Vindicators,
I'm working on a major overhaul of VOIN's itemization system, and I wanted to pull back the curtain a bit. This post is for the curious: the players who want to know why I'm making these changes, not just what they are.
After watching how you all play and listening to your feedback, I realized the game's current itemization system has a number of fundamental issues which couldn't really be fixed by adding things on top of it. So, I'm rebuilding it from the ground up.
The Issues
The Inventory Management System
Does anyone like managing inventories? At first, the ritual of visiting Satiation Stations feels satisfying. But that novelty wears off, and it quickly becomes a tedious chore of scrolling, discarding loot, and waiting through animations.
The bigger issue hits dedicated players: with over 1,300 possible weapon combinations alone, the limited inventory space actively punishes experimentation. Your drive to create and try new builds eventually hits a hard wall, forcing you to destroy your own creations. That’s the opposite of what I want.
High Barrier to Entry
Mystery and discovery are a huge part of VOIN, but I may have leaned too far into the "mystery" part. A barrage of similar-looking stations, floating spheres, and unfamiliar terms can be overwhelming. For new players, this creates a high barrier to entry before the game has had a chance to prove how rewarding its systems can be.
“I’ve Finished my Build…Now What?”
Whilst this is a great problem to have…it’s a problem nonetheless. The intrinsic motivation to craft your perfect set of gear is incredibly powerful, and it's what hooks many of you! But once that goal is achieved, the journey can feel…over. With no further upgrades or meaningful challenges that require min-maxing, that hard-earned power can leave the game feeling ‘solved’.
The Process
Of course, I could have addressed these issues by adding more systems on top of the old ones: expanded storage, sorting, reroll stations, the list goes on. It’s a lot of additional work, but to me it also felt like patchwork…like trying to fix something that should just not have these issues to begin with.
That’s why, instead of stacking new features, I went back to the drawing board with a few core goals:
Empower experimentation: allowing you to manage your build, not your inventory.
Design with the endgame in mind from the start: no hard stops to power progression.
Reduce friction, increase depth: allow for those satisfying ‘aha!’ moments of discovery, without the accompanied frustration.
Personally, I think I achieved these goals and then some…
The Solutions
There are a lot of changes in this new system, so I’m going to talk you through them…literally.
You: Okay, I've opened my Equipment screen. Whoa, the item description looks completely different! What's this experience bar? Does that mean my gear levels up as I use it?
Me: Exactly! The more you wield or wear an item, the more experience that item gains; this lets you unlock new augments, the new name for enchantments, on that item. The new counter on the item’s tooltip shows how many augments you’ve unlocked and how many are available for the item.
You: Got it. And the +11 next to the Augments are…?
Me: The next big change: items now have an Exaltation Level. This goes all the way to +16 (a big jump vs. the previous cap of +5!), and the higher your Exaltation Level, the more Augments you can activate. At the highest level, you can activate up to 3 Prime Augments and 2 Lesser Augments. So, you’ll level up an item to unlock a range of Augment options, then raise your Exaltation Level to activate more of those Augments at once.
You: That’s awesome! And what’s this new ‘loadouts’ option?
Me: You can now save multiple complete gear sets and switch between them instantly. Experiment with a lightning-fast dagger (spoiler?) build for one boss, then swap to a heavy, hammer-wielding tank setup for the next, within a couple of clicks.
You: But wait, does this mean I have to grind for experience on every single piece of gear in a loadout? That doesn’t sound great…
Me: Don’t worry. We have a great way to manage that; the Global Collections screen. Now, finding an item permanently unlocks it in your collection; the ones you’ve heard of but haven’t discovered are greyed out. When you pick up an item, you don’t get a duplicate in your inventory, you get experience for that item instead, with rarer duplicates offering higher XP. No more inventory bloat for duplicates!
You: Amazing! But wait, you mentioned earlier that unlocking an item lets me use its Augment on other weapons. How does that work?
Me: That's the best part! Once you unlock an item, its Augment is added to the shared pool. For example, once you've unlocked the Windraiser, you can then apply its Augment to any other weapon in your arsenal. The only restriction is you have to be in your hub, Amarict, to reconfigure your loadout.
You: So let me get this straight...I'm not just building a single item. I'm building a shared library of items and powerful Augments that I can mix and match across any item of the same category I own, anytime? That sounds incredibly powerful and flexible.
Me: That’s the goal! You can just open the Augments menu, select any Augment you’ve unlocked, and slap it on your gear next time you’re in Amarict, making item customization less of an inventory-management puzzle and more of a creative sandbox.
You: And what about these Lesser Augments you mentioned?
Me: These work a bit differently. The entire list is available from the start, so you don’t need to discover them. However, they’re unlocked randomly, and their power level is capped at 5. Every time you gain an Experience level with an item, it randomly picks a Lesser Augment to unlock or level up, so if you’re looking for a specific one, you’ll have to keep using that piece of gear and hope for a little luck. The real magic is in the combinations, though; for example, you could use the same fire-damage Augment on both your weapon and your necklace and suddenly you have a level of 10, instead of 5.
You: Ah! So the randomness isn’t just a gate so much as it’s encouraging me to try new builds; if I randomly unlock a high-level ‘poison on hit’ Lesser Augment, it might make me want to consider utilizing other poison-based Augments!
Me: That's it! Instead of staring at an overwhelming list of 100 Prime Augments, you can look at the unique set of Lesser Augments you've unlocked for that item and use that as a creative starting point.
…and that’s the core of Items 2.0!
To recap, I’m solving the original problems by:
Eliminating inventory bloat with a Global Collection system.
Lowering the barrier to entry by making progression intuitive and centralized.
Creating endless endgame goals through item and Augment collections, build experimentation and much higher power ceiling.
Building a flexible foundation instead of adding complex band-aid fixes.
This overhaul is designed to make your time with VOIN more about creativity and experimentation and less about managing a cluttered backpack. I'm incredibly excited to get this into your hands.
See you next time!
Thank you ♥