Hello you lovely deviants,
This is going to be a long one!
Given your strength primarily comes from the gear you craft - I have still been thinking about how I can make leveling up feel meaningful.
Right now, its almost meaningless - the current plan was just that as you level up it means you can craft a higher version of the weapon you have - which I feel like will get annoying. (i.e I am level 3 and crated a level 3 sword. I am level 5 now, so I can craft a level 5 weapon) This has lead me to an idea, in which your "level" is essentially tied to your gear's level, and it is the gear you use that you level up.What I mean by this is that the armor or weapons you have equipped are what gain experience. I'm thinking of it as like getting accustomed and comfortable in the gear. Your player's level will be the average of your gears "highest registered level" - which i will explain later on.
Gear would level up like so:Tier 1 Gear - Rank 1 - 20. Once all the gear you are wearing is rank 20 (your character will be ready to "rank up" - Then i've got some ideas what you would need to do to "rank up" ;)
This would then be similar for Tier 2, Tier 3 etc. With Tier 2 being levels 20-40, 40-60 and 60-100, maybe a Tier 5 that's 80-100
Some additional notes and questions about the gear
Once you "Rank Up" to the next Tier - that character will be able to use any gear that is below their current Tier.
Lets say you were using a basic steel Tier 1 level 20 sword, you would then be able to craft a Tier 2 steel sword which would start at level 20. However in the new area, you may unlock a silver sword which is a Tier 2 Weapon that by default is better than a Steel Sword at the same level (i.e better unlockable gear as you progress)
Characters cannot equip gear that is of a higher level than their currently "registered highest level". You may get one character to have all rank 20 gear and think "Well, now that I have unlocked the rank up, I can just equip this gear to my other characters and unlock the rank up." So you may have a Tier 1 Rank 20 sword, but your other character has only ever equipped at Tier 1 Rank 5 Sword. They would not be able to equip this.
What I mean by "highest registered level" is that once a character has had a level 15 Tier 1 weapon equipped, they may unequip this and equip a level 5 Tier 1 weapon that may have better sub stats they want to level up. Their "highest registered level" is still 15 Tier 1, so you can still equip that other level 15 if you want, and that level 15 will contribute to their overall player level.
"I thought the focus was to regularly craft gear, but wouldn't this mean you would only craft a weapon or armor on the Rank Up?" No, for a couple of reasons.
1. Being you may want to roll better sub stats on your gear.
2. Your gear will lose its effectiveness every time you level it up (wear and tear) - It will still be more effective than the previous level you were at, and it wont lose effectiveness from use, just leveling up - Think of it as losing about 5% effectiveness each level (that's the current plan) - so maybe after getting a bit of Armor from Tier 1 Rank 5 to Tier 1 Rank 10 - its lost 25% percent effectiveness - so you would be incentivized to create some new gear.
"Will I be able to repair this though - what if I love the weapon or bit of equipment?" - short answer, Yes. I want to revisit the precious and priceless materials and use those as ways to "repair" gear, to bring it back up to the full stats without the wear and tear.
"What if I have a really good bit of gear, and want a different character to use it? I wouldn't be able to because the level would be too high right?" This is a valid concern, and similar to the repair, I want to introduce a "level reset" type option, where lets say you have a level 30 Tier 2 weapon, and you just got an even better one - so you would like that level 30 weapon to go to another character. But the issue is that that character has a highest registered level for their weapon as 22. This mechanic would allow you to reset the level of that weapon to its original base which for a Tier 2 is level 20.
"When I craft a bit of gear, what level would it craft at?" The plan is for the gear to craft at your "Player Level" which as I mentioned is the average of all your gears highest registered level.So if you had the following, Weapon LVL: 8, Helmet LVL: 5, Hands LVL: 5, Arms LVL: 6, Legs LVL: 7, Body LVL: 3, Accessory LVL: 5 - the average is 5.71 which would round down to 5. So you would craft level 5 gear.
You will still have an exp bar - but it will essentially be leveling up visually based on your players level determined by the average gear. (so you have have enough exp that you are level 5, but 60% of the way to level 6 - your exp bar would show like an exp bar 60% of the way to the next level.
I have done my best to include everything i can think of, but please feel free to ask questions, and there are enough queries I can make another post to clarify or edit this.But what do you think?