Lithose
Buzzfeed Editor
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You could have a system in place that only allows 2-3 pieces of gear to be "soul bound" (This does not mean they are bound, it would be a temporary thing)--which are the only pieces you don't lose on death AND the only way you can wear "magic" items (A magic item that's not "soul bound" to you, can not be equipped). Then make it so "magic" items (Non-crafted, or crafted from PvE drops) are extremely rare and VERY powerful, and also very unique looking--so a normal sword vs a magical flaming sword. In addition, design the game with a soft cap, or AA system of advancement. So doing groups ect isn't about getting a magic item, but instead increasing the power of your character through the soft cap system. This way, you can keep PvE loot very rare, without making dungeons and like feel absolutely useless.
When someone gets a better magic item, they can "unbind" it and sell the magical item as normal. Eventually even rare items will "mudflate" until they are cheap to buy--and that should be intended, because the second tier of "crafting" would require blue prints from broken down magical items of that tier. So T2 should only be added to the game when nearly everyone is wearing their 3 T1 magic items (And a full suit of crafted).
Anyway, just an idea I'd love to see in a game. I'd really like a game that divorces 100% advancement fromitems. I really think items should go back to being actual treasure--that a character with no magical items should still be able to be powerful and viable, through a type of alternate advancement--but items would be something that completely augments game play, but you can only have so many. This way you wouldn't need to whore items out for every reward in the game, like has happened with WoW--because gear wouldn't be the sole method of advancement. (This way, even if a raid boss drops ONE fore sure item, it's still something people would want to kill, because the rarity of items--and for normal groups, boss drops would be rare, but the point of the group would be to grind the soft cap anyway, kind of like we grind badges in WoW.)
And this, right here, is why power shouldn't be the sole province of items. WoW ran into this problem too, this is why they added the badge grind--and dailies ect. A way to "break in" slightly into the next tier of gear through a lot of work.
If, however, dungeons were more about just increasing power through a soft cap--anyone could increase their soft caps, and be viable. While keeping it so items were rare, and while very powerful, were not the sole source with which to judge someone by. (THis in combination with a system that rewards smart play, rather than just "more gear" would make a great game).
EQ, at the start, kind of was designed as a soft cap(ish) system, probably by mistake, but they made max level very difficult to reach and since they really had JUST 2 raids, the levels were the content, not the end game. So you could be valuable to a group even if your gear sucked, simply by grinding out more levels, which was another form of fungible power--that kind of power gain was made obsolete when games became designed around max level, and not about "the next level"--after that change, power came solely through gear. (Which I think, was a big loss to the industry, looking back--it put too much emphasis on items to be +better...When +better should have been reserved for levels/soft cap, so items could be fun, powerful and unique.)
In other words...In WoW, I grind for items that make me strictly +better. In VERY early EQ, I would grind for levels that made me +better--and then items could be a real wild card (Sure most of them were +better, but they COULD have procs or completely agumenting game play--again, because the designers already had a kind of straight translation of time=+better in the level system, so the gear system didn't need it.)
