I really like your Idea but I like the combining items way to.

Innociv, I made a post in another thread before I got to this one (amazing how quickly the posts add up). 

In any case, I like your idea.  Its good, relatively simple, and intuitive. 

1st point - I'd really like everyone to be able to see everyone's items.  To make it even simplier, I'd like to see the Demigod's base stats (including attribute bonuses) + whatever lumped bonuses from items: i.e.

:mouse over Regulus:

Damage: 137 + 265

Move Speed: 65 + 6.5

Attack Speed: 80 + 40

etc etc

2nd point - I'd like to see some synergy between items.

I suggested you should be able to see others items in my UI thread.  But just the items, not their damage, attack speed, or armor.  But you could guess waht those stats are based on their items.
I wouldn't mind if you could see all that info on an enemy.. but i'd prefer not.
Should certainly be able to see allies though!

I'd like to see synergy between items too.   The only current synergy is how 100% attack speed is double damage, +100% damage is double damage, but both is 400% more damage. heh..

Or synergies between items and skills, that is easier to do.

Like i said with the "all %chance skills get 10% higher chance" thing that could synergize with lots of skills, and items too!

25% lightning becomes 35%.  15% stun chance becomes 25%.

Synergy = goooood.  Proper synergy makes it pretty impossible to "crack" balance.  "cracking" balance is bad!

Right now we already cracked the balance pretty much in our current build in like 3 days   At least we think we did

Inno, the attackspeed works like this.

Attackspeed is named Rate of Fire in the Lua files, and describes how many shots/hit per second you do. Example the Rook.

Rook has a RoF of 0.3, this means he  needs 3.33sec. for a swing. Now, you go and buy the +50% attackspeed boots, his RoF will change to 0.45 (Calculated: 0.3+0.3*0.5 or to better adjust to modifiers 0.(1+0.5)) => 2.22sec for a swing.

If you add now an additonal item with 20% attackspeed it'll look like: 0.(1+0.5+0.2) => RoF: 0.51 => 1.96sec

So they stack: 20 + 50 = 70% , else it would be to insane.

IF you do it like u said it would be: Basespeed*1.5*1.2 = 0.54 => 1.85sec - nice diffrence, but to show you how hard it would be, lets stack additional 30% to it.

1. 0.(1+0.5+0.2+0.3) = 0.6 = 1.6 sec.  Means 50% + 20% + 30% = 100% more attack speed.

2. 0.3*1.5*1.2*1.3 =  0.702 = 1.42 sec. means 50%*20%*30% = 134% more attack speed.

Percentage dont get multiplied normaly.

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Additional info: if found somethin intressting

        Primary = 'Power',

This is out of rooks file, it means, there are Attributes. I recognize, that if you check the Stat-Skill of regulus, there are also 3 Stats mentioned.

So long, Aspartem

I think the atk spd is as Aspartem said. More to add, i think only percentage activated skills work like you think innociv e.g. Lightning strike

So some things add, and some multiply, but there is no indication in the game without looking in the lua files?

I have a thing against hidden gameplay elements that require looking at the scripts to figure out.  In this case it's not as bad as i've seen in other games, though, granted.

Zeneroth, the -% cooldowns are multiplicative. the 2 25%'s make a 46.75% reduction not 50%.

Wow this is the first time I have seen this how do you activate the blacksmith menu

it's not currently in game, Iprometheus.  Innociv mocked this one up with photoshop  

I like this idea a bunch, and the implementation is very smooth

PS - Innociv - your posts have changed remarkably in tone and thoughtfulness since Sins - keep it up!

Why does every item need to have nothing but +bonus stuff. If they are going to implement this upgrade system I suggest adding penalties with the bonuses. Like +attackspeed, - damage. Good if you have a stun item or something that procs for example, or just wanna kill creeps fast and dont have an AOE. Or +damage, - attackspeed, good if you wanna spam skills as attack speed doesnt really matter then and you just want pure damage. Similar with items, +manaregen -healthregen. Great for a nuker who sits back out of the fight and nukes. -cooldown, - attackspeed. Similar, nuker or skillspammer can spam skills fast but takes a hit to regular attackspeed.

These are just examples obviously but they could be set up so that you can still specialise your character but there will be costs to it. As it is right now you can specialise but you are still as strong in every other aspect as everyone else.

Traditionally (Final Fantasy, WoW, Dota) items with penalties and bonuses are avoided.  They are very situational and players will more often choose bonus items only rather than building their character and inventory in a way to support the penalties incurred.

The penalty is spending gold, generally.

I'm not against some things having penalties, like how evade was making you dodge heals.

I don't disagree though, Subjagator, I mean really it makes a lot of sense.  +attackspeed and +damage multiply together on your DPS, so it would be good to have +attack speed give less damge because +attack speed also makes %chances trigger more often.
And if the powerful -cooldowns had a downside, that might be good too, like slower cast speed, higher mana usage, less attack speed, yeah.

I'm fine either way though, myself.  I don't know if I've feverishly fight for one or the other.

You might want to make a thread about that after beta2 though!  I hear in beta2 they're redoing like all the items pretty much.

This is a great idea.  One thing I would add (which may or may not make it a recipe) but maybe require certain peices in order to obtain a certain path.  For example, if you want to upgrade one of the gloves to receive a certain Armor bonus you need a specific Ring.  If you want to add speed, or energy, it requires a separate ring.

This makes the decisions harder because you are ultimately choosing a path that has consequences and a set of actions with it.  This goes back to an earlier post in another thread.  The show of a good items/abilities is the often difficult choice of which path to take when both paths offer a very attrative upgrade.

To be honest though, the only place this would work would be with the glove/ring combo, since the other armor pieces aren't located on top of each other.  Unless the artifacts could be integrated into the other peices.  Similar to too human where you can augment weapons or armor by inserting runes with specific powers.

It's actally not much of a choice unless the ring is somehow unique.  Otherwise, you use the ring, then buy another.  At which point you're just wasting time and adding complication.

OTOH, if the ring is unique, then yeah, it's a valid idea, assuming you want unique items.

Huh? That sounds horrible.. no offense. :/  I don't really think you've thought through how that'd actually work if it was in the game.

Then you can't use the gloves without the ring. And the ring without whatever it needs to allow upgrade.

And it'd make absolutely no sense.

This was a great post! I need to read the Demigod Ideas forum a lot more.

I don't know if anyone else has mentioned it but the receipe scrolls in DOTA suck, the only reason they were done that way is because it was a MOD of another game and that was the easiest way to upgrade items without needing to mess with the game's code or write a new upgrading interface.

The way Demigod handles items and their upgrade paths could far surpass DOTA in terms of intergration.