Game Mechanics Master Craftsman

I want to preface this by saying I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, since I have no idea what the feasibility of this idea is or if it is even good, but it something that I've been thinking about for a while now and I just wanted to get it out there.

With the announcement that Fruma will be coming out later this year, I am excited, but I am also a bit worried that many of the current mythics may end up feeling unsatisfying to play due to being outscaled by newer items with the update. That is when I thought of a way to avoid this - a system that allows players with a suitable crafting level to enhance current items.

The way that I'm thinking this enhancement will work is that a player will using the item that can be upgraded along with special items, likely obtained via world events, to create an updated version of the item that could have a higher base damage, stronger rolls, or possibly even new rolls. The upgraded item would not act like crafteds, and by that I mean that Item Team members would choose the way the item changes, players cannot just add ingredients to an item to change it however they like. The upgraded item would not have to be entirely rerolled, but rather keep current % rolls when upgraded.

With the idea out there, I'd like to lay out some Pros and Cons that I thought of for this idea

PROS:
Increased relevancy of woodworking and weaponsmithing
Currently, these 2 professions are nice for crafting lb/lq weapons as offhands for lootruns, but they generally feel weaker than the other crafting professions. This makes sense, as any crafted weapon would be forced to compete with mythics and fableds. The difficulty in competing with mythics is self-explanatory, but the difficulty in competing with fableds may be thought about less. Many fabled weapons have major ids, which adds a layer of identity that cannot be added to a crafted weapon. With an upgrading system, however, weaponsmithing and woodworking would become more relevant as ways to create powerful weapons that are competitive even late into the game.

Allows low level mythics to be more viable at alter stages of the game
It was not too long ago that the Item Team made clear that low level mythics are not intended to be viable in endgame, because they would then be too strong at level. This makes sense, but it is a bit unfortunate to see many cool weapons have such little usage due to only being powerful temporarily. Through this system, players could experience many of the low level mythics without having to sacrifice significant damage in the endgame to do so.

(Possibly) more build variety
I say possibly here because it fully revolves around balance. I have this listed under pros because it adds more viable weapons to the endgame, but it could very well be a con if any weapons end up being too strong, as that would decrease build variety.


CONS:
Dev Time
I feel like this is the most obvious con, because I assume that this would require dev time. I might be wrong, as I don't know how much CT members are able to do, but with the current focus on Fruma, this would obviously be incredibly low on the priority list even if members of the CT or devs liked this idea.

More items to balance
This would naturally make the lives of the Item Team harder, because they'd have to work with even more mythics and they would have to worry about making sure no items become too strong.

Less people trying out new items
With a change like this, it is very possible that less people would try out new items, which wouldn't feel great. I'm sure that many of the new items coming out in Fruma will be super fun to play, and a change like this may incentivize players to just stick to what they already have.


All in all, I think it would be cool if there was some consideration about this. Even if current mythics are able to stand their ground against new items that are added after the level cap increase, it would be cool to see some items that aren't mythic able to be upgraded (would be very funny if random level 10 items were able to be upgraded to endgame). I understand that this idea isn't perfect, however, and also that it is super optimistic to think that this idea even has a chance of happening. I do not know anything about game design, so maybe this idea has countless flaws that I didn't think of, but as I said before, this is just an idea I wanted to get out there.

 

Ah yes Grindy corkian augments