a C++ engine where you can write your own functions on the fly.

Spoiler
Lets call the job application "pro"-grammer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcKqhDFhNHI
"
Lachdanan wrote:
"
piece of shit engine

The most simple and crap engine must be a Logo(SPS)
it has 3x basic functions like AND,OR,NOT and like 5x advanced functions like TIMED,RAMP,..
you can do wonders with that.

Compared to a C++ engine where you can write your own functions on the fly.

Spoiler
Lets call the job application "pro"-grammer


You know what I meant.
"Danger is like jello, there's always room for more."
http://www.twitch.tv/vejita00

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