I think you may have missed my point. I've got nothing against colour coding or otherwise highlighting items to make it easier for a player to identify which items are interesting. My issue is highlighting items based on rarity, because rarity is not an interesting property.

Colour them based on their sale value. Or maybe based on how they compare to your current equipment. But not according to some value which has no actual meaning to the player.

Basically, that is how items are coloured right now. Compared to other items of a similar level, those that have "better colours" may have more stats that are more powerfull, supplemented by some active/passive ability. I can't remember any game that would have color coding for any other reason than that.

It is true that some items seem weak, like a blue cloack that gives fire resistance +1 but has 0 armor. For you, it may be irrelevant -- for a twink on that particular level, it may be a gold prize. I agree that sometimes the rarity seems arbitrary, but in most cases the items that are highlighted are somehow "different" and "unique" compared to your standard equipment (a white colour coded sword rarelly has any stat bonuses for example).

Basically, that is how items are coloured right now....

...It is true that some items seem weak, like a blue cloack that gives fire resistance +1 but has 0 armor. For you, it may be irrelevant -- for a twink on that particular level, it may be a gold prize.
[/quote]


*cries*

One last time: The second quote illustrates my problem with these 'rarity' systems. If it's trying to tell me that this item is interesting, and yet it quite obviously isn't (because it's only interesting to someone 20 levels lower) then it is quite clearly not accomplishing the desired purpose.

And therefore is a poor system which requires rethinking.

I'm not sure if I'm not explaining myself properly or people just aren't actually reading my posts before replying to them, but I don't really have the patience to debate it any further.

Sandman, the rarity system does not work relative to your level. If you want it to work that way -- why would it? It would be too much hassle for the following example:

You are level 30. You are wearing blue items, which are way much stronger than green or white for your level. Now, according to what you want, these items should be ultra-gold, flashing, accompanied by cherubs and horns for a level 1, just because it would be awesome for him to wear it. That would be misleading for the nooblet who knows nothing of the game -- each higher level person would have gold items on them (from his point of view).

In addition, a game isn't only about mechanics and stat bashing (or having only relevant/usefull info). It is about vanity -- a person plays longer to get a stupid item just because it has an appealing visual, or has a gold name. Well, most of it is vanity -- as Jim-ay said, some like to roleplay, selling a crap purple item as a trophy for 100 gold, while an awesome white sword goes about for 5 gold.

My 2 cents for what they are worth:

1. I never understood the rarity system. I believe it was a procedural way employed to simulate randomness in order to expand grinding in a multiplayer environment. It requires neither skill nor gut, but mostly luck or playtime, both of which aren't actual interesting gameplay decisions.

2. I believe unpredictability doesn't naturally link to randomness. A rarity system feels like it is strongly relying upon randomness. The idea of dropping ingredients/components at set intervals seems a lot more interesting though it may encourage grinding as well.

3. Strangely enough, your rarity system matches exactly that of Magic the Gathering TCG. And they've been quite successful with it (Legendary is called Mythic Rares, but we get the point).
Ironically however, Magic the Gathering cards are not ranked by rarity to reflect their actual power factor, but their complexity. Simple cards (utilities) show up at common, and will appear in several pro-level decks.
Obviously, this could be applied to your game in this way as well, but I doubt it would make sense. The question you need to ask yourself is, do you really need the rarity system for something?

Overall, I feel like you've assumed that because every game had a rarity system, so should yours.
Game Design is the ability perform problem solving, aka, find solutions to problems that spur from the design. I feel like you're developing a solution for a problem that may not exist.

Also, overcompensating by 'categorization' will have the side effect of making people care less (not) about your actual items, and will rely upon the color coding. The idea here is that they no longer need to think for themselves what they need. Typically, that means any item lower on the scale will have a very temporary lifetime in your inventory (1-5% of the game time you spend, when you're just looking for something better) until 95+% of the items dropped are irrelevant.

I believe the idea here rather would be to find a way to make every item interesting and restricting the player's ability to carry all of them around (is this not why the idea of stash was born?). Specialization of item is one way to achieve this. In Castlevania series, there is a sword with very low power, but the random ability to stone the enemies, which turns out to be quite efficient in many scenarios. Most hardcore players keep a copy in their inventory along with their uber weapons.
Also, some enemies are weaker to spears or swords, etc.

Choosing what to keep needs not to be a decision based on 'the computer told me to keep this through a clever color coding that allows me to waste less time' but rather on 'what do I REALLY need to keep around? What's my general strategy here? What must I keep around just in case?'
And choosing is a risk-reward strategy that actually generates interesting decisions.
And that my friend, is what you should be focusing on