Post by dragonflight on Mar 17, 2019 19:25:22 GMT
Bioware, it seems is making the classic mistake of assigning equal value to every level of loot. That's what the problem with the power scaling curve is all about. A white has the same power to affect the calculation as a masterwork or a Legendary.
So, what if they change that up a bit? The goal here is to create categories, where each power level has incrementally greater effect on the overall power scaling curve. So, if you have all masterwork and legendary items on your Javelin, the average will be fairly close to your power level. But if you have say, a masterwork or legendary, with a bunch of blues and purples on your Javelin, their ability to water down your power score is greatly reduced, because their categories have much less impact on a higher-tier piece of gear.
For instance. The Javelin has a Legendary item. Most of the other items on the Javelin are Rare, but because of some bad luck with loot drops, they still have a green or a white loaded. The next tier down is added together to come up with a single value. But then it's divided by the number of slots they collectively occupy, to determine their average aggregate value. Because items one tier down have less power to affect items a tier above them, only a percentage of the resulting total is applied to the power value of the Legendary. Say, twenty percent of the resulting calculation for the lower tier item.
Now, as discussed, there's a couple of blues or even a white still on this Javelin. The same calculations are performed for every color tier ranking loaded on the Javelin. The resulting numbers are divided by the number of slots devoted currently to that particular color tier. The resulting number has a proportionally smaller percentage of its total added to the calculation of the power curve. So a white, which is four or five tiers lower than the Legendary, has maybe a 5% or less impact on the Legendary's total value. It might even be as low as 2 or 4%. Simply reflecting that the weak item has very little ability to impact the total power of the Legendary item.
So, having a single Legendary on a suit full of Rares might pull down the average for a while until you load more Legendaries or Masterworks. But if you have Rares, Legendaries and Masterworks, and oh yes, a single white loaded, the total impact of that white item to your power total will probably be only one or two points, because of its much smaller impact on the suit's power level.
This would allow power scaling to continue to have relevance, but reward people with higher-tier gear in a way that doesn't penalize them unfairly for having lower-tier gear. The power cost of supporting weaker hardware is offset by the much reduced impact they can have on the overall power curve.
